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By Anis Chowdhury and Jomo Kwame Sundaram
SYDNEY and KUALA LUMPUR, May 5 2020 (IPS)

Like much of the West, Argentina did not take many early precautionary actions after the Covid-19 epidemic was confirmed in January, but became the first Latin American country to act decisively with a 12 March public health emergency declaration.

The presidential decree came a day after the World Health Organization (WHO) declared a global pandemic, just over a week after the first case was detected in the republic on 3 March.

Anis Chowdhury

Lockdown to ‘flatten the curve’
With neither vaccine nor cure available, Argentina decided on a lockdown to buy time to ‘flatten the curve’ by slowing its rapid spread and quickly enhancing its public health capacities and capabilities, to do mass testing and contact tracing, and get protective equipment for frontline health workers and respirators for the severely infected.

The measures include a mandatory ‘stay in shelter’ lockdown, with those violating the order facing fines and harsh prison sentences from six months to two years, and other “social, preventive isolation” measures from 20 to 31 March, now extended to 10 May.

All arrivals from Covid-19 ‘hot spots’ (including China, Iran, South Korea, Italy and the US) have to be quarantined for 14 days regardless of nationality. All direct flights between Argentina and the US as well as Europe were suspended for 30 days from 17 March, now extended indefinitely.

As infections surge in neighbouring Brazil, the government has set up secure corridors in border provinces, allowing Brazilian drivers to access bathrooms, get food and unload products with minimal contact with Argentines.

Health ‘non-system’ fragmented, ineffective, inequitable
All Argentines have a constitutional right to health care, but this does not mean much, due to its gross inequalities. Its patchwork of regional and national laws without much coherence compounds the problem, resulting in very complicated and uneven coverage.

Jomo Kwame Sundaram

The new left populist government from December 2019 of Peronist President Alberto Fernandez reversed the previous Macri government’s severe austerity measures under an IMF program, and demotion of the Health Minister to a non-cabinet position, which had further undermined its already debilitated health ‘non-system’.

A tenth of the population, mostly around Buenos Aires, has private health insurance, ensuring access to private hospitals with most of the best physicians, nurses and equipment.

About a third of the population – mostly rural poor – does not have any health insurance, and little choice other than the chronically underfunded and understaffed public hospitals. Many Argentines get health coverage through unions, with more than 300 various schemes, offering very different benefits.

By 30 April, 214 deaths had been attributed to the virus, while confirmed infections reached 4,285, probably too few, due to the low testing rate. By 26 April, only around 50,000 tests had been done for its 45.2 million population, compared to Chile’s 150,000 for 19.1 million. However, the Argentine government is rapidly enhancing its testing capacity.

Protecting the economy, people
For the new government, the crisis could not have come at a worse time, inheriting an economy in deep recession, with gross public debt around US$323 billion (93.3% of GDP), annual inflation over 50%, poverty above 40%, unemployment at almost 10%, and the Argentine peso having lost 68% of its value in 2019.

Yet, Argentina committed around 2% of GDP to an economic and social relief package, ensuring that no essential services – electricity, gas, water, mobile telephony, fixed landlines, internet and cable television – are cut for retirees, social welfare recipients and households earning less than about U$520 due to non-payment.

The government provides 10,000 pesos (about US$150) as an Emergency Family Income to domestic workers and other low-income earners, prioritizing those who qualify for the Universal Child Allowance and the Allowance for Pregnant Women. Nearly eight million Argentines received relief payments from 21 April.

The administration has made every employer, regardless of trade and size, eligible for the Emergency Aid Program for Work and Production, postponing or reducing taxes on small businesses by up to 95% and paying employees half to all the monthly minimum wage.

More than US$30 million has been allocated for food aid alone, with national, provincial and municipal authorities mobilizing many to work in public kitchens. Fernandez has promised food and other resources needed to survive, especially by the poor.

The government has also required banks to extend hundreds of millions of US dollars in loans at reduced interest rates to keep the economy afloat. The administration has also suspended evictions and frozen all rent increases until September, besides absolving the lowest tax bracket of penalties for not paying their March taxes.

As the lockdown continues, Argentina’s economic and social relief package has grown, almost daily, to almost double the original sum committed, to 3.5% of GDP by April’s end.

National unity against epidemic
Despite Argentina’s fiercely divisive politics, the new President insisted on standing with leaders from across the political spectrum in a rare display of unity to announce the 19 March lockdown.

The national government is working closely with state governors as well as all health providers, securing private sector cooperation without nationalization.

Meanwhile, the armed forces are building triage centres in case of a surge in infections while social, religious and business groups work together to deliver food to more than two million in the greater Buenos Aires area alone.

Despite relief measures, much hardship remains, especially for those in poor crowded barrio slums and relying on daily incomes. Yet, its measures have 94.7% approval, with the President’s popularity soaring to 81%.

Crisis as opportunity
After taking office, President Fernandez increased progressive taxation to try to balance the budget to restore growth, rather than pay foreign creditors. Rather than cut social expenditures, he cut spending benefitting the wealthy, e.g., by reducing higher pensions, but not cutting smaller ones.

Having announced that its debt needed restructuring, the new government made a restructuring offer to creditors well before the pandemic became its central concern. The government organized another display of national unity to back its insistence that it cannot pay creditors while dealing with the pandemic.

On 16 April, Economy Minister Martín Guzmán demanded that creditors accept new securities to replace US$65 billion worth of bonds, almost 40% of its foreign currency debt.

Argentina is also seeking a small ‘haircut’ of 5.4% on the debt principal, saving the government US$3.6 billion and cutting interest payments by 62%. These repayments will start low, at just 0.5%, beginning late in 2023, and will peak in 2029 at less than 5%. The plan will save the government U$37.9 billion in interest.

President Fernandez also welcomed the joint G20 statement of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund proposing immediate debt relief for the poorest countries, while calling for a global humanitarian emergency fund to tackle the pandemic.

Guzmán also urged fellow G20 finance ministers to use the ‘entire toolkit’ of economic policies, including bilateral swaps, to aid countries most in need.

Meanwhile, there seems to be a consensus of sorts that Argentina has tackled the epidemic rather well so far despite its problematic health system and economic problems.

The 27 March Bloomberg headline, Argentina Sacrifices Economy to Ward Off Virus, Winning Praise, captured the cruel dilemma Covid-19 has posed for people and governments to choose between lives and livelihoods.

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An Indigenous woman worker harvesting the tender leaves in a tea farm in Unakoti district of Tripura State before the coronavirus lockdown. Credit: Stella Paul/IPS

By Stella Paul
UNAKOTI, India, May 4 2020 (IPS)

As the sun sets over the hills, Prafulla Debbarma, a small tea grower in Dhanbilash village in north eastern India, walks along the labyrinth path of his farm and past a thick blanket of well-grown tea plants. In the fading light, the farmer appears deeply worried. This tea farm, the sole source of his livelihood, remains unharvested thanks to the ongoing COVID-19 crisis.

Across the region, tea harvesting begins on Apr. 1. But as India declared a total lockdown to halt the spread of coronavirus on Mar. 25, farmers in Tripura — the fifth-largest tea producer in India — also had to halt all activities, which included not being allowed to bring in additional labour for harvesting. Two weeks later, on Apr. 12, the government finally allowed harvesting, but by then the tea bushes had grown bigger with new leaves losing their tenderness — a crucial factor in determining the quality of the tea.

According to Debbarma, who is head of the state’s Association of Small Tea Growers — a 4,700-strong community of independent, smallholder tea farmers or growers — everything was fine until the pandemic.

“Our tea was starting to get recognised and markets were just opening for us slowly. The government also was promoting this sector. But the lockdown has destroyed everything because from harvesting to sale, there will be a chain of losses now,” he told IPS.

The supply chain includes plucking the tender tea shoots in spring, drying, processing, packaging and selling, which is done through auctions. Small tea growers, few of whom own a processing facility, sell their entire produce to bigger tea farms in the region.

So being at bottom of the supply chain pyramid, Debbarma explained, means that small growers are also the most vulnerable as they have little say in the sale of the produce or price control.

The Rangrung tea estate, in Unakoti, in India’s Tripura state, is owned collectively by a group of small tea farmers. Credit: Stella Paul/IPS

Small tea growers making headway 

A few kilometres away from Debbarma’s farm is Rangrung, a tea estate owned collectively by a group of small tea farmers. Many of these farmers also work as day labourers on other plantations as their own farms are too small to provide a livelihood.

Dulal Urang, one of Rangrung’s smallholder farmers who also works as a day labourer, is worried that the economic effects of the COVID crisis may push sector back to an era of uncertainty similar to the one almost two decades ago.

• From 1982-2001, the state’s entire tea sector collapsed due to a raging armed insurgency. As violence escalated, most estates were forced to shut down.

However, over the past few years, the tea sector had begun thriving again.

• Debbarma and Urang are among the 4,000 small tea growers, defined by  the Tea Board of India as a person who has a tea farm of up to 25 acres, in Tripura. Here in Tripura, most smallholder tea farmers like Debbarma cultivate on less than two acres of land.
• There are now 58 tea estates, spread over 7,482 hectares of land, with an annual production of around 8.72 million kg. Of these, 13 farms are like Rangrung, owned by small tea growers’ collectives.
• Together, the industry employs over 13,000 people.

Livelihood worries

According to the United Nations, tea plays a meaningful role in rural development, poverty reduction and food security in developing countries.

But in India, tea estates have been historically known as pockets of poor nutrition, ill health and under nourishment, mostly because of low wages and poverty. In Tripura, an overwhelming majority of the workers here earn between $26 to $66 per month, a Tripura University study found. It noted, “the present wage rate is Rs.71 ($0.94) per day, it may be increased up to Rs.150 ($1.98) per day or more”.

The set government wage in Tripura is actually 176 rupees or $2.33 a day for an adult and 88 rupees or $1.66 a day for a non-adult. A UNICEF-backed study also notes that a significant number of tea estates across the country also employ child labour.

However, farms that have better market access and higher selling prices had been slowly changing for the better.

Debbarma, who started his own processing unit recently, employs some 29 people and sells most of his produce to Hindustan Lever — Unilever’s India arm.

“The price was good, and the procurement process is transparent. If we produce more, we can pay more to [our workers] and change our entire community,” said the farmer.

Kanchan Uriya a member of the Rangrung village council noted that where estates paid the government daily wage, life had been better for tea pickers.

“Wherever the right wages are paid, the living condition has improved. You can see in tea estates like Manu Valley where workers have regular food supplies, mobile phones etc. But some [tea estates] are still not paying it,” she told IPS.

Small tea growers producing quality organic tea

But some of the smallholder tea farmers, who also worked as day labourers, had been contributing by producing high quality organic tea, said Bijit Basumatary, head of the Organic Small Tea Growers Association of North East (OSTGANE).

In international markets, the difference between the price of organic and non-organic tea is huge: while a kg of the best quality of non-organic tea sells for about $5, organic tea can be sold for at least at $105 per kg.

Though to sell organic tea, a tea planter needs to acquire a certificate from an authorised agency and recommendation of the Tea Board of India (TBI) — the nodal government agency on tea trade. It’s a complex process, involving a variety of tests on the variety, quality and yield rates, among others.

With limited resources and without the backing of big business houses, small tea growers found it hard to get the organic tag. 

Yet, two smallholder tea farms in Tripura, Maheshkhola and Mohanpur, had received the coveted organic certification after they met the National Programme for Organic Production Standards.  

And other like Debbarma had been lobbying the government for support in getting the certification, while proactively learning organic farming techniques. 

Debbarma, who is also the vice chair of OSTGANE, organised one such training at his own tea farm prior to the coronavirus lockdown.

Combating the effects of climate change

The growers were also planning a shift to natural gas from coal — a move supported by India’s premier fossil fuel explorer Oil and Natural Gas Commission (ONGC), Om Prakash Singh, a senior ONGC official had said during a press conference in January. 

If implement quickly, this could be a small but significant step towards easing the burden of the troubled industry, which has been hit by climate change. 

• Data from the Tea Research Institute — India’s oldest and largest tea research station — shows that India’s entire tea industry is facing climatic challenges such as erratic rainfall, which is causing inconsistent and low yield.

Combined with organic farming, the shift to an alternative, clean energy supply would help the small tea growers in Tripura restore plant and soil health, increase yield and better combat the climate threat in the future.

Dulal Urang cycles through Rangrung tea garden. Credit: Stella Paul/IPS

Coronavirus may have reversed the progress

But amid the COVID-19 lockdown, this continued improvement of conditions seems impossible now, Uriya said. Especially as most tea farms follow a ‘no work, no pay’ policy.

The lockdown, which was meant to end today, May 4, has been extended for a further two weeks.

According to Debbarma, the combination of a delayed harvest, coupled with a low market price is almost certain to cause financial damage and losses too heavy to recover.

Uriya is afraid that this will result is much lower wages for tea pickers. 

“If they didn’t pay the right wages when business was good, how will they pay when there is little or no business?” she said.

In the meantime, small tea farmers, like Urang, want to ensure their harvests are wasted and that they can continue earning a living.

“Right now, I am only hoping that my harvest is sold and there will be enough work after this season. Otherwise, our survival will be difficult, especially when the rains come,” Urang told IPS.

 

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Credit: Athar Parvaiz/IPS

By Eco Matser
AMSTERDAM, May 4 2020 (IPS)

The COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated inequalities and revealed to what extent current economic models are not sustainable. It has also shown that most countries are not equipped to cope with a health crisis.

The World Food Program is warning that the lives and livelihoods of 265 million people in low and middle-income countries will be under severe threat unless swift action is taken to tackle the pandemic.

This is especially true for the 840 million people in the world who still do not have access to electricity. And the further 3 billion who rely on inefficient stoves and polluting fuels like kerosene, biomass (wood, animal dung and crop waste) and coal for cooking or heating.

In the light of the annual toll to human health, the environment, and local economies, clean cooking solutions should be part of a global forward-looking strategy. Including these solutions in the wider plan for the recovery is ambitious, yet necessary

According to a recent study by the Harvard University T.H. Chan School of Public Health, “There is a large overlap between causes of deaths of COVID-19 patients and the diseases that are affected by long-term exposure to fine particulate matter.”

The results of the study suggest that “Long-term exposure to air pollution increases vulnerability to experiencing the most severe Covid-19 outcomes.” Similar conclusions on the link between high mortality in northern Italy and the level of air pollution in this region have been drawn by the Aarhus University. The evidence builds upon previous research during the 2003 SARS outbreak.

