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Group of Afro-Colombian women in Guapi, Cali, showing the area where they will start a new banana plantation. Credit: IFAD

By Jesus Quintana
LIMA, Peru, Oct 14 2019 (IPS)

Rural poverty and inequality continue inflicting large swaths of population in Colombia, especially in rural areas. This situation, endemic since at least the beginning of the twentieth century, was at the root of the 50-year long conflict that shattered the country, leaving 220,000 deaths and 5.7 million displaced persons, and devastating a significant part of the rural areas, where government services and infrastructure vanished.

The effects of the civil war were particularly damaging for rural people, who suffered the worst kinds of violence and whose well-being was disproportionately affected. Illicit crops and criminal activities in rural areas, which boomed as a result of the conflict, have seriously compromised Colombia’s ability to sustain legal economic activities. This in part explains the great inequalities that exist between urban and rural areas in today’s Colombia.

Jesus Quintana. Credit: A. Prado/MADR

The peace process between the Government and leaders of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (known by its Spanish acronym, FARC), the country’s largest insurgent group, halted most of the violence in 2016, giving hope for a lasting solution to violence, deprivation and the lack of basic services, from roads to schools to running water, in the countryside.

However, three years after the signing of the Peace Agreement, the situation in the rural areas has barely improved. Poverty affects one-third (36.1%) of the rural population, more than double the poverty rate in urban areas (16.2%), according to the World Bank. Colombia still has one of the highest levels of economic inequality in the world – in 2018, the country’s Gini coefficient increased to 52, ranking second in Latin America. More remote rural areas experience higher poverty levels. Social exclusion, mortality and food insecurity indicators are also significantly higher among rural women, indigenous peoples and Afro-descendant populations.

To revert this situation, the Colombian government has presented its strategy – the National Development Plan 2018-22, “Pacto por Colombia, Pacto por la equidad” [Pact for Colombia, Pact for Equity] which is organized around three axes, aiming to boost equality, entrepreneurship and legality. The objectives for entrepreneurship include an alliance to enhance the development and productivity of rural Colombia, promoting a productive transformation with more innovation, increased labour and business formalization, and better public goods and services.

Framed within this overall response, the Ministry of Agriculture, in collaboration with the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), has launched a new program, “El Campo Emprende” [Rural areas are enterprising], that benefits small producers, indigenous peoples, Afro-descendant communities, female heads of household, young people, and in general vulnerable families in the rural sector of the country, promoting economic ventures to reduce extreme poverty.

Beneficiaries of El Campo Emprende in Santiago de Quilichao, Cauca, presenting details of their Association for textile manufacturing. Credit: J. Quintana/IFAD

El Campo Emprende, with a total cost of US$ 70 million over six years, assists more than 36 000 families living in 134 rural municipalities of 20 departments, including the worst affected areas by the armed conflict, where trust and social capital have been destroyed, basic services are scarce, and where vulnerability is high.

The program seeks to strengthen associative processes around productive initiatives – agricultural production, handicrafts, tourism, green businesses and other rural services carried out by poor rural families, promoting and financing the creation of rural businesses that can improve the quality of life and generate employment in Colombian rurality.

El Campo Emprende has also a view to global commitments, helping to fulfil the 2030 Agenda and its Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), especially objectives 1 (ending poverty), 2 (zero hunger) and 8 (decent work and economic growth).

The program was launched last 15 August by President Duque and Minister Valencia in Caucasia, Antioquia, one of the areas that most suffered the violence during the conflict, with the participation of IFAD, the Spanish Cooperation and the European Union (both agencies cofinance the program) and was attended by more than 1,500 guests.

Official launching of El Campo Emprende in Caucasia, Antioquia, last 15 August 2019. Credit: Presidencia de Colombia

IFAD has been present in Colombia since the early 80s, and is supporting national priorities for the rural sector, especially those regarding entrepreneurship and productivity, to create greater opportunities for small-scale agricultural producers and rural entrepreneurs, and improve their well-being through creative, solid solutions that work.

With IFAD’s support, small-scale rural agricultural producers and entrepreneurs are being assisted to increase their productivity, competitiveness and incomes by enhancing their asset base, strengthening their organizational capacity, and promoting their access to markets and to inclusive financial and public services.

El Campo Emprende will be a key contribution to development and the consolidation of peace in the countryside, creating a brighter future for many poor families that placed their hope for progress and prosperity in this new Colombia era – and helping heal the wounds.

The post Rural Poverty Is Still a Scar on the Soul of Colombia, but a New Program Supporting Agri-Entrepreneurship Can Help Heal the Wounds appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Jesus Quintana is LAC Subregional Head and Country Director for Colombia at the International Fund for Agricultural Development

The post Rural Poverty Is Still a Scar on the Soul of Colombia, but a New Program Supporting Agri-Entrepreneurship Can Help Heal the Wounds appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Garment workers travel on private buses organized by their factory in Cambodia. When women do overtime work but lack safe transportation back home, it can expose them to greater risks of sexual assault at night. Credit: Samer Muscati/Human Rights Watch.

By Nisha Varia
NEW YORK, Oct 14 2019 (IPS)

If one dreamed up an ambitious global #metoo success story, it might involve governments around the world enthusiastically supporting legal norms and action on sexual harassment with active support and cooperation from businesses and workers.

Sound too good to be true? It is exactly what happened in June with the adoption of the International Labour Organization (ILO) Convention on Violence and Harassment. These new international standards could improve the world of work globally – and the next step is for countries to ratify and implement this landmark treaty.

Since September, media outlets have published countless reflections on the second anniversary of #MeToo going viral. Publications have collated useful timelines of high-profile cases and analyzed whether the movement has made a difference in workplaces around the world.

There have been many successes. The shift in public discourse, the newfound attention to an issue long normalized into invisibility, and the growing number of sexual violence survivors feeling empowered to speak up have shattered the status quo.

Resignations and prosecutions of those accused of abuse have taken place around the world, including Egypt, India, the United Kingdom, South Korea, Sweden, and the United States. There are new sexual harassment laws in 15 US states, and more legal resources for survivors who wish to come forward.

If the potential of #MeToo is to be fully realized on a global scale, governments must do their part to protect workers from sexual violence. Ratification of the Violence and Harassment Convention is a historic opportunity for countries to pledge their commitment to ending this scourge

But more change is needed. There has been backlash, for example through the use of defamation suits against those who turned to social media to make claims of abuse. In the past few weeks, Sandra Muller, whose tweet sparked France’s #metoo or #balancetonporc movement, was fined for defamation, and an Indian high court ordered Facebook and Instagram to reveal the identity of the person running an anonymous account sharing #metoo stories in India’s art world.

A 2018 World Bank report found that 59 out of 189 economies had no specific legal provisions covering sexual harassment in employment. And the ILO has found that existing laws often exclude the workers most exposed to violence, for example domestic workers, farmworkers, and those in precarious employment.

If the potential of #MeToo is to be fully realized on a global scale, governments must do their part to protect workers from sexual violence. Ratification of the Violence and Harassment Convention is a historic opportunity for countries to pledge their commitment to ending this scourge.

The treaty sets out minimum obligations for how governments should prevent and protect people from violence at work. This includes ensuring robust national laws against harassment and violence at work and prevention measures such as information campaigns. It also requires enforcement—such as inspections and investigations, and access to remedies for victims, including complaints mechanisms, whistleblower protections, and compensation.

Countries that ratify agree to align their national laws to the treaty’s standards and will be periodically reviewed for their compliance by the ILO.

The treaty is not limited to direct government action. It obliges governments to require employers to have workplace policies addressing violence and harassment, risk assessments, prevention measures, and training. Employers should take on these responsibilities whether their governments ratify the treaty or not.

Worker organizations had been pushing for the Violence and Harassment Convention for years, and the #MeToo social media explosion in October 2017 injected energy and urgency into the treaty negotiations that began in 2018 . Marie Clarke Walker, the lead negotiator for the workers, noted that it enabled her to push back against naysayers with, “You can’t say these things are not happening. It’s all over the media.”

There is reason to be excited. The treaty provides clear and specific guidance on an area of law that has remained murky and underdeveloped in many countries, just as the public is clamoring for reform.

Already, 10 countries–Argentina, Belgium, France, Iceland, Ireland, Namibia, Philippines, South Africa, Uganda, and Uruguay–have announced their intention to ratify the treaty without delay.

Global and national trade unions, such as the International Trade Union Confederation, and feminist groups, including the hallmark 16 Days of Activism against Gender-Based Violence, are gearing up to push other countries to join them.

This treaty offers governments an unprecedented new tool—backed by the United Nations, trade unions, and many employers—to fight against the harassment and violence plaguing workers around the world. Ratifying and enforcing it as soon as possible is the right thing to do.

 

The post The #MeToo Movement’s Powerful New Tool appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Nisha Varia is the women’s rights advocacy director at Human Rights Watch.

The post The #MeToo Movement’s Powerful New Tool appeared first on Inter Press Service.

By IPS World Desk
ROME, Oct 14 2019 (IPS)

Globalization and urbanization have had a staggering impact on human history, especially over the last decade. 

The world’s population living in urban areas was less than 5 percent in 1800. According to the the United Nations, that number increased to 47 percent by the year 2000. In ten years time, that number is expected to reach 65 percent.

As these shifts have taken place, we have witnessed dramatic changes in our diets and eating habits. The world has begun to abandon the traditions of preparing meals at home, which have historically been seasonal, plant-based and fibre-rich.

Preferring convenience, the world has turned to refined starches, sugars, fats, salt, processed foods, meat and animal-source products. In urban areas especially, consumers increasingly rely on supply chains of supermarkets, fast food outlets, street food vendors and take-away restaurants.

 

 

Dietary choices and sedentary lifestyles have pushed obesity into epidemic proportions not only in developed countries, but in low-income countries too, where hunger and obesity can co-exist.

Currently, 670 million adults and 160 million children suffer from obesity worldwide.

Astonishingly, over 820 million people suffer from hunger.

And this dichotomy is taking a toll on national health budgets, costing up to 2 trillion us dollars per year.

Poor diets are now are a leading cause of illness, linked to one fifth of all deaths worldwide.

The annual celebration of World World Food Day is an effort to bring attention to these issues. This year, it aims to push people everywhere to take action, under the theme: “Our Actions Are Our Future.”

The celebration is intent on informing citizens, businesses and governments that dietary choices, from the products we consume individually, to planetary choices, including the reduction of our environmental footprints, can enable a movement of change.

The post World Food Day 2019 – “Our Actions Are Our Future” appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Whale watching is seen as an ethical alternative to viewing captive cetaceans. Its benefits include raising awareness and educating people about cetaceans and marine conservation, besides providing a platform for research and collecting scientific data. But experts caution that this activity must be constantly monitored and compliance with legislation enforced, to avoid risk of harassment, injury and undue disturbances to cetaceans. Credit: Neena Bhandari/IPS

By Neena Bhandari
SYDNEY, Australia, Oct 14 2019 (IPS)

The thrill of watching a whale up close or schools of dolphins frolicking in an ocean are much sought after experiences today, boosting the demand for tours that provide people the opportunity to see these marine animals in their natural habitats. But becoming a major tourist drawcard has also exposed cetaceans (whales, dolphins and porpoises) and their environs to risks and challenges.

“Whale-watching generates economic benefits to a wider portion of the coastal communities where it is carried out, resulting in a more socially fair distribution of the profits unlike commercial whaling, which concentrated income in the hands of few business owners who killed whales for profit,” said Luena Fernandes of the Humpback Whale Institute in Brazil, who is the chair of the Whale Heritage Sites (WHS) Steering Committee and Chair of the World Cetacean Alliance (WCA) Science Working Group.

Over 100 whale scientists, conservationists and whale watching tourism experts met from 8th to 12th October in Hervey Bay in Australia’s Queensland state for the fifth World Whale Conference (WWC), organised by the United Kingdom-based WCA, world’s largest partnership of non-profit organisations, whale and dolphin watching tour operators and individuals, and co-hosted by Fraser Coast Tourism and Events.

