Africa - INTER PRESS SERVICE

Nancy Lee is a senior policy fellow at the Center for Global Development (CGD) & Asad Sami is a research assistant at the Center for Global Development.

By Nancy Lee and Asad Sami
WASHINGTON DC, Jul 24 2019 (IPS)

In a world of stagnating public aid, limited fiscal space, and rising public debt in low-income countries (LICs), can they realistically expect to rely more on private finance from foreigners? What does the evidence suggest?

Our new paper looks at recent cross-border private capital inflows to LICs. You might be surprised at what has happened since the global financial crisis.

Foreign private investment has caught up to foreign aid as a share of gross domestic product (GDP) for the median LIC.

For individual LICs, external private capital is an important and growing source of finance (Figure 1). The global financial crisis has not had a lasting, dampening effect on private inflows to LICs—quite the opposite.

The median ratio of inflows/GDP reached new highs—over 6 percent from 2011 on—with the exception of 2015 and 2016 when the downturn in global commodity prices and tightening US monetary policy pushed short-term capital inflows lower.

Foreign direct investment (FDI)—which makes up most of the inflows to LICs—has been stable and resilient throughout the post-crisis period. In contrast to higher median private capital inflows and tax revenue as a share of GDP, median foreign development aid has dropped by almost half as a share of GDP since 2006.

It’s not all about natural resources

Inflows are not all captured by resource-rich LICs (Figure 2). In 2017, more than half of capital inflows to LICs went to non-resource-rich LICs (Figure 2.1). Commodity prices appear to have influenced total inflows into both set of countries.
But zeroing in on FDI alone shows more volatility in flows to resource-rich LICs. FDI to non-resource-rich countries shows a steady upward march throughout the period (Figure 2.2).

The top 10 LIC recipients of FDI in 2017 are equally divided between resource-rich and non-resource-rich countries (Figure 3).

Policies make a difference

Investment climate policies have a stronger association with inflows in non-resource-rich than resource-rich LICs. Figure 4 shows a significant positive relationship in non-resource-rich LICs between capital inflow ratios and a broad measure of investors’ perceptions of regulatory quality that covers policies for taxes, trade, starting a business, price controls, competition, and labor markets.

The relationship is not significant for resource-rich LICs, where investment decisions are more likely driven by policies specific to resource extraction. Non-resource-rich countries are showing that their resource endowments no longer determine their destiny. Their policy choices matter.

China is a growing investor, not just a lender

We also see an interesting shift in the sources of FDI over a relatively short period of time. China more than doubled its stock of FDI in Africa between 2011 and 2016 (Figure 5)—and the amount is now closing in on that of large traditional direct investors like the United States, United Kingdom, and France. Much attention has been paid to China’s role as a creditor to Africa; its role as a rapidly growing direct investor has received less attention.

LICs need to think about how to spread the benefits of foreign investment more widely in the economy

Given the importance of private capital inflows in LIC economies, it is worth examining whether higher inflows are positively related to domestic private investment. Private inflows might spur complementary domestic private investment, as in the example of FDI by a foreign auto company catalyzing the growth of domestic parts manufacturers and auto sales companies.

We find that foreign and domestic private investment do not necessarily reinforce each other (Figure 6). That raises concerns. It contrasts with lower-middle-income countries where private foreign and domestic investment/GDP ratios are significantly and positively correlated.

The apparent lack of complementarity between foreign and domestic private investment may point to problems related to investment enclaves. Or, in cases where the state dominates LIC economies, the state could be crowding out local private investors.

Country per capita income is not a good predictor of private capital inflow ratios

Figure 7 shows no relation between median inflow ratios and median country income levels, meaning that as LIC move into higher income categories, it should not be presumed that private inflow ratios will also rise.

That has important implications for donor policies on graduation from concessional resources, which often assume private finance will replace declining aid.

In short….

Much of the news for LICs is encouraging, and some of it flies in the face of conventional wisdom. For LICs, private inflows are an important and growing source of finance. The inflows are not all captured by resource-rich LICs. Increasingly, policies, not just resource endowments, shape LIC destinations for foreign capital.

The relation between median capital inflows/GDP and median regulatory quality is significantly positive for non-resource-rich LICs. While many have focused on China’s role as a LIC creditor, China is also playing a key role in diversifying sources of FDI in Africa.

But there is also not-so-good news. More private foreign investment does not necessarily mean more private domestic investment in LICs. And private inflow ratios do not predictably rise with country per capita income. That means that donors reducing concessional finance as countries move out of LIC status should not assume private inflows will take up the slack.

The post Foreign Private Investment in Low-Income Countries: More Important Than You Think appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Nancy Lee is a senior policy fellow at the Center for Global Development (CGD) & Asad Sami is a research assistant at the Center for Global Development.

The post Foreign Private Investment in Low-Income Countries: More Important Than You Think appeared first on Inter Press Service.

It can take anywhere between a few months and a year for individuals to learn permagarden techniques. Credit: Rebecca Root

By Rebecca Boot
KAMPALA, Uganda, Jul 24 2019 (IPS)

As the rain hammers down, Aparo Dorin sits on the damp floor of her one-room hut in zone 12, block 5A, of the Palabek refugee camp in northern Uganda.

A young widower and caregiver to nine children — six of her own and three orphans she’s taken in — Dorin fled from South Sudan following attacks on her village.

While the others are at school, three of the children sit around Dorin, visibly weary. They stare at the rain and yawn almost in synchronization before succumbing to slumber.

Maybe it’s the rain or a lack of sleep in such cramped conditions that is leaving them lacking in energy at 2 p.m. Or perhaps it’s the food deficit.

While the World Food Programme (WFP) provides monthly food packages consisting of maize, oil, salt, sugar, and beans to the camp’s residents, portions are inadequate due to a lack of resources and the ever-rising number of new arrivals.

Toward the end of the month, supplies start to wane. If the next delivery is late — as it was this month — starvation looms. Dorin recalls a period of five days when the family had almost nothing to eat.

“Coordinating and ensuring that product is getting out when it should is really critical for the survival of everybody in the settlement,” said Robert Ackatia-Armah, head of nutrition at WFP Uganda, adding that malnutrition is an issue particularly in camps where new people, severely malnourished, continue to arrive.

Aneno Lily, just a few huts over, is in the same situation as Dorin. She travelled across the border 18 months ago with two small children after her husband was killed.

The prospect of returning home seems far away. South Sudan has been plagued with civil war — and food shortages — since 2013, forcing many to flee and making the situation at the border with Uganda one of the largest refugee crises in Africa.

Aneno Lily and her two children came to Uganda 18 months ago. Credit: Rebecca Root

Palabek camp alone — just one of 14 others in the area — hosts more than 38,000 refugees. The prevalence of acute malnutrition is higher than any of the region’s other camps at 12%. Anemia among those aged 6-59 months old sits at 46%.

Globally, malnutrition contributes to half of child deaths, said Mesfin Teklu Tessema, senior director of health at the International Rescue Committee. But the situation is exacerbated in humanitarian settings.

With limited funding, a lack of access to health care facilities in camps, and the short-term approach of humanitarian aid, the international community is yet to find a long-term solution to the issue.

Alongside many of the experts who spoke to Devex, Tessema stressed the need to find new solutions and innovative ways of tackling nutritional needs for those living in displacement camps.

Amid the mud and rain of Palabek camp, one innovative approach is already proving to be a lifeline for many.

“Permagardens” are 30 by 30 meter plots of land, or minigardens, that are allocated per household and managed by refugees themselves following training.

Introduced to the camp in 2017 by African Women Rising — a nonprofit organization that works to empower women after war — the gardens are cultivated in a way that maximizes the amount of crops, trees, and plants grown throughout that site.

The idea is to have a small, intensive garden that can produce a lot of food, said Linda Eckerbom Cole, executive director at AWR, explaining that the permagardens need little space but are only present in the blocks and zones that AWR have been assigned to work in.

Even in the dry season when the harvest might not be as strong, Dorin said she has been able to dry the produce out and store it. Credit: Rebecca Root

Permaculture — a type of agricultural ecosystem designed to be sustainable and self-sufficient — and biodynamic farming techniques that focus on adding vitality to the produce enable food to grow in a 12 to 14-day cycle.

The approach was designed by Eckerbom Cole’s husband, Thomas Cole, a senior technical adviser at AWR who specializes in this type of agriculture.

It was originally part of their work with local residents to address post-conflict recovery, but AWR adapted it to additionally focus on the nutritional needs of refugees as they began arriving at Palabek two years ago.

The Ugandan government has a decades-old policy of allotting a small plot of land to refugees, which they typically use to build a home or attempt to farm — but traditional farming requires more space.

“Refugees don’t have a lot of space, so it’s important that the space they do have is used as effectively as possible,” Eckerbom Cole said.

The first step in the program is to show those selected to take part — determined by levels of vulnerability within AWR’s designated zone — what a permagarden looks like, before putting the group through three phases of training: basic permagardening techniques, pest control, and post-harvest handling that demonstrate how to use the natural resources to yield food.

“Food is a huge issue in the camps, so one of the main things we’re looking at is helping refugees produce more food and providing them with skills they can bring with them when they go back to South Sudan,” Eckerbom Cole said.

“We look at water and soil conservation to make sure the gardens use the rainfall as much as possible.”

This means that while the rain has the family cooped up inside, it marks much-needed nourishment for the okra, onions, and peas emerging from the soil.

The total cost of developing, training, and supporting a permagarden is $85. AWR’s community mobilizers continue to visit and support the 2,000 households with permagardens over a period of three years to ensure they remain in optimum condition.

Each of the families is then able to harvest greens three to four times a week, as well as a variety of other fruits and vegetables. The gardens aren’t about growing calories, but provide a range of micronutrients and vitamins that aren’t found in the food aid rations they receive each month.

“One of the main things we’re looking at is helping refugees produce more food and providing them with skills they can bring with them when they go back to South Sudan,” says Linda Eckerbom Cole, executive director at African Women Rising

Even in the dry season when the harvest might not be as strong, Dorin said she has been able to dry the produce out and store it. She’s also able to sell anything that’s left over at the camp’s market, giving her some money to buy other essential items.

AWR plans to scale the project and has already been approached by other agencies, including the United Nations, looking to replicate the model.

The U.S. Agency for International Development is promoting the permagarden approach across many of the countries in its Food for Peace portfolio, including the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, Malawi, Zimbabwe, and Nepal.

The Danish Refugee Council is also implementing it in some of the other West Nile refugee camps in Uganda, seeing it as a real solution to malnutrition in the face of ever-changing climate conditions and fluctuating food aid.

The most important thing to recognize is that teaching the skills is not a quick process, Eckerbom Cole said, explaining that it can take anywhere between a few months and a year for individuals to learn the techniques and implement them successfully.

“Even though all these people are farmers, this is a completely new way of farming, and if you want it to be successful, you have to give it the time it needs,” she said.

There can also be challenges in mobilizing participants who often have to spend days walking back and forth to the distribution center waiting to collect their food package for the month.

Ackatia-Armah explained that such programming also requires a multisectoral approach, and the involvement of different partners in the areas of water, sanitation, livelihoods, agriculture, and nutrition.

“These have different donors and planning calendars and it’s been difficult to bring them together,” he said, but it is being realized under the office of the Prime Minister which leads the coordination of all activities in refugee settlements.

While Lily and Dorin hope to one day return home, dejected by the poor prospects of peace, they say they expect to stay put for the foreseeable future.

But Lily, who sits beside her thriving garden watching the rainwater trickle into the beds, explained that while they had previously been struggling to find vegetables, she has at least found relief in watching the health of her family improve.

To learn more, visit African Women Rising.

The post Malnutrition in Humanitarian Settings appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Rebecca Root is a Reporter and Editorial Associate at Devex

The post Malnutrition in Humanitarian Settings appeared first on Inter Press Service.

BANGLADESH: Dose of Vigilance Helps Manage HIV, AIDS DHAKA, Nov 3, 2010 (IPS) - It is one of the poorest countries in the world, has a low literacy rate, and is next door to at least two countries that have a considerable portion of their respective populations with HIV and AIDS. Yet even having a large migrant population has not made Bangladesh a hot spot for HIV and AIDS. http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=53443

By James Reinl
UNITED NATIONS, Jul 24 2019 (IPS)

The global fight against Aids is floundering amid cash shortfalls and spikes in new HIV infections among marginalised groups in developing regions, Gunilla Carlsson, executive director of the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS), said Tuesday.

Speaking with reporters in New York, Carlsson, head of U.N.-led efforts against the pandemic, warned that gains over recent years were under threat, particularly in parts of eastern Europe, central Asia, the Middle East and Africa.

“We are at a precarious point in the response to HIV. Some countries are making impressive gains, while others are experiencing rises in new HIV infections and even Aids-related deaths,” Carlsson said at U.N. headquarters.

