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H.E. Frans Makken is Ambassador of the Netherlands to Kenya

By H. E. Frans Makken
NAIROBI, Kenya, Jul 1 2019 (IPS)

Demographic dividend is a term which is increasingly preoccupying discussions among development economists and the donor community in general in Kenya. The term refers to countries with the greatest demographic opportunity for development and those that are ushering in a period in which the working-age population has good health, quality education, decent employment and a lower proportion of young dependents. Smaller numbers of children per household generally lead to larger investments per child, more freedom for women to enter the formal workforce and more household savings for old age. When this happens, the national economic payoff can be substantial, and this is the demographic dividend.

Frans Makken

African countries are rightly excited about the prospects of reaping a demographic dividend, based largely on their unrivalled potential of a youthful population. However, whether Africa can reap the benefits of a future demographic dividend will depend on how the continent prioritizes those Sustainable Development Goals that that will give the continent a competitive edge through its youth. In Kenya for instance, one study has estimated that the demographic dividend may not happen before 2055.

In most African countries –including Kenya, high birth rates are weighing down on economic growth as large numbers of under-15 youths need to be supported by a smaller group of workers. Kenya’s fertility rate stands at 3.7 while a rate of 2.5 or less is required to reach the tipping point where the working-age population surpasses the inactive part. Yet, a high working-age population is not the cure-all; the quality of the work force is even more important and how it meets the demands of the market and fits its wider ecosystem.

In my tour of duty, I have over the past four years worked closely with the Kenyan government and non-governmental actors to address some of the challenges, including in the areas of health and food security. The Netherlands strongly believes in the power of partnerships and innovation to ameliorate those bottlenecks.

One of the goals of the Kenyan government, through the UN Development Assistance Framework (2018 – 2022) is to front-load the realization of the demographic dividend by prioritizing strategic investments in the four key pillars of Employment and Entrepreneurship; Education and Skills Development; Health and Wellbeing (including family planning); and Rights, Governance and Youth Empowerment.

In September 2017, The Government of Kenya announced at the United Nations General Assembly the establishment of the SDG Partnership Platform, to realize Kenya’s vision to achieve universal health coverage. The Platform has since received global recognition from the UN as a promising practice to accelerate SDG financing and impact and has become a flagship programme under Kenya’s new UN Development Assistance Framework 2018-2022.

The Platform supported by the Netherlands was established under the leadership of the Government of Kenya, and with support of the United Nations Resident Coordinator’s Office and key private sector partners such as Royal Philips. The Platform convenes leadership from government, UN, development partners, private sector, philanthropy, civil society, academia, and faith-based organizations and is championing the delivery as one of SDG partnerships which catalyze investments and innovations to drive SDG impacts, as for example in health and well-being (SDG3). The outcomes are visible and appreciatable. Healthcare needs are being assessed and primary and community based healthcare is being strengthened in the country.

As the Netherlands is moving from aid to trade, we strongly believe in the contribution of the private sector in achieving the SDGs and investing in the youthful population. In this context, I am pleased to welcome a health sector trade mission comprising of leading innovative Dutch companies working on e-health, public health, medical equipment and training seeking partnerships with their Kenyan counterparts. The trade mission taking place from 1-3 July will be led by Dr. Erik Gerritsen, Dutch Vice Minister for Health who will also meet government officials to discuss cooperation that will lead to mutually beneficial business deals and better health outcomes in Kenya.

By advancing shared-value partnerships, Kenya will be able to sustainably create more health, education, and employment opportunities for its young people and offer a safety-net to many.

Indeed, Kenya is on the way to realizing its demographic dividend; together, we can together make the journey to that goal shorter. Kenya can become a blue print for the rest of Africa.

The post Kenya’s March Towards a Demographic Dividend by Investing in Health and Partnering with the Health Sector from the Netherlands Visiting Kenya appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

H.E. Frans Makken is Ambassador of the Netherlands to Kenya

The post Kenya’s March Towards a Demographic Dividend by Investing in Health and Partnering with the Health Sector from the Netherlands Visiting Kenya appeared first on Inter Press Service.

By Pedro Conceição
UNITED NATIONS, Jul 1 2019 (IPS)

“People are the real wealth of nations,” began the first Human Development Report (HDR). That 1990 report marked a turning point in the global development debate.

During the second half of the 20th century there were growing concerns about the tyranny of gross domestic product (GDP). Many decision-makers seemed to believe that economic growth and wellbeing were synonymous.

But those who understood what GDP actually measures disagreed. Their arguments were well encapsulated in Bobby Kennedy’s now famous speech in which he noted that GDP “measures everything in short, except that which makes life worthwhile”.

Thirty years later global development stands at another milestone. The 2030 Agenda is an opportunity to end poverty, protect the planet and ensure lasting peace and prosperity. Can human development thinking inspire a new generation of analysis, measurement and decision-making to revolutionise global development once again?

How does human development relate to the SDGs?

There are many links between the human development approach and the 2030 Agenda. But it is worth noting up front that the two are fundamentally different things.

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are a globally agreed tool for assessing development progress. Human development, meanwhile, is a philosophy – or lens – for considering almost any development issue one can think of.

In other words, the SDGs provide a development destination. Human development allows one to design the route to get there. Two characteristics of the approach make it particularly suitable for designing the policies that nations need to achieve the SDGs.

First, the SDGs are ‘integrated and indivisible’. And so, though the goals are discrete, the policies for achieving them need to recognise the interlinkages between the different areas. The human development approach stresses the importance of integrated thinking and the ‘joined up’ nature of development.

For instance, when trying to make it easier for someone to find work, one also needs to think about that person’s health, other responsibilities (at home, for example), education, access to transport, freedom to take a job (particularly for many women), and so on.

Second, while all nations have agreed on the importance of the SDGs, it is for each nation to pursue the goals according to their own priorities. And so, any broad development approach will need to be flexible if it is to be useful to many countries.

Human development can be thought of as broad as – or broader than – the 2030 Agenda. It is an approach that can be applied in different places, by different people and in different ways to tackle different issues.

Measuring and communicating progress

The SDGs comprise 17 goals, 169 targets and 232 indicators. Some commentators see the quantity of targets as a weakness. Others argue it is a necessary reflection of the complexity of life.

Whatever one thinks, the number of indicators undoubtedly makes it difficult to readily summarise a nation’s overall progress against the 2030 Agenda. Indeed, it is often argued that one reason for GDP’s dominance in political debate is that it provides a ‘one number’ measure of progress that captures public attention.

The Human Development Index (HDI) provides an alternative single-number measure, capturing progress in three basic dimensions of human development: health, education and living standards. It enables cross-country comparisons similar to – but broader than – those provided by GDP.

Mahbub Ul Haq, the father of the HDI, recognised the convening power of a single number: “We need a measure of the same level of vulgarity as GNP – just one number – but a measure that is not as blind to social aspects of human lives as GNP is.”

But the HDI has also attracted criticism. This is primarily because – as with almost all composite indicators – it is impossible to avoid rather arbitrary weighting when combining component indicators measured in different units: life expectancy (in years of life), income (in purchasing power) or education (in years of expected and actual schooling).

If this is problematic for the HDI, built from just four indicators, then imagine the uproar if one tried a similar approach with the SDGs’ 232 indicators.

Is there a middle ground? There might be a case for using the HDI as one of a very few measures to summarise progress towards the 2030 Agenda. Many of the SDGs relate directly to the HDI: poverty, health, education and work, for example.

Others – such as peace and hunger – relate indirectly. And if the HDI is moving in the right direction, it is rather likely that those SDGs are progressing too.

This is not to say that the HDI should replace those targets and indicators. It cannot. But the index can offer a rough indication of whether a nation is progressing against many of the SDGs.

Finding other summary measures – to sketch a fuller picture of progress towards the 2030 Agenda – is undoubtedly a challenge given the diversity of goals and targets. But work we are planning at UNDP might help.

It is fair to say that the HDI has not evolved as dramatically as the world’s development challenges have over the past 30 years. Some of the challenges the planet is grappling with are new, such as understanding what the rise in artificial intelligence might mean for the labour force a decade from now.

And some global challenges are more urgent than 30 years ago: the frightening pace of climate change being the most obvious example.

Indeed, the natural environment is a crucial component of the 2030 Agenda. But neither the HDI, nor our other composite indicators of human development, touch on environmental concerns. We intend next year to investigate how environmental – and other – considerations could be included within a composite development index.

Looking to the future

The development world is rightly focused on the SDGs. But global development will not, of course, grind to a halt in 2030 even if all the SDGs are achieved. Old concerns will continue. New ones will emerge.

And the HDR has an important role to play in ensuring we keep one eye on the horizon, even if most attention is focused on the next 11 years.

For example, this year’s HDR will be about inequality. An emerging theme suggests that although many countries are making progress in closing key development gaps, new fissures are opening just as quickly.

In many countries today, for example, the gap between rich and poor children has closed when we look at whether they have access to primary education. But differences between these children are widening when we consider the quality of that education, or whether they have access to other schooling, such as early childhood education.

These ‘new’ inequalities will have lifetime consequences, particularly given the rapid technological changes that are already impacting labour markets. It is important that we pay attention to them now. It is also important that we get ahead of the curve to see what important gaps will emerge in the next decade, even if they are not included in the SDGs.

The 2030 Agenda and the SDGs – with their universal call to action to end poverty, protect the planet and ensure that all people enjoy peace and prosperity – foreshadow a better world that the human development approach is helping to build. But the story of global development will not end in 2030.

It is our job to ensure that human development thinking will continue to shape the global development landscape for the rest of the 21st century.

* UNDP’s Human Development Report turns 30 next year. This is a moment both for celebrating the report’s impact, and for reflecting on how it can continue to help global development in a landscape dominated by the SDGs

The post Is there a Co-Relation Between Human Development & SDGs? appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Pedro Conceição is Director, UN Development Programme’s Human Development Report*

The post Is there a Co-Relation Between Human Development & SDGs? appeared first on Inter Press Service.

The Global Landscapes Forum (GLF) was held in Bonn, Germany and focused on how to give land rights the visibility needed to showcase that a rights approach, particularly when it comes to indigenous people, is a solution to the climate change crisis. Courtesy: Pilar Valbuena/GLF

By Friday Phiri
Jun 29 2019 (IPS)

The Global Landscapes Forum (GLF) was held in Bonn, Germany to rally behind a new approach to achieving a future that is more inclusive and sustainable than the present – through the establishment of secure and proper rights for all.

On Jun. 22 and 23, experts, political leaders, NGOs and indigenous peoples and communities gathered to deliberate on a methodology that emphasises rights for indigenous peoples and local communities in the management and perseveration of landscapes. The forum took place alongside the  United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change Bonn Climate Change Conference.

The forum focused giving land rights the visibility needed to showcase that a rights approach is a solution to the climate change crisis, and to develop a ‘gold standard’ for rights.

Indigenous peoples, local communities, women and youth, are believed to be the world’s most important environmental stewards but they are also among the most threatened and criminalised groups with little access to rights.

“We’re defending the world, for every single one of us,” said Geovaldis Gonzalez Jimenez, an indigenous peasant leader from Montes de María, Colombia.

But industries such as fossil fuels, large-scale agriculture, mining and others are not only endangering landscapes but also the lives of the people therein.

Already this year, said Gonzalez, his region witnessed 135 murders, adding that the day before the start of the GLF a local leader was killed in front of a 9-year-old boy.

According to the United Nations, the land belonging to the 350 million indigenous peoples across the globe is one of the most powerful shields against climate change as it holds 80 percent of the world’s biodiversity and sequesters nearly 300 billion metric tons of carbon. 

It is for this reason that amid the urgency to meet Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) under pressure from the climate threat, dialogues about the global future have begun to wake up to the fact that indigenous peoples’ relationships with the natural world are not only crucial to preserve for their own sakes, but for everyone’s.

The drafting of the document of rights was led by Indigenous Peoples Major Group (IPMG) for Sustainable Development and the Rights and Resources Initiative in the months leading up to the GLF.

Wider discussions and workshops over the two days served as a consultation on the draft (which is expected to be finalised by the end of the year) as a concrete guide for organisations, institutions, governments and the private sector on how to apply different principles of rights. This includes the rights to free, prior and informed consent; gender equality; respect to cultural heritage; and education.

U.N. Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Vicky Tauli-Corpuz said lands managed by indigenous peoples with secure rights have lower deforestation rates, higher biodiversity levels and higher carbon storage than lands in government-protected areas.

But Diel Mochire Mwenge, who leads the Initiative Programme for the Development of the Pygme in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), one of the largest indigenous forest communities in Central Africa, said he has witnessed more than one million people being evicted from the national parkland where they have long lived. He explained that they had not been given benefits from the ecotourism industries brought in to replace them and were left struggling to find new income sources.

“Our identity is being threatened, and we need to avoid being completely eradicated,” said Mwenge.