This raises the question of the impact that a respiratory illness like COVID-19 could have on people who are already exposed to indoor pollution. Particularly the poorest and most vulnerable who do not have access to clean cooking options and already bear the burden of energy poverty.

 

Four million premature deaths

The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that each year around four million people die prematurely from illnesses attributable to household air pollution. Women and children in many communities are disproportionately affected because of their traditional home-based activities, including cooking. As the WHO states, “Close to half of pneumonia deaths among children under five are caused by particulate matter (soot) inhaled from household air pollution.”

But at present, this issue is not getting the political attention it deserves. As a consequence, access to clean cooking solutions largely remains lacking, which vastly increases the risk for vulnerable groups during the current pandemic.

 

How to save millions of potential victims

The COVID-19 pandemic is intimately linked to the other challenges our world is facing. From outdoor and indoor pollution to climate change, from the over-exploitation of natural resources to the loss of biodiversity, these crises are all interlinked.

They are the product of a global socio-economic system that considers nature and ecosystems as its farms and factories. The response to the virus outbreak should not be limited to containing its spread in the short-term, but must entail a long-term vision of sustainability and inclusion.

There is an immediate need to ensure food security and support our health systems, especially in less developed countries and areas where lack of or unreliable electricity access prevents basic health service provision.

But going forward, governments have to respond to the pressing issues shaping our future. While an immediate health and financial response is crucial to prevent further spread of the virus and economic collapse, other long-term changes are urgently needed. One of these is the switch from traditional fuels to clean cooking solutions. This will protect millions of women, men and future generations by giving them a better chance of survival from COVID-19 and any new respiratory viruses.

 

A forward-looking strategy

Fortunately, the solutions already exist. But they have received too little attention and financial support. A Hivos/World Future Council report published last year shows that the costs of cooking with solar electricity using efficient slow cookers and pressure cookers have decreased in the last few years. So these clean alternatives are now competitive with the costs of traditional cooking fuels.

In the light of the annual toll to human health, the environment, and local economies, clean cooking solutions should be part of a global forward-looking strategy. Including these solutions in the wider plan for the recovery is ambitious, yet necessary. It is high time for governments, policy and decision-makers to embrace this new opportunity. They need to step up action and ensure an inclusive, resilient, sustainable and just future. After years of inaction on this front, now is the time to cooperate in a global response.

 

The big picture

Clean cooking solutions are part of the larger push towards decentralized renewable energy (DRE). COVID-19 will not only impact existing DRE projects that provide energy services to millions of people. It will also affect the future of the sector, jeopardizing our efforts to ensure a just energy transition for all. The DRE sector cannot be allowed to fail. That is why Hivos joined the Alliance for Rural Electrifications’ call to action for redirecting and adapting funding windows to the decentralized renewable energy sector.

We need to jointly strive for an inclusive energy sector. We must ensure that the most vulnerable people and the prime victims of this crisis are included in designing energy policies and programs.

This opinion piece was originally published here

 

Eco Matser is Hivos global Climate Change / Energy and Development Coordinator

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Workers busy plucking leaves in Rangichhara tea garden in Kulaura of Moulvibazar recently. Photo: Mintu Deshwara

By Mintu Deshwara
May 4 2020 (IPS-Partners)

After her mother passed away, her father remarried and moved elsewhere, and so attending school became a luxury for 12-year-old Sheuly Munda.

Along with her grandmother Belmoni, a registered tea-garden worker, Sheuly now plucks leaves at a tea garden in Moulvibazar district’s Srimongol upazila.

“I wanted to continue my study, but my grandmother said she could not bear my education expenses. Instead, it would be better for the family if I could earn something,” she said, while helping Belmoni achieve her daily leaf plucking target of 20-25 kg to earn the day’s wage of Tk 102.

In the same garden, 16-year-old Sakhina Munda started plucking leaves two years ago after dropping out of school at grade VII.

“My mother, a registered worker in this garden, has tuberculosis and my father died a few years ago. So, I have to work here to feed our family of four,” she said. Like other tea workers, she works at least seven to eight hours a day.

A 2018 baseline survey by BBS, funded by Unicef, found that 18.8 percent of all children between the ages of five and 17 in tea gardens of Moulvibazar, Habiganj and Sylhet districts are engaged in child labour.

The percentage of tea-garden children aged 5-17 and involved in child labour in Habiganj is 29.8 percent, in Moulvibazar 15.6 percent and in Sylhet 19.3 percent.

The study, the first of its kind on the country’s tea gardens, was conducted under Unicef’s Global Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey (MICS) programme.

Another MICS report from 2019 shows the total child labour in the country for children aged 5-17 is 6.8 percent.

The findings from the tea gardens show that low wages, malnutrition, inadequate maternity and health services lead children to work in tea gardens.

Tea-garden children mostly work as a substitute of or in addition to a family member, mentioned yet another study.

Faisal Ahmmed and Ismail Hossain, professors of the Department of Social Work, Shahjalal University of Science and Technology, conducted a study titled “A Study Report on Working Conditions of Tea Plantation Workers in Bangladesh” and published in 2016 and funded by the International Labour Organization (ILO).

Some children work as a replacement of a parent who is unable to work, so that they do not lose their residence in the workers’ colony. Living quarters are given only to active workers, the study said.

During peak season, the tea-garden authorities welcome children to work alongside their parents to finish the plucking within the stipulated timeframes. Workers also take their children to work to meet targets or secure more income, stated the findings.

“We do not want our children to work. We want to send them to school. But how can we afford that when we cannot even afford three meals a day?” Ajit Banerjee, a tea worker in Barlekha upazila of Moulvibazar, asked.

Pankaj Kondo, vice president of Bangladesh Cha Sramik Union, told this correspondent that, according to national law, children under 18 are not allowed to work in tea gardens, but they still do.

Generally, male child workers dig canals, repair broken roads in the tea gardens and take care of the tea plants. Female child workers pluck tea leaves and sometimes put tea into sacks in the factories, he said.

GM Shiblee, chairman of the Sylhet branch of Bangladesh Cha Sangsad, the tea garden owners’ association, said they rejected the MICS survey findings.

“They conducted the survey without contacting us,” he complained, adding that some people take jobs in the tea gardens with fake documents.

Shah Alam, chairman of Bangladesh Cha Sangsad, told this correspondent, “We do not employ any child.”
When asked about the findings of studies, he said action will be taken against those who employ children in tea gardens.

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Garment workers wash hands before entering an apparel factory at the Ulail area in Savar, on April 28, 2020. The Covid-19 pandemic has laid bare, in the cruellest way, the extraordinary precariousness and injustices of our world of work. Photo: Palash Khan

By Guy Ryder
May 4 2020 (IPS-Partners)

In these times of Covid-19, the big challenge for most of us is how to protect ourselves and our families from the virus and how to hold on to our jobs. For policymakers, that translates into beating the pandemic without doing irreversible damage to the economy in the process.

With over three million confirmed cases and over 230,000 victims of the virus to date globally, and the expected loss of the equivalent of 305 million jobs worldwide by mid-year, the stakes have never been higher. Governments continue to “follow the science” in the search for the best solutions while foregoing the obvious benefits of much greater international cooperation in building the needed global response to the global challenge.

But with the war against Covid-19 still to be won, it has become commonplace that what awaits us after victory is a “new normal” in the way society is organised and the way we will work.

This is hardly reassuring.

Because no one seems able to say what the new normal will be. Because the message is that it will be dictated by the constraints imposed by the pandemic rather than our choices and preferences. And because we’ve heard it before. The mantra which provided the mood music of the crash of 2008-2009 was that once the vaccine to the virus of financial excess had been developed and applied, the global economy would be safer, fairer, more sustainable. But that didn’t happen. The old normal was restored with a vengeance and those on the lower echelons of labour markets found themselves even further behind.

So May 1, the international day of labour, is the right occasion to look more closely at this new normal, and start on the task of making it a better normal—not so much for those who already have much, but for those who so obviously have too little.

This pandemic has laid bare, in the cruellest way, the extraordinary precariousness and injustices of our world of work. It is the decimation of livelihoods in the informal economy—where six out of ten workers make a living—that has ignited warnings from our colleagues in the World Food Programme of the coming pandemic of hunger. It is the gaping holes in the social protection systems of even the richest countries that have left millions in situations of deprivation. It is the failure to guarantee workplace safety that condemns nearly three million to die each year, because of the work they do. And it is the unchecked dynamic of growing inequality that means that if, in medical terms, the virus does not discriminate between its victims in its social and economic impact, it discriminates brutally against the poorest and the powerless.

The only thing that should surprise us in all this is that we are surprised. Before the pandemic, the manifest deficits in decent work were mostly played out in individual episodes of quiet desperation. It has taken the calamity of Covid-19 to aggregate them into the collective social cataclysm the world faces today. But we always knew: we simply chose not to care. By and large, policy choices by commission or omission accentuated rather than alleviated the problem.

Fifty-two years ago, Martin Luther King, in a speech to striking sanitation workers on the eve of his assassination, reminded the world that there is dignity in all labour. Today, the virus has similarly highlighted the always essential and sometimes heroic role of the working heroes of this pandemic. People who are usually invisible, unconsidered, undervalued, even ignored. Health and care workers, cleaners, supermarket cashiers, transport staff—too often numbered among the ranks of the working poor and the insecure.

Today, the denial of dignity to these people, and to millions of others, stand as a symbol of past policy failures and our future responsibilities.

On May Day next year, we trust that the pressing emergency of Covid-19 will be behind us. But we will have before us the task of building a future of work which tackles the injustices that the pandemic has highlighted, together with the permanent and no longer postponable challenges of climate, digital and demographic transition.

This is what defines the better normal that has to be the lasting legacy of the global health emergency of 2020.

Guy Ryder is the Director-General of International Labour Organization (ILO).

This story was originally published by The Daily Star, Bangladesh

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By Joseph Chamie
NEW YORK, May 4 2020 (IPS)

How many COVID-19 deaths will occur before a vaccine becomes available worldwide? As with many seemingly simple questions about an uncertain future, the proper answer to that important query is: “it depends”.

The total worldwide number of deaths from COVID-19 before a vaccine, reported to be nearly a quarter-million at the end of April and amounting to a five-fold increase since the start of April, is hard to predict. It depends on a host of critical factors, many of which are not well understood and are changing rapidly.

In the absence of a vaccine and limited success in limiting the spread of COVID-19, the percent of the world’s population becoming infected could reach 70 percent, the level roughly estimated to reach herd immunity. With an infection level of 70 percent and a 1 percent fatality rate, the resulting number of deaths from COVID-19 is 55 million, or about 0.7 percent of the world’s population

Among those factors are the pandemic’s duration, the dissemination of the disease, the contagiousness and fatality of the virus, the virus’ basic reproductive rate (R0), human bodily responses, access to and quality of health care, available treatments for the illness, immunity after the illness, population susceptibility and the effectiveness of mitigation policies to reduce the virus’ spread.

The true number of deaths due to Covid-19 deaths will likely never be known precisely for several reasons. Many COVID-19 deaths will go undercounted and underreported, some deliberately by government authorities and others missed due to weak vital statistics reporting systems. Also, specifying the cause of death is not always straightforward and clear as multiple causes may be involved in a person’s death.

Clearly, the worldwide availability of an effective vaccine against COVID-19 remains the utmost priority in defeating the pandemic. Scientists around the world are actively working on vaccines for COVID-19 as well as potential treatments for the illness.

To date, there is no vaccine for COVID-19 and no specific antiviral medicines against the disease. Although hopeful signs are emerging, most experts expect that a vaccine that would be administered widely on a global scale is unlikely to occur before 2021. In addition, even if a vaccine were discovered and made available, it is not clear how long the immunity to the disease might last.

WHO has warned that people who have had COVID-19 are not necessarily immune by the presence of antibodies from getting the virus again. In other words, while some are hopeful regarding immunity, as of yet there is no evidence that people who have had COVID-19 will not get a second infection. Consequently, governments are being cautioned about considering issuing “immunity passports” or risk-free certificates to people who had COVID-19 and assuming those people are safe to return to normal activities.

Up until the time when an effective vaccine becomes accessible and affordable worldwide, the number of COVID-19 deaths will be determined largely by two critical factors. The first is the percent of the world’s population who will become infected, both those who become ill and those who are asymptomatic. And the second critical factor determining the number of COVID-19 deaths is the percent of those infected who will die from the illness.

At this early point in the pandemic’s spread, government officials, public health experts and statistical modelers face the serious risks of both underestimating and overestimating the expected numbers of infections and deaths from COVID-19.

Some for political, economic, public order and related reasons tend to gravitate towards lower estimated numbers of COVID-19 infections and fatalities. Others who are concerned about being unprepared, undersupplied and overwhelmed by the disease, as well as the serious underreporting of coronavirus deaths, tend to lean towards higher estimates of COVID-19 deaths and infections.

To date the reported official numbers of COVID-19 deaths per one million population, unadjusted for age-sex structure, vary considerably across countries. Among the top ten countries, which are all developed countries, reported COVID-19 death rates at the end of April ranged from a low of nearly 200 deaths per million population in the United States to a high of more than 650 deaths per million population in Belgium (Figure 1). In China, where the novel coronavirus was first identified in Wuhan in December 2019, the reported COVID-19 death rate is substantially lower at 3 per one million population.

 

Source: Reported national data compiled by Worldometer.

 

COVID-19 death rates for dense urban centers are substantially higher than national rates. New York City, one of the epicenters of the coronavirus, reported that 25 percent of its residents may have been infected by COVID-19 by the end of April – similar to the proportion in Stockholm – and the COVID-19 death rate for the New York City metro area had surpassed more than 1,000 deaths per one million population. The death toll in Wuhan has recently been raised, with the COVID-19 mortality rate now at about 350 deaths per one million population.

Some models of the pandemic’s spread assume that the disease could infect from 40 to 70 percent of the world’s population. If the COVID-19 operates similar to other viruses, some report that a high infection rate of around 60 to 70 percent would in theory lead to “herd immunity”, which happens when a sufficiently high proportion of a population become immune to an infection disease that it stops the disease from spreading. However, some have dismissed that high level of infection because it is not prevention and implies that most people would become sick with many requiring hospitalization and large numbers dying.

The majority of people who become infected with COVID-19 are expected to be asymptomatic or recover without needing special treatment. However, when elderly people, and younger adults with serious medical conditions, such as heart disease, diabetes, lung disease, asthma and obesity, get infected with the coronavirus, the available data finds them having markedly higher risks of becoming severely ill, requiring hospitalization and possibly dying from the disease.

The overall death rate from COVID-19 is estimated by some to be somewhere around 1 percent. Other estimates place the fatality rate at around 0.5 to 1 percent. In comparison, the death rate from seasonal flu is substantially smaller, typically around 0.1 percent in the United States.