“Annual gains are getting smaller and the pace of progress is slowing down.”

More than half of all new HIV infections in 2018 were among drug users, sex workers, men who have sex with men, transgender people, prisoners and the sexual partners of these groups, said Carlsson.

Many of those at-risk groups do not get the treatment they need, she added.

A UNAIDS report released Jul. 16 noted “worrying increases” in these new infections in eastern Europe and central Asia, where HIV cases rose by 29 percent, as well as in the Middle East, North Africa and Latin America.

Global funding for the fight against Aids dropped off markedly in 2018 — by nearly one billion dollars— as international pledges dried up and domestic investments did not grow fast enough to fill the gap.

Only around 19 billion dollars was available for the Aids response in 2018 — some 7.2 billion dollars short of the total 26.2 billion needed by 2020, said Carlsson, describing a “deeply concerning” development.

“Ending Aids will not be possible unless we are investing adequately and smartly, focussing on people first, not diseases, and creating roadmaps for people who are left behind,” said Carlsson.

Some 770,000 people died of Aids globally in 2018 and almost 38 million people were living with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) that causes it. The disease is transmitted via infected blood and other bodily fluids.

HIV cannot be cured but the infection can be kept in check by Aids drugs known as antiretrovirals. Around 23.3 million of the 37.9 million people with HIV globally currently get the Aids drugs they need.

Around 1.7 million people were newly infected in 2018, a 16 percent decline since 2010, driven mostly by steady gains in parts of eastern and southern Africa, according to the latest UNAIDS report.

South Africa, for example, has cut new HIV infections by more than 40 percent and Aids-related deaths by around the same proportion since 2010. But the report warns that the disease is still rife in other parts of eastern and southern Africa.

Earlier this month, the aid group Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) warned that efforts to fight Aids were “stagnating” and that many of the disease-related deaths could be prevented if better care was available.

Dr. Gilles Van Cutsem, head of MSF’s team on HIV and Aids, said that many HIV sufferers turned up at clinics in Congo, Guinea, Malawi and elsewhere with advanced symptoms of a condition that their immune system was unable to fight.

“People arrive very ill, often with severe opportunistic infections such as tuberculosis, cryptococcal meningitis, or Kaposi’s sarcoma,” Van Cutsem said in a statement.

“When they arrive, sometimes it’s too late to save them. They might not have been diagnosed on time or they failed to get access to lifesaving treatment.”

Related Articles

• US Leads Donor Funding to Fight HIV/AIDS Amidst Overall Decline
• US Defunds UNFPA for Third Consecutive Year– on Misconceived Assumptions

The post Global Aids Fight Running out of Steam, U.N. says appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Credit: Tarek Mahmud.

By IPS World Desk
GUTHAIL, JAMALPUR, Bangladesh, Jul 23 2019 (IPS)

Floods are quite common in Bangladesh – blame it on climate change, the control and discharge of river waters at source or poor disaster management. The damage to property to livestock is colossal.

These pictures sent by Dewanganj (Jamalpur) based journalist Tarek Mahmud explain it all. Some of the government offices, schools, hospitals and large areas of farm land are under water. The damage to property & chattel is estimated to be in millions of Taka (Bangladesh currency). Rehabilitation of these displaced people will take months.

 

Credit: Tarek Mahmud.

 

 

Credit: Tarek Mahmud.

 

Credit: Tarek Mahmud.

 

Credit: Tarek Mahmud.

 

Credit: Tarek Mahmud.

 

Credit: Tarek Mahmud.

 

Credit: Tarek Mahmud.

 

Credit: Tarek Mahmud.

 

The post Floods Havoc in North Bangladesh appeared first on Inter Press Service.

By Lyndsay Walsh
DUBLIN, Jul 23 2019 (IPS)

Do you prefer to hear good news or bad news first? I will begin by giving you the (unsurprisingly) bad news. Today’s world is an unequal place. Standards of living vary massively both between and within countries.

To narrow it down to its most blunt statistic, if you were born in Hong Kong your life expectancy is nearly double that of someone born in Swaziland, 84 and 49 years, respectively.

The good news is that in recent decades many global indicators of living standards have improved. The Millennium Development Goals, a group of targets aimed at reducing poverty and raising living standards, were largely successful.

Those living in extreme poverty dropped from 1.9 billion in 1990 to 836 million in 2015, the proportion of undernourished people in low-income countries fell from 23 percent in 1990 to 13 percent in 2014, and worldwide primary school enrollment has reached 90 percent.

These statistics offer hope for a trajectory toward an equal world. There is more bad news, however, in that climate change threatens to undo this progress and create further inequity.

Climate change will be the definitive challenge of the 21st century, yet it is largely pushed aside in discussions of policies to address inequality. If warming is not limited to 1.5 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels the results could nullify most, if not all, the progress made in reducing inequality.

Climate change will further magnify existing inequality as low- and middle-income countries will bear the brunt of its impact. As rainfall patterns become more unpredictable, sea levels rise, and storms become more intense, the expected impacts on low-income countries are severe.

An integral problem of advocating for action is that people perceive climate change as a distant threat, but its ramifications are already being witnessed in many parts of the world. Cities such as Dakar in Senegal are flooded annually.

The semi-arid Sahel region is encroaching on once fertile farmland. California was subjected to the deadliest wildfires in its history last year, with record amounts of land burnt to ash.

Climate change is an exemplary illustration of inequality in the 21st century. The United States is responsible for 26 percent of global cumulative greenhouse gases, and Europe is responsible for an additional 22 percent. In contrast, the entire continent of Africa contributes just 3.8 percent.

While high-income countries are responsible for the vast majority of greenhouse gas emissions, it is the low-income countries that will face the repercussions. Many low-income countries are located in the tropics, which are far more vulnerable to rising temperatures than high-income temperate countries such as the United Kingdom.

Entire agricultural systems will be lost, famines will hit numerous areas, and diseases such as malaria are predicted to become more widespread. Already we are seeing pastoral farmers in Chad struggling to survive due to a lengthening dry season. The largest lake in the country, Lake Chad, has shrunk 90 percent in the past 50 years.

Nevertheless, this division is not solely between high- and low-income countries, it will also prevail within countries. Last year Harvard researchers coined the term “climate gentrification”: properties at higher elevations in inland Miami were becoming more expensive due to flooding risks associated with climate change. Again, it will be those who cannot afford to buy their way to safety who are left in at-risk areas.

Along with creating new problems for low-income countries, climate change will exacerbate existing inequalities. Low-income countries do not have the fiscal capacity to deal with severe disruptions to infrastructure. Increased flooding will lead to the spread of waterborne diseases such as cholera and dysentery due to damaged water provisioning services.

Cases of malnutrition are expected to rise dramatically as droughts in tropical areas result in lower crop yields. In countries such as Madagascar, where over 70 percent of the population are rural farmers, this will be devastating.

Due to the complex and far-reaching nature of climate change, the knock-on effects for low-income countries are multitudinous. It will make receiving a quality education more difficult, intensify existing gender inequalities, provoke conflict, destabilize governments, and force people to leave their homelands. These countries do not have the funds or support to deal with the scale of the problems climate change will bring.

“Climate migrant” is a term we will hear frequently; the World Bank predicts there may be up to 140 million such migrants by 2050. In Europe, the media often refer to refugees seeking security as a “crisis,” yet 84 percent of refugees are currently within low-income countries, and people in poorer countries are roughly five times more likely to be displaced by weather events.

This is yet another burden low-income countries are left to deal with. Even high-income countries threatened by climate change are far more able to deal with its consequences. Shanghai, one of the cities most vulnerable to flooding, has been building flood-defense infrastructure since 2012; one such project is expected to cost £5 billion. Low-income countries do not have such capital to invest.

This brings us to the main question: what can be done to tackle the problem? Many things, actually. The two main aspects of dealing with climate change are mitigation and adaptation. As high-income countries produce the majority of greenhouse gas emissions, the onus is on us to minimize them.

It seems that climate scientists are finally winning the battle of awareness, as a recent poll found that 73 percent of Americans now believe that climate change is occurring, a record high. Furthermore, 72 percent said it was personally important to them.

This is significant because it puts the onus on governments and companies to act in citizens’ interests. Mobilizing the public to put pressure on these groups will be the true turning point, and there are already signs of this happening.

Over 70,000 people marched in Brussels in January demanding better climate action from the government, and citizen groups all over the world—including in Ireland, where I am writing this—are taking their governments to court over lack of action on climate change.

The key point is that minimizing emissions sooner rather than later is an imperative as it is ultimately the cheaper and easier option. While there has been a focus on individual actions in reducing emissions, such as choosing low-emission transportation and buying seasonal produce, it is about time that governments and the private sector stepped up to the plate.

The 2017 Carbon Majors Report found that just 100 companies have produced over 70 percent of global industrial greenhouse gas emissions since 1988. This statistic gives us an opening to create proper, systemic change through demanding better practice from these corporations.

The private sector has a great ability to bring about lasting change not only by mitigating climate change but also by bringing people out of poverty through employment. As many countries turn toward nationalism, the private sector is one of only a few candidates in the search for a climate leader.

That said, climate change will not be mitigated without governmental cooperation through environmental policies such as carbon taxes, national adaptation plans, and participation in multilateral treaties.

Economic activity in the 20th century was largely based on fossil fuels, and carbon taxation will speed up development and adoption of alternative fuel sources. Climate change is a transboundary issue and requires global collaboration to both mitigate its effects and assist lower-income countries with adaptation.

Mitigation and adaptation are not a silver bullet for tackling existing inequalities across the world. This will be achieved through policymaking and reform of tax systems in conjunction with tackling climate change.

However, I chose to write about climate change as I found it was largely sidelined in discussions surrounding inequality. Until climate change is mitigated and vulnerable countries are helped to adapt to its impacts, no true progress can be made in the quest to tackle inequality.

If inequality is truly an issue that high-income countries care about, as they claim to, then they will not let climate change continue on its current pathway to devastating low-income populations.

At present we are certainly not on track to limit atmospheric warming to 1.5 degrees by the end of this century. We are not even on track to limit it to 3 degrees. According to current estimates we will reach 4 degrees warming by 2100, a year that babies born today in places like Hong Kong (but not Swaziland) will live to see.

With young activists like Greta Thunberg, the 16-year-old who gave an impassioned climate advocacy speech at Davos, I have hope that future leaders will act on this issue, but we cannot afford to wait for them. We need climate leaders now.

*Following a global essay competition for graduate students on how best to tackle inequality, Lyndsay Walsh’s submission was selected as the winner. Her essay will also appear in the December print issue of Finance & Development (F&D), which will focus on climate change. F&D is a publication of the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

The post How Best to Tackle Inequality in the 21st Century? Start with Climate Change appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Lyndsay Walsh of Trinity College Dublin, Ireland, is currently studying for a Master's in development practice, and received her Bachelor’s degree in natural sciences with a focus on zoology*

The post How Best to Tackle Inequality in the 21st Century? Start with Climate Change appeared first on Inter Press Service.

By Jomo Kwame Sundaram
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia, Jul 23 2019 (IPS)

International financial institutions (IFIs) have typically imposed wide-ranging policy reforms – called ‘conditionalities’ – in exchange for country governments to secure access to financial assistance.

While IFIs may demand anti-corruption policies, other IFI policy conditionalities, such as the privatization of state-owned enterprises (SOEs), can create new rentier opportunities, undermining government will and capacity to curb corruption.

Jomo Kwame Sundaram

IMF cure worse than disease?
Statistical analysis of International Monetary Fund (IMF) conditionalities on 141 developing countries from 1982 to 2014 has found that requiring privatization of SOEs has undermined anti-corruption efforts.

The study finds that IMF conditions requiring SOE privatization undermine anti-corruption efforts, both in the short-term, i.e., up to five years, and especially in the longer-term. Other IMF interventions have not effectively deterred corruption, which has clearly risen following privatization, especially in Latin America, sub-Saharan Africa and East Asia.

Meanwhile, studies of IMF policy paradigms after the 2008-2009 global financial crisis, suggest changes in rhetoric, rather than actual policies, as IFI leaderships have many reasons to maintain old practices.

IFI imposed reforms typically require governments to cut public expenditure, privatize state-owned assets, liberalize markets and deregulate prices, ostensibly to foster economic growth, promote ‘good governance’ and counter corruption.

Despite weak and ambiguous evidence, IFI advisers presume that market-liberalizing reforms will counter corruption. IFIs seek to privatize SOEs, presuming they have ‘governance structures’ liable to ‘political interference’ undermining development.

While some claim that free markets are associated with less corruption, others argue that SOE privatization has induced corruption, e.g., those with good connections successfully appropriate former SOEs, often for ‘asset-stripping’ and other such ends.