In Jharkhand, India, activist Gladson Dungdung, whose parents were murdered in 1990 for attending a court case over a local land dispute, said an amendment to India’s Forest Rights Act currently being reviewed by the Supreme Court could see 7.5 million indigenous peoples evicted from their native forest landscapes. The act can impact a further 90 million people who depend on these forests’ resources for their survival, he said.

The amendment, Dungdung said, would also give absolute power to the national forest guard; if a guard were to see someone using the forest for hunting or timber collection, they could legally shoot the person on-sight.

“Indigenous peoples are right on the frontline of the very real and dangerous fight for the world’s forests,” said actor and indigenous rights activist Alec Baldwin in a video address.

“Granted that indigenous peoples are the superheroes of the environmental movement,” Jennifer Morris, president of Conservation International wondered why they are not heard until they become victims. “Why do we not hear about these leaders until they’ve become martyrs for this cause?”

The examples of intimidation, criminalisation, eviction and hardship shared throughout the first day clearly showcased what indigenous peoples and local communities go through to preserve the forests or ‘lungs of the earth’.

The rights approach, according to conveners of the GLF, aims to strengthen respect, recognition and protection of the rights of indigenous peoples and local communities as stewards and bearers of solutions to landscape restoration, conservation, and sustainable use. It also aims to end persecution of land and environment defenders; build partnerships to enhance engagement and support for rights-based approaches to sustainable landscapes across scales and sectors; and, scale up efforts to legally recognise and secure collective land and resource rights across landscapes.

“By implementing a gold standard, we can both uphold and protect human rights and develop conservation, restoration and sustainable development initiatives that embrace the key role Indigenous peoples and local communities are already playing to protect our planet,” said Joan Carling, co-convener of IPMG.

IPMG recognises that indigenous and local communities are bearers of rights and solutions to common challenges.

“This will enable the partnership that we need to pave the way for a more sustainable, equitable and just future,” added Carling.

And the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) Director General, Robert Nasi, said when rights of local communities and indigenous peoples are recognised, there are significant benefits for the fight against climate change and environmental degradation.

“Whoever controls the rights over these landscapes has a very important part to play in fighting climate change,” he said.

In the climate and development arenas, the most current alarm being sounded is for rights–securing the land rights and freedoms of indigenous peoples, local communities and the marginalised members therein.

How can these custodians of a quarter of the world’s terrestrial surface be expected to care for their traditional lands if the lands don’t, in fact, belong to them? Or, worse, if they’re criminalised and endangered for doing so?

The basic principles of a ‘gold standard’ already exist, such as free, prior and informed consent, according to Alain Frechette of the Rights and Resources Initiative (RRI). What has been lacking, he said, is the application of principles that could be boosted by high-level statements that could “spur a race to the top”.

Related Articles

• The Environment: Latin America’s Battleground for Human Rights
• Justice for Berta Caceres Incomplete Without Land Rights: UN Rapporteur

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By Divya Srinivasan
NEW DELHI, Jun 28 2019 (IPS)

Early in 2018, India was shaken by the horrific details surrounding the abduction, gang rape, and murder of an 8-year-old girl in Kathua, a district in the north Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir.

The case is one of a string of brutal rapes to attract widespread media attention in a country where sexual violence against women and girls is commonplace.

According to India’s National Crime Records Bureau, around 100 sexual assaults are reported to police every day. Shocking though that is, the actual number of attacks is far higher, with a government survey finding that 99.1% of sexual violence cases go unreported, often due to pressure from family members.

Even in cases that do that make it into the criminal court system, justice for victims is often hard to obtain. In the Kathua case, the young victim was a Muslim from the poor nomadic Bakarwal tribe and the eight accused are part of the local majority Hindu community.

In many areas across India, political tensions run high between Muslims and Hindus and the public reaction to the murder investigation soon became embroiled in bitter sectarian divisions.

Widespread protests were held across the country with supporters alleging the men were innocent targets in an anti-Hindu plot instigated by biased Muslim investigators.

Numerous attempts were made to disrupt the police investigation and thwart legal processes. Some even resorted to death threats and attacks against the prosecution lawyers, witnesses, and victim’s family.

The Bakarwal community which they were members of came under sustained attack and the family was forced to flee the village where the assault occurred.

The situation became so dangerous that the Supreme Court decreed that a fair trial could not take place in Jammu and the case was moved to Pathankot in the neighboring state of Punjab to ensure impartiality in the legal process.

Against this backdrop, the judgment of the Special Court on 10 June 2019 came as a relief to many. Six out of the seven men charged were found guilty, with three sentenced to life in prison for gang-rape and murder, and three given five years for destroying evidence in order to protect the perpetrators. A seventh man was acquitted and an adolescent is yet to stand trial.

On a positive note, the Special Court pronounced judgment within a year of starting the trial, which is a rare achievement in India’s overburdened criminal justice system. While this is definitely laudable, the fact that justice was finally delivered (subject to appeal) in the Kathua case must not overshadow the many obstacles that had to be surmounted in reaching this acceptable conclusion.

Rather, it should be seen as an illustration of the many impediments faced by thousands of survivors of sexual violence across India, especially those from marginalized communities including Muslims, Dalits, and Adivasis.

Unfortunately, the speedy and effective justice delivered by the Special Court in Pathankot does not represent the experiences of the vast majority of survivors, and a fair and swift trial in cases of sexual violence remains the exception, rather than the norm.

In 2016 – the last year for which official statistics are available – there were 133,000 cases of sexual violence pending trial and conviction rates remain abysmally low.

The Unnao rape case is another recent high profile example in which a victim from a marginalized group is pitted against those who are more powerful. In this instance, an elected official from the ruling government party stands accused, alongside others including his driver, of raping a girl from the Dalit community.

The rape survivor attempted to set herself on fire in front of the state Chief Minister’s residence merely to get her criminal complaint registered. Her legal battle is ongoing and a criminal complaint for fraud has been filed against her by the parent of one of the men charged with rape in the case.

Meanwhile, her father was taken into police custody, allegedly after he was assaulted by supporters of the accused, and died shortly after, with a medical examination finding injuries consistent with him having been beaten.

So whilst we celebrate the verdict in the Kathua case, we must remember that every day in India, women and girls who have experienced sexual violence and assault are confronted with intimidation, threats, and coercion that inhibits them from reporting their violation or forces them into settling or dropping their cases.

Facing even greater obstacles to accessing justice are those who are subjected to additional discrimination on the grounds of class, caste, religion, or disability.

In 2014, the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) expressed concern about the escalation of rapes against women and girls in India, particularly on the basis of caste, and the downplaying by key state officials of the grave criminal nature of gender-based sexual violence.

The situation has, however, failed to improve. In April 2018, over 600 academics from India and abroad joined together to write an open letter to the Indian government, pointing out the rapes and lynchings appeared to be a targeted campaign against minorities and expressing anguish over the lack of action by the Indian government.

India’s criminal justice system remains inaccessible and insensitive to most survivors of sexual violence. These survivors face barriers in getting their cases registered with the police, have inadequate legal support, and are forced to wait years to have their cases heard.

Immediate, systemic change is needed to ensure expeditious trials and day-to-day hearing of cases, such as took place in the Kathua trial. Justice needs to be done and be seen to be done so that all survivors of sexual violence can place their faith in the legal system, safe in the knowledge that they will be heard and their claims treated seriously.

The onus is now on the Indian government to move beyond token action and ensure that the criminal justice system is responsive to survivors needs and is equipped to handle the high volume of sexual violence cases that are currently pending.

To achieve positive systemic change, state officials should work in close cooperation with civil society organizations, activists, and survivors who can provide invaluable insight and expertise.

Better implementation of existing laws, the introduction of much needed procedural reforms, and clearing the large backlog of cases pending in criminal courts, are all key. So is handling sexual violence cases with greater sensitivity, a more accountable police force, and bigger budgetary allocation by the government to end gender-based violence.

This includes giving sufficient funding to women’s rights organizations that are delivering vital support services at the grassroots to women and girls.

There is much to be done but if these important and long overdue improvements can be implemented, it means something positive can come from the tragedy of the Kathua case.

For media enquiries and interview requests please contact Equality Now Sr. Media Manager Tara Carey at tcarey@equalitynow.org; +44 (0)20 7304 6902; +44 (0)7971 556 340.

About Equality Now: Equality Now is an international human rights organization that works to protect and promote the rights of women and girls around the world by combining grassroots activism with international, regional and national legal advocacy. It’s international network of lawyers, activists, and supporters achieve legal and systemic change by holding governments responsible for enacting and enforcing laws and policies that end legal inequality, sex trafficking, sexual violence, and harmful practices such as child marriage and female genital mutilation. For more information go to www.equalitynow.org.

The post India’s Criminal Justice System is Failing Victims of Sexual Violence appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Divya Srinivasan is South Asia Consultant at Equality Now

The post India’s Criminal Justice System is Failing Victims of Sexual Violence appeared first on Inter Press Service.

By Daniel Yang
UNITED NATIONS, Jun 28 2019 (IPS)

For over 10,000 migrants fleeing to Libya from war and violence, their fate often comes down to the mercy of human traffickers or the dark unknown awaiting in detention centers.

The northern shores of Libya – the largest departure point for African migrants hoping to reach Europe – is a hotbed for modern-day slavery. Captured on land, intercepted at sea, cuffed and injured by militias and human traffickers, migrants are sent to detention centers and exposed to every abuse possible.

“From the moment [migrants] step onto Libyan soil, they become vulnerable to unlawful killings, torture and other ill-treatment, arbitrary detention, unlawful deprivation of liberty and rape,” according to a report by the United Nations Support Mission in Libya (UNSMIL).

However, not only has Libyan authority taken no measures to systematically address the issue, it has expanded its migrant detention capability with the aid of European governments.

‘Serious Health Threat’

The detention centers, controlled by Libya’s Ministry of Interior and guarded by the militias of the Government of National Accord (GNA), often hold hundreds of migrants in overcrowded spaces without proper ventilation or drinkable water.

“In some parts of the centre, toilets are overflowing and are in urgent need of repair. As a result, solid waste and garbage has piled up inside the cell for days and presents a serious health threat,” a spokesperson for the UN’s refugee agency said in a statement.

Poor sanitation has led to deteriorating health conditions inside the detention centers, causing multiple disease outbreaks.

The medical humanitarian organization Doctors Without Borders (MSF) has called the situation “a disaster,” noting that hundreds of detained migrants use “four barely functioning toilets, no shower and only sporadic access to water” in a visit to Zintan detention center.

Dr. Hussein Hassan, emergency coordinator from the World Health Organization (WHO) Libya office, told IPS: “TB with other respiratory infections, HIV and skin diseases are some of the conditions that migrants in more than 34 centers are suffering from.”

Although a TB screening campaign was done in January, those tested positive for TB were kept in the same room with the rest. According to Dr. Hassan, 16 migrants contracted with TB are in worse condition due to interruptions in medical treatment and lack of proper referral system.

An internal UN report leaked to the Irish Times said that more than 80 percent of migrants in Zintan detention center may have been infected with TB.

But TB is not the only disease present in the health crisis, according to MSF.

“Many of them suffer from malnutrition, skin infections, acute diarrhea, respiratory tract-infections and other ailments, as well as inadequate medical treatment,” MSF said in a statement. “Children are held with adults in same squalid conditions.”

However, help is not on the way. Libyan law forbids non-citizens access to public health services, effectively denying migrants proper medical care. Humanitarian organizations are often restricted entry into the centers, causing delays in treatment.

“We have been abandoned here, I cannot go back and no one wants us anywhere,” an Eritrean refugee told MSF. “I don’t know where my place on earth is.”

‘We’re dying’

Exploited by human traffickers and traded as commodities, migrants fear for their daily survival.

“Migrants held in the centers are systematically subjected to starvation and severe beatings, burned with hot metal objects, electrocuted and subjected to other forms of ill-treatment with the aim of extorting money from their families through a complex system of money transfers,” the UNSMIL report said.

Following the bloody civil war in 2011 that brought down military dictator Muammar Gaddafi, Libya fell in the hands of rival factions and Islamist groups. Two forces in the west and north fought to control the country’s oil fields. The period of lawlessness gave rise to smuggling and trafficking along Libya’s borders and coastlines.

Most migrants enter through the country’s southern border. But the warfare between the Libyan National Army and the UN-backed Government of National Accord (GNA) has left southern Libya lawless and unpatrolled.

Human traffickers and well-armed militias intercept migrants enroute to Tripoli, buying off government officials to sell migrant labor at prices as cheap as a few hundred dollars.

Traffickers have created an online market for illegal weapons despite the arms embargo posed by the UN Security Council, adding further uncertainty to the political situation.

“Seemingly unlimited arms supply fuels the erroneous belief in a military solution to the conflict and contributes to the unwillingness of actors on the ground to agree to a ceasefire,” said Jürgen Schulz, Deputy Permanent Representative of Germany to the UN.

Amid the chaos, migrants are left helpless.

