Africa - INTER PRESS SERVICE

By UNCCD Press Release
Mar 26 2020 (IPS-Partners)

The international community is developing policy measures and actions to help the people most vulnerable to drought to take early action to avoid loss of life, and the heavy and growing losses of livelihoods and damage to property and ecosystems following droughts.

The Intergovernmental Working Group on Drought (IWG) that is leading this initiative is convening for the first time on 26 March through virtual meetings involving four task teams. The outcomes of the initiative could become effective as early as 2022.

The importance of early warning followed by early action for the most vulnerable people and ecosystems as well as the need for preparedness to respond fast, cannot be over-emphasized.

The IWG’s virtual meeting is taking place after the Group’s first face-to-face meeting, scheduled for 25-27 March in Brussels, Belgium, was suspended following the outbreak and global spread the corona virus, COVID-19.

“Over 70 countries worldwide are affected by drought, and the droughts are spreading to new areas, recurring more often and lasting longer, sometimes stretching over a few years or even decades in some regions. The impacts of these new drought patterns on people, property, infrastructure and ecosystems are unprecedented and are a growing concern for both developed and developing countries,” says Ibrahim Thiaw, Executive Secretary of the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification, which is facilitating the work of the IWG.

“Half of the global land is projected to be drylands and may be more prone to drought by 2050. The increase in drought disasters is a wake-up call to this threat, especially because some avoidable impacts occur due to late action, and at worst, inaction. The possibility created by the IWG to share experiences and learn from the best examples of mitigating drought is a big step forward,” he adds.

Millions of people are dealing with the prospect of drought at the moment.

In just a few months (April), in a situation reminiscent of the 2015 to 2017 drought, a record 45 million people in Southern Africa may be food insecure, partly due to drought. The World Food Programme needed 489 million United States dollars by February 2020 to help the 8.3 million people that were already food insecure in the region, but had yet to raise half of the required sum.

Droughts destroy food that could feed 81 million people – a population the size of Germany – every day, for a year, according to a recent World Bank report. Drought is also one of the most cited reasons by young people leaving their homes in search of better lives elsewhere, including those migrating to Europe, according to a recent survey of migration patterns in Morocco.

“I cannot emphasize enough the importance of this new inter-governmental initiative. Its value goes beyond the immediate outcomes of saving lives, livestock, rangelands and livelihoods in case of drought. It will improve security in some of the world’s most fragile areas,” Jarso Ibrahim Gollole, a pastoralist and natural resource advisor with Mercycorps in Kenya says about the results expected from the IWG.

“The conflicts that arise among communities living across borders – but also within borders – as they compete, in times of drought, over few and shrinking pastures would be minimized. Also, the influx of communities from neighboring countries seeking to take advantage of the government services set aside for affected communities in Kenya, where drought responses are better, even if they are not perfect, would decrease. A collective approach to managing drought is far better than what we have today,” he added.

Drought and drought impacts are also addressed under the Climate Change and Disaster Risk Reduction processes of the United Nations. But the policy focus on drought is only one among many other disasters, that are more noticeable and get stronger policy actions, especially due to the dramatic nature of their arrival.

Droughts, by contrast, set in slowly and wreak havoc on some of the world’s poorest populations. By focusing only on drought, the IWG is expected to develop concrete, feasible and appropriate global options to address its socio-economic impacts effectively.

“Another world is possible. Drought resilience for countries at varying levels of economic development is possible. Witness the resilience of Ethiopia’s Tigray region to the 2014-2016 drought, the famous water harvesting scheme in Brazil’s north-east region, the Australian drought trust fund that helps farmers and the drought management approach of United States where a Presidential decree is issued early. How drought is managed must change fundamentally,” Thiaw said.

“Drought knows no boundaries, political or sectoral. It is a connector. The work of the IWG can bring much-needed coordination among stakeholders at all levels and rally affected countries to act and work together,” says Daniel Tsegai, the UNCCD’s drought expert in charge of the IWG process.

“Interest in the work of the IWG is already high. Governments, international and non-governmental organizations and other actors have sent close to 100 submissions for consideration. The submissions deal with issues such as collaboration among institutions, the barriers and challenges to drought response and recovery, the opportunities and measures for action as well as the lessons learned from successful cases,” he said.

The IWG was established in September 2019 following intense negotiations by governments during the 14th session of the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification.

Its outcomes, which include recommendations for action, will be presented to policy makers at the 15th COP session in Fall 2021.

Notes to Editors
See the FAQ for background information about the Intergovernmental Working Group on Drought. For more information about the IWG meetings and processes, contact Daniel Tsegai, dtsegai@unccd.int or visit https://www.unccd.int/news-events/call-experts-intergovernmental-working-group-drought

Fact Sheet
Attached is a list of potential interviewees.

1. Mr. Daniel Tsegai
Programme Officer
UNCCD secretariat
E-mail: dtsegai@unccd.int
2. Dr. Caroline King-Okumu
International Development Opportunities Manager
Centre for Ecology and Hydrology
E-mail: carkin@ceh.ac.uk
3. Mr. Jarso Ibrahim Gollole
Natural Resource Advisor and Pastoralist
MercyCorps, Kenya
E-mail: jgollole@mercycorps.com

For media-related questions contact: wwischnewski@unccd.int

The post A Positive Policy Turn for People Most Vulnerable To Drought Worldwide appeared first on Inter Press Service.

By Nazihah Muhamad Noor and Jomo Kwame Sundaram
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia, Mar 26 2020 (IPS)

By the third week of March 2020, the number of Covid-19 deaths in Italy had overtaken the number of deaths in China. Authorities all over the world are restricting the movements of their populations as part of efforts to control the spread of Covid-19.

For the time being, more and more governments are benchmarking their responses on the very worst outbreaks in Wuhan and northern Italy. But lockdowns inevitably have adverse economic impacts, especially for businesses, particularly small ones heavily reliant on continuous turnover. Are there other ways to bring the virus under control without lockdowns?

Nazihah Muhamad Noor

South Korean lessons?
The Republic of Korea, or South Korea, is one of a handful of mainly East Asian economies that have dramatically reduced the number of Covid-19 cases as well as related deaths. On 29 February 2020, the country saw 909 newly confirmed cases.

By 25 March, the number of newly confirmed cases fell to 100. It has gone from having the second highest rate of infection globally to eighth place, behind China, Italy, United States, Spain, Germany, Iran and France, all with varying rates of testing.

For now, South Korea has checked the spread of infections. It has managed to slow the spread of Covid-19 without imposing lockdowns, even in its most infected city, Daegu. How have they responded differently to the crisis?

Korean style pandemic management
The key to South Korea’s response has been mass testing. South Korea has done the most Covid-19 tests by country, with over 300,000 tests as of 20 March 2020, or over 6,000 per million inhabitants. Germany, in second place, had done 167,000 by 15 March 2020, or 2,000 per million.

The infected who show no symptoms (i.e., the asymptomatic) or only have mild symptoms are more likely to transmit the virus to others. As such undetected cases are more likely to spread infection, mass testing has checked the spread of the virus by identifying and breaking its chains of transmission.

The median incubation period, between infection and symptoms first appearing, is about five days, during which time asymptomatic individuals may unknowingly infect others. Mass testing detects infections early, so that individuals can self-isolate and get treatment instead of infecting others.

South Korea had built up its testing capabilities following the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) outbreak in 2015. It was thus prepared with test kits and facilities for rapid development, approval and deployment in case of future outbreaks.

After South Korea confirmed its first case of Covid-19 on 20 January 2020, hundreds of testing facilities, ranging from drive-through kiosks to hospitals and local clinics, quickly became available across the country.

Jomo Kwame Sundaram

Trace, test, treat
The tests are mainly free for those whom medical professionals suspect need to be tested, e.g., if they recently returned from China, or even ‘secondary contacts’ of a person known to be infected or to belong to an at-risk group, the tests are free of charge.

Others who do not belong to these categories, but wish to be tested, are charged 160,000 Korean won (about US$130), but reimbursed if the result is positive, with any treatment needed paid for by the government.

Another legacy of the MERS outbreak is that the government has the legal authority to collect mobile phone, credit card and other data from those who test positive for contact tracing efforts. China, too, has made use of artificial intelligence and big data to improve contact tracing and manage priority populations.

Although this has sparked debates over privacy concerns, South Korea’s pro-active testing and contact tracing methods have also been praised by the World Health Organization (WHO), which is encouraging other countries to apply lessons learned in South Korea, China and elsewhere in East Asia.

Path not taken
Although South Koreans are banned from entry into more than 80 countries around the world, its authorities have only restricted incoming travellers from China’s Hubei province, where Wuhan is, and Japan, due to bilateral political tensions.

Special procedures require visitors from China and Iran to use smartphone applications to monitor for symptoms such as fever. As Europe has become the new pandemic epicentre, all visitors from Europe are now being tested for Covid-19, with those staying long term quarantined first.

The Korean Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (KCDC) continue to urge people to practice social distancing and personal hygiene. Mass gatherings are discouraged, and employers encouraged to allow employees to work remotely. But no lockdown has been imposed, and South Korea has not imposed nationwide restrictions on movements of people within its borders.

Learning the right lessons
Besides South Korea, the WHO has also praised China for its Covid-19 response, which has rapidly reduced new cases, besides helping other countries with their efforts. More and more countries are restricting freedom of movement through lockdowns, citing China’s response in Wuhan.

However, Bruce Aylward, who led the WHO fact-finding mission to China, notes, “The majority of the response in China, in 30 provinces, was about case finding, contact tracing, and suspension of public gatherings—all common measures used anywhere in the world to manage [infectious] diseases.

“The lockdowns people are referring to…was concentrated in Wuhan and two or three other cities…that got out of control in the beginning…the key learning from China is…all about the speed. The faster you can find the cases, isolate the cases, and track their close contacts, the more successful you’re going to be.”

China and South Korea are now primed to detect and respond rapidly, which may make all the difference in preventing a new wave of infections. This is not to say that lockdowns are ineffective; we will soon know whether such measures in countries like Italy will succeed.

The South Korean and Chinese experiences suggest that resources should be concentrated on rapid and early detection, isolation and contact tracing, protecting the most vulnerable, and treating the infected, regardless of means, instead of mainly relying on strict lockdown measures.

Nazihah Noor has a Masters of Public Health and a BSc in Biomedical Science (Global Health) from Imperial College London. The authors are both associated with Khazanah Research Institute, but do not implicate KRI with the views expressed here.

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HRH Prince El Hassan bin Talal

By HRH Prince El Hassan bin Talal of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan
AMMAN, Jordan, Mar 26 2020 (IPS)

Humankind has outlived multiple pandemics in the course of world history. The kingdoms and states of Central and Western Europe abolished the institution of serfdom once it had become clear that medieval rule in the aftermath of devastating pestilence would founder without ending the dependency and servitude that characterized the Dark Ages. The vulnerability of entire nations to the risk of total collapse in the absence of widespread access to the most basic healthcare in the Spanish Flu spurred governments to build the public health systems that have made the progress and development of the last hundred years possible. If the past is prologue, then continuity and survival command that we change.

We have more often than not banded together in the face of all kinds of threats. In all its ramifications, COVID-19 threatens to push our social, political and economic structures to the brink. Disease, recession and fright can rapidly overwhelm states and societies. Each coming day will bring increasing challenges that can only be met by caring for the sick, minimizing the impact of shutdowns on lives and livelihoods, securing the delivery of adequate water, food and energy supplies, and racing for a cure. Success – as in an asymmetric conflict – rests on resilience. To contain the socio-political and socio-economic fallout from the crisis, policymaking efforts should center on human dignity and welfare as the bedrock of national and international security.

The most vulnerable members of society in some parts of our world are those on the front lines of the crisis: the doctors, nurses, care-givers, pharmacists, sanitation workers, farmers, supermarket cashiers and truck drivers whose courage, sacrifice and dedication will see us through the next 12 to 18 months of expected lockdowns. In the absence of state support, what will happen to the hundreds of thousands of people who have already been laid off, while millions more face looming hardship as the numbers of layoffs grow? Some will continue to ignore the vulnerable and marginalized, those who have least access to humanitarian assistance, while others will continue to exploit them. The calls for social distancing have grown louder and more frequent over the last couple of days, and as we begin to separate from one other we must remember our humanitarian duty to each another.

Security, far from being individual, is collective and global. The current crisis calls for transcendent thinking between politicians on both sides of the aisle. Grey areas in politics in which zero-sum games and the perverse logic of mutually assured destruction proliferate will not protect and promote human dignity and welfare. Conservatives and reformers must now move beyond the tournaments and arm-twisting of politics. The logic of mutually assured survival cannot accept grey areas. If conflict resolution transcends political beliefs, nationality, ethnicity, gender, and religion, then human dignity and welfare is the benchmark of the humanitarian commitment to life.

Reliable brokers in the management of this crisis and other crises do exist as in the International Committee of the Red Cross and Médecins Sans Frontières. Corporate social responsibility requires developing a public platform of health facts so that people-to-people conversations and consultations can be promoted through civil society, the media and educational institutions. We cannot cherry-pick energy and climate change without talking about health or education and human dignity. Migrants and refugees must be an integral part of the national response for halting the spread of the novel coronavirus. The United Nations Economic and Social Commission for West Asia reports that 55 million people, in West Asia region, require some sort of humanitarian assistance and that the vulnerability of displaced women and girls is especially heightened in a pandemic. Post-conflict insecurity – whether in countries ravaged by war or across the urban centers and countrysides of advanced economies overwhelmed by disease – can only be addressed in the careful terrain mapping of humanitarian access. Yemen, Syria, Gaza and Libya are frighteningly vulnerable to the onslaught of epidemics – what will peace uncover there when the wars end?