Powerful IFIs successfully promoted their reform agendas in developing countries when governments lacked the capacity to resist. IFIs thus served as agents of policy reforms desired by powerful governments, rather than those needed for national progress.

IFIs pushed for privatization, without considering conditions needed to avoid abuse. They transplanted ‘regulatory innovations’ from the developed world onto developing countries, often regardless of local contexts. Hence, the IFIs rarely facilitated, let alone required responsible regulation.

Insider information for corruption
Privatization induces corruption by creating new rents and unleashing processes that undermine anti-corruption efforts. While privatization generates rents to be captured, especially by ‘insiders’, rent-seeking undermines safeguards against such abuses.

Different modes of privatizing state-owned assets create economic rents, e.g., by putting public assets up for sale to be more easily appropriated privately. Corruption opportunities arise from privatization processes, especially from the sale of public assets, especially when managed by former SOE managers.

Information advantages enable rent appropriation, encouraging corruption to secure advantage. Outsiders have less access to information than ‘insiders’, such as managers and public officials, who use it to enrich themselves.

Greedy managers may fake accounts and undervalue firms in order to buy them cheap. Bidders may also try to influence key decisionmakers to secure rents from privatized SOEs.

Undermining anti-corruption
Once ‘privateers’ have acquired assets, they try to protect these acquisitions and related incomes, and to avoid detection and punishment, e.g., by bribing key public officials to get favourable treatment.

Privatization tends to weaken anti-corruption efforts as institutions deteriorate. Even if most people are not corrupt, such efforts weaken institutions, and consequently enable corruption. Thus, corruption associated with privatization reduces anti-corruption efforts.

Evidence on conditionalities said to reduce corruption is less conclusive. While they may reduce corruption in the short term, such reforms are likely to be detrimental in the longer term.

‘Insiders’ use their advantages to acquire newly privatized state assets, seizing new opportunities engendered by privatization. As favourable treatment in exchange for inducements to decision-makers is illegal, those involved cover up their corrupt activities.

Privatization generates massive rents that increase corruption, while motivating rentiers and rent-seekers to weaken state capacity. The resulting vicious circle of weakening institutions and increasing corruption is difficult to end.

No neoliberal solutions
IMF conditions seeking to eliminate rents are rarely effective because governments and insiders find other ways for the influential to capture rents. Reduced government capacities and capabilities also compromise the efficacy of anti-corruption efforts, even if serious.

Privatization thus undermines anti-corruption efforts, while privatization and market liberalization do not reduce corruption, as claimed by neoliberals. Thus, reduction of the state role in the economy, market liberalization and privatization have worsened corruption.

Jomo Kwame Sundaram, a former economics professor, was United Nations Assistant Secretary-General for Economic Development, and received the Wassily Leontief Prize for Advancing the Frontiers of Economic Thought.

The post Privatization Increases Corruption appeared first on Inter Press Service.

By Roberto Savio
ROME, Jul 23 2019 (IPS)

When all is said and done, it appears that Thomas Hobbes, the 17th century English philosopher who had a dire vision of man, was not totally wrong.

From the frivolous to the serious, in just a week we have had four items of news which would not happen in a normal world. An English porn beauty with 86,000 followers on social media has put bottles of the water she bathes in on sale at 30 pounds a bottle and has sold several thousand bottles.

Roberto Savio

A survey in Brazil found out that 7% of citizens believe that the earth is flat (40 percent of American schools teach that the world was created in a week, according to the Bible, so there cannot be ancient civilisations) Another survey, this time of members of the British Tory party, who seem likely to elect Boris Johnson as prime minister (not exactly a triumph of reason) are so in favour of a “hard” Brexit that they do not care if this means the exit of Scotland and the end of the United Kingdom. Finally, in order to win election, US president Donald Trump has made racism one of his banners and, in a country of immigrants, this has given him an increase of 5 points in opinion polls.

There are so many signs of barbarisation that they would fill a book… and, as Euripides famously wrote: Whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad.

It is not a popular task, but we have to look at the reality and observe that, in the most scientifically and technologically developed period of history, we are living in times of precipitous barbarisation.

Social inequality has become the basis for the new economy. People have now lowered their expectations and are prepared to work part-time in a precarious job, where young people (according to the International Labour Organisation) can hope for a retirement pension of 600 euro a month. This has been accepted by the political system. We even have a study from Spain according to which, in the present housing market, nearly 87% of people need 90% of their salary just to rent a house.

Today, for many, a salary means survival, not a dignified life. The new economy has developed the so-called gig economy: you work to distribute food, but you are a co-entrepreneur without any of the rights of an employee, for an amount that will never allow you to marry. Children have grown accustomed to look at phenomena such as poverty or war as natural. And now politics are not based on ideas but on how you can successfully exploit the guts of the people, waving banners against immigrants (when we are witnessing a rapid fall in the birth rate) and splintering countries between ”We” who represent the people and “You” enemy of the country. The United States is the best example, where Republicans consider Democrats enemies of the United States. And this brings us to a central question: have Trump, Italy’s Matteo Salvini, Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro and company not been elected democratically? And they are the symptom or the cause of the “populocracy” which is replacing democracy?

It is not possible to offer a sociological or historical study here. Let us just use a bite: we have gone from the Gutenberg era into a new era – the Zuckerberg era.

Those who greeted the arrival of the Internet with enthusiasm also did so because it would democratise communication and therefore bring about greater participation. The hope was to see a world where horizontal communication would replace the vertical system of information which Gutenberg made possible. Information was, in fact, a support for states and business that used it to reach citizens, who had no recourse to feedback. With Internet, people could now speak directly throughout the world and the propaganda which accompanied its arrival was not considered relevant: it is not important to know, it is important to know where to find It. Well, we have all the statistics on how Internet has affected the general level of culture and dialogue.

The attention span of people has declined dramatically. The majority of Internet users do not stay on an item more than 15 seconds. In the last five years, book volumes have been shortened by 29 pages. Today, articles longer than 650 words are not accepted by columnists’ services. The last meeting of editors of international news agencies decided to lower the level of news from the level of 22 years to that of 17 years. In Europe, the percentage of people who buy at least one book a year now stands at 22% (in the United States it is now 10.5%). According to a recent study in Italy, only 40% of the population is able to read and understand a book. In the same country, 13% of libraries have closed in the last ten years. A very popular transmission in Spain was ”59 seconds” which saw a number of people debate round a table; at the 59th seconds their microphones would disappear. Today, the dream of a TV interviewer is that the person interviewed will give a shorter answer than the question. Newspapers are for people over forty. And there is a unanimous complaint about the level of students entering the university: not all are free from mistakes of orthography and syntax. And the list could continue practically ad infinitum.

The problem of barbarisation has major relevance for political participation. The Gutenberg generations were accustomed to dialogue and discussion. Today, 83% of Internet users (80% under the age of 21), do so only in the virtual world they carved out for themselves. People of Group A gather only with people of Group A. If they come across somebody from Group B, they insult each other. Politicians have been able to adjust rapidly to the system. The best example is Trump. All US newspapers together have a circulation of 60 million copies (ten million those of quality, both conservative and progressive). Trump has 60 million followers who take Trump’s tweets as information. The do not buy newspapers, and if they watch TV it is Fox, which is Trump’s amplifier. No wonder that over 80% of Trump’s voters would vote for him again. And the media, which have lost the ability to offer analysis and cover processes, not just events, take the easy path. Let us follow famous people and make the famous more famous. Analytical journalism is disappearing. In the United States it exists thanks to grants … in every European country, there are few quality papers left, and the largest circulation goes to tabloids which spare their readers the effort of thinking. The Daily Mirror in Britain and Bild in Germany are the best examples.

Internet has made everybody a communicator. This is a fantastic achievement. But in this increasing barbarisation, people also use the Internet for transmitting false information, stories based on fantasy, without any of the quality controls that the media world used to have. And artificial intelligence has been taking over, creating many false accounts, which now interfere in the electoral process, as was proven in the last US elections. We have to add to this that the algorithms used by the owners of the Internet aim to trap the attention of users in order to keep them as much as possible. This month, El Pais published a long study entitled “The toxic effects of YouTube”, where it shows how its algorithms push the viewer to items that are of fantasy, pseudoscientific and of great attraction.

This is due to the fact that the owners have become fabulously rich by transforming citizens into consumers. They find out our identity, and they sell it to companies for their marketing, and also for elections. Those owners have unprecedented wealth, never achieved in the real world: not only in that of production, but even in the world of finance, which has become a casino with no control. The entire world of production of services and goods, man-made, is now close to a trillion dollars a day; that same day, financial flows reach 40 trillion dollars. Jeff Bezos ‘s divorce gave his wife 38 billion dollars. That is equal to the annual average income of 20,000 dollars of 19 million people. No wonder that 80 individuals now possess the same wealth as 2.3 billion people (in 2008, they were 1,200 individuals).

According to historians, greed and fear are great engines of change in history. That was also true in the Gutenberg era. But now, they have triggered a combination of both in a short period of time. After the fall of the Berlin Wall, the doctrine of liberal globalisation arrived with such strength that Margaret Thatcher (who with Ronald Reagan ushered in the new vision of individual profits and elimination of social goods) famously talked of TINA: There Is No Alternative.

The entire political system, including Social Democrats, accepted riding a system of values based on greed and unfettered competition at individual level, at state level and at international level. It took twenty years to understand that the poor have become poorer, and the rich richer, and that states have lost much of their sovereignty to multinational corporations and the world of finance. It is worth noting that, in 2009, in order to save a corrupt and inefficient financial system, the world spent 12 trillion dollars (the United States alone, 4 trillion). Since that rescue, banks have paid the impressive amount of 800 billion dollars in penalties for illicit activities.

The financial crisis of 2009 has triggered a wave of fear. Let us not forget that until 2009, there were no sovereignist, populist, xenophobic parties anywhere, except for Le Pen in France. Soon old traps such as “in name of the nation” and “the defence of religion” were resurrected by politicians able to ride fear. A new scapegoat – immigrants – was found and populocrats are now undermining democracy everywhere.

Populocracy is the new wave. Former Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi ushered in a new language, and that language has now been updated by Salvini, Trump and so on. Twitter, Facebook and Instagram are the new medium and now the medium is the message. The old elite had not found a new language.

The Zuckerberg era is an era of greed and fear. Zuckerberg is now attempting to create a global currency, the Libra, to be used by his 2.3 billion users. Until now, states were the only entities able to emit money, a symbol of the nation. Zuckerberg’s currency is based entirely on the Internet and will have no control or regulations. In case of a default, we will have a world crisis without precedent. In the Gutenberg era, this was not possible.

But who has made able Jeff Bezos to give 38 billion dollars to a former wife? Who has elected Trump and Salvini and company, who speak on behalf of the nation and the people, and turn those who do not agree into enemies of the nation and the people, creating an unprecedented polarisation, accompanied by an orgy of revolt against science and knowledge, which have supported the elite, and must now be put aside for the good of people.

This process of barbarisation should not obscure an old proverb: every country has the government it deserves. It is called democracy. However, the traditional elite has no code of communication with the new era. The answer will come from citizen mobilization.

A young Swedish girl, Greta Thunberg, has done more with her stubbornness to raise awareness about impending climate change than the entire political system. Even Trump (albeit for electoral reasons) has now declared that climate change is important.

Today, there many “points of light“ appearing in the world. The elections in Istanbul are a good example, as are the mobilisation in Hong Kong, Sudan and Nicaragua, among many others. Let us hope we will reach a point where people will take the reins of the process and awake the world from the precipitous course of barbarisation. Even Thomas Hobbes concluded that humankind will always, soon or later, find the right path, and give itself good governance. He thought that an elite would always be able to lead the masses.

Well, elites are now the Greta Thunbergs of the world.

Publisher of OtherNews, Italian-Argentine Roberto Savio is an economist, journalist, communication expert, political commentator, activist for social and climate justice and advocate of an anti neoliberal global governance. Director for international relations of the European Center for Peace and Development.. He is co-founder of Inter Press Service (IPS) news agency and its President Emeritus.

The post The Precipitous Barbarisation of Our Times appeared first on Inter Press Service.

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Jul 23 2019 (IPS)

With the rise of rightwing nationalism, primarily in the Western world, an increasingly large number of countries are not only abandoning multilateralism but also violating international treaties and conventions signed and ratified in a bygone era.

The most blatant is the violation of the 1951 Refugee Convention, which has been ratified by 145 State parties, and which also defines the term “refugee” while outlining the rights of the displaced, as well as the legal obligations of states to protect them.

