Africa - INTER PRESS SERVICE

Dr. Ameenah Gurib-Fakim

By Ameenah Gurib-Fakim
PORT LOUIS, Mauritius, Jan 29 2024 (IPS)

The Republic of Mauritius, an island nation, experienced its latest flash floods since the last bad one in 2013. These floods resulted in the loss of lives and hefty bills for car insurers with over 3000 cars have been damaged.

Unfortunately, we will go through more climate-related traumas because as an island nation we are sorely ill-prepared and we seem to be blithely oblivious to climate challenges especially when one takes a look at our development trajectory.

There is an urgent need to factor in resilience of our infrastructure; our adaptation strategy, the use of appropriate technology to inform and educate our people for better awareness and preparedness. When we look at recent tragedies, we cannot and must not put everything on the back of a changing climate, although I am sure the temptation is great in order to absolve one of his/her responsibilities. Urgent measures need to be put in place to counteract this new reality and also address our vulnerabilities.

There is no doubt that we will experience more devastating cyclones and they will take our economies back several decades.

It is the becoming increasingly clear that the way we urbanise, the resilience of our infrastructures, how ‘green’ we keep our buildings and landscape will all underscore how well we adapt to a changing climate.

Locally and in many parts of the world, there is a high proclivity to cut down big swath of forests, drain the ‘Ramsar-protected’ swamps which are the lungs the world; build bungalows on sea fronts; sacrifice century-old trees in the name of ‘development’; century-old drains which have survived the test of time, are now increasingly seeped in cement!

In many surrounding islands including Mauritius, buildings are seen popping up on the slopes of mountains. There’s also massive investment in infrastructure projects with no visibility on the ‘Environment Impact Assessments – EIA’ (absence of Freedom of Information Act in Mauritius prevents the public from accessing to these critical documents).

There’s also locally, no visibility on the Flood-prone zones which imply that people will keep building in these regions with the surreal consequences we have seen last week in Port Louis – cars piling up, flooded cemeteries reaching people’s homes, people being carried away by the sheer force of the water.

It is becoming abundantly clear that climate-related events will recur and we, as the human race, we have no choice but to adapt to our new realities. Time and time again, the rhetoric of ‘saving the planet’ is mentioned. It has to be brought home to all of us that Nature has existed before our appearance 200.000 years ago and will do well after we have gone. So let us not be presumptuous to even think that we can ‘tame’ or ‘save the planet’.. Our rhetoric must be couched in a the following language ‘how we save ourselves in the light of the crisis we have unleashed’!.. That would be more appropriate and much more in line of this truism which is facing us.

Part of our adaptation realities demand a culture of transparency, participatory-leadership, promote greater awareness among the general public on what’s at stake and more importantly, there has to be accountability from those who we vote to decide on our behalf. They cannot suddenly go mum when they are questioned or pass the buck to technical staff whose roles are, often purely advisory, when things start going south. The personal and material loss for the general public are simply too painful to see when entire lifetime efforts and savings are washed away by the gushing waters.

I am a resident of town called Quatre Bornes and which got badly affected by the recent floods. I am tempted to ask for this ‘confidential’ EIA report for the Quatre Bornes tram project so that we can be enlightened on the remedial actions going forward?

May be those who were at the helm in 2016 when the decision was taken to start this mega project can enlighten us ? No?

But this is where “Real politik” kicks in..

Those who were vociferously against this project during the electoral campaign, when they were in the Opposition (that was before they switched side and joined the winning party) are now its greatest defenders.

Some of those who actioned the decisions when in government are now in the Opposition and are expressing outsized aspirations for higher posts ..hmm.. at the next general elections??.

Really?

Transparency, Justice and Accountability are the virtues that the public demands what we certainly DONOT need are empty rhetoric and promises … The survival of our children and grandchildren depends on it and we have NO right to sacrifice their future through our inaction.

