Africa - INTER PRESS SERVICE

Sahle-Work Zewde, President of the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia

By Sahle-Work Zewde and Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka
UNITED NATIONS, Mar 3 2020 (IPS)

Twenty-five years ago, thousands of representatives adopted the Beijing Declaration, one of the most progressive universal agreement to advance women’s rights.

The Beijing Declaration built on the human rights inscribed in the Convention for the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), adopted by the UN General Assembly in 1979, whose articles 7 and 8 clearly states the need for removing all discriminations preventing women from leadership.

On September 1995, the Beijing Platform of Action took full ownership of the human rights agenda initially contained in CEDAW, advanced women’s rights and strongly reaffirmed the universal commitment to women’s power and leadership. Women took ownership of the human rights agenda and redefined it to ensure that gender equality and women’s empowerment would be at its core.

At the time, world leaders committed to the extraordinary Platform for Action with tangible and ambitious commitments in strategic areas, from peace to development, and designed roadmaps to get us there.

Since 1995, the world continued the march to make the world more gender equal and to enhance women’s leadership and participation in peace, security and development processes.

In 2000, following decades of advocacy led by women civil society organizations and women human rights activists, the United Nations Security Council adopted resolution 1325, the global commitment to ensure that women are systematically and sustainably integrated into peace and security processes.

The international community furthered the women, peace and security agenda in 2009 by recognizing the harmful impact of sexual violence in conflict on women and communities, making this scourge punishable under International Human Rights Law and International Criminal Law.

In the last twenty-five years, African women have made substantive progress in political, economic and social arenas but also have faced numerous constraints.

Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka

The positive picture reflects enhanced political and legislative leadership to ensure that women do have a seat at the table of key decision-making processes.

Today, Rwanda has the highest percentage of women members of parliament in the world: 61%. Namibia, Senegal and South Africa follow closely with at least over 40% of women holding seats in Parliament.

Ethiopia not only made great strides by electing its first female President in October 2018, but Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed also raised the bar high for national governments by ensuring a gender equal cabinet with 50% of its members being women.

Across Africa, women have taken the seat at the top table, including President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf of Liberia, President Joyce Banda of Malawi, President Catherine Samba-Panza of the Central African Republic and President Ameenah Gurib-Fakim of Mauritius.

More women are being elected in public office or appointed to ministerial positions. These changes have not happened by coincidence but as the result of deliberate policy decisions and grassroots action.

In many cases, this transformation was realized through hard-fought constitutional amendments and parity legislation aimed at reserving the necessary space for women and youth.

At continental level, the African Union has developed an extensive and progressive body of legal instruments as well as innovative solutions and platforms in its various thematic areas of work. The years 2010-2020 marked the African Women’s Decade.

The AU Strategy for Gender Equality & Women’s Empowerment (2018 – 2028) is informed by global standards that include instruments like the Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs – whose Goal 5 is on “Gender Equality”).

Other human rights instruments of the African Union such as the African Charter on Human and People’s Rights consider women’s rights as an integral component of the key rights. The AU has appointed Heads of State as champions and leaders to push for implementation of commitments under various thematic areas of the work of the Union.

Despite these great achievements, we must admit that the world – and we as leaders – did not keep our promise to ensure that every woman and girl, wherever she may live, could be assured to enjoy her full human rights reach her full potential.

The reality is that we have failed women and girls. Some of the best minds remain excluded because we failed to provide access to education to all women and girls. Many of the potential pillars of our societies remain marginalized because we failed to properly address and eradicate gender inequality and violence against women.

Our continent is lagging behind in creating the peaceful and developed societies we seek to realize, in part, because we failed to offer women and girls the necessary opportunities and tools, which would allow them to thrive and be full contributors.

And despite the elections of some women to high and highest offices, and existing legislative and legal frameworks, by and large, across Africa women are still struggling to gain a seat at the decision-making table or in peace and security processes.

Despite the existing evidence revealing that gender perspective drives the sustainability of peace and security processes, there is still a blunt implementation gap in terms of ensuring women’s participation in peace processes.

The evidence is staggering, with women constituting about 4% of signatories of peace agreements, 2.4% of chief mediators, 3.7% of witnesses or observers to peace negotiations, and 9% of negotiation team members. . Today, Africa currently counts one female Head of State (Ethiopia), four Vice-Presidents (The Gambia, Liberia, Tanzania, Zambia) one Prime Minister (Namibia).

This stark reality is a daily reminder that we cannot slow down our efforts. We must accelerate our efforts against the pushbacks. Women’s meaningful participation and leadership are crucial in the effective functioning and sustainability of our communities and our world.

To achieve this, a top-down approach is not sustainable to build the necessary transformative change. If the promise made is to be delivered, women and youth must be front and center and the drivers of the positive change we all aspire.

In this spirit, on 2 June 2017 African women leaders – I among them – came together as a movement to launch the African Women Leaders Network (AWLN) and its Call to Action, backed by the African Union and the United Nations through UN Women.

Our Network aims to advance, train and support female leaders across sectors and generations in Africa. The AWLN is pushing for policies and programmes that empower and enable women on the continent across the political, economic and humanitarian fields to reach their full potential.

Since June 2017, the African Women Leaders Network has achieved key milestones, from bolstering the voices of African women leaders across generations on the ground to enhancing their participation and leadership in key decision-making processes.

The Network committed to push and deliver on the commitments made in UN Security Council resolution 1325 by October 2020, its 20th anniversary and to be in solidarity with the women and communities in conflict and post-conflict situations throughout Africa.

Since 2017, the AWLN conducted joint UN-AU solidarity missions to revitalize women’s participation and leadership in peace, security and development in Cameroon, Chad, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Djibouti, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Niger Nigeria, Somalia and South Sudan. The missions brought much needed political attention to the situation on the ground, while promoting women’s meaningful participation as mediators in all efforts of conflict-resolution, sustainable development, peacebuilding and humanitarian interventions.

The AWLN redefines the faces and structures around power and leadership – considering each and every woman or girl a leader, standing up for her human rights, may she be a Head of State or a grassroots activist working for peace and development, an entrepreneur or a schoolgirl with a dream.

We support the advancement of African women through six (6) flagship projects in peace and security, governance, finance, agriculture, young women’s leadership and social mobilization. The Network further provides peer learning, experience sharing and cross-generational dialogues in order to bolster women’s contributions to building and sustaining peace, sustainable economies and social transformation.

Women are making a crucial difference in the lives of the people they serve at local level. In this spirit, the AWLN national chapters are the cornerstones of movement building for the Network and support its localization at grassroots level and represent a major milestone benefiting all African women and ensuring that their voices are better heard, and their issues better addressed, in order to increase women’s ownership in the transformation of the continent and the 2063 Agenda “The Africa We Want.”

Since 2017, the AWLN has established 11 national chapters in (chronologically) the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Cote d’Ivoire, the Central African Republic, Sierra Leone, the Republic of Congo, Nigeria, Seychelles, Ethiopia, Liberia, Morocco and Cameroon.

The Network, with the support of UN Women and the AU, plans to have a total of 25 national chapters established by March 2020, in line with UN Women’s Generation Gender Equality Campaign, and to ensure that a critical mass of women is leading the movement throughout the continent.

We are working closely with women’s groups, the UN System, the African Union and development partners to ensure that, beyond women’s participation, all efforts are undertaken to create a conducive environment for women empowerment and the protection of their rights and freedoms.

We encourage all African Member States to speed up the process and to offer the necessary support to women and young people coming together for Africa’s transformation. The time for action is now to build irreversible positive changes for gender equality in Africa.

In 2020, 25 years after the Beijing Declaration and 20 years after Security Council resolution 1325, it is clear that we must accelerate our efforts, move faster on the roadmap towards the targets we want to reach, and deliver tangible actions for the people we serve.

As I write these words, we are still very far away from achieving gender parity and full women’s empowerment in Africa. We must build on the positive strides that we have made so far to achieve this urgent ambition.

As African women, we call on all African men – leaders in politics and business, elders and young, neighbors in our cities and villages, fathers, brothers and sons – to join women in a great partnership for human rights, peace and development.

We call on them to lead and invest in change at a national level with the African Women Leaders Network National Chapters and women’s movements for peace to address the gender equality gaps that we know persist.

Africa has already adopted strong protocols, including the Maputo Protocol, and instruments that bind us, and through which Heads of State and Government have already agreed on Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment. Women must be meaningfully included in peace, security and developments negotiations and in the politics of their country.

We are asking all our allies to use their power and influence to support African women in taking their rightful place in the next chapter of the continent and building a future where women and girls can live out their lives freely, in purpose and happiness.

The movement of African women across the continent is a rally for action. A movement to ensure that leaders keep on their commitments and promises.

It is time for action.

Together, we can unite for Africa’s transformation.

The post It is Time for Action! Uniting for Africa’s Transformation appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

This article is part of special IPS coverage of International Women’s Day on March 8 2020

 

Sahle-Work Zewde, is President of the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, and Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, is Executive Director of UN Women

The post It is Time for Action! Uniting for Africa’s Transformation appeared first on Inter Press Service.

By External Source
Mar 2 2020 (IPS-Partners)

The Pacific Community (SPC) is calling for contestants to join the Pacific Healthy Recipe Contest and showcase their cooking skills and creativity to promote healthy eating and prevention of non-communicable diseases (NCDs).

Up to 75 per cent of deaths in Pacific countries are related to NCDs, such as diabetes and heart diseases, with unhealthy diets and lifestyles seen as important factors in their development.

From observation, the Pacific diet has changed over time and consumption of local foods has transitioned into consumption of more imported processed foods that are high in sugar, fat and salt. Approaches to improve eating habits includes trainings on healthy eating, development of resources to improve knowledge and health promoting campaigns to increase awareness.

Who can apply?
The contest will be open to all Pacific Island Countries and Territories.

How to apply
The contest will be launched through SPC social media.

Contestants will be invited to:
– Complete the registration online or fil this word document until 29 February 2020
– Follow the directions given to submit details of their recipe that they have created together with a photo of the prepared dish.

Prize
The winner and their entire family (up to 10 people) will enjoy a gourmet meal prepared in the comfort of their own home by a well-known chef!
All participants will get a copy of the ‘Pasifka Plates’ cook book.

How to assess the winner?
Assessment of the winner will be based on:
• Use of local ingredients
• Recipe with less sugar, salt and fat
• Creative and aesthetic presentation
• Showcasing of Pacific cooking traditions.

The recipes will be made available on the SPC website as well as shared through other means of communication.

Useful links:
Competition Terms and Conditions
Participation Form

For more information, it is possible to contact the organizers at the following address: health-enquiries@spc.int.

Media contacts:
Solène Bertrand-Protat, Non-Communicable Diseases Advisor, Public Health Division (PHD), Pacific Community (SPC) | soleneb@spc.int

General Inquiries:
Evlyn Mani, Communications Officer, Public Health Division (PHD), Pacific Community (SPC) | evlynm@spc.int
Alexandre Brecher, Senior Communications Officer, Corporate Communication Office, Pacific Community (SPC) | alexandreb@spc.int

About SPC:
The Pacific Community has been supporting sustainable development in the Pacific, through science, knowledge and innovation since 1947. It is the principal intergovernmental organization in the region, owned and governed by its 26 member countries and territories.

Division
Corporate
Public Health Division (PHD)

The post The Pacific Community launches the Pacific Healthy Recipe Contest appeared first on Inter Press Service.

US President Donald Trump looks on as India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi waves during a rally in India in February 2020. PHOTO: MANDEL NGAN/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES

By James M. Dorsey
Mar 2 2020 (IPS-Partners)

Television news summarises daily what a new world order shaped by civilisationalists entails. Writer William Gibson’s assertion that “the future is already here—it’s just not evenly distributed” is graphically illustrated in pictures of hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of desperate Syrians fleeing indiscriminate bombing in Idlib, Syria’s last rebel stronghold, with nowhere to go.

It’s also evident in video clips from the streets of Indian cities where police stand aside as Hindu nationalists target Muslims and Prime Minister Narendra Modi turns Muslims into second-class citizens; refugee camps in Bangladesh where hundreds of thousands of Rohingya who fled ethnic cleansing in Myanmar linger with no prospect of a better life; a devastating civil war in Libya fuelled by foreign powers propagating a worldview that has much in common with civilisationalism; a take-it-or-leave it US plan to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that belittles and disregards Palestinian aspirations; the Trump administration’s adoption of rules that favour immigrants from Europe rather than Africa, Asia and Latin America; and China’s brutal efforts to erase the identity and culture of its Turkic Muslim minority.

The constant TV diet of the horrors of civilisationalist-inspired violence, war, human suffering, discrimination and prejudice, coupled with fears of existential threats posed by the other, migration and globalisation, no longer sparks outrage.

“The horrors in Idlib are one face of the emerging ‘new world disorder,'” said Wall Street Journal columnist Walter Russell Mead. Underlying civilisationalist discrimination and repression that risks dislocating minority segments of populations, political violence and mass migration on unmanageable scales is the mainstreaming of racism, anti-Semitism and Islamophobia and the demonisation of liberal values that propagate basic, human and minority rights and ideologies that seek to synthesise democratic and conservative values steeped in tradition and religion, particularly Islam.