Regional insecurity is heightened in the absence of cooperation, but the multilateral system is not at a loss in facing an existential crisis. European solidarity has been sharply damaged by the onset of widespread disease although China is performing through the swift and effective action that has come to the aid of the people and government of Italy. Multilateralism today can only be revisited with a focus on the interdisciplinary priorities of the twenty-first century that include addressing the need for a Law of Peace. We draw humanitarian concessions from the law of war in times of conflict, but have no recourse to legal instruments that can secure the dignity and welfare of all in times of peace.

The current crisis is as much a global health crisis as it is a crisis of the globalization that has come to undermine the foundations of modern society with its rampant inequality and rising injustice and which threatens the very survival of our species with climate change. The planet that we share with other organisms is fragile and prone to crises. A resolution to our predicament will take nothing short of extending the ethic of human solidarity beyond the contours of our immediate response to the outbreak of COVID-19. Real success lies not in the taming of a pathogen or in re-discovering the value of compassion, respect and generosity, but in institutionalizing these values in the days, weeks and months ahead.

 

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By PRESS RELEASE
Mar 25 2020 (IPS-Partners)

A global approach is the only way to fight COVID-19, the UN says as it launches humanitarian response plan

• UN humanitarian chief warns that failing to help vulnerable countries fight the coronavirus now could place millions at risk and leave the virus free to circle back around the globe.
• UN launches US$2 billion global humanitarian response to fight COVID-19 across South America, Africa, the Middle East and Asia.
• Governments urged to commit to fully supporting the global humanitarian response plan, while sustaining funding to existing humanitarian appeals.

United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres today [Wednesday, 25 March] launched a $2 billion coordinated global humanitarian response plan to fight COVID-19 in some of the world’s most vulnerable countries in a bid to protect millions of people and stop the virus from circling back around the globe.

COVID-19 has killed more than 16,000 people worldwide and there are nearly 400,000 reported cases. It has a foothold across the globe and is now reaching countries that were already facing humanitarian crisis because of conflict, natural disasters and climate change.

The response plan will be implemented by UN agencies, with international NGOs and NGO consortia playing a direct role in the response. It will:

• deliver essential laboratory equipment to test for the virus, and medical supplies to treat people;
• install handwashing stations in camps and settlements;
• launch public information campaigns on how to protect yourself and others from the virus; and
• establish airbridges and hubs across Africa, Asia and Latin America to move humanitarian workers and supplies to where they are needed most.

United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres said:

“COVID-19 is menacing the whole of humanity – and so the whole of humanity must fight back. Individual country responses are not going to be enough.

“We must come to the aid of the ultra-vulnerable – millions upon millions of people who are least able to protect themselves. This is a matter of basic human solidarity. It is also crucial for combating the virus. This is the moment to step up for the vulnerable.”

Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs Mark Lowcock said:

“COVID-19 has already upended life in some of the world’s wealthiest countries. It is now reaching places where people live in warzones, cannot easily access clean water and soap, and have no hope of a hospital bed if they fall critically ill.

“To leave the world’s poorest and most vulnerable countries to their fate would be both cruel and unwise. If we leave coronavirus to spread freely in these places, we would be placing millions at high risk, whole regions will be tipped into chaos and the virus will have the opportunity to circle back around the globe.

“Countries battling the pandemic at home are rightly prioritizing people living in their own communities. But the hard truth is they will be failing to protect their own people if they do not act now to help the poorest countries protect themselves.

“Our priority is to help these countries prepare and continue helping the millions who rely on humanitarian assistance from the UN to survive. Properly funded, our global response effort will equip humanitarian organizations with the tools to fight the virus, save lives, and help contain the spread of COVID-19 worldwide.”

WHO Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said:

“The virus is now spreading in countries with weak health systems, including some which are already facing humanitarian crises. These countries need our support – out of solidarity but also to protect us all and help suppress this pandemic. At the same time, we must not fight the pandemic at the expense of the other humanitarian health emergencies.”

UNICEF Executive Director Henrietta H. Fore said:

“Children are the hidden victims of the COVID-19 pandemic. Lockdowns and school closures are affecting their education, mental health and access to basic health services. The risks of exploitation and abuse are higher than ever, for boys and girls alike. For children on the move or living through conflicts, the consequences will be unlike any we have ever seen. We must not let them down.”

At the virtual launch of the COVID-19 Global Humanitarian Response Plan, the UN Secretary-General was joined via video link by Mr. Lowcock, Dr Tedros and Ms. Fore.

Together they called on UN Member States to commit to stemming the impact of COVID-19 in vulnerable countries and containing the virus globally by giving the strongest possible support to the plan, while also sustaining core support to existing humanitarian appeals that help the more than 100 million people who already rely on humanitarian assistance from the UN just to survive.

Member States were warned that any diversion of funding from existing humanitarian operations would create an environment in which cholera, measles and meningitis can thrive, in which even more children become malnourished, and in which extremists can take control – an environment that would be the perfect breeding ground for the coronavirus.

To kick-start the response plan, Mr. Lowcock released an additional $60 million from the UN’s Central Emergency Response Fund (CERF). This brings CERF’s support to humanitarian action in response to the COVID-19 pandemic to $75 million. In addition, country-based pooled funds have allocated more than $3 million so far.

This new CERF allocation – one of the largest ever made – will support: WFP to ensure the continuity of supply chains and transport of aid workers and relief goods; WHO to contain the spread of the pandemic; and other agencies to provide humanitarian assistance and protection to those most affected by the pandemic, including women and girls, refugees and internally displaced people. Support will include efforts around food security, physical and mental health, water and sanitation, nutrition and protection.

Notes to editors

1. The COVID-19 Global Humanitarian Response Plan will be coordinated by the UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.
2. It brings together requirements from the World Health Organization (WHO), Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), International Organization for Migration (IOM), United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), UN-Habitat, UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR), United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and World Food Programme (WFP).

For further details, please contact:
OCHA New York: Zoe Paxton, + 1 917 297 1542, paxton@un.org
OCHA Geneva: Jens Laerke, +41 79 472 9750, laerke@un.org

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By Felix Dodds and Michael Strauss
NEW YORK, Mar 25 2020 (IPS)

With the coronavirus pandemic sweeping the planet and the governments of both wealthy and poorer nations overwhelmed by the demands of managing a response, the scheduling of this year’s critical UN Climate Summit is suddenly in doubt.

COP26 (formally, the 26th annual Conference of the Parties of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change) is planned for Glasgow, Scotland (UK) from 9-20 November. It will be the culmination of five years of negotiations since the historic 2015 Paris Climate Agreement.

More than 100 presidents and prime ministers are expected to present their nations’ plans for carrying out the sweeping environmental, economic and energy changes necessary to keep the Earth’s warming to survivable levels.

In all, over 30,000 government delegates, intergovernmental officials and stakeholder representatives are preparing to attend.

The agenda of COP26 is deep and urgent. Besides reporting how they plan to reduce oil, coal and gas production and increase renewable energy to limit global temperature rise to below 2°C (and preferably 1.5°C), governments must agree how to calculate whether each is fulfilling its pledges, what steps to take to deal with those which haven’t, and whether the total reductions agreed to are sufficient to avoid catastrophic climate impacts (so far they’re not).

National leaders will be looking for positive grand visions to pull their people out of pandemic- induced despair. A new American President might be eager to reassert a proactive international role for the US

At Glasgow, governments must also fulfill the  commitment of the $100 billion a year they promised to help developing countries.  Those funds are to cope with the devastating impacts of sea level rise, intense storms, extended droughts, erratic cold and heat waves that have already begun to disproportionately affect poorer nations – and to help shift those nations’ energy production to renewables.

Governments must decide what role private business and the financial sector play in contributing climate funding. And they must approve the so-called ‘Paris Rulebook’ on implementation guidelines for zero emissions and climate resilience by 2050.

Progress on all of these issues is lagging far behind schedule.

Last year’s COP25, in Madrid, was expected to agree on a formula to resolve key issues. Instead it became the longest COP conference ever, failed to resolve virtually any issue, and passing them on to an already pressured COP26.

Meanwhile, the pace of the climate crisis continues to accelerate, with another year of record temperatures, catastrophic hurricanes, and unanticipated rapidly melting glaciers in Antarctica and Greenland. And the public demand for action to meet the urgency escalated as well, led by a resurgent environmental youth movement inspired by Greta Thunberg.

 

The argument for a November meeting

So it would seem more necessary than ever to follow through with the November COP26 schedule.

For a world already decades behind the optimal carbon-reduction calendars suggested by environmentalists in the 1990s, the risks of further delay are huge.  We may already be on the verge of irreversible feedback loops like runaway deforestation in the Amazon, unstoppable desertification in China and the Sahel, massive shifts in thermal ocean currents that moderate the winters in Europe, and decalcification that could crash the populations of the world’s sea life.

With major fossil fuel corporations digging in to avoid action, taking the pressure off governments is an opening to fatal procrastination. As the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has calculated and Ms. Thunberg has tirelessly pointed out, the world only has eight years left in its allowable ‘carbon budget’ if it continues to emit about 42 gigatons of CO2 every year. So drastic reductions are necessary. Now.

 

The argument for postponing COP26

And yet. The world faces a sudden major pandemic that will impact all countries and affect all citizens. Millions will likely become ill and thousands will likely die. The focus of all countries is on containing the COVID 19 virus – as it should be.

Governments everywhere are enacting policies that would never have been imagined. Financial markets are crashing. The US Treasury Department has suggested a potential 20 percent unemployment rate.

Massive restrictions on public movement are being imposed and trillions of dollars in financial stimulus and subsidies are being spent. Public and private scientific expertise is being marshaled to solve medical emergencies.

The responses to the pandemic will impact the negotiations on climate. With only seven weeks to go before a key two week preparatory meeting in Bonn, virtually all flights to Europe are cancelled. It may be only be a matter of weeks before Bonn itself is postponed, or at best conducted virtually – which is a far more cumbersome process.

A second preparatory meeting, which could be expanded to take on the added work load, is planned in early October.  But it is scheduled to meet in Italy. Is it realistic that the Italian government will be sufficiently back to normal in order to host such a session by October?

In this context, it will be extraordinarily difficult for governments to assign the necessary political or economic resources to achieve a successful climate meeting this November.

​Even before the pandemic, it was already going to require exquisite timing, energy and finesse to achieve any degree of success in Glasgow. Besides the pre-negotiation failures, the willful climate obstructionism and catastrophic incompetence of the US government under Donald Trump, plus the self-imposed chaos of Boris Johnson’s Brexit in the UK, have left two of the world’s necessary climate nations nearly immobilized.

The only positive-case political scenario for a November COP would call for Democrats to sweep the US presidency and Senate on November 3 (one day before it becomes official that Trump has pulled the US out of the Paris Climate Agreement) and barely a week before the November 9 opening at Glasgow.

Even if that were to happen, Trump would still be in office until January and his policy would prevail. (Indeed, one could visualize a defeated Trump spitefully trying to wreak havoc through obstructionist interventions by his negotiating team.)

And even if everything went well, because of the lack of prepared agreements, the most that could be hoped for from a November COP  is another seemingly ambitious and robust, but in reality a very amorphous Conference declaration on principles and promises.

 

How to postpone but increase momentum

Many respected voices currently arguing against a postponement are understandably concerned that any delay will take the pressure off governments to keep building on their commitments. It’s a valid fear.

The answer is to not take the pressure off governments. Yes, postpone the meeting, but instead of a full COP in November in Glasgow, the parties can schedule an additional special high-level Preparatory Meeting, on those same days in November, in Bonn where the UNFCCC is housed.

Such a special Preparatory-Meeting could resume negotiations working through the backlog of unfinished business from COP25 and the cancelled meetings in 2020. It would still be energized by any positive results from the US elections.

The full COP26 in Glasgow can then be rescheduled in 2021. While it might be possible to schedule it for Spring of 2021, the more realistic and likely option would be to simply move the current sequence of 2020 meetings “June in Bonn. October Rome” to the same calendar in 2021.

When COP26 does then meet in November 2021 the world will presumably have emerged from the coronavirus crisis. Economies will be re-starting, so Finance Ministries will be able to visualize budgets that address climate needs.

National leaders will be looking for positive grand visions to pull their people out of pandemic- induced despair. A new American President might be eager to reassert a proactive international role for the US.

As for the legitimate urgency of climate action, the pandemic might actually have bought the world a little time. The extreme economic slowdown currently projected would mean lower emissions this year of CO2. The carbon clock might be slightly pushed back.

It might also turn out that the concerted international action that eventually succeeds in defeating the pandemic – and the widely respected leadership by the UN’s WHO – provides a model for global cooperation for taking the unprecedented steps necessary to defeat climate change. Governments and individuals may realize that indeed we can successfully take extensive multilateral action when a crisis calls for it.

We’re all living in unprecedented times, and nations and people are sailing through uncharted waters. While it’s by no means certain that the optimistic scenarios above can guarantee success, they’d seem to provide the greatest hope for it.

Nations are now facing two immense and urgent crises. One must and can be dealt with immediately. The second also requires extensive financial resources and exceptional political will, but needs time to produce them.

It is time to re-schedule COP26 to 2021.

 

Felix Dodds has been a policy consultant to United Nations agencies, national governments and stakeholders for 30 years. He was Chair of the UN Conference on Sustainable Societies Responsible Citizens (2011). He was the co-director of the Water and Climate Coalition at the UNFCCC (2007 to 2012) and Co-director of the University of North Carolina’s Nexus Conferences on Climate-Water-Energy-Food (2014 and 2018).

He is the author or editor of 20 books on the environment and intergovernmental negotiations. In 2019 he was a candidate for Executive Director the United Nations Environment Programme.