Whale watching is seen as an ethical alternative to viewing captive cetaceans. Its benefits include raising awareness and educating people about cetaceans and marine conservation, besides providing a platform for research and collecting scientific data. But Fernandes cautions that this activity must be constantly monitored and compliance with legislation enforced, to avoid risk of harassment, injury and undue disturbances to cetaceans. In many localities, whale-watching is carried out within breeding areas.

Scientists have also raised concerns about swimming with whales and dolphins, especially active interaction whereby tourists are placed ‘in the way’ of cetaceans or actually chase them. Studies have demonstrated that human interactions and vessels can alter the behaviour of cetaceans.

Humpback whales migrate from the cold southern waters of the Antarctic to the warm northern waters of the Kimberley region every year to calve. The World’s largest pod of Humpback Whales, estimated at up to 40,000, mate and give birth in the Indian Ocean around Broome, western Australia. Credit: Neena Bhandari/IPS

“In the short-term, whale-watching can change the distribution and dispersion of cetacean groups, and affect their vocalisations which are a crucial part of their social life and survival. Cetaceans can also be negatively affected without showing any apparent change in behaviour.  But acute, prolonged or cumulative stress can result in diseases and affect reproductive success and survival in the long-term,” Fernandes told IPS.

“In large whales, significant behaviour changes can have high energy costs too, in particular for females with calves, with the aggravation of being far from their feeding areas. If the females cannot rest and spend their energy reserves swimming, they may not have enough milk to nurse their calves adequately. This may affect calf growth, resulting in their lower survival probability. Only three studies to date have been able to demonstrate long-term effects of whale-watching on cetacean vital rates, mainly a decrease in female reproductive success, and all on Odontocetes (toothed whales and dolphins),” she added. 

Globally, an estimated 15 million or more people went whale watching in 2019. The last global study had stated that 13 million people went whale watching in 2009. People worldwide spent more than $2.5bn on commercial whale watching tours, with the industry supporting 19,000 jobs.

To inspire kids and adults about marine life and ocean conservation in landlocked places, nine-year-old Aeon Bashir, who addressed the conference via video link from his home in Minnesota (USA), started Aeon for Ocean in 2017.

“Children who live in inland areas often do not know or have a connection with oceans and marine life. Through presentations, sing-a-longs, discussions and beach clean-ups, me and my team of ambassadors in the Krill2Whale Program, have been helping our peers and adults understand how we are all part of the marine ecosystem with every breath we take and through the water we drink and use,” Aeon told IPS.

He wants other young people, especially from developing inland Asian countries, to become Krill2Whale Ambassadors.

“The programme represents kids like me learning about the small creatures, the krill, and to the biggest creature, the whale. It is aimed at educating, creating awareness about oceans and youth leadership by encouraging young people to speak or write about conservation.

We are also using virtual reality to help kids see personal connection with oceans and enthuse them into science,” added Aeon, who wants to be an aeronautical engineer and marine scientist to improve the design of planes by studying the Humpback Whale (Megaptera novaeangliae) body shape and movements.

To inspire kids and adults about marine life and ocean conservation in landlocked places, nine-year-old Aeon Bashir started Aeon for Ocean in 2017. This is Aeon presenting at the ProdeoAcademy. Courtesy: Aeon for Oceans

It was during their vacations in California that his parents first observed Aeon’s passion for whales and dolphins. “He preferred to watch these creatures in the ocean rather than go to theme parks. His heroes were whales, dolphins and sharks toys,” says his mother, Menaka Nagarajan, who hails from Chennai. His father, Bashir Ahmed, is from Bangladesh, both parents are computer scientists.

“We are learning with Aeon. If I knew what I know now about oceans and marine life when I was younger, I wouldn’t have been the one to throw that candy wrapper in the sea, but I would have been part of the solution.” 

Plastic pollution is driving many of the marine species to brink of extinction. Take 3 for the Sea inspires everyone to be part of the solution by taking 3 pieces of rubbish from a beach, waterway or anywhere to help reduce the plastic pollution ending up in our oceans.

“Earlier this year a starving Cuvier’s beaked whale was found beached in the Philippines, choking on 40 kg of plastic rubbish. Take 3 has delivered education that inspires participation to 350,000 students, and our global community of 300,000 are removing over 10 million pieces of rubbish every year,” Roberta Dixon-Valk, a marine ecologist/conservationist and Head of Programmes and a Co-founder of Take 3 for the Sea, told IPS.

Highlighting other major threats and risks to whales in the Asia-Pacific region, Wally Franklin, whale researcher and founder of The Oceania Project told IPS, “Climate change poses the most major threat to cetaceans. Rising sea temperatures and increased acidity of oceans may disrupt both breeding area patterns and habitats usage by humpback whales as well as krill production in Antarctic feeding areas. Also increasing vessel traffic, both commercial and recreational along coastal migratory corridors remain a serious threat as well as habitat degradation and plastic pollution.

“Sound pollution from coastal construction as well as offshore drilling platforms are likely to have an increasing impact on the acoustic environment for humpback whales and other species of cetaceans using coastal corridors during migration between Antarctic feeding areas and temperate breeding grounds.”

According to International Union for the Conservation of Nature, of the 89 currently recognised cetacean species, 29 percent are assigned to a threatened category.

Cetacean stranding, commonly known as beaching, is when whales and dolphins strand themselves on land, usually on a beach. Beached whales often die. Responses to stranding across the Asia-Pacific region vary tremendously, from expert care and successful re-floatation to communities using a stranded animal as a food source opportunity with little respect for the animal.

Sharon Livermore, Marine Conservation Programme Officer at the International Fund for Animal Welfare, an animal welfare and conservation organisation, told IPS, “In the case of any marine mammal strandings, it is important that members of the public who may come across one do all they can to help reduce risks to the animal. Firstly, if there are dogs in the area it is important they are kept under control to reduce stress to the stranded animal and ideally other members of the public are kept at a distance to reduce further disturbance”.

“We advise people to get in touch with the relevant marine stranding rescue group in the area. It is best to leave it to trained responders to refloat stranded animals to avoid inadvertently causing injury, but anyone keen to get more involved might wish to look into training and volunteering with a stranding network,” Livermore added.

Recent developments in AI technology are having a major impact on the study of marine mammals. According to Franklin, “Increased availability of visual data is allowing for the emergence of photo-based mark-recapture catalogues for multiple species. Emerging algorithms, if provided with an accurate and representative baseline curated by ‘eye’, can help quantify inherent error in matching.

However, no automated system has yet been developed to accommodate the information provided by multiple marks (e.g., ventral-tail flukes, dorsal-fins and lateral body marks). Importantly such AI technology must be open access to encourage wide application across multiple species”.

The migratory nature and wide range of most whale species makes it possible to watch them in various destinations throughout the year, but it also makes it crucial to protect their feeding, resting, breeding and calving habitats. 

The WCA’s Global Best Practice Guidance and International Whaling Commission’s Whale Watching Handbook represent international best practice for responsible whale and dolphin watching in the wild.

To reward communities that are promoting sustainable environmental management of marine resources, Whale Heritage Sites are being accredited across the globe. Hervey Bay, an internationally significant whale new-born calf nursery – where whales prepare their young for the long migration back to Antarctic waters, was on Friday accredited as the first Whale Heritage Site.

The whale watching centre of The Bluff, in Durban (South Africa), an important migratory route for humpback whales, including mother/calf pairs moving between northern calving grounds and southern feeding regions, was the second accredited site.

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The post Huge moment for Ethiopia as Abiy Ahmed wins Nobel Peace prize appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

It’s one of the world’s most prestigious honours, and has been awarded to Ethiopia’s prime minister in recognition of his inspired leadership across the Horn of Africa. But the award also comes at a time when his domestic policies and credibility are under increasing strain.

The post Huge moment for Ethiopia as Abiy Ahmed wins Nobel Peace prize appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Artist Kehinde Wiley discusses his work. Credit: A. D. McKenzie/IPS

By A. D. McKenzie
PARIS, Oct 11 2019 (IPS)

Fresh from unveiling a huge statue of a black man on horseback in New York’s Times Square, renowned African American artist Kehinde Wiley flew to France this week to “meet” 18th-century French painter Jacques-Louis David.

Wiley – most known for painting the portrait of US President Barack Obama in 2017 – is now “sharing a room” with David, who lived from 1748 to 1825 and was a painter and supporter of French military leader Napoleon Bonaparte.

In an exhibition titled “Wiley Meets David”, the American artist’s massive and colourful 2005 painting Napoleon Leading the Army over the Alps can for the first time be viewed opposite David’s 1800 depiction Bonaparte Crossing the Great St. Bernard Pass (Le Premier Consul franchissant le col du Grand-Saint-Bernard), in a show that runs until Jan. 6, 2020.

“There’s lots of chest beating going on … that’s why when you look closely at my painting, you’ll see sperm cells swimming across the surface,” said Wiley at the Oct. 9 opening of the exhibition. “This is masculinity boiled down to its most essential component. All of this stuff, warfare, is about egos, about nationhood, about the formation of society.”

The two works of powerful-looking men on horseback are presented “in dialogue” at the imposing Château de Malmaison, just outside Paris. This is the former residence of French Empress Joséphine, which she shared with Bonaparte before they divorced in 1809.

Wiley’s painting comprises a reinterpretation of David’s portrait, and it is the first in his series “Rumors of War”, where African American subjects replace the historically mighty in a questioning of warfare and inequality. Here, a model named Williams is on horseback, in the same pose as David’s Napoleon, but wearing contemporary urban gear and a golden cloak. In contrast, David’s depiction was a “symbol of the glory of Bonaparte” when it was produced in 1800, according to the show’s curators.

Wiley stressed that his work was meant to make people of African descent visible in ways that they haven’t been in the history of art. But he added that despite the aura of power in his painting, he was also portraying “fragility”, even amidst certain social advances.

Wiley arrives at the Château de Malmaison with associates. Credit: A. D. McKenzie

“I want to caution us against a facile acceptance,” Wiley said. “These steps that we’re moving forward with, I prize greatly, but I also recognize their fragility. As powerful as that young man looks on that horse, it’s not his power that I’m concerned about, but rather his fragile position within that culture … that relegates artists like myself to even need to make utterances like the ones that I’ve done.”

Before being brought to France, Wiley’s painting had been exhibited for years at the Brooklyn Museum of Art, and the current show is a joint project between this museum and the Château de Malmaison.

After the exhibition in France, both paintings will be on display in Brooklyn, from Jan. 24 to May 10, 2020. David’s work is therefore returning to the United States, where it had spent time in New Jersey in the 1800s as part of the property of Napoleon’s brother Joseph.

“The partnership with the Brooklyn Museum will provide an opportunity to shed light on the current practices of North American museums with regard to groups of artists who have been overlooked in history and the history of art, and their links to audience development,” said Emmanuel Delbouis, a co-curator of the exhibition.

For Wiley, 42 years old, it’s high time for a change in the narrative regarding the contributions of people who have traditionally been excluded from mainstream stories. He said it was not a “trend” or a “movement” that so many artists of African descent are now focusing on historical issues affecting people of colour.

“We have been able and capable of contributing to the larger conversation globally, and now these conversations are happening,” he said during the exhibition’s press opening. “I think perhaps the culture is evolving. So, it’s not a trend … it’s simply another human voice being paid attention to.”

He said his painting was a criticism of colonialism and a challenge to its legacy, but that it was also an “embrace” of French art and David’s talent.

Wiley, who rose to fame with the portrait of Obama, has seen his artistic impact grow, both in the United States and internationally. He has held several exhibitions in France, and before the opening of this latest show, the unveiling of his 27-foot-high statue in Times Square, on Sept. 27, garnered global attention.