Applying both more and less likely values for the infection rate and death rate of COVID-19 to the world’s population of 7.8 billion yields a broad range for the expected total number of COVID-19 deaths worldwide (Figure 2). As the world is at the early stages of this new pandemic, the selected values for this exercise are tentative and will require updating as more statistical data on the rates of infection and fatality become available.

 

 

At the high end of the range, where 70 percent of the world’s population is infected and 2 percent of them die from the coronavirus, which is near the case fatality rate of 1.8 percent abroad the cruise ship Diamond Princess, the number of deaths from the pandemic reaches a high of 110 million, or about 1.4 percent of the world’s population. At the low end, where 10 percent of the world is infected and 0.1 percent of those people die, the number of deaths is nearly 1 million, or 0.01 percent of the world’s population.

As noted earlier, some experts believe that the fatality rate from COVID-19 is likely to be ten times that of seasonal influenza, or around 1 percent. If one-third of the world’s population were to become infected with the virus, which is the infection level reported in the 1918 influenza pandemic, the resulting number of deaths from COVID-19 would be about 26 million, or 100 times as great as the official number of COVID-19 deaths at the end of April and 0.33 percent of today’s world population.

As a point of comparison, the 1918 influenza pandemic, considered the deadliest pandemic in human history, killed no less than 50 million and perhaps as many as 100 million people. Those numbers of death represent a staggering 3 and 5 percent, respectively, of the world’s population at that time.

In the absence of a vaccine and limited success in limiting the spread of COVID-19, the percent of the world’s population becoming infected could reach 70 percent, the level roughly estimated to reach herd immunity. With an infection level of 70 percent and a 1 percent fatality rate, the resulting number of deaths from COVID-19 is 55 million, or about 0.7 percent of the world’s population.

Some believe that the large reported numbers of people who died from COVID-19 may be inflated because many people would have died soon anyway as well as exaggerated for political reasons. Recently reported mortality data for 11 countries during the last month undermine that notion by finding that far more people died in those countries than in previous years. For example, the number of daily deaths is more than twice the usual number in Paris and six times the normal amount in New York City.

An analysis in Italy over the period 23 February to 21 March found that for every officially recorded COVID-19 death, there may have been another death that went unrecorded. In addition, some government agencies report that the coronavirus death toll is an underestimation as it only counts those who died after testing positive.

Given the paucity of good data and the relatively high levels of morbidity and mortality from COVID-19, unprecedented efforts are needed to slow the spread of the infection or “flatten the curve”. Without a widely available COVID-19 vaccine, populations will need to consider a variety of appropriate measures, including shelter-in-place, social-distancing, contact tracing, widespread rapid testing, self-isolation, hand washing and face mask wearing. However, as many have repeatedly cautioned, if efforts to suppress the spread of the disease are greatly relaxed or stopped too early, COVID-19 will come back and kill many more people, especially among high-risk populations, in a short amount of time.

However, some have expressed the strong concern that “the cure is worse than the disease”. In their view, the enormous economic, social and human rights consequences of closing down normal life, including businesses, schools, public places and services, travel, functions, gatherings, etc., are calamitous, long lasting and worse than the toll of the novel coronavirus.

They fear that the unemployment, hunger, impoverishment, financial indebtedness, bankruptcies, investment failings, reduced revenue, agriculture setbacks, food supply disruptions, crippled economies, widespread despair and depression brought about by the mandatory lockdown and related draconian restrictions will to lead to higher morbidity and mortality rates and more human misery than those resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic. Consequently, many are increasingly deciding to end the lockdown and to gradually return to normal daily life with limited restrictions based on area-specific risk profiles and trends in COVID-19 infection and fatality rates.

To support their decisions to end the lockdown, some have pointed to Sweden’s experience with the coronavirus. That country did not impose a rigid lockdown, but kept public life as unrestricted as possible with recommended public health guidelines, closing colleges and high schools but not lower level schools, banning gatherings of 50 or more persons, keeping restaurants and bars open and trusted the public to adopt voluntary measures to slow down the contagion’s spread.

As a result of Sweden’s coronavirus strategy, the country’s capital, Stockholm, is expected to reach herd immunity in May. Attempting to achieve herd immunity through exposure, however, has proven controversial. Sweden’s number of coronavirus deaths per million population, 256 at the end of April, is far greater than the numbers in neighboring Denmark (78), Finland (38) and Norway (39). Also, Sweden’s strategy has placed its elderly and people with existing health conditions at substantially greater risk of becoming seriously ill and, potentially, dying from the coronavirus.

By the end of April people over the age of 70 in Sweden accounted for 86 percent of that nation’s fatalities, which is roughly similar to level observed in the United States where 80 percent of the COVID-19 deaths were to those aged 65 years and over. Many of the elderly deaths occurred in nursing homes and long-term care facilities, where the disease typically spreads easily.

 

To effectively confront the current and future pandemics, government officials and agencies need to

• tell the truth,
• be transparent,
• provide sound information,
• allay public anxieties,
• establish the public’s trust,
• rely on medical/health expertise,
• gather and utilize scientific data,
• address misinformation,
• avoid politicization, and
• resist stigma, blame and social discord.

 

In addition, responsible authorities should heed early warnings, be prepared to act quickly, aggressively and consistently, promote appropriate interventions to stem the virus’ spread and coordinate the efforts of local, state and national authorities.

Most medical and health experts have concluded that it is now almost inevitable that the COVID-19 will be transmitted globally and take a big toll on the world’s population. To effectively confront the COVID-19 pandemic, international cooperation and global efforts need to be supported, strengthened and properly funded, especially as the worst of the coronavirus still lies ahead for the world.

 

Joseph Chamie is an independent consulting demographer and a former director of the United Nations Population Division.

 

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ONLINE HIGH-LEVEL DIALOGUE Moderated by Jorge Ramos (journalist & author, Univision)
 
4 May 2020, 17:00-18:15 CET (GMT+2) / 11:00am-12:15pm EDT
 
JOIN LIVE: http://en.unesco.org/commemorations/worldpressfreedomday
 

By External Source
May 4 2020 (IPS-Partners)

On the occasion of World Press Freedom Day 2020, join UNESCO for a dynamic online
discussion on the importance of press freedom and independent journalism to provide reliable,
life-saving information during the COVID-19 pandemic. Topics to be covered include:

• Fighting disinformation and rumours
• Journalists on the front lines: ensuring their health and safety
• The role of governments: protecting press freedom and independent journalism
• The role of social media and technology: supporting journalism and fighting disinformation

PROGRAMME

Opening: Audrey Azoulay Director-General, UNESCO

Remarks: António Guterres Secretary-General, United Nations

High-level: Audrey Azoulay Director-General, UNESCO

Panel:

François-Philippe Champagne Minister of Foreign Affairs of Canada
Co-chair of the Media Freedom Coalition
Michelle Bachelet United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights
Christophe Deloire Secretary-General, Reporters without Borders
Monika Bickert Vice-President for Public Policy & Content, Facebook
Maria Ressa Investigative journalist and co-founder of Rappler
Younes Mjahed President, International Federation of Journalists

Also featuring a series of video messages from Heads of State and Government,
Ministers and other high-level figures.

Organized with the support of members of the Group of Friends on the Safety of Journalists at UNESCO.

MORE THAN EVER WE NEED FACTS.
MORE THAN EVER WE NEED PRESS FREEDOM.

#WorldPressFreedomDay #PressFreedom #Covid19
en.unesco.org/commemorations/worldpressfreedomday

The post Press Freedom and Tackling Disinformation in the COVID-19 context appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

ONLINE HIGH-LEVEL DIALOGUE Moderated by Jorge Ramos (journalist & author, Univision)

 
4 May 2020, 17:00-18:15 CET (GMT+2) / 11:00am-12:15pm EDT

 
JOIN LIVE: http://en.unesco.org/commemorations/worldpressfreedomday
 

The post Press Freedom and Tackling Disinformation in the COVID-19 context appeared first on Inter Press Service.

An undersea restaurant in the Maldives, a Small Island Developing State (SIDS)

By Pamela Coke-Hamilton
GENEVA, May 4 2020 (IPS)

The COVID-19 pandemic and the measures put in place to contain its diffusion are taking a heavy toll on the tourism sector. According to the United Nations World Tourism Organization (UNWTO), the COVID-19 pandemic will result in a contraction of the tourism sector by 20% to 30% in 2020.

This estimate is likely to be conservative for countries relying on foreign tourists, as the recent data on daily air traffic indicate a drop of almost 80% since January 2020.

While many economic sectors are expected to recover once restrictive measures are lifted, the pandemic will probably have a longer lasting effect on international tourism. This is largely due to reduced consumer confidence and the likelihood of longer restrictions on the international movement of people.

According to the World Travel and Tourism Council (WTTC), in previous viral epidemics the average recovery time for visitors to a destination was about 19 months.

Highly vulnerable countries

The sudden, deep and likely prolonged downturn in the travel and tourism sector has made countries that rely heavily on foreign tourism very concerned about their finances.

Among these, small island developing states (SIDS) are most vulnerable not only because they are highly dependent on tourism, but also because any shock of such magnitude is difficult to manage for small economies.

Related link: Coronavirus (COVID-19) : News, Analysis and Resources. Credit: UNCTAD

On average, the tourism sector accounts for almost 30% of the gross domestic product (GDP) of the SIDS, according to WTTC data. This share is over 50% for the Maldives, Seychelles, St. Kitts and Nevis and Grenada.

Overall, travel and tourism in the SIDS generates approximately $30 billion per year. A decline in tourism receipts by 25% will result in a $7.4 billion or 7.3% fall in GDP. The drop could be significantly greater in some of the SIDS, reaching 16% in the Maldives and Seychelles.

It is expected that for many SIDS, the COVID-19 pandemic will directly result in record amounts of revenue losses without the alternative sources of foreign exchange revenues necessary to service external debt and pay for imports.

Devastating economic consequences

In general, countries may be able to weather economic storms by relying on additional debt or using available foreign reserves.

However, access to global capital markets is increasingly tight, more so for small countries such as SIDS, which are often highly indebted and not well diversified.

The external debt of the SIDS as a group accounts for 72.4% of their GDP on average, reaching up to 200% in the Seychelles and the Bahamas.

Foreign reserves are also generally low, with many of the SIDS possessing only the reserves sufficient for a few months of imports. Given these statistics, it is evident that without international assistance, the economic consequences of the pandemic will be devastating for many of the SIDS.

Immediate financial needs

By considering the economic impact of reduced tourism revenues (assuming a 25% decline in tourism receipts and restoring the minimum level of import coverage (three months), it is possible to provide a rough estimate of each country’s immediate financial needs to offset the damage of the pandemic.

Currently, the SIDS would need about $5.5 billion to counteract the adverse effects of the pandemic on their economies.

The Maldives stands out with a need of $1.2 billion due to its reliance on tourism revenues, followed by the Bahamas and Jamaica.

Many of the SIDS, like Jamaica and the Bahamas, also face high external debt burdens which require complementary external debt suspension or relief programmes.

Table 1: Tourism, Debt and Foreign Currency Reserve Indicators

International response

While governments all over the world have announced fiscal measures totalling $8 trillion to combat the pandemic, the international community has also mobilized funds through international financial institutions to counteract the economic crisis in the most vulnerable countries.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) created a $50 billion fund through its rapid-disbursing emergency financing facilities for low-income and emerging market countries. It has earmarked $10 billion to serve its poorest members with a zero-interest rate. Regional banks have also created response facilities aimed at financially supporting their members.

What options are available for SIDS?

The IMF has just revamped the Catastrophe Containment and Relief Trust (CCRT) to offer short term debt reliefs to some of its members.

While some SIDS such as Comoros, São Tomé and Príncipe, and the Solomon Islands have already requested and obtained debt relief, there is room for more SIDS to take advantage of this option. While many of the SIDS are not among the poorest countries, they are vulnerable. This is further compounded by high levels of external debt many SIDS experience.

It is critical that SIDS have access to funding at zero interest rates and can suspend existing debt payments until they are financially ready to service their external debt obligations.

Ultimately, this can help blunt the impact of external shocks such as COVID-19 and equip them with the necessary financial resources to plan their next steps for their economic development.

The post Impact of COVID-19 on Tourism in Small Island Developing States appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Pamela Coke-Hamilton, Director, Division on International Trade and Commodities, UN Conference on Trade & Development (UNCTAD)

The post Impact of COVID-19 on Tourism in Small Island Developing States appeared first on Inter Press Service.

By Badiuzzaman Bay
May 3 2020 (IPS-Partners)

Press freedom in Bangladesh has been in decline long before the coronavirus came to our shores. Over the last decade, thanks to increasingly repressive media laws and highhanded measures adopted by the authorities, the health of journalism has been deteriorating in such a way that even the stalwarts of the fourth estate began to worry if the damage could ever be reversed. Yet, an outcome few would have expected during the Covid-19 crisis—which was expected to unite the people and their leaders against humanity’s most dreaded enemy in decades—is the tightening of the noose around free flow of information, which holds the key to this unity. It’s a self-defeating strategy that hurts not only the general people and the media, but those tightening the noose as well.

There are plenty of cases to illustrate this point. Take, for instance, the restrictions put in the way of journalists covering daily briefings from the Directorate General of Health Services (DGHS). A report by Prothom Alo on April 30 charted the changes in the DGHS’ media engagement policy that show how the government has been restricting access to information about the coronavirus. First, the journalists were robbed of the opportunity to ask questions when, on April 8, the online media briefings were repackaged as “daily health bulletins”. It is common knowledge that questions are an essential part of any press briefing. They help journalists glean necessary information, challenge statements and demand clarifications if need be. But these so-called live “bulletins”, conducted by a top health official, basically offer a bland, pre-scripted communiqué that demands blind faith on the part of the audience, without any recourse to verification. Then, starting April 11, information on the government’s stock of testing kits was airbrushed from the bulletins. From April 24 onwards, information on daily sample collection in each testing laboratory in the country (there are 31 now) was also removed.

Could these be mere acts of omission? Should we take the statements from the administration—which has been roundly criticised for its failure to expand testing, ensure adequate safety gear for all frontline health workers, check irregularities in relief distribution, enforce social distancing regulations so essential to “flatten the curve” of the virus, and to protect the most vulnerable groups in society—at face value? Should we keep our faith in another BTV-like partisan tool of communication?

