Africa - INTER PRESS SERVICE

Richard Taylor, a Professor of Hydrogeology from the University College London (UCL) (far left) is the principal investigator in a project to study groundwater resources to understand more how to use the resource to alleviate poverty. Credit: Isaiah Esipisu/IPS

By Isaiah Esipisu
DODOMA, Tanzania, Jul 11 2019 (IPS)

Research scientists are studying groundwater resources in three African countries in order to understand the renewability of the source and how people can use it sustainably towards a green revolution in Africa.

“We don’t want to repeat some of the mistakes during the green revolution that has taken place in Asia, where people opted to use groundwater, then groundwater was overused and we ended up with a problem of sustainability,” said Richard Taylor, the principal investigator and a professor of Hydrogeology from the University College London (UCL).

Through a project known as Groundwater Futures in Sub-Saharan Africa (GroFutures), a team of 40 scientists from Africa and abroad have teamed up to develop a scientific basis and participatory management processes by which groundwater resources can be used sustainably for poverty alleviation.

Though the study is still ongoing, scientists can now tell how and when different major aquifers recharge, how they respond to different climatic shocks and extremes, and they are already looking for appropriate ways of boosting groundwater recharge for more sustainability.

“Our focus is on Tanzania, Ethiopia and Niger,” said Taylor. “These are three strategic laboratories in tropical Africa where we are expecting rapid development of agriculture and the increased need to irrigate,” he told IPS.

In Tanzania, scientists from UCL in collaboration with their colleagues from the local Sokoine University of Agriculture, the Ministry of Water and Irrigation and the WamiRuvu Basin Water Board, have been studying the Makutapora well field, which is the only source of water for the country’s capital city – Dodoma.

“This is demand-driven research because we have previously had conflicting data about the actual yield of this well field,” said Catherine Kongola, a government official who heads and manages a sub section of the WamiRuvu Basin in Central Tanzania. The WamiRuvu Basin comprises the country’s two major rivers of Wami and Ruvi and covers almost 70,000 square kilometres.

She notes that scientists are using modern techniques to study the behaviour of groundwater in relation to climate shocks and also human impact, as well as the quality of the water in different locations of the basin.

“Groundwater has always been regarded as a hidden resource. But using science, we can now understand how it behaves, and this will help with the formulation of appropriate policies for sustainability in the future,” she told IPS.

Already, the World Bank in collaboration with the Africa Development Bank intends to invest some nine billion dollars in irrigation on the African continent. This was announced during last year’s Africa Green Revolution Forum that was held in Kigali, Rwanda.

According to Rajiv Shah, the president of the Rockefeller Foundation, boosting irrigation is key to improving agricultural productivity in Africa.

“In each of the areas where we are working, people are already looking at groundwater as a key way of improving household income and livelihoods, but also improving food security, so that people are less dependent on imported food,” said Taylor. “But the big question is; where does the water come from?”

Since the 1960s, during the green revolution in Asia, India relied heavily on groundwater for irrigation, particularly on rice and wheat, in order to feed the growing population. But today, depletion of the groundwater in the country has become a national crisis, and it is primarily attributed to heavy abstraction for irrigation.

The depletion crisis remains a major challenge in many other places on the globe, including the United States and China where intensive agriculture is practiced.

“It is based on such experiences that we are working towards reducing uncertainty in the renewability and quantity of accessible groundwater to meet future demands for food, water and environmental services, while at the same time promoting inclusion of poor people’s voices in decision-making processes on groundwater development pathways,” said Taylor.

After a few years of intensive research in Tanzania’s Makutapora well field, scientists have discovered that the well field—which is found in an area mainly characterised by seasonal rivers, vegetation such as acacia shrubs, cactus trees, baobab and others that thrive in dry areas—can only be recharged during extreme floods that can also destroy agricultural crops and even property.

“By the end of the year 2015, we installed river stage gauges to record the amount of water in the streams. Through this, we can monitor an hourly resolution of the river flow and how the water flow is linked to groundwater recharge,” Dr David Seddon, a research scientist whose PhD thesis was based on the Makutapora well field, told IPS.

Taylor explains that Makutapora is known for having the longest-known groundwater level record in sub-Saharan Africa.

“A study of the well field over the past 60 years reveals that recharge sustaining the daily pumping of water for use in the city occurs episodically and depends on heavy seasonal rainfall associated with El Niño Southern Oscillation,” Taylor said.

According to Lister Kongola, a retired hydrologist who worked for the government from 1977 to 2012, the demand for water in the nearby capital city of Dodoma has been rising over the years, from 20 million litres in the 1970s, to 30 million litres in the 1980s and to the current 61 million litres.

“With most government offices now relocating from Dar Es Salaam to Dodoma, the establishment of the University of Dodoma, other institutions of higher learning and health institutions, and the emergence of several hotels in the city, the demand is likely going to double in the coming few years,” Kongola told IPS.

The good news, however, is that seasons with El Niño kind of rainfall are predictable. “By anticipating these events, we can seek to amplify them through minimal but strategic engineering interventions that might allow us to actually increase replenishment of the well-field,” said Taylor.

According to Professor Nuhu Hatibu, the East African head of the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa, irrigation has been the ‘magic’ bullet for improving agricultural productivity all over the world, and “that is exactly what Africa needs to achieve a green revolution.”

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By Marco Funk
BERLIN, Jul 11 2019 (IPS)

When the Italian police recently arrested Carola Rackete, captain of the Sea-Watch 3 search and rescue vessel, the Central Mediterranean Sea suddenly entered the international limelight once again.

Media coverage of the most dangerous migration route in the world had previously been quite muted everywhere except Italy, where for months Interior Minister Matteo Salvini used every opportunity to publicly lambast the German NGO’s activities – despite low numbers of arrivals.

In fact, Captain Rackete became Salvini’s (and increasingly his voters’) enemy of choice well before her arrest. At the same time, she became a hero to those who support rescuing migrants at sea.

Yet despite the uproar, the row about NGO rescue ships represents only a small part of the complex geopolitical puzzle that drives irregular migration along this route. Carola Rackete’s arrest will have a very limited impact on the overall situation.

In order to truly understand what’s going on in the Central Mediterranean, one must retrace migrants’ steps all the way back to their countries of origin – often in sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East or even South Asia.

Some are refugees as defined by the 1951 Refugee Convention, others are not, but practically all of them have good reasons to leave their homes. This mixed migration flow typically crosses several countries before entering Libya, the main gateway to Europe.

EU efforts in Libya since the fall of Gaddafi have focused heavily on curbing migration to Europe. Some activities bend or even violate international law to keep migrants at bay.

African migrants crossing the Sahara Desert face dangers as severe as those at sea, with an uncounted death toll possibly far greater than that in the Mediterranean. Once migrants enter Libya, they find themselves in a comparatively wealthy country – Libya holds Africa’s largest oil reserves.

However, it is also a war-torn country in political disarray since the fall of ex-dictator Muammar Gaddafi in 2011.

The Libyan situation

At the moment, there are over 660,000 migrants in Libya according to estimates by the International Organization for Migration. Their conditions vary according to nationality and location.

Some long-term residents from North Africa or the Middle East are quite happy to stay in Libya, while more recent arrivals from sub-Saharan countries often face severe discrimination, exploitation and abuse.

As Libya never signed the 1951 Refugee Convention, refugees have no legal status in the country and cannot seek international protection there. In fact, undocumented migrants in Libya can be arrested and imprisoned at any time.

Local militias, acting as police in areas they control, also run detention centres where they extort money from migrants or sell those who cannot pay to smugglers and human traffickers.

Some of these same militia members are on government payrolls and are supported directly or indirectly by EU missions seeking to train and equip border police and coast guard officials.

EU efforts in Libya since the fall of Gaddafi have focused heavily on curbing migration to Europe. Some activities bend or even violate international law to keep migrants at bay.

But there’s no way to address the issue effectively without settling the ongoing power struggle between the Government of National Accord (GNA) headed by Prime Minister Fayez al-Sarraj and rival Khalifa Haftar, commander of the Libyan National Army (LNA), based in the east of the country.

While the internationally recognised GNA is officially supported by the EU and Italy in particular, its actual control of Libyan territory is limited to Tripoli and some areas of Western Libya controlled by allied militias.

Meanwhile, France backs the LNA, which controls the east and parts of the south of the country either directly or by proxy through local militias. Haftar launched an attack on Tripoli in April 2019, just days before a planned national conference to organise presidential and parliamentary elections to help solve the political crisis in Libya.

The conflict is currently at a stalemate, with Haftar’s forces fighting against the GNA on the outskirts of Tripoli.

The EU needs a common strategy

The EU’s split position isn’t just awkward but indeed counterproductive in finding a solution to the conflict, and by extension the migratory situation as well. Italy and France should agree on a common strategy and facilitate a peace deal between the GNA and the LNA by using their respective influence on each side of the conflict.

The EU could then step up its capacity building work, help professionalise Libya’s security sector, strengthen civil society and invest in projects that unlock Libya’s economic potential. Stability and prosperity in Libya would significantly reduce migratory pressure to Europe by making it safer and more attractive as a destination country for labour migrants – as it was before the revolution.

As the European Parliament and the European Commission start their new terms this year, migration should be back at the top of their agendas.

Stabilising Libya will certainly take time and may not even be possible because the conflict is so complex and involves a multitude of internal and external non-EU actors. The EU must therefore simultaneously work towards a sustainable search and rescue, reception and relocation mechanism for those who manage to leave Libya.

Italy’s decision to close its ports and criminalise NGOs attempting to bring rescued migrants to shore is certainly deplorable. Yet it’s also understandable given the lack of solidarity other EU member states have demonstrated long before Salvini was elected to government.

As a result, Malta now feels the cold shoulder of northern and eastern European indifference as it receives more and more arrivals diverted from Italy. The current practice of ad-hoc, case-by-case relocations for each boatload of migrants rejected by the Italian authorities is simply not sustainable.

Solving the question of asylum seeker relocation within the EU may even be more difficult than achieving peace in Libya, as the never-ending standstill in negotiations between the European Parliament and Council on the reform of the Dublin Regulation demonstrates.

But it must be done. There’s no other way to handle the arrival of migrants seeking asylum in Europe. The alternative is a political backlash in frontline member states that threatens the entire EU project.

As the European Parliament and the European Commission start their new terms this year, migration should be back at the top of their agendas. However, in contrast to the last terms, they should approach irregular migration through the Central Mediterranean not as an isolated issue, but rather as one element in an interlinked set of challenges requiring integrated policy responses.

Only then does the EU stand a chance at finding sustainable solutions that can withstand the inevitable migratory pressure facing Europe in the future.

This article first appeared in International Politics and Society published by the International Political Analysis Unit of the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung, Hiroshimastrasse 28, D-10785 Berlin.

The post Migrants, Militias & the Mediterranean Sea appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Marco Funk is a Policy Officer at the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung EU Office, where he is responsible for the foundation’s Brussels-based activities related to EU migration and home affairs. He previously worked as a Policy Analyst for the European Policy Centre, where he focused on EU migration and asylum policy.

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Secretary-General António Guterres visits a Training Centre in Kamakunji, Kenya, and talked to youth about countering violent extremism, and preventing radicalization. (9 July 2019) Credit: UNEP/Duncan Moore

By Siddharth Chatterjee
NAIROBI, Kenya, Jul 11 2019 (IPS)

During the egregious Dusit attack, Kenya demonstrated remarkable, resilience, solidarity and stood firm against the terrorists.

Combined with a swift and highly efficient surgical response from the law enforcement agencies, Kenyans united together in empathy and all barriers came down in a collective show of humanity.

It is well known that for a long time all over the world, well-meaning counter-terrorism responses only ended up alienating some sections of society. Recent insights into drivers of extremism however are showing that forging partnerships with such communities, formerly subjected to profiling and hard-line policing, is a better option to challenge hateful extremism.

Globally, race, ethnicity, religion, dress, political ideology or any combination of these traits have all been used to single out people for attention. A whole-of-society approach is now offering communities an opportunity not just to stand up to stigmatization but to engage dialogue that could deal with the root causes of violent extremism.

During his visit to Kenya for the African Conference on Counter-Terrorism Conference in Africa, UN Secretary-General António Guterres had a chance to interact with a community in Nairobi’s Kamukunji suburbs, where grassroots level people have organized themselves to tackle the contentious issues that have made the area a target of radicalization.

In his interaction with the leaders, structural inequalities and alienation from terrorism response agencies were mentioned as important conversations that need to take place.

“Kenya is showing the way in pursuing cohesiveness and creating conditions where diverse people and can live and respect each other and stay alive to prevent manifestations of extremism, and in this the country has the full support of the UN,” said Mr. Guterres.

An important challenge in dealing with extremism and radicalization has been the varied and evolving nature of the drivers of violent extremism within communities, and countries.

The reality is that local communities are best placed to understand what these drivers are, why they change, and how best to address them. Yet, too often they have been excluded from policy dialogue on countering violent extremism.

A relatively common thread especially among the youth is that they simply want to be heard. Led by the area Member of Parliament, Yusuf Hassan, himself a victim of a grenade attack that confined him to a wheelchair for years, the Kamukunji community has identified appropriate interlocutors to lead in the process of countering radicalization at the local level.

This has involved developing trust between the different communities in the area, and between the communities and state actors in the war on terror, especially the police. Leadership has been exceptional in partnering with agencies such as the UN to unlock the potential of the community to develop tailored, local responses to the threat of extremism.