 

Michael Strauss is Executive Director of Earth Media, a political and media consultancy that advises UN agencies, NGOs and governments on international environmental, development, and social issues. He served as the UN’s Media Coordinator for NGOs, Trade Unions, and Business organizations at the UN Summits on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg (2002) and Rio de Janeiro (2012).

The post Is It Time to Postpone the 2020 Climate Summit? appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Amnesty International expressed their concern, in light of the United Nations Secretary General’s remarks, about the situation in Yemen, South Sudan, and Syria. A ceasefire would, at least to a limited extent, give countries in conflict a little more room to put aggressive efforts into preparing for the potentially devastating impact of the virus. This dated picture shows a photo of the sprawling settlement of Yida, South Sudan border. Credit: Jared Ferrie/IPS

By Samira Sadeque
UNITED NATIONS, Mar 25 2020 (IPS)

Conflict experts are concerned the the global ceasefire called for by the United Nations amid the coronavirus outbreak may not work and could lead to a rise in violence.

Coronavirus or COVID-19 continues spreading, having passed 400,000 cases globally and claiming more than 17,000 deaths. Countries around the world are putting in measures to ensure they can contain the disease. Many countries such as Canada, United States, and Kenya have closed their borders to non-citizens and/or non-essential travels.

On Monday, the U.N. secretary general António Guterres appealed for a global ceasefire.

“This is crucial,” he said, “to help create corridors for life-saving aid, to open precious windows for diplomacy, to bring hope to places among the most vulnerable to COVID-19.”

• Last week, the U.N. Refugee Agency and the U.N. Migration Agency, the International Organisation of Migration or IOM, announced that they are “suspending resettlement departures for refugees.” 
• This was especially of urgency as the disease continues to spread with people in transit, and would thus risk refugees in transit, according to the spokesperson’s office. 

Guterres further called attention to the fact that “the most vulnerable — women and children, people with disabilities, the marginalised and the displaced — pay the highest price” in times of armed conflict, combined with a global health crisis.

Experts have noted this concern as well. 

Joanne Mariner, senior crisis response adviser at Amnesty International, says they’re monitoring the gender aspect of the pandemic and how it can disproportionately affect women and girls. 

“Female-headed households, for example, often make up a sizeable proportion of refugee communities, and may be particularly hard hit,” she told IPS. “Many women, including migrant domestic workers, face the possibility of being unprotected caregivers; they also may be at higher risk of losing their jobs.”

It’s thus crucial to encourage countries from further advancing any form of oppression upon others. But what would this kind of ceasefire mean for the countries ravaged by war and conflict as they deal with threats of coronavirus?  

Professor Clionadh Raleigh, executive director of Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project (ACLED) says there are layers to this issue. 

“The ceasefire is a great initiative and while I certainly hope it works, the data suggests otherwise,” she told IPS. “I also expect that mob violence and xenophobia will rise.”

She pointed out that there are some armed groups who are capitalising on this opportunity, such as the Islamic State hoping to profit out of it. 

“There are…other indications that some groups will try to deal with this through unorthodox means (like kidnapping doctors),” she said. 

Meanwhile, Amnesty International expressed their concern, in light of the Secretary General’s remarks, about the situation in Yemen, South Sudan, and Syria. A ceasefire would, at least to a limited extent, give countries in conflict a little more room to put aggressive efforts into preparing for the potentially devastating impact of the virus.

“Displaced persons, fleeing conflict, often live in crowded and unsanitary camps, in which social distancing is very difficult if not impossible, and which clean water may be in short supply,” Mariner of Amnesty, told IPS.

Furthermore, many of these countries caught in conflict have healthcare systems that require a lot of improvement. 

“The health care infrastructure in countries facing armed conflict is often extremely weak, particularly when, as in Syria, hospitals have been bombed and doctors killed,” says Amnesty’s Mariner.

Meanwhile, there are different types of conflict that can arise as a result of the pandemic itself, according to a report by ACLED launched last week. 

“Governments may also rely on alternative forces to impose restrictions, and in doing so, increase the use of repressive violence,” reads a part of the report, which also includes other kinds of violence or conflict such as gang violence arising out of the financial instability that the world is witnessing. 

“If income from these means is reduced, it is possible that crime and looting will increase in areas of Central and South America,” says the report. 

To halt a conflict or enforce a ceasefire can be a complicated process, so it’s only a matter of time to see if it will be enforced. However, as per the experts’ analyses, global leaders will likely need to also combat how to address the violence that is arising out of coronavirus.

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Credit: WHO/ F. Tanggol.

By External Source
Mar 25 2020 (IPS)

Tuberculosis (TB) and HIV pose a significant burden on South Africa’s health system. There’s a close relationship between the two. About 60% of TB patients are also HIV-positive. The novel coronavirus (Sars-CoV-2) is likely to be of particular concern for communities with high rates of TB and HIV.

Sars-CoV-2 and its resulting disease (COVID-19) haven’t been fully researched and understood yet. But speculation based on the behaviour of other viruses and chronic illnesses raises concerns that HIV and TB patients may have a higher risk of developing severe disease. Emily Wong answers some questions.

 

Are people with TB more susceptible to infection with SARS-COV-2?

From the Chinese experience, we have seen that people with chronic lung disease are more likely to have increased severity of COVID-19. On that basis, we are concerned that people with undiagnosed active TB, or people currently undergoing treatment for TB, may have increased risk of developing more severe COVID-19 disease if they become infected with SARS-COV-2

SARS-COV-2’s primary target is the lungs where it causes inflammation in the delicate tissues that usually allow oxygen to transfer into blood. In mild cases, COVID-19 can just cause a cough, but in severe cases the lungs can fill with inflammation and fluid making it very difficult for them to provide adequate oxygen to the rest of the body. In people who are otherwise healthy, most cases of COVID-19 are mild or moderate.

At this time, I’m not aware of any data that directly address whether TB makes people more susceptible to COVID-19. But from the Chinese experience, we have seen that people with chronic lung disease are more likely to have increased severity of COVID-19. On that basis, we are concerned that people with undiagnosed active TB, or people currently undergoing treatment for TB, may have increased risk of developing more severe COVID-19 disease if they become infected with SARS-COV-2.

There is also increasing recognition that post-TB chronic lung disease can be an important long-term consequence of TB. We are concerned that this could also affect COVID-19 severity. After TB, people can get bronchiectasis – chronic damage to the airways of the lung. This can predispose them to other lung infections. Another lung condition – chronic obstructive pulmonary disease – can be caused by tobacco use or by the changes left in the lung after TB.

Even though there’s no data about the effect of post-TB lung disease on COVID-19 at this point, we are concerned that people who have had TB in the past – and have been left with some lung damage – may have a more difficult and severe time with COVID-19.

 

What about people infected with HIV?

There is also very little data to guide us here. But we know that in general HIV infection has profound effects on lung health and immunity. This is why HIV infection increases susceptibility to both Mycobacterium Tuberculosis (Mtb) – the bacterium that causes TB – infection and TB disease. We are therefore concerned that HIV infection may also affect SARS-COV-2 infection and COVID-19 severity.

But most experts think that people who are on antiretroviral therapy and whose viral loads are suppressed will probably have a better time with COVID-19 than people who aren’t. It is very important that people keep taking their HIV medications throughout any disruptions caused by the current COVID-19 epidemic.

 

What will the impact of the SARS-COV-2 epidemic be on TB and HIV services in South Africa?

This is a major concern. Even countries with better resourced national health systems have rapidly become overwhelmed as the COVID-19 epidemic hits.

South Africa has the world’s largest antiretroviral programme. Huge progress has been made. Even in KwaZulu-Natal, the epicentre of the HIV epidemic in South Africa, new HIV infection rates have been dropping. This is because of tremendous efforts to test people and to put people on antiretroviral treatment in a sustained way. Other factors have included national programmes like voluntary medical male circumcision.

The country has also started to see a decline in TB rates. We think this is related to improvements in the HIV treatment coverage. This is good news. But it’s the result of massive public health programmes that have taken a huge amount of time and effort to set up and optimise. And they’re still challenged by shortages of human and system resources.

We are very concerned about the impact that COVID-19 epidemic could have on HIV and TB services.

Thought is already going into how to try to maintain these critical HIV and TB services. In light of an impending health crisis, attention is on how to maintain sustained access to HIV and TB care. The President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) and the South African HIV Clinicians Society are trying to address this. For example, they are urging the health system to make six months of antiretrovirals available to people to save them from having to visit their clinics every month.

 

Are there extra precautions that individuals with TB and TB/HIV can take?

It’s very important that people ensure a supply of their HIV and TB medications and take them regularly.

At this point all South Africans should be heeding the call made by the President to focus on the basic hygiene interventions such as frequent hand-washing as well as implementing social distancing to the maximum extent. That means avoiding contact with groups of people outside of households, and staying home strictly.

All of these measures are extremely important, whether someone is personally at higher risk of severe infection, or for people who may not personally be at risk of more severe disease but may have a family member who’s older or HIV-positive or a neighbour who falls into any of those categories.

At this point the national recommendations apply to everyone. All South Africans need to take them very, very seriously because millions of people are immuno-supressed due to HIV or have some lung compromise due to prior TB infection.

 

Will any of the research on vaccines in South Africa be useful in the search for a COVID-19 vaccine?

The fact that South Africa has robust vaccine trial infrastructure for both TB and HIV is undoubtedly to its advantage when it comes to thinking about COVID-19 vaccine development. There are already candidate COVID-19 vaccines in human testing.

The company Moderna in collaboration with the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases in the US have started clinical trials of an mRNA vaccine candidate. Other candidates are also under development.

When these are ready for larger scale human testing, the global scientific community will almost certainly use existing vaccine trial networks to do this testing. Because of both HIV and TB research efforts to date, South Africa is very well represented.

Emily Wong, Faculty Member, Africa Health Research Institute, University of KwaZulu-Natal

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

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Credit: Religions for Peace/RfP2020

By Prof. Azza Karam
NEW YORK, Mar 25 2020 (IPS)

I was able to take office as the secretary general to the largest global interfaith organization – Religions for Peace – with interreligious councils (IRCs) composed of senior-most religious leaders representing their religious institutions, in 90 countries, and 6 regional IRCs, a week before we had to ask all employees to work from home, in compliance with New York State law.

As a person who feels functional with direct and open communication, where I can get a sense of the person (or persons) I am talking with, having to take leadership over an office of people I can no longer be with, feels a little like trying to run with legs tied together. It can be done, but it is tough.

And this is now the new normal, not only in the US, but everywhere in the world. For the first time in recorded human history, coming together – even within and among nuclear families – is a dangerous option, literally done at the risk of health and lives.

Thanks to more and more governmental regulations designed to ‘flatten the curve’ of a deadly and racing rate of Covid-19 infections, ‘social distancing’ is identified as the only viable option until a vaccine can be developed and given. Social distancing literally means not being in the presence of one another.

In the last decade, several functionaries around the world were learning to communicate via many electronic means, which enabled us to ‘see’ each other, while being thousands of miles apart.

Some institutions were trying to move to reducing carbon footprint from travel, by hosting more and more meetings/conferences/presentations on-line.

Prof. Azza Karam. Credit: United Nations

But this was occasionally done. And it bears mention that when this was done, the sense was invariably colored by some dissatisfaction for those of us who appreciate actually being in the same space with those whom we can see and speak with.

Most theories of communication insist that nothing can replace being together and seeing one another face-to-face – even corridor talk can often make the difference between a peace deal and a continuing war.

This hampering of our ability to be in the presence of one another on a regular basis will definitely contribute to changing the world forever.

As businesses, finance, all levels of education, civic action, religious services, governance, intergovernmental affairs – almost every profession including even many forms of health care – now moves irrevocably to almost total and complete reliance on virtual communication, our words will matter more than ever.

What we say, the words we choose and use, and how we use them, will matter even more than they already did. And they already matter plenty, as increasing norms around “email etiquette” also testify for instance.

Use of words by political and religious leaders in particular, already make a big difference to the perception of impact and capacity. Some politicians are under heavy criticism for how they are reacting to the Covid-19 crises. Few are praised.

Credit: Religions for Peace/RfP2020

These perceptions are not only based on the laws and regulations being put in place (and when or how these happen). A great deal of value is also placed on the words used.

Words have an impact on human consciousness, something scientists have long studied, and many researchers and health services are committed to. Articulation and eloquence have long defined culture.

And ‘having a way with words’ is a way of either praising special capacity – or bemoaning ‘spin’. Words, and how they are used, is a large part of what many bemoan as ‘fake news’.

So, we know that words matter. Now that we move into virtual communication for everything from trade to learning, from industry to worship, words will matter more than ever.

It is time to learn how to speak with mercy, how to raise interest and make deals with words, how to speak truth to power, heal wounds, raise alerts, voice concerns, convince and impact, even how to show deep love, all with words.

Faith – in anything, from a government and political leader, to a policy, to public advocacy, to all manner of relationships – will have to be elucidated and demonstrated through the word. Never before, have words mattered to so many at all times.

Time to pay attention, therefore, to how we use the word. Time to listen, and to learn, from some of those who come from the oldest professions of using and understanding and translating the word.

Faith leaders themselves are learning to communicate to their communities and congregations, manage worship, very differently – but still very much rooted in the word.

This is why Religions for Peace has issued a call to all faith leaders from all traditions, ages, regions, and identities, to raise their voice in prayers for and with one another, and to share narratives and stories of love in times of Covid.

For it is time for the kind words to overflow to express love and realise healing for this earth and for one another. As we gaze upon this world, we recognize we have to contribute to new beginnings for all life. And in the beginning was the word.