According to the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the core principle of the Convention is non-refoulement, which asserts that a refugee should not be returned to a country where they face serious threats to their life or freedom. This is now considered a rule of customary international law.

https://www.unhcr.org/protection/basic/3b73b0d63/states-parties-1951-convention-its-1967-protocol.html

But several countries, including the US, Australia, France, Italy and Hungary, are flouting the Convention because they have either barred or severely restricted the inflow of refugees—and also penalized those who have assisted refugees (as in the US and Italy).

Categorized mostly as “political refugees”, they originate largely from conflict-ridden countries such as Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, South Sudan, Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Myanmar and Venezuela, among others.

In an interview with IPS, Marco Funk, Policy Officer at the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung’s (FES) European Union (EU) Office, told IPS the context of today’s refugee situation is quite different from what it was in the aftermath of World War II, when the 1951 Convention was signed.

The original Convention itself was actually limited in scope to Europeans – this geographical limitation was only lifted by an additional protocol in 1967, which some countries did not implement. Turkey is a notable example, he said.

“Many other countries around the world, especially wealthy ones, have made it increasingly difficult for refugees to seek international protection and thus either indirectly or in some cases directly violate the convention they have signed and ratified”, he pointed out.

Racism certainly is a factor, but so is the pervasive fear of negative effects on destination countries’ economies and their security, said Funk, who is responsible for the FES’s Brussels-based activities related to EU migration and home affairs.

He said the significant increase in legal migration to developed countries since the 1950s also plays a role.

Attempts to restrict migration can be seen not only in Europe, the US and Australia, he said, but also in East Asia and even some parts of the developing world.

“Wherever there is displacement, there is usually also a counter-strategy of containment by countries of destination”.

“The international community should respond by drawing attention to the rights outlined in the Refugee Convention and violations of them where they occur, but that is not enough”, said Funk, who previously worked as a Policy Analyst for the European Policy Centre, where he focused on EU migration and asylum policy.

He argued that more effort should be put into highlighting and addressing the root causes of displacement, and using other relevant international agreements to their fullest extent in order to mitigate the drivers of forced migration.

At the same time, legal channels of migration should also be expanded, he noted.

In two controversial cases recently, the Italian government placed under house arrest (but later freed) the captain of a ship carrying rescued migrants on the Mediterranean Sea.

Captain Carola Rackete defended her decision to challenge Italy’s closed-door policy on refugees and migrants.

UN spokesperson Stephane Dujarric told reporters July1: “Sea rescue is a long standing humanitarian imperative. It’s also an obligation under international law”.

“No vessel or shipmaster should be at the risk of fine coming to the aid of boats in distress where loss of life be imminent. That’s a question… that’s an issue of principle,” he added.

In the US, Scott Warren, a volunteer for the non-profit humanitarian organization, ‘No More Deaths’, faced felony charges in a court in Arizona because he provided food and water for a pair of migrants who were found hungry and dehydrated in the desert — and fleeing from Central America.

In the initial hearing last June, the jury was dismissed because they could not agree on the charges.

Meanwhile, the UNHCR said on July 1 that more than 1.4 million refugees residing in over 60 refugee hosting countries will be in need of resettlement next year, according to data presented at an annual resettlement forum in Geneva.

The report, titled “Projected Global Resettlement Needs 2020”, said those most at risk and in need of resettlement include Syrian refugees (40 per cent); South Sudanese refugees (14 per cent of the total) and refugees from the Democratic Republic of the Congo (11 per cent of the total).

Asked for a UN perspective on the violations of the 1951 Convention, Dr Palitha Kohona, the former Chief of the UN Treaty Section, told IPS one has to remember the background to that convention.

In 1951, the refugees were war displaced Europeans, almost all Christian. Other Europeans poured out their milk of human kindness in abundance to these displaced.”

Today, he said, “the refugees in Europe are slightly tinted Muslims, and the fountain of charity has inexplicably dried up”.

“Where a country is a party to the Convention and a refugee meets its requirements, the country concerned is obliged to extend its umbrella of protection,” said Dr Kohona, a former Permanent Representative of Sri Lanka to the UN.

“Failure to comply could result in the other state parties taking a dim view. However, such dim views do not hurt much and tend to be forgotten quickly,” he added.

The writer can be contacted at thalifdeen@ips.org

The post Treaty Violators Make Mockery of Refugee Convention appeared first on Inter Press Service.

By Nomu, Oslin, and Liteboho*
NEW YORK, Jul 22 2019 (IPS)

We see many challenges that affect children around the world. Child marriage, corporal punishment, voting ages, air pollution, teachers going on strike…

It’s been great to speak and have world leaders at the UN listen when we talk about these issues. It’s been clear that leaders are open to hearing from children and learning what kids have to say.

But even then, it doesn’t always seem like leaders are ready to move from talking to action. It’s weird that there are all these urgent issues to tackle, but leaders aren’t acting right away.

When we talked with [Special Representative of the Secretary-General on Violence against Children] Najat Maalla M’jid, she said she’s going to try and change this. She will push the United Nations to work to end violence against children. She also offered to listen to children’s ideas, recommendations, and solutions.

Governments must make changes to end violence and stop child marriage. And it’s really important for governments to listen to children’s voices and stop underestimating our abilities. Children can offer ideas too, and its children who are the next generation.

Last week, we learned that every country is connected together, and issues that affect one country often affect others as well. Even though countries have different languages, cultures, and ways of learning, many problems that affect children are the same.

Child marriage and sexual abuse affect children all over the world. Child marriage is a horrific form of violence. It violates girls’ rights and negatively affects their ability to access education and health.

In Lesotho and many other countries, girls are forced to marry due to poverty, property grabbing, sexual abuse, premarital pregnancies and neglect. The laws that protect children are not effectively implemented and enforced.

We also need to stop thinking that punishing kids by hitting them is an acceptable discipline method. Just like child marriage, we need to realise that psychological abuse and corporal punishment of students is a problem in many countries, and maybe by working all together it will be easier to stop it.

Often governments have put some good laws in place, but they don’t always work because people don’t know about them. Adults need to be told about the new laws, otherwise they’re going to keep breaking them and the violence is only going to continue.

Children and teachers, for instance, need to know that there are rules about how children can be treated in schools. Sometimes the laws don’t match up, and so old marriage laws need to be updated so they don’t have lower ages than child protection laws.

When children get involved, they can help. For example, many children are born and live their life without having a birth certificate. Many countries make it hard for them to access their basic rights or go to school without a birth certificate.

In one village in Indonesia, many children were rejected when they wanted to register at school because they did not have a birth certificate. Thankfully, the child parliament was able to work with the village government to get a birth certificate for all children.

They arranged a “mass birth certificate” campaign and finally, 100% of the children in the village have birth certificates.

Children can help create the necessary changes in communities, but we need to be informed in order to do so. Child parliaments and youth groups can help raise community awareness about child protection laws and give us a space to share about our experiences.

Before sessions, not many girls knew that child marriage is against the law. After our meetings, children are more aware and have a better understanding of violence.

Every child has a right to participate. We hope our examples show how the voices of children are important and can help. If the government wants the world free from violence, involve us.

The main target of ending violence against children is a child. Therefore, the voices of children should be heard. If violence against children is stopped, we will have a better life, and we need this now, not in the future.

*As a general rule, World Vision doesn’t share the last names of children under 18.

The post It Takes Listening to Children to End Violence appeared first on Inter Press Service.

By Jan Lundius
STOCKHOLM / ROME, Jul 22 2019 (IPS)

If they pay for it, men tend to believe they have the right to do anything to a woman’s body. You pay for your own entertainment without a thought about who you are paying and what cause you are supporting. Money is used as an excuse for and a means to oil a machinery that generates lots of profit while keeping pimps and other perpetrators out of the reach of the law.

Jeffrey Epstein is a generous benefactor of world-renowned scientists and has intimate ties with powerful men like Donald Trump and Bill Clinton, as well as star lawyers like Alan Derschowitz. This multi-millionaire has recently been charged with sex trafficking, prompted by investigative reporting by Julie Brown. In November last year, she published in Miami Herald a three-part series exposing a vast sex trafficking operation – 80 victims were identified, some as young as 13 at the time of the alleged abuse. Furthermore, Brown revealed a government cover-up that in 2008 made it possible for Epstein to get away with an exceptionally light sentence. A “non-prosecution agreement” was secretly negotiated by prosecutor Alexander Acosta, who provided Epstein immunity from federal prosecution. After that Epstein apparently continued his sexual misconduct. Ironically, Acosta was by President Trump appointed as United States Secretary of Labor, among other tasks responsible for combatting sex-trafficking.1

How could a sexual predator of children year after year avoid being convicted for his crimes? Can wealth and influence be an answer? Soon the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit will hopefully release 2,000 pages of documents connected with the Epstein case, revealing sexual abuse by “numerous prominent American politicians, powerful business executives, foreign presidents, a well-known prime minister, and other world leaders.”2 The current President, Donald Trump, now declares:

I wasn’t a big fan of Jeffrey Epstein. That I can tell you. I didn’t want anything to do with him. That was many, many years ago. It shows you one thing — that I have good taste.3

However, in 2002 Trump stated, in a rather revealing manner, that Epstein was a terrific guy, a lot of fun to be with. It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side.4

The case of Jeffery Epstein, as well as that of another child abuser, George Aref Nader, reveal an outrageously low bar when it comes to sexual child abuse by wealthy and well-connected offenders. Nader, a businessman, and liaison between U.S. politicians and the Arab States of the Persian Gulf has over the years repeatedly been charged with sexual exploitation of minors. During Trump´s presidential campaign Nader did at various occasions meet with the future president´s closest associates, allegedly siphoning financial support from the Middle East. On June 3, Nader was arrested by federal agents for ”bestiality and possession of child pornography.”

Such wealthy child abusers are just the tip of an iceberg. In most European cities you may find ”provocatively dressed” women lining the thoroughfares. Most of them have, after being lured from their homes in Eastern Europe or Nigeria, been forced into prostitution by pimps who lurk in the shadows, or over smartphones control their sex slaves. Even if there are many lucciole (“fireflies”, Italian slang for street prostitutes), their numbers cannot be so overwhelming that they might explain why police and authorities are so utterly incapable of saving these victims of organized crime.

One reason for the inertia may be that human trafficking is a lucrative business. In 2017, the International Labour Organization (ILO) estimated that 3.8 million persons were globally trapped in forced sexual exploitation, twenty-one percent of them being children under the age of eighteen.5 Annnual profits from this sex trade were in 2015 approximately USD 100 billion.6

Profits per victim are highest in forced sexual exploitation, which can be explained by the demand for such services and the prices that clients are willing to pay, and by the low capital investments and low operating costs associated with this activity. With a global average profit of US$ 21,800 per year per victim, this sector is six times more profitable than all other forms of forced labour.7

Most migrant prostitutes live in a world of misery and violence unknown to most of us. One of countless examples is the fate of Maria, a Romanian girl who was working as a prostitute in Spain. After her “rescue” she told a journalist that you’re alive but you’re not really existing. Not one of the men who paid to sleep with me asked me if I was there out of choice, or whether I wanted to be doing this. They didn’t care either way. People always ask: “Why didn’t you just run away or go to the police?” but they don’t know what they’re talking about. You can’t just stop a random person on the street and ask for help, because someone you love could get killed. The police in Romania are often corrupt. You think, why should it be different here?”8

Maria had been brought from Romania to Spain by a boyfriend she thought was bringing her there on a holiday trip. He drove her over the border using their EU residency cards and within 24 hours she was on the streets. Maria was told she had to pay off a debt of €20,000 before she could go back home. The traffickers threatened to kill her mother or sister if she did not pay off her debt and while she was under their control they hit her with hundreds of tiny charges; payment for clothes, rent for the corner where she worked, for condoms and sanitary towels. If she did not bring back enough money, she was beaten. This is the sordid reality for hundreds of thousands ”sex workers” around the world and you might imagine the suffering of minors forced into a world like this.

Jeffery Epstein is by New York prosecutors indicted on old and new sex trafficking charges, Acosta was forced to resign as Labor Secretary, while George Aref Nader is in a Virginian jail awaiting his trial. Are these signs that something is about to change? Hopefully, though it remains doubtful if there is any real commitment to end prostitution and sexual abuse of minors. For example, Italian law states that anyone who practices prostitution or invites to it, within a public place is punishable with imprisonment and a fine from 200 to 3,000 euros,9 though in a town like Rome the scantily dressed young women waiting for customers have not disappeared from the streets, on the contrary – their presence seems to have increased during the last years. In Spain, prostitution was decriminalized in 1995 and its domestic sex trade is currently valued at USD 26.5 billion a year, with hundreds of licensed brothels and an estimated workforce of 300,000.10

The inhibited exploitation of children and young women must be condemned and banned from society. There is no valid excuse for early marriages and sexual exploitation of minors. Wealthy and influential decision-makers covering up and even partaking in such abominable crimes against humanity must be exposed and shamed. But how?