Kenya’s National Counter Terrorism Centre, together with the United Nations Country Team, among other partners, is working in counties and communities to develop county action plans on preventing violent extremism. These plans are notable for their inclusive approach, their attempt to be measurable, and responsive in an effective and efficient way.

For Kamakunji, that has had numerous terrorist incidences, there are very encouraging signs coming out of the area, of a community not just coming together to pick up the pieces after the attacks, but to strive to work together to make such occurrence less likely. The answer has been in taking the fight to extremists through community solidarity, trust, dignity, respect and good citizenship.

The emphasis now is on winning hearts and minds, while ensuring that the pillar of security is robust in countering violent extremism.

A fundamental pillar in the prevention of violent extremism are the youth of Africa. By 2050, there will be 2.3 Billion people in Africa, of which 830 million will be young people.

The way youth resilience manifests itself is highly dependent on their social, economic and political environments. When youth are empowered and provided opportunities for participation, they are most likely to capitalize on their resilience constructively. For this reason, youth are Africa’s most important asset in the prevention of violent extremism and peacebuilding. They are the very foundation of every community.

If Africa is to curtail the spread of violent extremism and achieve sustainable development, there must be determined focus on the empowerment, education and employment of youth- of a generation unlimited.

Siddharth Chatterjee, is the United Nations Resident Coordinator to Kenya

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Natalia Kanem

By Dr. Natalia Kanem
UNITED NATIONS, Jul 11 2019 (IPS)

Every year on World Population Day (July 11), UNFPA receives queries from journalists about the total number of people around the world. Numbers are indeed important because they help governments develop policies that respond to evolving needs for services such as education and health.

While global population is currently around 7.7 billion, what is perhaps more important than the numbers is the bigger story they tell–a story about sex: who has it, when they have it and under what circumstances. It is also a story about agency.

Oscar Wilde once said, “Everything in the world is about sex except sex. Sex is about power.” Whether a woman or teenage girl has the power to decide about sexual relations will have a profound impact on her life.

UNFPA statistics from 51 countries show that only three in five married women make their own decisions about intimacy with their partner, use of contraception, and their healthcare. In some of the least developed countries, it is only 1 in 14 women who have such power.

Lack of agency, or power, in these areas can translate into forced sex, unintended pregnancy, teenage pregnancy, and families that are larger than a woman wants. And with these consequences can come long-term harm to a woman’s health and the denial of her rights.

This is what a lack of agency meant for one young woman in Burundi: Charlotte was 17 when she was forced to marry and leave school, closing out opportunities for higher education, employment and economic independence.

Her husband deserted her after she became pregnant, and Charlotte was left to manage serious complications during delivery by herself. In the end, she lost her baby and fell into a coma for four days.

Unfortunately, she developed an obstetric fistula, a normally preventable condition, that caused urinary and fecal incontinence. Charlotte’s father then forced her to live in a brick hole in their backyard for nine years because he couldn’t bear the stench.

Thanks to UNFPA, Charlotte finally got the surgery she needed, but she will never get back the nine years she lost. A lack of agency early in life kicked off a calamitous chain of events that robbed her of her dignity and health and derailed her future.

Lack of agency in sex is often linked to child marriage. Every day, 33,000 girls become brides against their will and in violation of their rights. About 95 per cent of teenage births occur in developing countries, and 9 in 10 of these births occur within a marriage or union.

Millions of girls around the world pay a high price every day due to lack of access to comprehensive sexuality education and taboos around speaking openly about sexual and reproductive health.

There are 214 million women in developing countries who want to prevent a pregnancy but are not using contraception. Without family planning information and services, these women lack the power to make their own decisions about whether, when or how often to become pregnant.

And this amounts to a violation of their rights affirmed through international agreements and resolutions dating back as far as 1968.

We have ample evidence of how a lack of agency negatively impacts a woman’s health and well-being. But there is also abundant evidence of an economic impact as well.

Societies where women have the power to make decisions about the timing and spacing of pregnancies and in other aspects of their lives also tend to be more prosperous, equitable and resilient.

Twenty-five years ago, at the International Conference for Population and Development (ICPD) in Cairo, 179 governments recognized the importance of agency in sexual relations and promised to empower women and girls in every aspect of life to enable them to chart their own futures.

Central to the ICPD’s Programme of Action was a commitment to achieve universal sexual and reproductive health and to protect every woman’s right to make her own decisions about the timing and spacing of pregnancies.

Since then, the world has made impressive gains in bolstering agency, particularly through expanding access to contraception. Still, there are hundreds of millions of women and teenage girls who have been left behind, especially in poor, rural or marginalized communities.

We cannot accept defeat. We must take action to fulfill the commitments made at the ICPD and achieve the world we imagined: one where every pregnancy is wanted, where people choose freely whom to marry as adults, where no one is subjected to gender-based violence, and all girls are protected from violence and the harm caused by practices such as female genital mutilation–a world where agency, especially when it comes to sex, is a reality for all.

This world can be a reality, but it requires more than hope. It demands conviction, courage, partnership and dedication from us all. That’s why this November, UNFPA and the governments of Kenya and Denmark are co-convening the Nairobi Summit on ICPD25 to finish the job we started in 1994.

On this World Population Day, I call on all governments to join us in Nairobi, to look beyond the numbers, and to breathe new life into the global movement to achieve the world we imagine.

The post Let’s Talk About Sex – and Why Power Matters appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Dr Natalia Kanem is Executive Director of the UN Population Fund (UNFPA)

The post Let’s Talk About Sex – and Why Power Matters appeared first on Inter Press Service.

The United Nations has warned that drought, disease and war are preventing farmers from producing enough food for millions of people across Africa and other regions.Recurring droughts have destroyed most harvests in the Sahel. Credit:Kristin Palitza/IPS

By James Reinl
UNITED NATIONS, Jul 11 2019 (IPS)

The United Nations has warned of drought, disease and war preventing farmers from producing enough food for millions of people across Africa and other regions, leading to the need for major aid operations.

A report called the Crop Prospects and Food Situation by the U.N.’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) says that shortages of grain and other foodstuffs have left people in 41 countries — 31 of them in Africa — in need of handouts.

“Ongoing conflicts and dry weather conditions remain the primary causes of high levels of severe food insecurity, hampering food availability and access for millions of people,” U.N. spokesman Farhan Haq told reporters on Tuesday.

Southern Africa has experienced both dry spells and rainfall damage from Cyclone Idai, which made landfall in Mozambique on Mar. 14. The storm caused “agricultural production shortfalls” and big “increases in cereal import needs,” added Haq. 

Farmers in Zimbabwe and Zambia have seen harvests decline this year. Some three million people faced shortages at the start of 2019, but food price spikes there will likely push that number upwards in the coming months, researchers say.

In eastern Africa, crop yields have dropped in Somalia, Kenya and Sudan due to “severe dryness”, added Haq. 

According to the FAO, life for rural herders in Kassala State, in eastern Sudan, has been upended by a drought that has forced them to move livestock away from traditional grazing routes in pursuit of greener pastures.

“Life would be so hard if our livestock died. We wouldn’t have food or milk for the children,” Khalda Mohammed Ibrahim, a farmer near Aroma, in Kassala State, told FAO. “When it is dry, I am afraid the animals will starve — and then we will too.”

Droughts are getting worse, says the U.N. Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD). By 2025, some 1.8 billion people will experience serious water shortages, and two thirds of the world will be “water-stressed”.

In Asia, low yields of wheat and barley outputs are raising concerns in North Korea, where dry spells, heatwaves and flooding have led to what has been called the worst harvests the hermit dictatorship has seen in a decade, the report said.

More than 10 million North Koreans — or 40 percent of the country’s population — are short of food or require aid handouts, the U.N.’s Rome-based agency for agriculture said in its 42-page study.

FAO researchers also addressed the spread of a deadly pig disease in China that has disrupted the world’s biggest pork market and is one of the major risks to a well-supplied global agricultural sector.

China is grappling with African swine fever, which has spread across much of the country this past year. There is no cure or vaccine for the disease, often fatal for pigs although harmless for humans.

By the middle of June, more than 1.1 million pigs had died or been culled. The bug has also been reported in Vietnam, Cambodia, Mongolia, North Korea and Laos, affecting millions of pigs and threatening farmers’ livelihoods.

The FAO forecast a five percent fall in Chinese pork output this year, while imports were predicted to rise to almost two million tonnes from an average 1.6 million tonnes per year from 2016 to 2018.

Conflict is another worry, the FAO said. While Syria and Yemen have seen “generally conducive weather conditions for crops”, fighting between government forces, rebels and other groups in both countries has ravaged agriculture.

Violence in Yemen has triggered what the U.N. calls the world’s worst humanitarian crisis, with 3.3 million people displaced and 24.1 million — more than two-thirds of the population — in need of aid.

Last month, the U.N.’s World Food Programme (WFP) announced a “partial suspension” of aid affecting 850,000 people in Yemen’s capital Sanaa, saying the Houthi rebels that run the city were diverting food from the needy.

Likewise, in Africa, simmering conflicts in the Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and South Sudan have caused a “dire food security situation”. In  South Sudan, seven million people do not have enough food.

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The post Drought, Disease and War Hit Global Agriculture, Says U.N. appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Credit: UN Environment.

By Baher Kamal
MADRID, Jul 10 2019 (IPS)

In case you were not aware or just do not remember: all you eat, drink, breathe, wear, take as a medicine, the cosmetics you use, the walls of your house, among others, is full of chemicals. And all is really ALL.

For instance, in your bathroom, formaldehyde often sits in your shampoo, microbeads in your toothpaste, phthalates in your nail polish and antimicrobials in your soaps, while your medicine cabinet contains a myriad of synthetic pharmaceuticals.

In your kitchen, a juicy strawberry may carry traces of up to 20 different pesticides.

The size of the global chemical industry exceeded 5 trillion dollars in 2017. It is projected to double by 2030. Consumption and production are rapidly increasing in emerging economies.

And the perfumed bin-liners and air fresheners contain volatile organic compounds that can make you nauseous and give you a headache. And the list goes on…

Who tells all these and many other shocking facts is one of the top world organisations dealing with the sources and dangers of pollution and contamination – the UN Environment, which on 29 April 2019 released its Global Chemicals Outlook.

 

Chemicals, chemicals, chemicals everywhere

See what Tanzanian microbiologist and environmental scientist Joyce Msuya, the Deputy Executive Director of the United Nations Environment Programme, said in her introduction to this report:

“Chemicals are part of our everyday lives. From pharmaceuticals to plant protection, innovations in chemistry can improve our health, food security and much more. However, if poorly used and managed, hazardous chemicals and waste threaten human health and the environment.

“As the second Global Chemicals Outlook lays out, global trends such as population dynamics, urbanisation and economic growth are rapidly increasing chemical use, particularly in emerging economies.

“In 2017, the industry was worth more than 5 trillion dollars. By 2030, this will double.

“Large quantities of hazardous chemicals and pollutants continue to leak into the environment, contaminating food chains and accumulating in our bodies, where they do serious damage.

“Estimates by the European Environment Agency suggest that 62 per cent of the volume of chemicals consumed in Europe in 2016 were hazardous to health.

“The World Health Organization estimates the burden of disease from selected chemicals at 1.6 million lives in 2016. The lives of many more are negatively impacted…”

Referring to the agreed objective that, by 2020, chemicals will be produced and used in ways that minimise significant adverse effects on the environment and human health, Joyce Msuya warned “At our current pace, we will not achieve the goal.”

 

Key findings

The following are three key findings included in the report, among many others.

One is that the size of the global chemical industry exceeded 5 trillion dollars in 2017. It is projected to double by 2030. Consumption and production are rapidly increasing in emerging economies. Global supply chains, and the trade of chemicals and products, are becoming increasingly complex.

Another one is that, driven by global mega-trends, growth in chemical-intensive industry sectors (e.g. construction, agriculture, electronics) creates risks, but also opportunities to advance sustainable consumption, production and product innovation.

And a third one is that hazardous chemicals and other pollutants (e.g. plastic waste and pharmaceutical pollutants) continue to be released in large quantities. They are ubiquitous in humans and the environment and are accumulating in material stocks and products, highlighting the need to avoid future legacies through sustainable materials management and circular business models.

The Global Chemicals Outlook covers three broad inter-linked areas building upon the findings of existing and concurrent studies:

 

Production, trade, use and disposal of chemicals

Both the continuous growth trends and the changes in global production, trade and use of chemicals point towards an increasing chemical intensification of the economy.

This chemical intensification of the economy derives largely from several factors, such as the increased volume and a shift of production and use from highly industrialised countries to developing countries and countries in economic transition.

Another factor is the penetration of chemical intensive products into national economies through globalisation of sales and use.

Then there are the increased chemical emissions resulting from major economic development sectors.

According to the report, products of the chemical industry that are increasingly replacing natural materials in both industrial and commercial products.

Thus, petrochemical lubricants, coatings, adhesives, inks, dyes, creams, gels, soaps, detergents, fragrances and plastics are replacing conventional plant, animal and ceramic based products.

Industries and research institutions which are increasingly developing sophisticated and novel nano-scale chemicals and synthetic halogenated compounds that are creating new functions such as durable, non-stick, stain resistant, fire retardant, water-resistant, non-corrosive surfaces, and metallic, conductive compounds that are central to integrated circuits used in cars, cell phones, and computers.

 

Penetration of chemical intensive products 

The Global Outlook also informs that many countries are primarily importers of chemicals and are not significant producers. Agricultural chemicals and pesticides used in farming were among the first synthetic chemicals to be actively exported to developing countries.