That work, his first public sculpture, will be on view at the famed square for several weeks before being permanently installed at the entrance to the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, in Richmond, Virginia. It is being shown at the same time as the painting in France, sparking dialogue on both sides of the Atlantic about history and who gets to be celebrated in public monuments.

“We’re standing on the leading edge of story-telling, arguably on the leading edge of propaganda,” Wiley said in France. “Art has for centuries been at the service of churches, of state, of powerful men. And now artists have the ability to take that language and do what they will with it.

“So what am I doing? I’m engaging that language in a way that says ‘yes’ to certain things and ‘no’ to others,” he added. “The culture evolves, but we’re stuck here together, and we have to figure out how we’re gonna evolve together.”

This article is published in an arrangement with Southern World Arts News. Follow on Twitter: @mckenzie_ale

The post Obama’s Portraitist Challenges Napoleon’s Painter appeared first on Inter Press Service.

By Jan Lundius
STOCKHOLM / ROME, Oct 11 2019 (IPS)

Politics is a dodgy game, maybe even more so if you represent political views based on a moral approach. When the charismatic Justin Trudeau, son of a cosmopolitan liberal who served as Canada´s Prime Minister for 16 years, in 2015 was elected Prime Minister it was within a global political climate different from what it is today. Barack Obama was in the White House, Angela Merkel served her third period as German Chancellor, and the UK Government had not yet announced its country’s withdrawal from the EU. Nevertheless, Russia had three months before Trudeau´s election annexed Crimea, while Viktor Orbán´s Hungarian government the month before initiated the construction of a 4 metres high barrier along its nation´s eastern and southern borders to keep immigrants out.

After Donald Trump on January 27, 2017, had announced a ban on entry from seven Muslim-majority countries, Trudeau tweeted that “Canadians will welcome you, regardless of your faith” and since Trump was elected more than 40,000 asylum seekers have from the USA crossed the border into Canada.1 Just after taking office, Trudeau issued a statement promising to work for gender equality, to fight environmental degradation, rebuild relations with indigenous people and run an open, ethical and clear government, as well as he declared that his first legislative priority would be to lower taxes for middle-income Canadians and raise them for the highest percentage of income earners.

However, Trudeau´s stance as a stout liberal is becoming increasingly difficult within a global context and ahead of the Canadian general election day on October 21 his political opponents are exposing and trying to benefit from several shortcomings of his politics, as well as casting doubts on his personal integrity. A recent addition to this campaign has been when on September 18 Trudeau attracted controversy for a photograph published in Time on which he wore “brownface makeup” at a party at a private school where he was teaching in 2001. Time also published two earlier photos on which Trudeau wore “blackface”. Eventually, Trudeau was accused of being a populist politician obscuring the fact that he grew up as a privileged, white boy in close connection with the corridors of power where he learned to avoid accusations by acting as a firm believer in equality and multiculturalism. At once Trudeau apologized for unconsciously having hurt people:

Darkening your face, regardless of the context and circumstances, is always unacceptable because of the racist history of blackface. I should’ve understood that then, and I never should’ve done it […] I’m not that person anymore. I’m someone that understands the deep hurt caused by actions like that to people who live with discrimination every single day. I regret it deeply and I’m deeply sorry that I did that. It was something I didn’t think was racist at the time, and now I know it was racist.2

Trudeau was probably right. Dressing up and acting like a person from another culture and with another skin colour is probably something many of us have done. I remember how happy I was when I as a kid was chosen to play the African king Caspar in the Church´s Christmas pageant, wearing blackface and a beautiful robe. Furthermore, one of the favorite games among us kids in Sweden were to play Cowboys and Indians. I always wanted to be Sitting Bull and even had a magnificent feather war bonnet that my father had made for me.

Wearing blackface in the US or Canada may occasionally be equally innocent. Racist connotations of blackface are easily discernible, but its history is nevertheless multifaceted. Music and entertainment have always been a means for discriminated people to express frustrations and criticize an oppressing society. In his book Blues People from 1963, Leroy Jones, later known as Amiri Baraka, traced the origins of blues and jazz.3 Among other findings he described the cakewalk, originally a dance performed at get-togethers of plantation slaves, ridiculing the pretentious behaviour of slave masters. The polyrhythmic and syncopated music accompanying such dances was influenced by the hambone rhythm common among the West African Ewe people. After a troupe of former slaves performed the dance at the 1876 Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia it became popular all over the U.S. It was named cakewalk since the dancers were awarded with an enormous cake. Several composers, like Louis Moreau Gottschalk and Stephen Foster, made use of cakewalk tunes, but most famous was Scott Joplin´s inclusion of these specific rhythms in his ragtime compositions.

Cakewalk also captivated Europeans. In 1908, the French composer Claude Debussy published his Children´s Corner, a 6-movement suite for solo piano. The sixth piece, Golliwogg´s Cakewalk, is a jaunty, syncopated tune inspired by American ragtime. At the time Golliwogg dolls were fashionable all over the U.S. and Europe. They were stuffed dolls with jet black faces, bright red lips and wild, woolly hair. They wore red trousers, a shirt with a stiff collar, red bow-tie, and a blue jacket with tails, all reminiscent of performers in blackface minstrels.

Over the years, cakewalk had developed into popular shows, so called minstrels, in which both white and African American actors painted their faces jet black and then engaged in equilibristic song and dance numbers. Even the composer of the Canadian national hymn, Calixa Lavallée (1842-1891) spent 10 years of his life on stage in blackface. Famous Afro American blackface performers were Bahamian born Bert Williams and young comedy star Josephine Baker, who later brought her act to France, transformed it by introducing exotic ”African” traits and eventually became not only one of the most famous African American performers ever, but also a hero of the French resistance movement against the Nazi occupiers. The list of white artists performing in blackface is vast; famous among them are for example Bing Crosby, Fred Astaire, Laurel and Hardy, Buster Keaton, Doris Day. Mickey Rooney, Shirley Temple and Judy Garland, just to mention a few of them. Most famous of all blackface acts is when musical artist Al Jolson sang Mammy in the 1927 movie The Jazz Singer, the first sound film. As a son of a Jewish, Orthodox cantor who could not accept that his son had become a vaudeville artist, both Jolson and the character in the movie wore blackface during their performances as an indication that they had broken away from the ”enclosed traditional Jewish life” and become integrated in ”American culture”.4

The Golliwog character that inspired Debussy was created by the illustrator Florence Kate Upton, who in 1895 began writing children books about a black doll. The doll became the hero of thirteen enormously popular, rhyming books and was presented as a gentle and inventive character. The last of Upton´s books about Golliwog was published in 1909, but dolls manufactured in his likeness had by then become a common addition to thousands of nurseries. In far away Sweden, I was unaware of their existence but like millions of other children around the world I had read several of Enid Blyton´s (1897–1968) books – they have over the years been published in over 600 million copies – though I was never a great fan of them, the kids ate too much and were far too well-behaved. Her books are still popular and have been translated into 90 different languages. She built a literary empire, sometimes producing fifty books a year, among them a series of Golliwog books, like The Three Golliwogs, The Little Black Doll, The Golliwog Grumbles and Here Comes Noddy Again, it is only in the last book that a Golliwog is really naughty – he asks a driver for a lift only to end up stealing his car. Blyton´s books about the Golliwogs have been defended as being innocent children´s literature. Neverthelss, they are racist. The looks and simplistic behaviour of the black characters contribute to conecptions that more or less consciously influence the minds of young readers. The name Golliwog is offensive as well. Wog is a derogatory word referring to a ”non-white person”. The term apparently originated from sailors and used to label a person as a clumsy newcomer, someone who had not yet crossed the equator – pollywog was another name for a tadpole, i.e. someone who is not yet fully developed.

In Blues People, Leroi Jones characterized blackface performances as yet another proof of unawareness of how black people relate to oppressors. According to him, white people are brought up within a culture that thoughtlessly infantilizes and discriminates against persons of another skin colour. Most white Americans lack awareness of the origins of their own culture, which in reality is a mixture of contributions from a vast number of people with different skin colours. Especially American music, fashion and literature contain important traits of African culture and much of what now is used to denigrate African Americans were originally used by them to criticize the whites:

If the cakewalk is a Negro dance caricaturing certain white customs, what is that dance, when, say, a white theater company attempts to satirize it as a Negro dance? I find the idea of white minstrels in blackface satirizing a dance satirizing a dance satirizing themselves, as a remarkable kind of irony.5

Racism is absurd and all of us, irrespective of the colour of our skin, ought to realize that if we do not admit that certain behaviour can be considered as denigrating by others we remain at an infantile state of mind. When kids play being Cowboys and Indians, or when grown-ups impersonate people from other cultures, this is mostly done in an innocent manner. However, it is a quite different case when, as for example D.W. Griffith did in his classic and still admired movie Birth of a Nation, blackfaced actors are ridiculing and demonizing black Americans.

Trudeau did the right thing when he apologized for his use of blackface. However, his political opponents’ way of interpreting thoughtless, bygone playacting as a racist statement may be considered as a politically motivated maneuver intended to damage someone who actually has been trying to improve race relations.

1 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-47940989
2 https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/juliareinstein/justin-trudeau-blackface-brownface-photos-video
3 Jones, Leroi (1999) Blues People: Negro Music in White America. New York: Harper Perennial.
4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PIaj7FNHnjQ
5 Jones (1999), p. 86.

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

The post Justin Trudeau´s Blackface appeared first on Inter Press Service.

In Kashmir there are thousands of young women who were sold in their teens by their parents to older men, and now living lives governed by restrictions which many equate to imprisonment. Credit: Stella Paul/IPS

By Umar Manzoor Shah
SRINAGAR, Oct 11 2019 (IPS)

Haseena Akhtar was only 13 when an agent told her parents that they could earn a good amount of money by letting her marry a Kashmiri man. The man was, however, three times older than Akhtar, the agent said.

Akhtar’s parents, who lived in the poverty-stricken region of West Bengal (an eastern Indian state), had two other daughters and according to tradition they would have had to bear cost of their marriages. So they let their 13-year-old daughter go with the agent.

Akhtar, who is now 20, ended up here in Kashmir — a landlocked northern region of India caught in the grip of violence and conflict over the past 30 years.

The agent took her to an old part of the city in Srinagar, the region’s capital, and she was married to a middle aged, disabled, Kashmiri man.

“That was not a marriage in any terms. That was a pure selloff. I was sold to a man who couldn’t find a bride for himself in Kashmir because his right leg was amputated after he was injured in a bomb blast some years before,” Akhtar told IPS.

Too many daughters and no boy

A year after the marriage, she gave birth to a girl.

Three more daughters later, and the strong desire by both her husband and her in-laws for a son and grandson was not fulfilled.

By the age of 18 Akhtar was mother to four daughters and relations with her husband and her in-laws had deteriorated.

“I was nothing less than a sex slave for my husband who wanted me to give birth to a boy. When that didn’t happen, I was first ridiculed, then beaten and then dragged out of the home along with my daughters,” Akhtar said.

One of the neighbours provided her with shelter and intervened to talk to her husband and his family. A volunteer organisation also came to her aid and helped her get work as a cleaner in a private firm, earning $100 a month.

When efforts to remedy things with her in-laws failed, Akhtar’s husband  paid her $550 and divorced her.

With a meagre income and four daughters to support, the road ahead for Akhtar looks filled with hurdles.

“I don’t know what I will do and where I will go. I sometimes wonder why being poor makes you vulnerable to all kinds of exploitation,” she said.

It’s so common, its socially acceptable

Akhtar’s story is not unique here.

In Kashmir there are thousands of young women like her, sold in their teens by their parents to older men, who are now living lives governed by restrictions which many equate to imprisonment. 

Infested with violence and Islamist militancy, Kashmir is becoming a safe haven for human traffickers. 

A three-decade insurgency that aims to free the region from Indian rule and the Indian efforts to quell it have claimed at least 100,000 lives, including those of civilians, militants and members of the security forces.