As in all transactions, trafficking and sexual exploitation of children depend on demand and supply. When Sweden in 1999 introduced a ban of the purchase of sexual services, punishing offenders with fines, or imprisonment. The idea was that if there is no demand, there is no prostitution. Furthermore, a gender equality perspective was emphasized: buying access to another person’s body is about power, usually men’s power over women. A truism reflected by organized crime, where women and children end up as commodities to be bought and exploited. Defenders of prostitution may assert that it should be up to you if you want to prostitute yourself. However, such an argument evades the repugnant, sexual exploitation of defenseless children and ignore the glaring fact that prostitution and human trafficking are inevitably linked. Of people currently in prostitution in Sweden, three out of four are women and girls coming from poor countries.11 Prostitution cannot be reconciled with a demand for human rights. A Government believing in the equal value of all people cannot accept prostitution and even less so sexual exploitation of minors. For the vast majority, prostitution is a consequence of either poverty or violence.

It has been widely debated whether the Swedish Sex Purchase Act has been efficient. Many claim that it, together with the internet and harsh immigration laws, has made prostitution invisible by bringing it indoors and hidden within a criminal underworld, making life even worse for trafficked women and children. Nevertheless, it is a fact that Swedish attitudes towards prostitution have changed after 1999. When the Sex Purchase Act was introduced 32 percent of Swedes supported a ban against sex purchase, while in 2017 almost eighty percent supported it.12 This might be a result not only of the law but also due to an increased realization that gender equality and education may counteract prostitution and abuse of minors. However, the most effective remedy for sexual exploitation is probably general wellbeing, as well as equal and strictly applied rights for all.

1 Pilkington, Ed (2019) “Jeffery Epstein: how US media – with one exception – whitewashed the story.” The Guardian, 13 July.
2 Sherman, Gabriel (2019) “´It´s going to be staggering, the amount of names´; as Jeffrey Epsteing case grows more grotesque, Manhattan and DC brace for impact,” Vanity Fair, July17.
3 Nashrulla, Tasneem (2019) “A video shows Trump and Jeffrey Epstein laughing and discussing women´s looks at at a Mar-a-Lago partry,” BuzzFeed, July 17.
4 Ibid.
5 ILO (2017) Global Estimates of Modern Slavery. Geneva: ILO, p. 11.
6 USD 26.2 billion in “developed economies and EU”, 14.3 in Central/South-Eastern Europe and The Commonwealth of Independent States, 31.7 in Asia-Pacific, 10.4 in Latin America and the Caribbean, 8.9 in Africa, and 7.5 in Middle East . ILO (2015) Profits and Poverty: The Economics of Forced Labour. Geneva: ILO, p.13.
7 Ibid. p. 15
8 Kelly, Annie and Ofelia de Pablo (2019) “Prostitution is seen as a leisure activity here”: tackling Spain´s sex traffickers”, The Guardian, 11 May.
9 https://www.giustizia.it/giustizia/it/mg_1_2_1.page;jsessionid=wbHX-cErzpQfvPNGff5uYL5J?facetNode_1=0_15&facetNode_2=0_15_13&contentId=SAN47368&previsiousPage=mg_1_2
10 Kelley (2019).
11 Italy and Spain have Europe´s highest percent of migrant prostitutes – more then 90 percent of their sex workers are migrants.
12 Holmström, Charlotta and May-Len Skilbrei (2017) ”The Swedish Sex Purchase Act: Where Does it Stand?” Oslo Law Review, No. 2, Vol. 4.

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 Sexual Exploitation of Minors is a Crime Against Humanity appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

“Part of the beauty of me is that I’m very rich.”
“When you’re a star, they let you do it.
You can do anything.
Grab ’em by the pussy. You can do anything.”
                                      Donald J. Trump, U.S. President

The post Sexual Exploitation of Minors is a Crime Against Humanity appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Deputy Secretary-General Amina Mohammed (right) meets with Li Andersson, Minister of Education of Finland. 18 July 2019. Credit: United Nations, New York

By Lakshi De Vass Gunawardena
UNITED NATIONS, Jul 22 2019 (IPS)

Finland has garnered attention for its top-notch education, and the newly appointed Minister of Education for Finland is planning to continue with the success of her country’s education system through various and innovative approaches.

“In education, Finland has the lead according to many international comparisons,” Li Andersson, the newly appointed Minister of Education for Finland, said at a briefing at the Finnish consulate in New York on July 19.

Most recently, she pointed out, the London-based Economist ranked Finland as number one in delivering future-oriented skills through education.

“Thereby, Finland is best equipped to adapt education system to deliver skills for problem-solving and collaboration, as well as foster creativity, civic-awareness and participation,” she added.

The briefing was hosted by the Consulate General of Finland, with a guest speaker from Columbia University.

Andersson said investment in education is key to all of the successes “we have seen in Finnish society, so it is key for social cohesion, it is key for equality, and it is key for building economic progress and for economic growth.”

“The Finnish education system is one of the top performing education systems in the world,” she declared

Finland has been ranked as one of the happiest and most successful countries in the world, and most recently was ranked as the number one country for higher education by The Economist.

In terms of what other countries, such as the United States should learn from Finland, Dr. Samuel E. Abrams, director of the National Center for the Study of Privatization in Education at Teachers College, Columbia University had this to say: “We should follow Finland in testing only small samples of students rather than testing all students”.

“Our approach forces teachers to teach to the test. As we test all students in reading and math in grades 3-8, we generate undue stress for students, teachers, and parents alike”.

Moreover, he pointed out, “in focusing on reading and math, we crowd out time for history, science, music, art, crafts, and physical education. And students need those subjects as well as plenty of play for a well-rounded education.”

“Second, we should follow Finland in preparing teachers with high-quality master’s programs in pedagogical theory and practice.

“Third, we should follow Finland in paying teachers well and giving them significant autonomy,” he added.

“Finally, we should follow Finland in funding our schools fairly. That means more money per student at schools in disadvantaged neighborhoods, not less. We base funding on property taxes, which means wealthy districts have significantly more money to spend per pupil than poor districts”.

“None of this is rocket science,” he said. “But that does not make it easy.”

Dr. Abrams concluded: “We must follow in Finland’s path in altering the way we think about children and their future. This requires, one, thinking about child development through the eyes of the child, which means a well-rounded curriculum; two, reconceiving our social contract to ensure a high-quality education for all children; and three, esteeming teachers as pillars of the community.”

With that said, the education system in Finland has much room for improvement. “We see growing disparities in the learning results.” Andersson said, in terms of learning results.

“There is a difference between boys and girls and also some growing regional differences, and also a stronger difference where the pupils home background will affect the learning results more than before.”

“Inequality hampers growth and otherwise,” she added.

To combat these worrisome findings, Andersson and the Finnish government have set three main priorities to be tackled in the coming years.

“The first of these priorities is raising the educational level of the whole population.” Andersson said.

“We are also seeing a tendency where we are seeing the growing level of education has actually stopped.” She went on to cite that the generation of the 1970’s, and in Finland it is the current generation that has the highest level of education.

“The second priority of the government is reducing inequality gaps in education referring to what I said about earlier about the worrisome trends, and the third priority is focusing on continuous education…. learning should be something that we do all the time, and we should have the possibility to engage in all the time, no matter whether if we are working or outside working life or studying.”

For raising the level of education, Andersson plans on ensuring that all students have a degree on the upper secondary level and plans on raising the amounts of adults on the third educational level (post-secondary education) to 50% by 2030.

In order to implement this, Andersson intends on devising a Road Map, and a document that will reach Parliament.

She also highlighted the importance of addressing the equality gaps and strengthening the whole Finnish education system, from early childhood education to primary school.

She also intends on raising the compulsory education age to 18 years old. “16% of the overt generations in Finland are without a degree on the secondary level.” She noted.

“We know that the employment rate of people with only primary education backgrounds is around 40% at the moment, and that has been going down all the time.”

She cited the changing labor market, and how that calls for a change in the education system.

In terms of closing education gaps, Andersson cited a significant focus on early childhood development, as that is key.

Such actions to help assist this goal is to reduce group sizes for children over 3 years old and ensuring that every child has the right to at least 40 hours a week to early childhood education and care “no matter if their parents are working or unemployed.”

Andersson is also piloting a two- year preschool to see how it will affect participation rates in early childhood care, as well as to observe the effects it will have on learning results in primary education.

Furthermore, Andersson plans on providing support for maternity and childhood clinics.
For continuing education and the future of work, Andersson is unsure, as the labor market is drastically changing but noted that “It is clear that the knowledge requirement will grow.”

“Education is the best tool we have, and we should think of it as an investment not an expenditure.” She concluded.

She added that students should “just focus on things you’re motivated about, not too get too stressed, I think it is a shame there is a lot of pressure on the students now, with their stress with finances etc.”

But she offered encouragement and stated that students should “not think too much about what government is saying about how fast you should study and finally, “use the possibilities you have at the university”

The post Finland’s Education System Leads Globally appeared first on Inter Press Service.

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Jul 19 2019 (IPS)

The United Nations, which has been tracking both the successes and failures of its highly-ambitious Agenda for Sustainable Development, has warned that “progress has been slow” in many of the 17 Goals after four years of implementation.

Described as “a global blueprint for dignity, peace and prosperity for people and the planet”, the 2030 Agenda has left several lingering questions unanswered following a High-Level Political Forum (HLPF) which concluded July 19.

Why are countries faltering on their Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) which were adopted by world leaders in 2015? Is it due to a decline in development aid? A lack of political will? Or is the agenda far too ambitious in its lofty goals? And will a new global fund help deliver the development agenda by 2030?

Asked for a response, Oli Henman, Global Coordinator of Action for Sustainable Development, who participated in the HLPF, told IPS: “Based on our analysis of the delivery of the SDGs in many countries and our shadow reports from national coalitions alongside the Voluntary National Reviews (VNRs) at the HLPF, there are several reasons for the delays”.

Firstly, many countries are delivering in a piecemeal way, with limited national plans, and many countries only focus on a few goals while ignoring the majority of the goals.

Secondly, there does not seem to be sufficient political will in a number of key countries which could be leading the way. Instead, in many Northern countries, inequality and xenophobia are on the rise, he added.

Finally, in terms of development aid, there are still very limited funds to support the transformation promised by the SDGs.

“We urgently call for a global fund to support the grassroots delivery of the 2030 Agenda”, said Henman, speaking on behalf of a new and rapidly growing decentralised network of over 2,000 civil society organisations (CSOs) and local activists in more than 160 countries.

In a report released just ahead of the ministerial meeting of the HLPF, the UN’s Department of Economic and Social Affairs (DESA) said “there is no escaping the fact that the global landscape for SDG implementation has generally deteriorated since 2015, hindering the efforts of governments and other partners. Moreover, the commitment to multilateral cooperation, so central to implementing our major global agreements, is now under pressure.”

A new joint declaration, “Stand Together Now for a Just, Peaceful and Sustainable World”, adopted by dozens of CSOs July 17, said: “We are standing alongside many others around the world in calling out a state of emergency. Humanity cannot afford to wait, people are demanding transformative change, and we are not willing to accept the current lack of action and ambition from many governments.” full text

The call to action comes from a wide range of CSOs, including those working on fighting inequality, humanitarian assistance, human rights and climate change, such as Action for Sustainable Development, ACT Alliance, ActionAid, Amnesty International, CAN, CIVICUS, CPDE, GCAP, Greenpeace, Oxfam and Restless Development.

Asked whether some of the goals, including the eradication of extreme poverty and hunger, be ever reached by 2030, Henman said the Goals are under threat because in many countries government policies and priorities mean inequality is rising, conflict has increased, and the opportunity to speak out is under threat.

“The lack of a joined-up approach to tackling the underlying challenges of extreme poverty and inequality is further under threat from climate displacement and increasing concentration of land and wealth. People are being pushed off their land and losing the right to speak out,” he declared.

Meanwhile, the network of CSO says that inequality is rising, with the 26 richest billionaires now owning as many assets as the 3.8 billion people who make up the poorest half of the planet’s population.

“The climate emergency is worsening, with the United Nations saying we could have just 11 years left to limit a climate change catastrophe”.

A global crackdown on human rights means that only 43 UN member states are currently meeting their commitments to uphold the fundamental civic freedoms of expression, association and peaceful assembly.

At the same time, the majority of countries that have signed up to the SDGs, are not making the progress needed to avert a global break down.

The writer can be contacted at thalifdeen@ips.org

The post Will a Global Fund Help Deliver UN’s Development Agenda? appeared first on Inter Press Service.

By Caley Pigliucci
UNITED NATIONS, Jul 19 2019 (IPS)

Since 2010, donor funding to fight HIV/AIDS in low-and middle-income countries has dropped significantly, according to a new report released here.