Today, as consumption of a wide range of products increases over time, these products themselves become a significant vehicle increasing the presence of chemicals in developing and transition economies, the report explains, adding the following information:

 

• These include liquid chemical personal care products for sale directly to consumers; paints, adhesives and lubricants; as well as chemically complex articles ranging from textiles and electronics, to building materials and toys. Emissions from products pose different management challenges from those associated with manufacturing, as   they are diffused throughout the economy, rather than being concentrated at manufacturing facilities.

 

• Trade in articles has been identified as a significant driver of global transport of lead, cadmium, mercury and brominated flame retardants.

 

• It is often the case that electrical and electronic equipment, which contain hazardous or toxic substances, are purchased in developed countries before being disposed of or recycled in unsafe and unprotected conditions in developing states or countries with economies in transition.

 

• Products such as cell phones and laptops are being purchased and used in regions of the world recently thought to be too remote.

 

• Increasing consumer demand for electrical/electronic goods and materials, along with rapid technology change and the high obsolescence rate of these items have led to the increasing generation of large quantities of obsolete and near end of life electronic products.

 

• These trends contribute to global electronic waste generation estimated at 40 million tons per year.

 

Chemical contamination and waste associated with industrial sectors of importance in developing countries include: pesticides from agricultural runoff; heavy metals associated with cement production; dioxin associated with electronics recycling; mercury and other heavy metals associated with mining and coal combustion, explains the Global Outlook.

They also include: butyl tins, heavy metals, and asbestos released during ship breaking; heavy metals associated with tanneries; mutagenic dyes, heavy metals and other pollutants associated with textile production; toxic metals, solvents, polymers, and flame retardants used in electronics manufacturing, and  the direct exposure resulting from the long range transport of many chemicals through environmental media that deliver chemical pollutants which originate from sources thousands of kilometres away.

 

Credit: UN Environment.

 

Health and environmental effects

According to the report:

 

• Chemicals released to the air can act as air pollutants as well as greenhouse gases and ozone depleters and contribute to acid rain formation.
• Chemicals can contaminate water resources through direct discharges to bodies of water, or via deposition of air contaminants to water. This contamination can have adverse effects on aquatic organisms, including fish, and on the availability of water resources for drinking, bathing, and other activities.
• It is common for soil pollution to be a direct result of atmospheric deposition, dumping of waste, spills from industrial or waste facilities, mining activities, contaminated water, or pesticides.
• Persistent and bio-accumulative chemicals are found as widespread contaminants in wildlife, especially those that are high in the food chain. Some of these chemicals cause cancers, immune system dysfunction, and reproductive disorders in wildlife.
• In some countries, the runoff of pesticides and fertilisers from agricultural fields or the use of chemicals in mining in neighbouring countries, may leach into ground water, or run into estuaries shared across national boundaries.
• Fisheries, an important source of protein and of economic value for populations around the world, can be severely affected by chemicals. Persistent organic pollutants can accumulate in fish, especially those high in the food chain. As a result, the value of this otherwise excellent protein source is diminished or lost completely.
• Exposure to toxic chemicals can cause or contribute to a broad range of health outcomes. These include eye, skin, and respiratory irritation; damage to organs such as the brain, lungs, liver or kidneys; damage to the immune, respiratory, cardiovascular, nervous, reproductive or endocrine systems; and birth defects and chronic diseases, such as cancer, asthma, or diabetes.
• Workers in industries using chemicals are especially vulnerable through exposure to toxic chemicals and related health effects.

 

These include an increased cancer rate in workers in electronics facilities; high blood lead levels among workers at lead-acid battery manufacturing and recycling plants; flame retardant exposures among workers in electronic waste recycling; mercury poisoning in small-scale gold miners; asbestosis among workers employed in asbestos mining and milling; and acute and chronic pesticide poisoning among workers in agriculture in many countries.

In spite of these and other immense negative impacts on health and the environment, the more than 400 scientists and experts around the world, who worked over three long years to prepare the Global Chemicals Outlook, underscore that the goal to minimise adverse impacts of chemicals and waste will not be achieved by 2020.

“Solutions exist,” the 400 world experts emphasise, “but more ambitious worldwide action by all stakeholders is urgently required.”

Otherwise…

 

Baher Kamal is Director of Human Wrongs Watch where this article was originally published. 

The post Today’s Menu: Pesticide Salad, Leaded Fish with Plastic, Chemical Fruit appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Yohei Sasakawa, president of the Nippon Foundation, is interviewed by IPS in the Brazilian capital, where he concluded a tour of the country aimed at promoting the elimination of Hansen's Disease, better known as leprosy, and also the stigma that make it the "disease of silence.” Credit: Mario Osava/IPS

By Mario Osava
BRASILIA, Jul 10 2019 (IPS)

Yohei Sasakawa has dedicated half of his 80 years of life to combating the “disease of silence” and is still fighting the battle, as president of the Nippon Foundation and World Health Organisation (WHO) goodwill ambassador for elimination of leprosy, formally known as Hansen’s Disease.

His current emphasis is on combating the discrimination, prejudice and stigma that aggravate the suffering of people with leprosy, their families and even those who have already been cured. They also stand in the way of treatment, because people with the disease keep silent out of fear of hostility, he told IPS in an interview in the Brazilian capital.“I travel around the world and speak out against the discrimination that marginalises those affected by the disease. But these are prejudices that have existed for 2,000 years; they cannot be overcome in two or three years. Many share my viewpoint and accompany me in the struggle. One day the discrimination will end. It is more difficult to cure the disease that plagues society than the illness itself. My effort is to hold a dialogue with presidents and ministers, people in positions of leadership, so that my message acquires political strength and can lead to a solution.”

Sasakawa visited Brazil Jul. 1 to 10, as part of his activism aimed at reducing the prevalence and social impacts of a disease stigmatised since biblical times. In Brasilia, he mobilised President Jair Bolsonaro, legislators and health and human rights officials to promote more intense efforts against the disease.

The idea of holding a national conference on Hansen’s Disease emerged from the meetings, with the political objective of disseminating knowledge and bolstering the disposition to eradicate prejudice, and the technical goal of improving strategies and efforts against the disease.

Brazil is second only to India with respect to the number of new infections diagnosed each year. The country implemented a National Strategy to Combat Hanseniasis from 2019 to 2022, with plans also at the level of municipalities and states, tailored to the specific local conditions.

The Tokyo-based Nippon Foundation is funding several projects and is preparing to support new initiatives in Brazil.

Brazil and Japan abolished the word leprosy from their medical terminology, due to the stigma surrounding it, and adopted the term Hanseniasis to refer to the disease caused by the Mycobacterium leprae bacillus. Sasakawa used this name during his interview with IPS, even though the WHO continues to employ the term leprosy.

IPS: Why did you choose as your mission the fight against Hansen’s Disease and the different kinds of harm it causes to patients and their families?

YOHEI SASAKAWA: It started with my father, the founder of the Nippon Foundation, who as a young man fell in love with a young woman who suddenly disappeared when she was taken far away and put in isolation. My father was appalled by the cruelty and, driven by a spirit of seeking justice, he started this movement. No one discussed the reason she was taken away, but I sincerely believe it was because she had Hanseniasis.

Later my father built hospitals in different places, including one in South Korea, where I accompanied him to the inauguration. On that occasion I noticed that my father touched the hands and legs of the patients, even though they had pus. He hugged them. That impressed me.

I was surprised for two reasons. It frightened me that my father so easily embraced people in those conditions. Besides, I wasn’t familiar with the disease yet. I saw people with a sick, unhealthy pallor. They were dead people who were still alive, the living dead, abandoned by their families.

I was filled with admiration for my father’s work and immediately decided that I should continue it.

IPS: What are the main difficulties in eradicating Hanseniasis?

YS: In general, when faced with a problem specialists and intellectuals come up with 10 reasons why it’s impossible to solve. I have the strong conviction that it is possible, and that’s why I address the problem in such a way that I can identify it and at the same time find a solution.

The people who find it difficult generally work in air-conditioned offices pushing around papers, studying the data. The most important thing is to have the firm conviction that the problem can be solved and then begin to take action.

The president of the Nippon Foundation, Yohei Sasakawa (C) is seen meeting with the president of Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro (L), in an IPS screen capture from the video that the president broadcast on Facebook to raise public awareness about the importance of eliminating Hansen’s Disease, better known as leprosy, and eradicating the prejudice faced by patients and their families. Credit: IPS

Since the 1980s more than 16 million people have been cured of Hansen’s Disease. Today, 200,000 patients a year are cured around the world.

IPS: What role do prejudice, stigma and discrimination play in the fight against this disease?

YS: That is a good question. After working for many years with the WHO, focusing mainly on curing the disease, I realised that many people who had already been cured could neither find work nor get married; they were still suffering the same conditions they faced when they were sick.

I concluded that Hanseniasis was like a two-wheeled motorcycle – the front one is the disease that can be cured and the back one is the prejudice, discrimination and stigma that surround it. If you don’t cure both wheels, no healing is possible.

In 2003, I submitted to the United Nations Commission on Human Rights a proposal to eliminate discrimination against Hanseniasis. After seven years of paperwork and procedures, the 193-member General Assembly unanimously approved a resolution to eradicate this problem that affects the carrier of the disease as well as those who have been cured, and their families.

But this does not mean that the problem has been solved, because prejudice and discrimination are the disease plaguing society.

People believe that Hanseniasis is a punishment from God, a curse, a hereditary evil. It’s hard to eradicate this judgment embedded in people’s minds. Even today there are many patients who have recovered and are totally healed, who cannot find a job or get married. In spite of the new laws, their conditions do not improve, because of the prejudice in people’s hearts.

In Japan, several generations of the family of someone who had the disease were unable to marry. This is no longer the case today.

That’s why I travel the world and speak out against the discrimination that marginalises those affected by the disease. But these are prejudices that have existed for 2,000 years; they cannot be overcome in two or three years.

Many share my viewpoint and accompany me in the struggle. One day the discrimination will end. It is more difficult to cure the disease that plagues society than the illness itself.

My effort is to hold a dialogue with presidents and ministers, people in positions of leadership, so that my message acquires political strength and can lead to a solution.

IPS: How did Japan manage to eradicate Hansen’s Disease?

YS: One way was the collective action of people who had the disease. Long-term media campaigns were conducted to spread knowledge about the disease. Movies, books and plays were also produced.

In Japan, Hanseniasis ceased to be the ‘disease of silence’. The nation apologised for the discrimination and compensated those affected. But in other countries, people affected by the disease have not yet come together to fight. Brazil, however, does have a very active movement.

IPS: As an example of what can be done, you cite Brazil’s Movement for the Reintegration of People Affected by Hanseniasis, MORHAN. Are there similar initiatives in other countries?

YS: Morhan really stands out as a model. Organisations have been formed by patients in India and Ethiopia, but they still have limited political influence. The Nippon Foundation encourages such movements.

IPS: You’ve visited Brazil more than 10 times. Have you seen any progress on this tour of the states of Pará and Maranhão, in the north, and in Brasilia?

YS: On that trip we couldn’t visit patients’ homes and talk to them, but we did see that the national, regional and local governments are motivated. We will be able to expand our activities here. In any country, if the highest-level leaders, such as presidents and prime ministers, take the initiative, solutions can be accelerated.

We agreed to organise a national meeting, promoted by the Health Ministry and sponsored by the Nippon Foundation, if possible with the participation of President Jair Bolsonaro, to bolster action against Hanseniasis.

We believe that this would generate a strong current to reduce the prevalence of Hanseniasis to zero and also to eliminate discrimination and prejudice. If this happens, my visit could be considered very successful.

IPS: What would you emphasise about the results of your visit?

YS: The message that President Bolsonaro spread directly to the population through Facebook during our meeting, with his view addressed to all politicians, to his team and and to all government officials on the need to eliminate the disease. I feel as if I have obtained the support of a million people who will work with us.

Related Articles

• Japan Boosts Complex Fight to Eliminate Leprosy in Brazil
• People Affected by Leprosy in Latin America Unite for Their Rights and Their Voice
• In Latin America, the Term Leprosy Still Carries a Burden from Biblical Times
• People Affected by Leprosy Still Face Stigma in Latin America

The post A Lifelong Battle Against the “Disease of Silence” appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Mario Osava interviews YOHEI SASAKAWA, president of the Nippon Foundation

The post A Lifelong Battle Against the “Disease of Silence” appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Former United Nations secretary general Ban Ki-moon speaks at a programme on climate change in Dhaka on Wednesday, July 10, 2019. Photo grabbed from Facebook live video/ Ashraful Alam Khokan, Deputy Press Secretary To the Honorable Prime minister at Prime Minister's Office

By Star Online Report
Jul 10 2019 (IPS-Partners)

(The Daily Star) – Former United Nations secretary general Ban Ki-moon today said Bangladesh is the best teacher in climate change adaptation.

Ban Ki-moon said this while addressing the inaugural ceremony of a two-day international conference on climate change adaptation in Dhaka.

“We are here to learn from Bangladesh’s experiences and vision, when it comes to adaptation, our best teachers are opened doors who are on the front lines of climate change,” Moon said.

A few countries have more to teach the rest of the world than Bangladesh, Bangladesh is thus is the best teacher to learn about the adaptation, he said.

“If sea levels were to rise by just one metre, 17% of the country (Bangladesh) would be under water by 2050, he said.

“According to the IPCC, Dhaka itself could be engulfed by even or slight rise in sea level,” he added.

While the rest of the world debate climate change, for Bangladesh adapting to a warmer, more violent, less predictable climate is a matter of absolute survival, he said.