That certainly seems to be the conclusion of the administration. There is no denying that the coronavirus has created an unprecedented situation in Bangladesh as in many other countries. There is no exit strategy good enough for a crisis of this magnitude. It’s also true that the virus is as much a public relations issue as a medical one, given how public perception/response can dramatically change a situation. Manufacturing approval is thus vital to the continuity of the government’s efforts. We have ministers who keep telling us how Bangladesh has fared better than the likes of the US, Italy and Spain. However, such optimistic but grossly misleading claims belie the fact that Bangladesh lags far behind even its neighbours in dealing with the crisis. There are growing fears that the actual numbers of infection cases and deaths are much higher than the figures released by the authorities. The fumbling response of the authorities has justifiably made the country a case study in what not to do in a pandemic.

The list of things going haywire is quite stupefying, as a cursory glance through any newspaper will reveal. For the media and free speech activists, this essentially meant suppression of vital information, tightening of control of the social media, efforts of the administration to impose its version of journalism, threats of lawsuits, arrests and imprisonment for those speaking out about the crisis, etc.

On April 18, four journalists including bdnews24.com Editor-in-Chief Toufique Imrose Khalidi and jagonews24.com acting editor Mohiuddin Sarker were sued under the Digital Security Act for reporting on alleged embezzlement of aid for coronavirus victims in Thakurgaon’s Baliadangi Upazila. They were charged with publishing “offensive, false, defamatory or fear-inducing data or information,” following a complaint filed by a ruling party leader. One of the accused, local journalistTanvir Hasan, claimed that the lawsuit was filed to stifle journalists so that they do not report on corruption committed by ruling party politicians. “Police have acted swiftly in taking on the case. It’s an attempt to stop us from writing about corruption,” he told the Deutsche Welle (DW).

Since mid-March, according to the Human Rights Watch, the authorities have targeted or arrested a number of individuals including doctors, academics, students and opposition activists for their comments about the coronavirus, most of them under the draconian Digital Security Act. All this adds up to a grave warning: there is a systematic effort in place to silence those who express concerns about the government’s handling of the crisis. Often this is done in the name of preventing the spread of “rumours” and “misinformation”. As if to bolster theinformation suppression claims, on April 23, Health Minister Zahid Maleque directed officials not to talk to the media, since it “creates misunderstanding” and “it is against the government’s policy.” He said this while speaking at the daily online “bulletin”.

True, the government has a responsibility to prevent the spread of misinformation about Covid-19. But this doesn’t mean it can or should silence those with genuine concerns or criticism of its handling of the situation. According to Brad Adams, Asia director at the Human Rights Watch, “the government should stop abusing free speech and start building trust by ensuring that people are properly informed about plans for prevention, containment, and cure as it battles the virus.”

Regardless of the circumstances created by Covid-19, Bangladesh’s struggle with press freedom has been a constant challenge. In this year’s World Press Freedom Index released by the Reporters Without Borders later last month, the country has ranked 151st out of 180 countries, while its position was 150th last year. It is instructional to take a look at these figures as they remind us how far down the rabbit hole have we fallen. Clearly, the problem hasn’t been exacerbated by the coronavirus, but suppression of information and press freedom poses a greater challenge now as it has very real health consequences. This much should be obvious to anyone who cares for their life and that of their loved ones. This goes for those in power as well.

And this is precisely why journalism is more vital now than ever before. The Covid-19 pandemic has placed independent media front and centre in providing reliable, fact-checked and potentially life-saving information. An independent press can ensure our leaders and officials remain accountable and their measures are scrutinised. This will only help improve the government’s response to the crisis—as will an emboldened citizenry free to voice their legitimate concerns and grievances. The opposite of it, as they say, is “pure, unadulterated chaos”.

Badiuzzaman Bay is a member of the editorial team at The Daily Star. Email: badiuzzaman.bd@gmail.com

This story was originally published by The Daily Star, Bangladesh

The post Blocking media access during Covid-19 appeared first on Inter Press Service.

By Jan Lundius
STOCKHOLM / ROME, May 1 2020 (IPS)

United Nations has designated at least 170 specific days of the year as occasions to mark particular events or topics to promote the objectives of the Organization. 2 This might be considered as yet another sign of a supersaturation caused by the internet revolution. However, it cannot be denied that certain issues need to be globally recognized and amended. UNESCO has declared that the 3rd of May will be a day to remind us that media are in several parts of the world under attack, their independence are denied, critical thinking is considered as a threat and journalists seeking the truth are harassed, threatened, roughed up, or even killed. I would like to add that it is also an opportunity to acknowledge that communication, critical thinking, and imagination are essential parts of human existence and culture, if this is suppressed the entire humanity will suffer.

Journalists are essential contributors to the well-being of our communities. They are communicators and we currently live within an Age of Information, which we definitely entered in the late 20th Century when our civilization underwent a shift from traditional industry to an economy primarily based upon information technology. Even if the transformation has been brusque, its is nevertheless a result of a development which finds its origin more than 500 years back in time.

During the 1450s, Johannes Gutenberg devised a method for printing books with movable, reusable types. In three years he completed an edition of nearly 200 bibles, the same amount of time it previously had taken to print a single book of the same size as Gutenberg´s Bible. Soon there were printing presses in all of Europe’s major cities. The printed book became the most useful, versatile and most enduring technology in world history.

For the first time in human existence written texts reached large segments of the population, giving rise to ideas that turned the world upside down. Everything changed and time could not be reversed. Old regimes crumbled and disappeared, science advanced, people exchanged information across borders, across seas and continents. The world opened up, new technologies developed, people demanded rights and justice, supported by the rapid spread of the written world. Priviliged decision makers tried to stop this development; wars were waged, heretics tortured and excecuted, printing presses smashed, newspaper offices burned to the ground, but the unchained word continued to expand, sowing its seeds of transformation. People came to realize that freedom of the press was the linchpin for a just and equal society. In 1823, the German author Heinrich Heine famously wrote “Where they have burned books, they will end in burning human beings.” 3

What happened in the 16th century may be compared to the recent decades’ electronic information explosion, with its avalanche of social media, which just like the invention of printing with movable types is a result of technological innovation. The Canadian philosopher Marshall McLuhan called the global era of the printed book the Gutenberg Galaxy. However, already in 1962 McLuhan saw where humanity was heading, that the time of the Gutenberg Galaxy had begun to be replaced by computer technology: “Instead of tending towards a vast Alexandrinian library the world has become a computer, an electronic brain, exactly as an infantile piece of science fiction. And as our senses have gone outside us, Big Brother goes inside. So, unless aware of this dynamic, we shall at once move into a phase of panic terrors, exactly befitting a small world of tribal drums, total interdependence, and superimposed co-existence.” 4

The advent of the Internet and related social changes has during recent years affected the entire political discourse, making mis-information and deception more prevalent than ever before. Our political culture is increasingly framed by emotional appeals, neglecting and even resisting factual, complicated and multidimensional realities. Influential media outlets depend on their ability to attract viewers to their websites, so they thus might generate lucrative advertising revenues. With the sole purpose of attracting users and advertisers, startling and/or apealling stories are published without any foundations whatsoever. Easy access to online advertisment, increased political polarization and the enormous popularity of social media have all been implicated in the spread of ”fake news”, competing with well researched, responsable, and legitimate journalism. Commercialization of reporting has been an issue ever since the invention of the printing press. In 2014, the German journalist Udo Ulfkotte paid attention to the problem in his book Gekaufte Journalisten, in which he stated that secret services pay journalists to report stories in a certain light, something which also is true when it comes to politicians and decision makers in several nations around the world. 5

Fake news and an unrestrained internet are currently undermining serious media coverage, making it increasingly difficult for serious journalists to cover significant news – newspapers are shut down, journalists lose their jobs and income while reporting become ever more superficial and sensational. Parallell to this development, decision makers are incresingly trying to benefit from the marginalization of critical, professional and investigative journalism. Some, most notably the current president of the United States, have broadened the meaning of ”fake news” to include any reporting negative of their behaviour and leadership.

Totalitarian leadership tries to bask in on notions about the press spreading ”fake news”, i.e. criticism of its politics and is trying to control all media outlets, even appropriating as much reporting as possible. In its annual global survey, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) found that in 2019 at least 250 journalists had been imprisioned in relation to their work. After China, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt, the worst jailers were Eritrea, Vietnam, and Iran. There has in recent years been a rising trend to harass and imprison regime critical journalists, while using numerous pretexts to silence the free press, depicting censorship and concerns of holding on to power as an antidote to terrorism and social unrest. Turkey, China and Egypt accounted for more than half of all journalists jailed globally. 6

Chinese leaders were utterly displeased to learn that their nation by Reporters sans frontières (RSF) had been evaluated as a nation that did not favour any freedom of expression. China was actually at the 177th place out of 180 countries within RSF´s 2020 World Press Freedom Index, barley ahead of Eritrea, Turkmenistan and North Korea. China´s deplorable position was according to RSF due to the fact that its leadership to a high degree was ignoring Article 35 of their nation´s own consitution, which intended to guarantee freedom of the press. I was also pointed out that President Xi Jinping and the Chinese Communist Party in recent years had tightened their control of China’s state and privately-owned media, increased surveillance of social media, and were actively trying to export their oppressive model of media control. It was furthermore stressed that in 2020, China remains ”the worlds biggest jailer of journalists” with more than 109 of them officially behind bars. 7 It is interesting to note that the Chinese Foreign Minstry spokesman, Geng Shuang, accused RSF of spreading ”fake news”.

Egypt´s low ranking in the 2020 World Press Freedom Index is due to the fact that over the past six years, Egyptian media have come to be almost entirely dominated by the State – including its intelligence services and security agencies. The Egyptian state is now in direct or indirect control of most of the newspapers, television and radio stations and can thus directly, or indirectly, censor all reporting. It has furthermore become dangerous to ”provoke” the regime. Not only journalists, but any media producer, run the risk of being put on trial for diffuse crimes, like insulting the judiciary and/or the president. When asked if the wievs of a world leader like Donald Trump had any influence on the freedom of the press in Egypt a journalist answered: ”It sets a tone. I would say it must matter on some level that the president of the United States expresses admiration for repressive governments that crack down on journalists and violate human rights.” 8

President Trump has called Egypt´s leader Abdel Fatah al-Sisis a ”great leader” and even my ”favorite dictator”. Much like Donald Trump and his supporters, Egypt’s leaders have responded to reports about the estimated number of coronavirus infections as though they were a personal attack, rather than a health crisis the entire world is struggling to contain. Opinions mirrored by another regime finding itself among the culprits when it comes to limiting freedom of speech – the Turkish president Recep Erdoğan, who has described journalists as ”throwing up” false information and untruths and thus being more dangerous than the virus itself. He accused media critical of his regime as ”waging a war against their own country” and working ”night and day to break the nation’s morale,” warning them that they would ”drown in their own pools of hatred and intrigues along with terrorist organisations.” 9

Freedom of speech is part of human culture, a tool to confront power abuse, corruption, injustice and violence. To preserve and defend human dignity and well-being we must protect the freedom of the press, if not – the people of the world will follow a road to self-extinction.

1 Hikmet, Nazim ”A Sad State of Freedoom” in Bold, Alan (ed.) (1970) The Penguin Book of Socialist Verse. Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin Books, p. 263.
2 https://www.un.org/en/sections/observances/international-days/
3 From Heinrich Heine´s Almansor, A Tragedy, quoted in Ward, Graham (2003), True religion. Hoboken NJ: Wiley-Blackwell, p. 142.
4 McLuhan, Marshall (1962) The Gutenberg Galaxy; The making of typographic man. University of Toronto Press, p. 32.
5 Ulfkotte, Udo (2019) Presstitutes Embedded in the Pay of the CIA: A Confession from the Profession. San Diego CA: Progressive Press.
6 https://cpj.org/reports/2019/12/journalists-jailed-china-turkey-saudi-arabia-egypt.php
7 https://rsf.org/en/news/china-ranking-near-bottom-rsfs-index-claims-it-welcomes-foreign-journalists-despite-all-evidence
8 https://www.worldpoliticsreview.com/trend-lines/27870/simply-put-there-s-no-freedom-of-the-press-in-sisi-s-egypt
9 https://en.qantara.de/content/coronavirus-and-press-freedom-in-turkey-erdogans-crusade-against-all-media-and-political

Jan Lundius holds a PhD. on History of Religion from Lund University and has served as a development expert, researcher and advisor at SIDA, UNESCO, FAO and other international organisations.

The post Freedom of the Press as a Guarantee for Human Dignity and Well-Being appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

You may proclaim that one must live
not as a tool, a number or a link
but as a human being—
then at once they handcuff your wrists.
You are free to be arrested, imprisoned
and even hanged. 1

The post Freedom of the Press as a Guarantee for Human Dignity and Well-Being appeared first on Inter Press Service.

By Namrata Sharma
KATHMANDU, May 1 2020 (IPS)

This year’s World Press Freedom Day on 3 May falls during COVID-19 lockdowns in many of our countries. Restriction on movement means journalists all over the world are facing obstacles in getting interviews and data, and verifying stories before publishing.

In addition, the global pandemic has been used by many governments to control not just the people’s movement but also their right to information. Journalists have been intimidated or attacked, and photojournalists and videographers on the frontlines often risk getting infected while documenting stories.

Two recent webinars conducted by Global Investigative Journalism Network (GIJN) and Finance Uncovered (FU) showed that recent government moves to restrict the press in Nepal are not unique – they are happening in many countries around the world.

The global pandemic has been used by many governments to control not just the people’s movement but also their right to information. Journalists have been intimidated or attacked, and photojournalists and videographers on the frontlines often risk getting infected while documenting stories

There have been efforts by authorities to criminalise journalism, and this is putting journalists reporting on the pandemic at risk, noted Courtney Radsch of the Center to Protect Journalists at the GIJN webinar. In Nepal, too, there have been attempts by various government agencies to censor information. 

Last month, the portal Kathmandu Press posted a story about alleged corruption during the purchase of medical equipment involving people in high places. This story was deleted from the site by a software company maintaining the portal’s homepage which had links to individuals in the Prime Minister’s Office involved in the deal.

On 27 April, Radio Nepal aired a live interview of former prime minister Baburam Bhattarai that was sharply critical of Prime Minister K P Oli. The government asked the head of the state-owned radio station and its news editor for an explanation, and got the interview deleted from Radio Nepal’s site.

On 18 April, Press Council Nepal (PCN) sent a letter to Nepal Telecommunication Authority to shut down certain web-based portals and ban them from publishing false news. In all these recent cases, the government appears to be using the cover of the COVID-19 crisis and the excuse of protecting privacy and shielding the public from fake news and character assassination to crackdown on the free press.