The study, Communities at the Centre, released July 16 by the Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF) and the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS), points out a $1.0 billion decline in funding from 2017-2018.

This most heavily affects low-income countries in East and South African countries (except South Africa), which rely on donor funding for 80% of HIV responses.

However, seven of 14 donor governments increased their funding between 2017 and 2018 (Australia, Canada, France, Japan, the Netherlands, Norway, and Sweden).

But funding by five countries declined (Denmark, Ireland, Italy, the U.K., and the U.S), and two were flat (the European Commission and Germany).

Jose Antonio Izazola, the UNAIDS Resource Tracking and Finances Director told IPS: “The flattening is a result of multiple factors like competition for scarce funds (migration in Europe, climate change, 17 SDGs, health systems, political preferences of donor governments, and economic situations in the donor countries.”

Jen Kates, Senior Vice President and Director of the Global Health & HIV Policy at KFF agreed with Izazola.

She told IPS, “The Global Financial crisis, rising refugee and humanitarian costs, especially for donors in Europe. Donor fatigue, and decreasing attention to HIV by the media and others” were among the reasons for the decline in funding.

According to a report from HIV.org, “AIDS-related deaths have been reduced by more than 51% since the peak in 2004. In 2017, 940,000 people died from AIDS-related illnesses worldwide, compared to 1.4 million in 2010 and 1.9 million in 2004.”

But Kates worries that “because of many of the successes, [there is] a false sense that HIV is no longer a problem.”

HIV is still highly prevalent globally. According to UNAIDS, there were 36.9 million people world-wide living with HIV/AIDS, as of 2017..

53% of that global population living with HIV/AIDS (around 19.6 million people), were in eastern and southern Africa, countries that rely most heavily on donor aid.

The United States as Top Donor

The report looks both at bilateral funding (provided directly to or on behalf of countries), and multilateral funding (which includes contributions to the global fund and Unitaid) for HIV/AIDS.

“Donor funds can be channeled directly from the government of one country to the recipient country (like [The President’s Emergency Plan For AIDS Relief] PEPFAR), or be provided to an organization which pools resources from many sources, eg UNAIDS, and all UN agencies, Global Fund, Unitaid, etc. exclusively for HIV or for various purposes,” Izazola explained.

According to the report, this funding mainly comes from the United States, which remains the top donor in the fight against HIV.

The U.S. disbursed $5.8 billion last year, “and also ranks first in disbursements relative to the size of each donor’s economy.”

The United Kingdom (US$605 million), France (US$302 million), the Netherlands (US$232 million) and Germany (US$162 million) are the next largest donors, trailing the U.S. by a significant margin.

Asked why we see continued, and largely unwavering, support from the United States, Izazola said: “There is strong political will by the US government, including Congress (bipartisan support) for a program [PEPFAR] which has support from multiple constituencies and shows results (lives saved, infections averted, etc).”

He added that he sees there is still “strong leadership: technically and diplomatically,” in the U.S. government to fight HIV/AIDS.

The KFF/UNAIDS report argues that if the current trends continue, “future funding from donor governments is likely to remain stable at best, and will hinge largely on future U.S. support.”

But support from the U.S. may not be as stable as it appears.

The report states that “In the case of the U.S., Congressional appropriations in 2019 were essentially flat, and the PEPFAR funding pipeline has diminished, which could lead to decreasing bilateral disbursements over time.”

“There is also uncertainty about the U.S. pledge to the Global Fund, although the Congress has indicated its intention to increase support,” the report added.

The Need for Continued Funding

Despite the successes thus far, Izazola thinks there is still more to be done, and the resources needed are funded by donor governments.

“The additional resources are needed not only to provide for the services needed, but to change the epidemic by reducing the number of new HIV infections below the AIDS-related deaths to reach epidemic control which would lead to controlling the financing of the HIV response in the medium term,” he said.

“There is also a need to finance ways to overcome the barriers to access to services known as social enablers and services to the populations labeled as ‘key populations,'” he added.

He sees the need to increase resources for testing, treatment and prevention. But this cannot be done by local governments alone.

Kates explained that “Even if [countries] were to increase their own spending, it would be hard for them to replace what donors provide.”

There has been an increase in focus on sustainability for funding, by starting to transition from donor aid to domestic aid.

In 2014, about 50% of the resources available within a country came domestically. Today, it is 57%.

While the transition between donor funding and government funding has been a steady one, it is not yet enough to meet the demands needed to fight HIV/AIDS.

“Donor funding will continue to be critical to addressing HIV in the near and mid-term but clearly is not filling what is a growing gap between what resources are available and needed,” she said.

She added that “The challenge is that if funding falls short now, costs rise in the future.”

The post US Leads Donor Funding to Fight HIV/AIDS Amidst Overall Decline appeared first on Inter Press Service.

In 2019, there are measles outbreaks in the US and Europe; Ebola outbreak in DRC and Uganda and several other infectious disease outbreaks in Nigeria, Vietnam and South Africa. Credit: Marc-André Boisvert/IPS

By Ifeanyi Nsofor
ABUJA, Jul 19 2019 (IPS)

The 2019 G20 Summit was held recently in Osaka, Japan. The Summit ended with the “G20 Osaka Leaders’ Declaration”, which identifies health as a prerequisite for sustainable and inclusive economic growth, and the leaders committed to various efforts to improve epidemic preparedness. 

These efforts are commendable, but the G20, comprised of 19 countries and the European Union with economies that represent more than 80 percent of global Gross Domestic Product (GDP), also must do more to lead by example in epidemic preparedness by ensuring they all have a ReadyScore.

This is managed by preventepidemics.org, the world’s first website to provide clear and concise country-level data on epidemic preparedness.  It measures a country’s ability to find, stop and prevent health threats. Then, they need to demonstrate they are ready to take steps to improve their score, as needed.

This is an important issue because within 36 hours, an infectious disease can travel from a remote village and can be carried to major cities worldwide, according to the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). If anything kills over 10 million people in the next few decades, it would mostly likely be a highly infectious virus rather than a war. The next disaster is not missiles, but microbes, said Bill Gates in his 2015 TED Talk.

As Gates was giving his 2015 TED Talk, the Ebola outbreak in West Africa was coming to an end after causing the deaths of over 11,300 people, reducing the GDPs of Guinea, Liberia & Sierra Leone by $3 billion and devasting the health workforce in the three countries. Overall, the 2014 Ebola outbreak in West Africa cost global economy an estimated $53 billion.

As long as there are communities globally in which people are unable to access healthcare because of their inability to pay or due to other inequities, the risks of infectious diseases remain

Outbreaks are not a thing of the past, however. In 2019, there are measles outbreaks in the US and Europe; Ebola outbreak in DRC and Uganda and several other infectious disease outbreaks in Nigeria, Vietnam and South Africa.

To be assigned a ReadyScore, countries should undergo a Joint External Evaluation (JEE) which is a voluntary, collaborative, multisectoral process to assess country capacities to prevent, detect and rapidly respond to public health risks whether occurring naturally or due to deliberate or accidental events.

Right now, only 100 out of 195 countries (51 percent) have conducted the JEE. Until all 195 countries conduct the JEE, it would be difficult to assess global preparedness for prevention, detection and response to epidemics.

Based on records on preventepidemics.org, the following G20 countries have an unknown ReadyScore; Brazil, China, France, India, Italy, Russia and Turkey. An unknown score implies that a country has not volunteered to have a JEE. On the other hand, the ReadyScore of Argentina, Canada, Germany and Mexico is pending.

This means that they have committed to have a JEE, but data are unavailable. Some G20 countries that do have a ReadyScore include United Kingdom (84 percent), USA (87 percent), South Africa (62 percent), Indonesia (64 percent) and Japan (92 percent).

 

The ReadyScore provides clear and concise country-level data on epidemic preparedness. It measures a country’s ability to find, stop and prevent health threats.

 

To be better prepared for epidemics, a country must have a ReadyScore of 80 percent and above, otherwise the international community cannot categorically say that all G20 countries can prevent, detect and rapidly respond to infectious disease outbreaks. So, what needs to happen next?

First, the G20 should work with the World Health Organisation and other partners to conduct JEE to make our world safer. JEE is a voluntary activity and no nation can be compelled to conduct one and very few G20 countries have their ReadyScore. The WHO on its own must strengthen advocacy to the G20 countries that have no ReadyScore. The advocacy should make these countries acknowledge that when it comes to epidemic preparedness, the world is as strong as its weakest.

Second, universal health coverage and global health security must both be addressed together. Billions of people do not have access to healthcare, and this poses serious risks for global health security. As long as there are communities globally in which people are unable to access healthcare because of their inability to pay or due to other inequities, the risks of infectious diseases remain.

A number of G20 countries already fund different health interventions in low- and middle-income countries. It is time for the G20 to push for integrated health programs instead of the current vertical system in recipient countries. Universal health coverage is heavily dependent on political will.

Therefore, the G20 should use its influence to advocate to countries without universal health coverage to gradually move to one. Development aid to such countries earmarked for health should be conditional – to be used to develop a publicly-funded universal health coverage health system which is accessible to all.

Third, G20 countries can invest in networks of reference and specialised laboratories as part of disaster prevention. Detection and control of infectious diseases is delayed if bio samples have to be taken to other countries located thousands of miles away in order to get definitive diagnoses.

For example, during the 2014 Ebola outbreak in West Africa, to confirm Ebola in Nigeria, blood samples had to be taken to Senegal (more than 3 hours by flight). This obviously delayed the response efforts. Although the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) has since increased its diagnostic capacity, national public health institutes such as NCDC still require financial and technical support to ensure global health security.

G20 countries should lead by example and get a ReadyScore by being open for joint external evaluations and meet all Osaka Leaders’ global health commitments. If other countries follow suit, then the world would move closer to being better prepared to handle epidemics.

 

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

The post Here’s How the World Can Be Better Prepared to Handle Epidemics appeared first on Inter Press Service.

By Daniel Yang
UNITED NATIONS, Jul 19 2019 (IPS)

When the United Nations General Assembly met in 2007 to vote on North Korea’s human rights record, only 10 of the 56 African countries voted with the U.S.-led western coalition.

The overwhelming majority followed China – either by voting against or abstaining from the resolution.

This has not always been the case. Just three decades prior, the consequential General Assembly vote to replace the Republic of China (Taiwan) with the People’s Republic of China – signaling international recognition of Communist Party rule – was met with resistance from the United States. Although the resolution was passed, African countries did not abide by any side.

In the interim three decades, China rose to be one of the world’s most formidable economic and military powers, surpassed the United States as Africa’s largest trading partner and financed more than 3,000 large, critical infrastructure projects.

More than 10,000 Chinese firms operate in Africa, claiming nearly 50 percent of Africa’s internationally contracted construction market.

China transitioned from the world’s supplier of cheap labor to a leading financier of the developing world, aiming to build bridges – both figuratively and literally – through economic cooperation. Its chief foreign policy project – the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) – has connected 152 countries across continents and facilitated more than 1.3 trillion in trade.

Yet to the west, China’s ascent means an authoritarian challenge to the liberal international system.

In a foreign policy address last December, U.S. National Security Advisor John Bolton warned that China has been “deliberatively and aggressively” undermining U.S. interests.

“China uses bribes, opaque agreements, and the strategic use of debt to hold states in Africa captive to Beijing’s wishes and demands,” Bolton said. “Such predatory actions are sub-components of broader Chinese strategic initiatives… with the ultimate goal of advancing Chinese global dominance.”

Although Washington is becoming increasingly alert on Africa, Beijing devised its own Africa strategy long before the twenty-first century.

Shortly after China’s founding in 1949, much of the developing world was still struggling with anti-colonialism and anti-imperialism. China’s then-premier Zhou Enlai saw this as an opportunity to position China – a country that triumphed in the same struggle – as a leader of the developing world.

“Africa’s always been important for China going back to the 1950s,” Dr. Stanley Rosen, professor of political science at the University of Southern California’s US-China Institute, told IPS.

“In the earlier period under Mao, it was because of the number of countries in Africa that had votes at the United Nations and the fact that China was promoting revolutionary movements, so it’s very political.”

“Shortly after the reforms began in China in 1979, Africa became more important economically,” Dr. Rosen added.

In the 1990s, encouraged by then-President Jiang Zemin’s “Go Out Policy” – a government-backed program to incentivize private overseas investment – Sino-African trade grew by 700 percent. With the help of the low-interest loans from the Chinese Export-Import Bank, companies like Huawei spearheaded a new generation’s quest for markets abroad.

Dr. Rosen told IPS that China now seeks to build mutually beneficial relationships with resource-rich countries regardless of their domestic political situation.