And regardless of where we stand or what mission we serve, the word now has to be love/mercy/compassion/dignity for all life. This is the change we must realise to survive, and in Maya Angelou’s words, to thrive.

The post “In the Beginning was the Word”: Why Covid-19 Renders Words even more Powerful appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Prof. Azza Karam is Secretary General, Religions for Peace International

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Getting the measure of water in a southern Indian village. Credit: Stella Paul/IPS.

By Daud Khan
ROME, Mar 24 2020 (IPS)

Most developing countries have good policies, programmes and projects in place. Many of these have been prepared with assistance from development partners or international financing institutions such as the World Bank, the regional development banks, the UN agencies or bilateral aid agencies.

Most of these are of high quality and have gone through intensive review and quality control.  The major challenge is to effectively implement these policies, programmes and projects. Unfortunately this does not often happen and leads to huge lost opportunities. This is particularly the case in the poorest countries, many of which are conflict affected. 

To improve things, there are three major problems which need to be addressed: Political Will, Technical Efficiency and, what I call, Last Mile Issues. 

Little is likely to improve unless there is Political Will at the highest levels of Government to raise incomes across the board, and not just for the few who have political power; address poverty and improve food and nutrition security. 

Very often at international meetings and conferences it is often the delegates from the poorest countries that stay in the most expensive hotels, wear the most expensive clothes, and are driven to the meeting in the most expensive cars. Surely some “shaming” would be in order
 
The principal reason why this does not happen is capture of political and economic power by small groups of people, who then misappropriate funds meant for projects and programmes, or put in place policies which directly benefit them.  Very often the money thus stolen is transferred to banks in developed countries.  

Can anything be done in such a situation?  Possibly very little. But there may be a few actions by the international community that might help. 

More openness on the part of banks in developed countries about large deposits from developing countries – known for their lack of transparency – might help. 

Another could be to better link international processes, such as prosecutions at the International Criminal Court, with financial sanctions such as blocking of bank accounts of those under trial or sentenced.

Yet another, which would be effective, but politically difficult, is to “name and shame” the worst offenders in international fora such as at the United Nations. Very often at international meetings and conferences it is often the delegates from the poorest countries that stay in the most expensive hotels, wear the most expensive clothes, and are driven to the meeting in the most expensive cars. Surely some “shaming” would be in order. 

The next set of problems relate to Technical Efficiency.  Getting projects and programmes implemented requires effective and transparent management; good monitoring systems; and an accountability system that holds people responsible for reaching well-defined milestones.

These relatively simple and well understood management practices are spelt out in most project and programme documents. Usually ample financial provisions are made for these actions and for associated ICT systems.

However, in practice, getting effective implementation is very difficult.  Good implementation means constantly making decisions, frequent mid-course corrections, and, above all, taking risks which range from financial to reputational to operational.  

Most development projects and programmes are implemented by salaried public employees.  For many of them working as a project or programme manager is only one step in a long career which tends to be highly competitive – not so much in terms of rank or salary, but in terms of getting prestigious assignments. 

In such an environment reputation is critical and officers tend to be highly risk averse. Far better to miss a project milestone than break a bureaucratic rule, or take action against a non-performing but politically connected team member. 

Solutions?  Well it is difficult but there are a few. One is subcontract the entire work to a private company.  At times this works well, especially in large infrastructure projects where performance and milestones are relatively easy to define; and where foreign funding and companies are involved, which make them less subject to political interference.

In other cases it may be possible to bring in managers from the private sector but often bureaucrats tend to obstruct, or at times even actively sabotage, their work.   A relatively recent innovation is to set up “Delivery Units” – a small dedicated group of highly-skilled people assigned to help a set of projects of programmes achieve their objectives.

Their focus is on data-led decision making and they typically report directly to senior management, proposing solutions to untangle barriers. Staff for these units is usually recruited from among mid-career professionals working in the private sector on a contract basis.

These units work best when reporting to a strong senior management team which has decision making powers and is above bureaucratic infighting.  

Last, but by no means least, are the “Last Mile Issues”.  This refers to the challenge of making the connection between the lowest levels of project or programmes activities, and the individual households and communities who are the final targets of development work.

Thus a Government irrigation project may take water down to village level but then the water needs to get to individual fields. This requires famers to invest in local water conveyance and control systems, and create and manage water distribution schedules.

Similarly, a credit programme may enhance the supply of funds to the local bank branch, which may be a district or commune level. But then potential borrowers will need to be informed and, if they are unfamiliar with banking procedures, provided help to complete the necessary paperwork and chose the financing package best suited to their needs.  

There have been many attempts to address such last mile issues.  These include efforts by NGOs to build community organizations; efforts by Governments to extend the outreach of public institutions and initiatives; and, most recently, efforts by the corporate sector, as part of their Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) activities. 

All three approaches have had their success and failures. Their impact could be improved if NGOs, governments and the corporate sector talked more to each other about learning from these successes and failures and to seek synergies. 

Government programmes would certainly benefit from the social capital built up by NGOs and the management systems of the corporate sector.  NGOs would be more accountable if a greater proportion of their funding was channelled through Government and if they conducted the audits and financial and effectives reviews that are commonplace in large companies.

Similarly, the corporate sector’s CSR efforts would be more leveraged if they were to draw on Government staff, buildings and other facilities already existing in the areas where they work and on the community organizations developed by the NGOs.  

 

Daud Khan is a retired UN staff who lives partly in Rome and partly in Pakistan. He has degrees in economics from the LSE and Oxford – where he was a Rhodes Scholar; and a degree in Environmental Management from the Imperial College of Science and Technology.

 

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ICPD awareness-raising campaigns in rural Tadjourah and Ali Sabieh in Djibouti, organised by the Parliamentary Group of Population and Development (PGPD). Courtesy: PGPD.

By Mantoe Phakathi
MBABANE, Mar 24 2020 (IPS)

Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) is still widely practised in the African country of Djibouti. Despite efforts by the government and development agencies to curb this practice, culture, tradition and religion continue to slow down progress.

According to Hassan Omar Mohamed, a Member of Parliament from the Djibouti House of Assembly, FGM is a deeply-rooted practice that has stood the test of time.

• The United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) describes FGM as a practice that involves altering or injuring the female genitalia for non-medical reasons.  It is internationally recognised as a human rights violation.
• Globally, it is estimated that 200 million girls and women alive today have undergone some form of FGM. UNFPA states that, although FGM is declining in the majority of countries where it is prevalent, most of these are also experiencing a high rate of population growth – meaning that the number of girls who undergo FGM will continue to grow if efforts are not significantly scaled up.

Latest data from UNFPA and UNICEF reveal that 78 percent of women and girls in Djibouti are still subjected to FGM. 

In November, United Nations member states gathered in the Kenyan capital of Nairobi to renew a promise made 25 years ago to end harmful practices against women and girls including FGM.

It is for that reason that the Government of Djibouti has intensified awareness-raising efforts, which has resulted in reduced FGM cases, although the practice continues.

“Education and training are the means which facilitate the change of behaviour,” said Omar Mohamed, adding that the change of attitude will lead to the total abandonment of the practice.

Djibouti participated at the Nairobi Summit and made resolutions following the 25th International Conference on Population Development (ICPD25) commitments in fulfilling Goal 5 of the U.N. Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). SDG 5 calls upon countries to achieve gender equality and women empowerment by 2030.

As a result, in 2019 Djibouti created the Parliamentary Group of Population and Development (PGPD) – an eight-member formation of four men and an equal number of women MPs – to which Omar Mohamed is the president.

Its objective is to contribute to the promotion and protection of the fundamental rights of populations; promote access to education, health, family planning and to encourage the full implementation of the programme of action of the ICPD.

Besides, in February, the PGPD organised an interregional conference on the follow-up of the ICPD25 that brought together parliamentarians from African and Arab countries.

“It was an opportunity for parliamentarians to interact and cooperate with their colleagues on issues related to the engagement of the Nairobi Summit,” he said. They discussed family planning and violence against women and girls and developed a roadmap for implementing ICPD25 commitments.

Moreover, the Government of Djibouti has adopted, signed and ratified the following international instruments that contribute to the eradication of FGM.  These include:

•  The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women;
•  The Declaration on the Elimination of Violence Against Women; and,
• The Additional Protocol to the African Charter on Human and Peoples Rights on the Rights of Women (Maputo Protocol).
• To harmonise international commitments on ICPD the Government of Djibouti developed a five-year National Strategy for the Abandonment of FGM.

“The main objective of this strategy was to promote the total abandonment of FGM by respecting physical integrity and promoting the health of women and girls,” said Omar Mohamed.

UNFPA has also supported several ICPD activities in Djibouti, including updating the Sexual and Reproductive Health Essential Package Protocol to include FGM and established a mobile anti-FGM brigade.

The government also has strengthened its domestic law to protect women and prohibit any physical violation.

Omar Mohamed noted that considering that ICPD issues are part of the SDGs which are interlinked, there is a great commitment to meet the targets by 2030.

However, socio-economic challenges that slow down progress which include massive unemployment, inequality and the rise of extremism remain a stumbling block.

“To counter all the challenges that arise, economic and institutional reforms are needed to support and respect the SDGs and the commitments made within the framework of the ICPD process,” he said.

The government has produced a national strategy to respond to the socio-economic challenges that hinder the country’s progress towards achieving the SDGs.   

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• Asian & Arab Parliamentarians to Move Forward on Reproductive Health & Gender Empowerment

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On March 2020, over 330 students, women champions, government officials, NGO members and community members from around Kampot and Kep gathered in an effort to plant 3,000 mangroves and conserve Cambodia’s coastline. The local activity took place as part of a larger mangrove planting and marine exhibition under Action Aid’s 100,000 Mangroves campaign, supported by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) under the project ‘Strengthening Climate Information and Early Warning Systems in Cambodia’. The campaign aims to plan 100,000 mangroves in eight community fisheries by May 2020, and raise awareness of the importance of marine ecosystems. Credit: ManuthButh/UNDP Cambodia

By Claudia Ituarte-Lima
VANCOUVER, British Columbia, Canada, Mar 24 2020 (IPS)

We are living in a critical time. As we face existential environmental challenges from climate crises to the mass extinction of species, it is difficult sometimes to see solutions and new ideas. This is why we all need to celebrate and give visibility to creative and courageous efforts of people and organizations striving towards a healthy planet for all.

I write today about the key role played by National Human Rights Institutions (NHRIs) in the Global South in our collective fight against climate change. The time has come to empower NHRIs.

Their unique position mandated by law yet independent from the government can make an urgent needed bridge between legal and policy advances, and ground-up efforts such as youth and women movements, thereby contributing to the enjoyment of the right to a healthy environment.

I have recently had the chance of learning real-world success stories by brave NHRIs working in some of the most challenging contexts. While being a member of the facilitators’ team of a series of webinars* for technical staff and decision-makers working in NHRIs and prior face-to-face interaction with them, it became crystal clear that strengthening the skills and capacities of NHRIs can contribute positive outcomes for both human rights and the environment.

In Mongolia, for instance, the NHRI with the support of civil society organizations and environmental researchers has recently developed a draft law for safeguarding the rights of environmental defenders.

The NHRIs have also intervened in a variety of sectoral issues from pesticides and agriculture in Costa Rica, to mining in South Africa and the connections between coal mining and transportation in Mongolia. The Morocco NHRI has prompted other African NHRIs and civil society organizations to actively participate in international climate negotiations.

Business and human rights was a key issue raised by our NHRIs colleagues.

Nazia, 38, proudly shows off her home-grown tomatoes in Nadirabad village, Pakistan. She participated in kitchen gardening training offered under the joint UNDP-EU Refugee Affected and Host Areas (RAHA) Programme in Pakistan. Credit: UNDP Pakistan

The significant legal, institutional and financial obstacles that national duty bearers face to investigate transnational corporations and their responsibilities concerning their impacts to a safe climate has not proved insurmountable for NHRIs.

The Philippine’s NHRI has a mandate to promote human rights which, creatively interpreted, allowed it to investigate the climate change and human rights nexus beyond its national borders.

The systemic nature of climate change justified a national inquiry rather than a field visit. Because climate change is an existential issue not only to Filipino people but globally, the Philippines national inquiry on climate change turned into an inquiry with strong global dimensions.

It included public hearings in the Philippines, New York and London, virtual hearings and expert advice from the former UN Special Rapporteur on human rights and environment, academics from different parts of the world and the Asia-Pacific regional network of NHRIs.

A major comparative advantage presented by the NHRIs is their unique position in working hand in hand with right holders in addressing environmental – human rights gaps facing the most vulnerable populations.

Costa Rica NHRI has found, for instance, that women, girls, men and boys and elder living in coastal areas become especially vulnerable to climate change because their access to clean drinking water and fish become scarce.

The South African NHRI together with food sovereignty civil society organizations has developed a draft climate charter, to be presented to the parliament, with a more holistic approach to the current climate policy.

In recent years, the awareness of the linkages between human rights and climate change has greatly increased. The legal recognition of the right to a healthy environment in more than 150 countries, together with judicial decisions, and academic studies on the safe climate dimension of this right has grown rapidly. NHRIs can be instrumental in translating them into results and action, including under difficult circumstances.

Their role in advising duty bearers, working together with right-holders helps to understand and act upon systemic environmental challenges. Their synergies with environmental human rights defenders can also contribute to more effective investigation and advocacy, not least in the context of informal and unregulated business activities where it is especially difficult to collect data and hold businesses accountable.

Time has come for the international community to do more to support NHRIs in the Global South, a key player often overlooked in climate and biodiversity talks, debates and funding. Due to the intrinsic connections between human rights and environment, the NHRIs need to be further supported to perform their innovative roles in safeguarding life-support systems at various jurisdictional scales, including advocating for the global recognition of the right to a healthy environment by the United Nations.