“Many supposedly democratic countries like the United States, India and Nepal are censoring the press and making it very difficult for press freedom to prevail while covering COVID 19,” said Kosmos Biswokarma editor of Kathmandu Press. Tampering with the website without permission raised grave questions of freedom of press in this country, he added.

The mission of journalism is to use the citizens’ right to freedom of expression to keep them informed. Journalists go to great lengths, and put themselves at considerable risk, to gather and investigate factual information to alert the public and authorities about wrong-doing and malpractice.

However, citizens today get their information not just from the mass media but also from the Internet. The dissemination of fake news, rumours, defamation, violation of privacy on social media is not journalism. Governments should make that distinction.

The authorities should not mistake misinformation for journalism, and not use objectionable social media content for blanket suppression of journalistic information. There has to be a mechanism to track such content and take action against perpetrators. It is the Press Council Nepal’s job to trace these sources, and not issue directives to ban portals. In fact it is not the PCN’s job to close down the media at all.

During emergencies like the COVID-19 pandemic, due diligence rules are relaxed and there is a lack of transparency in big deals. Because it is the journalist’s job to speak truth to power, this often gets them into trouble, as happened in Nepal with the coverage of the Omni Business Corporate International in the direct purchase of test kits and medical equipment from China at inflated cost.

Shiva Gaunle of the Centre for Investigative Journalism Nepal (CIJ-N) says the biggest problem journalists are facing during the present crisis is getting data and verifying them. “It is not just the lockdown and restrictions on mobility, news items are taken off home pages or shut down, how can Nepal claim to have right to information and rule of law?” he asks.

Journalism is not a crime, and fake news is not journalism. Governments should be able to separate the two, especially during emergencies like this global pandemic.

Namrata Sharma is the former chair of the Centre for Investigative Journalism Nepal

Twitter: NamrataSharmaP

namrata1964@yahoo.com

The post Journalism is Not a Crime…and Fake News on Social Media is Not Journalism appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Jerald Aruldas, a journalist from the southern state of Tamil Nadu, and his colleague, were held by city police for 9 hours for reporting on stories around alleged government corruption around the food aid distribution system and how doctors in Coimbatore faced food shortages while working during the COVID-19 lockdown. Courtesy: Jerald Aruldas

By Stella Paul
HYDERABAD, India , May 1 2020 (IPS)

Andrew Sam Raja Pandian, a digital journalist and founder of a news portal in the southern state of Tamil Nadu, was arrested for running two news articles related to COVID-19.

One of the articles exposed corruption in the government food aid distribution system, while the other highlighted doctors in Coimbatore city facing food issues. The city police first detained the journalist and photographer who had reported on the stories, Jerald Aruldas and M Balaji, for 9 hours before arresting Pandian for publishing the pieces.

Yesterday morning, Apr. 30, Aruldas told me about how his detainment and the arrest of his editor have shaken him: “The police did not hurt me or Balaji. We were not interrogated, just made to sit there for long hours. But it was still a very intimidating experience. There is an air of fear in the local media. Every media person is now scared of covering news related to COVID-19.”

The worries are not unjustified: Pandian, released on bail on Apr. 28, has been charged under several sections of criminal laws as well as the The Disaster Management Act, 2005. He faces several years in jail if proven guilty.

The arrest of Pandian and detention of Aruldas and Balaji are not isolated cases. Across India, media personnel have been facing violence, including intimidation, detention and arrests.

While some like Pandian have been arrested for reporting in the media on government inaction or its inability to combat COVID-19 crisis, some have been arrested for social media posts.

Zubair Ahmad, a senior freelance journalist based in India’s Andamans and Nicobor Islands, was arrested on Apr. 27 for sending a tweet that questioned the alleged quarantining of locals for speaking to COVID-19 patients over the phone.

Can someone explain why families are placed under home quarantine for speaking over phone with Covid patients? @MediaRN_ANI @Andaman_Admin

— Zubair Ahmed (@zubairpbl) April 26, 2020

Ahmad’s tweet was based on an article published by a local newspaper where a woman claimed she was put under quarantine following a phone call to a relative who tested positive for the coronavirus.

The same day, Ahmad was arrested by police for “posting inciting, false and instigating tweet to disrupt public harmony, violating government order and to create panic among the public”.

Currently out on conditional bail, Ahmad has also been charged for several offences under the The Disaster Management Act, 2005.

“I am safe, at home and under conditional bail,” he told me when I called him. But he sounded tired and particularly disturbed by the fact that the police have been carrying out a smear campaign against him.

For example, the police chief of Andamans and Nicobar Deependra Pathak called Ahmad a “self-proclaimed journalist” in his address to the media after his arrest.

“I have written for India Today, EPW  (Economic and Political Weekly – a well-known media publication), Down to Earth, IE (Indian Express), TOI (Times of India) etc. Now, they are trying to discredit me by calling me a self proclaimed and self styled journalist,” he told me.

The anguish is easy to understand and also relatable. It takes years for a journalist to build a career and reputation and earn the trust of readers/viewers. 

Questioning the credibility is an attempt to end the reader’s trust or destroy the very foundation of a journalist’s reputation.

IPS award-winning journalist and senior correspondent Stella Paul.

A disturbing global trend

This is not something happening only in India. Like the pandemic itself, assaults against working journalists and media outlets, especially those often criticising government policies and actions, have been on the rise worldwide.

One of the biggest such actions took place in Myanmar on Apr. 1 when the government ordered blockade of 230 local websites using local IP addresses.

Many of them were news portals like the Rakhine-based Narinjara News – a known critic of Myanmar army’s action against the minority Rohingyas. Other news sites that were blocked included the Development Media Group (DMG), Mandalay-based Mandalay In-Depth News, Voice of Myanmar and Tachileik-based Mekong News. All of which are officially registered with the Ministry of Information, which gives them permission to publish locally.

A number of organisations have appealed to the government to lift the ban, and my friend Ni Ni Aye, a political and internet access activist, says that there may have been a partial lifting of NGO-owned websites. But there is no clear picture yet.

As a journalist who has covered the Rohingya issues both within and outside of Myanmar, I can both understand and relate to the difficulties the media personnel associated with these websites. When your portal is blocked, your connections are blocked and you are cut off from the rest of the world, including your audience, which is your main support system.

The result of this could not only mean financial difficulties but also a very dangerous level of isolation, which makes you completely vulnerable.

In the winter of 2018, I visited Myanmar and connected to a public internet network. Immediately, all of my devices stopped working. They started working again the moment I left Myanmar airspace – no repairs or virus cleaning needed.

But during those six days when I could not send or receive a single message to anyone anywhere, I spent each moment in anxiety, fearing a knock on my door at any minute. The worst of all fears is to vanish without anyone in my family or any of my friends knowing about it.

Personal fears aside, the intimidation and suppression of media is also a big loss for the people who can no longer access the news they want. And when there is a pandemic with no available cure, lack of information is a threat to public safety. On Mar. 31, in a last editorial before it was blocked, the DMG wrote this: “the deprivation of the internet as a means of receiving information is especially problematic at a time when timely communication of coronavirus preventive measures could literally be life-saving”.

Rakhine state, for example, is now a black spot as hyperlocal news is no longer accessible. 

Nyi Khine Thwee, an artist in Myanmar, has long been drawing cartoons to show the human rights violations and the plight of people in Rakhine state. But since the COVID-19 pandemic, he has been using his art to express the current situation of media and freedom of speech in the country. Courtesy: Nyi Khine Thwee

Nyi Khine Thwee – an artist I know – has been describing the human rights violations and the plight of people in Rakhine through illustrations for a while. Thwee has now taken up drawing cartoons to express the current situation of media and freedom of speech in the country.

Thwee’s work seems to be a perfect response to an ongoing United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) campaign called Cartoons for Freedom of Expression, launched to commemorate the Press Freedom Day on May 3.  The campaign has been publishing series of cartoons that show the state of press freedom during the ongoing COVID-19 crisis.

Exposing fake news

Meanwhile, there is a bombardment of misinformation related to COVID-19 on social media. In India, the fake news first began to appear in February and I remember receiving Whatsapp texts that said chopping onions would kill the disease. Then, as the virus spread further, the volume of misinformation also increased.

Some news outlets did play a part in this by sharing news of cow urine being a possible cure for COVID-19. Yet there was no official body or strategy to counter the fake news until Mar. 31 when the Supreme Court of India, instructed the government to share daily updates on the coronavirus.

However, despite the government efforts, fake news and false information, especially laced with communal hatred have continued, especially on social media platforms.

I just noticed one such post on Twitter which calls upon Hindus to celebrate because a Muslim parliamentarian from Hyderabad died because of COVID-19. I can only imagine the kind of responses and public anger such a hateful and fake news post will result in when it goes viral.

I read a brief just released by UNESCO about the role of free and independent media in countering COVID-19.

Titled ‘Journalism, press freedom and COVID-19’, the brief quotes Director-General Audrey Azoulay as saying: “At this crucial moment and for our future, we need a free press, and journalists need to be able to count on all of us.”

I think the UNESCO brief hits the nail hard: if we are to win this battle against the pandemic, we need the right information and this cannot be accessed only by wielding the baton, but also by freeing and strengthening the pen of journalists.

The post Protect Journalists’ Rights so We can Stop the COVID-19 Disinfodemic appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Stella Paul is the recipient of the IWMF Courage in Journalism Award, a multiple winner of the Asian Environmental Journalism Awards, the Lead Ambassador for World Pulse and a senior IPS correspondent.

The post Protect Journalists’ Rights so We can Stop the COVID-19 Disinfodemic appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Pakistani migrant workers on a construction site in Dubai. Credit: S. Irfan Ahmed/IPS

By Jennifer Hattam
ISTANBUL, Apr 30 2020 (IPS)

A daily commute of two-and-a-half hours each way would take a toll on anyone, but for Özkan, a construction worker in Istanbul, the hardest part of his long journey is coping with his fears about what might happen after he gets home.

“The conditions on our job site are deplorable, and I feel psychologically broken with worrying that I might infect other people, especially my wife or my 8-year-old son,” Özkan says. “We don’t have any way to disinfect ourselves on the site, so as soon as I get home, I go straight to the bathroom to take a shower. I can’t kiss my son, I can only greet him from afar.”

Around the world, governments are asking their citizens to stay at home to protect themselves and others against the COVID–19 pandemic, but millions of construction workers are still on the job, caught between risking their health and losing their livelihoods.

Around the world, governments are asking their citizens to stay at home to protect themselves and others against the COVID–19 pandemic, but millions of construction workers are still on the job, caught between risking their health and losing their livelihoods
More than 15,000 construction workers in Istanbul were let go from their jobs on large projects, most without receiving any compensation, during one two-week period in March as sites began halting operations or reducing their workforces, according to the Turkish construction workers’ union Dev-Yapı-İş.

The union estimates that around 295,000 people are employed in construction in Istanbul, and more than a million countrywide. Workers and labour advocates say those who remain employed have been offered few protections against coronavirus in an already-dangerous occupation where it is difficult to enforce social distancing.

“Masks are distributed at some construction sites, but not many. Both knowledge about how to use these masks and especially the number available, are very insufficient. No other precautions are taken,” says Dr. Ercan Duman, a member of the Occupational Health and Workplace Medicine Commission of the Istanbul Chamber of Physicians. A recent report by the Confederation of Progressive Trade Unions of Turkey (DİSK), which includes Dev-Yapı-İş, indicates that DİSK members have tested positive for COVID-19 at a rate three times higher than the average rate per 1000 people tested among the general public in Turkey.

At the site where Özkan and around 70 others are employed, he says the only change has been a directive for workers to sit apart while eating, a measure he calls “meaningless” given the poor hygiene standards in their makeshift canteen.

Videos and photos circulated on social media by Turkish unions and their supporters show workers crammed into cafeterias andsleeping 10 to a room in on-site dorms. Describing the worker accommodation at his site, Özkan says: “The street is cleaner. You live in filth. It’s contrary to human dignity.”

 

Essential work?

Construction industry practices have come under scrutiny in many countries amid the on-going pandemic as governments set divergent — and not always clear — policies on the kinds of building projects that are considered essential work and thus allowed to continue amid stay-at-home orders and lockdowns.

“It’s understandable that the public is concerned, because they’re looking out of their windows in the city and seeing this construction going on that’s raising issues about social distancing,” says Ian Woodland, construction national officer for the British and Irish trade union Unite. “There are a number of projects that are critical infrastructure like building hospitals, but others, like luxury flats being built, are not critical in nature.”

Unite estimates that only around a quarter of the UK’s construction sites have suspended work amid the pandemic. The union has called for tougher measures to be taken to enforce safety, and to ensure that workers are not compelled to work on non-essential projects. Nearly 130 members of parliament have signed on to a letter that raises concerns about the increased coronavirus risk posed by allowing non-essential workplaces, including construction sites, to stay open. Similar debates are occurring in large cities in the United States, with 10,000 members of a major construction industry union in Boston holding a work stoppage this month over coronavirus-related health and safety concerns.

The logistics of much building work, and the structure of the industry in many countries, make either option difficult to ensure.

“For certain jobs on-site, pairing up is a necessity for safety reasons as well as the nature of the work. It’s impossible to do the recommended social distancing of two metres in all construction operations,” says Woodland. “Starting with travelling to work, either on company buses or on public transport, to queuing up to clock in and get onto the worksite, to accessing canteen and toilet facilities during the workday — it’s virtually impossible to enforce social distancing in all of those situations.”

 

Precarious, migrant workers

In many countries, including both Turkey and the UK, construction workers are often self-employed, irregularly employed by agencies, or employed by subcontractors, conditions which may result in them being left out of paid furlough schemes or not receiving government subsidies for the unemployed. This precarity can have dangerous consequences.

In Turkey, the vast majority of the construction workforce in Istanbul and other large cities is made up of internal migrants from smaller towns and rural provinces. When workers were laid off earlier in the pandemic without compensation, many returned to their hometowns, potentially contributing to the spread of the virus. Since Turkey halted most intercity travel in late March, those who lose their jobs are marooned in the cities where they had worked, often with little financial or social support.

Similar scenarios have played out elsewhere. “The lockdown in India has left many internal migrants, mostly construction workers, stuck in the cities without food to eat,” says Yuson. “They have to work to get paid, so you still see many people in the streets, going to work, or trying to find work.”

“Construction has been deemed an essential industry in the UAE and protections for non-citizens are being rolled back through allowances for employers to cut workers’ wages,” says Isobel Archer, a project officer at the London-based Business & Human Rights Resource Centre (BHRRC). Though the measures in the UAE call for obtaining the mutual consent of the employee, already-vulnerable migrant workers have little power to negotiate, she says.