In September last year, Chinese President Xi Jinping pledged that China will provide an additional $60 billion in financial support to Africa for at the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) through foreign direct investment (FDI) and infrastructure loans.

Perhaps more telling of China’s attraction, more African countries attended FOCAC than the similarly-timed UN General Assembly meeting in 2018.

Xi calls China’s foreign policy, “major country diplomacy with Chinese characteristics” – a doctrine that prioritizes peaceful cooperation than single-power domination.

However, regardless of Xi’s intentions, China’s investment has boosted domestic economic growth and gained political sway over willing African leaders who need technical aid and infrastructure development.

More importantly, China has shown that the western-dominant model of development characterized by neoliberal economic policies and democratic political principles is not the only way. By doing so, China is shifting the eye of world affairs eastward.

In June, 43 African countries drafted a statement to oppose the U.S. veto power on judicial appointments at the Appellate Body of the World Trade Organization (WTO), the world’s highest trade court. Again, they sided with China.

China has urged the WTO to oppose U.S. veto power since early last year. Zhang Xiangchen, China’s WTO ambassador, said the international trade system is facing “grave challenges,” referring to President Trump’s trade policy.

“The most urgent and burning question that the WTO has to answer now is how to respond to unilateralism and protectionism,” Zhang said. “What is most dangerous and devastating is that the U.S. is systematically challenging fundamental guiding principles by blocking the selection process of the Appellate Body members.”

“If left untreated, [the policy] will fatally undermine the functioning of the WTO,” Zhang added.

China’s challenge to the U.S.-dominant world order doesn’t stop with the WTO. China has set up international institutions such as the New Development Bank and the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) to further solidify its position as the developing world’s financier.

While some have argued that these institutions are potential rivals to the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), some are more cautious to assume that China is attempting to change the international order because of China’s lack of clarity in its policy implementation process.

Dr. Yuen Yuen Ang, associate political science professor at the University of Michigan, told IPS that China’s intentions are “not verifiable.”

“While observers are free to speculate upon China’s intentions,” Dr. Ang said. “What we should and can know for sure is a persistent gap between policy formulation and implementation.”

Dr. Ang explained that the implementation of BRI has been “fragmented and uncoordinated,” causing confusion for international partners and participant companies and blurring Beijing’s strategic vision.

Despite its flaws, however, the BRI is showing the world the China way.

On the 95th anniversary of the Communist Party’s founding, Xi announced to a hall of thousands that the Chinese people “are fully confident in offering a China solution to humanity’s search for better social systems.”

As China continues to form alliances in Africa and around the globe, the west may soon need to acknowledge Xi’s foresight.

The post How China’s Africa Alliance is Shifting World Order appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Research shows goats and sheep populations in Kenya have increased as the country’s temperatures have increased, in some places above 1.5˚C. Credit: Isaiah Esipisu/IPS

By Isaiah Esipisu
NAIROBI, Jul 18 2019 (IPS)

Kenya’s getting hotter. Much hotter than the 1.5˚C increase that has been deemed acceptable by global leaders, and it is too hot for livestock, wildlife and plants to survive. Thousands of households, dependent on farming and livestock, are at risk too.

This is according to researchers who presented the Kenyan government with the findings of their study titled ‘Harnessing opportunities for climate resilient economic development in semi arid lands: Adaptation options in key sectors (with focus on livestock value chain)’.

According to their findings, the thermometer has been climbing steadily upwards across this East African nation’s entire 21 arid and semi-arid counties, with the temperature in a few counties already surpassing the 1.5°C above pre-industrialised levels that research that has predicted would be reached between 2030 and 2052.

The counties are:

• West Pokot and Elgeyo-Marakwet, which have both recorded an increase of 1.91° C;
• Turkana and Baringo, which both recorded a 1.8° C increase;
• Laikipia county which showed a 1.59° C increase and;
• Narok which had a 1.75° C.

All the increases were recorded over the last five decades.

During the 21st round of climate change negotiations under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in Paris in 2015, all countries committed under the Paris Agreement to “holding the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels and pursuing efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5°C.”

In 2018, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released a special report warning that without urgent changes to slow down the global warming, the world would face the risk of extreme heat, drought, floods and poverty at a temperature rise of 1.5°C.

The Kenyan study today noted that humans were already feeling the impact of these increased temperatures as over the last four decades the livestock in some counties have declined by almost a quarter of the overall livestock population because of the temperature increase over this time.

“In all the 21 counties, we observed a 25.2 percent decline in cattle population between 1977 and 2016, and this is directly linked to the increased heat,” Dr Mohammed Yahya Said, the lead investigator and a consulting scientist at Kenya Markets Trust, which conducted the research, tells IPS.

The research was commissioned by the Canadian-based International Development Research Centre and the United Kingdom’s Department for International Development through the Pathways to Resilience in Semi-arid Economies.

“This is a very disturbing statistic especially for a pastoral community whose main livelihoods are derived from livestock,” remarks Said.

It is statistic that Eunice Marima, a pastoralist from Kenya’s Narok County has lived through.

“This is something I have witnessed over the years,” Marima tells IPS. She vividly recalls how her father, who then lived in Kajiado County which borders Tanzania, and lies 21 kilometres south of Nairobi, lost a herd of 3,000 cattle in December 1962.

And she clearly remembers how many more people have lost thousands and thousands of animals in the subsequent years. Her cattle have not been spared either because in the 1984 and 1994 droughts she lost 210 and 88 animals respectively.

“I have learned my lesson, and now, I have 90 acres of land where I usually plant Boma Rodhes grass whenever it rains,” she tells IPS. She explains that she harvests the grass to make hay, which she uses to feed her animals during drought. “This is my new adaptation method, and as a result, following the 2017 drought, I did not lose any animal,” she says.

According to the new study, the most affected county was Turkana, which recorded a temperature increase of 1.8˚C over the last half century with a resultant sharp decline in its cattle population, which by almost 60 percent between 1977 and 2016.

“However, our study found something else these communities could hang on to,” Said explains.

The same study reveals that the changing climatic conditions have at the same time presented opportunities that could be explored to realise the government’s development agenda.

During the same period, all the Arid and Semi Arid Land (ASAL) counties recorded a 76.4 percent increase in goat and sheep populations, and 13.1 percent increase for camels.

“These are very important findings for the country especially now that we are working towards the realisation of the ‘Big Four’ development agenda,” said Mwangi Harry Gioche, the Director of Agriculture Research and Innovation at the Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock Fisheries and Irrigation, who received the findings on behalf of the Principal Secretary for Agricultural Research, Professor Hamadi Boga.

The ‘Big Four’ is a four-point agenda by President Uhuru Kenyatta, outlining what he will be focusing on in his last presidential term, which ends in 2022, to improve the living standards of Kenyans, grow the economy and leave a lasting legacy. The agenda items include food security, manufacturing (mainly focusing on job creation in this area), affordable universal health care and affordable housing.

According to Professor Nick Ogunge, who represented the University of Nairobi at the research dissemination event, the information is very crucial for the formulation of policies that are responsive to the prevailing climatic conditions.

Said explains that according to projections, temperatures are most likely to increase even further, which called for informed preparedness. He did not say how much higher the temperature would rise.

“Climate change is already happening and research shows there are possible ways of adaptation,” Dr. Olufunso Somorin from the Africa Development Bank said during presentation of the findings in Nairobi. “However, countries have been using such important data to develop policies and strategies which are never implemented.”

Somorin challenged the government of Kenya to use the new data positively for the wellbeing of communities in the ASAL counties.

The scientists observed that if the country took advantage of such information to invest in the livestock value chain in the correct ecological zones, then the country could easily become a net exporter of livestock and livestock products.

Kenya is on record as being the fifth-largest livestock producer in Africa, and most of the animals are found in the ASALs. However, the country loses millions of the animals during droughts, making it meat-deficit country. So far, most of the meat eaten in Kenya is imported from Ethiopia, Somalia, Tanzania and Eritrea.

“Nearly all pastoralists keep cattle as a hobby and as a symbol of wealth, and when drought comes, they lose so many animals,” says Marima.

“Time has come for us to face the reality.”

Related Articles

• Heatwaves are a ‘New Normal’, Says Red Cross
• Want to Inspire More People to Act on Climate Change? Broaden the Framing

The post Parts of Kenya are Already Above 1.5˚C appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Adelaide Maphangane stands beside an empty water hole in the district of Mabalane, Mozambique. Many people come to this area to dig for water and often leave empty handed. The holes they are digging to reach water are getting deeper by the day. The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies says that heatwaves are one of the deadliest natural hazards facing humanity. Courtesy: Aurélie Marrier d'Unienville / International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC).

By James Reinl
UNITED NATIONS, Jul 18 2019 (IPS)

It is barely the middle of the month, but the verdict is in: July has been hot.

In recent weeks, climate scientists have monitored a freak heatwave in the Canadian Arctic, droughts around Harare and Chennai and forest fires across southern France that have sent holidaymakers fleeing from their burning campgrounds.

Against this eerie backdrop, one of the world’s top relief agencies has warned that heatwaves are only becoming more frequent on our warming planet, and that we have to up our game to deal with their life-threatening consequences.

“Heatwaves are one of the deadliest natural hazards facing humanity, and the threat they pose will only become more serious and more widespread as the climate crisis continues,” said Francesco Rocca, President of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC).

“However, the good news is that heatwaves are also predictable and preventable. The actions that authorities can take to save lives and significantly reduce suffering are simple and affordable.”

On Tuesday, Jul. 16, the IFRC released a 96-page guidebook designed to help city mayors prepare for heatwaves, which explains that they have to prepare better, stay alert for coming hot spells and work harder to save lives.

Some five billion people live in regions where extreme heat can be predicted days or weeks in advance, says the report. This gives officials and conscientious CEOs enough time to reduce the harm from an impending hot spell.

Officials should let people know how bad a heatwave will be, prepare medical staff to respond, set up “cooling centres” for folks who do not have air conditioners, and hand out plenty of bottles of water, researchers said.

Researchers offered plenty of architectural ideas, calling for more trees and landscaping to shade buildings from sunlight, gardens on rooftops and coats of reflective paint that bounce away the sun’s warming rays.

Getting rid of cars and more people using public transit, walking and cycling would also “significantly reduce” emissions of heat, pollution and the greenhouse gases behind climate change, says the report.

In particular, officials should focus on the people who are most likely to experience dehydration, heatstroke and other health worries — the elderly, youngsters, pregnant women and folks who live alone.

“Heatwaves are silent killers because they take the lives of people who are already vulnerable,” said Rocca, an Italian career humanitarian. “It’s vital that everyone knows how to prepare for them and limit their impact.”

According to the report, 17 of the 18 hottest years in the record books have occurred since 2001. In this period, heatwaves have caused more harm than just sweaty commutes on cramped buses and subway cars.

Several major heatwaves have killed tens of thousands of people worldwide so far this century, including a 2015 hot spell in India that killed around 2,500 people, and the 2003 European heatwave that caused some 70,000 deaths.

The extreme temperatures seen across western Europe last month were in part a result of climate change, the report says, citing evidence that the hot spell was made at least five times more likely by global warming.

The IFRC released its report on the sidelines of a high-level political forum at United Nations headquarters in New York, which is focused on climate action and other parts of the world body’s so-called Sustainable Development Goals.

Earlier this month, the U.N.’s envoy on disaster risk reduction, Mami Mizutori, warned that small-scale climate-related disasters were happening “at the rate of one a week”, though most attract little attention.

Mizutori told The Guardian newspaper that “lower-impact events” causing death and displacement were happening more frequently than predicted and urged policymakers to “talk more about adaptation and resilience”.

Related Articles

• Want to Inspire More People to Act on Climate Change? Broaden the Framing
• Rwanda Prepares the Foundations for Climate-Resilient Cities

The post Heatwaves are a ‘New Normal’, Says Red Cross appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Group photo at the 'World Youth Skills Day 2019' commemoration event at the UN Headquarters July 15

By Lakshi De Vass Gunawardena
UNITED NATIONS, Jul 18 2019 (IPS)

When the United Nations commemorated World Youth Skills Day, there was one stark reality that emerged out of the event: the world’s youth account for over a third of the global population of more than 7.7 billion people, and they also account for over a third of those unemployed across the globe.

“Over the next decade, we will need to create at least 14 million jobs per year to keep pace with the growing population” María Fernanda Espinosa Garcés, President of the UN General Assembly told the panelists.

The panel discussion, which took place on July 15, was hosted by the Permanent Mission of Sri Lanka to the UN, along with the Permanent Mission of Portugal to the UN, the Office of the Secretary- General’s Envoy on Youth, the UN Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), and the International Labour Organization (ILO).

“Young people can and must lead,” said Ana María Menéndez, Representative of the UN Secretary General.