* The series was organized by the Global Alliance for National Human Rights Institutions (GANHRI), UNDP, the UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights and the Environment, the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency and UN Environment. A final report with key messages from the webinar series is available on the UNDP website.

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Excerpt:

Claudia Ituarte-Lima, Stockholm University, Sweden and University of British Columbia, Canada

 

Claudia Ituarte-Lima is researcher on international environmental law at the Stockholm Resilience Centre, and affiliated senior researcher at the Raoul Wallenberg Institute of Human Rights and Humanitarian Law. She is currently a visiting researcher at the Institute for Resources, Environment and Sustainability, University of British Columbia. She holds a PhD from the University College London and a MPhil from the University of Cambridge.

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Health workers are at the frontlines in the fight against the new Corona Virus. Credit: John Njoroge

By Mutahi Kagwe and Siddharth Chatterjee
NAIROBI, Kenya, Mar 24 2020 (IPS)

Many soldiers have seen first-hand the horrors of war and, terrifying though it often was, they knew who they were fighting, and could recognise their enemy.

The COVID 19 or the new Corona Virus is different. In this virus we have an enemy which is invisible and sometimes deadly, and the task is harder.

About a century ago the Spanish flu pandemic killed an estimated 50 million people, more than the combined total casualties of World Wars I and II. Our understanding of disease transmission and treatments is far ahead of our position in 1918, but this new coronavirus has shown the limits of our ability to deal with major disease outbreaks.

Advice to protect ourselves is clear: wash your hands well and often, self-isolate if you feel unwell, maintain social distance by avoiding crowded and public spaces and, if your symptoms worsen, contact medical services. Only by following this advice rigorously can we hope to stem the tide of new infections.

For now, however, the virus is spreading and, on the frontline between a nervous public and those responsible for directing national responses, the healthcare workers on whom we all depend can easily be forgotten.

During the Ebola outbreak six years ago, the World Health Organisation estimated that health workers were between 21 and 32 times more likely to be infected with Ebola than people in the general adult population. In West Africa more than 350 health care workers died while battling Ebola.

Mutahi Kagwe

Doctors, nurses, carers and paramedics around the world are facing an unprecedented workload in overstretched health facilities, and with no end in sight. They are working in stressful and frightening work environments, not just because the virus is little understood, but because in most settings they are under-protected, overworked and themselves vulnerable to infection.

The risk to doctors, nurses and others on the front lines has become plain: Italy has seen at least 18 doctors with coronavirus die. Spain reported that more than 3,900 health care workers have become infected,

We need a whole-of-society resolve that we will not let our frontline soldiers become patients. We must do everything to support health workers who, despite their own well-founded fears, are stepping directly into Covid-19’s path to aid the afflicted and help halt the virus’s spread.

In sub-Saharan Africa as elsewhere, pressure on the healthcare workforce will intensify in the coming months. A recent survey of National Nurses United (NNU) members in the US, revealed that only 30% believed their healthcare organization had sufficient inventory of personal protective equipment (PPE) for responding to a surge event. In some parts of France and Italy, hospitals have run out of masks, forcing doctors to examine and treat coronavirus patients without adequate protection.

Siddharth Chatterjee

The situation in poorer countries will be worse. Demand has far outstripped supplies. In Kenya to enable health workers to do their jobs safely we will dedicate resources to providing gowns, gloves, and medical grade face masks, and also arm them with the latest knowledge and information on the virus. As partners the Government of Kenya, the United Nations and the international community are determined to explore every avenue to ensure all the possible support for the health workers.

Evidence indicates that coronavirus can survive on some hard surfaces for up to three days, but it is also easily killed by simple disinfectants. Health workers need the back-up of ancillary staff to increase the frequency and rigour of cleaning light switches, countertops, handrails, elevator buttons and doorknobs. Such measures can give much-needed reassurance to stressed care givers and protect the public too.

Like soldiers, health workers also face considerable mental stress. It is often forgotten that as humans, they feel the sorrow of loss when their patients succumb to the virus. They too have families, and so will also naturally be fearful that the virus might reach those they love most.

Whenever possible we will ensure that healthcare workers have access to counselling services so they can recharge before moving on again, given that this could be a long, drawn out battle.

We need to also use accurate information as a means of defence. Misinformation can cause public panic, suspicion and unrest; it can disrupt the availability of food and vital supplies and divert resources – such as face masks – away from health workers and other frontline workers whose need is greatest.

Covid-19 will not be the last dangerous microbe we see. The heroism, dedication and selflessness of medical staff allow the rest of us a degree of reassurance that we will overcome this virus.

We must give these health workers all the support they need to do their jobs, be safe and stay alive. We will need them when the next pandemic strikes.

Mr. Mutahi Kagwe is the Minister of Health in Kenya and Siddharth Chatterjee is the United Nations Resident Coordinator to Kenya.

The post Health Workers Are the Frontline Soldiers Against Covid-19. Let’s Protect Them appeared first on Inter Press Service.

By Anis Chowdhury and Jomo Kwame Sundaram
SYDNEY and KUALA LUMPUR, Mar 24 2020 (IPS)

The economic impact of the coronavirus pandemic is hard to predict as events are still unfolding, and estimates vary dramatically. UNCTAD estimates lost output in the order of US$1 trillion, just over a third of Bloomberg’s expectation of US$2.7 trillion in losses. The OECD expects global economic growth to halve from already anaemic levels.

Dire consequences for achieving the already failing Agenda 2030 for the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are inevitable. Developing countries are particularly vulnerable, with meagre resources available for the new threat and its consequences.

As resources are urgently needed to cope with the pandemic, their ability to spend on other development priorities will be even more constrained. As with previous economic and health crises, poor and vulnerable sections of the population will be worse affected.

Ahead of the forthcoming G20 leaders’ virtual emergency meeting, the UN Secretary-General warned that current national responses to the coronavirus pandemic “will not address the global scale and complexity of the crisis”.

Anis Chowdhury

Millions could die without a more “coordinated global response, including helping countries that are less prepared to tackle the crisis”, as “global solidarity is not only a moral imperative, it is in everyone’s interests”.

Impact on developing countries
Besides the direct socio-economic impacts of the Covid-19 crisis, the pandemic will affect developing countries otherwise via: global value chain and tourism disruptions, falling commodity prices and foreign direct investment, as well as the consequences of capital flight and a stronger dollar.

Analysts project reduced investments in global value chains, energy, mining, and other sectors, as well as falling travel and tourism in African countries due to reduced Chinese demand for raw materials as its economy slows further. Sub-Saharan Africa is also expected to lose up to US$34 billion in export revenue due to reduced global demand, especially collapsing oil prices.

Commodity prices have already fallen sharply, and exporters expect more problems due to falling demand as the global economy slows. Heavily indebted developing countries are in a particularly difficult situation as their exports decline with falling global demand, and import and debt service costs rise due to weaker currencies as money flees to ‘safe havens’.

The Institute for International Finance estimates that around US$67.45 billion has flowed out of emerging countries since late January, an amount larger than emerging market capital outflows in the aftermath of the 2008-2009 global financial crisis and the 1997-1998 Asian financial crisis.

Impacts on working people
A new International Labour Office report projects almost 25 million jobs could be lost worldwide, and workers could lose some US$3.4 trillion in income by year’s end.
Without paid sick leave, workers in the informal economy cannot afford to stay home.

Lockdowns will disproportionately hurt low-income households, casual workers and the poor, especially where social protection is grossly inadequate. Many lack the means to stockpile food or seek medical treatment.

Jomo Kwame Sundaram

Malnutrition, poverty and hunger induced health stresses compound vulnerability and feed vicious cycles of disease, destitution and death. As the Ebola epidemic revealed, poverty worsens contagion, which can, in turn, deepen poverty.

Studies of 11 sub-Saharan African, South and Southeast Asian countries found that without universal health coverage, poor people respond to health shocks with impoverishing ‘distress sales’ of their limited assets and by taking on more usurious debt.

Urban slums and refugee camps can become virus hotspots. For the world’s more than 65 million displaced people, who have fled war and persecution, and live precariously, the risks posed by the pandemic are dire.

By disrupting economic activity and cutting incomes, the pandemic is a new cause of impoverishment, besides limiting the ability of vulnerable households to escape from – and stay out of – poverty.

Support measures lack coordination
As of 9 March 2020, ‘donors’ (including governments, multilateral organizations and private funders) had pledged or given an estimated US$8.3 billion – directly to countries and to the WHO – for COVID-19 responses.

This included US$15 million from the UN’s Central Emergency Response Fund to help vulnerable countries, not very much as the organization struggles with its own persistent underfunding.

Meanwhile, the World Bank announced US$12 billion in immediate support, while the International Monetary Fund (IMF) made available about US$50 billion in emergency financing for low income and emerging market countries, and “stands ready” to use its US$1 trillion lending capacity to help countries coping with the pandemic.

Concessional support from the IMF and the World Bank usually comes with onerous “one-size-fits-all” policy conditionalities, typically favouring influential shareholders.

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Wellcome Trust have set up a US$125 million coronavirus drug fund, while Michael Bloomberg’s US$40 million plan seeks to stem the coronavirus spread in developing countries. Philanthropic support is typically oblivious of national development priorities, and may ‘distort’ public health or social protection.

These funds are inadequate, given the scale and complexity of the problem, especially as an early end to the pandemic remains highly unlikely. Different modes of pandemic control need to be considered to minimize the scale of disruption and threat.

Crucially, multilateral coordination remains seriously lacking beyond the valiant efforts of the WHO in the face of persistent criticisms and its own financing problems. The UN should show how slow progress on the SDGs has made us all much more vulnerable to the pandemic and its various consequences.

It will be important for the UN to play a stronger coordinating and leadership role, e.g., with the UN Sustainable Development Group (UNSDG) rapidly assessing the adverse impacts and funding needs of the Covid-19 pandemic in relation to Agenda 20.

The post Stronger UN Leadership Needed to Cope with Coronavirus Threat appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Writers who were supposed to be at the now cancelled PEN World Voices Festival. (Courtesy of PEN America)

By SWAN
Mar 24 2020 (IPS-Partners)

With the spread of the Covid-19 disease, the arts and culture sectors have seen a flood of cancellations and postponements, affecting artists around the world and putting the global 2,000-billion-dollar creative industry at risk.

Concerts, book fairs, film and literary festivals – including the famed Cannes Film Festival – and a range of other events have had to move their dates or cancel outright, while bookshops, museums and cinemas have been forced to close their doors.

The sectors, which employ some 30 million people worldwide, will be among those hit hardest by the pandemic, according to analysts, and individual artists are already fighting to maintain their livelihood.

“Everyone is impacted and suffering,” says American jazz singer Denise King. “As a member of the artist/musician community, I’ve gone from a fairly heavy touring and gig schedule … to nothing. To face this sudden loss of income is devastating. Many artists like myself are scrambling to come up with creative ways to generate income.”

With some 210,000 confirmed cases of Covid-19 worldwide, and 8,778 deaths by March 19 (about three months after the outbreak in Wuhan, China), both wealthy and low-income countries are affected, but vulnerable states are particularly at risk, according to the UN. Along with the health sector, culture and other areas will struggle to recover.

In the Caribbean, several festivals have announced postponements. The popular Calabash literary festival in Treasure Beach, Jamaica, will now take place in September 2020 instead of May, while the national Bocas Lit Fest in Trinidad and Tobago is similarly postponed.

“We watched and waited to make this decision,” stated Calabash co-organizers Justine Henzell and Kwame Dawes, who stressed that there was no other option given the travel restrictions.

Jamaica was among the first in the region to order lockdowns and to restrict travel from several affected countries. The minister of culture, gender, entertainment and sport, Olivia “Babsy” Grange, announced the closure of cultural and sport facilities, including museums, galleries, and stadia run by the government, on March 13, with effect from the following day.

She said the closures were “in keeping with the government’s strategy to prevent the spread of Covid-19 in Jamaica and to minimise the potential health impact on the country”, and she urged those in the cultural, sport and entertainment sectors to “take all necessary precautions and follow the guidance of the health authorities”.

The island had 13 confirmed cases of Covid-19 as of March 19, and the government has been commended by World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus for its response to the pandemic. But officials are aware of the fiscal effects of the crisis.

The Caribbean economy is strongly tied to tourism, including cultural tourism, with the sector representing around 14% of the region’s total GDP, while the arts and culture fields employ thousands of workers.

UNESCO HQ shuttered. Credit: AD McKenzie

According to the United Nations agency UNESCO (which has had to close its doors in Paris), the cultural and creative industry sectors generate annual revenues of US$2,250 billion and global exports of more than US$250 billion.

These industries currently provide nearly 30 million jobs worldwide and employ more people aged 15 – 29 than any other sector, the agency said in a 2018 report, “Reshaping Cultural Policies”. Nearly half of the people working in the cultural and creative industries are women, the report showed.

For states such as France, which is the most visited country in the world with 90 million tourists annually, the shuttering of the cultural sector is unprecedented in peacetime.

The Paris Book Fair, or Livre Paris, was the first major event to announce its cancellation. Normally attracting about 160,000 visitors each year, the Fair was scheduled for March 20-23 and was set to put Indian literature in the spotlight. But when France banned events with gatherings of 5,000 or more people in early March, there was no choice but to cancel.

“Everyone is going to lose a lot of money. Some of us won’t survive,” an independent Paris-based publisher, who asked not to be named, told SWAN. “Those who do manage to keep going will have to push back their planned publications.”

The owners of some bookshops had hoped to stay open, arguing that people need material to read when in confinement, but they too have had to pull down the shutters, although newsagents can remain in operation.