Marshall Islands President Hilda Heine, World Bank CEO Kristalina Georgieva and Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina spoke on the occasion among other distinguished guests at a Dhaka hotel this morning.

Former United Nations secretary general Ban Ki-moon, Marshall Islands President Hilda Heine and Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina meet at a lounge at Hotel InterContinental in Dhaka on Wednesday, July 10, 2019. Photo: PID

Bangladesh will showcase its good practices on climate change adaption initiatives like water resilient crops, home solar system and climate trust fund.

The meeting will prepare a set of recommendations on climate change adaptation for placing it before the UN in September.

During their stay here, the international dignitaries are scheduled to visit the Rohingya camps in Cox’s Bazar to see environmental degradation caused by the Rohingya influx and settlement

This story was originally published by The Daily Star, Bangladesh

The post Bangladesh is our best teacher in climate change adaptation: UN ex-chief Ban Ki-moon appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Ethiopians read newspapers in Addis Ababa on June 24. Following what the government refers to as a failed attempted coup, access to the internet was cut and journalists were arrested. (Reuters/Tiksa Negeri)

By Muthoki Mumo
NAIROBI, Jul 10 2019 (IPS)

On June 22, Ethiopia was plunged into an internet blackout following what the government described as a failed attempted coup in the Amhara region.

In the aftermath at least two journalists were detained under the country’s repressive anti-terror law, part of an uptick in arrests that CPJ has noted in the country since May.

While internet shutdowns and anti-terror laws being turned against journalists are nothing new in Ethiopia, their use in recent weeks is in stark contrast to the Ethiopia that welcomed the international media community for World Press Freedom Day celebrations in May and whose prime minister, Abiy Ahmed, has been fêted as taking bold steps in opening up the space for a free press.

Yared Hailemariam, the executive director of the Swiss-based Association for Human Rights in Ethiopia, described the June 22 shutdown to CPJ as “a very wrong and old strategy of the government.” But it wasn’t the only blackout last month.

The country was hit by intermittent network disruptions affecting internet and SMS services between June 11 and June 18, according to the Open Observatory of Network Interference, a global open sourcing network for tracking blocks.

Several outlets, including Bloomberg and CNN, said speculation inside Ethiopia was that authorities cut internet access in those instances to prevent students cheating during examinations.

Alongside the blackouts, in the past two months authorities also arrested several journalists and, on July 8, Ethiopia’s Ministry of Defense said in a press conference that it planned to file charges against “individuals and media creating distrust between the public and the army,” the state-affiliated Fana Broadcasting reported.

All this leads to the inevitable question: did we celebrate the opening up of Ethiopia too early?

Most journalists and human rights defenders with whom CPJ spoke said there are concrete wins: journalists who had been imprisoned for years were freed in 2018 and the government is carrying out positive legal reform.

Haimanot Ashenafi, a senior editor at the weekly Addis Maleda, said journalism in Ethiopia today is different from the profession which for years was characterized by “shock and trauma”.

Zelalem Kibret, an Ethiopian academic and former blogger, saidthat he was “ambivalent” as to whether recent events were a case of “an old habit struggling to fade away or a renewed attack on the press.”

However, several of the people with whom CPJ spoke said they were concerned about the future for the media.

“It doesn’t look as bright as it was a few months ago. My optimism is dimming though I am still hopeful,” said Elias Kifle, the chief executive of the online news outlet Mereja TV. He added that the problems reflected polarization in the country.

Belay Manaye, an editor at the privately-owned Satellite Radio and Television (ASRAT) and co-founder of the newspaper, Berera, said, “The way we manage this political crisis will manifest which way we could go in the near future: are we getting back to the dark times or will we manage the crisis and move forward? I hope we can manage.”

Key to moving forward, the journalists said, is greater openness with the public and the media.

The government has not provided an official explanation for the internet shutdowns, which journalists say disrupted their work and made it difficult to communicate with sources.

When CPJ asked Billene Seyoum, a spokesperson in the Prime Minister’s office, about the disruptions she said only that connectivity had been restored. Cherer Aklilu, executive director of the country’s sole service provider, Ethio Telecom, did not respond to CPJ’s June 28 call or request for comment sent via text message.

Attempts to reach Cherer via phone on July 3 were unsuccessful. Ethio Telecom apologized for the shutdowns on June 18 and July 5 via statements posted to its Twitter account.

Haimanot told CPJ that while she believed a shutdown might have throttled “dangerous” speech online on June 22, it could not be the main solution to tackling misinformation. She said that during earlier blackouts that month, conspiracy theories emerged, some of which she had to debunk: a task made difficult because she could not communicate as easily with sources.

Befekadu Hailu, also from Addis Maleda, told CPJ he was disappointed at the shutdown which, he said, was unjustifiable and meant that “the government monopolized the narrative” about events, with the only information available coming from state media.

CPJ experienced the difficulties of reporting during a network disruption first hand. In the absence of a secure means of communication, and with news trickling out of Ethiopia through the diaspora community, misinformation sprouted, including at least one report of a journalist being abducted–a story later debunked by the Amharic service of the German public broadcaster Deutsche Welle.

Anti-terror law back in use

Over 200 people were arrested in the aftermath of the alleged attempted coup, Deutche Welle reported. Of those, at least two–ASRAT manager Berihun Adane and Getachew Ambachew, a volunteer at the station–were detained under Ethiopia’s anti-terror law.

The law was used to crack down on dissenting journalists under previous administrations. The Abiy government has prioritized its reform and Cabinet approved a draft law in May and referred it to parliament, according to media reports.

“I’m very concerned about its resuscitation in this delicate time for murky allegations against journalists,” said Zelalem, who was previously convicted under it.

On June 26, a court ordered Getachew, Berihun, who also works for Berera, and four others to be detained for 28 days, pending investigations on allegations of terrorism in connection to the unrest, according to Berihun’s lawyer Henok Aklilu, and the Addis Standard.

Neither the police nor the court specified evidence of the alleged terrorist activity and the journalists have not been charged, Henok and ASRAT editor Betre Getahun told CPJ.

Some of those detained alongside the journalists are members of the Balderas Council, a political movement founded by prominent Ethiopian journalist Eskinder Nega that claims to advocate for the rights of Addis Ababa residents, and is considered by some as controversial.

Eskinder, Henok, and ASRAT editor Betre Getahun said that the pair were not part of the council and that they thought the journalists’ arrests could be linked to the strident editorial line of Berera and ASRAT media. Both outlets are both pro-Amhara, which is one of Ethiopia’s largest ethnic groups.

Separately, a third journalist, ESAT television station reporter Amanuel Mengistu, told CPJ he was arrested from his home in Addis Ababa on June 24 and released unconditionally on June 26.

He said that security searched his home, saying they were looking for weapons, but did not interrogate him or tell him why he was arrested or whether it was connected with his work at ESAT. Before he became a journalist, Amanuel was a member of the Ginbot 7, a group that was previously banned by Ethiopian authorities.

Government spokesperson Billene told CPJ that she did not have specific details about the arrested journalists, but that authorities were investigating people “from various walks of life, professions and parts of the country” in connection to the events of June 22.

Even before the current crisis, authorities were harassing journalists with brief detentions.

Police on May 22 detained Mesganaw Getachew, a reporter with the Ethiopis newspaper, while he was reporting on the demolition of homes in the Arat Kilo neighborhood of Addis Ababa, his editor Eskinder, told CPJ. Mesganaw was released without charge on bail, Eskinder said, adding that police beat and slapped the reporter.

Two days later, Tamirat Abera, a journalist with the privately owned Ahadu FM, was arrested from the station’s office in Addis Ababa by police from the Oromia region, the journalist told CPJ. And Gettye Yalew, an online reporter, told CPJ that he was arrested on May 26 when he went to visit Tamirat in jail.

Both journalists were freed on May 27. Gettye’s release was unconditional, but Tamirat and three of his Ahadu FM journalists face prosecution in connection to their reporting on alleged misconduct in the courts, according to Tamirat, Gettye, and a Facebook post by Ahadu FM.

CPJ is investigating other reports of journalists being arrested and harassed in Addis Ababa and other regions of Ethiopia, including Ethiopis contributor and activist Elias Gebru

Government spokesperson Billene did not comment on specific arrests, but told CPJ that it was “not always directly related to their journalistic activities.” She said the government was committed to opening up the space for the media “at the highest level”.

Oromia regional government spokesperson Admasu Damtew did not respond to CPJ’s text messages in June and early July, requesting comment on Tamirat’s and Gettye’s case. When CPJ called on July 9, Admasu said he could speak in one hour but did not answer CPJ’s follow up call or text message.

The crossroads Ethiopia now finds itself at was reflected in an editorial published in the local publication The Reporter after Tamirat was detained. The editorial said the arrest “sent chills throughout the media industry” and that the government must ensure due process of the law and guard against a return to the past, when Ethiopia was “one giant prison for journalists.”

The post In Era of Reform, Ethiopia Still Reverts to Old Tactics to Censor Press appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Muthoki Mumo is Sub-Saharan Africa representative of the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). She is based in Nairobi, Kenya, and has a master's degree in journalism and globalization from the University of Hamburg.

The post In Era of Reform, Ethiopia Still Reverts to Old Tactics to Censor Press appeared first on Inter Press Service.

FAO Director-General Elect Qu Dongyu. Credit: ©FAO/Alessia Pierdomenico.

By Daud Khan
ROME, Jul 10 2019 (IPS)

On 23 June 2019 Mr Qu Dongyu of China was elected as the new Director General of the Food and Agriculture Organization. FAO is one of the largest UN specialized agencies with a budget for 2018-19 of  US$2.5  billion,  offices in over 130 countries and more than 11,000 employees.  

Mr Qu takes over from José Graziano da Silva who has been in the post since 2012 and completes two terms in July 2019.  Mr Qu has a doctorate in agricultural and environmental sciences from Wageningen Agricultural University in the Netherlands, and has held several senior positions including as vice president of the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences. His most recent job was that of Vice Minister of Agriculture. He will take over his new position on 1 August 2019.

In his speech to the Member States prior to the election, Mr Qu outlined some of his key priorities.  These include “a focus on hunger and poverty eradication, tropical agriculture, drought land farming, digital rural development and better land design through transformation of agricultural production”. Over the coming weeks Mr Qu and his team will be translating these ideas into action plans.  The article below provides thoughts on a few big issues mainly related to production and trade, which should have high priority on their agenda.

Mr Qu will need to mediate changes in the power relations underlying global trade. In doing this he will need to ensure that greater competition is generated, that the fears and apprehension of the smaller developing countries are allayed, and that mercantilist pressures in the USA and Europe do not impede this process.

With regard to the first set of issues related to production, Mr Qu and his team will need to develop a vision for global agriculture in the coming decades.  Climate change is bringing about new temperature and rainfall patterns across the world. At the same time, rising incomes and larger populations mean that demand for agricultural products will increase. This will be accompanied by shifts in demand patterns. In most countries this will mean a move away from staple foods, such as wheat, rice and maize towards higher-value food products, particularly livestock and horticultural products; as well as towards agricultural raw materials, including animal feeds.

Critical questions that need answers include: how these emerging demands will be met; what changes in production systems and technologies will be needed; how domestic and international trade patterns for agricultural inputs and outputs will develop; and what impact that this would have on soils, air and water quality. Within this context, the new Management will need to identify the roles of governments, private sector and civil society and to start a conversation with these actors at global, regional and country level about what role FAO could play to support these changes.

Although no blue-print may emerge from these discussions, it is likely that many of these issues will require smart, tech-based solutions. The ICT revolution in agriculture has barely started and in the coming years new approaches such as precision agriculture and “smart” value-chain logistics will play a leading role.

Mr Qu will doubtless be aware that much of the needed technologies are imbedded in machinery, inputs and software that have been developed in the rich countries of Europe and in the USA, and come at high cost with large profit margins for the companies that developed them.

In the short run these costs will need to be lowered – the kind of negotiations done by the World Health Organization with the big pharmaceutical companies to lower medical drug prices for poor countries provides a good model to follow. However, in the medium to long run alternatives sources of technology will need to be developed. Countries with large agriculture research systems such as Brazil, India and China must lead this. Equally complex issues surround the use of Genetically Modified Organism (GMOs).

GMOS have a massive potential but issues about its proper and safe use have become mired in a poorly informed political debate.  Mr Qu will need to draw on his technical knowledge and experience, as well as his instincts as a scientist, to develop new strategies and approaches for FAO.

With regard to international trade, the shift to greater and more diversified consumption will require specialization across countries and regions, and a rapid increase in international trade. Global food imports have already tripled since 2000 to US$1.47 trillion.

Strong growth will continue as production of field crops, particularly food staples and feed (particularly soybean), will likely shift to countries with abundant land areas such as in North and South America, and Russia & Eastern Europe.

However, many countries are apprehensive about increased reliance on food imports – and for good reason.  Currently, the bulk of world grains trade is handled by four companies – the so called ABCDs: ADM, Bunge, Cargill and Louis Dreyfuss.

These companies have been in the grain trade business for over a century and their network of silos, ports and ships gives them a virtual stranglehold on the business.  However, their dominance is now being challenged by the China National Cereals, Oils and Foodstuffs Corporation (COFCO) and its international trading arm (COFCO International).

Mr Qu will need to mediate changes in the power relations underlying global trade. In doing this he will need to ensure that greater competition is generated, that the fears and apprehension of the smaller developing countries are allayed, and that mercantilist pressures in the USA and Europe do not impede this process.