The border tensions and insurgency have killed an average of 1,500 people each year over the last 30 years, according to official records. Here, many former militants, torture victims and people who remain psychologically affected by the conflict didn’t marry at the traditionally marriageable ages of between 25 to 35 years. 

Now much older, these rejected grooms are turning to agents who provide them with young, non-local women whom they can marry — all for the price of just a few thousand dollars.

Aabid Simnanni, a renowned scholar and a social worker who heads an organisations that focuses on human trafficking in Kashmir, told IPS that a majority of the marriages between Kashmiri men and teenage, non-local women end badly due to the generational and cultural gaps. 

“You see the men to whom these young brides are married to are middle aged — 40 to 45 years old. How could you expect such a huge generation gap to disappear? Also, there are cultural, linguistic and many other barriers between the two sides. These things matter a lot in a successful marriage,” Simnanni said.

He said that for the past five years his organisation has been helping women get legal and financial help but that it would be a Herculean task to stop the practice. 

Police won’t investigate because the women are legally married

A senior official in the anti-trafficking cell of the Kashmir police told IPS that it has become almost impossible to catch traffickers as there is no one willing to testify to the crime.

“The victim is usually married to the man by [law] and it is difficult to ascertain the victim’s age as the documents are already forged by the agents. We act only when we receive the complaint against anyone,” said the official who did not wish to be named as he is not authorised to speak to the media about the issue. 

He says that there are no records available about the number of brides trafficked to Kashmir as the practice has societal acceptance in Kashmir. 

“The marriage is happens in a broad day light. Though it is an open secret that these girls are sold by their parents for a pretty sum, the relationship they get into is absolutely legitimate and legal in accordance the law,” the official said.

My marriage, my prison

Four years ago, Ulfat Bano, a 14-year-old from India’s Northern state of Bihar was taken to Kashmir by her distant cousin who herself was married to a Kashmiri man. 

Bano’s family was given around one thousand dollars and an assurance that she would marry into a good family. 

Here she was given to a  50- year-old torture victim.

“I was shocked when I saw him first. He was older than my father and I was forcibly married to him. I had no choice,” Bano told IPS.

According to her, her husband was tortured in the early 1990s when militancy against the Indian rule erupted in Kashmir.

His left eye was damaged and for years he could not find a local woman to marry him. His family contacted Bano’s cousin, who was married to one of their relatives, and asked her to find a bride for their son.

Now the mother of a three-year-old daughter and a two-year-old son, Bano longs for home every day. 

In the four years since her marriage, she has not been allowed to return to Bihar to see her family.

“Kashmir is nothing less than a prison for me. What good is this life for when you cannot meet your parents and share few moments of joy with them? My husband fears that if he allows me to meet my parents, I won’t return home.

“He is probably right.”

—————————————–The Global Sustainability Network ( GSN ) is pursuing the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal number 8 with a special emphasis on Goal 8.7 which ‘takes immediate and effective measures to eradicate forced labour, end modern slavery and human trafficking and secure the prohibition and elimination of the worst forms of child labour, including recruitment and use of child soldiers, and by 2025 end child labour in all its forms’.

The origins of the GSN come from the endeavours of the Joint Declaration of Religious Leaders signed on 2 December 2014. Religious leaders of various faiths, gathered to work together “to defend the dignity and freedom of the human being against the extreme forms of the globalisation of indifference, such us exploitation, forced labour, prostitution, human trafficking” and so forth.

Related Articles

• West Africa’s Fine Line Between Cultural Norms and Child Trafficking
• As Fathers Die, Kashmir’s Children Become Breadwinners
• Myanmar and China’s Bride Trafficking Problem

The post For Some in Kashmir Marriage Equates to Sexual Slavery appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

This is part of a series of features from across the globe on human trafficking. IPS coverage is supported by the Riana Group.

The post For Some in Kashmir Marriage Equates to Sexual Slavery appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Dr. Abiy Ahmed must now work tirelessly for peace

By PRESS RELEASE
OSLO, Oct 11 2019 (IPS-Partners)

“We congratulate Dr. Abiy Ahmed on the Nobel Peace Prize and his courageous efforts in bringing ambitious reforms to Ethiopia and offering the hand of peace to neighbouring Eritrea. The Norwegian Refugee Council is among the very few international groups operating in Eritrea and Ethiopia and assisting people in need in both countries. We have witnessed the dramatic improvement in relations between the two countries during Dr. Abiy Ahmed´s government after conflict and tension over the years produced displacement and suffering.

As the recipient of the Nobel prize, Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed must now make resolving ethnic tensions within Ethiopia a priority and work tirelessly to bring peace to his people.

As Africa´s youngest leader, Dr. Ahmed made peace with Eritrea after almost 20 years of hostilities. He released political prisoners and journalists, unbanned opposition groups and appointed women to his cabinet, all within a year of being in office.

Today´s announcement is not only a win for Dr. Ahmed but for Ethiopia.

When I visited Ethiopia in June, I was astounded by the country´s economic and social achievements, including its ability to welcome refugees from war-torn countries like South Sudan and Somalia without complaint. Ethiopia currently hosts over 900,000 refugees and passed a historic new law that allows refugees access to services such as work permits and banking.

However, I was equally struck by meeting many of the millions of displaced Ethiopians as a result of ethnic violence. Around 2.3 million citizens are displaced inside the country, 1.7 million of them after fleeing conflict. Dr. Ahmed must continue to be brave and work to resolve ethnic tensions through peaceful means and bring to an end the misery and suffering of millions of displaced people.”

For interviews or more information, please contact:

NRC’s media hotline: info@nrc.no, +47 90562329

The post Statement by NRC Secretary General Jan Egeland following the announcement of the Nobel Peace Prize winner for 2019: appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Dr. Abiy Ahmed must now work tirelessly for peace

The post Statement by NRC Secretary General Jan Egeland following the announcement of the Nobel Peace Prize winner for 2019: appeared first on Inter Press Service.

By Kul Chandra Gautam
KATHMANDU, Nepal, Oct 11 2019 (IPS)

The United Nations is faced with a financial crisis once again. Leaders of as many as 64 countries who paraded and pontificated at the UN General Assembly and its multiple Summit meetings in September 2019 were deadbeats, who had not paid their dues in full to the UN for this year.

Many have been in arrears for multiple years. Those include not just poor and war-torn countries in crisis but many wealthy countries such as the United States, Israel, Saudi Arabia, South Korea, Oman, and Nigeria whose ambassador presides over the UN General Assembly this year.

This is not a new phenomenon. UN has been in serious financial crisis before. And once every decade or so the crisis becomes alarming as it seems to be at present.

We are told that the UN Secretariat could face a default on staff salaries and payments for goods and services by the end of November 2019 unless more Member States pay their budget dues in full.

To address the crisis, the Secretary-General has taken various steps including reduction in official travel; postponing spending on goods and services; discontinuing events outside official meeting hours, and possibly considering postponement or even cancellation of meetings and conferences mandated by the General Assembly. Previous Secretaries-General also had to resort to such measures.

Faced with similar circumstances, many bold proposals were made to resolve the crises in the past. But the fate of such proposals always ended up in resorting to short-term, stop-gap, compromise solutions.

Kul Chandra Gautam

As his predecessors have done in the past, Secretary-General António Guterres wrote a letter to all Member States on the 7th of October 2019 to apprise them of the imminent financial crisis and appealed for their help to resolve it.

What is new in the S-G’s most recent letter to Member States is an explicit acknowledgment that “this is a recurrent problem that severely hampers the Secretariat’s ability to fulfil its obligations to the people we serve”.

He went on to say that he “looks to Member States to resolve the structural issues that underlie this annual crisis without further delay”.

It is my considered view that the time has come for the Secretary-General himself to exercise bolder leadership and make some specific proposals, and not just to “look to Member States to resolve the structural issues that underlie the crisis”.

Precisely because there are structural issues and strong vested interests, Member States by themselves are unlikely to come up with solutions that require bold, innovative and even non-conventional approaches.

Only a neutral, visionary and respected leader or a group of leaders can come up with such proposals. The onus and the opportunity for coming up with such proposals now lies squarely with Secretary-General António Guterres.

Everybody says UN needs reforms. But the kind of reforms that are proposed by Member States are often timid and inadequate, and in the case of those proposed by some, e.g. the Trump administration, they are actually harmful and contrary to the multilateral ethos of the United Nations. Such proposals are unlikely to command broad-based support.

It is time for the Secretary-General himself to take the initiative and commission a high-level panel to propose a more predictable and sustainable funding of the UN.

The 75th anniversary of the UN in 2020 is a perfect occasion for the S-G to present a bold proposal for a more sustainable funding mechanism for the UN in keeping with the ambitious Sustainable Development Agenda for 2030 that the UN has championed so boldly.

What might be some elements of the proposal that the S-G can present? I made a humble proposal in 2017 when the Trump administration first proposed its sweeping cuts to the UN budget and aid for international development: http://kulgautam.org/2017/03/20/responding-to-us-budget-cuts-for-united-nations/.

This proposal was further dissected in an Inter Press Service article in December 2018 by several scholars and diplomats with deep knowledge and affinity with the UN : http://www.ipsnews.net/2018/12/time-end-cheque-book-diplomacy-un/

Here are two key elements that stand out for the S-G’s consideration: 1) resurrect, revise and reformulate the 1985 proposal by the late Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme who recommended capping the share of any member state to 10 percent of the organization’s assessed contributions, and 2) seriously explore some innovative financing arrangements such as the Tobin tax on currency or financial transactions, a carbon tax, taxes on the arms trade, and raising resources from the deep seas and other global commons, which are considered the common heritage of humankind.

It is worth remembering that the cap proposed by Palme was intended to reduce the UN’s excessive dependence on funding by the US and a fistful of big donors. The spirit of the Palme proposal was to protect the UN from being unduly influenced by and vulnerable to the whims of such donors.

Any shortfall caused by capping the US contribution to the UN can and ought to be made up by other members of the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), and the large number of middle-income emerging economies, without putting undue burden on the world’s low-income countries and LDCs.

It is worth recalling that in the larger scheme of international finance, in a world economy of $88 trillion and global military budgets of $1.8 trillion per year, the UN’s regular annual budget is only $3.3 billion, and the totality of the UN system’s budget for humanitarian assistance, development cooperation, peace-keeping operations, technical assistance and other essential normative functions, amounts to less than $50 billion per year.

This is a modest amount to respond to the huge challenges that the UN is asked and expected to help tackle.

To put it in perspective, the total UN system-wide spending annually is less than the defense budget of India or France, and less than one month’s US spending on defense.
With similar investment, bilateral aid and national budgets of much bigger proportions could hardly achieve results comparable to what the UN and international financial institutions achieve.

On the idea of exploring alternative innovative funding, it is useful to recall that financing for development landscape is changing rapidly. Many UN activities already benefit from private sector financing and philanthropic foundations. Many NGOs rely increasingly in cloud-sourcing and crowd-funding as well as different modalities of public-private partnerships.

Harnessing such possibilities and expanding its sphere of partnerships must also be part of the UN’s own sustainable funding agenda as recognized in SDG-17.

We know that the US and many other states are likely to oppose such schemes as most states want to safeguard their monopoly over taxing powers and will not be keen to give such authority to the UN or anyone else.

Many governments would also be fearful of UN mobilizing funding from non-conventional sources that they cannot control.

However, I see no reason why the UN should not judiciously explore such funding options – not to replace core funding by Member States, but to complement it.

After all, the UN is supposed to be an organization of “We the Peoples”, not just “We the Governments”. Historically, it is often the people’s movements that have helped the UN to set ambitious and futuristic agenda, such as on human rights, social justice, and climate change, often defying the resistance of some powerful as well as many power-hungry governments.

To his credit, Guterres has dared to push the agenda of addressing the climate crisis, universal health coverage – including sexual and reproductive health and rights – and several other measures despite known objections by some powerful Member States, including the US.