“Both countries have taken measures to close social venues and cancel or postpone events, so they’re clearly aware that coronavirus is a huge public health issue,” Archer adds. “That’s why it’s so alarming that there’s this distinction being made in the UAE with migrant workers.”

Developer Emaar Properties recently announced that it would suspend major projects in Dubai, while Qatar has directed private-sector employers to restrict working hours on construction sites and increase health and occupational safety measures to protect against the spread of the coronavirus. But seven of 14 construction companies surveyed by BHRRC on what steps they are taking to protect migrant workers did not respond, and none of those that did had adequate plans in place, the organisation said in a press release.

“The pandemic is really highlighting the need for reform on issues that have been repeatedly investigated by NGOs,” Archer says. Concerns have long been raised about abuse and exploitation of migrant labour in Gulf countries, where workers on projects such as Qatar’s 2022 World Cup facilities often live in cramped, unsanitary conditions on huge labour camps. A coronavirus infection in one of these camps would be “a ticking time bomb,” says Yuson.

Istanbul construction worker Özkan says that when concerns are raised about workplace issues, employers first stall for time, then dismiss those who dared to complain. “After that, you’re not going to be hired at any other worksite,” he says. Unions in Turkey have reported that workers are also being fired if they don’t sign declarations agreeing not to hold their employer responsible if they contract coronavirus while on the job.

“Blacklisting has been a problem in the UK as well, with workers afraid to raise issues due to the precarity of their job,” says Woodland of Unite. “They could get a tap on the shoulder and be told they’re not needed on site anymore. So there’s a possibility that health and safety issues are not being reported as a result.”

 

This story was originally published by Equal Times

The post Across the World, Construction Workers are Caught Between Coronavirus Risk and Joblessness appeared first on Inter Press Service.

OSCE Special Representative for Combating Trafficking in Human Beings offers recommendations to governments on short-term responses to COVID-19: “Without urgent and targeted action, this health and economic crisis can become a human trafficking crisis, putting many more lives and the cohesion of our societies at risk.” “Human trafficking feeds off vulnerability. It is precisely when our global community is shaken by a crisis of this magnitude that our obligation to combat the exploitation of vulnerable people becomes most acute.”

By PRESS RELEASE
VIENNA, Apr 30 2020 (IPS-Partners)

How to address the consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic for the most vulnerable in our societies, especially for human trafficking victims and survivors, is the focus of a set of recommendations to governments published by the OSCE Special Representative and Co-ordinator for Combating Trafficking in Human Beings Valiant Richey today.

Building on his earlier statement, Richey alerted governments to the risk that, without urgent and targeted action, this health and economic crisis becomes a human trafficking crisis, putting many more lives and the cohesion of our societies at risk. “The impact of the COVID-19 crisis on trafficking in human beings is deeply concerning. Our recommendations aim to support the 57 OSCE participating States in combating trafficking in human beings during and following the current crisis, as vulnerabilities will compound in the weeks and months to come,” he said.

Human trafficking feeds off vulnerability —in particular, gender and economic inequality — and it is a symptom of frailty in our society. Richey stated: “It is precisely when our global community is shaken by a crisis of this magnitude that our obligation to combat the exploitation of vulnerable people becomes most acute. Combating human trafficking is not just a law enforcement responsibility. It is a human, societal, and security imperative and an urgent priority.”

“With the necessary attention, adequate resources, and the right programmes, we can start today to build a better and safer tomorrow for all.” Said the Special Representative who stands ready to provide further support to participating States, including through tailored technical assistance for the development and implementation of anti-trafficking action plans and other legislative or policy efforts.

Recommendations:

Prevention

1. Ensure universal access to essential economic and social welfare services, including unemployment aid, for all those who need them, regardless of their recent employment history. This will help prevent those affected by the economic impact of the crisis, including millions of unregistered domestic workers, from falling into the hands of traffickers.

2. Grant or extend temporary resident permits to migrants and asylum seekers, regardless of their legal status. This will increase their resilience by facilitating access to healthcare and other welfare services and will also help States’ authorities and social services promptly identify presumed victims of trafficking and better prevent future episodes of exploitation.

3. Prioritize resources for exit services in high-risk sectors such as the prostitution industry. With purchasing of commercial sex artificially suppressed as a result of the lockdown, inclusive programmes ensuring support can be a powerful tool to break the cycle of exploitation and strengthen exit pathways, giving a real alternative to those in need.

Protection

4. Provide victims of trafficking with access to safe and immediate accommodation, health care and psychological assistance, to assist in their exit from trafficking and protect them from revictimization. Temporary quarantine accommodation prior to shelter placement has been identified as a promising practice to ensure compliance with COVID-19 prevention measures.

5. Extend for at least six months all protection and assistance measures for all victims of trafficking, including work permits and access to services, to ensure continuity in their social inclusion process beyond the current health crisis. Continue investments in rehabilitation programmes, as the risk of ‘losing’ those survivors who are already in transition is now particularly high due to the adverse economic situation. Provide online support to victims of trafficking inside and outside shelters. Psychological counselling, legal support as well as educational and training activities are examples of the services which might be temporarily provided remotely to ensure the continuity of victim’s support and to prevent re-trafficking.

6. Establish or strengthen hotlines for human trafficking, domestic violence and child abuse (including online) reporting, and broadly promote their services as a tool for the identification of presumed cases of human trafficking.

Prosecution

7. Ensure high alert among law enforcement and other first line responders to recognize and detect human trafficking. With traffickers likely to pivot to online exploitation, and with police, labour inspectors, social workers, healthcare professionals, educators and NGOs currently dramatically limited in their anti-trafficking efforts, detection and suppression efforts will have to adapt to a changing environment.

8. Ensure the continuity of the justice system to investigate and prosecute traffickers even in times of lockdown. For example, holding court via video or teleconferencing should be considered and actively pursued whenever possible as a tool to ensure timely justice and avoid re-traumatizing victims.

9. Investigators should be prepared as traffickers change their modus operandi, increasing online enforcement presence and employing advanced investigative instruments, including financial investigation tools to detect human trafficking in financial flows due to an increase in non-cash payments.

10. Plan systemic labour inspections of high-risk industries immediately after business operations resume. Agriculture, due to the summer harvest, is a prime example of an area to monitor with particular attention.

11. Once lockdown measures are lifted, keep a high law enforcement alert on forms of trafficking that are likely to increase in the near future, such as online exploitation and forced begging.

Partnership

12. Incentivize or mandate technology companies to identify and eradicate risks of human trafficking on their platforms, including by identifying and stopping distribution of child sexual abuse material online. Establish or strengthen law enforcement and judicial co-operation, including at the pre-trial stage, with countries of origin and destination in cases of online exploitation, especially of children.

Looking ahead

13. Plan ahead to ensure that the anti-trafficking community can respond adequately to another possible Coronavirus outbreak. The forecast for a second COVID-19 wave later this year highlights the need to ensure that assistance facilities, protection programmes, investigations and courts continue functioning during possible future lockdown measures.

Media Contact:

Lilia Rotoloni
Public Information Officer
Lilia.Rotoloni@osce.org
+33 (0)628340397
@osce_cthb

The post OSCE PRESS RELEASE: COVID-19/Human Trafficking appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

OSCE Special Representative for Combating Trafficking in Human Beings offers recommendations to governments on short-term responses to COVID-19:

“Without urgent and targeted action, this health and economic crisis can become a human trafficking crisis, putting many more lives and the cohesion of our societies at risk.”

“Human trafficking feeds off vulnerability. It is precisely when our global community is shaken by a crisis of this magnitude that our obligation to combat the exploitation of vulnerable people becomes most acute.”

The post OSCE PRESS RELEASE: COVID-19/Human Trafficking appeared first on Inter Press Service.

The International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA) Young Agriprenuer Programme is promoting youth participation in agribusiness with hands on skills training in farming and entrepreneurship. Credit: Busani Bafana/IPS

By Busani Bafana
BULAWAYO, Zimbabwe, Apr 30 2020 (IPS)

In Rwanda, Benimana Uwera Gilberthe, a scholar and pepper producer, experienced first-hand the challenges of breaking into agribusiness.

While in Nigeria, Ayoola Adewale is trying to understand if poultry egg farming will prove a profitable and viable business opportunity to the youth of the continent’s most populous nation. Also in Nigeria, Esther Alleluyanatha is understanding the link between young people leaving their villages for larger cities, the remittances they send home, and the implications on rural livelihoods and agriculture productivity.

In understanding this, these three young researchers are in fact providing answers to greater questions about agriculture on the continent. Like:

• What will it take to attract more African youth into agriculture — a sector the World Bank says could be worth $1 trillion in the next 10 years?
• And what supportive polices and investments are needed to develop this sector?

Adewale, Alleluyanatha  and Gilberthe are just three of the 80 young African scholars that are tackling the business of agriculture through the innovativeness and freshness that comes with youth — while obtaining their masters or doctoral degrees in the process.

They are awardees of the Enhancing Capacity to Apply Research Evidence (CARE), a three-year project that was launched in 2018 by the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA), with funding from the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD).

The project aims “to build an understanding of poverty reduction, employment impact, and factors influencing youth engagement in agribusiness, and rural farm and non-farm economies,” according to IITA Director General Nteranya Sanginga.

“Grantees were offered training on research methodology, data management, scientific writing, and the production of research evidence for policymaking. They are mentored by IITA scientists and experts on a research topic of their choice and produce science articles and policy briefs about their work,” Sanginga explained.

He has long championed the idea that developing agriculture is key to addressing the urgent challenges of food insecurity, poverty and youth unemployment on the continent.

• Indeed, according to IFAD, agriculture makes business sense because it has high returns per dollar invested. An IFAD study, The Economics Advantage: Assessing the value of climate change actions in agriculture, states that for every dollar invested through one of its smallholder programmes, farmers could earn between $1.40 and $2.60 over a 20-year period by applying climate change adaptation practices. 

“Youth brings energy and innovation to the mix, but these qualities can be best channelled by young Africans themselves carrying out results-based research in agribusiness and rural development involving young people. Youth engagement is key,” Sanginga said.

Young farmers and brothers Prosper and Prince Chikwara are using precision farming techniques at their horticulture farm, outside Bulawayo, Zimbabwe. Credit: Busani Bafana/ IPS

Commercial agriculture the answer to youth unemployment?

Adewale, a PhD candidate at the University of Ibadan, works as a technical assistant at the Federal Operation Coordinating Unit for Youth Employment and Social Operation (FOCU-YESSO) in Abuja.  

YESSO is tasked with providing access to work opportunities for Nigeria’s poor and vulnerable youth. 

• Nigeria, which has a population of over 180 million, had 19.58 percent youth unemployment in 2019, according to estimates by the International Labour Organisation (ILO).

“Commercialised agriculture holds immense potential as a way out of poverty,” Adewale told IPS. 

• Nigeria is also a net food importer, spending an average of $22 billion annually. The country imports rice, fish, wheat and poultry products with milk and tomato paste accounting for more than $1,4 billion of the food import bill.

“Youth involvement in commercialised agriculture is growing and seems to be the way out of the current unemployment rate. However, government and private sector support is required if youths will compete favourably, thrive sustainably and raise coming generation of commercial agriculture entrepreneurs,” Adewale said.

For her research topic she wants to understand if poultry egg production is a profitable and  technically efficient venture for youth farmers,  specifically assessing the impact of the Commercial Agriculture Development project (CADP).

• CADP is a World Bank-assisted project targeted at strengthening agricultural production systems and facilitating access to market for targeted value chains among small and medium scale commercial farmers in Cross River, Enugu, Lagos, Kaduna and Kano states. 

“Commercial agriculture, across all value chains, holds potential to boost productivity, profitability and economic growth of Nigeria and indeed Africa,” she said. “The study will provide insight into how commercial agriculture programmes are sustainable as well as provide direction into how commercial agriculture can be harnessed for African agriculture.”

Money in agriculture

Alleluyanatha, also from Nigeria, is also concerned about the high rate of unemployment among youth — particularly in urban areas.

“There is a need, therefore, to discourage the exodus of youths from rural to urban areas and to encourage them to go into agriculture, which is known to be the major source of livelihood in the rural areas,” Alleluyanatha said. 

She is researching youth migration and remittances and the implications on rural livelihood and agriculture productivity in Africa. She aims to do this by comparing households with youth migrants and those without. 

In Rwanda, Gilberthe  and his under-graduate classmates started growing pepper for export after securing a contract with the country’s National Agricultural Export Development Board. 

“The venture was successful and we gave youth in my areas the idea on how agribusiness can be a decent job if you do it professionally and invest in it,” Gilberthe told IPS. “I used to have at least $210 each time we sold our product.”

Youth aged between 14 and 35 years make up 39 percent of Rwanda’s population but, according to Gilberthe, many are not participating in agribusiness owing to limited agribusiness skills, lack of start-up capital, limited access to land, and information on agribusiness opportunities.

• Indeed it is a issue across the continent. The Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) notes that Africa needs targeted interventions focused on making agriculture a viable employment option for Africa’s youth who are held back from joining it by lack of land, credit, quality farm inputs, machinery and skills.

Gilberthe is researching how being part of financing schemes impact the incomes of youth agripreneurs.

He believes policies for youth engagement in agribusiness should also include trainings about running such businesses. In addition, he believes such policies should also make provisions for more agribusiness financing schemes.

“In Rwanda, youth engaged in agribusiness have a problem of not owning land and most of them use their parent’s land but their income is limited and they need access to credit,” he said.

• Rwanda, one of Africa’s smaller countries per square kilometre, has a land area of just under 27,000 square kilometres. About 69 percent of the land is used for agriculture, according to the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations.

“I think differently about agriculture now,” says Gilberthe. “As a young researcher I have discovered the opportunities and barriers for youth engaged in agribusiness and this research is giving me a chance to contribute toward policy formulation about youth engagement in agribusiness.

“Through my findings I will be able to prove wrong youth who take agriculture as the work for old and village people and other people who still think that agriculture cannot improve your income.”

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• Q&A: Africa Must Innovate its Food Systems in Order to Beat Hunger and Poverty

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80 young African scholars are tackling the business of agriculture through the innovativeness and freshness that comes with youth — while obtaining their masters or doctoral degrees in the process.

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Primary School in Dhaka, Bangladesh. Credit: Shafiqul Alam Kiron/IPS.