IPS UN Bureau

 

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Excerpt:

Ameenah Gurib-Fakim, PhD, Former President of the Republic of Mauritius

A glamping resort, One Open Sky Glamp, at Mahodand Lake in Swat, Pakistan, shows the lack of snow this winter (2023/4), compared with last year (2022/3). The uncertain weather conditions are having an impact on business. Credit: Noorulhuda Shaheen

By Zofeen Ebrahim
KARACHI, Jan 29 2024 (IPS)

Alpine skier, 28-year-old Muhammad Karim, has spent the winter with his eyes skyward, wishing and hoping for deep and abundant snow.  “My bread and butter depend on the snow,” said the Olympian, who is also a ski trainer, at Naltar Ski Resort, in the valley by the same name nestled in the Gilgit-Baltistan’s Karakoram mountain range.

Heading the ice-hockey and alpine skiing section run by the Ski Federation of Pakistan and with the national skiing competition looming just weeks away (held between February 14 and 20 in Naltar), Karim had been getting sleepless nights as it had not snowed after a slight sprinkling of “half an inch” in November, and there were chances the sporting event would be called off. 

But as predicted by the Meteorological Department, the snowfall began on January 28 and “will continue for a few days,” said Karachi-based Dr. Sardar Sarfaraz, chief meteorologist at the Pakistan Meteorological Department.

But it’s not yet good news.

“It’s too light,” said Karim, talking to IPS over the phone from Naltar. “We are still uncertain about the event,” he added.

Without prolonged cold winter days to follow the snowfall, the snow will melt away, said Sarfaraz, continuing: “Nor will it compensate for the almost 80–90 percent less precipitation the country faced in December and January.”

Snow falls have been late this year, as these photos of a Jeep in Shahi Ground in Kalam, Swat, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa taken in January 2022 and 2024 show. Credit: Khalil Wahab

“It is too little, too late,” said Sher Mohammad, a cryosphere expert at the Nepal-based International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD), over an email exchange.

This year has been quite unusual. It has been an almost snowless winter in the northern region of the Himalayan-Hindukush-Karakoram ranges.

“We usually experience the first snowfall by the end of October in some parts of G-B, and this continues well into March,” said Shehzad Shigri, director of the Gilgit-Baltistan Environmental Protection Agency, speaking to IPS from Gilgit city.

“Winter has been milder,” he said, due to the El Niño effect. The temperatures recorded by the seven weather stations, however, show “an increase by 0.5 degree Centigrade in the region, on average, since 1983, and a decrease of precipitation (rain and snow) by 8.4 mm,” said Shigri.

Arun Bhakta Shrestha, senior climate expert at ICIMOD, underscoring the impact of global warming, explained the “unusual absence of snowfall in the Himalayas, Hindu Kush, and Karakoram this winter, attributing it to “warmer temperatures and fewer cold days and nights.”

“Overall, in Pakistan, nights are getting warmer by 0.5°C, which means we are experiencing, on average, eight to ten fewer cold days,” corroborated Sarfaraz.

A satellite image of the snowfall in the Kalam Valley, Hindu Kush, over the winters of 2024 and 2023. Credit: ICIMOD

 

A satellite visual of the Hunza Valley shows the differences in snowfall over last and this winter. Credit: ICIMOD

 

“This weather anomaly disrupts normal climate patterns, influenced by extreme La Niña-El Niño conditions and alterations to the Western Disturbance [weather systems that cause precipitation in the Western Himalayan region during its winter months]. These shifts, emblematic of the climate crisis, pose a significant threat to mountain communities and water security in the HinduKush-Himalayan region,” warned Shrestha.

But Sarfaraz is adamant El Niño is not to blame for less than average rain.

“Less precipitation in winter isn’t due to El Niño, as it affects the summer and the monsoon rains,” he insisted, saying rains in winter, in Pakistan, are known to have a linkage with the North Atlantic Oscillation, which, “if positive, brings a good amount of rain, and when negative, brings less.”

It is also premature to attribute a one-off snowless winter to ‘climate change,’ as it is not proven scientifically, he added.

Last year, 2023, according to climate scientists, with average temperatures of 1.34–1.54°C, was the hottest year since 1850–1900—the so-called pre-industrial era. Many scientists predict that 2024 could be hotter.