While actual progress has been limited, and the S-G does not have the power or the resources to force changes, the bully pulpit of the world’s top and most visible diplomat needs to be harnessed for the greater good of humanity.

Dag Hammarskjold and Kofi Annan dared to take bold leadership despite great odds, and history has judged them well.

I would urge António Guterres to come up with some bold proposals for sustainable funding of the UN on the occasion of its 75th anniversary in 2020. This could be one of his lasting legacies as the Secretary-General of the SDG-era.

https://amazon.com/author/kulgautam

The post Wanted: Bold Leadership by António Guterres: On Sustainable Funding of United Nations appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Kul Chandra Gautam, a former Deputy Executive Director of UNICEF and Assistant Secretary-General of the United Nations, is the author of: Global Citizen from Gulmi: My Journey from the Hills of Nepal to the Halls of the United Nations.

The post Wanted: Bold Leadership by António Guterres: On Sustainable Funding of United Nations appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Isabel Ortiz is Director of the Global Social Justice Program at Joseph Stiglitz’s Initiative for Policy Dialogue at Columbia University, former Director at the International Labour Organization (ILO) and UNICEF, and senior official at the UN and at the Asian Development Bank.
 
Matthew Cummins is senior economist who has worked at UNDP, UNICEF and the World Bank.

By Isabel Ortiz and Matthew Cummins
WASHINGTON DC, Oct 11 2019 (IPS)

While this week Ministers of Finance and economists meet in Washington to confront global economic challenges at the IMF and World Bank Annual Meetings, the majority of the world population lives with austerity cuts and see their living standards deteriorating. World leaders must reverse this trend.

Isabel Ortiz

Since 2010, most governments in both high income and developing counties have been implementing austerity policies, cutting public expenditures. Surprisingly, this trend is expected to continue at least until 2024, according to a global study just published by the Initiative for Policy Dialogue at Columbia University, global trade unions and civil society organizations. Austerity has become “the new normal.”

Based on IMF fiscal projections, the study finds that a new fiscal adjustment shock will start in 2020. By 2021, government expenditures as a share of GDP will be declining in 130 countries, nearly three-fourths of which are in the developing world. The reach of austerity is staggering: nearly 6 billion persons will be affected by 2021.

How are governments cutting their budgets and implementing austerity reforms? In practice, the most commonly considered adjustment measures in 2018-19 include: pension and social security reforms (in 86 countries); cutting or capping the public sector wage bill, including the number and salaries of teachers, health workers and civil servants delivering public services (in 80 countries); labor flexibilization reforms (in 79 countries); reducing or eliminating subsidies (in 78 countries); rationalizing and/or further targeting social assistance or safety nets (in 77 countries); increasing regressive consumption taxes, such as sales and value added taxes (in 73 countries); strengthening public-private partnerships (PPPs) (in 60 countries); privatizing public assets/services (in 59 countries); and healthcare reforms (in 33 countries).

All of these measures have negative social impacts. As a result, in many countries older persons have lower pensions; there are not sufficient teachers, medical and care staff, and the quality of public services suffers; there are less jobs, and people work under more precarious conditions; prices increase while wages are stagnant; and the low and middle classes are squeezed and under pressure.

Matthew Cummins

In perspective, the macroeconomic and fiscal choices made by governments over the last decade are alarming. The G20 alone committed US$10 trillion to support the financial sector in response to the global financial crisis, and then passed the costs of adjustment to populations, with millions of people being pushed into poverty and lower living standards.

The worldwide drive toward austerity or fiscal consolidation can be expected to aggravate the growth and employment crisis and diminish public support at a time of high development needs, soaring inequalities and social discontent.

Austerity is also being used as a trojan horse to induce “Washington Consensus” policies to cut back on public policies and the welfare state. Once budgets are contracting, governments must look at policies that minimize the public sector and expand private sector delivery, including PPPs. There are clear winners and losers from this renewed Washington Consensus, and governments must effectively assess and question these policies.

Austerity and budget cuts do not need to be “the new normal.” There are alternatives, even in the poorest countries. Governments can find additional fiscal space to fund public services and development policies through at least eight options, which range from increasing progressive tax revenues, cracking down on illicit financial flows, improving debt management and using fiscal and foreign exchange reserves, to adopting more accommodative macroeconomic frameworks, reprioritizing public expenditures and -for lower income countries- lobbying for greater aid. All these options are endorsed by the United Nations and the international financial institutions.

It is time for world leaders to abandon the myopic scope of macroeconomic and fiscal policy decisions that benefit few and, instead, look for new fiscal space and financing opportunities to foster a robust global recovery and the achievement of long-term global prosperity for all.

The post Austerity, the “New Normal” appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Isabel Ortiz is Director of the Global Social Justice Program at Joseph Stiglitz’s Initiative for Policy Dialogue at Columbia University, former Director at the International Labour Organization (ILO) and UNICEF, and senior official at the UN and at the Asian Development Bank.

 
Matthew Cummins is senior economist who has worked at UNDP, UNICEF and the World Bank.

The post Austerity, the “New Normal” appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Civilians at risk as violence escalates and humanitarian work is suspended.

By PRESS RELEASE
Oct 10 2019 (IPS-Partners)

Civilians in north-east Syria are at risk and humanitarian aid could be cut off following the launch of a new military operation in the area, leading aid agencies are warning.

Reports from humanitarian responders on the ground say civilians are already on the move and that some vital services have been interrupted, including medical facilities and water supplies. Agencies say that some of their staff have fled with their families, while others are on lockdown.

An estimated 450,000 people live within 5km of the Syria-Turkey border and are at risk if all sides do not exercise maximum restraint and prioritise the protection of civilians. The population includes more than 90,000 internally displaced people, who have already been forced to flee their homes at least once in Syria’s unrelenting war.

According to UN OCHA, there are at least 1,650,000 people in need of humanitarian assistance in north-east Syria. The life-saving humanitarian response will be threatened if instability forces aid agencies to suspend or relocate their programming and staff, as is already happening. With an ongoing major crisis in Idlib and huge needs across the country, the aid response in Syria is already stretched to breaking point.

The 14 aid agencies are urging parties to the conflict to fully respect International Humanitarian Law and ensure that they refrain from using explosive weapons in populated areas. They must ensure all measures are taken to protect civilians and facilitate safe, unhindered humanitarian access. People living in the area affected by this military action have the right to freedom of movement and must not be forcibly displaced from their homes.

Likewise, there must be no forcible returns of refugees living in Turkey to Syria. Anyone returned could face threats to their safety and security, continued internal displacement and reliance on humanitarian assistance that the international community is not in a position to provide. According to the Government of Turkey, an estimated 83 per cent of the three million Syrians in Turkey do not originate from the north-east.

The international community has an important role to play in helping to resolve this crisis. The UN Security Council, which is expected to discuss the situation today (10th October), must emphasize the need for restraint and reiterate importance of protecting civilians and facilitating unimpeded humanitarian operations.

The security situation in the area is already fragile, with tens of thousands of fighters and their families being held in camps and detention centres. All children must be protected and provided humanitarian assistance, and countries of origin must take immediate steps to repatriate the estimated 9,000 children from at least 40 different nationalities who are in north-east Syria.

Urgent action is needed to ensure that the humanitarian situation in north-east Syria does not worsen further, with potentially dire consequences for families and children who find themselves once again caught up in deadly violence.

Signed:
• Action Against Hunger
• Christian Aid
• CARE International
• DanChurchAid
• Diakonie Katastrophenhilfe
• Humanity & Inclusion
• International Rescue Committee
• Medecins du Monde
• Mercy Corps
• Norwegian Refugee Council
• Oxfam
• People in Need
• Un Ponte Per
• World Vision

For more information please contact Karl Schembri karl.schembri@nrc.no / +962 7902 20159 or Caroline Anning caroline_anning@wvi.org / +962 778482439

The post 14 aid agencies warn of humanitarian crisis in North-East Syria appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Civilians at risk as violence escalates and humanitarian work is suspended.

The post 14 aid agencies warn of humanitarian crisis in North-East Syria appeared first on Inter Press Service.

This week UN Security Council considered the situation in Syria. Aid groups operating in northeastern Syria have been raising the alarm about civilian casualties and an impending humanitarian crisis this week, as Turkey began a military assault on the turbulent region’s Kurdish militants. Credit: UN Photo/Manuel Elias

By James Reinl
UNITED NATIONS, Oct 10 2019 (IPS)

Aid groups operating in northeastern Syria have been raising the alarm about civilian casualties and an impending humanitarian crisis this week, as Turkey began a military assault on the turbulent region’s Kurdish militants.

Doctors Without Borders (MSF), Human Rights Watch (HRW) and other groups warned about everything from massive new flows of refugees to conditions for detained Islamic State (IS) fighters from a previous phase in Syria’s chaotic civil war.

Turkish forces began an offensive in Syria’s northeast on Wednesday to clear out Kurdish militias and return Syrian refugees, within days of United States President Donald Trump’s controversial decision to withdraw U.S. troops from Syria’s turbulent north.

MSF teams “remain ready to provide medical care after the Turkish military launched operations” and “are preparing for a potential increase of patients linked to the conflict,” the group said in a statement Wednesday.

“We have seen people being displaced from locations along the border due to the conflict and are extremely worried that the military intervention will threaten the safety and wellbeing of the Syrian people,” the group said.

Military operations against Kurdish fighters began Wednesday with air strikes rocking the Syrian border town of Ras al Ain with large explosions, as Turkey moved tanks, artillery, and howitzers in preparation for a broader assault.

United Nations spokesman Farhan Haq said aid groups would have “scale-up at a time of crisis” and urged the region’s armed forces to keep the Turkey-Syria border open so that aid trucks could bring food, medicine and other gear to those affected by fighting.

Ankara seeks to create a “safe zone” to return millions of refugees to Syrian soil and end a “terror corridor” on Turkey’s southern border. Turkey says Kurdish YPG fighters in northeast Syria are terrorists due to their links to militants waging an insurgency inside Turkey.

Turkey had been preparing to advance into Syria’s northeast since U.S. troops started pulling out of the area in a policy shift by Trump that was widely condemned in Washington as a betrayal of America’s armed Kurdish allies.

Eric Schwartz, president of Refugees International, an aid group, blasted Trump’s policy shift and rounded on Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s “shockingly irresponsible” assault, which “will put lives at grave risk.”

“Trump’s decision to give Turkey the green light to launch an incursion into northeast Syria could have major humanitarian consequences,” Schwartz, a former U.S. State Department official, said in a statement.

“It could open new fronts in the conflict and newly displace hundreds of thousands of civilians across an area already in the grip of a humanitarian crisis [and] likely force international relief groups to evacuate just when they are most needed.”

Doz, a youth aid organisation, said Ankara’s stated objective of resettling some 2 million Syrian refugees from Turkey back to their homeland was tantamount to “demographic engineering and ethnic cleansing”.

In a statement, Doz urged the European Union, the U.N. and the U.S. to try to “prevent this war”, which will have “dramatic consequences such as new mass forced migration and directly affect the life of 6 million civilians.”

Fighting in the struggling northeast could “revive” prospects for IS and “cause the release” of some 12,000 hardline militants who are detained by Kurdish forces at al-Hol and other camps in Syria’s northeast, said Doz.

HRW, a New York-based campaign group, said the detained militants across some seven lockups in the northeast included 4,000 foreign fighters who should be repatriated to their countries of origin.

“Thousands of people, including children, are stuck in what amounts to shockingly overcrowded prisons on suspicion of being IS, but no one is accepting responsibility for them,” said Letta Tayler, a crisis researcher for HRW. 

 

“Any authority that effectively controls these informal prisons is legally bound to urgently improve conditions and ensure that each and every detainee is held lawfully.”