Civilisationalists and right-wing populists, including Messrs. Trump and Modi, Russian President Vladimir Putin, and Chinese President Xi Jinping, feed from similar philosophical troughs.

Political scientist Shawn W Rosenberg argues that the political structures of states that are governed by populists and/or defined by a civilisation rather than the Westphalian concept of a nation are built on the notion that people are characterised not by their ties to one another, but by being part of a nation.

Civilisationalists and populists ignore individual differences and emphasise an individual’s relationship to the nation. In their world, individuals are at the bottom of the heap in a civilisationalist state that is anchored in concepts of loyalty to the nation, and obedience to the state and its leaders who embody the will of the people.

Rosenberg warns that civilisationalists see an independent judiciary, Western concepts of rule of law, and a free press as institutions that not only obstruct accomplishment of their mission but also undermine their definition of the role and place of the individual.

To protect a nation’s integrity, civilisationalists and populists seek to shield “the people” from foreign influences, migration and the nation’s competitors—other nations. They see their nation’s power as derived from being stronger than others and doing better than others at the other’s expense.

Foreign policy is geared towards that goal rather than towards a global community that upholds principles of equality, equity and cooperation, Rosenberg asserts. Civilisationalists and populists seek economic and/or military diminution, if not domination of others, which by implication requires a rejection or hollowing out of international institutions.

The civilisationalist approach is making itself felt not only in lands governed by civilisationalists. Mainstream political leaders like French President Emmanuel Macron, widely viewed as a centrist who is attempting to counter civilisationalism and populism, are not immune to aspects of civilisationalism.

Nor is the Dutch parliamentary commission that earlier last month held controversial hearings about “unwanted influencing by unfree countries” that focused on Gulf support for Dutch Muslim communities and an unnuanced view of political Islam. The commission contemplated following in the footsteps of Austria, which has banned foreign funding for Muslim organisations. France is considering a similar ban.

Speaking in the city of Mulhouse earlier last month, Macron laid out his strategy to combat political Islam represented by the Muslim Brotherhood and Salafists, who in his words insist that Islamic law supersedes the laws of the French Republic and emphasise “Islamist separatism” and “Islamist supremacy.”

Kuwait and Qatar are funding the construction of an Islamic religious and cultural centre in Mulhouse. Qatar has backed the Brotherhood in the past and is home to Yusuf al-Qaradawi, widely viewed as one of the foremost influencers of the Brotherhood, a catch-all for a multitude of aligned Islamist groups that bicker among themselves.

“In the Republic, we cannot accept that we refuse to shake hands with a woman because she is a woman. In the Republic, we cannot accept that someone refuses to be treated or educated by someone because she is a woman. In the Republic, one cannot accept school dropouts for religious or belief reasons. In the Republic, one cannot require certificates of virginity to marry,” Macron said.

Macron’s sweeping opposition to political Islam persuaded him to support Libyan rebel leader Khalifa Haftar, who stands accused of human rights violations and has aligned himself with a Saudi-backed strand of Salafism that preaches absolute obedience to the ruler.

Haftar, who also enjoys the support of the United Arab Emirates and Egypt, two countries opposed to democracy and any expression of Islam that rejects submission to an autocrat, is seeking to wrench control of the Libyan capital of Tripoli from the United Nations-recognised Government of National Accord (GNA). The GNA is backed by Turkey and includes elements associated with the Brotherhood.

To be sure, France has had its share of jihadist violence in recent years, with deadly attacks on a French satirical newspaper, restaurants, music halls and soccer stadiums and the ramming of a truck into a crowd on the streets of Nice.

Creeping civilisationalism does not, however, by definition characterise the efforts by Europeans like Macron and others to ensure that minority communities, including Muslims, are full-fledged participants in a society that should afford them equal opportunity and rights and requires them to accommodate dominant mores.

Civilisationalist approaches, nonetheless, contribute to the failure to be agnostic in countering all forms of supremacism and racial, ethnic or religious prejudice and the lumping together of ideologies that reject democratic values with ones that seek accommodation.

It is a failure that creates the environment in which someone like white supremacist Tobias Rathjen was emboldened, earlier last month, to kill nine people with immigrant backgrounds in the German city of Hanau. German politicians accused the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party of contributing to that environment. They demanded that the party be placed under surveillance.

Countering civilisationalism is one side of the coin. Avoiding unhelpful generalisations and oversimplifications is another.

In an examination of the concept of popular sovereignty in Islamic thought, political scientist Andrew F March argues that this decade’s popular Arab revolts marked an “intellectual revolution” and “a comprehensive reformulation of Islamic political philosophy”, involving not only “reducing rulers to their proper status as agents of the people but also implicitly raising the people to the ultimate arbiters of God’s law.”

No doubt, it is a revolution that is rejected by ultra-conservative Muslims, elements of the Brotherhood and various strands of Salafism. Nonetheless, it was a revolution articulated in February 2011, days after the fall of Hosni Mubarak, by none other than Al-Qaradawi, one of the most prominent Islamist thinkers.

Quoting Martin Luther King Jr’s prediction that “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice,” Mead, the columnist, concluded that this “is hard to see from Idlib.”

He could have just as well been speaking about the dislocation and suffering in a civilisationalist-dominated world that plays out on television screens across the globe in which rights, equitable rule of law and international law are relegated to the dust bin.

Dr James M Dorsey is a senior fellow at Nanyang Technological University’s S Rajaratnam School of International Studies, an adjunct senior research fellow at the National University of Singapore’s Middle East Institute and co-director of the

University of Wuerzburg’s Institute of Fan Culture.

This story was originally published by The Daily Star, Bangladesh

The post Not a pretty picture appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Orange the World march in Ecuador. November 2019. Credit: UN Women/Johis Alarcón

By External Source
QUITO, Ecuador, Mar 2 2020 (IPS)

Inclusion of women in political processes is one of the key ingredients of sustainable peace.

Although the number of women in political office has increased worldwide over the past 25 years, progress has been slow.

As of 1 January 2020, only four countries had 50 per cent or more women parliamentarians (Rwanda, Cuba, Bolivia and United Arab Emirates).

In the Americas region, an average of 30.6 per cent of parliamentarians were women as of October 2019. In December 2019, the National Assembly of Ecuador approved a package of reforms to advance gender parity and address obstacles in the way of women candidates to elected office.

Data, analysis and recommendations by the United Nations contributed to what is considered a milestone in the country.

The United Nations and other international organizations will devote substantial time and attention in 2020 to assessing progress (or the lack of it) in increasing the participation of women in political and peace processes.

Twenty years since the adoption of Security Council resolution 1325, the consensus, backed by evidence, is that women’s participation in peacemaking and peacebuilding contributes to the quality and durability of peace after conflict.

There is also growing evidence that women’s leadership in political decision-making processes improves such processes. Adding to that body of evidence is a recent study (in Spanish) by UN Women, carried out in cooperation with the Department of Political and Peacebuilding Affairs (DPPA), on the situation in Ecuador.

The South American country ranks sixth in Latin America, out of 33 countries, in terms of the number of women legislators in the National Assembly. The number of women elected officials at the local level, however, is very low.

The UN study set out to determine, among other things, why this was so and what could be done about it. The research identifies discrimination, but also political violence against women, as reasons for the scant number of women officials in the country.

The study includes information from 154 people, including 41 women candidates and 12 focus groups in the the March 2019 elections. It focuses on the situations of discrimination and violence that women experience when choosing a political party and movement; registering their candidacies; taking office as authorities; performing their duties, and during the campaign and election process.

The findings show that violence against women candidates takes place within their families, communities and political parties. The violence is largely psychological, but it is also physical and sexual. This violence is a central barrier to women’s access and participation in politics.

Sixty-six per cent of the women interviewed said that psychological violence was the most frequent manifestation of political violence, including reputation bashing and rumor campaigns against them; making them invisible, hardly publicizing their candidacy or their governance, and isolating them, excluding them or marginalizing them; and party members or local government officials concealing information or providing false information.

One third of the women responding mentioned that they had been subjected to bullying, ridicule and public mocking, prevented from talking or expressing what they think.

The perpetrators of political gender-based violence against women were political stakeholders (leaders of political parties, electoral candidates, political party activists and electoral campaign personnel); societal stakeholders (voters, family members, community members or groups, religious or traditional leaders, media and social networks, employers and workmates); and governmental stakeholders (police, military and other governmental staff from all branches of the State, including electoral officials and personnel).

In June 2019, DPPA adopted a new Women, Peace and Security Policy calling for specific efforts to advance gender equality and the inclusion and empowerment of women, including action needed to promote women´s political participation through legislation.

An Electoral Needs Assessment Mission deployed to Ecuador in May 2019 explicitly recommended supporting the National Electoral Council to prevent and mitigate violence against women in political life.

In partnership with UN Women Ecuador, DPPA backed efforts to address political violence against women, promoting the linkages between SDG 16 on peace, justice and strong institutions and SDG 5 on gender equality.

The UN study recommended specific structural reforms to the legal and institutional framework, as well as promoting cultural change through the women’s movement and media. The study in particular urged changes to prevent, identify, denounce and punish violence against women candidates.

In August 2019, the National Electoral Council’s Democracy Institute held two public discussions in Quito and Guayaquil on the findings of the study.

The information and analysis in the study, the feedback from female politicians, and the joint work among the National Electoral Council, the Democracy Institute and UN Women, with support from DPPA, served as the basis for a draft proposal to amend the Code of Democracy.

The National Electoral Council submitted the proposal to the National Assembly in the fall of 2019. On 3 December 2019, the National Assembly approved the package of reforms, with key provisions to advance gender parity and to address violence against women candidates.

Diana Atamaint, the President of the National Electoral Council, welcomed the reforms and thanked the United Nations for its contributions through data, analysis and recommendations, to this important milestone.

The reforms include parity headings in the lists of candidates in a progressive manner: 15 per cent of women by 2021, 30 per cent in 2023, until reaching 50 per cent in 2025.

The presidential binomials must be composed of male-female or female-male candidates by 2025. In addition, provisions on political violence included specific sanctions against gender-based political violence.

*The article was first published in the online magazine of the Department of Political and Peacebuilding Affairs (DPPA)

The post Helping Advance Women’s Political Rights in Ecuador appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

International Women’s Day, March 8 2020

 

UN’s Department of Political and Peacebuilding Affairs (DPPA)*

The post Helping Advance Women’s Political Rights in Ecuador appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Lebanese women in politics. Credit: Eliane Eid

By Eliane Eid
KESERWAN, Lebanon, Mar 2 2020 (IPS)

Women were at the forefront of Lebanon’s 2019 ‘October Revolution’. Beyond the iconic images of their participation, it seems that by women linking equity in politics to the broader issues of mismanagement of corruption paid off – although activists say there is a long road ahead.

In May 2018 saw the election of six Lebanese women to parliament from 86 female candidates. Following the October 2019 uprising, that started to change the equation within the political system and under the continued pressure of the civil society, a new cabinet was formed. It included six female ministers out of 20.

From a general perspective, this seems like a win for achieving gender equality, considering that 30% of the actual cabinet is female. Lebanon, a democratic republic in the Middle East, is deemed to have acknowledged the role of women and started to include them in the political field.

However, from a Lebanese perspective, questions arise whether this achievement is a veneer to please the streets and Western donors in a crumbling country?

Rouba El Helou-Sensenig, coordinator of the gender, communications and global mobility studies at the Faculty of Law and Political Science at Notre Dame University in Lebanon, is not convinced this change is enough.

“Even though the Lebanese government signed international agreements related to advancing women’s rights and their participation in political life, I believe that the Lebanese government is not serious about reaching gender equality,” she says.

“What has been achieved so far is the result of a combination of pressure from civil society and international bodies,” she added, citing a list of reasons why women’s rights within the country are flawed.
“Today, the Lebanese people, whether they are with or against gender equality, are aware that Lebanese women do not have the right to give their citizenship to their children; that the religious courts do not rule in favour of a mother most of the time.”

She says the Kafala system promotes more injustices in Lebanese society and “family friendly-policies should be drafted and implemented” as a matter of urgency.

El Helou-Sensenig explained to IPS that Lebanon still has a labour code with a long list of articles which prohibit women from working in certain fields. Gender-based violence and sexual harassment are still not appropriately criminalised.

Two young women rest in the morning of a new day during the October 2019 Revolution, Lebanon. Credit: Blanche Eid

Historically, Lebanese women waited until 1953 to vote and run for elections – and their fundamental rights undermined until Lebanon signed the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) in 1997.

Most of the women in parliament have been elected based on their political affiliations or even traditional ones. Lebanese society has rarely seen any organic approach to promote female candidates in any election.

This year the World Economic Forum (WEF), in its 2020 report Mind the 100 Year Gap, noted that gender parity would not be attained for 99.5 years – meaning that none of the current generations will witness it. WEF’s even more sobering analysis puts the gap in the Middle East, and North Africa is 140 years. This is a challenge to NGOs and institutions fighting gender discrimination.

Once such a global advocate for gender equality and health and rights of girls and women, Women Deliver is working with five civil society organisations (CSOs) to breach the gender inequity gap in Lebanon. Its Humanitarian Advocates Program, along with the CSOs, is working toward meeting the needs of the women and children who make up 80% of the country’s more than 1 million registered refugees.