“Countless migrants and refugees lost their lives during captivity by smugglers, after being shot, tortured to death, or simply left to die from starvation or medical neglect,” the UNSMIL report added. “Across Libya, unidentified bodies of migrants and refugees bearing gunshot wounds, torture marks and burns are frequently uncovered in rubbish bins, dry river beds, farms and the desert.”

“We are dying,” detainees told the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF). “We live like animals; they beat us everyday.”

‘Complicit in Tragedy’

Libyan law groups migrants, political refugees and asylum seekers in the same category under the supervision of the Interior Ministry of Department of Combating Illegal Migration (DCIM).

Even if migrants manage to escape from human traffickers and the DCIM’s search and capture along the northern coastline, European patrol ships in the Mediterranean Sea intercept and return migrant boats to Libya.

The European Union (EU) has invested millions of euros in the Libyan Coast Guard in the name of “efficient border management,” fully aware that those returned can only expect indefinite servitude and abuse.

Oxfam, Human Rights Watch (HRW) and dozens other international organizations condemned the EU’s move, calling the policy “complicit,” in an open letter in January.

“The actions of European governments have made it extremely difficult for search and rescue organizations to continue their life-saving work,” the letter said, calling an end to returning migrants to Libya.

Italy – where most migrants land after a journey across the Mediterranean – has been intercepting migrant boats and assisting to transfer migrants back to Libya since 2009. Although deemed a violation by the European Court of Human Rights’ in 2012, Italy’s effort to guard off African migrants has only intensified since then.

In 2017, the Italian parliament signed a legislation that deploys Italy’s Navy to Libyan waters, aiming to assist the Libyan Coast Guard to “fight against illegal immigration and human trafficking.”

More than 10,000 have died crossing the Mediterranean since 2014, according to the International Organization for Migration (IOM).

Yet for migrants fleeing from the insufferable, that stretch of water still represents hope.

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By PRESS RELEASE
Jun 27 2019 (IPS-Partners)

(ESCAP) – A crowdfunding platform for women farmers, online marketplaces for women-produced goods and services, and e-wallet enabled lending were among ten of the winning business models which will be co-funded by the United Nations to improve access to finance for women-owned, managed or led micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) in the region.

Launched by the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP) and the United Nations Capital Development Fund (UNCDF) in March 2019, the Women Fintech MSME Innovation Fund will support the implementation of the winning private sector FinTech and digital business solutions for women entrepreneurs in Bangladesh, Cambodia, Fiji, Myanmar, Nepal, Samoa and Viet Nam.

“We received over 100 innovative proposals from businesses registered in more than 20 countries around the region. The breadth of proposals received was impressive. It is encouraging to see how digital finance and digital solutions can be used to address some of the barriers women-led MSMEs face in accessing finance and advancing their business. ESCAP is grateful to the Government of Canada for their support to this initiative,” shared ESCAP Deputy Executive Secretary Hongjoo Hahm.

MSMEs are a vital source of employment and a significant contributor to the GDP. However, more than 45 per cent of MSMEs in Asia and the Pacific experience financial access constraints. Socio-cultural norms mean women-led enterprises have to overcome gender-specific barriers to access institutional credit and other financial services.

“To address the issues that female business owners face, we need entrepreneur-centric solutions that will allow her to grow her business and reach her full potential,” said Andrew Shaw, Senior Advisor, Fintech and Financial Inclusion at the Dutch development Bank (FMO).

The Women MSME Fintech Innovation Fund provides risk capital and technical assistance to pilot technology enabled financial service solutions for women-led enterprises. Out of the 110 applications received, the top 30 proposals were asked to pitch their ideas to an independent investment committee made up of industry experts and regulators.

Over the next year, ESCAP and UNCDF will provide financial and technical support to the ten winning companies as they develop and pilot their business initiatives. In the short-term, the initiatives aim to support more than 9,000 women led MSMEs in Bangladesh, Cambodia, Fiji, Myanmar, Nepal, Samoa and Viet Nam. The winning companies include the following:

• iFarmer (Bangladesh)
• Romoni Services (Bangladesh)
• BanhJi FinTech (Cambodia)
• SHE Investments (Cambodia)
• HFC Bank (Fiji)
• InfoCorp (Myanmar)
• Aeloi Technologies (Nepal)
• SparrowPay (Nepal)
• SkyEye (Samoa)
• Tinh Thuong Microfinance Institution (Viet Nam)

“Transforming towards digital economy requires inclusive partnerships and concerted effort towards enhancing MSMEs competitiveness. We thank ESCAP, the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, Government of Canada, FMO and Visa for their collaboration and support for bringing in the much-needed synergy on advancing women MSMEs through use of the UNCDF SHIFT Innovation Fund mechanism,” said Rajeev Kumar Gupta, SHIFT ASEAN and SAARC Programme Manager, UNCDF.

Similarly, Mr. Arif Qayyum, Senior Director of Social Impact in Asia Pacific, Visa, stated: “We believe that given the right opportunities and support, women owned-business and entrepreneurs can have a significant impact on economic growth. Partnerships such as the Women Fintech MSME Innovation Fund will give FinTechs the support they need to implement locally-relevant solutions to help more women-owned MSMEs thrive with access to formal financial services.”

The Women MSME FinTech Innovation Fund is part of a regional programme ‘Catalyzing Women’s Entrepreneurship: Creating a Gender-Responsive Entrepreneurial Ecosystem’ funded by the Government of Canada and implemented by ESCAP in partnership with UNCDF. The programme aims to support the growth of women entrepreneurs in the Asia-Pacific region through addressing the challenges faced at three levels: enabling policy environment, access to finance and use of ICT for entrepreneurship. Funding support is also provided by FMO and Visa Inc.

For more information about the winning business models and how they plan to support women entrepreneurs, please visit: https://adobe.ly/2X6jWb5.

For media enquiries, please contact:
Ms. Kavita Sukanandan, Public Information Officer, Strategic Communications and Advocacy Section, ESCAP, T: (66) 2 288 1869 / E: sukanandan@un.org

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Amir Ali, 75, plays a violin in front of his house in Kutupalong Rohingya refugee camp in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh. Reuters file photo

By Thomson Reuters Foundation, London
Jun 27 2019 (IPS-Partners)

Myanmar must grant citizenship to stateless Rohingya with roots in the country, a senior UN investigator said yesterday, as she urged the country’s leader Aung San Suu Kyi to “be the democrat she once told us she was”.

Buddhist-majority Myanmar does not recognise the Muslim Rohingya as citizens despite a long history in the country.

Hundreds of thousands fled to neighbouring Bangladesh following a 2017 crackdown by the military, which UN investigators say was executed with “genocidal intent”.

“I have seen much brutality in the different parts of my career but the rape and forced eviction of the Rohingya shook me to my core,” said Radhika Coomaraswamy, a member of the UN fact-finding mission that gathered evidence on the violence.

Coomaraswamy said statelessness was at the root of the “horrific” Rohingya crisis, which was among the worst she had seen, second only to the Rwandan genocide.

He told how soldiers shot at fleeing villagers, gang raped women and burned down houses with children inside.

Myanmar has rejected a report by the United Nations investigators calling for top generals to be prosecuted for genocide, saying the international community is making “false allegations”.

Coomaraswamy was speaking after addressing a global conference on statelessness in The Hague where the plight of the Rohingya is in the spotlight.

The Rohingya are among an estimated 10 to 15 million stateless people in the world who are not recognized as citizens of any country.

Sometimes called “legal ghosts”, stateless people are deprived of basic rights from education to employment and vulnerable to exploitation, violence and arbitrary detention.

“These are heartbreaking issues and one is never quite the same after … seeing the impact that forced statelessness has,” Coomaraswamy told delegates.

Bulldozed villages

The Rohingya are the world’s largest stateless population. About 900,000 are in Bangladesh, hundreds of thousands remain in Myanmar and others are scattered throughout Asia.

Coomaraswamy said she was struck by one elderly refugee she met who showed her a dirty plastic bag of papers.

These included the citizenship document her grandparents had received at independence, a paper from 1982 denying her citizenship, and a card she had just received stating she was a “Bengali Muslim” which gave her access to some services.

“She was holding it like this was her life. She had left everything behind (when she fled) including even her jewellery. She said she sleeps with this bag under her pillow,” Coomaraswamy told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

Myanmar has said it will take back some Rohingya who can show they have a long history in the country. But many fled to Bangladesh with nothing, and many do not want to return without full citizenship.

Coomaraswamy urged the international community to stop pressuring Rohingya to return and ensure those behind the violence are brought to justice.

“Before you force people to go back into Myanmar you must make sure the conditions are right and the Rohingyas will have … a clear pathway to citizenship,” she said.

“The problem is their villages have been bulldozed — without a tree standing.”

She said those still in Myanmar were in decrepit camps with severe restrictions on their movement, limited access to food and healthcare and sky-high malnutrition rates.

Subterranean world

The mission will hand its evidence to a new prosecutorial authority in September so that it can build cases against the generals behind the atrocities, she said.

Coomaraswamy said the desperation and sadness was overwhelming when investigators met refugees immediately after the August 2017 violence.

When the team returned to Bangladesh last month the Rohingya were “much more organized, much clearer on what they want and deeply disappointed in the international community,” she said.

“They would like to see justice and citizenship.”

She said the continued defence of the military by Myanmar’s civilian leader and Nobel peace prize winner Suu Kyi posed serious concern.

“We would hope she would change and be the democrat she once told us she was and have … the Rohingyas (who lived there) come back … with a guarantee of full rights.”

Coomaraswamy told the conference that increasing numbers of people globally were ending up stateless after “falling between the cracks”.

They lived in a “subterranean world” without formal rights, documents or sense of belonging, at risk of violence and easy prey to traffickers.

“Statelessness is no longer the exception in the world – it has become endemic,” she said.

This story was originally published by The Daily Star, Bangladesh

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By Fergus Watt and Richard Ponzio
WASHINGTON DC, Jun 27 2019 (IPS)

Despite the polarization and stasis that characterizes so much of the present politics at the United Nations, Secretary-General António Guterres is betting that the 75th anniversary of the organization, in 2020, will provide an opportunity for the international community to begin to address the “crisis in multilateralism,” and to shape a more robust and effective organization.

On 14 June, the UN General Assembly adopted by consensus a “modalities resolution” (A/RES/73/299, titled “Commemoration of the Seventy-fifth Anniversary of the United Nations”) setting out the framework and practical arrangements for actions by various UN stakeholders to mark the UN’s 75th anniversary.

A growing civil society network, the “UN2020 Initiative,” has campaigned since early 2017 for using this anniversary as an opportunity to involve governments and other UN stakeholders in a process of stocktaking, review and consideration of measures to strengthen the organization.

And prospects for a stand-alone resolution for UN75 gained momentum earlier this year with the active encouragement from the President of the General Assembly, Ms. María Fernanda Espinosa of Ecuador.

The resolution identifies the theme for the 75th anniversary (which is meant to guide all activities, meetings and conferences organized by the United Nations in 2020) as “The future we want, the United Nations we need: reaffirming our collective commitment to multilateralism.”

A Leaders Summit is scheduled for 21 September 2020, while “meaningful observance ceremonies” took place on June 26 (the 75th anniversary of the signing of the Charter) and October 24 (UN Day). A youth plenary will also be organized in the spring of 2020.

An outcome document will be adopted at the Leaders’ Summit. Arrangements for the negotiation of this political declaration are to be determined by the President of the 74th session of the General Assembly, Ambassador Tijani Muhammad-Bande of Nigeria.

Against this backdrop, the Secretary-General has appointed a Special Adviser for 75th Anniversary Preparations, highly-regarded Fabrizio Hochschild Drummond of Chile, who had previously served in the S-G’s Executive Office as Assistant Secretary-General for Strategic Coordination.

At a meeting June 5-7 hosted by the Washington-based Stimson Center, along with the Global Challenges Foundation, One Earth Future Foundation, and the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung New York Office, Hochschild shared with civil society representatives a draft of the Secretary-General’s ambitious plans for a “UN@75” program of activities.

The Secretariat aims to stimulate a “global dialogue” at the local, national and international levels on “The future we want, the United Nations we need.”

From “classrooms to board rooms, village houses to houses of parliament,” the intention is to employ a mix of intellectual, communications, media, and engagement tools in order to catalyze widespread public engagement on the role of the UN system in addressing global challenges.

All 130 UN Resident Coordinators will be involved, as will UN regional commissions and many UN agencies and programmes. Young people in particular are expected to be drivers of this worldwide dialogue.

The planning document for UN@75 recognizes that an unprecedented confluence of existential threats, systems changes and new actors, including the role of mega-corporations and tech giants, present new governance challenges.

These changes “are occurring faster than public institutions ability to adapt or regulate.” The document calls for “a reflection on successes as well as failures, inviting transformational thinking about the potentially momentous paradigm shifts for how the multilateral system as a whole confronts global challenges.”

More than a simple commemoration, these proposals go far beyond what was organized for the UN’s 70th anniversary in 2015.

Considering the current levels of international hostility and indifference to the very idea of international cooperation and a rules-based world order, the commitment of Mr. Guterres to an ambitious UN@75 program, though commendable, surely faces long odds. Many public officials in similar circumstances would be more risk-averse.