By Manssour Bin Mussallam
GENEVA, Apr 30 2020 (IPS)

An invisible adversary has thrown the world – Global South and Global North alike – into disarray. The psychosocial and economic consequences of the COVID-19 crisis will remain with us long after it has been overcome. There will be no anti-viral return to the pre-coronavirus status quo, nor can we afford to idly wait for a viral transformation of our world. The future is not inevitable, abstract promise – it will depend on our collective readiness to forge it, or to be forged by it.

Manssour Bin Mussallam

Although it has been claimed that no one could have foreseen that in 2020, over 1.5 billion students would be forced to stay at home because of a virus, experts worldwide have repeatedly signified that just such a crisis was indeed conceivable.

For the prevailing short-sighted, boom-and-bust economic system, excessively geared towards short-term profits, has left no margin for societies to address social emergencies.

Even now, the same analysts and international actors who, in the name of economic efficiency, have undermined our common public goods for years, are promising us new global solutions. Our global challenges, however, do not require global solutions.

They require a shared vision, underpinned by contextual policies and supported by efficient, solidarity-based mechanisms of international cooperation and coordination.

The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed, and exacerbated, the social and economic divides between, and within, societies. But it did not cause them.

To argue that the laissez-faire policy prescriptions enforced by our international institutions have fuelled this crisis would, in fact, make for a better case. And as we now wage an absolute war to contain the virus and mitigate its consequences, we must be willing to learn the lessons being taught to us by this crisis, if we are to reconstruct – and not merely reproduce – our international and national systems.

From underfunded and understaffed healthcare systems to the estimated 154 million people who find themselves homeless and unable to self-isolate, passing by the professionals living pay-check to pay-check for whom self-isolation protects life but endangers livelihood, and the 1.5 billion out-of-school students worldwide with unequal access to e-learning portals, the injustices which devastate our societies are more than a mere moral concern: they are threats to our common future.

The development models emanating from the Global North having failed, it is now long overdue for the assumptions permeating our international institutions to be challenged, and for a third, alternative, inclusive way of development to be constructed from the Global South
Several initiatives have already been announced to mitigate the effects of this crisis: recalling retired health professionals, providing safe-spaces for self-isolation, suspending foreclosures and evictions, and commitments by technology giants to provide software and equipment free-of-charge.

These measures, amongst others, are necessary. But they are also insufficient. If we are to overcome, once and for all, crises such as the current pandemic, we must be unwavering in our determination to address the injustices it has exposed.

We must, therefore, protect the right to free, quality universal healthcare; enshrine dignified, affordable housing as an unalienable right; ensure material and immaterial security for the peoples of the world; protect the right to paid sick and holiday leave as well as a living wage for all workers; and bridge the techno-digital divide.

This requires an unprecedented mobilisation of intellectual, human, technical and financial resources. It also calls for our initiatives to emancipate themselves from stale concepts so as to construct authentic, effective alternatives.

Free, quality universal healthcare and dignified, affordable housing will not be achieved as long as we continue dismantling them as private commodities from which to profiteer, rather than investing in them as common public goods which ought to be protected.

Material and immaterial security, living wages, and socially conscious labour laws will not be realised without an international system which consecrates human dignity and contributes to the implementation of holistic, humanistic, and progressive social policies.

The techno-digital divide will not be bridged by relying on expensive, imported technologies – often ill-suited to national and local contexts – nor by generating nationwide technical dependency on private multinational companies, when such technologies are donated.

We must develop local, endogenous technologies – more affordable, sustainable, and contextually relevant – which harness the creative potential of communities and stimulate national economies.

In a world in which the collective wealth of 6.9 billion people constitutes less than half of the wealth amassed by the richest 1%, and the market capitalisation of a single company such as Apple Inc. surpasses the GDP value of entire economies – including those of countries in the Global North, such as the Netherlands, Switzerland, Belgium, and Sweden – , the feasibility of such measures does not seem any more outlandish than the sustainability of this present state of affairs seems preposterous.

This does require, however, international platforms of solidarity-based cooperation acting as instruments and catalysts for a sustainable, prosperous and equitable development, that is inclusive of the perspectives, priorities, and needs of the majority of the world’s population.

If ad-hoc multilateralism and lack of global solidarity continue to administer the international system, which seems more preoccupied by its own survival than by achieving our collective aspirations, the current COVID-19 pandemic will only be a preview of future crises to come.

And it is highly unlikely for those who have institutionally enabled such an international system to also be those who will reshape it – good intentions notwithstanding. The development models emanating from the Global North having failed, it is now long overdue for the assumptions permeating our international institutions to be challenged, and for a third, alternative, inclusive way of development to be constructed from the Global South.

It is with this motivation that African, Arab, Asian, Latin American and Pacific Island countries, as well as international civil society organisations, founded the Organisation of Educational Cooperation (OEC) to “contribute to the equitable, just, and prosperous social transformation of societies by promoting balanced and inclusive education, in order to attain the fundamental rights to liberty, justice, dignity, sustainability, social cohesion, and material and immaterial security for the peoples of the world”.

The OEC is not, accordingly, an international organisation for education, but rather an international organisation for development through education, since true development cannot be compartmentalised, and the transformative power of education is only true insofar as it is itself transformed.

This new, proactive, multilateral framework of cooperation which we are constructing places the concerns and aspirations of countries and peoples at the centre of global policymaking and at the forefront of development efforts, respecting and adapting to national priorities, local aspirations, and socio-cultural contexts.

The COVID-19 pandemic is both a tragedy and a test in crisis management for the entire world. It is also a reminder of the importance of renewing and reinventing the spirit of true solidarity and multilateralism in the 21st century. The time has come for new, innovative international mechanisms and platforms, not only designed to keep the peace, but also achieve the justice of which peace is the fruit.

Armed with a sense of duty, an impulse of solidarity and an intransigent determination, it is now our historic responsibility to heed the warning of this crisis and give ourselves the means to collectively forge the future to which we aspire, and which we deserve.

——

Sheikh Manssour Bin Mussallam is the Secretary General-elect of the Organisation of Educational Cooperation (OEC), an international governmental organisation established on 29 January 2020 at the International Summit on Balanced and Inclusive Education by African, Arab, Asian, Latin American and Pacific Island countries and civil society organisations from across the Global South. He has previously served as the President of the Education Relief Foundation.

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• FEATURED TRANSLATION – FRENCH

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Manssour Bin Mussallam, is Secretary General-elect of the Organisation of Educational Cooperation (OEC)

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By Jan Lundius
STOCKHOLM / ROME, Apr 30 2020 (IPS)

For some time Wuhan in China and Lombardy in Italy were epicentres of the COVID-19 virus, something that has changed when the contagion is spreading fast in the US. A Lombardy in the grip of a deadly epidemic might among several Italians give rise to memories of their school days. For almost a century, Alessando Manzoni’s massive novel The Betrothed (I promessi sposi) from 1842 has been obligatory reading for all Italians during their last primary school year. A quite impressive endeavour considering that the novel is more than 700 pages long.

I assume almost every adult Italian is familiar with the Divine Comedy, Pinocchio and, of course The Betrothed. No Italian novel has been the object of so much veneration, scrutiny and intense scholarship. I have been told by Italian friends that they are surprised that The Betrothed is not more known and appreciated outside of Italy and to my discredit I have often been forced to admit that I had not read it.

While being quarantined in Rome I picked up The Betrothed, thinking ”it´s now or never”. It proved to be an interesting acquaintance. Taking as its point of departure a small Lombardian community during the 17th century the novel described how poor, defenceless people experienced war, pestilence, foreign occupation, poverty, famine, power abuse, religious fanaticism, mafia rule, legal injustice and manipulative, corrupt authorities. These are common themes in other literary works as well, though what made The Betrothed a pleasure to read was Manzoni’s use of language. For being such an old novel it felt amazingly fresh. Alessandro Manzoni made use of a literary device by retelling a story while stating it had been written by another author. This enabled him to keep an ironic distance to his tale and being free to interpose witty comments about events and protagonists. Manzoni also occasionally reminded his readers that his story evolved within a well-documented, historical reality.

With mounting expectations I reached the last and third part of the novel – its famous description of the plague in Milan. Here Manzoni offers a description of a wide variety of reactions to a calamity that befalls an entire society: ”In any public misfortune, in any long disturbance of whatever may be the normal order of things, we always find a growth, a heightening of human virtue; but unfortunatly it is always accompanied by an increase in human wickedness.” 1

In 1628, the Holy Roman Empire included Lombardy, which became the scene of bloodshed and looting while French troops battled mostly German mercenaries, remunerated by the Spanish branch of the Habsburgs. Soldiers carried with them the bubonic plague. In Milan, the centre of Lombardian industry and commerce, authorities were implementing effective public health measures. However, relaxed regulations during the carnival season in 1630 caused a major outbreak of the plague and by the same time the following year, an even deadlier wave of the plague engulfed the city. Overall, Milan suffered approximately 60,000 fatalities out of a total population of 130,000.

Milan counted upon a Commission of Public Health with far-reaching authority. It consisted of one president, four magistrates and two doctors of medicine. Its decrees were effectively enforced by the police. Milan also counted upon a lazaretto, a quaratine hospital with 288 rooms, founded in 1489, where suspected plague victims were brought for observation and treatment.

Rumours about plague victims in surrounding villages reached Milan in October 1628. The Commission immediately dispatched medical doctors to the village of Lecco. However, they came back reporting that the outbreak of disease had probably been caused by vapours from surrounding swamps. Nevertheless, during the following weeks more plague reports came in from villages even closer to Milan. Two commissioners were sent out and came back with alarming reports that plague deaths now occurred all over the countryside and people were panicking. Milan’s city gates were closed and outsiders allowed in only under extraordinary circumstances, all incoming goods were stored and checked for vermin. In mid-November a patient No. 1 was traced, a certain Pier Paolo Locati had returned home dressed in German military clothing, probably taken from a corpse. Just a few days after his arrival, Locati had fallen down dead in a market square. All persons he had been in close contact with were tracked down and quaratined in the lazaretto, while their former living quarters were sealed off. The health commissioners visited the Spanish governor asking for taxes to be waived and economic assistance offered to shop keepers and others who were making a loss due to the enforced quarantine. The lazaretto also had to be enforced with doctors, surgeons, medicins, food and eqiupment. The governor declared he was desolated by the news, but since a war was waged against the French he could neither lower taxes, nor release any funds and he recommended opening the city for business again, regardless of the risks.

Probably due to efforts by the Commission of Public Health, Milan had so far not been much affected by the plague and people demanded that the quarantine had to be lifted. The City’s Chief Physician, eighty years old Lodovico Settala who had lived through another plague and constantly pleaded for even harsher measures, was almost lynched by an angry mob. When carnival celebrations were planned for 1630 a majority of Milan’s citizens pleaded with the City Council that restrictions had to be lifted. The town authorities gave in. Outsiders were allowed to enter, shops and restaurants were kept open. The commissioners of public health protested and even had a carriage with naked, plagued stricken corpses taken from the lazaretto and driven through the city as a warning of what could happen if people did not stay indoors.

Nevertheless, the Milanese went along with their carnival. A few days later the plague was completely out of control. Soon tens of thousands of plague victims were amassed within the lazaretto. However, most people continued to neglect the Commission’s decrees about social distancing. Instead, rumours were spread that the plague was not a common plague at all, but caused by a French manufactured substance intended to kill Lombardians, vanquish the Spaniards and take control over Europe. The substance was said to have been smeared on walls and doors by French agents, or spread among crowds in the form of a powder. People began to see so called anointers everywhere. Innocent people were lynched being accused of being anointers, even the authorities convicted and executed inculpable persons as anointers, just to prove they were taking measures to halt the plague.”Good sense was not lacking, but it was hiding from the violence of public opinion.” 2

Authorities and medical doctors, who assumed their prestige were dependent on people’s appreciation, adapted their ”expertise” to general perceptions. ”From the inventions of the crowd, educated men borrowed all they could reconcile with their own ideas; from the inventions of the educated, the crowd borrowed as much as they could understand […]. Out of all this emerged a confused and terrifying accumulation of public folly.” 3 The more fanciful these opinions were, the more unreservedly they were accepted: ”poisionous arts, diabolical operations, conspiracies of people spreading the plague by contagious venoms or black magic.” 4 Manzoni provided several examples of how ”educated” people to cover up their deficient knowledge of how a pandemic functioned and above all to avoid recommending the unpopular solution of social distancing, invented notions that the plague could not be stopped since it arose from ”cosmological phenomena”, or that it was caused by malevolent ”foreigners” who wanted to gain control over Milan. To combat the plague they recommended worthless medicines and remedies, anything but the unwanted quarantine.

It was Italian city states, depending on international trade, like Venice, Milan and Genoa, which were among the first to realize that the most efficient way to stop epidemics were to quarantine people. The word quarantena means ”forty days”, i.e. the designated period that crew and passengers suspected of being plague carriers onboard ships anchoring in Venice were required to be isolated for, before they were allowed ashore. The Venetian Senate had just in time before the arrival of the Black Death, in 1340 appointed three guardians of public health to control incoming ships and establish whether they carried the plague, or not. In 1403, Venice founded a lazaretto, an asylum for suspected plague victims on a lagoon island housing a monastery called Santa Maria di Nazareth (Nazaretto), which later came to be known as Lazaretto.

Officially supported installations and regulations eventually became a system of state controlled Public Health, of which Milan’s Commission of Public Health was one example. Trough such state entities the science of epidemiology gradually emerged. Viruses and bacteria were still unknown. However, Italian plague doctors like Girolamo Fracastoro (1483-1553) were 300 years before Louis Pasteur and Robert Koch speculating that contagious diseases could be caused by rapidly multiplying ”seed” transmitted by direct contact, through the air, or on contaminated clothing and linens. Such insights meant that lazzarettos and communes as a remedy against infectious diseases fostered health control and general cleanliness. It was agreed that such measures were effective only if implemented by a public heath system, free of charge.

The Betrothed described how common sense propagated by state supported commissions were impaired by populist community leaders. If something could be learned from a fascinating old novel like The Betrothed it is that even four hundred years ago trust in medical experience could have impeded a deadly pandemic. However, in 17th century Milan, leaders responsible for the well-being and security of their fellow citizens had apparently not learned from earlier mistakes. They ignored the dire warnings of the city’s Commission of Public Health and minimized the treats of an epidemic killer with disastrous consequences. Let us only hope that the current cataclysm is not globally repeated to the same horrific extent as in Milan 1630-1631.

1 Manzoni, Allesandro (1972) The Betrothed. Penguin Classics: Bungay, Suffolk, p.596.
2 Ibid., p. 603.
3 Ibid., pp. 600-601.
4 Ibid., p. 578.

Jan Lundius holds a PhD. on History of Religion from Lund University and has served as a development expert, researcher and advisor at SIDA, UNESCO, FAO and other international organisations.