“They must be able to participate in the decisions that affect their lives, and create an enabling environment, where they are seen not as subjects, but as citizens with equal rights.” she added.

The theme of this year’s World Youth Skills Day was Learning to Learn, which emphasizes that learning should and must not end in the classroom.

The panelists also revealed that right now, 2 out of 3 children in primary school will be in jobs that do not currently exist. With this, it is evident widespread support systems for youths will continue to be fostered, especially within the education system.

The history of World Youth Skills Day goes back to 18 December 2014 when the UN General Assembly adopted by consensus, resolution, A/RES/69/145, titled ‘World Youth Skills Day’ spearheaded by Sri Lanka, declaring 15th July as the World Youth Skills Day.

Since then, this has been an annual event celebrated at the UN.

Students training in MIANI centre in Batticaloa, Sri Lanka. They are acquiring skills to pursue a career in the tourism industry. Photo: CC BYNC-SA 3.0 IGO © UNESCO-UNEVOC/Sanduni Siripala

“Learning is learning to be curious.” Erol Kirespi, President of the Institute of Engineering told IPS.

“Learning to learn can mean a lot of things- I think that learning is about curiosity, and curiosity comes from a passion for something, or having a spark of an interest in something.” Amelia Addis, Champions Trust Regional Representative for Oceania and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), and member of World Skills, told IPS.

However, as she noted, too often a young person develops a passion for something, only to get shamed for said passion by outside forces.

“And so often, they might have passion for something and are told not to follow their passion because it’s ‘not the right career. But learning to learn comes naturally when you are passionate about it, so we need to encourage young people to follow up and to have that curiosity to keep learning,” she added.

Ultimately, though it is up to the young people and those around them to help nurture and strengthen their skillsets so that they can have an effective and sustainable role in the workforce. But, as aforementioned, there is a stigma around unorthodox skills and passions.

“I think the biggest challenge with the sort of negative reception to skills is around perception of skills themselves. I think universally skills are thought of as entry level jobs, and those of us involved in the Technical and Vocational Education Training (TVET) community know that this isn’t true”.

“Vocational careers like any other career have opportunities for growth and development on both personal and professional levels. Parents and teachers have a responsibility to expose youth to different career and educational pathways and trust that youth will find their passion. Once they have found their passion they will be on the road to success.” Addis noted.

“My advice for youth who may feel disheartened by the prospect of pursuing skills careers is to trust themselves when they have found something that gives them that spark. If they are looking for more practical help to know what a profession might be like they can find someone who is equally passionate about the skill they are looking to pursue.”

“Traditionally the mentor and apprentice relationship has been the core of so many vocational backgrounds and this is still an integral way youth can gain knowledge about their passions. We must realize however that not every young person will have access to a one on one, in person mentor dynamic, she declared.

“This is where we can look to online communities of peers and professionals to be our mentors. I personally do this in my own work all the time, gaining inspiration from others who work not only in my field but those who have like-minded skills.”

All in all, learning to learn is the door to the success of our world, and the young generation is the key to unlocking that very door.

The post How Skills Can Change Lives of World’s Youth appeared first on Inter Press Service.

By Daniel Yang
UNITED NATIONS, Jul 18 2019 (IPS)

The United Nations launched its 2019 report on Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), showing inadequate progress in the fourth year into the sustainable development agenda and highlighting the need for imminent global action.

Released on the first day of the SDG High-Level Political Forum (HLPF), the report evaluates progress made towards the 2030 target. Despite achievements in a number of areas, including poverty reduction and global health, the world needs “deeper, faster and more ambitious response” to meet the goal, said UN Secretary-General António Guterres.

“We are moving too slowly in our efforts to end human suffering and create opportunity for all,” Guterres said. “We must diligently ensure that policy choices leave no one behind, and that national efforts are supported by effective international cooperation.”

The report identifies climate change and inequality as two of the most urgent issues. Climate-induced disaster disproportionately affects low-income countries and worsen poverty, hunger and disease for the world’s poorest and most vulnerable.

Climate Change and the Environment

Although more financial resources have been directed to reducing greenhouse gas emissions and developing risk-reduction strategies, the world is not on track to meet the target of curbing global warming to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels.

Mitigating the effects of climate change still requires “unprecedented changes” in all aspects of society, according to the report.

The 1.5°C target was set to reduce the possibility of extreme weather events such as droughts, heavy precipitation and tropical cyclones that can cause human suffering, according to the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

Guterres called climate change an “existential threat” in a speech on climate action delivered last September.

Liu Zhenmin, the UN Under-Secretary-General for Economic and Social Affairs echoed Guterres’ message by calling climate change “the main obstacle to our shared prosperity” at the press conference where he introduced the report.

“If we do not cut record-high greenhouse gas emissions now,” Liu said. “the compound effects will be catastrophic and irreversible… render[ing] many parts of the world uninhabitable, put[ting] food production at risk, leading to widespread food shortages and hunger, and potentially displac[ing] up to 140 million people by 2050.”

However, even if the terms of the Paris Agreement are implemented, global temperature is likely to rise above 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels, according to Dr. Virginia Burkett, Chief Scientist for Land Resources at United States Geological Survey (USGS) and Acting Chair of US Global Change Research Program.

“With significant reductions in emissions, the increase in annual average global temperature could possibly be limited to 2°C,” Dr. Burkett told IPS. “But this would require a rapid transition towards the decarbonization of the global economy and new technologies for removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.”

Although the UN’s climate research coordination effort has been effective, Dr. Burkett said lack of internationally coordinated policy solution is likely to affect the pace of progress.

Imminent policy response is also needed to preserve and improve the environment, including key resources such as water.

“Two billion people live in countries experiencing high water stress, and about 4 billion people experience severe water scarcity at least one month a year,” the report identified.

Inadequate water, sanitation and hygiene have been a “major contributors” to illness and health, causing diseases such as diarrhea. Efforts to improve life on land and below water “must accelerate” to meet the 2030 agenda, according to the report.

Wealth and Gender Inequality

The report painted a grim picture towards achieving greater wealth and gender equality.

According to the International Labor Organization (ILO), nearly half of the world’s workers – close to 1.6 billion people – make only $200 a month, and the bottom 10 percent would need to work 28 years to earn the same as the top 10 percent.

Economic disparity also affects gender equality, with men’s median hourly pay 12 percent higher than that of women.

This gap is even greater for managerial occupations due to “rigid social norms and cultural expectations about women’s role in society,” the report said.

Women worldwide also experience persistently high level of sexual violence and often find legal frameworks failing to protect their rights.

“Women and girls around the world continue to experience violence and cruel practices that strip them of their dignity and erode their well-being,” the report noted. “Women and girls perform a disproportionate share of unpaid domestic work [and] continue to face barriers with respect to their sexual and reproductive health and rights.”

Sexual violence is especially common in Sub-Saharan Africa and Central and Southern Asia.

Poverty, Hunger and Global Health

Despite extended progress in the past decade, hunger is again on the rise largely due to adverse weather conditions and armed conflicts in Sub-Saharan Africa, reflecting a “worrisome” trend.

Malnutrition, another effect of inadequate food supply, is still a prevalent condition affecting 49 million children under 5 years of age despite notably decrease since 2000.

“Intensified efforts are needed to implement and scale up interventions to improve access to safe, nutritious and sufficient food for all,” the report said.

The UN introduced the Multidimensional Poverty Index to indicate poverty not only in income but also poor housing, health and quality of work. By this standard, a startling 1.3 billion people – nearly one fifth of the world’s population – remain multidimensionally poor.

As a result, the world is not on track to end poverty by 2030.

“One out of five children live in extreme poverty, and the negative effects of poverty and deprivation in the early years have ramifications that can last a lifetime,” the report said.

However, substantial progress has been made in improving the health of millions across the world, developing cures to fight against previously deadly and infectious diseases and combating maternal and child mortality rates.

In Sub-Saharan Africa, where malaria and tuberculosis continue to plague human health and financial hardship deny access to immunization and routine interventions, global health is still a subject of urgent concern.

“Concerted efforts are required to achieve universal health coverage and sustainable financing for health, address the growing burden of non-communicable diseases including mental health, and tackle environmental factors contributing to ill health,” the report concluded.

The post UN Report Shows Mixed Results in Meeting SDGs appeared first on Inter Press Service.

“Carmen S.” holds her son, 3, at a shelter where they were staying in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, May 2019, after being returned to Mexico under the Trump administration’s “Migrant Protection Protocols.” Carmen told Human Rights Watch that she was thinking of trying to cross illegally but was afraid of losing her children. © 2019 Clara Long/Human Rights Watch

By Ariana Sawyer
SAN FRANCISCO, California, US, Jul 18 2019 (IPS)

On the 2,000-mile journey from San Pedro Sula, Honduras, to the US-Mexico border, the 20-year-old asylum seeker and her 16-year-old brother took turns sleeping every time they managed to catch a ride or get on a bus. She told me they kept each other safe that way.

The asylum seeker – I’ll call her Gloria because she was afraid to have her real name published – said she fled Honduras with her little brother after a member of a gang there stalked and threatened to kill her for refusing to be his girlfriend.

When the siblings turned themselves in to US Border Patrol near El Paso, Texas, in mid-April, agents separated them.

“Where are you taking him?” she asked.

The US government is failing in its responsibilities toward asylum seekers by sending them to Ciudad Juarez and elsewhere in Mexico, where meaningful oversight is impossible.

“He’s going to a better place than you,” she said an agent replied. But as we have found, Gloria’s brother, like other children in Border Patrol detention, certainly was not going to a good place.

Gloria said she spent six days in Customs and Border Protection custody without sunlight in an overcrowded cell with no shower or ready access to water. She was then placed in the Trump administration’s Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP) or “Remain in Mexico” program and sent alone to Mexico. She is expected to wait there for the duration of her asylum case, which could take months or years. She will be allowed to travel to the US only to attend immigration court hearings.

When I interviewed her in the border city of Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, in May, she hadn’t heard from her brother in weeks. She seemed more worried about him than anything else, but her own situation was dire.

Like the other asylum seekers we interviewed about the cruel and chaotic MPP program, Gloria found it hard enough to survive, let alone pursue her asylum case.

The shelter where she spoke to me has a limit on the number of days she can stay. Shelter operators explained they don’t want to kick vulnerable people out, but they feel they must give priority to those US authorities have most recently sent to Mexico, since they’re the most disoriented.

 

A sign in front of a migrant shelter in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, informs asylum seekers that they have no space, May 2019. This shelter is located in a particularly dangerous neighborhood, and asylum seekers there said they were afraid to leave, even to go to the store just blocks away. © 2019 Clara Long/Human Rights Watch

 

One shelter operator broke down and cried when we asked why one family was told that day would be their last.

Asylum seekers in need of shelter outnumber available beds in Ciudad Juarez 11 to 1, though one Mexican official told me that 20 to 30 percent of those waiting had already left with plans to try to cross the border between the ports of entry, probably in more remote, dangerous areas. Meanwhile, many of those in the program say they have family in the US to whom they could be released.

Compared to some of the most recent rounds of asylum seekers sent to Mexico whose preliminary immigration court hearings were scheduled for the summer of 2020, Gloria is somewhat better off. Her first hearing is in August.

As long as she was allowed to stay at the shelter, she said, she was avoiding going outdoors. Mexico is  experiencing record levels of murders – the highest number of intentional homicides since the country began keeping track in the late 90s – which have hit Ciudad Juarez and other Mexican border towns particularly hard, and migrant women there are especially vulnerable, US federal asylum officers have said.

“I know that in any moment something could happen to me,” Gloria said.

We initially decided to visit Ciudad Juarez after migrant rights advocates expressed the need to shine a light there, describing the city as a “black hole” to which asylum seekers were being sent – out of sight, out of mind.

And when one Congresswoman recently sent staff members to Ciudad Juarez to monitor the program, a  Customs and Border Patrol  official leaked some forms her office sent the government agency containing sensitive information about individual asylum seekers and accused her of trying to undermine the Border Patrol.

The US government is failing in its responsibilities toward asylum seekers by sending them to Ciudad Juarez and elsewhere in Mexico, where meaningful oversight is impossible. But those concerned about this mistreatment can do their part to end it. They can call on their members of Congress to end the funding for the program, oppose the separation of families, strengthen the asylum system, and pursue alternatives to detention.

Oscar Alberto Martinez Ramirez and his daughter, Valeria, reportedly died trying to swim across the Rio Grande because they were disheartened by the barriers to asylum put up by the Trump administration at ports of entry.

Lawmakers need to rein in an increasingly abusive border agency.

 

The post Desperation and Fear on the Mexican Border appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Ariana Sawyer is with the US program at Human Rights Watch

The post Desperation and Fear on the Mexican Border appeared first on Inter Press Service.