The Louvre, the world’s most visited museum, first closed its doors for a few days at the beginning of March because staffers invoked their right to walk off the job if they felt at risk. It reopened, but soon it and all museums, galleries and cinemas had to close because of the government’s decree on March 16, putting the population in lockdown.

“We’re at war” against the virus, French President Emmanuel Macron said in a televised address, ordering the confinement. Since March 17, only places offering essential services are allowed to be open, and residents may leave their home for brief periods only after filling in a form, on their honour, called the “attestation de déplacement dérogatoire”.

With confirmed Covid-19 cases above 10,000 in France, the organisers of the prestigious Cannes Film Festival said on March 19 they had decided to postpone the event. The festival had earlier announced that American director Spike Lee would head the competition jury – the first person of African descent to have this role – and he is expected to be present for the new dates.

“The Festival de Cannes cannot be held on the scheduled dates, from May 12 to 23. Several options are considered in order to preserve its running, the main one being a simple postponement, in Cannes, until the end of June-beginning of July 2020,” the festival team stated.

The organisers said they would make their final decision known following ongoing consultation with the French government and Cannes City Hall.

In the United States, where the government has been widely criticised for being slow to respond to the Covid-19 pandemic, cultural events are being cancelled one after the other as well.

PEN, the international association of writers, said it was with “heavy hearts” that it had decided to cancel the 2020 PEN America World Voices Festival scheduled for May 6 – 12.

“We were hoping that this awful public health crisis might ebb by May, and that we could emerge with the exciting events we had curated for audiences in New York and Los Angeles. It’s now plain such plans are neither realistic nor safe for our participants and our audiences,” stated Suzanne Nossel, CEO, PEN America, and Chip Rolley, director of the festival.

“We join the ranks of cultural institutions in New York, Los Angeles, and across the country that will temporarily go dark this spring,” they added. “The World Voices Festival was founded in the wake of 9/11 to provide a beacon for writers and audiences from around the world and to build bridges across borders as an antidote to cultural isolationism. As a new and unexpected isolation is thrust upon us, we regret deeply that we won’t be able to shine that light or foster those vital in-person connections.”

The organisation said it was “seeking new means” to bring directly to audiences the “words, ideas, and artistry” of the writers who’d been invited, including Arundhati Roy and Colm Tóibín. This might be done “through a variety of digital means”, including a new podcast set to launch soon.

The branch of PEN in England, English PEN, meanwhile said it was “with great sadness” that the organization had decided to postpone or cancel all its events “at least until 30 April 2020 following the latest public health advice from the government”. The group announced the creation of an Authors Emergency Fund on March 20, to “help support authors impacted financially by the growing health crisis”.

In the face of the pandemic, not all is doom and gloom in the cultural sector, however. Singers such as John Legend and Chris Martin have been streaming concerts via their social media accounts, as part of the “Sessions: Together, At Home” series – an initiative launched by the Global Citizen Festival and the World Health Organization.

In addition, some publishers are offering significant discounts on their books, while others have made stories, poetry and textbooks available online. From confinement, one can also view many of the world’s art masterpieces via museum web platforms and see films that festivals have decided to stream for free.

King, the jazz vocalist, said she will present a performance on FB live, and she called on the public to assist at-risk artists in whatever way they can.

“We have to hold each other up,” she told SWAN. “Perhaps this virus serves as way to help us focus on what really matters and to reconnect.”

This article is published with permission from Southern World Arts News and editor A. D. McKenzie.

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The post Arts, Culture – Trying to Keep the Lights on amid Covid-19 appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Credit: United Nations

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Mar 24 2020 (IPS)

When US President Donald Trump repeatedly characterized the fast-spreading COVID-19 as a “Chinese virus” last week, it prompted some white supremacists to resurrect an age old ethnic slur against Chinese and East Asians: the “Yellow Peril” which, in a bygone era, was touted as a xenophobic threat to the Western world.

But Tendayi Achiume, UN Special Rapporteur on Contemporary Forms of Racism, Racial Discrimination and Xenophobia, is highly critical of the racist interpretation to a disease which has claimed over 16,500 deaths worldwide and accounted for more than 378,000 infections, with the epicenter shifting from China to Europe.

Singling out Trump, she said: it’s dismaying, however, “to witness State officials—including the President of the United States—adopting alternative names for the COVID-19 coronavirus”.

“Instead of using the internationally recognized name of the virus, these officials have adopted names with geographic references, typically referring to its emergence in China,” said Achiume, who is Assistant Professor of Law at the University of California, Los Angeles, School of Law.

“This sort of calculated use of a geographic-based name for this virus is rooted in, and fosters, racism and xenophobia. In this case, it serves to isolate and stigmatize individuals who are, or are perceived to be, of Chinese or other East Asian descent”, she added.

Meanwhile, white supremacist groups in the US have justified the label, mostly in Facebook postings, by arguing that if diseases like German measles (1814), Spanish flu (1918) and Lyme disease (1975), are widely accepted, why not a “Chinese virus”?

Asked for her response, Achiume told IPS it’s disingenuous to try and make this an issue of semantics, where defenders of racialized disease-names point to historical examples of related naming practices.

“We have individuals today who are being attacked and abused on racial and ethnic grounds, in part because their attackers are emboldened by xenophobic leaders stoking intolerance on the basis of national origin”.

She said this is not a time for semantics.

“We are facing a global pandemic that requires leaders to defend and protect the dignity of all people, irrespective of race or ethnicity”, declared Achiume, who is also a research associate of the African Center for Migration and Society at the University of Witwatersrand in South Africa.

According to the National Broadcasting Company (NBC), one of the primary TV channels in the US, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has, in an intelligence briefing last month, revealed plans involving white supremacist groups allegedly attempting to “weaponize the coronavirus” to attack non-whites and minorities—through infected saliva, spray bottles and laced items.

And in a report on Yahoo News, Hunter Walker and Jana Winter write: “Violent extremists continue to make bioterrorism a popular topic among themselves,” reads the intelligence brief written by the Federal Protective Service, which covered the week of Feb. 17-24.

“White Racially Motivated Violent Extremists have recently commented on the coronavirus, stating that it is an ‘OBLIGATION’ to spread it, should any of them contract the virus.”

Matthew Lee, a health policy researcher and a doctoral candidate in sociomedical sciences at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health, points out that during disease outbreaks, attacks on marginalized groups are not an exception, but the norm.

This racism and xenophobia are additionally stoked by discourse that casts the bodies and behaviors of Chinese Americans and other Asian Americans as suspicious, and even at fault, for spreading disease, he noted.

“While viruses and other pathogens do not discriminate between hosts based on race, ethnicity, nationality or immigration status — stigma and misinformation certainly do,” Lee added.

Achiume said irresponsible, discriminatory State rhetoric is no minor issue.

As noted by the World Health Organization in 2015: ‘disease names really do matter to the people who are directly affected … certain disease names provoke a backlash against members of particular religious or ethnic communities … This can have serious consequences for peoples’ lives and livelihoods’.

“These consequences have already become a reality. Over the past two months, people who are perceived or known to be of Chinese or other East Asian descent have been subject to racist and xenophobic attacks related to the virus. These attacks have ranged from hateful slurs to denial of services to brutal acts of violence,’ she added.

COVID-19-related expressions of racism and xenophobia online have included harassment, hate speech, proliferation of discriminatory stereotypes, and conspiracy theories.

Not surprisingly, she argued, leaders who are attempting to attribute COVID-19 to certain national or ethnic groups are the very same nationalist populist leaders who have made racist and xenophobic rhetoric central to their political platforms.

“Political responses to the COVID-19 outbreak that stigmatize, exclude, and make certain populations more vulnerable to violence are inexcusable, unconscionable, and inconsistent with States’ international human rights law obligations”.

“Furthermore, political rhetoric and policy that stokes fear and diminish the equality of all people is counterproductive. To treat and combat the spread of COVID-19 effectively, individuals must have access to accurate health advice and sufficient healthcare without fear of discrimination,” she declared.

The writer can be contacted at thalifdeen@ips.org

The post White Supremacists, Yellow Peril & “Chinese Virus” Add to a Volatile Political Mix appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Sungai Nibung village chief Syarif Ibrahim (second from left) leads by example in planting mangrove trees in Kubu Raya regency, West Kalimantan province.

By Kanis Dursin
JAKARTA, Mar 23 2020 (IPS)

Samsul sounded very happy last Monday (Mar. 16) when recounting his experience of catching crabs worth more than $60 in a single day. 

“I hauled over 12 kilograms of crabs on that day, which I sold to local traders,” Samsul told IPS during a phone interview from Sungai Nibung, a fishing village inside a protected mangrove forest in Kubu Raya regency, in the West Kalimantan province on Borneo Island. The island is a 90-minute flight north of the country’s capital Jakarta.

But that was some time ago.

Decades of overfishing and rampant use of fish bombs, poison, and trawls, combined with the rapid conversion of land into oil palm plantations in neighbouring villages, had severely depleted crab, shrimp and fish stocks in the area, resulting in dwindling catch and declining incomes for local residents.

To help make ends meet, Sungai Nibung residents would cut down mangrove trees to sell as firewood, often playing cat and mouse with law enforcers as the mangrove forests were protected areas.

But in 2017, the Ministry of Environment and Forestry in Jakarta set aside 3,058 hectares of mangrove forest for the community to manage under a village forest scheme. Village residents were allowed to cultivate the mangrove forest to improve their economic circumstances but were not allowed to cut down mangrove trees.

Since then many fisherfolk like Samsul not only continue to have an income, but some have even doubled theirs.

“I have been a fisherman since childhood. Prior to 2017, my income was around $6 gross per day. Now, I take home an average of $18 daily,” Samsul, a father of two, said.

Muhammad Tahir, 47, another Sungai Nibung resident and a colleague of Samsul, also had a similar story.

“My income was uncertain before but now I get an average of $242 gross per month. With that income, I was able to send my second child to study at a university in [the provincial capital] Pontianak and my youngest to a junior high school. On top of that, we can also now save around $6 monthly,” the father of four told IPS.

• West Kalimantan’s minimum wage is currently around $140 per month. It was approximately $133 a month in 2019.  

Sungai Nibung, a fishing village located inside a protected mangrove forest in Kubu Raya regency, West Kalimantan province.

Dividing the mangroves for profit

Syarif Ibrahim has been the head of Sungai Nibung village since 2005. He told IPS that the village residents decided to divide the community forest, locally known as hutan desa, into zones for development, conservation, and sustainable agriculture.

“The development zone covers an area of some 1,800 hectares and is designated as fishing grounds, with 400 to 600 hectares of conservation area dedicated to mangrove research and education activities. The sustainable agriculture zone has some 600 hectares for dry-land paddy field and horticulture plants,” Ibrahim said.

“We also agreed that rivers and tributaries in the development zone are closed for fishing for three consecutive months at different times of the year to allow crabs, fish and shrimps to breed and replenish the stock,” Ibrahim said.

Riansyah, a Planet Indonesia Foundation activist who assisted villagers in the area with understanding sustainable fishery, said the first closures ran from August to October 2017, involving five rivers and tributaries.

“Since then, 11 of the village’s 21 rivers and tributaries have been closed and opened alternately for fishing at different times of the year. Each closure lasts for three months,” said Riansyah, adding that five rivers and tributaries were scheduled to be closed in the next round of closures from March 22 to June 22 this year.

During the closures, two fisherfolk are assigned daily to patrol the rivers and tributaries to ensure no one violates the agreement, Riansyah told IPS.

Entering its third year, the open-closed fishing system has proven to improve local people’s economic condition as reflected in both Samsul’s and Tahir’s experiences.

But more importantly, Sungai Nibung residents have learned to save the mangrove forests from destruction. In the conservation zone, for example, fishing is strictly prohibited except in designated areas. Local residents, including fishers, have also learned about the important role mangroves play for coastal ecosystems.

“Now fishers here know mangroves are very important for the sustainability of crab, shrimp and fish in the village and have agreed to stop using fish bombs, poison, and trawls,” Ibrahim told IPS.

According to the Food Sustainability Index, created by the Barilla Centre for Food and Nutrition and the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU), Indonesia has a score of 61.1 out of 100 when it comes to sustainable agriculture, where 100 is “the highest sustainability and greatest progress towards meeting environmental, societal and economic Key Performance Indicators”. This is just below the average of 65 of other middle income countries.

Saving the mangroves for climate mitigation and sustainable food supply

But aside from the conservation and ensuring that fish stocks are allowed to replenish before fishing, residents have also participated in various mangrove campaigns, planting over 32 hectares of the village forest with mangrove trees since 2017, according to Riansyah.

West Kalimantan, with around 100,000 hectares of mangroves, is home to 75 percent of Indonesia’s mangrove species. Aside from Kubu Raya, mangrove forests are also found in other areas such as Ketapang, Kayong Utara, Mempawah, Sambas and in Singkawang municipality.

According to an international paper, mangroves capture four times more carbon than rainforests and store captured carbon in the soil beneath its trees. This ability to mitigate climate change is a key to a sustainable food system.

The FSI also notes that addressing deforestation is important for countries across the globe adding that, “climate change adaptation and mitigation strategies will be essential in creating a more sustainable food system since agricultural activities make a significant contribution to climate change, accounting for up to 30 percent of global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, according to some estimates.”

Asep Sugiharta, director of Essential Ecosystem Management at the ministry of environment and forestry, told IPS that Indonesia recorded 3.3 million hectares of mangrove forests in 2019, almost 23 percent of the world’s total mangrove forests. At least 252,071 hectares are found in Kalimantan, the Indonesian part of Borneo Island.

“At least 2.6 million hectares of the country’s total mangrove forests are located outside conservation forests and only 0.7 million hectares are in conservation forests,” Sugiharta told IPS during an interview in Jakarta.