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Jay Collins speaks at the informal virtual meeting of the 2020 ECOSOC Forum on Financing for Development follow-up: "Financing Sustainable Development in the Context of COVID-19". Credit: United Nations

By Jay Collins
NEW YORK, Apr 30 2020 (IPS)

We are today in a time of crisis—a time when our shared choices will shape the way history tells our story and the paradigm shift it has so forcefully provoked.

The difference between the historical path of promise or peril will be defined, not just by the urgency and manner of our response, but also by our shared vision of recovery and renewal.

The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has struck the planet with scant concern for human suffering, and with vast economic destruction and financial cost. But more than that, it has dealt a blow to our Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) , and we must urgently address how we will recover from it.

The global community can be proud, thus far, of the size and speed of the multi-trillion-dollar mobilization of capital in response to COVID-19. We have demonstrated that we are capable of radical and forceful societal response in the developed world.

However, we have only just begun to fight COVID-19’s wrath in the developing world. As the pandemic shows little respect for national boundaries, we must embrace the opportunity to re-enforce, re-purpose and re-invigorate the multilateral cooperation mechanisms and organizations of the Bretton Woods era if we are to meet the developing world’s challenges.

As the COVID-19 crisis continues, we should urge that massive stimulus efforts be affected sustainably: targeted and aligned to the SDGs and compatible with the Paris Agreement trajectory.

Climate change and global pandemics both epitomize Michele Wucker’s “Gray Rhino” concept—that is, neglect of the highly probable, high impact, global threats. Yes, many had in fact told us that a pandemic was coming, and we did not responsibly prepare.

As Mark Carney has so aptly pointed out, climate change also imbeds within it “the tragedy of commons,” in which the cost of inaction today is felt by future generations, well beyond humanity’s traditional economic and political time horizons.

Let us not permit that our grandchildren look back on climate change as humanity’s worst “Gray Rhino moment,” but use this COVID-19 crisis to re-galvanize our resolve against it.

We must embrace an intense dialogue with policy makers, regulators and the private sector, not only about funding and incentivizing the glide path of energy transition, but also about how to manage the new headwinds that low oil prices, pandemic-strained budgets and drained capital coffers represent.

We must meet the potential COVID-19 setback to the SDG agenda with defiance and with Churchillian resolve, unafraid to pivot as the virus moves our targets tragically further out of reach and makes our Goals even more ambitious in their aims.

Let us be resolved not to let a temporary corporate and investor focus on liquidity and volatility alter the pre-crisis momentum toward bold public private partnerships, stakeholder- driven corporate leadership and ESG investor commitment to achieving the SDGs.

Let us also not underestimate the plight of the poorest countries through this crisis. If the human price is not enough to inspire action, contemplate the global political consequences of an inability to respond to social crises in the developing world and of social unrest.

These challenges can develop quickly and can be as systemically destabilizing as methane bubbling through the permafrost.

Today, it is fair to say that the “S” in “ESG” now has a double line underscoring it as investors and securities issuers alike fund COVID-19 health and social spending. The social SDGs have moved to the forefront of our battle.

There are already silver linings in the COVID-19 ESG momentum. Let me name a few:

• ESG funds are outperforming their non-ESG market benchmarks;
• Risk models are being re-considered, supercharging concepts like “climate value at risk;”
• We are witnessing lowered ESG scores for poor corporate behavior in response to COVID-19;
• We have also seen a move from “negative screening” for ESG funds to a desire to see coronavirus-response “additionality objectives;” and finally,
• We are seeing an expression of social values absorbed into investor paradigms, underpinned by the Gen Z and Millennials’ view that this is a defining moment for their generations.

Despite these rays of hope, COVID-19 has made our funding challenges greater, and the call to use capital markets and creative funding mechanisms more urgent. The debt quagmire in the poorest of the emerging market economies has been and will continue to worsen through this crisis.

The Secretary-General and, in parallel, his Global Investors for Sustainable Development (GISD) Alliance, have recognized the challenges of debt to our agenda; we cannot help but acknowledge the fallacy that increasing indebtedness to fund the SDGs represents for many of the world’s poorest countries.

While instinctively we already know that the pandemic has shifted our goal posts, we must invest heavily and speedily in the technology and processes for SDG and ESG metrics alike, embracing Big Data solution-sets.

Rearview mirror, macroeconomic data is insufficient for the challenges ahead and lacks the precision to measure future success.

As we face head-on the consequences of the potential exponentiality of the COVID-19 infection curves in the developing world, so too must we embrace the exponential characteristics of beneficial technological solutions applied aggressively to Sustainability challenges.

While guarding against its pitfalls, applied technology and innovation, if funded at scale, can lower the cost and speed of attainment of our Goals.

The 193 UN member states are taking decisive action to arrest the fallout from COVID- 19, and we must not forget the importance to the developing world of maintaining open and functioning capital markets.

These allow the broadest possible access to funds for our response. Simultaneously, the development bank community must continue its urgent search for out-of-the-box, accelerated and modified risk-sharing mechanisms, leveraging and catalyzing private sector credit where possible, surgically mitigating risk where necessary, and fully absorbing risk where systemically vital.

Lest we forget, in radical juxtaposition to the Global Financial Crisis, the global banking system today is strong and will continue to constructively support solutions to the pandemic and its social and economic consequences.

As we search for temporary reprieve mechanisms to address the weakest credit sovereigns, let us avoid contagious defaults that can shock the financial system, further restrict existing credit extension mechanisms, or slow the capital formation process of recovery.

This will be no easy feat. In some cases, it will require us to engage the market in voluntary standstill mechanisms that are closely coordinated with the official sector and move us toward orderly debt re-profiling strategies once the present fog lifts and the path to debt sustainability can be seen more clearly.

As Shakespeare wrote, “Sweet are the uses of adversity.” This cannot be “the end of normal,” but must be an historical starting point for the creation of a better normal.

We have the potential to re-imagine capitalism in a post-COVID world, to embrace long- termism and multi-stakeholder corporate behavior and to use COVID-19 adversity to reinvigorate our commitment to addressing the greatest social, environmental and economic challenges of our time.

*Citigroup is one of the 30 investor, corporate and bank members of the GISD Alliance. Jay Collins is a member of GISD’s Strategy Group, and delivered a version of these remarks at the UN ECOSOC Forum on Financing for Development on 23 April 2020.

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Excerpt:

Jay Collins is Vice Chairman Banking, Capital Markets and Advisory, Citigroup*

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Students learn with tablets in a school in South Africa. Credit: AMO/Jackie Clausen

By External Source
CAPE TOWN, South Africa, Apr 30 2020 (IPS)

South Africa’s education system is complex, with historical inequalities dating back to apartheid. Most of the country’s pupils come from disadvantaged backgrounds. Language is an issue; most pupils do not speak English as a mother tongue, yet English dominates in many classrooms. And, as the COVID-19 crisis has showed, there’s a huge digital divide at play.

The ongoing effects of the virus have kept pupils and teachers at home. This has necessitated a move to e-learning. In theory, this could be an important step towards a fairer education system. Digital platforms enable equitable access for learners to digital books, simulated science labs and related innovative learning resources.

Electronic and mobile learning can thus be seen as an additional learning resource that can also help enhance access to learning tools. Access to e-learning is not a panacea to the challenges in South African education. But it does provide an opportunity to make access to learning resources for all children more equitable.

COVID-19 has shown that technology is no longer a luxury but an important component of the education process. In presenting solutions, a wide range of factors must be considered. These range from access to computers, to teacher training, to the social and economic challenges faced by teachers, pupils and schools in their communities

But the reality in South Africa, as in most developing countries, is very different. Teachers have varying digital skills. Many families and teachers also cannot afford the data necessary to sustain some online learning activities.

COVID-19 has shown that technology is no longer a luxury but an important component of the education process. In presenting solutions, a wide range of factors must be considered. These range from access to computers, to teacher training, to the social and economic challenges faced by teachers, pupils and schools in their communities.

 

National focus

There are already some strategic policies and resources in place to help schools and teachers use technology as part of the teaching and learning process.

Information and Communications Technology is also taught as a school subject. But the government needs to consider an additional range of issues if it’s going to solidify a commitment towards e-learning. This includes policies and strategies surrounding connectivity, data costs, skills development, hardware access as well as contextual multilingual digital learning content.

Many schools have little or no technology facilities. Some have tablets and only a few have advanced computing laboratories. Formal training in applied technology skills is provided for teachers who want to teach a technology specialist subject in schools.

But all this needs to be extended. Adequate digital skills training should become a mandatory component of all teacher training programmes in universities, universities of technology and colleges. While there have been several digital training programmes for both in-service and trainee teachers in some provinces, it is time for a concerted national programme to ensure all teachers are skilled in digital teaching and technology.

Several studies have reflected on the innovative use of mobile phones and related applications to support learning in South Africa.

But South Africa has some of the highest data costs on the continent. This means that pupils can’t always easily access information on their mobile phones.

In the wake of South Africa’s first COVID-19 cases, as schools closed, several educational sites were zero rated; this means they are now free to use.

This should be extended to support home schooling and any future returns to school, so that data costs don’t keep schools in poorer communities from accessing these resources. Policies to enable such beyond the pandemic should be considered.

 

Projects that work

As an educator who focuses on Education Technology research, I know there is enormous enthusiasm among teachers and pupils to become more digitally savvy. I have worked with a number of under-resourced schools, supporting the teaching of Science, Technology and Maths subjects through basic software applications, learning management systems and other free-to-use cloud-based education platforms.

When pupils and teachers receive the right support for digital learning, the response is often remarkable. I have met many teachers who willingly dedicate their weekends and school holidays to digital learning and teaching, with no financial incentives but a passion to equip pupils with digital skills.

I am particularly proud of a collaboration between computing students from the University of the Western Cape with teachers in a high school in an underprivileged part of Cape Town. Their work together has cultivated computing skills and sparked learners’ interest in other subjects like chemistry and astronomy.

A similar collaboration has been expanded to the North West province and convinces me that there are thousands of teachers who are keen to retrain to prepare their pupils for the digital era.

The COVID-19 crisis offers a unique opportunity to harness this enthusiasm. With the right support and training, digital teaching and learning can become ubiquitous even in resource-strapped environments.

 

Mmaki Jantjies, Associate professor in Information Systems, University of the Western Cape

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

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By Farhana Haque Rahman
ROME, Apr 30 2020 (IPS)

Wearing an orange jacket and face mask, Li Zehua, a Chinese freelance journalist, can be seen filming himself in a car. He is sure that state security agents have been pursuing him since he began documenting events in Hubei’s capital Wuhan, the first epicentre of the COVID-19 pandemic. A second YouTube video, circulating widely since he launched his appeal, ends abruptly when two men knock at his apartment. He has just reappeared online after two months, saying police interrogated him and put him in quarantine and that he was well looked after during this period.

Other ‘citizen journalists’ like Li have also seemingly vanished after reporting and sharing images of the Coronavirus outbreak in China – inside hospital wards, in the crematorium, on the street. “The censorship is very strict and people’s accounts are being closed down if they share my content,” lawyer-journalist Chen Qiushi told the BBC in February. He is still missing.

Human Rights Watch says Chinese authorities are putting the same effort into trying to contain the virus as in suppressing criticism. In March, the Chinese government expelled 13 journalists working for three US publications.

Farhana Haque Rahman

World Press Freedom Day on May 3 reminds us that the media is facing crises on multiple fronts, exacerbated by the pandemic. Releasing the 2020 World Press Freedom Index on April 21, Reporters Without Borders (RSF) notes that the Coronavirus is being used by authoritarian governments to implement ‘shock doctrine’ measures that would be impossible in normal times.

The index, RSF says, shows a “clear correlation between suppression of media freedom in response to the coronavirus pandemic, and a country’s ranking in the Index” of 180 countries and territories. China (177) and Iran (down 3 at 173) censored their coronavirus outbreaks extensively. Iraq (down 6 at 162) punished Reuters for an article that questioned official coronavirus figures, and Hungary (down 2 at 89) has passed a coercive ‘coronavirus’ law.

The danger and long-term risks of suppressing press freedoms have been strikingly exposed by the pandemic. As the global death toll mounts amidst an economic crisis of unprecedented proportions, China stands accused of acting too late in warning the world about the timing and extent of the threat.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chungying followed up by questioning about the speed of the U.S.’s response to the virus after banning arrivals from China on February 2. Promoting transparent and free reporting in an interconnected world is a global necessity.

This is indeed not the problem of just one country. The World Press Freedom Index illustrates the oppression of journalists from the North to the South in what appears like a pandemic in its own right, regardless of the causes and of the political system.

Even the president of the world’s most powerful democracy, Donald Trump, has described the press as “the enemy of the American people.”

Yet it’s where institutions are more fragile or conflict is rife that the dislike of governments to be held accountable takes shape in typically authoritarian ways.

In Myanmar, eNay Myo Lin was arrested on March 31 charged with terrorism for interviewing a representative of the Arakan Army, a rebel group fighting for autonomy in Rakhine state. Bangladesh, on the other side of the border is seeing increasing violence against journalists.

Democracy is not enough to guarantee media freedom either. In India under Prime Minister Narendra Modi the press “is not so free, writes the New York Times. According to non-profit Pen America, “harassing critical writers and journalists not just in India but globally is a disturbing new low for Modi’s government that’s already put Indian democracy on its heels”.

But it’s not just governments making threats. Organised crime, corrupted officials and terrorism are also constant dangers. April 18 marked the anniversary of the killing of journalist Lyra McKee by a republican paramilitary activist during rioting in Northern Ireland.

So how do we challenge this kind of oppression and abuse in a world where, as Thomas Jefferson said, “the only security of all is in a free press”?

Ultimately, just as in a pandemic, the freedom of the press can only be guaranteed by a coordinated global effort and a focus on the long-term advantages of a more critical world. This means pressure to reinforce legal frameworks, including prosecuting harassers and killers, perhaps just as the international community would persecute war criminals, while offering a global protection for journalists. Finding and promoting innovative ways of subsidizing independent media, as well as getting big tech companies to pay for the content they share, is also crucial to help a free press to thrive.

Albert Camus, writer and author of The Plague, was also a journalist. As he once noted: “A free press can, of course, be good or bad, but, most certainly without freedom, the press will never be anything but bad.”

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Farhana Haque Rahman is Senior Vice President of IPS Inter Press Service; a journalist and communications expert, she is a former senior official of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization and the International Fund for Agricultural Development.

The post Press Freedom Needs Protection from Pandemic too appeared first on Inter Press Service.