In the broader society equality will take time, but many countries still lack fundamental human rights, including Lebanon.

In February Notre Dame University held a seminar on women pursuing peace and justice and being politically active. During the seminar, Cedar Mansour, dean of the faculty of law and political science, explained that for Lebanon to make changes, women need to be more involved in policymaking and participation.

“In order to make a real difference, the change should start in the institutions. Equality should be paramount, inherited discrimination that is infesting our laws should be revolted against,” Mansour said.

By making laws and creating opportunities for women to become more involved, only then, Lebanon will have a chance to stay in the race.

Many factors stand in the way of achieving these goals, the seminar heard.

Lea Baroudi, the founding member and director of March, Lebanon, told IPS has personal experience of many of these challenges and what it takes to be successful.

“What made me continue is what I saw I was capable of doing. I had this belief that I can change. There are two struggles that affect us as women: the patriarchal attitude and the older generation mentality. The attitude of ‘you cannot do it’,” she said.

“But, to succeed, you have to fail many times, and that’s what kept me going”.

Baroudi explained that no matter what a woman will do, she will always be questioned and evaluated every step of the way. She always has to be number one in every field; otherwise, she is considered weak and powerless.

“As long as we cannot change the laws, we have a problem” she adds. Lebanon needs a shift in the understanding of gender equality and its implementation. Many factors play an essential role in shaping this culture, especially patriarchal power rooted in the Lebanese mindset.

In 2016, Lebanon created the first ministry of women’s affairs; this initiative was supposed to be a step forward to achieve political empowerment and gender equality. In the case of Lebanon, the minister of women’s affairs was a man. The idea of creating this ministry was to promote political empowerment, but a female figure in Lebanese politics is known to be more of a mediator than an action taker.

Four months have passed since the revolution started – women have taken a critical role in keeping this uprising safe and its agenda in the spotlight.

One of the current demands is to have an early election with more women involved.

Lebanon might witness a new era of female leaders, but the key issue is whether create a safe environment for Lebanese women by changing policies or they would fall in the trap of being the winning ticket for political parties.

The post What’s Needed for Real Changes for Women in Lebanese Politics? appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

International Women's Day, March 8 2020
 

The year 2020 began with a shock report, Mind the 100 Year Gap, from the World Economic Forum which projected that gender equity would take at least 100 years to realise. Women and girls play a crucial role in society. However, they bear the brunt of patriarchy, their needs often unmet by traditional humanitarian responses and their health and education needs not prioritised. In the run-up to International Women’s Day with its theme, “I am Generation Equality: Realising Women’s Rights” IPS is publishing a series of features, opinion and editorials from experts and affiliated journalists around the world on women.

The post What’s Needed for Real Changes for Women in Lebanese Politics? appeared first on Inter Press Service.

By Emina Osmandzikovic
Mar 2 2020 (IPS-Partners)

A succession of meetings over the last two months in Berlin, Geneva and Munich has signified a renewed multilateral effort to resolve the Libyan civil conflict. With 13 nations led by the UN, seeking to enforce a brittle arms embargo and comprehensive cease-fire, the concerned parties have been seeking to resolve the rivalry between the UN-recognized administration based in the capital of Tripoli and the country’s western regions with the backing of Turkey, Qatar and Italy, and the rival eastern-based government led by General Khalifa Haftar, with the support of Egypt, France, Russia and other states.

Emina Osmandzikovic

While recent diplomatic efforts have produced a 55-point road map to resolve the conflict, a potential conflict resolution is still very much dependent on the complex interplay between internal and external actors and the willingness of all parties to observe the tentative internationally-led peace effort. With the humanitarian situation in Libya deteriorating due to the country’s contracting economy, a robust peaceful solution is urgently needed.

Libya as a proxy in foreign powers’ interplay

Nine years after the initial outbreak of violence against the regime of Muammar Al-Qaddafi, Libya is still at war, marred with the refugee and migrant crises, internal strife between opposing militias, haunted by Islamist groups, and unable to govern its own territory. In addition to an over-inflated narrative of Al-Qaddafi’s prominent role in inciting violence in 2011, the aftermath of the NATO intervention in Libya[i] left a jarring environment of tribal, ethnic, religious and ideological violence that had a negative spill-over effect on the neighboring countries, the most prominent example being the case of Mali in 2013.

The 2012 parliamentary elections were initially seen as a promising development. With the turn-up rate higher than 60 percent, the elections brought to office a moderate, secular coalition government despite persistent instances of violence across the country. However, since mid-2014, the country has seen the rise and progression of two parallel governing systems, one based in Tobruk, controlling the Libyan National Army (LNA), the other based in Tripoli with the international endorsement and support of the UN and external allies, further complicating the already byzantine political landscape of post-uprising Libya.

As one of the key markers of the conflict, tribal violence has gone unaddressed under Al-Qaddafi and further exacerbated in the post-uprising Libya. While this item took a backseat on the agenda of the recent internationally-brokered peace talks, this issue remains crucial to tackling the country’s peaceful power-sharing. The inability of the dual government to impose a monopoly on violence has been further perpetuated by the 2013 Political Isolation Law, which came as an attempt to prevent members of the Qaddafi regime from holding public office during the country’s transition to peace and stable power-sharing. Moreover, most of the militias across the country have been paid by one of the two rival governments despite failed attempts to incorporate them in the budding, but still weak, national security forces. This is in addition to a massive number of weapons still in possession of private individuals.

Marginalized in the peace talks, one impeding factor that cannot be ignored is the rising influence of radical Islamists, including various branches of ISIS), aided by larger regional movements. Such groups have actively worked to undermine any progress toward peace, as stabilization is not in their interest. One particularly (unclear) has been garnering support from the local population by undertaking charity work, especially for martyrs’ families. They have positioned themselves as worthy challengers by providing socio-economic assistance where the government had previously failed. As a consequence, the Islamist agenda is becoming more attractive for Libyans, begging the question of potential legitimacy of either of the two competing governments in any post-conflict scenario.

Post-2011, the deep-seated tribal divisions that had been utilized by the Qaddafi regime have been left untouched, which has opened a Pandora’s box of difficulties for consolidating any power-sharing mechanisms and establishing peace. The tribe-state relations in Libya have been historically fluid, pragmatic and opportunistic, and the marginalization has reinforced the co-optation of some tribes, but contended to threaten the exclusion of others. The downside of tribal involvement in security provision is that protection is offered in selective manner, reproducing politics of co-optation and exclusion at local level.

The 2011 uprising led to a Libyan polity that was able to remove Qaddafi from power, yet remained short of addressing the tribe-government nexus, which was later swallowed by a vortex of militias, extremist groups and external players. This conundrum was furthered by the NATO intervention in Libya and the intense involvement of external forces in the country’s civil war, a factor that marks the conflict even today and continues to be one of the greatest impediments to any serious peace negotiation. As an antithesis to any on-ground progression toward peace, the role of external forces further complicates the situation in the country by internationalizing its conflict without tackling its domestic drivers.

The UN has been involved in the country since the beginning of the Libyan revolt in 2011. Following the NATO intervention in Libya, the United Nations Support Mission in Libya (UNSMIL), established in September of the same year, became the primary international body seeking reconciliation between various revolutionary groups. Egypt and Russia have steadily supported the House of Representatives in Tobruk in efforts to drive other groups out of Benghazi and Eastern Libya, according to some reports, while Turkey, Qatar and Sudan have supported the Tripoli-based government.

Ongoing efforts to resolve the conflict

Despite several meetings that have taken place and those that are scheduled in the old continent, the short- and medium-term future of Libya continues to hang on a thread. As the first meeting between Libya’s warring sides since early 2018, the Berlin conference failed to produce fruitful and credible results. The sequel, seen in the Munich Security Conference held in early February, merely addressed the failures of its predecessor. The most recent Geneva talks failed to even include the warring sides. These failures, especially the inability to stop the supply of weapons to various factions in Libya, indicate a lack of credible commitment by both local and international actors toward any sustainable peace efforts.

Following the latest peace effort in Geneva, the next meeting is scheduled for early March in Rome, though it remains uncertain which of the parties will attend. While the unprecedented frequency of high-level meetings indicates renewed global interest in resolving the conflicts in Libya, these platforms have also been used as an extension of proxy confrontations among various sides. For instance, the European Union has, thus far, used the UN arms embargo on Libya to cease its Operation Sophia and launch Operation EU Active Surveillance. In parallel, Turkey has used the very same political vacuum to send fighters from Syria to Libya.

These high-level discussions have largely contributed to the marginalization of previously-mentioned local processes within Libya, thereby undermining the efforts of local actors to maintain their step-by-step approach to forging the country’s peaceful future. Ensuring that no external party further complicates the on-ground conundrum has proven to be virtually impossible. In the short-term, the international community needs to work on establishing credibility and trust in order for all sides to step away from armed conflict. And in the long-term, all parties involved have to diligently and collectively work on securing a permanent cessation of hostilities as both a necessary and a sufficient condition for the resumption of Libya’s dormant political process.

The urgent need for a negotiated solution is compounded by Libya’s rapidly deteriorating economic situation, with a contributory factor in the UN’s prediction that more than 900,000 people in the country will be in need of some form of humanitarian assistance in 2020. Perhaps the right solution lies beyond regularly meeting and talking peace with the warring sides, in their presence or otherwise.

Competing external and internal factions

In an interplay between domestic forces and international actors, eastern Libya ports, controlled by the Libyan National Army (LNA) under the command of Khalifa Haftar, have shut down oil exports, resulting in national crude output being cut by more than half ahead of the Berlin summit. In addition, of the build-up to the Munich follow-up conference held on February 16-17, a period of calm was overshadowed by high-level discussions on the future of the UN arms embargo on Libya and the complicating factor of Turkish troops being deployed in the war-torn country.

As the first meeting between the warring sides since 2018, the Berlin summit left a bitter aftertaste for both the LNA Chief, Field Marshal Khalifa Haftar, and the Prime Minister of the GNA, Fayez al-Sarraj. In January 2020, as many as 11 world leaders and both warring sides of the Libyan conflict walked away with a diluted pledge to cease the flow of weapons into Libya and a promise to form a five-by-five military council to negotiate a ceasefire in the near future. In the event, the Munich follow-up meetings produced similar results to the most recent Geneva talks.

In the post-Berlin period, the international community has maintained its focus on the conflict-torn Libya despite the tensions and conflicting interests that undermined the negotiations in Geneva.

The renewed efforts to seek a solution have been galvanized by Turkey’s direct military intervention in the conflict. Even as Berlin prepared for the meeting, the UN called for an end to foreign intervention in Libya. Yet Turkey announced in January that it is sending troops to Libya in support of the GNA. The decision was backed by the deployment of hundreds of Syrian fighters to bolster the GNA forces’ efforts, envisioned to work in tandem with the Turkish forces. Around the time of the Munich conference, however, additional reports surfaced that Turkey sent fighters to fight in Libya, a move that underscored the extent to which the government led by Recep Tayyip Erdogan was prepared to disregard the UN-led principle of non-involvement. Although Erdogan stated that Turkish forces were involved in Libya for training purposes only, the intervention suggests that Turkey wishes to further assert its power in the Eastern Mediterranean in order to overcome its relative diplomatic isolation following recent agreements between Greece, Cyprus, Egypt and Israel on exploring local hydrocarbons reserves.

The announcement served as a prelude to ceasefire negotiations and a mini-summit between the GNA, supported by Turkey, Qatar and Italy, and the LNA, supported by Egypt, Saudi Arabia, France and Russia, that took place on January 13 in Moscow, reflecting the fact that Russia increasingly sees Libya as one of the focal points of its interest in the region. President Vladimir Putin’s interest in the conflict stems from his ambition to assert Russia’s interests in the Mediterranean as part of a strategic push-and-pull with the Western powers and a conviction that Russia’s status necessitates a say in the outcome of the Libyan civil war. However, the January talks in Moscow prematurely ended when Haftar requested more time for consideration, subsequently leaving Russia without a concrete agreement and signaling to Moscow and other capitals that Haftar’s objectives might greatly differ from their agendas.

With no concrete steps on the horizon, the reiteration of the urgency of obtaining peace in Libya was at the heart of the Munich debate. Despite the fact that the Berlin summit hosted all the key players of the Libyan conflict, including the Arab League and the African Union in an attempt to prevent the marginalization of Libya’s immediate neighbours, the ultimate conclusion did not progress from previous efforts. Moreover, the voices of both the Arab League and the African Union have gone unheard amid renewed tensions and the latest spill of weapons into Libya, despite prominent statements from the region repeatedly seeking consensus-based political arrangements.

The unofficial ceasefire declared by Turkey and Russia, who support the GNA and Haftar respectively, has reduced active fighting to Libya’s capital since it went into force on January 12; however, no official document detailing the ceasefire has been signed. Under the auspices of the UN special envoy for Libya, Ghassan Salame, Germany was hoping to finalize a political roadmap agreement during the Berlin summit in Europe’s latest and most concrete attempt to stabilize Libya; however, no concrete follow-up has been negotiated as of February 27th.