• Indonesia recorded annual greenhouse gas emissions of 2.4 billion tons of CO2 equivalent (GtCO2e) in 2015, around 4.8 percent of the world’s total global emission for that year, according to the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK).  
• Indonesian President Joko Widodo has pledged to cut emissions by 29 percent without international support and 41 percent with international cooperation by 2030, compared to a “business as usual” scenario.

Environmental benefits aside, the open-closed fishing system has given new optimism to Samsul, particularly when it comes to the future of his two children.

“I was not able to finish my elementary education due to dire poverty. With the success of the open-closed system, I am optimistic my income will continue to grow and thus I can send my two children to higher education,” Samsul said. “More than that, I was told the system would ensure the sustainability of the coastal ecosystem for our great grandchildren.”

Meanwhile, village head Ibrahim breathed a sigh of relief that Sungai Nibung residents have bought into the idea of sustainable food production.

“The challenging part was changing people’s paradigms. The villagers were so used to fishing anywhere throughout the year in the mangrove forest, taking big and small crabs, shrimps, or fish. Now, they have started thinking about their sustainability.”

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The post Fisherfolk Fix Both Food and Climate by Closing Fishing Grounds appeared first on Inter Press Service.

By Shloka Nath
MUMBAI, India, Mar 23 2020 (IPS)

Over the past few years, worsening air quality in India—and in north India specifically—has awakened policy makers and civil society to take urgent action.

There have been some efforts to address air quality, specifically the National Clean Air Programme (NCAP), which was launched in January 2019 with the aim of improving air quality standards by 20-30 percent over the next five years. While this has been a positive step, we not only need a more ambitious agenda, but also a strong compliance framework that ensures accountability to the targets we have set.

With growing congestion in cities—a trend which is only likely to increase—we need to also look at the transport sector, especially at a time when infrastructure investments such as the Mumbai Coastal Road Project do little to factor in environmental impacts. It is no surprise that fewer cars on the road mean less traffic, less time on the road, and therefore less air pollution exposure.

Air pollution, both outdoors and in households is the second most serious risk factor for public health in India, after malnutrition, contributing to 6.4 percent of all healthy years of life lost

Despite how much needs to still be accomplished, we have come a long way in the past few years. We are now in a place where we are starting to get the science and technology right, in terms of monitoring air quality and understanding the impact it has on our lives. We have more data and evidence than ever before; now we must focus on enabling its use to identify and implement solutions.

The fight for the right to cleaner air in India is unique and important because it is not championing one solution, or one approach. That a diverse cross-section of players has chosen to stand up and take action underlines the fact that no one is protected, and everyone has a responsibility.

What we need today is greater urgency and action to ensure clean air in our homes, villages, and cities. The development sector, especially foundations and philanthropists, have a unique role to play given their varied expertise and backgrounds.

 

To start with, here are the four most important ways Indian philanthropists can get involved

 

1. Pinpoint the problem

The current lack of effective monitoring and measurement is a peculiar issue within air pollution, and it is also one of the areas where funders can play a meaningful role. This can take a few forms:

a) Monitor air quality

In India, according to estimates, we require around 4,000 continuous monitoring stations to give us an accurate picture of the air pollution problem—2,800 in the urban areas and 1,200 in the rural areas. Currently data, when available, comes from a little over 600 manual stations and less than 100 continuous monitoring stations.

Funding a data gap like this could go a long way in starting to solve the air quality issue in India, because better data generation means better informed people and policies. More importantly, it is a fundamental human right of any citizen to have access to information on the quality of air they are breathing.

b) Identify pollution sources

Mumbai’s air pollution problem is a good case in point. The relatively clear skies of today’s Mumbai create the perception among residents that air quality can be a low priority. Yet, a study released by the Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) in December 2019, stated that Mumbai’s air has the highest concentration of PM10 out of 24 cities in peninsular India.

In many parts of the city, Air Quality Index (AQI) readings frequently register 24-hour averages of between 120 and 300, classified anywhere between unhealthy and hazardous.

Worse still, is that we don’t have a clear enough picture on what’s causing these numbers. We know the pollutants—the result of construction, road works, waste burning, industrial activity, fires, vehicular emissions, and so on—yet, attributing exact data around source contributions is complicated.

The information needs to be analysed in real time and requires more monitoring infrastructure for more granular data collection.

c) Assess health and economic impacts

The Global Burden of Disease analysis released in November 2017, for instance, identified air pollution, both outdoors and in households, as the second most serious risk factor for public health in India, after malnutrition, contributing to 6.4 percent of all healthy years of life lost (Disability Adjusted Life Years) in 2016. According to the World Bank, India lost over 8.5 percent of its GDP in 2013 due to air pollution. Anumita Roychowdhury of the Centre for Science and Environment says, “If you add up the number of years we are losing because of illness, because of the productive time, all of these are coming at huge economic costs.”

Today, we know that there are health and economic consequences of poor air quality, but we don’t have a comprehensive picture, one that allows us to truly assess the impact and to mobilise action accordingly.

 

2. Engage the public

a) Elevate impactful stories

People are at the heart of the air pollution epidemic. We need to increase communication efforts to drive citizen engagement through impactful storytelling. Here, philanthropy can play a crucial role in increasing public awareness by supporting targeted campaigns that spread information around the health impacts of air pollution. Importantly, we must encourage communication that showcases how short-term investments in clean air have a long-term effect on reducing expenditure on healthcare in the future.

b) Advocate for policy change and regulation

There is still a lot of work left in terms of getting the right message to the right audience set. We need an increased effort in communicating not just the problems that arise as a result of air quality, but what the solutions are. This would help bridge the disconnect between the work specialists are doing in the field and the actionable insights that arise from it, which can influence decision makers.

Citizens too, need to be better informed so they know how to demand that their elected officials make clean air a priority. These efforts—bringing data and evidence from specialists to decision makers and growing public demand for clean air—can together play a role in policy change and more effective regulation.

c) Build movements

Lastly, there is still a great need to create consistent, crisp, and relatable public messaging around the effects of air pollution. Not only would this help avoid confusion around the problem, it would also increase the urgency for action.

Take for instance, the Save the Tiger campaign. They focused their communications on just one number—1,411, which was the number of tigers left in the world. This was enough to inspire urgency and action.

Compelling messaging like this does not exist in the air quality debate right now. There is a need for innovative communication strategies to reach the masses—we need to leverage social media, influential personalities, and the press—so that people are empowered with the right knowledge and tools for action. This will allow the air quality crisis to grow into a movement.

 

3. Enable solutions

a) Strengthen enforcement capabilities

Many parts of India are experiencing air pollution at hazardous levels. Yet, pollution control measures are at best reactive and ad hoc. The courts, and now the central and state governments, have set up various committees, designed action plans and schemes, and issued prohibitory orders in order to address the crisis at hand. But these measures to regulate and control emissions are incomplete.

This is where philanthropy and policy can go hand in hand. Directing funding to address specific problems has limited impact if the lessons learned are limited to grant recipients, and not disseminated for the greater good. Foundations are often in a prime position to impact policy because of their influence and networks.

There is a need to support a variety of efforts, including analysing and recommending policy, providing technical assistance to government bodies, and strengthening enforcement capabilities.

b) Boost innovation

There are many ways in which philanthropy can boost innovation, some of which include supporting:

• The design and implementation of financial products that incentivise retro-fitting polluting technologies
• Urban plans that reduce transportation pollution
• Research and development for alternate large-scale uses for pollution in the air, or agricultural residue which is otherwise burned and causes pollution

4. Organise collaboration

Lastly, donors can play an important role in facilitating collaboration, be it between implementing organisations, academics, practitioners, government departments, the public and private sectors, and so on.

Doing so involves not only working towards getting a larger community of diverse stakeholders involved, but also helping them to collaborate at local and other levels of administration. For example, the NCAP is not connected to the work of the pollution control board in every state—bridging this gap would enable resources to be pooled together, instead of having people working in silos, on overlapping or similar issues.

Similarly, donors can collaborate—for instance, a foundation with expertise in air pollution can work with another focused on maternal and newborn health, given the inter-linkages between both areas.

The general adage for philanthropy is that donors shouldn’t limit themselves to issues they can influence during their lifetimes. We are learning that we need to let go of our compulsion to see the change we seek. But in the case of the air quality crisis, the opposite is true.

Provided we choose to step into the ring, this is a fight we can most definitely win in our lifetimes. The time for us to act together is now, because every breath we take depends on it.

Know more:

• Learn about what AQI is and how it is measured.
• Understand how air pollution is linked to impaired judgement, mental health problems, poorer performance in school, and higher levels of crime.
• View this one-page infographic on why climate change is important for Indian philanthropy.

Do more:

• See how the world’s most polluted air compares with your city’s.
• Check out the India Climate Collaborative, an India-focused collaborative that seeks to direct funding and visibility towards climate action in India.

 

 

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

The post Air Pollution: A Problem We Can Solve in Our Lifetime appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Shloka Nath is Executive Director, India Climate Collaborative

The post Air Pollution: A Problem We Can Solve in Our Lifetime appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Photojournalists stage a demonstration demanding the safe return of Shafiqul Islam Kajol, in front of the National Museum in Dhaka, on March 18, 2020. PHOTO: COLLECTED

By Sushmita S. Preetha
Mar 23 2020 (IPS-Partners)

A barrage of fireworks light up the smoggy skies of Dhaka and I feel as if I’m in the opening scenes of a dystopian film.

There’s anxiety and despair all around about what’s to come—those who have been following the developments in other parts of the world know there’s no way to avoid the impending crisis in our healthcare system as it scrambles, without any preparation, to tackle what may soon become a tsunami of patients showcasing symptoms of the coronavirus. The streets are uncharacteristically empty, and the rickshaw puller, for whom self-quarantine would mean the loss of his daily wages on which his family of five depend, asks me if I know how much these pyrotechnics cost.

Our conversation is silenced by the loud explosions. Yes, I remind myself, celebrations must go on—priorities are priorities, after all—and I know better than to mention the unmentionable, even in a private conversation with a rickshaw puller, even on social media and particularly in opinion pieces published in The Daily Star. The nagging thought that I’m trapped in a dystopia returns as, with each firework that sounds like a gunshot, my mind finds itself ruminating over the fate of photojournalist Shafiqul Islam Kajol, who has been missing since March 10, 2020. The coronavirus crisis and the resultant chaos and mismanagement have understandably taken over the news, and while we worry about what will happen to our loved ones if the virus spreads beyond control, Shafiqul’s son has been living an unimaginable nightmare of his own, not knowing where his father is and whether he is still alive.

Kajol is the editor of a fortnightly magazine called Pakkhakal, with past experience in working as a photojournalist with Dainik Samakal and Banik Barta. He “disappeared” a day after a case was filed against him and 31 others, including the editor-in-chief of daily Manabzamin, under the Digital Security Act by lawmaker Shifuzzaman Shikhor, a former aide to the prime minister. They were accused of “deteriorating the law and order” by publishing a report with “false information” and circulating it on social media.

The report in question, published in Manabzamin, simply stated that Jubo Mohila League leader Shamima Nur Papia, during police interrogation, had shared the names of 30 MPs, bureaucrats and businessmen who used to frequent her prostitution and extortion racket. The report itself did not name any of these lawmakers and others, but it was later shared by some, including Shafiqul, on social media with a list of names.

Shafiqul was last seen at his office in Hatirpul at 6:51 pm on March 10. A CCTV footage from outside his office, verified and shared by the Amnesty International, on March 22, shows several unidentified men keeping a track on his motorbike for at least three hours before he was last seen. Between 5:59 pm and 6:05 pm, three men are seen approaching his motorbike separately and meddling with it. At 6:19 pm, Shafiqul walks out of his office with another person but does not take his bike with him. He comes back alone after a while and leaves the area on his bike at exactly 6:51 pm.

Mysteriously, following his disappearance, his Facebook posts from this year have also disappeared. In fact, the last post that can still be accessed on his page dates back to November 27, 2019. According to a report by Prothom Alo, many of the missing posts involved the arrest of Jubo Mohila League leader Shamima Nur Papia. The report further added that Shafiqul was known to be on good terms with many activists and leaders of Jubo Mohila League (Prothom Alo, March 17).

Shafiqul’s son, Monorom Polok, claims that he collected his father’s call list from Grameenphone, according to which, Shafiqul spoke to two Jubo Mohila League leaders shortly before he disappeared. One of these two women told Prothom Alo that she had spoken to Shafiqul at 6:30 pm about where he was and when he would return, and about setting up a time to meet to discuss his latest Facebook posts. The second woman on his call list denied speaking to Shafiqul but admitted that she had sent him a text and that she, too, had wanted to meet to talk about his social media posts.

For almost a week, Shafiqul’s family pleaded with the police to file an abduction case, but both the Chawkbazar and New Market police stations refused to take the case, each insisting it fell under the other’s jurisdiction. The case was finally lodged with the Chawkbazar police station on March 18 following a suo moto move from the High Court asking the police why it had not filed a case yet.

Why was there such a delay in filing a case? It would be easy enough to dismiss it as bureaucratic ineptitude of our law enforcement agencies, but was there something more sinister in the reluctance of law enforcers to file and pursue the case? When there is a CCTV footage that clearly identifies men who were following Shafiqul and tampering with his motorbike, why hasn’t the police been able to apprehend them yet—in the 12 days he has been missing (as of this article going to print)? Why is Shafiqul’s son having to collect call lists when it’s the police who should be following leads and questioning all those who may have crucial information on Shafiqul since they were the last to speak to him?

It’s ironic that our law enforcers can go to any lengths when they have to track down a dissident using their sophisticated surveillance mechanisms but cannot bring themselves to track a missing person, even when there is a CCTV footage identifying the suspects!