If FAO has to play a catalytic role in the above mentioned issues, Mr Qu will need to articulate and start implementing a new HR and staffing strategy for FAO.  Mr Qu will need to rebuild the cohort of highly experienced technical staff who can dialogue on policy and programmatic issues with countries and in global forums.

They need to be able to lead FAO’s work related to standards setting, creation of global public goods and international surveillance of pests, disease and emissions related to agriculture.  As part of this he also needs to rebuild the rift that has developed between staff and management, and with the decentralized offices which often work in a fragmented and opportunistic manner with little strategic focus.  To do this, Mr Qu will need to draw his experience as a senior manager in the Ministry.

Mr Qu takes over at a time when the global order is changing rapidly.  As he moves forward, including on some of the issues above, there will be opposition.  Some of this will play on the fears of an emergent “non liberal” China. He will also likely be accused of being a puppet of the Government.  Mr Qu will need to rise above past these criticisms and courageously take on a dynamic agenda.

Good luck Mr Qu.

 

Daud Khan is a retired UN staff based in Rome and Pakistan. He has degrees in economics from the London School of Economics and the University of Oxford; and a degree in Environmental Management from the Imperial College of Science and Technology. At Oxford he was a Rhodes Scholar. 

 

The post What Should FAO’s New Director General Focus on? appeared first on Inter Press Service.

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

The nominations of Christine Lagarde of France as the first woman to head the European Central Bank (ECB) and Ursula von der Leyen of Germany as the first woman to lead the 28-nation European Commission, have been described as significant landmarks in the higher echelons of international institutions long dominated by men.

The two women, who broke through the glass ceiling, take leadership roles at a time when fiscal policies of some European countries, including Greece and Italy, are in disarray while there are growing demands for urgent economic reforms in the Eurozone.

As Lagarde once famously said: whenever the situation is really, really bad, “you call in the woman” (as they did when she was Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund for eight years beginning 2011).

But even in the most trying circumstances, the United Nations and the World Bank (WB), where leadership has been the exclusive privilege of men, have refused to “call in the women” – primarily for political reasons.

Asked whether the two male dominated institutions will follow in the footsteps of Europe, Ambassador Anwarul K. Chowdhury, former Under-Secretary-General and UN High Representative, told IPS: “As a consistent believer in women’s equality of participation at all decision-making levels, I would always welcome when a woman is appointed or elected to a leadership position in an organization which has been a man’s prerogative so long.”

‘In the same breath, I would say that unless the organizational and institutional culture of patriarchic thinking is simultaneously overhauled, nothing would change substantively,” said Chowdhury, whose initiative in March 2000, as President of the Security Council, led to the adoption of the groundbreaking UN Security Council Resolution 1325 on the role of women in peace and security.

Chowdhury said the same thing happened when Lagarde was heading the IMF, an organization which continues its arrogant imposition of policy prescriptions to the vulnerable countries without any concern about their negative impact on common people.

“I have no comment on the ECB and Lagarde at its helm as she is in her home-ground,” he added.

Although the UN has lacked a woman Secretary-General, the current incumbent, Antonio Guterres, a former Prime Minister of Portugal, has been credited with achieving one of the world body’s long-term goals: increasing the number of women at senior levels.

Asked about the UN’s longstanding policy of gender parity, UN Deputy Spokesperson Farhan Haq told IPS: “Yes, we announced last year that there was an equal number of men and women in his senior management team.”

According to UN Women, the United Nations made significant strides in increasing women’s representation in UN leadership in 2018, with both the Senior Management Group at the headquarters and Resident Coordinators in the field, reaching gender parity for the first time.

Barbara Crossette, former UN Bureau Chief for the New York Times (1994-2001), told IPS the United Nations and the World Bank are in a sense separate and different cases.

“Geopolitics plays into choices in both and it seems that a qualified woman could run either, if she has the necessary background. Start with the expertise and not with the idea that being a woman is the most important factor”.

The UN, she pointed out, which covers everything, from peacekeeping and security to refugees, and climate change, as well as being a repository of treaties and other documents, may be said to need an administrator or manager more than a visionary or creative thinker.

“The UN bends under intense political pressures from governments and regions seeking to grab good jobs — sometimes, it seems, whether or not a candidate has the requisite experience,” she declared.

There are many women around the world with very strong management skills and instincts, and Christine Lagarde at the IMF is an exceptionally good example, said Crossette, a senior consulting editor and writer for PassBlue and the United Nations correspondent for The Nation.

Chowdhury said: “If I am asked about Ms. Lagarde’s move from IMF to ECB opening the door for women to lead the United Nations or the World Bank, I would only say “not so fast”. “

“Well, the decision-making for the choice of heads of these two organizations are controlled by UN’s veto system and WB’s veto-like voting system”, he pointed out.

So, the bottom line is that all depends on one country which enjoys control of both. It is therefore a reality that only that country’s backing a woman candidate for either or both posts would make that happen – not because Ms Lagarde has been moved from IMF to ECB, he added.

Chowdhury said it is significant to keep in mind that the appointments of the WB and IMF heads are shared by US and Europe respectively as part of a post-World War II deal which needs a major overhaul in view of the widespread change in global political and economic scene.

Arancha González, Executive Director of the Geneva-based International Trade Centre (ITC), told IPS the recent nomination by European leaders of two women for its four most senior posts – head of the European Commission and European Central bank – is clearly a step in the direction of a more equal world.

“It adds to concerted efforts by the UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres to achieve gender-balance across the UN’s top leadership.”

Momentum is there, she said, adding that “this trend is not something we should take for granted”.

“We will have to continue working – every day – to ensure that women are treated on an equal footing to men, and not only in the leadership positions in international organizatons, but at every level and in every country,” she added.

Crossette said development is more central to the Bank’s mandate in research and work, and is thought have a staff with greater expertise, independence and analytical skills in the field.

Politics aside, it may be much less difficult to find a woman for the World Bank who is very much focused and experienced in social and political development in this disruptive, bombastic global environment where people don’t see their lives getting better.

“The question is why there has not already been a female Bank president’,” she said.

At the UN, Crossette argued, the current UN secretary-General was perhaps chosen over a group of female candidates because the political, geopolitical and security aspects of the job were seen as ‘too important’ for a woman — an old-fashioned, out-of-date concept at best, bringing the P5 (the five permanent members of the Security Council, namely the US, UK, France, China and Russia) to the fore, and handing them the final say on who would be the most pliant servant of the powerful.

“Maybe the Europeans can change that now”, she declared.

Sascha Gabizon, Executive Director of ‘Women Engage for a Common Future’ (WECF), told IPS Lagarde is looked at critically by some parts of the banking sector for not being “an economist”.

“My take is that it will be quite a difficult job, especially with Italian populists wanting to go heavily into debt, but that Lagarde is a highly experienced leader, and a feminist, and she understands the social dimensions of monetary policies. So, she’s a good choice”

“We will have two women in leadership roles, both from conservative party backgrounds, who have worked in typically male dominated ministries/positions, and both are able to manouvre international difficult environments,” she added.

Besides Guterres, the men who have headed the UN include Ban Ki-moon of South Korea; Kofi Annan, Ghana; Boutros Boutros-Ghali, Egypt; Javier Perez de Cuellar, Peru; Kurt Waldheim, Austria; U Thant, Myanmar (formerly known as Burma); Dag Hammarskjöld, Sweden and Trygve Lie, Norway.

While the head of the IMF has traditionally been an European, the Americans have held onto the presidency of the World Bank, including Jim Yong Kim, Robert B. Zoellick, Paul Wolfowitz, James D. Wolfensohn, Lewis Preston, Barber Conable, Alden Winship Clausen, Robert Strange McNamara, George David Woods, Eugene Robert Black, John Jay McCloy and Eugene Meyer.

The writer can be contacted at thalifdeen@ips.org

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By Luis Felipe López-Calva
UNITED NATIONS, Jul 9 2019 (IPS)

Transparency is a critical element of making governance more effective. By making information available, it creates a foundation for greater accountability to citizens.

In recent decades, transparency has been on the rise across Latin America and the Caribbean. According to data from the Global Right to Information Rating, 23 countries in LAC have laws securing citizens’ right to information.

Colombia was the first country in the region to pass such a law in 1985, and Saint Kitts and Nevis was the most recent country to do so in 2018.

While transparency is a necessary condition for promoting accountability, it is not a sufficient condition. We can think about transparency as a first step.

While transparency makes information available, we also need publicity to make information accessible, and accountability mechanisms to make information actionable.

Information, per se, is nothing without publicity and accountability. If information does not reach the interested audiences, its effect is negligible. Similarly, even if information reaches the public, if it does not lead to consequences, its effect is not only negligible but potentially harmful.

For example, we have seen, unfortunately, many cases in our region where people can access detailed information about corruption cases, but nothing happens to those who are responsible. This leads to frustration and destroys trust.

Luis Felipe López-Calva

We can think about this progression from transparency to accountability as the “information value chain.” Recently, one way in which the information value chain has been broken in Latin America and the Caribbean is the intentional creation and spread of false information (what is known as “disinformation”).

In many cases these pseudo-facts are created for political purposes and target specific audiences, with the intention to induce certain outcomes (for example, by influencing voting behavior).

This system has been called the “fake news” industry—a term widely used by politicians in recent times. It’s important to note that false information can also be spread unintentionally (what is known as “misinformation”).

The rise of disinformation and misinformation has been facilitated by the rise of technology. Technology—particularly the rise of social media and messaging apps—has reduced the cost of disseminating information to massive audiences.

This has made the “publicity” industry more competitive and created a new social dynamic in which people often take access to information as equivalent to knowledge.

While knowledge is difficult to build and constantly update, information has become easy to get, and public debates are increasingly based on false—and often deliberately false—information.

Indeed, a recent study by scholars at MIT found that false news spreads much more rapidly than true news—and this effect is particularly salient for false political news (in comparison to false news about topics such as terrorism, natural disasters, science, urban legends, or financial information).

According the 2018 Reuters Institute Digital News Report, citizens in LAC countries are facing high exposure to false information, and are very concerned about what news is real and what news is fake on the internet.

In each of the four LAC countries included in the study (Brazil, Chile, Mexico, and Argentina), over 35% of respondents stated that they were exposed to completely made-up news in the last week—reaching as high as 43% of the sample in Mexico.

Moreover, over 60% of respondents stated that they are very or extremely concerned about what is real and what is fake on the internet when it comes to news—reaching as high as 85% of the sample in Brazil.

This high level of concern is consistent with recent experiences with political disinformation in the region—for example, the use of automated bots to influence public opinion in Brazil, Argentina, and Venezuela.

This problem carries with it the concern for broader potential consequences such as deepening political polarization or the erosion of trust in the media. Indeed, over the past few decades years, the dissemination of false information by political parties and levels of political polarization are increasing in tandem in LAC.

This is a challenge not only in LAC, but in many regions around the world. This global preoccupation was reflected in the theme chosen for this year’s World Press Freedom Day—which focused on journalism and elections in times of disinformation.

Several of the countries in Latin America are holding presidential elections later this year: Argentina, Bolivia, Guatemala, and Uruguay. There is a concern in the region about how disinformation campaigns, coupled with microtargeting of political messages and sophisticated online advertising through social networks and online platforms, could affect the outcome of elections.

There is a lot we can do in this area to protect the information value chain and the quality of elections—such as “clean campaign” agreements between political parties, the creation of independent fact-checking services, greater enforcement by social media companies, and the promotion of information literacy among citizens.

In Latin America, these initiatives are still nascent, but they are growing. It is important to recognize, however, that combatting the challenge of disinformation campaigns will require the coordinated action of multiple stakeholders such as electoral courts, the media, civil society, academia and tech businesses (such as Facebook, Google, WhatsApp, and Twitter).

Without a strong coalition of actors, it will be difficult to successfully repair the information value chain and achieve accountability.

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Excerpt:

Luis Felipe López-Calva is UN Assistant Secretary-General and UNDP Regional Director for Latin America and the Caribbean

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By Jomo Kwame Sundaram
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia, Jul 9 2019 (IPS)

For decades, the two Bretton Woods institutions have rejected the contribution of industrial policy (IP), or government investment and technology promotion efforts, in accelerating and sustaining growth, industrialization and structural transformation.

Finally, two International Monetary Fund (IMF) staff members, Reda Cherif and Fuad Hasanov, have broken the taboo. They embrace industrial policy, arguing against the current conventional wisdom that East Asian industrial policies cannot be successfully emulated by other developing countries.

Jomo Kwame Sundaram

Miracle economies not miraculous
They argue that IP has been key to East Asian ‘miracles’, offering valuable lessons for sustaining ‘catch-up’ growth. For them, appropriate IP interventions have been key to successful entry into more sophisticated industrial activities, early strong export orientation, and fierce competition with strict accountability.

For over half a century, especially following Asian and African decolonization after World War Two, developing countries have gone their separate ways with very mixed results, with all too many falling behind. Meanwhile, very few economies have caught up with some of the most advanced economies and firms.

Between 1960 and 2014, 16 out of the 182 economies they study achieved high-income status, underscoring the difficulties for middle-income countries reaching high-income status within two generations. They distinguish three types of countries which have ‘succeeded’, namely the East Asian miracles, those discovering considerable oil and gas, and those that benefited from joining the European Union.

Cherif and Hasanov insist on the key role of industrial policy in the Asian miracles, and for the US after the Civil War, Germany under Bismarck, and Japan after the Meiji Restoration. They argue that East Asian industrial policies have much in common despite their many differences.

The conventional growth formula — of improving macroeconomic stability (typically through anti-inflationary policies), strengthening property rights, and providing physical and social infrastructure and basic services to address government failures — was not enough .