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The post Aid Groups Warn of Humanitarian Crisis from Turkey’s Assault on Syria appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Credit: UN peacekeeping

By Izumi Nakamitsu
STOCKHOLM, Oct 10 2019 (IPS)

Throughout history, technology has transformed armed conflict. The carnage of First World War battlefields is a stark example of what happens when advances in weaponry outpace the normative frameworks around its use.

Today, we are experiencing a technological revolution that holds incredible promise for human development and welfare. From genome editing to quantum computing and artificial intelligence, emerging technologies offer us powerful new ways to achieve our shared commitments, including the Sustainable Development Goals.

Our networked society is promoting a “democratization” of technological dissemination. Ease of understanding and using technology is greater than ever before. Yet these benefits also bring with them clear risks for international peace and security.

Before I address the trends and consequences of the current technological context, I want to add my usual caveat: it is important not to be alarmist about the ramifications of technology, but at the same time not dismissive either.

With that, let me share with you some of the major trends in conflict risk as I see them and the implications they carry for international peace and security.

First, the application of technology to new means and methods of warfare is aggravating an arms-racing dynamic in both conventional and nuclear weapons. This dynamic is evident in the eye-watering amounts of money spent on weapons – some 1.8 trillion dollars last year, according to SIPRI – and the nuclear modernization campaigns that are, in effect, a qualitative nuclear arms race.

This is both exacerbated by, and in turn exacerbates, the absence of transparency and confidence in international relations. As States strive to develop newer and better weapons, it threatens to undermine stability and increase the prospects for unintended and potentially uncontrollable escalation.

This dynamic is not limited to States with advanced technological bases. The democratic characteristics of technological innovation provide for creative asymmetric responses – the digital IEDs, if you will.

The second trend I want to highlight is how technology is opening new potential domains for the conduct of hostilities.

Military operations using emerging technologies and in new domains can involve actions that are not easily classifiable or fall below traditional thresholds for an armed attack or an act of aggression.

This creates challenges for international peace and stability, as even non- permanent means of disrupting or disabling a military capability can prompt a conventional armed response.

Take, for example, what is commonly referred to as “cyber warfare”.

The frequency of malicious cyber incidents is growing, along with their severity. Such acts are contributing to diminishing trust and confidence among States and encouraging them to adopt offensive postures for the hostile use of these technologies.

The difficulty of attributing responsibility for cyber-attacks could result in unwarranted armed responses and escalation. Constraints agr the case of cyberattacks that do not cause physical damage and are not lethal.

New domains and methods of warfare will also change the impact on civilians in ways that are less kinetic but equally damaging. For example, “casualties” in a cyber conflict could include millions of people who have had their bank accounts wiped out by an offensive cyberattack.

Put differently, some of these new technologies could not only change the size and speed of destruction in conflict, but also the character and nature of destruction in war.

A third and related trend is how certain new technologies, in particular armed uncrewed aerial vehicles, are undermining civilian protections. Lower risks to armed forces and comparatively lower levels of physical violence risk lowering the threshold on the use of armed force in situations where it would not otherwise have been contemplated.

Such actions not only endanger civilians, but risk escalating conflict.

The fourth and final trend I want to draw attention to is the emerging nature of warfare enabled by networked militaries, autonomy, uncrewed vehicles, advanced sensors, and weapons that can attack at hypersonic speeds.

This form of warfare is not yet fully realized, but technological innovation, coupled with evolving military thinking, is trending the world in this direction with several significant risks.

So-called “hypersonic weapons” pose particular concerns because they could both reduce decision-making times while also adding ambiguities related to the nature of their targets and their own payloads, whether conventional or nuclear.

Increased adoption of Artificial Intelligence (AI) may lead to decision-making processes faster than human cognition and concern has been expressed about the potential for unpredictable and non-transparent behaviour by AI in armed conflict.

Increasing autonomy in the critical functions of weapons systems raises serious ethical and legal questions for existing frameworks and how to ensure human accountability for the use of force. The growing use of UAVs and increased autonomy could lead to perceptions of casualty-free warfare.

The possibility of third parties with malicious intent interfering in control systems to incite conflict cannot be discounted.

The potential for such advances to exacerbate political divisions and global tensions would be alarming even in the most benign of international environments.

However, we are currently mired in a geostrategic context defined by distrust, the militarization of international relations and a dearth of dialogue. Relations between the so- called “great powers” are eroding as the rules-based international order – including the disarmament and non-proliferation regime – is being challenged.

Other global issues – climate change, mass migration and social unrest – will also continue to affect the nature and conduct of armed conflict.

In this unsettling environment, where brakes on warfare are being removed, the utmost caution should be exercised in the deployment of technological innovations with disruptive ramifications.

Having said this, it is easy to list risks and challenges. It is a much harder task to elaborate solutions.

I would like to suggest today what might be some of the key elements, from the United Nations’ perspective, for our joint work ahead to elaborate possible solutions. Some of them relate to substance, others to the process and partnerships we must forge.

First, a few points related to the development of norms and their operationalization or implementation.

One of the most prominent debates in the governance of emerging technologies has been whether international frameworks can adequately contain new risks and concerns. There is divergence over whether existing law is sufficient or whether new legal instruments are required.

Some new technologies, such as armed drones, have prompted concerns about how they can tempt some to reinterpret international law.

What we need is an honest debate about how international law applies to any possible use of emerging technologies as weapons, how any such uses are constrained or prohibited by existing international law and where new approaches, including new law, is needed to mitigate foreseeable risks.

Increased transparency and accountability in the use of new technologies could help increase confidence in adherence to international law. When it comes to the weaponization of new technologies, broadened use and transparency of weapons reviews – those required under article 36 of Additional Protocol I to the 1949 Geneva Conventions – would build confidence about the legality of those weapons systems.

Regardless of where States sit on this debate, protecting civilians from the effects of armed conflict must continue to be a central concern when addressing the means and methods of warfare.

This is a tenet that we cannot lose sight of as States rush to utilize technological innovations in armed conflict.

We must reinforce mechanisms for the protection of civilians, including respect for and compliance at all times with applicable international law, including international humanitarian law.

While Member States will continue to have primary responsibility in matters of international peace and security, twenty-first century norm-making cannot be just straightforward treaty negotiations between States.

Much of the technology we have been discussing today is either dual-use or even enabling. Its creators need to be brought into the fold.

The importance of developing effective multi-stakeholder platforms that can bring together experts from Member States, industry, academia and civil society should be a priority.

This is important not only to ensure that intergovernmental deliberations are adequately informed, but also that technical communities are aware of the context and possible consequences of their work.

Modern norm-making should consider a broad spectrum of responses, from self-regulation such as code of conducts, to political initiatives such as transparency and confidence-building measures, to comprehensive and multifaceted efforts in the traditional intergovernmental negotiations.

Secondly, while each of these technologies will have a disruptive individual impact, it is at their convergence where the real challenges lie.

We need to generate a better understanding of the combined effects, especially of enabling technologies such as cyber and AI that will impact everything, not least each other. What, for example, will be the impact of autonomous malware?

I am particularly worried about how the combined use of technological innovations could upend strategic stability and lower the barriers to the use of a nuclear weapon.

Concepts such as “left of launch” missile defence – the disabling of nuclear command and control structures by cyber means – could create “use it or lose it” mentalities for first strikes.

Experts have raised the possibility of AI deep fakes to spoof command and control or early warning systems, as well the prospect of so-called “data poisoning”, the deliberate alteration of the data on which AI runs to produce unintended outcomes.

Because of such risks, Cold War concepts, including classical deterrence models, should be re-evaluated for the digital age where terms such as “cyber deterrence” could have dangerous escalatory consequences. In this era, instead of deterring conflict we need to better focus on preventing it.

In the UN context, we have made good progress to address some of the challenges posed by innovations in technology.

On autonomous weapons, States considering this issue within the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons have produced three consensus reports. My office stands ready to support Member States to build on the commonalities identified in those reports, including by elaborating measures to ensure that humans remain in control of the use of force.

Five UN Group of Governmental Experts have agreed that international law applies to the use of ICTs and that the UN Charter applies in its entirety. In 2015, the GGE was able to forge 11 voluntary non-binding norms to reduce risks to international peace, security and stability. That work continues now in two forums – an Open-Ended Working Group that met earlier this month, and another GGE that will convene later this year.

To help facilitate responses to their potential risks, my office, together with the United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research, published a study on hypersonic weapons. The study makes the case for multilateral discussion of these weapons, the development of which cannot be seen in isolation from the current deterioration in strategic arms control. We have now convened two track 1.5 meetings to inform and explore its findings.

Member States have taken practical steps to preserve peace and security by developing and commencing the implementation of transparency and confidence-building measures in outer space activities.

Later this year, the First and Fourth Committees of the General Assembly will convene a third ad hoc meeting on possible challenges to space security and sustainability.

A GGE on the prevention of an arms race in outer space also met earlier this year. Unfortunately, it was unable to agree on a substantive report, but nevertheless had the most substantive dialogue since the item was introduced to the Conference on Disarmament in 1985.

As you can see, there have been good discussions taking place in various individual areas of new technology. It is important to start now in understanding what might be the possible combined impact of these technologies in today’s international security environment. This leads me to my third and final key issue.

The disruptive nature of technological innovations and the convergence between them has prompted calls for new thinking in disarmament, arms control and non-proliferation.

As the Secretary-General said in February this year: “We need a new vision for arms control in the complex international security environment of today.”

Any new vision would need to preserve the indispensable benefits of the existing frameworks but could address many of the issues I have already mentioned. It should encompass all kinds of nuclear weapons and their qualitative developments.

It could consider particularly destabilizing categories of weapons such as hypersonic weapons. It could take into account new developments in technology and the potential vulnerabilities these have exposed, as well as the convergences between them, and new models of governance.

It should preserve and further develop or strengthen measures for protection of civilians in any type of conflict. And it should enable the use of these technologies for our collective benefit, in conflict prevention and peace-building mechanisms, and also arms control, disarmament and non-proliferation.

The UN has the convening power to create different types of platforms and discussion mechanisms. It is uniquely situated to be an impartial convener and bring in non-government actors so that multiple stakeholders can learn from each other and develop creative, mutually beneficial solutions.

I believe that the UN system, due to its broad expertise, is also well-placed to act as a catalyst for innovative thinking. I believe the UN has to play a central role in bringing together the security and humanitarian discourses in a new vision for arms control and disarmament.

And I believe the UN should contribute creative ideas to maximize the benefits and minimize the challenges of disruptive technology.

The use of technology in warfare in ways that undermines our collective security is not a forgone conclusion. Through dialogue, transparency, negotiation and cooperation, we can build the normative framework that prevents the direst of scenarios from taking place. I look forward to working together to secure our common future.

*In an address to the fourth annual Stockholm Security Conference at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI)

The post The Role of Emerging Technologies in Military Conflicts appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Izumi Nakamitsu is UN High Representative for Disarmament Affairs*

The post The Role of Emerging Technologies in Military Conflicts appeared first on Inter Press Service.

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Oct 10 2019 (IPS)

The UN’s smoldering cash crisis, which has threatened staff salaries and payments to vendors, has triggered strong reactions and rattled the over 6,400 staffers who work in the 39-storeyed Secretariat building in New York.

The proposed cuts in spending, which also cover about 37,500 UN staffers worldwide, excluding over 25 UN agencies, have put the focus on several issues, including a “bloated bureaucracy,” and more critically, on the time and money spent on endless overseas trips by some high ranking UN officials who are constantly “airborne”.

http://ask.un.org/faq/14626

Guy Candusso, a former First Vice-President of the UN Staff Union, told IPS, the cash crunch in the 1990’s was much worse, but Under-Secretary-General Joe Connor managed to solve it.

“Over the last 10 years, the UN has become a bloated organization, especially at the top. If the cash crunch is considered so serious now, there should be a complete hiring freeze along with the other measures announced,” said Candusso, a longstanding staffer, until his recent retirement.