Where did Shafiqul go? What could have happened to him? No one claims to know anything, but if what happened to Bangla Tribune correspondent Ariful Islam is an indication of how journalists who ruffle the feathers of the political elite are treated, we have reasons to be deeply worried. On March 14, Ariful was dragged from his home in the middle of the night, beaten, stripped and threatened with “crossfire” by Senior Assistant Commissioner (RDC) Nazim Uddin and two magistrates as part of a mobile court raid (which was later declared “illegal” by Kurigram municipality mayor Abdul Jalil, following widespread criticism). It is now clear that Ariful was targeted for his investigative reports about the activities of Kurigram Deputy Commissioner (DC) Sultana Pervin. As he was being humiliated and tortured, Nazim told him, “So, you are a journalist! We will teach you what journalism is, you dared to write against our DC”—and “You will be put in a crossfire. Your time is up. Recite the kalima.”

Ariful’s description of that night is chilling, to say the least, and offers a window into those unknown, untold stories of men disappearing into the night only to appear—if they appear at all—as dead bodies in so-called shootouts or after “falling ill” while in custody, with some rare exceptions. Ariful is no doubt lucky that his story was picked up by the media right away and that he had the backing of a powerful media outlet, which protected him from further harassment and mistreatment.

But what about those who aren’t so fortunate, those like… Shafiqul?

That freedom of expression is no longer an inalienable right in Bangladesh is not breaking news. According to Article 19, a UK-based human rights organisation, in February 2020 alone, there were at least 50 incidents of violations of freedom of expression—four involved serious bodily injuries, nine assaults, one abduction, five destruction of equipment, two defamation cases and one involved gender-based violence. Despite widespread criticism of the Digital Security Act which essentially authorises state agencies to pick up whoever they want without so much as a warrant or approval of any authorities, under various vague and misleading sections of the law, more than 1,000 cases have been filed under the Act since October 2018—sometimes for as little as disapproval of government decisions on social media. The systematic way in which freedom of expression has been, and continues to be, throttled has created an environment of fear, uncertainty and self-censorship which has caused irreparable damage to the democratic fabric of this country. The disappearance of Shafiqul Islam is one more nail in the coffin of the free press.

And so you and I keep silent in a cowardly bid to protect ourselves from the virus that has seeped deep into our psyche and political systems. As for a dystopian future, haven’t we been living in one for a long time anyway?

Sushmita S Preetha is a journalist and researcher.

This story was originally published by The Daily Star, Bangladesh

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Kazimir Malevich, Children on the Grass, 1908 (Pushkin Museum State Museum of Fine Arts, Moscow).

By External Source
Mar 23 2020 (IPS-Partners)

SARS-CoV-2 or COVID19, now declared a global pandemic by the World Health Organisation, has begun to wreak havoc in large parts of the world, with other parts waiting in anticipation. We are in a real struggle, which needs total mobilisation; a struggle that needs to put life before profit. We will only win this struggle – as China has already done – if our people are united and disciplined, if governments earn our respect by their actions, and if we act in solidarity across the globe.

Global debt is at $250 trillion, with corporate debt already enormous. On the other hand, there are trillions of dollars swirling around stock markets and in tax havens. As economic activity contracts, corporations will line up for bailouts; this is not the best use of precious human resources in this time. In the midst of this, that financial markets remain open is a failure of imagination. The drop in the value of stocks – in the markets from the Hang Seng to Wall Street – is merely a way to intensify global social anxiety, since the health of the stock market has come to be seen – erroneously – as an indicator of economic health in general.

Long-term quarantines and shutdowns have taken place in large parts of the world, certainly in Europe and North America, but increasingly in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Economic activity has already begun to shudder to a halt. Estimates of the net losses are not possible to make, and even the major international institutions are adjusting their numbers every day. An UNCTAD study on 4 March, for instance, said that the slowdown of manufacturing in China will by itself disrupt the global supply chain and decrease exports by $50 billion; this is only one part of the loss. The total losses are – as yet – beyond calculation.

The IMF has pledged to use $1 trillion to help countries stave off economic disaster. Already about twenty countries have come to the IMF to request assistance; Iran, which had stayed away from the IMF for the past three decades, has now requested IMF help. It would be an auspicious change in the IMF’s policy, unprecedented in history, if not for the shameful refusal to help the people of Venezuela under the pretext of not recognizing the Venezuelan government. The IMF must not require any adjustments or strings for the provision of these bridge loans. The rejection of a loan to Venezuela is a sign of great political failure by the IMF.

International solidarity from China and Cuba is exemplary. Chinese and Cuban doctors have been in Iran, Italy, and Venezuela, while they have offered their services and expertise around the world. They have developed salves and medical treatments that prevents the fatality rate for those afflicted with COVID19, and they want to distribute this – without any patent or profit – to the world’s people. The example of the Chinese and Cubans in this period must be taken seriously; thanks to this example, it is easier to imagine socialism in the midst of this coronavirus pandemic, than it is to live under the heartless regime of capitalism.

European countries, now the focus of the pandemic, are seeing their weakened health systems collapse after decades of under-funding and neo-liberal austerity. European governments, as well as the European Central Bank and the EU, allocate the bulk of their resources on trying to safeguard the financial and business sectors from a sure economic debacle. The adoption of timid actions aimed at strengthening the capacities of States in the face of the crisis – targeted renationalisations, temporary public control of health service providers – or of palliative measures – limited exemptions from the payment of rent and housing mortgages – do not represent a decisive commitment to provide for basic guarantees for labour and safeguarding the health of the working class that is most exposed to the devastating effects of the pandemic: healthcare workers, women that are caregivers, employees of the food industry and basic services companies, etc.

This is a partial repudiation of the neoliberal prescriptions that have dominated the world for the past fifty years. The IMF must take cognizance of this, since it has otherwise participated actively in cannibalising resources in Africa, Asia, and Latin America, and creating institutional deserts in country after country. Strengthening the state and redistributing wealth in favour of the masses should be the global orientation.

Scientists tell us that this struggle against the virus could last for the next thirty or forty days. That is why it is essential that each country and each government take measures to prevent the death of multiple thousands of people.

The movements, unions, and parties that make up the International Assembly of Peoples propose that a programme of structural change be formulated and implemented to allow us to win this struggle and reshape the world. This programme must include:

1. Immediate suspension of all work, except essential medical and logistical personnel and those required to produce and distribute food and necessities, without any loss of wages. The State must assume the cost of the wages for the period of the quarantine.
2. Health, food supply, and public safety must be maintained in an organised manner. Emergency grain stocks must be immediately released for distribution amongst the poor.
3. Schools must all be suspended.
4. Immediate socialization of hospitals and medical centres so that they do not worry about the profit motive as the crisis unfolds. These medical centres must be under the control of the government’s health campaign.
5. Immediate nationalization of pharmaceutical companies, and immediate international cooperation amongst them to find a vaccine and easier testing devices. Abolishment of intellectual property in the medical field.
6. Immediate testing of all people. Immediate mobilization of tests and support for medical personnel who are at the frontlines of this pandemic.
7. Immediate speed-up of production for materials necessary to deal with the crisis (testing kits, masks, respirators).
8. Immediate closure of global financial markets.
9. Immediate gathering of the finances to prevent the bankruptcy of governments.
10. Immediate cancellation of all non-corporate debt.
11. Immediate end to all rent and mortgage payments, as well as an end to evictions; this includes the immediate provision of adequate housing as a basic human right. Decent housing must be a right for all citizens guaranteed by the state.
12. Immediate absorption of all utility payments by the State – water, electricity, and internet provided as part of a human right; where these utilities are not universally accessible, we call for them to be provided with immediate effect.
13. Immediate end to the unilateral, criminal sanctions regimes and economic blockades that impact countries such as Cuba, Iran, and Venezuela and prevent them from importing necessary medical supplies.
14. Urgent support for the peasantry to increase the production of healthy food and supply it to the government for direct distribution.
15. Suspension of the dollar as an international currency and request that the United Nations urgently call a new international conference to propose a common international currency.
16. Ensure a universal minimum income in every country. This makes possible to guarantee support from the state for millions of families who are out of work, working in extremely precarious conditions or self-employed. The current capitalist system excludes millions of people from formal jobs. The State should provide employment and a dignified life for the population. The cost of the Universal Basic Income can be covered by defence budgets, in particular the expense of arms and ammunition.

To add the signature of your organisation to this declaration, please send an email to secretaria@asambleadelospueblos.org by Thursday, March 26, 2020

The post In Light of the Global Pandemic, Focus Attention on the People appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

International Assembly of the Peoples and Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research

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Credit: Mohamed Fofanah/IPS

By Isabel Ortiz and Thomas Stubbs
NEW YORK and LONDON, Mar 23 2020 (IPS)

Austerity policies pushed by international financial institutions have weakened public health systems, despite current financial support packages, condemning many people to die.

As health systems of East Asia, Europe, and the Americas buckle under the strain of coronavirus, developing countries are expecting an even higher human toll. Decades of austerity promoted by international financial institutions (IFIs) such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank, and regional development banks have weakened public health systems, impeding the ability of governments to respond to the pandemic.

The IMF pledged $1 trillion, and the World Bank a further $12bn, in immediate funds to assist countries to cushion the impact of Covid-19. Yet, these organisations are implicated in decades of brutal austerity and privatizations that damagedpublic health systems in the first place. And it is in regions with fragile health public systems where outbreaks spread the fastest, witnessed most acutely during the 2014 West African Ebola outbreak.

Governments across the globe have implemented spending cuts and the commercialization of health services since the 1980s, advised by IFIs during regular surveillance missions or as part of their lending programmes. Austerity policies are criticised for prioritising short-term fiscal objectives over longer-term social investments such as health.

Isabel Ortiz

Under IMF guidance, for example, governments reduced health budgets, cut or capped public sector wages, and limited the number of doctors, nurses, and other public health staff. In the name of efficiency, governments – often advised by “development” banks – decreased the number of hospital beds, closed public services, and underinvested in health research and medical equipment. This undermines the ability of health systems to cope with infectious disease outbreaks, leaving billions of people highly vulnerable during pandemics.

What is worse, governments were discouraged from raising alarm to the debilitating impact of scarce funding for public health. With the publication of “From Billions to Trillions: Transforming Development Finance Post-2015” and related documents, IFIs reassured governments of a simple solution to declining budgets: private sector delivery of public goods and services. This advice came despite multiple failures in public-private partnerships and privatizations over the last decades – for example, the US private health model is the world’s most expensive health system, but it has low effectiveness, leaving millions of Americans without health coverage.

From Lesotho to Sweden, public-private partnerships on health were costlier to citizens and resulted in poorer service delivery than public health systems.

So who benefits from these policies? IFIs have not prioritized public health issues, but fiscal or private sector objectives instead. Macroeconomic or business interests were often considered over the public good, and people’s welfare was an afterthought. This has already resulted in higher morbidityand millions of avoidable deaths, with many more yet to come.

A recent report shows how IMF-induced austerity cuts are negatively impacting about 75 percent of the world population– a total of 113 countries in 2020 – despite urgent health and developmental needs. Spending cuts apply to 72 developing countries and 41 high-income countries, many of which have already been suffering decades of adjustments. Another study shows how 46 countries prioritised debt service over public health services at the beginning of 2020, when coronaviruswas spreading.

Despite contributing to the crisis, IFIs now aim to become part of the solution by making new funds available. While laudable, the World Bank’s $12bn financial package represents a smokescreen to the public relations disaster related to its flagship Pandemic Emergency Financing (PEF) bonds. PEF bonds were designed with markedly stringent pay-out criteria to reduce the risk of losses for private investors – who have so far made annual yields of up to 14 percent, funded by the aid budgets of Germany, Japan, and Australia. Ultimately the bonds have diverted aid from crucial investments in public health systems of developing countries.

At its core, the reckless actions of IFIs represent the absence of effective global governance for health. Decades of IFIsundermining public health systems highlight how desperately the world needs global leadership and a coordinated response.To that end, the G20 has scheduled a virtual Summit over Covid-19. But will G20 leaders have the foresight to permanently abandon outdated austerity policies and urgently invest in universal public health systems?

Thomas Stubbs

Given the coronavirus emergency, even the IMF is advising governments to ramp up public health expenditures. This needs to be more than just a short-term measure, to then later return to a situation where millions are excluded from healthcare. The building blocks of global health security should be based on prevention and universal public health systems, especially in countries with underdeveloped healthcare.

The United Nations, in particular the World Health Organization (WHO), is more capable than IFIs to coordinate universal public healthcare systems, but the WHO currently lacks resources to move beyond monitoring and surveillance. The US Trump Administration recently cut contributions to the organisation, instead funnelling trillions of US dollars on restoring short-term confidence in the markets. European countries could have given meaningful aid in solidarity to East Asia and developing countries, where thousands are infected of Covid-19. But, from the outset of the crisis, they instead adopted inward-looking responses that often entrenched or intensified authoritarian and populist nationalism.

How many more people need to die? While we are now reaping the consequences of austerity policies imposed around the world, the coronavirus pandemic also offers an opportunity to redress public health gaps and do things differently. State intervention is necessary to address the magnitude of the Covid-19 pandemic, develop long-term public health, and realize the right to health of populations everywhere. It is time for world leaders to abandon myopic austerity policies and instead focus on building robust public health systems for all.

Dr. Isabel Ortiz is Director of the Global Social Justice Program at the Initiative for Policy Dialogue, Columbia University, and former director of the International Labour Organization (ILO) and UNICEF.

Dr. Thomas Stubbs is a Senior Lecturer in International Relations at Royal Holloway, University of London, and a Research Associate in Political Economy at the Centre for Business Research, University of Cambridge.

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