Is there a public appetite for such a far-reaching worldwide dialogue about the United Nations and global governance? We shall see.

The post Will “UN@75” Revive Multilateralism? appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Fergus Watt coordinates the civil society-led UN2020 Initiative. Richard Ponzio directs the Just Security 2020 program at the Stimson Center in Washington D.C.

The post Will “UN@75” Revive Multilateralism? appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Frank Bainimarama is Prime Minister of Fiji

By Frank Bainimarama
SUVA, Fiji, Jun 27 2019 (IPS)

SUVA, Fiji, 27 June 2019 (IPS) — Are the most climate-vulnerable nations of the world right to demand that developed and major economies commit to carbon neutrality by 2050?

Should the poorest nations of the world insist that the “haves” put their significant economic and political resources behind aggressive efforts to combat climate change?

Frank Bainimarama

Do we have the right to expect political leaders to show the courage, vision and will to lead their citizens to responsible action to stem the growth of global warming?

The answer is yes, of course, and the reason is simple: We cannot save the world from climate catastrophe if the largest emitters of CO2 don’t step up now.

And the most vulnerable countries of the world cannot adequately reduce our emissions and adapt to the effects of climate change without economic support from the developed world that is flexible and accessible. Governments, private financial institutions, international financial institutions and foundations must be a part of the solution.

Last week, European Union leaders missed a critical opportunity to develop a more aggressive collective mitigation target by 2020 and achieve carbon neutrality by 2050. Perhaps more importantly, they had a chance to lead the world to carbon neutrality, but they failed to step up at the critical moment.

Their failure was a bitter disappointment to countries, like Fiji, that are doing everything within our means to achieve those same results. Island nations are determined to lead by example.

We have laid the ground work, but unfortunately, our efforts, strenuous though they may be, will not be enough alone. We need developed economies—and advanced developing economies—to make the same strenuous effort.

We are at a critical juncture in this fight, at a point where we know we can still act globally to change the course of human-made climate change or fail to act and face the reverberations of climate, environmental and biodiversity crises for generations to come.

The political and scientific ground has shifted under our feet since we signed the Paris Agreement in 2015. Governments have changed, and populists and climate sceptics have gained ascendancy in some countries.

Then, last October, the IPCC released its Special Report on 1.5 Degrees, which made it clear that time is closing in on us; we simply don’t have the time to turn the tide that we thought we had in Paris.

It was a struggle then for small island states and members of the High Ambition Coalition to win the inclusion in the Paris Agreement of an aspiration to limit global warming to of 1.5 degrees, when the official goal of the agreement was 2 degrees.

Now we find that we are less than 12 years away from dramatic, far-reaching, and possibly irreversible consequences of surpassing 1.5 degrees of warming if we keep going the way we’re going. We simply cannot miss opportunities like the one the EU missed last week, and we must embrace all possible solutions.

There are three things we need to focus on now. First, we need to reduce the amount of carbon we are releasing into the atmosphere. This means that countries need to set much more ambitious targets in their national climate commitments under the Paris Agreement that lead to rapid decarbonisation of high-emitting industries and sectors.

I am encouraged to see that the number of countries that are stepping up to the 2020 deadline is growing, but I’m both proud and concerned that most of these are from the developing world. The names of many developed and major economies are still notably absent from this list.

Second, we need to remove more of the carbon that has already been emitted into the atmosphere and this means massively increasing our investment in nature — developing and implementing natural climate solutions that can be implemented worldwide.

Nature has the incredible power to remove carbon dioxide from the earth’s atmosphere, but we are currently failing to protect this vital resource. We will not be able to achieve 1.5 degrees without dramatically recalibrating how we look after and restore our natural landscapes. Under the leadership of China and New Zealand, we are expecting a big step forward on this front at the upcoming UN Secretary-General’s Climate Summit (in New York on September 23 this year).

And, third, developed and major economies should increase the amount — and rapidly deploy — climate finance for developing countries to allow us to achieve and increase our mitigation targets, as well as urgently build our resilience to the impacts of climate change. This means at least $100 billion a year by 2020.

The irony of the EU’s failure of will is that so many European leaders understand fully what is at stake, and many individual European countries—and non-European countries—are beginning to take responsible action.

Still, it is a sad fact that the Marshall Islands and Fiji—two of the most marginal carbon emitters in the world—are the only two countries to have officially submitted long-term plans to the UN for achieving net-zero emissions by 2050.

The Paris Agreement committed signatories to achieving net carbon neutrality by the second half of the 21st century, but it was unclear what was intended by the term “second half.”

We know now that the deadline must be the beginning of the second half, not the end. Fifty years of ambiguous wiggle room, 50 years of hesitancy, and 50 years of procrastination will lead us to the catastrophe we fear.

Setting a date for achieving net-zero, matched with boosting short-term action, is critical and that’s where national leadership comes in. It gives all the relevant stakeholders, government departments, businesses and citizens the signal they need to start making concerted changes.

If developing countries can develop robust emissions-reduction targets that truly drive us toward the goals we agreed to in Paris, then other nations can, too.

The EU, and the rest of the developed world, can still change course. The UN Secretary General’s Climate Summit in September will provide a forum for every country to lay out their climate ambitions before the world and be judged.

I urge developed countries to come to New York with the most aggressive and most ambitious plans they can devise. In Paris, the small island states used our moral weight to push the world to accept the aspiration of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees. In New York, vulnerable developing countries must do the same.

We cannot accept that countries with the means to do more will sit on the sidelines and do less.

The post We Cannot Save the World from Climate Catastrophe if Largest Emitters of CO2 Don’t Step up Now appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Frank Bainimarama is Prime Minister of Fiji

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United Nations Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions Agnes Callamard determined that Saudi Arabia is “responsible” for the “extrajudicial” murder of Washington Post writer Jamal Khashoggi. Courtesy: United Nations Photo/Manuel Elias

By Tharanga Yakupitiyage
UNITED NATIONS, Jun 27 2019 (IPS)

Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi was deliberately killed at the hands of state actors and journalists around the world are increasingly seeing the same fate, said a United Nations expert.

After a six-month investigation, U.N. Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions Agnes Callamard determined that Saudi Arabia is “responsible” for the “extrajudicial” murder of Washington Post writer Khashoggi.

“This killing was a result of an elaborate mission involving extensive coordination and significant human and financial resources. It was overseen, planned, and endorsed by high level officials and it was premeditated,” she said to the Human Rights Council.

“The right to life is a right at the core of international human rights protection. If the international community ignores targeted killing designed to silence peaceful expression, it puts at risk the protection on which all human rights depend,” Callamard added.

Since it occurred at a consulate in Turkey, the killing cannot be considered a “domestic matter” and violates the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations as well as the prohibition against extraterritorial use of force in times of peace, making it an international crime.

Callamard pointed to the need to establish a U.N. criminal investigation to ensure the delivery of justice, noting that the inquiry undertaken by the Saudi authorities was woefully inadequate.

“The investigation carried out by the Saudi authorities has failed to address the chain of command. It is not only a question of who ordered the killing—criminal responsibility can be derived from direct or indirect incitement or from the failure to prevent and protect,” she said.

The government of Saudi Arabia continues to deny its involvement and rejected the new report, stating that it is based on “prejudice and pre-fabricated ideas.”

While the killing of Khashoggi was brutal, his story is just one of many cases of targeting journalists around the world.

“This execution is emblematic of a global pattern of targeted killings of journalists, human rights defenders, and political activists,” Callamard said.

According to Reporters Without Borders (RSF), 80 journalists were killed, 348 imprisoned, and 60 held hostage in 2018, reflecting an unprecedented level of violence against journalists.

Javier Valdez Cárdenas, a Mexican journalist who investigated cartels, was killed in May 2017.

Just days after, Valdez’s colleagues and widow began receiving messages infected with a spyware known as Pegasus, which was bought by the Mexican government from Israeli cyber warfare company NSO Group.

According to the NSO Group, Pegasus is only sold to governments for the purposes of fighting terror and investigating crime. However, digital watchdog Citizen Lab found 24 questionable targets, including some of Mexico’s most prominent journalists.

The programme has also been used elsewhere by repressive governments such as the United Arab Emirates which targeted and imprisoned human rights defender Ahmed Manor for his social media posts. In Canada, critic of the Saudi regime and friend of Khashoggi, Omar Abdulaziz, was also infected with the spyware by a Saudi Arabia-linked operator.

While a suspect was arrested in 2018 for the murder of Valdez, it is unclear if they are the main culprit.

“The arrest of a suspect in the murder of Javier Valdez Cárdenas is a welcome step, but we urge the Mexican authorities to identify all those responsible for the killing, including the mastermind,” said Committee to Protect Journalists’ (CPJ) Mexico Representative Jan-Albert Hootsen.

“Too often, investigations into the murders of Mexican journalists stall after low-level suspects have been arrested, which allows impunity to thrive,” he added.

The Mexican government also launched an investigation into the misuse of such surveillance technology, but as yet no one has been punished.

Callamard urged Saudi Arabia to release those imprisoned for their opinion or belief and to undertake an in-depth assessment of the institutions “that made the crime against Mr. Khashoggi possible.”

She also stressed the need to strengthen laws to protect individuals against targeted killings, including the sharing of information if an individual is at risk.

“There are clear signs of increasingly aggressive tactics by States and non-State actors to permanently silence those who criticise them. The international community must take stock of these hostile environments, it must take stock of the findings of my investigation into the killing of Mr. Khashoggi,” Callamard told the Human Rights Council.

“Denunciations are important, but they are no longer sufficient. The international community must demand accountability and non repetition. It must strengthen protections and prevention urgently. Silence and inaction will only cause further injustice and global instability,” she added.

Related Articles

• Don’t “Whitewash” Khashoggi’s Murder
• Truth Never Dies: Justice for Slain Journalists
• “A Year of Shame” for Middle East and North Africa

The post Beyond Saudi Arabia: The World Is Failing Journalists appeared first on Inter Press Service.

By Caley Pigliucci
UNITED NATIONS, Jun 26 2019 (IPS)

The feeling in the air at a recent meeting of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) was one of compassion and benevolence.

The focus was on children as Foreign Terrorist Fighters (FTFs), a subject that everyone at the panel discussion argued is delicate and politically sensitive.

Alexandra Martins, the Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice Officer at the UNODC, pointed out that “”Nobody is a lost cause, and there is always a possibility to rehabilitate and reintegrate children from these groups.”

Two of her words were repeated by almost every speaker: “rehabilitate and reintegrate”.

The meeting was meant to discuss the release of the UNODC Handbook on Children Recruited and Exploited by Terrorist and Violent Extremist Groups.

The roadmap’s main goal is to provide UN’s 193 Member States with guidance on how to treat children associated with terrorist and violent extremist groups. It argues for an approach to rehabilitate those associated with or accused of being FTFs, and to reintegrate them back into their communities.

Though many of the children accused have taken part in terrorism, the UNODC advocates for a change in the way Member States handle the children.

Speaking during the release of the handbook, Dr. Jehangir Khan, Director at the UN Office of Counter-Terrorism/Counter Terrorism Centre (UN OCT/CCT), said “children must be seen first and foremost as victims.”

The roadmap was released alongside 4 technical assistance tools: UNODC Handbook on Children Recruited and Exploited by Terrorist and Violent Extremist Groups: The Role of the Justice System (2018); the UNODC Training Manual on Prevention of Child Recruitment by Terrorist and Violent Extremist Groups (May 2019); the UNODC Training Manual on Rehabilitation and Reintegration of Child Victims of Recruitment by Terrorist and Violent Extremist Groups (to be released in July 2019); the UNODC Training Manual on Justice for Children in the Context of Counter-Terrorism (May 2019).

The documents are based on three years of technical assistance work conducted by the UNODC to Member States that have found children as FTFs.

One country already advocating its support for the Roadmap is Lebanon. Until 2013, children accused of being or associated with terrorist fighters were kept in adult prisons and tried as such.

“It is in prison that I learned the meaning of life” one of the boys, aged 19, remarked in a video played by the representative from Lebanon stated.

A step in the direction of treating children as victims came in 2013, when they were moved to a juvenile prison.

Lebanon’s Head of the Prison Administration at the Ministry of Justice of Lebanon, Judge Raja AbiNader, said: “By showing them the same respect we showed the rest of the children, things started to change.”

Martins told IPS that there are many such countries, like Lebanon, whose children and communities have already benefited from the guidance offered in the Roadmap.

“As a result of the protocol, children deprived of liberty for association with Boko Haram were released and transferred to child protection authorities to begin a process of reintegration in their communities,” she said.

Martins stated that more than 30 countries have received guidance on child FTFs from the UNODC’s, from 6 different regions (West Africa, East Africa, Middle East and North Africa, South Asia, Southeast Asia and Central Asia).

Despite the Roadmap offering guidance, at the panel discussion, Martins clarified that “there is no one size fits all approach” on handling children.