Viable future avenues

While the UN is seeking a step away from foreign interference in Libya, focusing on transforming the unofficial ceasefire into an official agreement with monitoring and separation of rival groups and repositioning of heavy weapons, the most recent wave of geopolitical focus on Libya paints a different picture. Turkey has sent troops to Libya, followed by a Russian-led ceasefire negotiation that was left open-ended, as a prelude to the Berlin summit and Europe’s increased involvement in Libya’s future. In negotiating the ceasefire and Libya’s post-conflict peace landscape, efforts to build a new Libya should take into account the country’s strong tribal character and should look into integrating tribal forces in a manner that favors the central state project while simultaneously allowing for true representation and inclusion of all local and tribal entities.

In the long-term, an improvement of the current situation in Libya is direly needed, especially in terms of the rule of law, the socio-economic sector; and infrastructure. Politically, such a leap toward peace could be achieved through federalism and a step-by-step approach in addressing the country’s system of dual governance and underlying tribal issues, that could further aid both national and international efforts in containing armed opposition and re-securing entire Libya’s territory.

Ultimately, securing Libya’s peace process will be a tedious and fickle process. The international community and the parties to the conflict have to stick to the step-by-step approach to tackling each issue that is undermining the credibility of actors and viability of a peaceful status quo. In the short-term, all sides will have to jointly and in good faith work on establishing and maintaining the credibility of intention and trust. In concrete terms, abiding by the UN arms embargo on Libya may not necessitate the cessation of other measures, which is what the EU had done with Operation Sophia to launch Operation EU Active Surveillance. This will also demand greater involvement by other parties as well, which have thus far been seen as marginal to the negotiations, including the African Union, with a stronger pledge to adhere to the UN embargo. In the long-run, such efforts will ensure a permanent cessation of hostilities within Libya along with a greater degree of certainty of not reverting to lawlessness.

[i] Kuperman, Alan J. “A model humanitarian intervention? Reassessing NATO’s Libya campaign.” International Security 38.1 (2013): 105-136.

Author’s profile: http://trendsresearch.org/expert/emina-osmandzikovic/

This article was first published by TRENDS Research & Advisory.

The post What ails Libya’s peace process? appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Credit: UN News/Li Zhang

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Mar 2 2020 (IPS)

The deadly coronavirus COVID-19, which is spreading across China, Japan, South Korea, Iran, Italy, the Philippines– along with new cases in Asia, Western Europe and the Middle East– has claimed one of its first casualties at the United Nations.

The annual inter-governmental meeting of the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW), due to take place March 9-20, is being described as dead on arrival (DOA).

But it is still likely to take place as scheduled— minus the participation of over 5,000 to 6,000 delegates from overseas.

The 11-day meeting, the largest single gathering of women delegates from 193 countries, is being significantly downgraded because of the threat of COVID-19.

The United States, meanwhile, has postponed its own summit of world leaders of the 10-member Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) due to take place in Las Vegas March 14.

“As the international community works together to defeat the novel coronavirus, the United States, in consultation with ASEAN partners, has made the difficult decision to postpone the ASEAN leaders meeting previously scheduled for mid-March,” a senior administration official was quoted as saying.

Ma.Victoria (Mavic) Cabrera Balleza, Chief Executive Officer, Global Network of Women Peacebuilders, told IPS the 64th session of the upcoming CSW session should not be cancelled because of the outbreak of coronavirus disease — but its methodology should be modified.

“It is a very important event that brings a big momentum to our advocacy for women’s rights and gender equality, especially this year as we are commemorating the 25th anniversary of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action, the most comprehensive global women’s rights agenda,” she pointed out.

In light of the outbreak of coronavirus disease, the UN Secretary-General’s suggestion to the Chair of the CSW that Member States consider amending the format and conduct of the session is a good idea, she said.

“However, I don’t think it should be limited to New York-based delegations only. The valued-added of CSW sessions lie on the huge participation of women’s rights activists and gender experts from around the world,” said Cabrera Balleza.

Such strong participation allows for discussions on diverse topics that impact on women’s enjoyment of their rights in political, economic, and social arenas, she noted.

UN Spokesperson Stephane Dujarric told reporters February 28 that given the fast evolving situation regarding COVID-19– and the need to balance the UN’s critical work and public health concerns—UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres has suggested to the Bureau of the Committee on the Status of Women that they hold a scaled down meeting, limiting participation to New York based representation.

This, in effect, would bar delegates coming from their home countries preventing the spread of the virus through travel.

The limited participation, Dujarric pointed out, would still enable the CSW to adopt decisions and implement its mandate.

The final decision, which is likely to be aligned with the recommendation made by Guterres, will be taken by the 193 member states later this week.

Emergency room nurses wear face masks at Second People’s Hospital of Shenzhen in China. Credit: Man Yi/ UN News

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said his first priority “is to protect our homeland. We have imposed prudent travel restrictions and strong travel advisories to slow the spread of the virus in the United States.”

This could, in effect, prevent women delegates from some the US blacklisted countries from entering the US and participating in the CSW session.

Dr. Nancy Messonnier, director of the US National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, said at a news briefing February 24: “It’s not so much of a question if this will happen anymore but rather more of a question of exactly when this will happen.”

She said that cities and towns should plan for “social distancing measures,” like dividing school classes into smaller groups of students or closing schools altogether. Meetings and conferences may have to be canceled, she said. And businesses should arrange for employees to work from home.

Purnima Mane, a former UN Assistant Secretary-General and Deputy Executive Director of the UN Population Fund (UNFPA), told IPS the CSW session, like in the case of other large meetings and conferences, is under serious consideration on the part of the organizers of canceling the meeting due to the growing epidemic of the coronavirus COVID-19.

“As an advocate of women’s issues, I will of course be disappointed if the meeting is not held as planned but as a public health professional as well, I would advocate for caution.”

She said the situation of the virus is evolving rapidly and merits a careful assessment of the risks of any global meeting.

The meeting is next week and countries remain at different stages of preparedness to deal with the epidemic, said Mane, a former President and CEO of Pathfinder International.

She pointed out that the World Health Organization (WHO) has consistently advised against the application of travel restrictions.

However, several countries have imposed restrictions nonetheless, such as quarantine, visa restrictions or denial of entry of passengers.

In others there is far stricter screening of passengers on arrival and discrimination against citizens from certain regions of the world, even though the epidemic has spread to every continent except Antarctica, and cases are growing on a daily basis, she declared.

Cabrera Balleza told IPS: If most CSW participants will not be able to travel to New York, virtual conferences can be organized.

However, UN country teams and governments in developing and conflict-affected countries should open up their offices so grassroots women’s rights activists can go there, use the internet and participate in virtual conferences.

The UN should also provide transportation and interpretation support during virtual conferences, she noted.

As WHO has declared a global emergency over the coronavirus and has been lending support to China and other countries, the UN HQ in NY should ensure that it is taking all necessary precautions and its operations are not in any way contributing to the spread of the disease.

There are a number of logistical challenges in organizing a modified CSW session but they are not insurmountable.

If the UN and Member States are truly committed to women’s rights, gender equality, and women’s empowerment, they will mobilize necessary resources to ensure that the CSW session in 2020, will contribute to making this a pivotal year for the accelerated realization of women’s empowerment and gender equality for all women and girls around the world, said Cabrera Balleza.

The other key concern, she said, is the lack of “care planning” if participants catch the virus.

“What if they get sick when they are already in New York? Are there enough facilities that are equipped to handle coronavirus cases? Let alone the cost of medical care in NY. What if they get sick on the way back to their countries? Not having immediate access to care when traveling is a big problem,” she cautioned.

Mane told IPS that in a situation in which many countries are not in a state of topnotch preparedness for dealing with this epidemic, it is judicious to wait to hold a global meeting.

“And in a situation in which some countries are imposing travel restrictions despite WHO advice, it is obvious that not everybody who wants and should be present at this important meeting will be able to participate in person, anyway, reducing the impact of the CSW meeting.”

She said that each of the intergovernmental meetings is expected to be assessed on a case-by-case basis depending on the evolving situation.

But since the CSW is the first major intergovernmental meeting of 2020, the decision will undeniably impact other intergovernmental meetings to follow.

For the CSW, taking into consideration the pragmatic and public health considerations, it makes sense to give countries more time for building preparedness and to permit the presence of more delegates at the CSW.

It might be optimal either to organize country level meetings to feed into global recommendations for the CSW or an outright postponement of the date, so that when the CSW is held, it is a truly global event. In view of the vital subject of women’s status being dealt at the CSW, it would be prudent and ethical to do so.

UN Spokesperson Dujarric said the advice given by the Secretary-General is based on inputs from the Senior Emergency Policy Team and very close consultations between the U.N. Medical Services and the WHO.

“Forthcoming intergovernmental meetings at Headquarters and elsewhere will be assessed on a case-by-case basis, taking into account the specificities of the meetings and evolving circumstances,” he added.

The writer can be contacted at thalifdeen@aol.com

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Members of the Alliance for Food Health, a collective of organisations and academics, called in Mexico for better regulation of advertising of junk food aimed at children and of food and beverage labelling, during the launch of the report “A childhood hooked on obesity” in Mexico City. Credit: Emilio Godoy/IPS

By N Chandra Mohan
NEW DELHI, Feb 28 2020 (IPS)

Paradoxically, when the number of people suffering from undernourishment or hunger has risen in the world, so, too, have those afflicted by overweight and obesity. Latin America’s second largest economy, Mexico, for instance, is currently battling one of the world’s largest epidemics of obesity and its success is bound to be emulated by countries of the South. The numbers involved are staggering. The director-general of the National Institute of Public Health, Dr Juan Rivera told the Financial Times that “seventy five percent of adults and 35 percent of children and adolescents are overweight or obese… The State has a duty to protect public health.”

Mexico’s public health crisis is reflected in the third edition of the Food Sustainability Index (FSI) – based on the pillars of sustainable agriculture, food loss/waste and nutritional challenges — developed by the Economist Intelligence Unit and the Barilla Center for Food & Nutrition in Italy. Nutritional challenges in particular are tracked by several indicators like life quality (prevalence of malnourishment, micronutrient deficiency), life expectancy (prevalence of overnourishment, impact on health) and dietary patterns (diet composition, number of people per fast food restaurant and quality of policy response to dietary patterns).

Out of a scale of 0 to 100, where 100 represents the greatest progress towards meeting a performance indicator, Mexico registered low scores of 13.9 on the prevalence of overnourishment or overweight that ranks it 61st out of 67 countries tracked by the FSI.The share of those who are overweight among adults and children are also broadly in line with what was indicated by Dr Rivera. Mexican diets have high levels of sugar with a score of 10.3 that places it among the bottom five out of the 67 countries as per this indicator. The score for the number of people per fast food restaurant is also rather low at 1.9.

N Chandra Mohan

However, Mexico is in the top five countries for its policy response to dietary patterns. The country now plans to have a compulsory labeling system in place by March whereby food and beverage products sold in the country will have warnings that they “contain too much sugar” or “too many calories” or “too much fat”. In 2014, this country imposed taxes on sugar in foods like soft drinks and junk food. But this taxation route has had a limited impact in curbing consumption of these items as obesity has acquired epidemic proportions. Non-communicable diseases in the population have also increased like diabetes, hypertension and heart disease.

The proximate causes of this obesity epidemic stem from more and more Mexicans living in urban areas with economic development. Only a fifth now resides in rural areas. Urbanisation in turn has been associated with shifts in dietary patterns from traditional foods including fruits and vegetables towards low-cost energy-dense foods that are high in sugar and deficient in micronutrients. Metropolitan life styles are also sedentary than living in the rural countryside. With the consumption of more fast food and sugary drinks, the energy imbalance between calories consumed and calories expended is manifested in overweight and obesity.

To combat obesity, a welcome factor of change is that local communities, especially in Mexico’s countryside, are also getting involved in this effort. Last year, IPS reported the efforts of the non-governmental Amaranth Network in the Mixteca region, in the southern state of Oaxaca, to grow a native crop amaranth alongside traditional corn and beans. The inclusion of amaranth with other high protein seeds helps to significantly improve the nutritional quality of diets. The cultivation of this crop has produced benefits such as the organisation of farmers, processors and consumers and much-needed public funding to scale up this laudable initiative.

In contrast to Mexico, elsewhere in the South – in vast parts of sub-Saharan Africa and Asia like India — the problem is much grimmer with the paradox of undernourishment or hunger coexisting with obesity. This double burden of malnutrition co-exists within countries, within communities and also within households according to Dr Raghav Gaiha, Professorial Research Fellow, University of Manchester. The excess energy from low-cost energy-dense food can affect children and adults within the same household differently: The children may use up the excess energy and remain underweight while adults are likely to become overweight.

In India, for instance, the ranks of the hungry are also set to further rise with domestic food prices (including global as well) going through the roof amidst a sharp slowdown in overall economic growth. This can constrain budgetary resources for vastly stepping up outlays for nutrition initiatives for children through schemes like the Integrated Child Development Services and Mid-day Meals Programme. The provision of healthy food items like millets and pulses through the nationwide public distribution system is also necessary. The prevalence of hunger with rising obesity calls for best practices to be shared within the South.