Patricia Nemeth, President, United Nations Staff Union, told IPS staff at the United Nations are alarmed by the cash flow crisis facing the organisation.

“In addition to the anxiety we feel regarding next month’s salary, constant financial uncertainty limits our ability to fulfil our mandates or deliver services to the most vulnerable,” she said.

The United Nations Staff Union in New York has been working closely with the Under Secretary-General for Management Strategy, Policy and Compliance and the Controller to keep staff informed of the situation as it evolves.

Among the various mitigating measures, the Union welcomes the instruction to limit all official travel to essential activities.

“In this spirit, we expect senior officials to lead by example, as we are in this together”, said Nemeth, who is also Vice President for Conditions of Service – The Coordinating Committee of International Staff Unions and Associations CCISUA

“More importantly, on behalf of our 15,000+ constituents (NY staff and local staff in the peacekeeping missions) the Leadership of the United Nations Staff Union appeals to those countries who have not yet done so to heed the Secretary-General’s call and make the payments required to ensure that the work of the United Nations can continue, with the resources required to accomplish the mandates they themselves have given us.”

“We count on the world’s leaders to support the UN’s valuable work, improving the lives of current and future generations,” she declared.

Ian Richards, President of the 60,000-strong Coordinating Committee of International Staff Unions and Associations (CCISUA), told IPS: “Obviously staff are very worried about what is going on. We are pleased that the Secretary-General has prioritised payment of salaries and we have also been asked to advise on which meetings and events can be delayed for when there is more money available.”

If things get worse, Richards warned, this will have serious consequences.

“Staff have rent and other bills to pay and for those in dangerous duty stations, we need to be able to continue paying for their safety and security”.

He said this could also impact the UN’s ability to deliver food to the most needy and protect the rights of the most vulnerable.

Focusing on the UN’s mandates, Nemeth told IPS the world is faced with countless pressing issues, from violent conflicts to natural disasters, all set against the continued need to promote sustainable development for all.

The United Nations is the leading force in humanitarian efforts; in maintaining peace and security; and in offering hope for the most vulnerable, all of whom aspire to the most basic needs: life, liberty, dignity, peace, security and justice.

“Yet our critical work around the globe is currently hampered by delays in the payment of Member States’ contributions, compounded by overly restrictive financial rules.”

“We are grateful to the Secretary-General for his continued efforts to ensure that Member States fulfil their obligation to come forward with their assessed contributions. However, if the situation does not improve, we call on the Secretary-General and his team to calibrate their response to ensure that staff is protected, and ask him to cooperate closely with the Staff Unions to find practical solutions,” she declared.

UN Spokesman Stephane Dujarric told reporters the Secretariat could face a default on salaries and payments for goods and services by the end of November unless more Member States pay their budget dues in full.

The Secretary-General has therefore requested additional steps be taken immediately, including further reductions in official travel; postponing spending on goods and services; and discontinuing events scheduled outside official meeting hours at headquarters duty stations.

In addition, conferences and meetings may have to be postponed or services be adjusted. He is reviewing further options, said Dujarric.

The Secretary-General has already written to Member States about “the worst cash crisis facing the United Nations in nearly a decade”.

Stressing the Charter obligation of Member States, the Secretary-General thanked the Member States who have paid their regular budget assessments, which is now 129, and urged those who have not paid to do so urgently and in full.

By the end of September, Member States had paid only 70% of the total assessment for the regular budget, compared with 78% at the same time last year. The Secretariat had put in place multiple measures since the beginning of the year to align expenditures with cash inflows.

The 64 states that have yet to pay regular budget dues in full for 2019 are: Afghanistan, Angola, Antigua and Barbuda, Argentina, Bangladesh, Belize, Benin, Brazil, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Central African Republic, Comoros, Congo, Costa Rica, Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Djibouti, Ecuador, Eritrea, Gambia, Grenada, Guatemala, Guinea-Bissau, Honduras, Iran (Islamic Republic of), Israel, Kiribati, Lebanon, Lesotho, Liberia, Madagascar, Mali, Mauritania, Mexico, Mozambique, Niger, Nigeria, Oman, Panama, Papua New Guinea, Peru, Philippines, Republic of Korea, Romania, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Sao Tome and Principe, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, Seychelles, Somalia, South Sudan, Sri Lanka, Sudan, Suriname, Tajikistan, Togo, Tonga, Trinidad and Tobago, Tunisia, Turkmenistan, United States of America, Uruguay, Venezuela (Bolivarian Republic of) and Yemen.

The writer can be contacted at thalifdeen@ips.org

The post UN’s Cash Crisis Can Have Serious Consequences, Staff Unions Warn appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Osamu Kusumoto is Secretary General and Executive Director of Asian Population and Development Association (APDA)

By Osamu Kusumoto
TOKYO, Japan, Oct 9 2019 (IPS)

Currently, the topic of abortion as human rights leaves the world bustling. When the state of Alabama1 in the United States enacted a very strict ban on abortion, it shocked the world. This prompted so-called conservative movements, led by female business owners, to make a full-scale advertisement in the New York Times claiming abortion is a human right2 ; hence the global debate between pro-life and pro-choice.

Osamu Kusumoto

This discussion is a remnant of the debate at the International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) in 1994. Twenty Five years into the ICPD and the struggle between opposing views persists, causing the continued disruption in the　accessibility of women to reproductive health. This is especially true in developing countries.

The purpose of this paper is to show that pro-life and pro-choice are actually following the same logical development despite failing to arrive at the same conclusion.

Current Status of ICPD and Reproductive Rights

As its name suggests, ICPD is a conference that places population issues in the context of sustainable development, which served as the basis of the current Agenda 2030. However, the population problem has been treated as a value and not a scientific issue. Following this paradigm, possible solutions are unattainable.

Efforts are being made to include abortion in the ICPD Programme of Action (PoA), particularly in paragraphs 5.5., 7.3. and 7.36, which defines Reproductive Rights. The principles behind such effort are that:

A) Reproductive rights embrace certain human rights that are already recognized in national laws, international human rights documents and other consensus documents.

B) These rights rest on the recognition of the basic right of all couples and individuals to decide freely and responsibly the number, spacing and timing of their children and to have the information and means to do so.

The concept of the reproductive right is not included in the human rights defined by the UN CESCR.

Pro-choice advocates aim to expand the definition of reproductive rights in the ICPD PoA and position the right to abortion in 7.3, which refers to the number of and spacing of children. As such, the right to abortion is not an infringement to self-determination, which is central to the concept of human rights.

Pro-life advocates, on the other hand, regard abortion as infringing on the right to existence of another life, which is a gift from God.

However, it must be recognized that unplanned and unwanted pregnancies also happen. One case in point is the Yazidi girl who got pregnant as a result of sexual assault by members of ISIS. She was alienated from her community causing further victimization of the child. This is just one case and many more are happening in different parts of the world. Such abuse put women and girls in difficult position. How can this kind of problem be addressed?

The basis of human rights is respecting the dignity of human life as part of society regardless of one’s race, religion, or culture. Therefore, this contradicts the concept that abortion is a human right. Obviously, no matter how extensive the discussion on this problem could go, no logical solution can be reached. Ergo, it is meaningless to engage in an argument that will always end up in a stalemate.

Possible solution

Reproductive Rights as defined in the ICPD PoA intends to prevent pregnancy in situations where self-determination is not possible – these cases must be devoid of theological debates. Serious discussions and negotiations had been made during the formulation of the ICPD PoA and it can be assumed that a reasonable conclusion was drawn because it was adopted and ratified by many countries.

The debates on abortion may be addressed through a democratic decision-making mechanism. Unless the conditions for achieving reproductive rights are there, such as the meaningful empowerment of women, access to education, improved socioeconomic status, advancement in the field of health – especially in family planning – and full dissemination of reproductive health services, women cannot be held accountable.

Abortion is not a matter that should be recognized as a right yet, but it is an issue that should be treated with the utmost care. Appropriate medical measures must be put in place for situations where the conditions for reproductive rights cannot be met, resulting in an unwanted pregnancy. Otherwise, prolife means denying the life and dignity to human beings who are victims of circumstances.

The suggestion is to separate the issue of abortion from reproductive rights. This way, it will be possible to present a more realistic, reasonable and relevant solution that could be more commonly acceptable.

1 https://www.huffpost.com/entry/alabama-senate-abortion-bill-passes_n_5cd9fba1e4b073aa0b3266d9?guccounter=1
2 https://forbesjapan.com/articles/detail/27402?utm_source=owned&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=mailmagazine_0522_1461&utm_content=art1

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Excerpt:

Osamu Kusumoto is Secretary General and Executive Director of Asian Population and Development Association (APDA)

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By Stella Paul
INCHEON, South Korea, Oct 9 2019 (IPS)

“The window of opportunity to avoid catastrophic climate change is fast shrinking,” executive director of the Green Climate Fund (GCF), Yannick Glemarec, tells IPS.

He was speaking at the GCF Private Investment for Climate (GPIC) Conference, which took place in Incheon, South Korea, from Oct. 7 to 9. The conference has been an important platform to encourage greater dialogue among investors on the barriers they face, share past and current investment experiences and exchange innovative ideas while assuring them of all assistance and support by GCF.

“When I started my career 30 years ago though we had 80 years before we would cross the 2 ° Celsius threshold. Today we face the real risk of crossing it within 20 to 30 years or 40 years,” Glemarec says.

Executive director of the Green Climate Fund (GCF), Yannick Glemarec speaks to IPS from the GCF Private Investment for Climate (GPIC) Conference, which took place in Incheon, South Korea, from Oct. 7 to 9 about the need for scaling up private investment for climate projects. Credit: Stella Paul/IPS

“In addition what we have found over the past fews years is that 2 ° Celsius might be already far too much for a number of countries for a number of communities for a number of ecosystems. We thought, for example, that we would not see major threats to ecosystems before an increase of temperature to 3, 4, 5, 6° Celsius. Today we believe that coral reefs could be wiped out by the time we reach 2 ° Celsius,” he says.

In this interview with IPS, Glemarec candidly shares his views on the urgency of more actions in both climate mitigation and adaptation and also the urgent requirement of more finances to make these actions possible.

He also shares some details about how GCF is working to mobilise these finances, especially from private investors as public money is not enough to meet the massive needs. Finally, he shares some examples of positive leadership by GCF in developing countries where private investment helped set up and run energy projects with great success.

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• Global Climate Change Investment Heavily Tilted Towards Mitigation and Low on Adaptation

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Excerpt:

In this Voices from the Global South podcast executive director of the Green Climate Fund (GCF), Yannick Glemarec speaks to IPS from the GCF Private Investment for Climate (GPIC) Conference, which took place in Incheon, South Korea, from Oct. 7 to 9 about the need for scaling up private investment for climate projects.

The post “Window of Opportunity to Avoid Catastrophic Climate Change is Fast Shrinking” appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Credit: United Nations

By Ben Phillips
MEXICO CITY, Oct 9 2019 (IPS)

Last month 195 world leaders once again met in New York for big speeches and grand events. But on inequality, when all is said and done, more has been said than done.

Four years after governments across the world committed to fight inequality as part of the UN Sustainable Development Goals, far too little has been seen in the way of government action. That’s not the verdict of critical NGOs – that’s the official assessment of UN Secretary-General António Guterres himself.

As Guterres told countries, adding only the thinnest diplomatic coating, “the shift in development pathways to generate the transformation required to meet the Sustainable Development Goals by 2030 is not yet advancing at the speed or scale required.”

Indeed, he noted, “the global landscape for Sustainable Development Goal implementation has generally deteriorated since 2015”. It is in this context that the UN has called for a “decade of delivery” following five years in which we the people have been able to feast on words whilst fasting on action.

For years, grassroots organisations have been sounding the alarm about the damage being caused by widening inequality. More recently, the formal debate on inequality shifted and the accepted mainstream normative position has become that inequality is dangerous and needs to be reduced.