Drawing useful lessons from varied country experiences is fraught with difficulty, especially considering the exogenous and conjunctural factors affecting growth, including luck. In contrast with the conventional empirical approach emphasizing averages, their analysis of long-term cross-country growth experiences underscores the value of studying the ‘tails’ or exceptions instead.

Technology and innovation policy
Contrary to earlier formulations of industrial policy as primarily involving investment and technology, Cherif and Hasanov propose three key principles constituting ‘true industrial policy’, summarized as technology and innovation policy (TIP), namely:

• State interventions to overcome constraints to the early emergence of national producers in more sophisticated industries, beyond conventional notions of ‘comparative advantage’.
• Export orientation, not import substituting industrialization (ISI); this contrasts with providing effective protection in the national or regional market on condition of early export promotion to achieve export competitiveness.
• Ensuring both national and international competitiveness with strict accountability.

Hyundai vs Proton
Cherif and Hasanov also contrast the cases of Malaysia’s Proton with South Korea’s Hyundai in support of their three principles. They argue that Proton did not export enough, reflecting failure to build sufficient managerial and engineering skills as well as an innovative automotive cluster.

Hyundai, by contrast, has successfully created a global brand. Cherif and Hasanov insist that allowing several South Korean industrial conglomerates or chaebols to develop rival auto industries and the push to export were key to its success.

Governments have directed capital and labour into industrial ventures that firms probably would not have undertaken without appropriate incentives, but market competition, market signals, and private sector accountability are also recognized as important.

Without conclusive evidence, Cherif and Hasanov claim that due to the government’s push to export, Korean automakers ‘moved first, then learnt and adjusted’. In exchange for very low real interest rate loans, Korean chaebols had to quickly secure foreign market shares, while accountability was enforced by firing senior managers who failed to reach export targets.

Pressure to compete and export forced Hyundai to increase its R&D effort and technology upgrading, producing its own engine in 1991, and later, its first electric car. Korean encouragement of several chaebols in the automotive industry later forced them to restructure, with few surviving.

But would fostering more than one automotive firm have ensured Proton’s success in light of Malaysia’s smaller domestic market and more modest industrial capabilities? And what were the economic costs of Korea’s arguably wasteful automotive industry competition?

Three development policy options
Cherif and Hasanov emphasize the importance of government ambition, accountability and adaptability. Government ambition is seen in terms of a feasible or pragmatic level of sophistication of new sectors and domestic ownership of industrial technology.

Government policy implementation must be subject to accountability, not only for firms, but also policymakers and senior managers responsible. As conditions change and new knowledge becomes available, policy interventions must adapt to continue to be effective and feasible.

* Low gear: The conventional approach to growth — of improving the investment environment, key institutions, infrastructure, macroeconomic stability, investments in education, and minimizing other government interventions — is likely to result in relatively slow ‘snail’s pace’ growth.

Such policy interventions typically address government failures, but not necessarily market failures, especially to develop more technologically sophisticated sectors beyond conventional understandings of comparative advantage.

Middle gear: This approach mainly relies on attracting FDI into more technologically sophisticated industries to participate increasingly in global value chains, or by improving the technological level of existing industries. This may accelerate growth for middle-income countries, but is unlikely to lead to sustainable development or ‘high-income status within two generations’ owing to limited national capacities and capabilities.

High gear: The East Asian miracle economies are said to be using a ‘moonshot approach’ for governments to create competitive national firms in frontier technologies, and more sophisticated industries with homegrown technologies, creating conditions for high, sustained long-term growth.

The speed and extent of the leaps to more sophisticated industries and technologies created by national firms are crucial for sustaining long-term development. Countries that manage this process well have better chances of soon becoming relatively advanced economies.

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.

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By Jan Lundius
STOCKHOLM / ROME, Jul 9 2019 (IPS)

The Libyan catastrophe and the suffering of ”illegal” migrants are generally depicted as fairly recent events, though they are actually the results of a long history of greed, contempt for others and fatal shortsightedness. Like former Yugoslavia, Libya was created from a mosaic of tribal entities, subdued by colonial powers and then ruled by an iron-fisted dictator. Now, Libya is a quagmire where local and international stakeholders battle to control its natural resources. The country holds the largest oil reserves in Africa, oil and gas account for 60 percent of GDP and more than 90 percent of exports.1 This is one reason why Egypt, France, Russia, Saudi Arabia, the U.S., and many other nations are enmeshed in Libya. Furthermore, European nations try to stop mainly sub-Saharan refugees and migrants from reaching their coasts from Libya. An attempt to understand Italy´s essential role in the struggle over Libya´s oil and attempts to control unwanted immigration may help to clarify some issues related to the current situation.

On the 29th of June Sea-Watch 3 arrived in the port of Lampedusa. The ship carried 40 people who two weeks before had been rescued from an inflatable raft off the coast of Libya. After being denied disembarkation in Tripoli Sea-Watch headed for Lampedusa. The German Captain Carola Rackete´s appeals to the Italian Government to let the migrants disembark on Italian territory were met by deaf ears and she thus steered Sea-Watch dangerously close to a military patrol boat, which tried to hinder her vessel from reaching the port:

The situation was desperate. My goal was only to bring exhausted and desperate people to shore. My intention was not to put anyone in danger. I already apologised, and I reiterate my apology. They were asking me to take them back to Libya. From a legal standpoint, these were people fleeing a country at war [and] the law bars you from taking them back there.

Captain Rackete was placed under house arrest awaiting trial, accused of “resistance and violence against warships”. Italy´s interior minister, Matteo Salvini, declared:

Mission accomplished. Law-breaking captain arrested. Pirate ship seized, maximum fine for foreign NGO.2

On the 3rd of July, the Court decided that Rackete had acted out of compassion and after being ordered to return to Germany she was released. Salvini fumed:

She will return to her Germany where they would not have been so tolerant if an Italian woman had made an attempt on the life of German policemen. Italy has raised its head: we are proud to defend our country and to be different from other small European leaders who think they can still treat us as their colony.3

Italy treated like a European colony? This is doubtful, though it is a fact that Libya once was Italy´s grossing and mistreated colony and that Italy continues to be deeply involved in Lybian affairs.

While Rackete awaited her trial, Tajoura, a “migrant detention centre” east of Tripoli, housing more than 600 people, was hit by two airstrikes, leaving at least 44 dead and more than 130 severely injured. The attack was blamed on Kahilfa Haftar’s Libyan National Army (LNA).

Field Marshal Khalifa Haftar is the Libyan-American commander of armed forces loyal to the Libyan House of Representatives.4 He served under Muammar Gaddafi and took part in the coup that in 1969 brought Gaddafi to power. In 1987, Haftar was captured during Chad´s still smoldering civil war. He was released in 1990 and for two decades lived not far from Langley, Virginia, headquarters of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). General Haftar was instrumental in the 2011 downfall of Gaddafi and has been described as Libya’s most potent warlord. During Libya´s recent conflicts he has fought with and against nearly every significant faction.5

At the moment, Haftar is openly supported by Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, and Egypt, and more or less clandestinely by France and Russia, with the U.S. waiting in the wings. France supports the interests of Total S.A., ranked as the world’s fourth-largest non-governmental petroleum company (after Shell, BP, and Exxon), while Russia is supporting LNA through weapon sales. Haftar´s forces are currently attacking the Government of National Accord (NAC) with its centre in Tripoli, this transition government is officially supported by the UN and particularly by Qatar and Turkey, though other forces are also present, such as Italy´s Miasit mission with 400 soldiers and 130 “land, naval and air vehicles”. Italy is the European country with the deepest Libyan ties.6 One example is ENI´s activities, an Italian multinational oil and gas corporation, the world´s 11th largest industrial company, which since 1959 has profited from Libya´s oil production.7 However, Italy´s connections with Libya runs even deeper than that.

In 1912, Italy conquered Ottoman Tripolotania and created a colony called Libya. After being defeated in World War II, Italy did in 1947 relinquish all claims to the territory. However, for more than thirty years the stream of people crossing the Mediterranean had moved in a completely different direction than it is doing now. After the Great Depression, Libya´s Italian population increased rapidly; in 1927, 26,000 Italians were living there, by 1939 they numbered 119,140, or 13 percent of the total population. Italian settlers were provided with land and infrastructure, while the local population was driven off to marginal lands, though this did not happen without fierce resistance. Italian colonial troops waged a ruthelss war against the locals, applying chemical weapons, mass executions of POWs and civilians, as well as the establishment of lethal concentration camps. It is estimated that between 1923 and 1932, 80,000 to 120,000 Libyans had been exterminated.8

When Colonel Muammar Gadaffi in 1970 became Libya´s dictator he banished the remaining 12,000 Italian citizens and had their possessions confiscated. After Gadaffi in 1973 nationalized half of the foreign oil production, the country´s GDP rose from USD 3.8 billion in 1969 to USD 24.5 billion in 1979. For a few years, Libya´s average per-capita income was above the average of Italy. Oil money was used to fund welfare programmes; house-building projects, improved healthcare, and compulsory education. However, over time Gadaffi´s erratic behaviour worsened. Any political conversation with foreigners became punishable with at least three years in prison and intents to start a ”political party” could lead to execution. Libya was furthermore supporting terrorist organizations all over the world.

In 2004, Gadaffi visited Brussels and succeeded in convincing the EU to drop sanctions imposed on Libya. Like Turkey, Libya used the plights of refugees and international migrants as a means to extract funds from the EU, which in 2010 contributed with €50 million to stop African migrants from passing through Libya into Europe, while migrants had already been used as a bargaining chip during Gadaffi´s negotiations with Italy, which in spite of recurrent grievances had maintained several of its financial and commercial ties with Libyan leaders.

In 2008, Gadaffi made a deal with Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi – Italy would through annual installments of USD250 million over a 20 year period compensate Libya for hardships brought about by its colonization of the country. In exchange, Libya would curb illegal migration across the Mediterranean, an encouragement for establishing ”detention centres”, which soon became sources for slave labour and human trafficking.9 The deal was suspended in February 2011 but renewed on 7 July 2018, leading to an intensified Italian-Lybian cooperation.

After a new Italian government came into office in 2018, it refused to take in people from search-and-rescue ships active in the Mediterranean, this included rescue efforts by the EU sponsored Operation Sophia, which since 2015 had saved thousands of people from drowning. After Italy threatened to veto it, EU did on 27 March stop this endeavour. Since then, thousands more international migrants, mainly from sub-Saharan Africa, have been detained in the infamous Lybian detention centres. Various reports did in 2017 estimate the number of inmates in Libyan camps to be between 10,000-20,000, at any given time. 10

The situation has become even worse after Field Marshal Haftar´s recent, massive attack on Tripoli. Both militias and ”regular” army forces tend to use ”detention centres” as ”shields” for their installations. On 3 July, right after the attack on the Tajoura camp, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Michelle Bachelet, stated:

I have repeatedly called for the closure of all migrant detention centres in Libya, where UN human rights staff have documented severe overcrowding, torture, ill-treatment, forced labour, rape, and acute malnutrition, among other serious human rights violations. I also repeat my call for the release of detained migrants and refugees as a matter of urgency, and for their access to humanitarian protection, collective shelters or other safe places, well away from areas that are likely to be after been trapped in gruesome facilities.11

Libya´s current misery and the plight of refugees and international migrants languishing in its detention centres, or drown in the Mediterranean, cannot only be blamed on repression in developing countries and the inability of their governments to amend poverty and unemployment. The disaster is also caused and furthered by distortions engendered by colonization and the enduring greed of foreign stakeholders. We are all guilty of the current suffering in Libya.

1 Organization of the Pertroleum Exporting Countries (2019) Libya Facts and Figures. https://www.opec.org/opec_web/en/about_us/166.htm
2 Agence France-Presse (2019) “Captain defends her decision to force rescue boat into Italian port.” The Guardian, 30 June.
3 Tonacci, Fabio and Alessandra Ziniti (2019) “Sea-Watch, Carola Rackete è libera: ´Commossa. Gip annula
l´arresto: ´Agì per portare in salvo i migranti´. L´ira di Salvini.” La Repubblica, 4 July.
4 A UN led initiative established in 2015 a Libyan Government of National Accord (NAC). However, a House of Representatives (HoR) had already been formed after an election in 2014, to replace Libya´s General National Congress. Neither entity recognizes the other, NAC is based in Tripoli, while HoR is in Tobruk, their armies are currently fighting each other.
5 Anderson, Jon Lee (2015) “The Unravelling: In a failing state, an anti-Islamist general mounts a divisive campaign” The New Yorker, February 23 and March 2.
6 Orsini, Alessandro (2019) “Haftar a Roma: L´Italia non pu`lasciare a Libia scivolare verso il Medio Oriente,” Il Messagero, March 17.
7 https://www.eni.com/enipedia/en_IT/international-presence/africa/enis-activities-in-libya.page?lnkfrm=asknow Thirty percent ENI´s shares are owned by the Italian government.
8 Historical information in this article is mainly based on Wright, John (2012) Libya: A Modern History. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
9 Human smuggling from the coast of Libya is a multimillion dollar business. In 2015, the Global Initiative against Transnational Organised Crime (GITOC) estimated profits to be between USD 255 – 323 million per year. GITOC (2015) Policy Brief. Libya: a growing hub for Criminal Economies and Terrorist Financing in the Trans-Sahara. Geneva: RHIPTO. p. 2.
10 Amnesty International (2017) Libya’s Dark Web of Collusion: Abuses Against Europe-Bound Refugees and Migrants. London: Amnesty International Ltd.
11 https://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=24535&LangID=E

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 The Libyan Disaster: Little Bits of History Repeating appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

And I've seen it before,
and I'll see it again.
Yes I've seen it before,
just little bits of history repeating.
           Propeller Heads: History repeating

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Sandton Gautrain Station in Johannesburg, South Africa.