There have been different approaches offered on handling the children in general, and specifically when dealing with different genders.

There will be a second event during the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) in September that Martins hopes will “promote the guidance further.”

Gender and the Roadmap

But there appears to be some disagreement still on the treatment of boys and girls during the rehabilitation and reintegration processes.

Under international law (Havana Rule 87.d., Bangkok Rules), boys and girls must be held in separate detention facilities. But the Roadmap encourages them to still engage together, to foster development.

The Roadmap also advocates for targeted approaches on the treatment of girls.

Martins told IPS that girls are “considerably more vulnerable to both physical and sexual abuse and require special attention in this regard.”

She noted that “girls deprived of liberty are exposed to other forms of sexual violence such as threats of rape, touching, ‘virginity testing’, being stripped naked, invasive body searches, insults and humiliations of a sexual nature.”

Given these sensitive issues, and the fact that girls are different physiologically and often psychologically from boys at certain development stages, the Roadmap advocates for an awareness of gender and for specific targeted approaches.

“A section in the manual alludes that girl victims of recruitment and exploitation by terrorist and violent extremist groups require specific approaches to reintegration, because of their increased exposure to violence at multiple levels and from different actors,” Martins said.

But it is not clear yet that this section on gender differences has been implemented.

While Martins says the Roadmap takes seriously the different approaches for girls and boys, Judge AbiNader told IPS that in Lebanon “Very honestly, we’re not working specifically with girls concerning rehabilitation.”

As of June 7th, Lebanon has 10 boys and 2 girls in prison for being associated with or accused of being FTFs.

When asked why there were not specific programs that tackle children of divergent genders differently, he argued that they girls “should be treated the same” during rehabilitation.

“And it hasn’t been discussed because the number [of girls in prison for accusations of being FTFs] is so low,” he added.

Despite the low numbers of accused girls in detention facilities, Martins believes that targeted women’s health education should be provided, and that “Access to age- and gender-specific programmes and services, such as counselling for sexual abuse or violence, has to be given to girls.”

Though the UNODC has advocated a change in outlook on children involved with terrorist organizations, the Roadmap’s release is just the beginning of that change being implemented.

The post A Roadmap for Children as Victims, not Terrorists appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Credit: Bigstock.

By Esther Ngumbi
ILLINOIS, United States, Jun 26 2019 (IPS)

The U.S Agency for International Development (USAID) Administrator Mark Green recently concluded a one-week visit to USAID-funded programs at several African countries, including the Democratic Republic of Congo, Rwanda, Kenya and Mozambique. His goal was to promote sustainable paths to self-reliance, including in the context of food security programs.

Finding sustainable pathways to self-reliance, especially for many African countries whose citizens continue to be affected by hunger and food insecurity, is indeed important. Presently, over 257 million African citizens are hungry. In addition, according to a recent report titled For Lack of Will – Child Hunger in Africa, over 50 percent of all child deaths in Africa are caused by hunger.

Importantly, achieving food security will set the stage and pave way for African citizens to meet their food needs, create surpluses for export and tap on the opportunities that come with urbanization and transition from developing to emerging economies.

There are many strategies and pathways that African countries must implement to attain food security, and this includes learning from countries that have made remarkable progress in this area, including the U.S.

Of course, no country is perfect and hunger and food insecurity is still an issue that affects close to 40 million people in the U.S., (around 12 percent of the population). Still, the U.S. has made remarkable progress and great strides in achieving food security for all its citizens.

As a result, there are lessons African governments can learn from them as they work to attain food security and improve childhood nutrition.

The frameworks that have propelled the U.S. to become food secure encompass a multitude of several interlinked targeted strategies and initiatives, including prioritizing the agricultural sector, investing in innovative agricultural initiatives that are resilient and responsive to new challenges such as climate change, and building safety nets that can be tapped upon by citizens who need the help.

The frameworks that have propelled the U.S. to become food secure encompass a multitude of several interlinked targeted strategies and initiatives, including prioritizing the agricultural sector, investing in innovative agricultural initiatives that are resilient and responsive to new challenges such as climate change, and building safety nets that can be tapped upon by citizens who need the help

Further, many of the initiatives have clear goals, targets, benchmarks and indicators of success. In addition, these initiatives have built-in monitoring and evaluations systems to ensure they achieve the intended outcomes.

Take California, for example, also referred to as the agricultural powerhouse of the U.S. Despite facing drought, one of the extremities that comes with a changing climate, recent Agricultural Statistics Review shows that investing in innovative agricultural initiatives has allowed the State to maintain sustainable agricultural crop production, and, consequently become food secure.

The State of Illinois ranks nationally and internationally in maize and soybean output, and has maintained these rankings despite the many challenges farmers face including a changing climate. By using all the available and recent agricultural technologies and tools such as improved seed varieties, farmers have been to maintain crop yields, translating into food security. Furthermore, the United States Department of Agriculture continuously supports all states and provides detailed reports and resources that farmers can consult.

Importantly, the frameworks that have allowed the U.S. to be food secure have a common backbone — the land-grant university system. Through it, many Land-Grant Universities in the U.S. such as University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign, Cornell University, Purdue University, consistently carry agricultural research coupled with a functioning extension service arm that delivers discoveries and recent science-based information to farmers and rural communities.

For example, Purdue and University of Kentucky recently collaborated with USDA in an effort to provide research, extension and other assistance to rural communities.  Cornell University has Small Farms program dedicated to supporting farmers.  Other Land-Grant universities with similar programs include Penn State University, Virginia State University, and University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Complimenting these efforts have been investments by both the State and Federal governments agencies such as the USDA and advancements in new technologies and equipment, irrigation systems, soil health building systems, access to water and electricity, improved production systems and production practices, infrastructure like roads, and sound policies as well as risk management.

The USDA, for example, recently announced that it would support all U.S. farmers impacted by recent trade disruption. This is in addition to several other programs for farmers that are impacted by other extremities that come with a changing climate.

At the same time, the U.S. also invested in improving its phytosanitary standards, further allowing it to trade commodities, allowing for export-led economy. In addition, U.S. citizens have access to food they cannot produce all the times.

A recent technical brief showed that many African countries phytosanitary standards are not up to date, further limiting African countries from benefiting from exporting and importing food.

Countries in Africa that are the most food secure such as Tunisia, Mauritius, Morocco, Algeria, Ghana, Senegal and South Africa and those which are making progress toward being more food secure such as Ethiopia, Tanzania, Nigeria and Kenya have achieved their progress by using some of the same strategies as the U.S, through USAID Feed the Future Initiative, and other USAID funded programs and initiatives such as  USAID Feed the Future Innovation labs .

Other African countries can follow suit. Of course, other foundational frameworks these countries have are stable democracies and export-driven economies.

Building a food secure future can be achieved when countries are open to weighing in on proven strategies.  Time is now.

 

Esther Ngumbi is Distinguished Post Doctoral Researcher, Entomology Department at the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign, Illinois, World Policy Institute Senior Fellow, Aspen Institute New Voices Food Security Fellow, Clinton Global University Initiative Agriculture Commitments Mentor and Ambassador

 

The post Fighting Food Insecurity in Africa – Lessons from the United States appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Delegates at the International Labor Conference in Geneva which adopted a landmark Treaty last week.

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Jun 26 2019 (IPS)

Against the back drop of widespread charges of sexual abuse and harassment at workplaces– including the United Nations– the International Labour Conference (ILC) last week adopted a “Convention” and a set of “Recommendations” to protect workers and employees worldwide.

According to the Geneva-based International Labour Organisation (ILO), whose broad policies are set by the ILC, the Convention will enter into force 12 months after two member States have ratified it. The “Recommendation”, which is not legally binding, provides guidelines on how the Convention could be applied.

Rothna Begum, women’s rights senior researcher at Human Rights Watch (HRW) in Geneva, told IPS the treaty needs to be ratified by a couple of states before it can start to go into effect (and it takes another year after the initial ratification to come into force).

The Convention, she said, is an international treaty that is binding on Member States that ratify it, while the accompanying Recommendation provides more detailed guidance on how to apply the Convention.

“The Recommendation is not binding but it provides the necessary guidance for understanding the obligations set out in the Convention.”

She pointed out that there is also a resolution that once adopted will direct the ILO to have a strategy to have a ratification campaign and to help governments, employers’ organizations and workers’ organizations to implement it.

Paula Donovan, a women’s rights activist and co-Director of AIDS-Free World and Code Blue Campaign, told IPS: “It’s breathtaking to realize that less than a decade ago, few imagined that such a progressive convention could be adopted at the ILO at all, never mind by a landslide”

Ironically, she pointed out, the UN’s unique immunity means that its own workplaces won’t be affected, even in countries that ratify this convention.

“But last week’s victory should inspire the hope that the UN might choose to change with the times, and actually join the revolution it champions,” she declared.

Asked about its implementation, Dr Palitha Kohona, a former Chief of the UN Treaty Section, told IPS: “The question of whether the ILO convention on violence and harassment in the world of work is mandatory or voluntary would depend on its own provisions”.

Generally, ILO conventions, of which there were 189 as of July 2018, permit states parties to implement their own treaty obligations using their own mechanisms.

In general, he said, treaties are best implemented where the states parties feel obliged to implement them in their own domestic jurisdictions because implementation is in their own best interest.

Voluntary implementation produces the best results. Where a treaty has mandatory provisions, their implementation would require the creation of a range of international implementation mechanisms, which is not easy, said Dr Kohona, a former Permanent Representative of Sri Lanka to the United Nations.

Asked about the effectiveness of the treaty and its implementation by member states, he said this would depend on the convention itself.

If it is a requirement for the Convention to be ratified for it to enter into force for a particular signatory state, until such ratification is effected, the convention would not be legally binding on that state.

There are many examples where states had signed international conventions but not ratified them, he noted.

“In such cases, due to the provisions of the convention itself, non-ratifying states would not be legally bound by its provisions. Other treaties, provide for them to be legally binding on signature alone. This is a choice that the negotiating states must make,” he added.

Asked if ILO should assign the task of monitoring how the treaty is being implemented, Dr Kohona said” “It is not uncommon for the organization, under whose auspices a treaty is negotiated, to be given the task of monitoring its implementation by participating States.

But the treaty/convention must make the necessary provision for this. Environment conventions generally confer this responsibility on the bodies established under them, he declared.

Ma. Victoria (Mavic) Cabrera Balleza, Chief Executive Officer (CEO), Global Network of Women Peacebuilders, told IPS the adoption of the ILO Convention on Violence and Harassment is a watershed moment in the struggle to eliminate violence against women in the workplace.

When it is ratified and fully and effectively enforced, this will change the lives of women around the world, she added.

“When women know they are safe, they will be more productive, more inspired and more motivated. That would be beneficial to everyone — to the women themselves, to the labor movement, to the business sector and to governments,” said Cabrera Balleza.

“This also proves that the #MeToo movement is or could be diverse. It’s not only for white women or women in North America and Europe. I sincerely hope that more women –especially in workplaces in developing countries will speak up about the harassment and violence committed against them; that all perpetrators will be brought to justice.”

She pointed out that the new treaty has proven that #MeToo can really be #WeToo! The next step is to get all governments to ratify the treaty.

“Civil society around the world should unite and mobilize to ensure that no government will get away with not ratifying it. Equally if not more important, ensure that the governments, the employers, the unions and workers’ associations are all held accountable for the enforcement of this groundbreaking treaty,” she declared.

Asked if the Convention applies to international institutions like the United Nations, an ILO spokesman told IPS that it applies to Member States that have ratified it, “and could be also used as reference for policies in international organizations.”

The new Convention—the Violence and Harassment Convention – was adopted by 439 votes in favour, seven against, with 30 abstentions. The Violence and Harassment Recommendation was passed with 397 votes in favour, 12 against and 4 abstentions.

After the adoption of the treaty, ILO Director-General Guy Ryder said the new standards recognize the right of everyone to a world of work free from violence and harassment.

”The next step is to put these protections into practice, so that we create a better, safer, decent, working environment for women and men. I am sure that, given the co-operation and solidarity we have seen on this issue, and the public demand for action, we will see speedy and widespread ratifications and action to implement.”

In a statement released last week the Center for Women’s Global leadership said the progress in moving from widespread awareness of gender-based violence (GBV) in the world of work, to a mechanism providing accountability to end it, is the direct result of pressure and support from women’s rights and labor rights advocates around the world, including the 16 Days community who embraced our global call to action #ILOendGBV.

“These new standards recognize a broad definition of “worker” and “world of work,” which has the potential to address the diverse range of work realities for women; and we welcome an acknowledged link between domestic violence and GBV in the world of work”

An intersectional approach will be required in implementation, to ensure these standards are inclusive of marginalized women workers and encompass situations of vulnerability.

This Convention will positively impact billions of women around the world, and provide a strong foundation for continued progress in our effort to secure equality, regardless of identity, the statement added.

“ We will look to states and employers to develop promising practices, so that they not only meet these new standards, but reflect true leadership in honoring women’s rights as human rights, and the right to decent conditions of work as a human right,” the statement added.