The UN has also stepped up in providing coordination and advice. But governments have not shifted in recognition of the new consensus. Cynicism about whether anything will be done has taken root amongst even the most hopeful observers.

And the big headlines from this year’s UN General Assembly did very little to counter that cynicism, dominated as they were by the world’s loudest leaders, who seem to make up for an absence of substance with a surfeit of bombast.

Quietly, on the sidelines, however, another group met to plan not a communique on the stage but a series of actions at home. It was not a huge group of countries, just a dozen, but it included countries from every region of the world and every income level.

They met not because they think they have the answers, but because they are keen to learn from each other and to act. From Indonesia to Sierra Leone to Sweden to Mexico, they and others gathered in the first heads of state and government meeting of the Grand Challenge on Inequality, a new multi-stakeholder initiative to support vanguard governments, committed to tackling inequality, in finding the path by walking it.

Then, even more crucially, these same leaders mandated senior leaders and officials – the doers – to gather just after the New York meetings in Mexico City, and then in a few months in Jakarta, and onwards, to plan the implementation of a series of practical country-specific policies to narrow the gap between the runaway few and the many pushed behind.

You haven’t heard about this meeting because the leaders don’t believe that they have yet earned the right to declare themselves the leaders. Saint Francis of Assisi said “Preach the Gospel, and if you must, use words.”

In a similar spirit, the country leaders in the Grand Challenge on Inequality recognized, in the New York and in Mexico City meetings, that the power of their commitment to tackling inequality will be shown not in what they say but in what they do.

They recognized that there is no single policy that on its own can beat inequality, and so a series of complementary policies year on year is needed. They recognized that tackling inequality means taking on vested interests: that it means progressive tax and universal public services, it means protected workers and regulated corporations, it means designing policy from the bottom-up not the top-down, and it means tackling the wealth and power of the very wealthy.

As part of that, they opened themselves up to forthright challenge from grassroots social movements and trade unions, and shared what they as leaders were finding most challenging and the lessons they had learnt from their mistakes. It was, I’ll confess, something of a shock to hear leaders start off not with justifications but with self-criticism.

It was a world away from the (in)famous “Big Men Who Strode New York”. In a world saturated by the fake, to witness sincerity was disorientating.

It is early days for the pioneer governments Grand Challenge on Inequality, but, as a witness and as someone who has spent years bluntly challenging governments for their failures, here’s why it matters: social transformation doesn’t happen when people recognize that ther society is unfair – it happens when people also recognize that it can be fairer.

And that depends on people witnessing change, somewhere. Cynicism and despair are ultimately tools of the status quo. There is nothing more dangerous to those who would keep things as they are than the threat of a good example.

And, quietly, this group of countries, of leaders who do not call themselves leaders, are starting to build that good example. Oxfam have started to call this group of governments the “axis of hope”. Perhaps these governments could be more prosaically named the “axis of action”.

Grassroots organising will remain essential to help foster leaders’ determination, and to push back against the pressures that will continue to be exerted by economic elites. There is no certainty that change is coming. But there is no longer certainty that it isn’t. And the sound that accompanies this change is not the bang of fireworks. It is a quiet whirring of hard work.

The post The Most Important Meeting You’ve Never Heard Of — & the Grand Challenge on Inequality appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Ben Phillips is an author and activist on inequality.

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Amaranth cultivation in Jumla district in Nepal. Credit: LI-BIRD

By Sonia Awale
KATHMANDU, Oct 9 2019 (IPS)

The nutritious grain that mountain peoples of the Americas and high Asia cultivated were displaced by wheat and rice, but they are staging a comeback thanks to growing public consciousness about health.

Food items like pickled potato, roasted corn, tomato in curry and chilli paste are as Nepali as you can get. But few here know that these staples of our food heritage have their roots in the Andes, and were actually brought to Europe and Asia only in the last 500 years.

Just like the Andes, the Himalaya has its own superfoods like chino (Proso millet) and kaguno (Foxtail millet) which have similar nutritional value to quinoa, but very few know of their existence

Now, there is growing demand for other lost crops of the Incas like amaranth and quinoa among urban Nepalis. These grains are high in protein, low in carbohydrates, gluten-free and rich in micronutrients and minerals.

In fact, amaranth and quinoa are healthier alternatives to rice, particularly for diabetes and hypertension patients. Another South American fruit, the gooseberry, is much sought after for its fibrous and antioxidant properties.

“We might cater to a limited market, but there is a growing demand for superfoods. In fact more and more of our customers prefer to eat quinoa instead of rice,” said Roseeta Raymajhi of Fresh Shelf and Beverage in Baluwatar that has been supplying quinoa for two years.

The Incas grew a variety of crops and vegetables, exotic fruits, beans and tubers. But with the Spanish conquests, native crops were replaced with European foods and many were lost. However with better understanding of their nutritional value, some of the lost crops of the Inca are being rediscovered.

Amaranth is now also cultivated in Nepal’s Jumla and Humla districts, where the arid mountains have a similar soil and climate to the Andes. Iron-rich amaranth leaves (latta ko sag) are eaten as a vegetable, and larger-scale amaranth cultivation in Doti and Achham districts cater to a rising demand in India.

“Many mountain crops like amaranth had been neglected but these are climate smart superfoods and that is where the future is,” explained Rita Gurung of LI-BIRD, the Pokhara-based agro-biodiversity research organisation.

She says the crops need commercial-scale production and an campaign to promote their nutritional value by recipe generation so that Nepalis will make them a regular part of their diet.

Just like the Andes, the Himalaya has its own superfoods like chino (Proso millet) and kaguno (Foxtail millet) which have similar nutritional value to quinoa, but very few know of their existence.

“We have so many highly nutritional foods, but we have abandoned them for processed and packaged foodstuff and vitamin capsules,” laments public health expert Aruna Uprety.

It has been over four years since Saurav Dhakal started Green Growth, an online shopping portal for organic produce in Kathmandu. He has seen gradual increase in demand for locally grown organic and nutrient rich produce, but says farmers have to be first convinced that there is a market for them.

“There are traditional recipes to all of our indigenous foods that we have to relearn and propagate,” Dhakal says.

This Dasain, let us replace rice with kodo (millet), phapar (buckwheat), jau (barley), til (sesame), aalas (flax seed) so that when we eat, drink and make merry, we also become healthier.

This story was originally published by The Nepali Times

The post The Superfoods of the Andes and the Himalaya appeared first on Inter Press Service.

By Stéphane Dujarric
UNITED NATIONS, Oct 9 2019 (IPS)

The Secretary-General wrote to Member States about the worst cash crisis facing the United Nations in nearly a decade. The Organization runs the risk of depleting its liquidity reserves by the end of the month and defaulting on payments to staff and vendors.

Stressing the Charter obligation of Member States, the Secretary-General thanked the Member States who have paid their regular budget assessments, which is now 129, and urged those who have not paid to do so urgently and in full.

This is the only way to avoid a default that could risk disrupting operations globally. The Secretary-General further asked governments to address the underlying reasons for the crisis and agree on measures to put the United Nations on a sound financial footing.

By the end of September, Member States had paid only 70% of the total assessment for the regular budget, compared with 78% at the same time last year. The Secretariat had put in place multiple measures since the beginning of the year to align expenditures with cash inflows.

These included adjusting hiring and other non-post expenses based on expected cash availability. Had it not contained expenditures globally from the beginning of the year, the cash shortfall in October could have reached $600 million and the Organisation would not have had the liquidity to support the opening of the General Assembly debate and the high-level meetings last month.

To date, we have averted major disruptions to operations.

These measures are no longer enough. The Secretariat could face a default on salaries and payments for goods and services by the end of November unless more Member States pay their budget dues in full.

The Secretary-General has therefore requested additional steps be taken immediately, including further reductions in official travel; postponing spending on goods and services; and discontinuing events scheduled outside official meeting hours at headquarters duty stations.

In addition, conferences and meetings may have to be postponed or services be adjusted. He is reviewing further options.

The Secretary-General noted that this is a recurrent problem that severely hampers the Secretariat’s ability to fulfil its obligations to the people we serve.

We are now driven to prioritize our work on the basis of the availability of cash, thus undermining the implementation of mandates decided by inter-governmental bodies.

The Secretary-General therefore looks to Member States to resolve the structural issues that underlie this annual crisis without further delay.

The Secretary-General has also kept the staff informed of these developments.

Footnote:

As of Tuesday 8 October 2019, 129 Member States have paid their regular budget dues in full. For a list of those countries, see http://www.un.org/en/ga/contributions/honourroll.shtml.

At this time, Member States have paid US$1.99 billion towards the 2019 regular budget assessment. The outstanding amount for 2019 for regular budget is US$1.386 billion.

The 64 states that have yet to pay regular budget dues in full for 2019 are: Afghanistan, Angola, Antigua and Barbuda, Argentina, Bangladesh, Belize, Benin, Brazil, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Central African Republic, Comoros, Congo, Costa Rica, Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Djibouti, Ecuador, Eritrea, Gambia, Grenada, Guatemala, Guinea-Bissau, Honduras, Iran (Islamic Republic of), Israel, Kiribati, Lebanon, Lesotho, Liberia, Madagascar, Mali, Mauritania, Mexico, Mozambique, Niger, Nigeria, Oman, Panama, Papua New Guinea, Peru, Philippines, Republic of Korea, Romania, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Sao Tome and Principe, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, Seychelles, Somalia, South Sudan, Sri Lanka, Sudan, Suriname, Tajikistan, Togo, Tonga, Trinidad and Tobago, Tunisia, Turkmenistan, United States of America, Uruguay, Venezuela (Bolivarian Republic of) and Yemen.

Meanwhile in a letter dated 7 October addressed to all UN staffers, Secretary-General Antonio Guterres says: I am writing to update you again on the troubling financial situation facing the United Nations. As you know, I have been working closely with Member States and managers over the past few months to solve the liquidity crisis facing our regular budget.

The ultimate responsibility for our financial health lies with Member States. Most of them have fulfilled their Charter obligations and have paid in full and some even on time. We are regularly engaging those who have not yet paid in full and will continue doing so.

With your help, we have been containing expenditures globally from the beginning of this year to align it with our liquidity. Without these measures, we would not have been able to meet payrolls and fulfil our obligations towards vendors this month.

To date, Member States have paid only 70 per cent of the total amount needed for our regular budget operations in 2019. This translates into a cash shortage of $230 million at the end of September. We run the risk of depleting our backup liquidity reserves by the end of the month.

I want to assure you that we are in this together. I have made every effort to protect staff from this crisis and I will continue to do so. I wrote to Member States on 4 October 2019 to explain that we are at a critical juncture for regular budget operations and that I must now take additional stop-gap measures to ensure the salaries and entitlements of staff will be paid as usual.

The Department of Management Strategy, Policy and Compliance will meet with senior managers tomorrow to explain these measures.

I have asked the Department of Management Strategy, Policy and Compliance to continue to work with the various departments and offices to further contain non-post expenditure wherever possible.

Managers will be asked to explore avenues to further limit expenses during the last quarter, including postponing conferences and meetings or seeking ways to reduce related expenses by adjusting services.

I am also directing them to limit all official travel to the most essential activities and to further reduce all other non-post expenses. This includes postponing purchases of goods and services, implementing energy saving and other measures to reduce utility bills and temporarily curtailing expenses on managing facilities.

Everything is being done with the major objective: To protect staff from the impact of our liquidity problems. I ask you to engage with your managers if you have any concerns. Please also share with them your ideas for curtailing expenditures in your areas of work. Together, we will manage in these difficult times.

I will continue to work with Member States to solve this problem to enable the United Nations to carry out its vital work.

Thank you for your cooperation and your service during these challenging times.

The post UN Faces its Worst Cash Crisis in Nearly a Decade appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Stéphane Dujarric is Spokesman for the Secretary-General

The post UN Faces its Worst Cash Crisis in Nearly a Decade appeared first on Inter Press Service.