By Finbarr Toesland
UNITED NATIONS, Jul 9 2019 (IPS)

Megacities, cities with a population of at least 10 million, are sprouting everywhere in Africa. Cairo in Egypt, Kinshasa in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and Lagos in Nigeria are already megacities, while Luanda in Angola, Dar es Salaam in Tanzania and Johannesburg in South Africa will attain the status by 2030, according the United Nations.

Abidjan in Côte d’Ivoire and Nairobi in Kenya will surpass the 10 million threshold by 2040. And by 2050 Ouagadougou in Burkina Faso, Addis Ababa in Ethiopia, Bamako in Mali, Dakar in Senegal and Ibadan and Kano in Nigeria will join the ranks—bringing the total number of megacities in Africa to 14 in about 30 years.

The number of people living in urban areas in Africa will double to more than 1 billion by 2042, according to the World Bank.

The University of Toronto’s Global Cities Institute, which monitors cities’ population growth and socioeconomic development worldwide, forecasts that Lagos will be the largest city in the world by 2100, housing an astonishing 88 million people, up from 21 million currently.

In a 2016 paper titled African Urban Futures, published by the Institute for Security Studies, an African independent research organization that aims to enhance human security on the continent, researchers Julia Bello-Schünemann and Ciara Aucoin wrote: “The current speed of Africa’s urbanisation is unprecedented in history. For some it is the ‘single most important transformation’ that is happening on the continent.” They add that African “cities and towns will increasingly shape the lives of people living on the continent.”

Africa’s demographic transition, caused by the “youth bulge,” an increase in the population of people between 15 and 29 years of age, will continue to fuel a move to the big cities because “young people are generally more prone to migrate to urban areas” than older people, according to Ms. Bello-Schünemann and Ms. Aucoin.

While millions of rural Africans move to cities in search of high-paying jobs and a better quality of life, these burgeoning metropolises also offer strong incentives to investors foreign and domestic.

Power of population

Lagos is a prime example of the economic power in Africa’s megacities. From its technology hub ecosystem—Africa’s largest—to its successful banking sector and prosperous film industry, venture capitalists see many investment opportunities in Nigeria’s commercial capital.

According to a report by the telecom trade body GSM Association, there are 31 tech hubs in Lagos, 29 in Cape Town and 25 in Nairobi. The value of innovative tech spaces to African economies is massive, as investors pump capital into start-ups and hence contribute to countries’ GDPs.

In 2017 outgoing Lagos State Governor Akinwunmi Ambode announced that the state’s GDP had reached $136 billion, about a third of Nigeria’s GDP ($376 billion) and more than the combined GDPs of Ghana ($47 billion) and Tanzania ($52 billion).

Steve Cashin, founder and CEO of the private equity firm Pan African Capital Group, believes that investors are focusing on Africa’s megacities because of market size.

“My firm does a lot of business in Liberia, and one of the main constraints to growing businesses and attracting investment there is the population size and density. When the entire country’s population is just about 4 million, and you’re likely only to reach a small fraction of that, it is harder to make a compelling business case,” says Cashin.

A single Lagos district can be a market the size of an entire country such as Botswana. Because people in Lagos are concentrated, companies can benefit from lower fixed costs and easier distribution. “The economics are just more attractive,” he adds.

Overstretched infrastructure

But highly populated cities have both positives and negatives. Rapid urbanization strains already overstretched infrastructure and creates complex problems for local governments.

For example, the population of Kinshasa is forecast to grow by 61 people every hour until 2030. People will have to look for jobs and use public transport and other social services.

Bello-Schünemann and Aucoin elaborate: “Most of Africa’s urban residents live in informal settlements or slums, lack access to basic services, face precarious employment conditions and are vulnerable to various forms of urban violence.”

They add: “Global climate and environmental changes, and pressure from water, food and energy insecurities, compound the challenges for human development and the complexities of contemporary urban governance on the continent.”

Around 75% of homes in Kinshasa are in slums, and Lagos has dozens of them: places like Somolu, Bariga and the floating slum of Makoko. If infrastructure growth fails to keep up with increasing population, more slums will develop, experts warn.

To address these problems, Africa’s fast-growing cities require all-inclusive infrastructure development, advises Cashin. “The importance of deliberate and thoughtful urban planning cannot be understated, not only for the efficiency and productivity of these cities but also for the safety of its inhabitants.”

He adds that “proper urban planning requires significant upfront investment” and that “local governments also need to harness the potential of these rapidly growing cities by making strides to formalise the economy.”

Informal economies

In sub-Saharan Africa the informal economy—economic activities that are not regulated and therefore not taxed—represents up to 41% of GDP and provides 85.5% of total employment, reports the International Labour Organisation (ILO), the UN body that sets international labour standards and promotes social protection.

Without collecting enough taxes, cash-strapped city authorities cannot finance critical infrastructure such as roads, hospitals and power.

Some local administrations depend on foreign direct investment (FDI) or opt for the BOT system—build, operate, transfer—in which investors finance a project (such as a bridge) and recoup their investments by, for example, collecting tolls for a limited period.

Investors who are attracted to densely populated cities are also repelled by a lack of infrastructure and incompetent city authorities.

The State of African Cities 2018, a UN report, says that Johannesburg, Lagos and Nairobi are the leading FDI attractions in sub-Saharan Africa.

Private investors often accompany financing with technological know-how. For example, smart city projects across South Africa, such as Melrose Arch in Johannesburg, require a diverse range of talent not often found in that country. Foreign investors with expertise in this field can draw on their own experience and contacts to put a skilled team in place.

In sum, the key to urban planning and attracting investors is to plan with an eye toward future population growth, notes Jonathan Hall, assistant professor at the University of Toronto’s Department of Economics and Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy.

He adds that, “People will continue to move to the megacities until unemployment is so high, and the infrastructure is so overstretched, that their quality of life is roughly the same in the city and the countryside.”

Authorities managing Africa’s megacities have their work cut out for them. Investors who are attracted to densely populated cities are also repelled by a lack of infrastructure and incompetent city authorities.

“Cities need strong, competent and democratic governments [that can] work with their low-income populations, rather than, as all too often happens, evicting them,” says David Satterthwaite, senior fellow with the Human Settlements Group at the think tank International Institute for Environment and Development.

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Excerpt:

Finbarr Toesland, Africa Renewal

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The United Nations said the current internet shutdown in Sudan forms part of a larger effort to stifle the free expression and association of the Sudanese population, and to curtail the ongoing protests in the country. In this dated picture, Sudanese journalists attend a press conference. Courtesy: Albert González Farran /UNAMID

By James Reinl
UNITED NATIONS, Jul 9 2019 (IPS)

The United Nations has condemned an internet shutdown and the blocking of social media channels during Sudan’s political crisis, as fears persisted over a crackdown on media freedoms in the turbulent African country.

The U.N.’s independent expert on the human rights situation in Sudan, Aristide Nononsi, and two other officials, said in a statement that web blocking by Zain-SDN and other internet providers was stifling the freedoms of expression and association.

“In the past few weeks, we have continued to receive reports on internet blocking of social media platforms by the Transitional Military Council [TMC],” the experts said, referencing the TMC, which has run Sudan since the ouster of former president Omar al-Bashir in April.

“The internet shut down is in clear violation of international human rights law and cannot be justified under any circumstances. We urge the authorities to immediately restore internet services.”

The statement was co-signed by Clement Nyaletsossi Voule, the U.N.’s Special Rapporteur on rights to freedom of peaceful assembly and of association, and David Kaye, a special rapporteur Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression .

The three officials said mobile operator Zain-SDN was behind the “most extensive blocking scheme” and had closed access to all key social platforms, which are used to share news and to arrange protests. Other providers MTN, Sudatel and Kanartel had also cut web access, they said.

“The internet shutdown forms part of a larger effort to stifle the free expression and association of the Sudanese population, and to curtail the ongoing protests,” the experts said in a statement on Monday.

“Restricting or blocking access to internet services not only adversely affects the enjoyment of the rights to freedom of expression, assembly and participation, but it also has severe effects on protesters demands’ regarding economic and social rights.”

Sudan’s military rulers ordered the internet blackout as a security measure on Jun. 3, when security forces also killed dozens of protesters as they cleared a sit-in outside the Defence Ministry in the centre of the capital, Khartoum.

The web blackout has affected most ordinary users of mobile and fixed line connections and is reportedly harming the economy and humanitarian operations in the African nation of some 40 million people.

Sudanese journalists have also raised concerns about the treatment of reporters during the ongoing political crisis.

On Jun. 20, journalist Amar Mohamed Adam was arrested and detained by the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), a paramilitary outfit under the TMC, before being handed over to the intelligence services, according to the Sudanese Journalists Network.

At the end of May, the TMC also ordered Qatar-based Al Jazeera Television offices in Khartoum closed, with officers from various Sudanese security branches turning up at the premises and seizing broadcast gear.

Sherif Mansour, a regional coordinator for the Committee to Protect Journalists, a watchdog and campaign group, described a “worrying sign” designed “to suppress coverage of pro-democracy events”. He urged the TMC to “reverse course”.

Protesters had been demanding the restoration of internet services as one of their conditions for getting back around the negotiation table with the TMC and forming a transitional administration made up of civilians and military officers.

Hopes were raised of a breakthrough last week, after Sudan’s military chiefs and protest leaders announced they had struck a deal on the disputed issue of a new governing body in talks aimed at ending the country’s months-long political crisis

The two sides reportedly agreed on a joint sovereign council to rule for a little over three years while elections are organised. Both sides say a diplomatic push by the United States and its Arab allies was key to ending a standoff that had raised fears of all-out civil war.

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Yohei Sasakawa (C), president of the Nippon Foundation and World Health Organisation Goodwill Ambassador for Leprosy Elimination, shakes the hand of Sebastião Miranda Filho, the mayor of Marabá in northern Brazil, where the foundation finances a project to distribute food to poor families affected by the disease, to encourage them to complete treatment. Credit: Artur Custodio/IPS

By Mario Osava
BRASILIA, Jul 9 2019 (IPS)

When cases of Hansen’s disease, better known as leprosy, increase in Brazil, it is not due to a lack of medical assistance but to the growing efficacy of the health system in detecting infections, contrary to the situation in other countries.

This unique aspect of the disease was highlighted during a Jul. 2-7 visit by Nippon Foundation President Yohei Sasakawa to the northern Brazilian states of Pará and Maranhão, to learn about and reinforce efforts to reduce the incidence of the disease.

Sasakawa continued his tour of this Latin American country on Monday Jul. 8 in Brasilia, where he will meet with President Jair Bolsonaro and other authorities from the executive, legislative and judicial branches, before returning to Japan on Wednesday Jul. 10.

The Nippon Foundation funds several projects in Brazil, one of which facilitates telephone and Internet communications, to expand and improve information about this chronic disease and combat the prejudice, stigma and discrimination surrounding it.

Early detection is one of the recommendations stressed in Sasakawa’s meetings with authorities in the Amazon jungle state of Pará, according to Claudio Salgado, a professor at the Federal University of Pará who is president of the Brazilian Hansenology Society.

“Hanseniasis (as the disease is called in Brazil) doesn’t manifest itself in acute outbreaks of fever, chills and confusion, like malaria,” he told IPS from Belem do Para.

Symptoms, such as numb spots on the skin, often take years to appear, when the effects are already irreversible, including loss of fingers and crippling or paralysis of the hands or entire limbs.

In addition, the cases are widely dispersed, making it even more difficult to identify patients, even though there are means of early detection, such as the screening of household contacts of leprosy patients.

An estimated 95 percent of people have natural immunity to infection. Hansen’s disease is not as contagious as many people believe. It takes prolonged, close contact over many months with an untreated leprosy patient to catch the disease, and patients are no longer contagious after only a few days of antibiotic treatment.

For all these reasons, it could be deceptive to set quantitative goals, such as the target adopted by the World Health Organisation (WHO) to “eliminate” leprosy by the year 2000, Salgado argued. “Elimination” is defined as a prevalence rate of less than one case per 10,000 persons a year.

The battle against Hansen’s disease gained a key ally in 1982, when multidrug therapy became available. More than 16 million people have been cured since then, according to WHO.

Brazil is the only country in the world that did not formally meet the goal. In 2017 there were 26,875 new cases in a population of 200 million, translating to 1.35 cases per 10,000 people, according to a WHO report.

But Salgado calls into question statistics that point to a sharp reduction in cases, which he said is epidemiologically impossible. He also throws doubt on the claim that Brazil accounts for 92 percent of all new cases in the Americas, as recognised by the Brazilian Health Ministry in its National Strategy to Confront Hanseniasis 2019-2022.

The governor of Maranhão, Flavio Dino, held a dinner for the delegation of the Nippon Foundation, which funds projects for those affected by Hansen’s disease in several cities in this state in Northeast Brazil. The visit and meetings with health officials bolstered new efforts to combat the disease and its consequences, such as disabilities, stigma and discrimination. Credit: Artur Custodio/IPS

He says this indicates that very different situations with respect to leprosy, between Brazil and its neighbours, in spite of similar economic, social and environmental conditions.

An apparent paradox: a country where diagnosis and treatment of Hansen’s disease is reduced would have favourable statistics, in contrast with the likely expansion of leprosy. In other words, fewer cases would be detected, even if the situation was actually getting worse.