N Chandra Mohan is an economics and business commentator

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Civil protection volunteers engaged in health checks at the "Milano Malpensa" airport. This week a joint team between WHO and the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control arrived in Rome to review the public health measures put in place to prevent the spread of the coronavirus. Courtesy: Dipartimento Protezione Civile

By Samira Sadeque
UNITED NATIONS, Feb 28 2020 (IPS)

Just a month since the World Health Organization declared the Coronavirus a public health emergency, it is now taking steps to contain misinformation being spread about the disease. Globally, there have been more than 82,000 cases of Coronavirus, which has claimed 2,800 lives — the majority being in China, where the disease has been traced to. 

On Thursday, United Nations Secretary General António Guterres reiterated at a talk in New York that it’s not yet a pandemic but urged people to practice caution. 

“We are not yet in a pandemic, but there is a clear risk there and the window of opportunity to avoid it is narrowing,” he said, adding that governments must do everything possible to stop the transmission and to do it now. He also expressed his concern about countries in the developing world that “lack the capacity” to address the massive scale of the issue. 

“This is still the moment to ask for countries to contain the disease and to do everything possible to contain the disease because we’re not yet in an irreversible pandemic,” he said. 

He urged people to avoid stigmatising the illness, and to “have a human rights approach to the way this disease is fought”.

However, as health officials around the world continue to gear up for the disease, which seemingly has no cure, there is another aspect of the crisis to be dealt with: misinformation about it spreading on the internet. 

David P. Fidler, a senior fellow for cybersecurity and global health at the non-profit think tank, Council on Foreign Relations, detailed the issue of misinformation and the harm it does during a health emergency like this. 

“Disinformation threatens health because it undermines confidence in the underlying science, questions the motivations of health professionals, politicises health activities, and creates problems for responses to disease challenges,” he wrote in 2019 about how disinformation during an Ebola outbreak was a major concern. 

He went on to explain that it has historic roots: often, illnesses are mistakenly associated or linked to immigrants or a foreign country in order to perpetuate xenophobic sentiments.

“Spreading misinformation about diseases was a tactic of disinformation campaigns by governments before the social media era,” he wrote. 

IPS caught up with Fidler on how misinformation in the current situation can exacerbate the crisis:

Inter Press Service (IPS): Usually during a crisis like this (or in the past during Ebola or SARS), what is the main challenge in containing misinformation being spread?

David Fidler (DF): In past outbreaks, two factors typically converged to produce problems from information and misinformation: uncertainty about the outbreak on the part of national and international health officials making efforts to address the disease, and lack of trust in the population in the information provided by official sources. These factors appeared in disease outbreaks before the advent of social media, and the scale and intensity of information and misinformation circulating on social media platforms exacerbates the two factors noted above.

In addition, the ease with which misinformation can be spread and amplified on social media has become yet another factor public health officials have to address in dealing with outbreaks. Social media even makes communicating accurate information more difficult. I have seen, across my Twitter feed, a cacophony of attempts to share information that has frustrated experts trying to identify and share the latest information about COVID-19.

 

IPS: What leads to misinformation during times like this?

DF: In the past, people with political agendas would exploit the fear that serious outbreaks create to produce and spread misinformation. Such misinformation in essence weaponised the outbreak for other political purposes. In the age of social media, this “weaponisation” of outbreaks for political purposes has become, for lack of a better term, industrialised by state and non-state actors exploiting the potential of social media to spread misinformation on a scale and at a speed never seen before, especially in the public health context.

 

IPS: What, in your opinion, is currently the biggest misunderstanding about the Coronavirus?

DF: We are seeing, I think, a “triple burden” in the information space concerning COVID-19. First, international and national health officials are struggling to communicate information concerning a new virus about which much is not known.

However, at the international level, WHO has made the information climate worse by praising China’s response even though much of what China has done in trying to address the outbreak in its territory is not consistent with WHO’s recommendations on the outbreak or WHO’s emphasis in the past on responses to outbreaks that do not unnecessarily restrict trade, travel, and human rights. WHO’s credibility, I think, has taken a massive hit. At the national level, we see, for example, the current circus in the U.S. government about communicating to the American people about the outbreak, and I imagine other national governments are also scrambling to get the “messaging” right.

What’s astonishing to me, having studied outbreaks for nearly three decades, is that this communication problem continues to flummox national and international health officials just about every single time–so that “lesson learned” is apparently never actually learned.

Second, we are seeing the weaponisation of the outbreak in the misinformation being circulated for different political purposes. For me, this outbreak is different in that the weaponisation has connected to the change in geopolitics, with the rise of China and worries about China’s growing power and influence sharpening and broadening criticism of China’s response to the outbreak. Here, unlike Ebola in Africa, we have the outbreak entangled with the increasing rawness of balance of power politics between the United States and China.

Third, we have the social media effect where state and non-state actors are spreading misinformation widely and rapidly in a context where no government or international organisation has any effective policy responses to address this problem.

 

IPS: What is your recommendation to the following sections of society to do their role in making sure misinformation doesn’t spread:

 

DF: Policymakers: The touchstones of effective communication during outbreaks have been studied and promulgated frequently, so follow the playbook, including making the most up-to-date information available with great frequency across media outlets in ways accessible to people, and include in the information advice on any steps individuals can take to protect themselves and their families. Rinse and repeat, again and again as the outbreak evolves. The information/misinformation environment is more competitive now because of social media, but the basic principles of effective communication in a crisis context remain valid even amidst more noise.

 

DF: Institutions such as schools and workplaces: School and company leaders should monitor information being released by the U.S. Centres for Disease Control and translate that information into actionable steps and plans for the school context and for specific workplace contexts. Again, be fast, frequent, and user-friendly with the information that school and company leaders provide to students and employees.

 

Individuals: Do not rely solely on social media for information about the COVID-19 outbreak and how it might affect you and your family. Visit and re-visit the information provided by the U.S. Centres for Disease Control and translate that information into your individual and family circumstances. 

• In order to tackle the misinformation concerns, WHO launched its EPI-WIN initiative, which aims to provide users with timely and accurate information while also filtering through “infodemics”, which the organisation describes as “excessive amount of information about a problem that makes it difficult to identify a solution”. 

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The delegation visit a water pumping and desalination station in Wajir County, constructed under a Public-Private Partnership between the Government of Kenya, USAID, the Swiss Government, World Vision, Boreal Light and the Millennium Water Alliance.

By PRESS RELEASE
NAIROBI, Kenya, Feb 28 2020 (IPS-Partners)

From 26 February to 28 February 2020, the United Nations in Kenya supported a joint visit to the Frontier Counties of Kenya.

The objective of this mission was to allow delegates from the Government of Kenya, United Nations, and development partners to identify opportunities and innovation beyond what any individual stakeholder can accomplish, assess Public- Private Partnerships at county level, and ultimately promote socio-economic transformation in historically marginalised counties.

The mission was conducted as part on ongoing efforts by the Ministry of Devolution, Arid and Semi Arid Lands ( ASALs) and the UN system to build on the existing United Nations Development Assistance Framework (UNDAF) 2018-2022 which responds to the clarion call by the United Nations Secretary General, Mr Antonio Guterres of “leaving no one behind and reaching the furthest behind first”.

The thematic focus of the mission is on access to water. Specifically, to facilitate both high-level dialogues and visits to development initiatives related to water which have the potential to advance the Kenyan development agenda, the Big 4 and enabling environment, with the CIDPs as its context and the realization of Vision 2030 and MTP III and 2010 Constitution asserting Kenya towards Shared Prosperity.

Analysis shows that a deficit of water impacts negatively on pastoralism and agriculture. Combined with the egregious effects of climate change, scarcity of water is one of the root causes of conflict and a driver of extreme poverty, leading over into degraded health, livelihoods, opening to other negative trends, radicalization, criminality; and forced migration. Water is also one of the most important inputs for industries and economic development: it can have positive impact, unlocking risk capital in SMEs if it is available, or a negative impact if it is scarce.

The development initiatives visited during the mission, which were located in the counties of West Pokot, Turkana, Wajir, Garissa, Isiolo and Marsabit, had common themes of targeted intervention and local ownership. Specifically, these initiatives were conceived to bring water and other essential services to historically marginalized communities and areas, and members of those same communities were supported to undergo technical training to both develop and maintain them.

This visit follows a previous high-level mission organised by the UN and FCDC in 2018, which had a thematic focus of Realization of the SDGs in the Counties which informed the current UNDAF.

The mission was also able to see first-hand the positive effects of devolution.

President Uhuru Kenyatta in his State of the Union address in 2019 said, “ There is No Turning Back on Devolution. The System is sound and has proven its value and contribution to national development. Its potential and value will be greatly enhanced by focus on service delivery, prioritizing development expenditure, unwavering commitment to integrity and anti-corruption, and strict commitment to value for money in procurement. Devolution will, no doubt, transform our Nation.”

Led by the Cabinet Secretary of Devolution and ASALs Hon Eugene Wamalwa and the United Nations Resident Coordinator to Kenya Siddharth Chatterjee, this joint mission had wide representation from the Government of Kenya, the FCDC secretariat, the Council of Governors, the United Nations Country Team in Kenya as well as Ambassadors/High Commissioners/senior representatives from the missions of Norway, India, Russian Federation, Portugal, Switzerland, Netherlands, European Union to Kenya, the United Kingdom and Canada.

The post Government of Kenya, United Nations and Foreign Missions to Kenya Visit the Frontier Counties of Kenya appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Souylemane (second to the right) and other technicians gather to learn about tree care.

By Lindsay Cobb and Ashleigh Burgess
SILVER SPRING, Maryland, USA, Feb 28 2020 (IPS)

Souylemane Samb sits under a crowded tent on a hot Senegalese day. He wears a canvas vest with Trees for the Future printed across the back.

Despite his dark sunglasses, his expression is easy to read – the tall 43-year-old is smiling contentedly as he waves a flag that says “Kaffrine 2 Graduation Day.”

Souylemane is at a graduation for more than 200 farmers celebrating the completion of a four-year agroforestry program with Trees for the Future (TREES). Using what TREES calls the Forest Garden Approach for the last four years, the farmers have successfully planted themselves out of hunger and poverty.

Souylemane is an Assistant Technician for TREES, his job is to work with farmers and help them become experts in agroforestry and regenerative agriculture. Ultimately helping them succeed as farmers in a region and climate where farmers don’t typically fare well.

As he presents diplomas to graduating farmers, Souylemane remembers being in their position. In 2018 Souylemane graduated from the TREES program himself, after joining the program in 2015.

Obstacles in Farming

“Before joining TREES, my land was not well organized. I planted things randomly and with no real knowledge of how best to do it or what kinds of crops to pick,” he recalls. “My soil was also degraded from years of chemical use.”

A farmer all his life, Souylamene points out that farmers like him were never set up for success. Despite practicing agriculture for centuries, he says farming has never really evolved in a way that benefits both the land and the farmer.

“Farmers want to do the work but they don’t always know how to do the work, how long things take to grow, or seasonal and market planning.”

Recalling some of the biggest challenges he faced before implementing the Forest Garden Approach, Souylemane says deforestation is rampant in Senegal because farmers are forced to cut down what little tree cover they have to try to protect what little crop production they can achieve.

“Now live fencing saves money, so we have no more worries that animals will get in. The principal aspect and foundation of Forest Gardens is protection! It’s the number one most important thing! And now we feel our land can flourish, and all the life that comes with it can flourish, too.”

Seed supply was another major obstacle for him.

“There were many seasons that I unknowingly bought bad seeds from market. I spent 50,000 CFA (about $100 USD), that was a third of my entire earnings for the year back then. I spent all that money and nothing came up. Nothing came of it!”

Souylemane and fellow technician Namang visit Forest Garden farmers throughout the region by motorcycle.

A Reliable Support System

In late 2014, he met a TREES technician while in town. Although he says he was weary of another international development organization in his community, he decided to attend an informational meeting to learn more about the program.

“We’ve had many interactions with organizations trying to help us, but none has spoken truth like Trees for the Future,” he says today. “Everyone in Kaffrine, all of the Forest Garden farmers, say they have never seen a project as successful as this.”

Souylemane joined the program at the beginning of 2015 and soon began learning everything about agroforestry from his Forest Garden Training manual and the TREES technicians.

“Training has brought me so much knowledge! I learned about agroforestry and its importance for making farms better, faster,” he says. “I learned how to graft, how to organize my field, tree pruning, nursery care, composting, how to save and select seeds.”

Souylemane also participated in TREES’ water initiative. In semi-arid Senegal, farmers like must have a reliable source of water, but with such little tree cover, wells can regularly dry up.

To break this cycle of poor groundwater recharge and rapid evaporation, TREES launched its Loxo Loxo program in 2019, connecting farmers’ land to a central water source in town. Souylemane says the water initiative helped improve his land even more.

Finding Success in the Forest Garden

Where before, he was growing meager crops of chili peppers, lettuce, and okra, Souylamene now proudly describes a completely different world.

“When you open the door you see two piles of compost, tons of big trees that are pruned properly, crops growing in the alleys between trees. We have a water spigot now and so many varieties of vegetable crops. You can hear the sounds of birds, bees, wind that comes and passes over the garden… peace only.”

“But it’s a lot of work to get to that point!” he adds.