Meanwhile, according to HRW, the treaty was adopted at the ILO’s International Labour Conference (ILC) comprising governments, worker representatives, and employer representatives.

ILO members spent two years negotiating the legally binding convention and an accompanying recommendation that provides guidance on implementing the convention obligations.

The treaty would cover workers, trainees, workers whose employment has been terminated, job seekers, and others, and applies to both formal and informal sectors. It also recognizes the impact of domestic violence on work. The ILC is the body that develops, adopts, and monitors international labor standards.

The treaty would require governments that ratify it to develop national laws prohibiting workplace violence and to take preventive measures such as information campaigns and requiring companies to have workplace policies on violence.

The treaty also obligates governments to monitor the issue and to provide access to remedies through complaint mechanisms, witness protection measures, and victim services, and to provide measures to protect against retaliation.

The writer can be contacted at thalifdeen@ips.org

The post How Effective is a Non-Binding Treaty Aimed at Ending Harassment at Work Places? appeared first on Inter Press Service.

As the world’s soils store more carbon than the planet’s atmosphere, the restoration of soil and degraded land is therefore essential in the fight against climate change with a potential to store up to 3 million tons of carbon annually. Pictured here is a 2012 reclamation project of desertified, sandified land on either side of the Sudu desert road in Wengniute County, China. Credit: Manipadma Jena/IPS

By Tharanga Yakupitiyage
UNITED NATIONS, Jun 26 2019 (IPS)

The international community still has a long way to go to chart a new, sustainable course for humanity. But the upcoming climate change meetings provide a renewed opportunity to tackle climate change head on.

Ahead of the United Nations Climate Action Summit in September, governments are gearing up to convene in Abu Dhabi for a preparatory meeting Jun. 30 to Jul. 1. The meeting is expected to have the highest official international participation since the Paris Agreement in 2015.

“This summit is a unique opportunity to make sure that climate is not perceived as an environmental issue…the summit allows us to bring climate into the overall agenda of development of a country,” said Special Envoy of the Secretary-General on the Climate Summit, Luis Alfonso de Alba.

“I think that’s the only solution for the climate. As long as we keep climate as an environmental issue, we will never achieve the level of transformation that is needed to deal with the problem and particularly to move to a different way in which we consume and produce as a society,” he added.

During the Abu Dhabu climate meeting, governments will make concrete proposals for initiatives on various climate change related issues from finance to energy. An agenda, recommendations, and draft resolutions will then be presented and adopted during the September summit.

In recent years, the climate change debate has been largely focused on energy, particularly the use of fossil fuels. Most recently, European Union (EU) leaders failed to reach a consensus on how to make the EU carbon neutral by 2050 as coal-reliant countries rejected the proposal. This sparked protests across the continent, including a 40,000-strong rally at a German coal mine.

U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres also called for an end to new coal plants after 2020 as well as fossil fuel subsidies.

While such moves are essential to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, sustainable land management is another crucial aspect that is often overlooked.

According to the U.N. Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD), the land use sector represents almost 25 percent of total global emissions. As the world’s soils store more carbon than the planet’s atmosphere, the restoration of soil and degraded land is therefore essential in the fight against climate change with a potential to store up to three million tons of carbon annually.

Agroforestry could be an essential tool to address land degradation and help communities to mitigate and adapt to climate change.

A land management system where trees and shrubs are grown together with crops and pasture, agroforestry has been found to provide numerous benefits including improved soil and water quality, increased biodiversity, high crop yields and thus incomes, reduced greenhouse gas emissions, and increased carbon sequestration. 

In Niger, agroforestry has helped restore five million hectares of land through the planting of 200 million trees. This has resulted in an additional half a million tons of grain production each year, improving climate change resilience and food security of an estimated 2.5 million people.

Such sustainable land management is therefore a potential low-hanging fruit for achieving nationally determined contributions (NDCs) under the Paris Agreement.

Already, 40 percent of developing countries propose agroforestry as a measure in their NDCs, including 70 percent of African countries.

However, current commitments for long-term climate action remain insufficient as it covers only one-third of emissions reductions required by 2030.

In fact, U.N. Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights Philip Alston that even if current targets are met, the world is still at risk of a “climate apartheid” where the wealthy are able to pay to escape heat and hunger while the rest is left to suffer.

“Maintaining the current course is a recipe for economic catastrophe,” the U.N. expert said.

“States have marched past every scientific warning and threshold, and what was once considered catastrophic warming now seems like a best-case scenario. Even today, too many countries are taking short-sighted steps in the wrong direction,” Alston added.

De Alba echoed similar sentiments regarding the uneven commitment to climate action, stating: “If we are dealing and trying to improve the transition of energy, if we are concerned about land degradation and the protection of the forests, if we are all looking into innovation—I think we are all working for climate change whether we label it that way or not.”

Countries must therefore not only scale up their commitments, but also address and close existing gaps.

For instance, the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) found that agroforestry is not included in countries’ measurement, reporting, and verification (MRV) systems, including the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change’s (UNFCCC) own systems.

If agroforestry remains excluded from MRV, its contributions to national and international climate objectives will remain invisible.

“If agroforestry trees aren’t counted in MRV systems, then in many ways they don’t count. Only if agroforestry resources are measured, reported and verified will countries gain access to the financial and other support they need to effectively include agroforestry in climate change adaptation and mitigation,” CGIAR said in a study, recommending the creation of guidelines for agroforestry reporting.

De Alba stressed the need for the international community to act quickly.

“Fighting climate change is compatible with growth, compatible with the fight against poverty…it is important that we continue the work from Abu Dhabi into the summit to get the best results.”

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By Sivananthi Thanenthiran
UNITED NATIONS, Jun 25 2019 (IPS)

The increase in world population by 2 billion in the next 30 years will present a serious global challenge especially if we do not find new paradigms of development thought and renewed global political leadership.

Our region, the Asia and the Pacific region is already home to 60 per cent of the world’s population – some 4.3 billion people, with India and China being the most populous countries.

A further increase in population means it will be harder to achieve the 17 SDGs with the 169 different targets – aimed at fighting poverty, reducing inequality, addressing climate change, ensuring quality primary and secondary education for all children, gender equality, and reduced child mortality – to ensure nobody is left behind.

Marginalised populations already suffer deprivations: poor women, women in living in rural and hard-to-reach areas are those who are unable to access to contraceptive services even when they desire to have a smaller family size. This unmet need amongst those left behind needs to be addressed, if we are looking at ensuring that these groups do not get left behind.

We are currently facing heightened conflicts over resources, accelerated effects of climate change, political strife and economic collapse in a world marked by inequalities.

These trends cannot be contained within borders and will spill over and the global community must be aware – that this will raise poverty levels, and give rise to displaced persons, refugees and migrants.

Besides these already well documented impacts, the most affected will be women and girls. In most developing countries, women and girls are already marginalised, and will be further pushed into poverty.

In areas we have conducted research in, we can see that climate change has effects on food security – forcing women and girls into hunger and malnutrition; there is increased incidence of lesser education opportunities and increase child marriages.

This essentially impacts a whole gamut of women’s rights, particularly their sexual and reproductive health and rights. This is why we track and monitor governments’ implementation of the landmark International Conference on Population and Development’s Programme of Action (ICPD POA) that took place in Cairo in 1994.

Signed by 179 countries across the world in 1994, the PoA put human rights as the corner stone to address population and development issues, and called for a comprehensive approach to sexual and reproductive health and reproductive rights, especially for women and girls.

Governments agreed that reproductive rights, gender equality, equity and women’s empowerment are essential for improving quality of life and achieving sustained social and economic growth and sustainable development.

At the juncture of the 25th anniversary of the ICPD, it is essential for us to look at holistic, rights-based global frameworks to help us get a grip on the challenges we are facing today.

The prediction that the world population will increase by 2 billion in the next 30 years is based on ground realities like high incidence of child marriage and fertility rates. When girls are married younger, they drop out of school and often also get pregnant earlier.

They have little or no access to comprehensive sexuality education which impacts their knowledge of contraception, access and knowledge of abortion services and leads to unwanted pregnancies. Those who are already marginalised, will suffer further deprivations.

Governments in the region should have the political courage to ensure eradication of child marriages, ensure provision of comprehensive sexuality education, and access to sexual and reproductive health services to young people regardless of marital status.

UN data shows that population in the group of 47 least developed countries (LDCs), which includes countries in Asia, is growing 2.5 times faster than the total population of the rest of the world, and is expected to jump from 1 billion inhabitants in 2019 to 1.9 billion in 2050.

It is also predicted that half of the world’s population growth will be concentrated in just nine countries: India, Nigeria, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Pakistan, Ethiopia, the United Republic of Tanzania, the United States of America, Uganda and Indonesia.

However, women’s rights are key in slowing down population. It is no coincidence that in many of the above countries in our region as well as others, the status of women and girls is low. It is a fact that sexual and reproductive rights are integral to individual autonomy, to freely decide on matters of sexuality and reproduction, to have the right to consent and bodily integrity. Women need to have control over their bodies and should be able to decide whether or not to have children, when to have children, how many children to have.

In 2016, a study from the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) and the Asian Demographic Research Institute (ADRI) at Shanghai University showed that if the world could achieve the 17 SDGs by 2030, it could slow down global population growth to 8.2 to 8.7 billion by 2100.

The Goals 3 and 5 – of good health and well-being and gender equality – help build an enabling environment for the achievement of all other goals. Which is why it is so critical for us to ensure our governments implement the ICPD PoA.

Empowering women is the key to slowing down population. However, population growth cannot be achieved through coercive measures like sterilisation, family planning methods that limit women’s reproductive choices.

Instead, we need to ensure comprehensive sexuality education for in and out-of-school children and youth, eliminate child, early and forced marriage, tackle teenage pregnancies, invest in health care programmes and policies, ensure universal health coverage for all, including the most vulnerable and marginalised, a rights-based approach to family planning where women have access to contraceptive and family planning services of their choice.

Besides these, we need to simultaneously ensure access to safe abortion services to all women and girls and remove all barriers to access abortion so there are no unintended, unplanned or forced pregnancies.

There is also a pressing need to increase investments in girls’ education & address barriers that prevent girls from attending schools. Similarly, we need to increase women’s participation in the labour force, which means addressing gender inequalities inside homes and making work environments safer.

When we shift the focus to people’s development, and enable marginalised women and girls to have choices and exercise decision-making over their life choices, we create the necessary change for the world’s population.

*Sivananthi Thanenthiran is also a SheDecides Champion for Asia Pacific. ARROW has consultative status with the Economic and Social Council (UN ECOSOC) of the United Nations and works closely with many national partners in countries, regional and global networks around the world, and are able to reach stakeholders in 120 countries.

The post Women’s Rights are Key in Slowing Down Population appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Sivananthi Thanenthiran* is the executive director of the Asian-Pacific Resource and Research Centre for Women (ARROW), a regional feminist NGO based in Malaysia championing sexual and reproductive health and rights in Asia Pacific.

The post Women’s Rights are Key in Slowing Down Population appeared first on Inter Press Service.

By Jomo Kwame Sundaram and Nazran Zhafri Ahmad Johari
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia, Jun 25 2019 (IPS)

With growing economic conflicts triggered by US President Donald Trump’s novel neo-mercantilist approach to overcoming his nation’s economic malaises, many voices now argue that bad free trade agreements are better than nothing.

After US withdrawal following Trump’s inauguration in early 2017, there is considerable pressure on signatory governments to quickly ratify the Comprehensive and Progressive Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP), the successor to the TPP.

Jomo Kwame Sundaram

To ratify or not to ratify
Undoubtedly, freer trade is attractive, especially to consumers desiring lower import prices. Yet, it is now generally acknowledged that no country has ever developed without policy interventions, typically involving trade, to develop new economic capacities and capabilities.

Thus far, the CPTPP has been ratified by 7 of the original 11 signatory countries, with Brunei, Chile, Malaysia and Peru holding out so far. Ratification advocates claim that the CPTPP would boost economic growth by greatly increasing exports.

They cite disputed Peterson Institute of International Economics (PIIE) and World Bank studies, both by the same authors, using a dubious methodology even rejected by the US government’s International Trade Council in mid-2016, i.e., under Obama. The reports highlight increased export prospects, but are conveniently silent about the far greater increase in imports.

Dubious gains from trade
United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) economist Rashmi Banga’s study of its likely economic impact on Malaysia suggests much need for caution. The original TPP promised Malaysia more exports, mainly to the USA, with such claims grossly exaggerated by the PIIE. Without the USA, export prospects have diminished greatly.

Nazran Zhafri Ahmad Johari

While exports to CPTPP countries will rise by 0.2%, imports will grow by 6.0%, setting Malaysia’s annual merchandise trade balance back by US$2.4 billion, worsening its balance of payments as its services trade balance has always been in deficit.

As Malaysia already has free trade agreements (FTAs) with other major trading partners in the CPTPP, participation has little to offer. Malaysian FTAs with Singapore, Japan and Australia affect 82% of its CPTPP exports and 84% of imports.