In Maranhão, the second Brazilian state visited by Sasakawa, the rate is high: 4.4 new cases per 10,000 persons.

“We detect 3,125 cases per year on average,” reported Lea Terto, superintendent of Epidemiology and Disease Control at the local Health Ministry.

The fact that Maranhão is the state with the largest number of infected children and adolescents under 15 is a concern, because it indicates that they are living with untreated adults, he told IPS from the regional capital, São Luís.

Sasakawa was welcomed by health workers at the clinics, former leprosariums and cities he visited, who celebrated the benefits of projects funded by the Nippon Foundation.

Maranhão was the state that benefited the most from a project implemented since 2017, aimed at strengthening detection and treatment of Hansen’s disease in the 20 municipalities with the highest prevalence of the disease, Artur Custodio, national coordinator of the Movement for the Reintegration of Those Affected by Hanseniasis (Morhan), told IPS from São Luís.

The visit was “very positive” in terms of strengthening the disposition of those involved in the issue and bolstering the local government’s commitment to combatting the disease and the problems that hinder its prevention, Terto said.

She was impressed by Sasakawa’s statement that “people who are prejudiced are sicker” than patients with Hansen’s disease.

“Active search and exams of household contacts” are the priorities of her work, to “reduce prevalence in a concrete and responsible way,” which means a slow reduction of about two percent of new cases a year, said Terto, who has been a nurse for 37 years.

It is actually better if more cases appear than expected, she said, because it means that new untreated patients have been identified.

In addition to the difficulties of making leprosy visible, there are concerns about people quitting treatment, which can last from six months to more than a year depending on the severity of the case. In the most complex cases, a major effort is required to ensure that the patients stick with the treatment until the leprosy bacteria is eliminated.

To encourage patients to complete the multidrug therapy, the Foundation is funding the distribution of baskets of basic foodstuffs to affected families in Marabá, a city in the interior of the state of Pará, visited by Sasakawa on Jul. 3.

Better nutrition gives a boost to the treatment, which is effective if the infected person takes the antibiotics for the prescribed period of time.

Sasakawa began his tour in northern Brazil with a visit to the Marcello Candia Clinic, a dermatology reference unit in Marituba, a city of 108,000 inhabitants in Pará.

A former leprosarium marked the history of the city and of José Picanço, head of Morhan in Pará. He and his two siblings were separated from their parents, who had the disease and were isolated in the institution in 1972. Picanço and his siblings were also treated like “lepers”.

Children of people with leprosy were taken away from their parents and placed in orphanages. It is estimated that between 15,000 and 20,000 people in Brazil suffered – and still suffer – the social and psychological consequences of hanseniasis, because of the former law for the segregation of people with the disease.

Picanço’s parents, who lived until 2007, at least achieved the right to compensation for the violence perpetrated against them by the State. But their grown children continue to fight for this right as victims.

“There are states, such as Minas Gerais and Ceará, that are working towards recognition of this right, by government decree or bills making their way through parliament. But since the problem resulted from a national policy, it is up to the federal government to compensate us,” Picanço told IPS from Belem.

He said Sasakawa’s visit strengthened the struggles for early diagnosis of the disease, the rights of those affected and the need for greater coverage of hanseniasis in the media, which is currently limited to an annual campaign in January.

Related Articles

• People Affected by Leprosy in Latin America Unite for Their Rights and Their Voice
• In Latin America, the Term Leprosy Still Carries a Burden from Biblical Times
• People Affected by Leprosy Still Face Stigma in Latin America

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Professor Joshua Castellino is Executive Director of the UK-based Minority Rights Group International

By Joshua Castellino
LONDON, Jul 8 2019 (IPS)

Contemporary politics generates a lot of noise and smoke, with little attention devoted to understanding, analysing and fixing the causes of the noise and smoke. The global public discourse is dominated by statements made by politicians and aspirants to power, designed to shock, awe and draw support.

But the statements are rarely about real underpinning threats facing society: not on climate change, and not on the urgent need to generate employment in the face of increased mechanization.

Anger and resentment at the loss of jobs on account of shifts in manufacturing are dismissed as a design fault to be overcome through simple solutions: building walls, departing clubs like the EU, increasing tariffs on ‘foreign produce’ and keeping migrants out since they are apparently responsible for the failure of the economy to generate employment.

Irresponsible as that simplistic politics might be, it pales in comparison to how climate change is treated. The sheer abdication of governance is appalling and shameful, calling into question the essence of why governments are needed at critical times in human history.

While scientists have produced compelling evidence for decades, the recent impact of climate change is difficult to refute for even the least educated person. When Greta Thunberg called for urgent action she received adulation and patronage in equal measure, but none have yet been able to respond with the urgent action she called for.

Many in government around the world appear to accept the realities of climate justice, but see it as an issue for the future – unlikely to affect their time driven mandate of adhering to power.

In its Key Trends Report 2019, focussing on climate justice, Minority Rights Group (MRG) provides evidence of the impact of climate change on the most vulnerable communities in society.

The overarching facts on climate change are not new: Lake Chad, a key water body in Africa has shrunk by 90 per cent since the 1960s, while the Arctic is currently warming twice as fast as anywhere else on earth. These stark facts, in the public realm for long, have not yet focussed on the impact on people.

The push for Canadian indigenous communities to leave their ancestral lands in the face of climate impact is mirrored by those in the Pacific in Tuvalu and Kiribati.

The degradation of forests around key water towers in Kenya, and their occupation for commercial use, impacts their traditional custodians, depriving them of their homes, and disrupting the flow of water across Africa, into the Nile and onwards into the Mediterranean.

As the desert eats into Chad, pastoralists face a heightened crisis, stimulating migrant flows into Europe, while Nigeria is heading in a similar direction with tensions rising as pastoralists, faced with shrinking grazing areas, make incursions into others’ territories.

Pastoralists and sedentary communities are also building up to a stand-off in Morocco as competition for land and water becomes acute.

The continued exploitation of natural wealth in the form of oil and gas by wealthy companies, despite stark warnings about the carbon economy, are creating devastating immediate consequences for the communities cursed with living in proximity to these.

This is as true in Kenya as in Ecuador, Thailand and Russia. In every case communities are forced to contend with pollution, dereliction of their environment, impact on their livelihoods and the eventual loss of their homes. That they were not consulted in any of the processes is a given, only exacerbated by the shocking governance failures over what ought to happen to them.

A new theme is also emerging that treats indigenous communities and forest dwellers in particular as inconvenient nuisances that through their very existence negatively impact the push towards climate conservation.

This phenomenon pits environmentalists against super marginalized communities, who appear to be considered as collateral for the few pitiful moves being made in the name of environmental protection. The argument being made appears to posit communities that have lived in a sustainable and traditional manner for centuries being tagged with responsibility for environmental damage.

This deeply flawed argument goes against all evidence, making scapegoats out of subsistence driven communities, for activities that have been sustainable for centuries and create an overall negative carbon footprint.

It also facilitates the biggest polluters and corporate actors, who continue to reserve the right to make profits out of natural wealth in conjunction with governments, that no matter what property regime is used, do not belong to them.

Alongside each of these relatively ‘new’ phenomena, lies the time-honed discrimination that has erected structures over centuries that seek to maintain the hegemony of a small privileged elite in each society.

Thus, the plight of Black Americans in New Orleans affected by Hurricane Katrina lies in stark contrast to the urgent action taken in the face of the flooding experienced by Manhattan as a result of Hurricane Sandy.

The Valladolid Controversy of 1550 was the first publicized debate concerning the rights of colonized peoples. Bartolomé de Las Casas argued that native Americans were human despite their ‘unchristian’ customs, while Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda believed they were barbarians rather than human, and therefore had to be suppressed. The dispute may seem like a historical footnote that captured the fatal attraction and insecurity towards Otherness.

Yet in this the most recent crisis facing humanity its echoes are alive and well. Climate change affects us all, of that there is little doubt. At what point this becomes survival critical for you is merely a reflection of the accident of birth.

Wealth and proximity to power may keep you insulated a while longer. Indigenous peoples and minorities the world over on the other hand, have continued to be treated as objects whose consent to anything is irrelevant and unnecessary, and therefore they form the frontline to the crisis.

Sane, scientifically validated well-informed voices have called for urgent action. MRG’s Key Trends Report of 2019 provides evidence of the current impact of climate injustice on communities. If governments continue to abdicate responsibility to solving this problem, we need to sweep them away and bring in others who can respond to this need.

Each of us have a responsibility to hold our governments to account for issues that matter, while not being drawn into meaningless games that maintain the power of the few over the many. If climate change is not highest on your agenda it ought to be, and you must act politically and responsibly to make sure your voice counts.

If not for the indigenous and minority communities now, then for yourself and your own loved ones tomorrow.

The post Climate Change Victims: What Will You Do Next? appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Professor Joshua Castellino is Executive Director of the UK-based Minority Rights Group International

The post Climate Change Victims: What Will You Do Next? appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Cooking with a biogas stove, photo: Sven Torfinn

By Eco Matser
AMSTERDAM, Jul 8 2019 (IPS)

Whoever still thinks climate change is purely an environmental issue, threatening only nature, needs to think again. Climate change is also essentially a human issue because of its devastating effect on human life – and rights. It exacerbates existing inequalities, undermines democracy and threatens development at large. Likewise, by far the greatest burden will fall on those already in poverty, while the rich will be able to buy their way out of rising heat and hunger.

Human rights and climate change

The latest report on climate change and poverty by the UN Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights puts it bluntly: “climate change threatens the full enjoyment of a wide range of rights,” – from the right to land, resources and food, to the right to good health. It will spark conflicts and aggravate all current forms of insecurity.

Equally important will be the impact on democracy. As the UN report outlines, governments struggle to get support for (the costs of) action to combat climate change and the major socio-economic transformations this requires. “In such a setting, civil and political rights will be highly vulnerable.”

We at Hivos, and a number of organizations and individuals with us, have long warned about the terrible impact climate change can have on development and how it so unfairly affects people living in poverty. For years, we have been calling for an integrated approach to combatting climate change that benefits both the environment and development goals. Here’s why:

 

Exacerbating poverty and inequality

People in poverty are far more vulnerable to climate shocks because they have fewer resources available to adapt or make themselves resilient. Hence, they are driven deeper into poverty. For example, farmers risk losing their income due to drought or other extreme weather, and (fishing) communities living in coastal areas will have to flee rising sea levels.

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

Apart from increasing inequalities between rich and poor, climate change is also causing a growing divide between ethnicities, the sexes, generations and communities (Amnesty International). Areas inhabited largely by migrants and ethnic or racial minorities are more exposed to problems like industrial pollution, overcrowding, food insecurity, landslides, and the impacts of resource extraction; women and girls are disproportionately affected across the board; (indoor) air pollution is particularly harmful to children and the elderly; and the lands of indigenous people are more vulnerable to changing weather patterns.

 

Reduced productivity

And there is the threat to all our economies. At present, heat stress already causes loss of productivity. This will rise to 2 percent of working hours by 2030 even if we manage to maintain the global temperature increase below 1.5°C, estimates Moustapha Kamal Gueye, Coordinator of the ILO’s Green Jobs Program.

 

The risk of “climate apartheid”

The UN report also cites what is possibly the most disturbing risk of all. A new era of “climate apartheid” where the wealthy pay to escape rising temperatures, hunger, and conflict while the rest of the world is left to suffer. “Perversely, the richest who have the greatest capacity to adapt and are responsible for and have benefitted from the vast majority of greenhouse gas emissions, will be the best placed to cope with climate change, while the poorest, who have contributed the least to emissions and have the least capacity to react, will be the most harmed,” the report states.

 

A just transition

For all these reasons, mitigating climate change is an urgent human rights obligation. But it also provides a huge opportunity to enhance these rights. The transition to a low carbon economy would actually strengthen workers’ and women’s rights and reduce the divide between individuals and between communities.

Providing access to clean and affordable energy resources will increase the (economic) wellbeing of people currently living in poverty. Replacing firewood with “clean” solar, biogas or electric cooking equipment not only reduces carbon emissions but provides much healthier conditions for women and children. The same goes for the energy needs of (remote) off-grid rural communities, which can be much easier met by wind and solar energy sources that in turn do not harm the environment. In fact, it is estimated that the renewable energy sector alone will create 18 million new jobs – also for the underprivileged.

 

Making the right link

Linkages made by some human rights organizations have referred to specific issues like the “right to food” or the “land rights” of indigenous peoples. But they barely ever make the connection between climate change and human rights writ large. This is we so warmly welcome the UN report on climate change and poverty.

Governments and the private sector have equally failed to integrate the two. In the Paris Agreement, governments committed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and support climate vulnerable countries to adapt to irreversible consequences. But missing is the fact that people have the right to be protected against climate change. That there needs to be a just transition, ensuring gender equality, and minority and indigenous rights, while reducing economic and social inequalities. And that the implementation should be transparent and participatory, in accordance with the right to information.

The private sector also has a huge role to play. Fossil fuel companies in particular must take responsibility for the negative climate effects they cause and transition to renewable energy, phasing out fossil fuel exploration and use.

 

Climate change policies must be human rights policies

In conclusion, integrating human rights into climate change policies will simply improve and expand their effectiveness. As the UN report states, “This crisis [climate change] should be a catalyst for states to fulfil long ignored and overlooked economic and social rights, including to social security and access to food, healthcare, shelter, and decent work.”

This opinion piece was originally published here

The post Climate Change Deniers Violate Human Rights appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

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

The post Climate Change Deniers Violate Human Rights appeared first on Inter Press Service.