A lot of work that he says was most certainly worth it. Today, Souylemane, his wife, and their five kids are living healthier and more stable lives. With diverse foods in their garden he says their nutrition has improved greatly and they can now make a consistent living from their harvests.

“I have things to sell at the market now, before I did not. I would go and buy things but I rarely had anything I could sell there. Now I bring my vegetables and I make money.”

A Bright Future

Often, Forest Garden farmers report using their newfound income to pay for their children’s school fees. With his Forest Garden income and his salary as a TREES technician, Souylamene can afford to send his younger children to school and his older daughters to university where they are studying business and law.

As a technician, Souylemane says he enjoys being able to help other farmers change their land and lives.

“I’ve never seen a program so successful that is reflective, well-conceived, that really takes farmers out of poverty. TREES accompanies them sustainably through all of these steps and then that’s it, they have the skills they need for the rest of their lives!”

When he comes home from a day of traveling to other farmers’ Forest Gardens, he says his favorite thing to find in his own garden is tomatoes.

“Tomatoes! Sometimes I will just eat them raw with a little salt. Or my wife will pick some lettuce fresh from the garden and we make a salad with dressing and dinner is ready.”

The Kaffrine 2 graduation marks five years since Souylamene joined Trees for the Future and became a Forest Garden farmer. He is one of 75,000+ farmers to have joined the Forest Garden Training Program.

Learn more about Trees for the Future’s work with smallholder farmers, and visit their Forest Garden Training Center to learn how to implement regenerative agriculture practices.

The post Senegal Farmer Succeeds with Regenerative Agriculture & Begins Teaching Others appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Lindsay Cobb, is Marketing & Communications Manager, Trees for the Future (TREES) and
Ashleigh Burgess is Deputy Director of Programs, TREES

The post Senegal Farmer Succeeds with Regenerative Agriculture & Begins Teaching Others appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Demonstrators in the neighborhood of Cotiza, on the north side of Caracas. Credit: Courtesy of EfectoCocuyo.com

By External Source
CARACAS/BOGOTA/BRUSSELS, Feb 28 2020 (IPS)

Power in Venezuela is slipping away from state institutions and concentrating in the hands of criminals, guerrillas and other non-state actors. Any new negotiations between government and opposition must consider how to defang these armed irregulars, who might otherwise scuttle an eventual settlement.

What’s new? Political turmoil, economic ruin and heightening tensions with neighbouring countries have furnished non-state armed groups, including guerrillas from Colombia, criminal syndicates, paramilitaries and pro-government vigilantes known as colectivos, with the means to expand their influence and presence across Venezuela.

Why does it matter? Armed groups filling the vacuum left by a government determined to resist domestic opposition, international pressure and mounting sanctions pose a threat of escalating violence in the absence of negotiations, while also entailing major risks of sabotage in the wake of any eventual political settlement.

What should be done? These groups’ threat to peace must be contained, and that imperative should feature prominently in future talks aimed at settling the crisis. Those negotiations should include Venezuela’s military. Demobilising each armed group will require a tailored approach, but most should aim for deals securing acquiescence in a comprehensive political settlement.

As Venezuela’s turmoil deepens with no end in sight, power is seeping out of formal state institutions and pooling in the hands of various armed irregulars. Behind this phenomenon are diverse causes.

As Venezuela’s turmoil deepens with no end in sight, power is seeping out of formal state institutions and pooling in the hands of various armed irregulars. Behind this phenomenon are diverse causes.

The ceaseless struggle for supremacy between President Nicolás Maduro’s government and opposition forces has turned state organs into partisan bodies that either solicit support from armed groups or overlook them.

Economic ruin brought about by government mismanagement – now worsened by U.S. sanctions – has pushed numerous Venezuelans into illicit livelihoods and the orbit of organised crime.

Meanwhile, the country’s long, porous borders have allowed Colombian guerrillas to gain footholds deep inside the country. The armed groups are far from identical, but all are ready to use violence and territorial control to further their goals, and any might sabotage a settlement that Venezuela’s competing political forces eventually agree to.

Defanging them will require approaches tailored to each outfit, but the main goal should be to demobilise fighters and seek their buy-in to a deal that ends Venezuela’s collective agony.

Guerrillas from Colombia, loyalist pro-government militias known as colectivos, paramilitaries and a catalogue of criminal gangs stand out as the main non-state armed groups now operating in Venezuela. Their methods, goals and affinities vary hugely.

Some profess ideological motivations while others pursue naked criminal profit. Some work in alleged collusion with ruling elites, while others purportedly have ties to opposition elites. The opposition led by Juan Guaidó and its international allies, now numbering close to 60 countries, accuse all but the right-wing paramilitaries of complicity with state security forces, or even with the high military command and political elites within chavismo, the movement named after the late president, Hugo Chávez.

But the exact nature of the ties between these armed groups and the state, and the mutual benefits that arise from them, are not always easy to identify. Skirmishes between state and non-state actors acting in supposed coordination have exposed the high levels of mistrust that divide them.

Formal talks between the government and opposition are moribund, but if and when they restart, they should urgently address the questions of how to reduce the armed irregulars’ influence and how to stop them from scuttling agreements that the sparring Venezuelan sides may reach. As the types of armed groups present different problems, each will need its own remedy.

Dealing with Colombian guerrillas will require intensive cooperation between Caracas and Bogotá, ideally as part of efforts in the latter capital to end the insurgencies through negotiations aimed at general demobilisation.

Some colectivos may be persuaded to reassume their historical role as mediators between state and society. As for criminal elements, several of them may also accept deals whereby they avoid prosecution or face reduced sentences in exchange for giving up arms.

Experience in other Latin American countries shows that such tactics, while not always easy to swallow, are more likely to help the Venezuelan state reassert its writ with a minimum of additional bloodshed.

This story was originally published by International Crisis Group, You can find the full report here.

 

The post A Glut of Arms: Curbing the Threat to Venezuela from Violent Groups appeared first on Inter Press Service.

View of the Italian Pyramid, at 5,050 m a.s.l. located 20 minutes awayfrom Lobouche, Nepal. Credit: Valentina Gasbarri

By Valentina Gasbarri
MILAN, Italy, Feb 27 2020 (IPS)

 
Hello! Are you Italian?
No, I’m from Nepal.
Ops.

Kaji Bista is the staff manager of the Ev-K2-CNR’s innovative Pyramid International Laboratory/Observatory (known as the Italian Pyramid) at 5,050 m a.s.l. located in Lobouche.

He usually does not welcome trekkers, unless they stay overnight in the Nepali style lodge, located in the base of the building.

When planning the Everest Base Camp Trek, the last thing one would expect to find is a Pyramid that made it to the Guinness Book of World Records in 1998 for being the highest point in the world.

Covered with Perspex solar panels and sitting atop a low-stone building, the Everest Pyramid is about 20 minutes away from Lobuche. Crossing the glacier and a narrow lunar valley, the route reveals the vista of a past, glorious and visionary research center.

Our curiosity opened up a way for me to enter the forbidden area – entry reserved only for researchers. Inside the Pyramid there were a number of warm, clean, western-style rooms, crammed with scientific equipment, advanced lab machinery and paper files. Italian electronics labels and stickers were everywhere.

“Look – it’s just like being at home!” I said.
“I’m Italian and here it’s so strange to be in a place thats familiar, thousands of kilometers away”.

Kaji smiled, maybe not surprised anymore by my obvious reaction.

He then narrated the story of the Italian research center.
It all started more than 30 years ago, when in 1986 an American expedition declared K2 was taller than the Everest. It was the beginning of a mountaineering competition between Italy and the US.

Agostino Da Polenza and Prof. Ardito Desio, both researchers could not resist this challenge and, in 1987, they combined their scientific and mountaineering knowledge to launch the “Ev-K2-CNR Project” in collaboration with the Italian National Research Council (CNR).

They organized expeditions which put mountaineering at the service of science and re-measured both mountains using traditional survey techniques and innovative GPS (Global Positioning System) measurements.

Not only did they confirm Everest’s title but they also set the standard for altitudemeasurements to come.

Two years later, the two researchers founded the Ev-K2-CNR Committee to continue promoting technological and scientific research at high altitude.

Since then, Ev-K2-CNR has been recognized for this unique scientific research base, the quality and importance of the research carried out there and the specialized scientific contributions, combining technical and logistics know-how with scientific excellence.

I asked Kaji if he has opened the place up as a lodge for trekkers too.
He smiled and replied saying that this was the only thing he could do as the only manager still left there.

“ I had to. I’ve not been paid a salary for three and a half years”.
The Italian government stopped funding the Centre since 2015.

Kaji went on to say that they were a team of 15 people and he has been a staff manager for more than15 years. Now, he is doing more or less everything from maintaining the facility and collecting all the data himself.

“If I leave, the research station will close. So, for my income now I offer the empty space as a trekking lodge for the scientists and journalists visits, too”.

Kaji hopes the new Italian government will free up some funds to finance the Centre.

Microplastics in the Himalayas: Lessons-learned and Best Practices

Ev-K2-CNR continues to promote technological and scientific research at high altitude on health, climate change and environment as well develop new technologies.

One of the major projects carried out, despite the financial challenges, is one on micro-plastics, promoted by the Nepalese Government.

According to the Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA), plastic pollution has emerged as an environmental crisis of international concern. With the scale of global plastic pollution now painfully clear, it is high time for corporations and governments to take into consideration scientific-based research to find alternatives to plastics.

“It is a testament to how ubiquitous this pervasive material has become in our society that it can now be easily found even on the very highest point on our planet – Mount Everest, in the Himalayas” the EIA states.

In an unprecedented clean-up campaign launched by the Nepali Government in 2019, over four tonnes of plastic debris were collected in the high-altitude region of the Everest in the first five days alone. Consequently, since January, the Nepalese authorities have banned single-use plastics in the Everest region in a bid to cut down on waste left by climbers.

All plastic drinking bottles and plastics of less than 30 microns in width will be banned in the province.

The government says the army will be used for the task, which will cost 860 million Nepali rupees ($7.5m). It has also brought in measures to encourage people not to litter, asking for a $400 deposit before climbing, which is returned if they bring their waste back down with them.

Travel agencies and sherpas have a key role to play in sensitising trekkers and citizens to curb plastic waste.

During treks, the waste is coming from a variety of products, such as climbing gear and other rubbish like food wrappers, cans and bottles. Often, abandoned oxygen and cooking gas cylinders are found on the higher levels to the Summit.

Recently, iced bodies have also being discovered, creating a global debate on the expeditions and impact on the landscape and environment in the Mt. Everest region.

Scientific tools outside the building. Unfortunately, since 2015 the research projects are all frozen due to lack of funding from the Italian Government. Credit: Valentina Gasbarri

Few Everest Base Camp trekkers expect to find a pyramid high in the Himalayas. Covered in solar panels and sitting atop a low stone building, the Everest Pyramid is an unusual sight among the rock and snow of the mountains. Credit: Valentina Gasbarri

Entrance of the Research Center entered in 1998 in the Guinness Book of World Records for being the highest in the world. Credit: Valentina Gasbarri

Kaji and Sherpa Paesang collecting samples of water for studying the effects on microplastics on water and soil in the Khumbu Valley. Credit: Valentina Gasbarri

Plastic Waste in the Everest Base Camp Trekking Route. Plastics do not quicklybiodegrade, but instead break down into smaller pieces. This has led the NepaleseGovernment to ban single-use plastics from 2020. Credit: Valentina Gasbarri

Arriving close to the highest point in the world, one can still find plastic waste and garbage to collect.
Ev-K2-CNR Side Event at the 15th meeting of the UN Committee on SustainableDevelopment, New York (2007). Credit: Valentina Gasbarri

Tourists and trekkers are considered one of the biggest polluters in the Everest Region.
Education and Awareness Raising campaigns would be critical to educate people to adoptsustainable tourism practices. Credit: Valentina Gasbarri

The post The Italian Pyramid: Scientific Observatory at the Top of the World appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Mantfombi Msibi (left) and Bheki Ginindza, the Climate-Smart Market Oriented Agriculture project manager (right) talking in her field while her grandchildren look on. Thanks to Climate-Smart Agriculture, the 63-year-old Msibi no longer has to spend days on end weeding her fields. Credit: Mantoe Phakathi/IPS

By Mantoe Phakathi
NGWEMPISI, Eswatini, Feb 27 2020 (IPS)

Aside from the seven hours Mantfombi Msibi (63) would spend daily during the Eswatini farming season planting, applying herbicides and weeding her 1.2-hectare maize field, she would also spend E1 750 ($125) on tractor services. It was a huge cost of both time and money. But this season, Msibi will be benefiting from climate-smart farming technology that has opened up a new world of farming to her, saving her time in the process. 

“Not only was this activity laborious for my ageing husband and I, but one of our grandchildren would be forced to abscond from school for several days just to help out with the work,” Dlamini told IPS.

Besides cultivating the field, the family also has livestock; cattle, pigs and chickens, which also have to be taken care of. That excludes other household chores such as cooking and looking after her three younger grandchildren all whose parents passed away.