Hence, Malaysia will not lose much to trade diversion by not ratifying, i.e., about 0.09% of current exports to other CPTPP countries. On the other hand, it will retain revenue from its relatively higher import tariffs.

The two largest imported items are automobiles and plastic materials. Banga estimates that imports of vehicles, mainly from Japan, will rise by 36% if customs duties come down to zero. This is likely to wreak havoc on Malaysia’s already fragile automotive industry.

Over a quarter century ago, then World Bank vice-president Larry Summers infamously suggested that toxic waste might be dumped in poor countries in Africa owing to the lower opportunity costs involved.

On the cusp of becoming a high-income nation, the last Malaysian administration belatedly took his advice by licensing ostensible plastic waste recycling plants. The CPTPP will enable much more imports of plastic materials, including waste and scrap, by around 35%.

21st century gold standard?
Advocates also claim that the CPTPP represents a ‘cutting edge’, ‘state of the art’, ‘gold standard’, ‘21st century FTA’. In fact, it will mainly benefit transnational firms at the expense of consumers, workers and the public in participating economies.

With the investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) provisions, for example, foreign investors will be able to sue the government for loss of revenue and profits if government policies are changed, or if contracts are renegotiated, even if in the public interest, e.g., by banning toxic or carcinogenic chemicals.

ISDS involves binding ‘private’ arbitration bypassing national judicial systems, significantly strengthening foreign investors at the expense of governments with typically more modest means to litigate cases, thus exercising a ‘chilling effect’ on governments to comply with foreign corporate demands. Government ability to improve public policy will thus be restricted.

Ironically, the Trump administration is now opposed to ISDS. TransCanada sued the US government, under North American Free Trade Area (NAFTA) ISDS provisions, for US$15 billion after the Obama administration cancelled its Keystone XL pipeline project. The case was dropped after Trump revived the project.

CPTPP proponents insist that strengthening intellectual property (IP) laws will benefit everyone as it will incentivize research and innovation, a claim for which there is no evidence. The TPP agreement would have lengthened monopolies on patented medicines, kept cheaper generics off the market and allowed natural biological materials and processes to be patented.

The Third World Network has long highlighted many such CPTPP dangers, for instance, citing the Malaysian government’s procurement of an Egyptian generic treatment of Hepatitis C for RM1300, instead of the patented US treatment costing almost RM300,000.

Encircling China
The TPP was originally a minor plurilateral regional trade agreement involving four countries. The Obama administration decided to use it to check China’s growing economic influence.

With the recent escalation of tensions between China and the USA, many in East Asia are understandably concerned about how the growing economic conflict will affect economic prospects. Ratifying the CPTPP is likely to be seen as taking sides, even without the USA in it.

To secure broad public support in the face of growing scepticism about the benefits of trade liberalization associated with globalization, the Obama administration involved over 700 advisers, mainly representing corporate interests, to be involved in drafting the 6350-page TPP.

Ironically, the USA is no longer party to an agreement largely drafted by US corporate interests. A few of the most onerous clauses of the TPP have been suspended in the CPTPP, but if Japan, Australia and Singapore succeed in bringing the USA back in, the White House will insist on their re-inclusion.

Withdrawing from the CPTPP would send a clear message that a government is determined to put the needs of its people over the interests of powerful transnational corporations or geopolitical considerations. In any case, there is no requirement, obligation or deadline for any signatory government to ratify.

Other governments will need to carefully consider their navigation options in the difficult times ahead as countries seek to recover and sustain economic progress. Bad FTAs are not better than no FTAs, and as the map of the world economy has changed, options are different.

Jomo Kwame Sundaram is Senior Adviser at Khazanah Research Institute (KRI) in Malaysia. Nazran Zhafri Ahmad Johari has a law degree and is currently with the KRI.

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Cooking by candle light. Credit: Tomislav Georgiev / World Bank

By Pinelopi Goldberg
WASHINGTON DC, Jun 25 2019 (IPS)

After participating in two events on inequality at the Spring Meetings – Making Growth Work for the Poor and Income Inequality Matters: How to Ensure Economic Growth Benefits the Many and Not the Few, I received a surprising number of emails asking whether my remarks on the importance of addressing rising inequality meant I had abandoned growth as the main priority for developing countries.

One thing I certainly took away from this correspondence: Inequality is too complex a phenomenon to address in a brief session at the Spring Meetings.

This is why the Institute of Fiscal Studies in London (IFS) has put together an ambitious, multi-disciplinary project, headed by Nobel Prize winner Angus Deaton, the so-called Deaton Review, to understand the multiple aspects of inequality and propose appropriate policies. Pointedly, the project is called “Inequalities in the twenty-first century” – note the plural.

Pinelopi Goldberg

The multi-disciplinary project brings together experts from Economics, Political Science, Sociology, and Public Health aiming at a comprehensive yet nuanced, and most importantly balanced discussion of “inequality.”

Recognizing the complexity of the issues, the project has a four-year timeline. I hope by its completion, we will have a better grasp of why “inequality” (I am going back to the singular following convention) is such an important concern today, both among policy makers and the public, and what we can do to address it. But, for those of you who may not want to wait that long, here are my two cents.

Both theoretically and empirically, we expect growth and changes in the income distribution to go hand in hand. But this positive relationship neither means an increase in income inequality is inevitable nor implies that it is desirable.

Growth is simply the size of the pie increasing. In principle, a bigger pie makes it feasible to give everyone a piece of at least the same size as before, and possibly more.

This is the essence of the so-called Pareto criterion invoked by economists. But markets do not guarantee that as the pie grows, all its slices will increase – some can get smaller. Policy is needed to encourage inclusive growth.

Why should we care about equal distribution of the pie? I have three responses.

First, people care about “fairness”. Large inequalities in income or wealth are often viewed as unfair. To be clear, I am not advocating complete equality where everyone receives exactly the same piece of the pie independent of competence, effort and the demands of the market.

This would create the classic moral hazard problem economists worry about. But the vast inequalities observed today are hard to justify based on these factors alone.

Conversely, there is little evidence that a more equal distribution of income or wealth by itself reduces incentives to work and contribute to society.

Second, even if one does not care about inequality at all, in practice large inequalities create social unrest. We do not need to go as far as invoking the French or October revolutions.

In recent years, sound economic policies that produced large aggregate gains have also generated considerable backlash where they generated winners and uncompensated losers. And this backlash can impede further growth when those left behind block further change.

Trade reforms and the hyper-globalization of the past three decades are prime examples. The backlash against globalization we currently experience in many advanced economies shows not only that inequality matters to people, but also that the perception of being left behind interferes with policies that would promote growth.

Lastly, big inequalities in income and wealth often translate in inequalities in opportunity. There is evidence that rising income and wealth inequality in many advanced economies is driving disparities in health and education (which is why the Deaton Review is devoting particular attention to these aspects of inequality).

People who emailed have asked me why focus on inequality in a developing country where 70% of the population live on less than $1.90 per day? But a country will not grow rapidly unless it utilizes its productive potential.

Stunting, poor health, and inadequate education among the poorest segments of a society mean that people will be unable to realize their potential and contribute to the economy.

Countries where women have limited rights and cannot contribute to the economy on equal terms not only miss the opportunity to draw on the labor and talent of half of their population, but also tend to face demographic challenges due to high birth rates.

This points to the importance of a different dimension of inequality, gender inequality, and may serve a reminder that inequality goes beyond disparities in income and wealth.

So, “inclusive growth” is not an oxymoron. Rather, inclusiveness may be the only way to achieve growth today, in developed and developing economies alike.

The post Is Inclusive Growth an Oxymoron? appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Pinelopi Goldberg is Chief Economist, World Bank Group

The post Is Inclusive Growth an Oxymoron? appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Financial inclusion services can help boost the productivity of smallholder farmers in Africa. Pictured here is maize farmer Senamiso Ndlovu, from Nyamandlovu District, Zimbabwe. Credit: Busani Bafana/IPS

By Busani Bafana
BULAWAYO, Zimbabwe, Jun 25 2019 (IPS)

A Jamaican start-up has an innovative solution to help smallholder farmers—many of whom do not have the collateral demanded by financial institutions to access loans—build a track record of their production that is proving better than collateral.

FarmCredibly creates a record for farmers based on their production and they do not even need to leave the work on their farms to create this, founder Varun Baker tells IPS.

Blockchain is a decentralised, digital ledger initially developed for the cryptocurrency bitcoin. It works through a series of digitally connected records where information can be shared openly and publicly verified through a cluster of computers.

The decentralised nature of blockchain means that information is not stored in one place but on many computers or databases. The information is also time stamped. As such, if information is changed it has to be done through the system and cannot be deleted or changed at one point without the other databases of the information also being updated.

Using the block chain technology, farmers can plan their production based on the actual market demand. Distributors in turn safely source produce from many farmers with a reliable track record, says Baker.

Banking the under banked

In 2017, Baker and his team won a blockchain Hackathon competition organised by international IT company IBM and NCB, a major commercial bank in Jamaica for their idea of developing a tool which enables under banked farmers access loans and micro-investments.

In 2018, FarmCredibly entered the AgriHack competition organised by the Technical Centre for Agricultural and Rural Cooperation (CTA) and they emerged winners.

“Our strength is in technology and one big part that excites me about now and the future is the adoption of blockchain technology which can be a complicated subject for people,” Baker admits. “In our pitch, we simplified the value in using blockchain which is in enforcing the integrity in information. This still sounds really complicated, but the same idea is put more eloquently by a Jamaican songwriter who said ‘you so can fool some people some time but you cannot fool all the people all the time,’ and this is the value we want to bring to agriculture.”

Working with farmers 10 years ago, Baker had encouraged them to use mobile applications for good record keeping and documenting their work on their farms. But in many cases farmers were reluctant to use any online or mobile device in the field.

Today Baker sees the potential of using blockchain technology to release farmers from the burden of using apps themselves.

The technology is designed in a way that farmers can build a profile on themselves based on the data that other people have so they do not have to change anything about what they are doing, Baker explains.

Through FarmCredibly, Baker forms partnerships with companies that farmers already do business with. Input suppliers, buyers, agro-processors, hotels and supermarkets have valuable information on farmers that helps support their production record.

“We use this information to build up a profile on behalf of the farmer, which means once a farmer is ready to get a loan at the bank, it is an easier process for them because suddenly they have a track record. This is something that can work for even unbanked people who have no credit history at all,” Baker says as he takes on the challenge of convincing lenders that this is valid information that reduces risk when it comes to providing loans in agriculture.

“In my experience lenders find agriculture a risky business and we are trying to convince people that we are lowering risk in this area which provides massive economic value across the world,” says Baker who is currently using funding from the CTA and Development Bank of Jamaica to run a pilot project in Jamaica to facilitate loans for farmers to be more productive.

For many years, smallholder farmer, Kevin Buchanan from Clarendon Parish, south of Jamaica, battled to obtain loans because he did not have the collateral demanded by banks. Thanks to a digital profiling of his production he recently received a 385-dollar micro loan through FarmCredibly to buy nursery supplies to start growing his own seedlings.

“I believe in the use of technology as it helps greatly in doing the same thing better and more efficiently,” Buchanan tells IPS. “That way with the same amount of resources more can be done. This is very good also as it increases my income and makes success more sure.”

Buchanan grows hot and sweet peppers, corn and sweet potatoes on part of his 10 hectare farm. With funding, he would be able to transition his produce and mostly grow hot peppers, which have a guaranteed market.

“My limiting factor is access to funding,” Buchanan laments. “I am not alone…this is the dilemma of so many farmers. Before the blockchain intervention I could only put a quarter of a hectare of sweet potatoes in production…now I have 1.11 hectare. Because of this too I am working on the capacity to supply other farmers with seedlings. The income from this will be used back in the farming operation to assist me with buying irrigation supplies to establish a block of hot peppers.”

While financial inclusion is on the rise thanks to mobile phones and the internet, nearly two billion people globally remain unbanked while two-thirds of them own a mobile phone that could help them access financial services. This is according to a World Bank 2018 report on the use of financial services. It also finds that men remain more likely than women to have a bank account.

Digital technology can take advantage of existing cash transactions to bring people into the financial system, the report finds. For example, paying government wages, pensions, and social benefits directly into accounts could bring formal financial services to up to 100 million more adults globally, including 95 million in developing economies. Currently, 86 percent of Jamaica’s population is under banked, meaning they do not have access to loans.

A technology for agriculture development

Researchers at the Institute of Agrifood Research and Technology (IRTA) in Spain argue that blockchain promises ubiquitous financial transactions among distributed untrusted parties, without the need of intermediaries such as banks.

In particular, blockchain is suitable for the developing world, where it can support small farmers by providing them with finance and insurance and facilitate transactions. Although small farmers supply 80 percent of food in developing countries, they rarely have access to insurance, banking or basic financial services.