This season, Msibi was introduced to climate-smart agriculture techniques, which has significantly improved her life and that of her family. Compared to the amount of work that she used to do for many hours a day over several weeks, with the new climate-smart techniques of direct seeding and boom spraying, she only spends about five hours cultivating her field.

• Direct seeding refers to farming systems that fertilise and plant directly into undisturbed soil in one field operation or two separate operations of fertilising and planting. Much of the residue from the previous crop is retained on the soil surface.
• While boom spraying is used to apply liquid fertilisers, pesticides, or other liquids to crops during their vegetative cycle. 

These are promoted by the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO) as part of the Climate-Smart Agriculture technique. 

• This is defined by the FAO as an approach towards developing agriculture strategies that will ensure sustainable food security in times of climate change.

Now Msibi has no need to till the soil anymore because climate-smart technology destroys weeds, thereby saving her from the laborious weeding process.    

• According to FAO, 50 to 75 percent of farm labour time is spent on weeding by hand, with 90 percent this being done by women. 

“I now have enough time to look after other family responsibilities. Most importantly, I get time to rest and none of the children is forced to abscond from school because of farming,” said Msibi.

Msibi is one of the beneficiary farmers under the Ministry of Agriculture’s conservation agriculture programme, whose aim is to improve the uptake of Climate-Smart Agriculture.

According to Jabu Dlamini, the conservation agriculture chairperson for the Manzini Region, this technology applies herbicide that destroys weed without any residual effect to the soil.

“It’s a very environmentally friendly technology and that’s why the government is promoting it as a CSA technique,” Dlamini told IPS.

Besides the benefits to the environment, Dlamini said it reduces the number of time farmers have to spend in the field. 

“When using the conventional way, a farmer would pay for seven to eight hours on a 1.2ha field for tractor services and would still have to do other things such as applying herbicides and weeding which is laborious,” said Dlamini.

Introduced as a pilot in two Regional Administrative Areas; Ngwempisi and Ntfonjeni, this programme is relatively new although it is gaining momentum among farmers.

“We’re working on the data for now on how many farmers are benefitting but those who have tried it don’t want to look back to conventional farming,” said Dlamini.

This technology follows research by the Climate-Smart Market Oriented Agriculture Project (CSMA) where it was discovered that women have too many household chores yet they still have to spend many hours for days on end in the fields.

This does not only limit the quality of their production but it also puts a strain on their health.
According to Bheki Ginindza, the CSMA project manager, the idea is to increase the uptake of the use of this technology by up to 30 percent because of its ability to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by up to 70 percent.

“This technology increases soil organic matter in that after harvesting the maize stalks are left to rot in the field which improves the soil health,” said Ginindza, adding: “The soil is a very important carbon sink.”

What is also a benefit about the direct seeder is that it uses much less fuel compared to its conventional counterpart in that it works for a much shorter time and its fuel consumption is less.

While this promises to be a good technology for farmers, it is relatively new in the country so there are fewer suppliers who are importing these types of tractors.

“What is a benefit though is that now the direct seeder can be modified in the country,” Ginindza told IPS. “Some of the direct seeders come with a chisel that is designed for softer soil and they need to be modified to work on harder soil.”

The CSMA is also promoting agro-forestry, which is a CSA technique where crops and trees are grown alongside the same field to improve soil health and food and nutrition security for the whole family.

“But the challenge is that farmers don’t like trees in their fields because they need to be maintained so that they don’t create shade for the crops,” said Ginindza. “The trees also attract thieves who want the fruits.”

The CSMA aims to support farmers to be climate-resilient, generate sustainable income, incorporate gender balance and reduce poverty in Eswatini. It is funded by the European Union (EU) through the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA).

Related Articles

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• Does Africa’s Food Future Really Lie with Young Farmers?

The post Climate-Smart Agriculture means More Time for Eswatini Women Farmers appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

In the southern African nation of Eswatini, women, who already have too many household chores, have had to spend many hours for days on end in the fields, tilling and weeding the soil. But thanks to the gradual introduction of Climate-Smart Agriculture, some are beginning to harvest the gains of more time for their families.

The post Climate-Smart Agriculture means More Time for Eswatini Women Farmers appeared first on Inter Press Service.

This partnership looks beyond getting children back in school, focusing on learning, child development and well-being. Ethiopia will be one of the pilot countries for the partnership. Photo UNICEF Ethiopia.

By External Source
NEW YORK, Feb 27 2020 (IPS-Partners)

To improve learning outcomes for girls and boys caught in emergencies and protracted crises, Education Cannot Wait (ECW) is now partnering with the global philanthropic organization Porticus to develop, test and document fit-for-purpose solutions towards measuring the learning of children in crises-affected countries.

The pilot programme will be implemented in three countries between 2020 and 2022, as part of ECW’s Acceleration Facility. Bangladesh and Ethiopia are shortlisted, and a third country is in the process of being selected.

“There is a growing global movement to address the pressing needs of the 75 million children and youth caught in crises who do not have consistent access to a quality education. This partnership looks beyond getting children back in school, focusing on learning, child development and well-being. This includes the measurement of progress in academic learning, but equally gives attention to psycho-social, as well as social and emotional domains of learning and development. With this focus on measurement we can better understand whether and how children being exposed to multiple risks and adversities can develop the academic, social and emotional skills and competencies needed to achieve their full potential. The results of measurement can inform concrete program design, as well as policy,” said Gerhard Pulfer, Porticus representative for Education in Displacement.

Porticus’ goal in the field of Education in Emergencies is to “to promote a transition towards holistic, quality education for displaced learners and host communities.” According to Pulfer, Porticus seeks education systems for displaced children that take responsibility for learning outcomes, and that encompass both academic and social and emotional learning.

Holistic Approaches
Learning is different and vastly more complex for children and youth caught in crises and emergencies, including armed conflict, forced displacement and climate-change induced disasters. Stress, trauma, fear and anxiety make it hard for them to concentrate in school and learn. Of greater concern, too many girls and boys are simply left behind and excluded from the hope, opportunity and protection that a quality learning environment provides.

To address these challenges, ECW supports Multi-Year Resilience Programmes (MYRPs) that use a ‘whole-of-child’ approach to deliver quality education to children and youth affected by emergencies and protracted crises. These MYRPs focus on increasing access, teaching capacity, conducive school environments, more relevant curricula, tailored learning material, physical and emotional safety, as well as other aspects related to school feeding, and water and sanitation in schools.

Together with its partners – including host governments, United Nations agencies, public and private donors, civil society organizations and non-profits – ECW has launched MYRPs in 10 crisis-affected countries to date and plans to expand its support to a total 25 countries by 2021.

The new partnership between Porticus and ECW will measure the effect of these initiatives and provide a better understanding of what is working and is not working for children caught in emergencies and protracted crises to learn.

To do so, the partnership will take a holistic approach to measure learning outcomes, looking beyond academic achievements in literacy and numeracy to also include aspects of social-emotional learning. The social-emotional aspect is often overlooked in stable settings and requires specific attention for children affected by conflict. These skills include self-awareness, emotional regulation and respect for others, as well as interpersonal skills such as listening and conflict resolution. They also include skills such as critical and creative thinking, goal setting, study skills, teamwork and time management.

“Every child and young person have a right and need to enjoy an education that is holistic and addresses the full spectrum of developmental needs. The fact that they are caught in war zones, forced displacement or natural disasters does not remove their right to a quality education. On the contrary, a quality education is the only hope and viable solution left,” said Yasmine Sherif, Director of Education Cannot Wait. “As we supercharge ideas to create solutions as part of the UN’s Decade of Action, we must improve our evidence base and adjust approaches accordingly. This is part of our global promise to leave no one behind, and to ensure not just universal and equitable access to an education, but also universal and equitable access to a quality education.”

Partnerships for the Future
Porticus and ECW will work in close collaboration with in-country partners as well as global actors to ensure broad exposure, inclusive feedback and close collaboration as the partnership is implemented. Lessons learned through the partnership will be shared across a broad group of relevant stakeholders.

To kickstart the partnership, Porticus is granting EUR1 million (approximately US$1.1 million) to ECW. ECW will co-fund this valuable partnership with a US$500,000 investment.

As the partnership develops, both Porticus and ECW intend to broaden and grow the collaboration, to mainstream and accelerate best practices and help ensure children and youth caught in crises benefit from improved learning outcomes.

Bangladesh, where ECW supports a multi-year resilience programme for Rohingya refugees and host communities, is also targeted as part for the partnership. Photo UNICEF

###

About Education Cannot Wait: ECW is the first global fund dedicated to education in emergencies. It was launched by international humanitarian and development aid actors, along with public and private donors, to address the urgent education needs of 75 million children and youth in conflict and crisis settings. ECW’s investment modalities are designed to usher in a more collaborative approach among actors on the ground, ensuring relief and development organizations join forces to achieve education outcomes. Education Cannot Wait is hosted by UNICEF. The Fund is administered under UNICEF’s financial, human resources and administrative rules and regulations, while operations are run by the Fund’s own independent governance structure.

Please follow on Twitter: @EduCannotWait @YasmineSherif1 @KentPage
Additional information at: www.educationcannotwait.org

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

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Luvunzu Mutwale, his wife, and their seven children are from the Katanga region in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). They fled to neighboring Zambia in 2015 to escape civil unrest at home, and they currently live in the Meheba refugee camp in Zambia’s Northwestern province.

By Emely Mwale
LUSAKA, Zambia, Feb 27 2020 (IPS)

The Mutwales farm a small plot of land in the camp, growing primarily cassava and maize for food. They are also one of the 105 refugee farming families participating in an initiative during the 2019/2020 growing season to help them cultivate nutritious, vitamin A-biofortified orange maize, which was developed by the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) in partnership with HarvestPlus.

The initiative is part of a livelihoods project supported by the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) and implemented by CARITAS, a Catholic humanitarian organization.

HarvestPlus provides technical assistance, including demonstrations and training on growing biofortified maize, as well as nutrition education.

“My family and I are most grateful to UNHCR for providing us with inputs to grow a half hectare of orange maize,” said Mutwale. “I have heard of the many nutrition and health benefits and I’m very delighted that after harvest, my family will experience them when we start consuming the maize.” Mutwale also hopes to be able to sell some of the harvest to earn income and invest in inputs for a second growing season and pay his children’s school fees.

Vitamin-A deficiency can lead to impaired vision—even blindness—and a higher risk of diarrhea and other infections. Pregnant women with vitamin A deficiency may be at increased risk of mortality. Nationally in Zambia, more than half of children under five are vitamin-A deficient.

Zambia has been a refugee destination for more than 50 years, primarily from Angola, the DRC, Rwanda, and Burundi. The three major refugee settlements are Meheba in Northwestern Province, Mayukwayukwa in Western Province, and Kala in Luapula province.

Luvunz Mutwale and his wife pick up seed inputs.

Through the UNHCR, the refugees are provided basic food, shelter, and access to clean water and sanitation, as well as health services and education infrastructure.

The UNHCR livelihoods project is one of many social welfare interventions aimed at improving the well-being of refugees in the Zambian camps.

In addition to farmer training and nutrition education, Harvestplus Zambia also helps catalyze an orange maize business model for the farmers based on forging linkages with input suppliers and establishing formal contracts with maize purchasers (i.e., processors and offtakers).

The system helps build confidence on all sides, ensuring sufficient maize is grown as well as purchased. For example, Butemwe Milling, a local processor, has already placed an order for 10,000 bags of the refugee farmers’ orange maize at 50 kgs per bag, for a total order of 500 metric tons.

There was strong interest from refugee farmers to participate in the orange maize initiative—about 1,500 applied but resources were limited during the pilot. Selection criteria included the applicants’ level of economic vulnerability and the capacity of the household to grow the maize.

The 105 participating families received 10 kilograms of orange maize seed and various inputs required to cultivate a half hectare. The fertilizer and other inputs were procured through an open tender process, which attracted bids from several suppliers, including local agro-dealers. A true platform for business engagement in biofortification was created.

The objective is for the participants to eventually “graduate” to self-sustaining investment in orange maize cultivation after receiving start-up support during the 2019/20 season (which runs from about November 2019-May/June 2020). And if this pilot in Meheba camp provides successful, the program may expand to other refugee camps.

HarvestPlus and its partners are eager to get biofortified crops to refugees and other vulnerable populations who are at high risk of nutritional deficiencies and related health impacts.

Another refugee-focused project is under way in Uganda, where HarvestPlus is partnering with Self-Help Africa to support more than 1,000 households in eight refugee settlements and host communities in the northern Adjumani district.

HarvestPlus is a program of the CGIAR global research partnership for a food secure future and is based at the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), a CGIAR research center.

For more information about the work of HarvestPlus Zambia, contact Joseph Mulambu: j.mulambu@cgiar.org

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Excerpt:

Emely Mwale is Assistant Country Manager at HarvestPlus

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An eight-month-old boy is examined by a doctor in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. Credit: Kristin Palitza/IPS

By External Source
NAIROBI, Feb 27 2020 (IPS)

Grief over the loss of a child poses a threat to public health in Sub-Saharan Africa, as nearly two-thirds of mothers in some countries suffer the death of at least one child, a study has found.

According to the World Health Organization, 5.3 million children under five died in 2018 globally. The risk of a child dying before reaching five is about eight times higher in Africa than in Europe.