In a 2018 report published by the CTA, researchers Andreas Kamilaris, Francesc Xavier Prenafeta-Boldú and Agusti Fonts say ongoing projects and initiatives now illustrate the impact blockchain technology on agriculture. The researchers suggest blockchain has great potential for the future. For example, in December 2016 AgriDigital, an Australian company founded a year previously, successfully executed the world’s first sale of 23.46 tons of grain on a blockchain. Since then, over 1,300 users have been involved in the sale of more than 1.6 million tons of grain over the cloud-based system, involving 360 million dollars in grower payments.

Blockchain best but

While blockchain technology offers many opportunities for farmers, there are various barriers and challenges for its wider adoption, researchers worry.

There is lack of expertise by smallholder farmers to invest in the blockchain by themselves, researcher say. Besides, there is a lack of awareness about the blockchain and training platforms are non-existent and there are regulation barriers too.

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The post Blockchain Releases Farmers From the Collateral Trap appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Teenagers hanging out in Kazakhstan. In Kazakhstan the lack of sexuality education has led to 91 percent of young people aged between 15 and 19 not having accurate and full knowledge on HIV and AIDS. Courtesy: Gulbakyt Dyussenova/ World Bank

By Tharanga Yakupitiyage
UNITED NATIONS, Jun 25 2019 (IPS)

Young people around the world are facing increasingly insurmountable, persistent barriers as they try to achieve their full potential and secure a prosperous future. However, Central Asia and the Asia-Pacific have already begun working to ensure that no one is left behind.

In collaboration with the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) and the Asian Population and Development Association (APDA), parliamentarians across Asia gathered to address and act on the pressing issues that youth face today, including access to health and employment.

“The demographic dividend in countries in the region provides an opportune moment to continue to invest in youth for the benefit of all society,” UNFPA’s Representative in Kazakhstan Giulia Vallese told IPS.

Approximately 60 percent of the world’s youth live in Central Asia and the Asia-Pacific region.

Discussing sustainable development issues such as health care and employment access, parliamentarians met in a series of two meetings; the first being the “Leaving No One Behind” meeting in Kazakhstan in October 2018 and the “Act Today, Shape Tomorrow” gathering in Tajikistan in March 2019.

It is through such multi-stakeholder platforms and collaborations where success can be achieved, noted Vallese.

“It was important to bring together these different stakeholders to promote a shared understanding of closely interlinked root causes of issues and challenges faced by young people and increase appreciation of the urgent need for cross-sectoral, inter-ministerial, and multi-stakeholder approaches to help resolve the issues and challenges faced by young people in the region,” she said.

“Both conferences demonstrated the positive impact and the catalytic effect of multi-stakeholder partnerships for development. They allowed under the leadership of the respective host countries, Kazakhstan and Tajikistan, for the exchange of ideas on the role of national multi-stakeholder partnerships, which actually is the essence of implementing such a complex agenda as the International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) programme of action and contribute to delivering on Agenda 2030,” she added.

Adopted by 179 governments in 1994, the landmark ICPD agenda marked the first paradigm shift which put people’s rights at the heart of all sustainable development.

In Kazakhstan, among the major issues discussed by participants was access to health information and services.

For instance, the lack of sexuality education has led to 91 percent of young people aged between 15 and 19 not having accurate and full knowledge on HIV and AIDS.

UNFPA also found that among those who reported having had symptoms of sexually transmitted infections, only 37 percent sought medical help.

Adolescents younger than 18 require parental consent to receive medical services.

In Tajikistan, access to employment and education particularly for youth and women remain limited.

According to the World Bank, inactive youth who are neither employed nor in school make up approximately 40 percent of the total youth population. Almost one third of those who are employed are in unpaid, informal jobs compared to 15 percent of adults.

Women have not fared well either as the female labour force participation rate was just 27 percent compared to 63 percent among males in 2013. Almost a quarter of women are in unpaid employment compared to 13 percent of men.

While education can help determine job outcomes, completion rates of secondary education may be falling in the Central Asian nation. For instance, more young women are not completing secondary school or technical education, the World Bank found.

Speaking to IPS, Deputy Speaker of Tajikistan’s Parliament Honorary Khayrinisso Yusufi said that youth are the “main creative force of the future” and stressed the need for investments to develop their potential.

“Developing the potential of young people, shaping their public engagement, strengthening their quality of education and health care, their participation in labour markets, and engaging in development processes reflect the aspirations of peoples and the policies of our countries to achieve the SDGs and create a better world for everyone,” she said.

And Central Asian countries such as Tajikistan and Kazakhstan are already on their way to empower youth.

During the conference in Dushnabe, Deputy Minister of Education and Science of Tajikistan Dr. Latofat Naziri told participants of the importance of actively engaging youth in order to help build their envisioned futures and involvement in society. With that in mind, study groups and clubs are being organised at the school level aimed at developing youth’s entrepreneurship skills.

Others, including Yusufi, pointed to the focus on strengthening the status of young people, especially girls. Among Tajikistan’s priorities are presidential quotas for girls’ higher education, and already the number of young parliamentarians and women in the country has increased, Yusufi told IPS.

After the meeting in Astana, participants adopted the Astana Declaration which promises to make primary health care, especially sexual and reproductive health services as well as sexuality education, more youth-friendly and accessible.

UNFPA has already begun working on this front, establishing Youth Peer Education which trains youth to help their peers and share accurate information about healthy life skills. Youth-friendly health centres have also been established in order to provide comprehensive and confidential services.

Vallese urged that such work should continue, and protective laws and policies are essential to support human rights of youth.

“Young people need to be part of the national dialogue for sustainable development…investing in young people is critically important to ensure future societies are economically dynamic and vibrant, as well as peaceful, inclusive and sustainable while providing opportunity for all,” she told IPS.

Yusufi also highlighted the role of parliamentarians, legislation, and collaborations to achieve such a vision.

“I am sure that the activity shown by the forum participants in discussing the problems and prospects of youth policies in our countries will be productive in the legislative field. We will be able to more effectively pursue a policy of modernisation, improve education, health, protect the environment, effectively apply technologies and support youth initiatives,” she said.

“We parliamentarians, reaffirmed the key role of parliaments and parliamentary networks in establishing a multi-state partnership with a view to sustainable development and a better future for humanity,” Yusifi concluded.

As this year marks the 25th anniversary of the ICPD, civil society and governments will gather in Kenya for the Nairobi Summit to advance the ICPD’s goals.  

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The post Partnering for Youth in Central Asia appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Inna de Yard, a documentary about reggae music, opened across Germany on Jun. 20. Courtesy: Inna de Yard

By A. D. McKenzie
KINGSTON/PARIS, Jun 24 2019 (IPS)

Dogs barking in the distance. Birds chirping nearby. A man walking through the mist, surrounded by lush vegetation. A distinctive vibrato singing “Speak Softly, Love” over it all.

So begins Inna de Yard, a documentary that can safely be called a love poem to reggae music, or the “soul of Jamaica”, as the film is sub-titled with an obvious play on words.

Directed by Peter Webber (whose first feature was the acclaimed Girl with a Pearl Earring), the documentary comes at a timely moment: reggae was inscribed last November on United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization’s (UNESCO) Intangible Cultural Heritage List.

Before opening across Germany on Jun. 20, the film was screened in Paris at the U.N. agency’s headquarters to a full house of spectators, many of whom seemed to know the artists and the songs. Several stood up to dance when the musicians performed after the projection.

Inna de Yard takes us into the lives of pioneer reggae musicians who have come together to record music in a hilltop studio. This is a weathered, old house that offers breath-taking views of the capital Kingston. It is filled with stacks of vinyl records spilling out of their decaying jackets, while an ancient piano sits on the porch.

The man walking through the mist at the beginning is a piano tuner, who tells viewers that the instrument is sometimes infested with insects, but he needs to get it ready for the musicians. We watch as he takes bits of wire and other objects to do just that.

Then the music begins in earnest. We are introduced to the artists – Ken Boothe, Kiddus I, Winston McAnuff, Cedric Myton, The Viceroys and Judy Mowatt – as Boothe’s vibrato accompanies spectacular aerial shots of the landscape.

Kiddus – who appeared in the 1978 cult film “Rockers”– explains in his deep, pleasant voice that the project is “an amalgamation of elders playing acoustic music”, and McAnuff adds that the aim is to capture the music “in its virgin state”.

Mowatt, looking like an urban goddess in her patterned robe, says that the house up in the hills “felt like heaven” when she first visited.

In a previous era, Mowatt performed with the I-Threes, the trio of backing vocalists for Bob Marley and the Wailers. But beyond her presence, the extended Marley clan is not in focus here. This documentary is about the other trailblazers and the source of the music.

“Some countries have diamonds. Some countries have pearls. Some countries have oil. We have reggae music,” says bass player Worm in the film.

With footage from the 1960s and 1970s, the documentary takes us to the beginning of ska and rocksteady, showing how the music developed, influenced by American rhythm and blues.

“We paid attention to what was happening outside our shores and we amalgamated that with what was happening here,” Mowatt tells viewers. “The 1960s was the romantic era, but the 1970s was the conscious era.”

She says that reggae “talked about the realities of life” and that “all of Jamaica was living the songs that were being sung”– songs about political violence, hardships, and police repression of Rastafarians, for instance. It was the “golden age” of the music.

The documentary gives each of the artists space to reminisce even as it describes their lives now. “We miss everything about those days,” says Cedric Myton, a playful, lively spirit in the film who said he’s “going up the ladder” at 70-plus years old.

During one of the film’s most memorable scenes, we see him heading out in a boat and joking around with fishermen as he sings “Row, Fisherman, Row”, in his iconic falsetto. The film cuts from the sea to the studio in the hills, to Myton enlightening viewers on the origins of the lyrics.

Like many of the others, Myton started out in the music business with what seemed a bright future, but troubles in the United States – related to “herb charges”– meant he couldn’t perform there. In addition, all the musicians have had experience with unscrupulous record producers, or “thieves” as Myton calls them.

“We’re not giving up because we know there are better days ahead,” Myton says. “But financially it’s been a struggle.”

Some of his peers have had more personal struggles. McAnuff lost his son Matthew, also a singer, in 2012, and his description of the “senseless” death is among the most moving sections of the film. So is the story of younger musician Derajah, who lost his sister to gun violence. We see them working through their grief via the music.

“It’s a message for healing,” Kiddus says.

The Inna de Yard project puts the pioneers in contact with younger musicians who perform with them in the studio and on tour, and the film profiles these artists as well. “We learn from the younger guys and they learn a lot from us,” Kiddus comments.

Mowatt also records with two younger singers, the fiery Jah 9 and her colleague Rovleta. Speaking passionately, Jah 9 gives an introduction to the history of the island and the role that the Maroons and their legendary leader Nanny played in fighting against slavery.  Then she joins Mowatt and Rovleta in the studio to sing Mowatt’s “first solo anthem”– an intense track called “Black Woman”.

“It’s a love splash,” Mowatt characterises the session, describing the affection and solidarity between the three.

Accompanying individual musicians, the film also takes us through unspoilt areas of Jamaica – waterfalls, natural diving pools, forested Maroon country – but it doesn’t shy away from showing poor sections of the capital Kingston where the music was born, or the environmental degradation of some beaches. We also get a glimpse into eroticised dancehall culture, during a segment in a bar.

Film director Webber was, however, not interested in showing scenes “that would cause eyes to pop in the West,” as he said in an interview following the screening in Paris. Webber added that the restraint in filming certain aspects of the culture was “deliberate” as he didn’t “feel the need to labour the point”.

Because of this approach, viewers get a sense of the love of and respect for the music, unlike some sensationalist portrayals of Jamaican arts.

Webber said he was first introduced to the island’s music as a teenager in London and became “a huge fan of reggae”. Years later, he was working with French producer Gaël Nouaille on a Netflix project when Nouaille told him about the Inna de Yard musicians and recordings.

“I had never been to Jamaica before, partly because I had a Jamaica in my head, and I knew that if I got on a plane, I would have a touristic experience and it wouldn’t live up to what I imagined,” he said. “I didn’t want to spend two weeks on a beach in Negril. But this was a different way to go.”

When he got to the island and met the musicians, he initially wasn’t sure there was a feature film to be made, and he questioned whether he could produce a documentary that would “appeal to a more general audience” than traditional fans of reggae or dub.

He said it was also important to meet younger musicians. I was wondering, “Are these guys like the last of the Mohicans?”

Asked why he was the one to make this film, Webber said: “I did it because of my love and enthusiasm and because I had an opportunity to do it. You may wonder if the world needs another middle-aged white man dropping into Jamaica, but I see myself as a medium. I’m a channel, and I basically put my technical skills and my creativity at their disposal to tell their story. It’s not a film of cultural appropriation.”

He said the documentary developed based on the “spine of the story” – the musicians recording an album “up in this house in the hills”.

The house is indeed at the centre of the documentary, but from there, Webber and the musicians take us on a journey: back to the past, around the island, to concerts in Paris, and into the soul of reggae and Jamaica. And Webber does so with an artist’s touch, reflecting his background as a student of art history.

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

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