According to the study published this month in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, more than half of women aged 45 to 49 years in some Sub-Saharan African countries have experienced the death of a child under the age of five.

“In Benin, Burkina Faso, Liberia, Malawi, Mali, and Niger, having had at least one infant die was a more common experience than having had all of one’s children survive infancy,” the study explains.

5.3 million children under five died in 2018 globally. The risk of a child dying before reaching five is about eight times higher in Africa than in Europe

“In no country has the [total infant deaths] fallen below 100 per 1000 for mothers age 45 to 49, and only in Benin, Kenya, Namibia and Zimbabwe has it fallen below 200 per 1000.”

Researchers analysed the prevalence of infant and child deaths for every 1000 mothers using demographic and health surveys over a 30-year period, from 20 countries.

“In the shadows of very high child mortality rates that the global health community typically focuses on are all these grieving parents that never receive any attention,” says lead author Emily Smith-Greenaway, an assistant professor of sociology at the US-based University of Southern California.

“These results increase our recognition of bereavement as itself a public health threat — one that’s unfairly concentrated in low-income regions of the world.”

A recent study of child deaths in Iceland over 200 years notes that mothers who lose a child have elevated risks of psychiatric symptoms and psychiatric hospitalisations, cardiovascular disease, and some cancers. The study found that “child loss is likely to constitute a major threat to the survival of mothers in societies with high infant mortality rates”.

The study, in eLife Sciences Publications, found there was a “large increase in the rate of premature maternal mortality after child loss”, but only a limited increase in paternal deaths, suggesting differences in attachment, and emotional responses to trauma, as possible factors.

This is known by some as the ‘maternal bereavement effect’.

A seemingly universal maternal reaction to the loss of a child is a feeling of guilt. The World Health Organization reports that cultural and societal attitudes to baby or child deaths vary globally, but in Sub-Saharan Africa it is a common belief that a baby may be stillborn because of witchcraft or evil spirits.

Female genital mutilation and child marriage cause immense damage to girls’ sexual and reproductive health, and the health of their babies, the WHO says. The way women are treated during pregnancy is linked to sexual and reproductive rights, which are lacking in many parts of the world.

Smith-Greenaway tells SciDev.Net that although parental bereavement research has been receiving increasing attention in North America and Western Europe, it is overlooked in Sub-Saharan Africa.

Phelgona A. Otieno, a paediatrician and epidemiologist at the Kenya Medical Research Institute’s Centre for Clinical Research, praises the researchers for conducting a study that “takes an interesting turn and calls for countries to recognise the impact of child mortality on women and bereavement as a public health threat”.

Otieno attributes increased child death to healthcare-related factors.

“Poor access to quality, affordable health care is one of the biggest factors especially in low-income countries. Poor nutrition is also a factor since children who suffer from malnutrition are more vulnerable to disease,” she says.

The burden of loss is especially heavy for mothers not only because of the pregnancy and childbirth experience, but because they are also the primary care givers to their children, she adds.

Smith-Greenaway says it is important to create programmes in Sub-Saharan Africa that support bereaved mothers as they navigate life after loss.

By Stephanie Achieng’

This piece was produced by SciDev.Net’s Sub-Saharan Africa English desk.

 

References

Emily Smith-Greenaway and Jenny Trinitapol  Maternal cumulative prevalence measures of child mortality show heavy burden in sub-Saharan Africa (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 10 February, 2020)

 

This story was originally published by SciDev.Net

 

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Thousands of children from different schools and colleges bring out a procession at Manik Mia Avenue expressing solidarity with the global climate strike. PHOTO: STAR/PRABIR DAS

By Saleemul Huq
Feb 26 2020 (IPS-Partners)

The Bangladesh parliament, led by the parliamentary standing committee on environment, recently declared a planetary emergency in Bangladesh. This is ground breaking in that most other parliaments around the world have declared a climate change emergency, but none have also added a biodiversity emergency as the Bangladesh parliament has. So ours is a twin track emergency, not just a single track.

While this is indeed a pioneering resolution, it will mean very little unless implemented.

The climate emergency side of the twin track declaration has already received significant priority within national planning and even budgeting by virtue of the clearly visible adverse impacts of climate change that Bangladesh has already started to face over the last few years.

The good news is that the government is about to publish the revised Bangladesh Climate Change Strategy and Action Plan (BCCSAP), which will take us to 2030, while the original BCCSAP from 2009 has reached its end. The most important element in the revised BCCSAP is that instead of having separate and parallel funds and projects for tackling climate change, we now need to rapidly shift into mainstreaming or integrating climate change actions into all national, sectoral and local level plans, as well as into every ministry’s and agency’s workplan going forward.

The upcoming preparation of the 8th Five Year Plan is a great opportunity for the Bangladesh government to again show how to integrate climate change into all chapters of the plan, and not just a stand-alone chapter for environment and climate change.

At the same time, the ministry of finance should be lauded for preparing a climate change budget every year for the last few years, and should be encouraged to include even more ministries in the next year’s budget. It also needs to enhance the monitoring and evaluation of these expenditures to assess their actual effectiveness on the ground.

Also, non-government organisations (NGOs), private sector, education sector and media need to gear up their own actions to tackle climate change so that it is a whole-of-society effort and not just a whole-of-government effort.

Here, it is important to also point out the synergies with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), of which, SDG 13 is explicitly about tackling climate change—hence these efforts at finding synergies across sectors will give us significant dividends in enhancing the quality of our economic development going forward.

When it comes to protecting our biodiversity, which includes both individual species of plants and animals, as well as entire habitats and ecosystems, we are unfortunately in a very bad position as we have failed to protect our natural environment because of the kind of growth we have pursued. We now stand at a very significant crossroad, where a business-as-usual attitude will lead to us losing whatever natural resources we have left in a very short period of time. Hence, protecting the environment while also growing has to be the new agenda going forward. This paradigm shift goes under several terms such as green development or Nature Based Solutions (NBS), but the label is less important than the necessity to acknowledge that every day we are destroying our natural environment bit by bit, and that this must not just stop but be reversed as soon as possible.

This is where the parliamentary standing committee on environment has a very important role to play, as it is the constitutionally mandated body to oversee that national development is protecting and not destroying our natural environment. It’s declaration of the planetary emergency has demonstrated that it is indeed very concerned about these issues. But now it needs to exert its constitutionally mandated power over the executive to ensure that it means what it says.

I would also like to add that there is an extremely energetic resource that they can harness if they wish, namely the youth of our country, starting with all the university students and then high school and even primary school students. The paradigm shift that is needed is to make this agenda everybody’s agenda and not just leave it to government authorities only.

At the same time, the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MOEFCC) has an extremely important role to play within the government, where its role is to try to protect the natural environment against forces, often other powerful ministries within the government, who want to get permission to build over natural habitats. I must say that over the last few decades, the different heads of the ministry have recognised their duty and done their best to try and protect the environment, but have often failed against the desires of powerful interests, both within as well as outside the government.

Hence, we have to realise that protecting our natural environment requires us to fight the forces who want to destroy it in every way possible, from within the government by the MOEFCC, and outside it by conscious citizens, who will oppose any visible destruction of the natural habitat that they see happening anywhere in the country.

The most effective means of protecting our natural environment is for every citizen to see it as her or his duty to do so. I believe we can do it.

Saleemul Huq is Director of the International Centre for Climate Change and Development at the Independent University, Bangladesh.

This story was originally published by The Daily Star, Bangladesh

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By Jewel Fraser
PORT OF SPAIN, Feb 26 2020 (IPS)

The Environmental Defence Fund and its partners in conservation are this month celebrating a major milestone in Belize’s efforts to safeguard its fisheries.

On Feb. 14, the Belizean Parliament passed into law the Fisheries Resources Act that establishes legal safeguards for marine protected areas and that country’s managed access programme for fishers. The Central American country of Belize was a pioneer in 2016 in bringing its entire territorial waters under a system of licensed fishing rights that gave fishers designated spots.

Doug Rader, chief ocean scientist at the EDF, tells Voices from the Global South that this new law is a win-win for all, since the marine protected areas and the managed access programme reinforce each other, ensuring the livelihood of Belizean fishers. In this Voices from the Global South Podcast, IPS Caribbean correspondent Jewel Fraser speaks to Rader about the problems the law will solve and the ways Belize and neighbouring countries will benefit.

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Credit: Patrick Burnett/IPS

By Ifeanyi Nsofor
ABUJA, Feb 25 2020 (IPS)

Recently, Nigerian feminist author Ukamaka Olisakwe spoke about her post-partum depression after giving birth in the city of Aba, southeast Nigeria. This follows her 2019 Longreads essay, in which she narrated painful details of her experience. 

In 2007, Olisakwe was 24 years old when she had her first encounter with post-partum depression. She had just given birth to her first child of three – a daughter.

Olisakwe’s experience convinced her that, No one really cares about how the women feel, if they are still haunted by the memories of childbirth, how they are coping with the immense bodily changes, if they are emotionally ready to have sex, if they even want to go through pregnancy ever again. They are expected to perform their roles as virtuous wives and good mothers, or they’ll fall short of societal expectations, of which the consequences are grave.

Post-partum depression is a mental health disorder. It is much more than baby blues. Globally, 13% of women who give birth experience post-partum depression. In some U.S. states, prevalence can be as high as 20%. In South Africa, up to 40% of women suffer from post-partum depression.

Post-partum depression is a neglected part of mental health. It is hardly spoken about. In most cultures, women who suffer post-partum depression are stigmatized and made to feel unworthy

According to the U.S. Centres for Disease Control, symptoms of post-partum depression include; crying more often than usual, feelings of anger, withdrawing from loved ones, feeling numb or disconnected from your baby, worrying that you will hurt the baby and feeling guilty about not being a good mom or doubting your ability to care for the baby.

It could also present with other symptoms of depression such as, thoughts of suicide or suicide attempts, difficulty falling asleep or sleeping too much and overeating or loss of appetite.

On the extreme end,  a few women have harmed themselves and their loved ones. In 2014, for instance, a woman named Carol suffering from post-partum psychosis stabbed and killed her three children aged 2 years, 1 year and 3 months. In 2016, another woman named Elizabeth committed suicide, after months of battling post-partum depression.

Without a doubt, post-partum depression is a neglected part of mental health. It is hardly spoken about. In most cultures, women who suffer post-partum depression are stigmatized and made to feel unworthy.

They are made to keep caring for their children, husbands and families despite suffering a serious disability, which dangerously impacts their quality of life. Women who suffer post-partum depression suffer in silence. When they cry out for help, society and health systems don’t listen.

It’s’ time to listen. We must help prevent post-partum depression and provide care to sufferers. These are ways to achieve both.

Post-partum depression diagnoses and treatment must be included in Maternal, Newborn and Child Health (MNCH) projects. Right now, it is hard to find a project with treatment of post-partum depression as a core component.

Between 2008 to 2010, for instance, I was part of a MNCH project in Nigeria, which focused on managing excessive bleeding after birth in communities and health facilities. Post-partum depression was not a part of that project. With hindsight, I can imagine the number of women who gave birth, looked “okay” but could have been battling post-partum depression. This makes me feel bad. A decade later, these kinds of services are still lacking.

Donors that fund MNCH programs should work with governments and ensure that such services are available to pregnant women and mothers. It is no longer a question of whether post-depression would happen, we know up to 40% of women who give birth will suffer this mental health disorder.

Community education to improve awareness on post-partum depression must be redesigned to show how serious it is. Governments, donors, private sector and community based organisations should work with communities, religious and traditional leaders to dismantle patriarchal cultures that perpetuate this mental disorder. As Olisakwe mentioned in her recent interview, “I think not discussing postpartum depression is the legacy of patriarchy, not the illness itself”.

There should be open non-judgmental discussions about post-partum depression and sufferers should not be shamed but supported to heal. Referral systems for mental health treatment should be established to cater for the women who would require such specialized care.

Communities must understand that not all women have same birth experiences. Therefore, every woman deserves individualized support during pregnancy, birth and afterwards.

Male involvement in pregnancy, childbirth and after birth should be institutionalized. Involving men leads to better outcomes for women. In Nigeria, Tolu Adeleke, popularly known as “Tolu the Midwife” champions male involvement.

Through her interventions, she organizes couples antenatal classes and dads’ antenatal classes. Topics covered during these classes include, what to expect when you are expecting, partner’s role in pregnancy, partner’s role at birth, breastfeeding and partner roles, postnatal recovery and adjusting to life with a newborn.

Parental leave should be non-negotiable. After 9 months of pregnancy, women and their partners need time off work to recover while caring for their newborns. All countries should emulate Finland’s parental leave laws which give each parent 7 months of leave after a child’s birth. This is a good way to involve men in caring for new mothers and newborn.

There is no time to waste, too many women are suffering in silence and crying out for help. It took Ukamaka 17 years of suffering in silence before she was able to write and speak about her experience.

Post-partum depression is a mental health disorder. It should be accorded the recognition it deserves. Period.

 

The post Let’s Prevent Post-partum Depression and Provide Care to Those in Need appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Dr. Ifeanyi Nsofor is a medical doctor, the CEO of EpiAFRIC, Director of Policy and Advocacy for Nigeria Health Watch

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