Whether anthropogenic or natural, a change in the fragile mountain ecosystem can have far-reaching consequences for the communities compared to terrestrial ones, Shigri said.

If nights are sleepless, the days have not been any easier for skier Karim. “I spend the day getting weather updates and rescheduling our plans. In between, he said, he is bombarded with phone calls from anxious athletes from all over Pakistan asking whether the event will be held at all.

Artificial snow needed to be added on the slope of Wildbore. Credit: Ski Federation of Pakistan

 

Winter season snowfall over the past 18 years. Credit: Pakistan Meteorological Department

As a backup, the foundation had started making artificial snow. “We had managed to cover 20 percent of the Wildboar slope, where the competition is to be held, but another 30 percent needs to be covered before February 13,” said the trainer. Artificial snow is not only a costly venture; Karim said it also requires a certain temperature, without which the snow will melt. Having glided down natural snow since he was four, he was not too enthused about the imitation.

“You cannot slide as smoothly as you can on natural snow,” he explained.

But Karim is not the only one whose life depends on snow.

Like in Naltar, the bare slope in the ski resort of Malam Jabba, in KP’s Swat district, was being covered with artificial snow to generate some economic activity before it started snowing on the eve of January 27.

“The season has been pretty lean,” admitted Afkaar Hussain, spokesperson of the Malam Jabba Ski Resort. From catering to up to 3,500 customers per day last year, the number has come down to as many as 500 per day, with most arriving over weekends this year.

Hussain said people come from all over Pakistan, sometimes even for the weekend or just a day trip if they are close by, to enjoy snowfall, do skiing, snowboarding, ziplining, or just go up to the hotel at the top of the slope on a chairlift to capture the splendid snow-capped views.

“Last year this place was buzzing; I didn’t know when the day started and ended; this year I have been quite free, but I hope this bout of snow will bring tourists back to town, even though it’s a bit late and the holiday season is over in the plains,” he said.

Kalam, in the Swat Valley, in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, where the first snow falls by mid-November and continues well into March, with snow up to eight feet, also got its share of snow on January 27.

“BBQ, endless cups of tea, and enjoying live music around a bonfire is a common sight in Kalam in the winter season,” recalled 30-year-old Noorulhuda Shaheen, adding that the flux of visitors was such that hotel rooms were booked months in advance—back in the day.

Snowfall late in January could be too late to save livelihoods this season. Credit: Noorulhuda Shaheen

Seeing what a roaring business this could be, he decided to open four luxury tented huts (where those with an adventurous streak do ‘glamping’) on the camping site of the famous Mahodand Lake, about an hour and a half jeep-drive from Kalam, in 2022.

“I did great when the spring started, but then in August, the floods dealt a death blow to tourism. Last year there was a good four feet of snow, but due to the county’s economic situation, business did not pick up. This winter season (starting from November 2023–March 2024), I was hoping I’d do well,” said Shaheen.

But till last week, with Kalam giving a deadpan look, it seemed highly unlikely people would go up to Mahodand Lake for glamping. However, he is hopeful about the late arrival of snow.

He hopes that once the snow stops falling and the sun comes out, people will flock to the valley.

“My huts are well equipped to keep tourists warm; it’s just magical out there right now,” he said after visiting the place after the snowfall.

But it is not just a lack of tourists that is worrisome.

The mountain people depend on natural resources for their livelihoods and practice small-scale agriculture. The impact of an almost snowless winter can be devastating for his people, said Shaheen. “It will mean our springs will dry up when the entire population is pastoral and dependent on subsistence farming and rearing livestock.”

A recent blog on ICIMOD’s website explains it best: “Snow cover usually acts as an insulating blanket, shielding dormant crops, allowing root growth, preventing frost penetration, and protecting soil from erosion. Reduced snowfall and erratic rains across the Himalayan region have the potential to cause adverse ecological impacts in the region, including on water and agroforestry.”

But if temperatures rise, which may well happen, as pointed out by Shigri, this late snowfall will be even more problematic. “It will lead to flash flooding and GLOFs (glacial lake outburst flooding) sweeping away homes, orchards, and livestock,” he said.

If this becomes the norm, repeated absences of snowfall may accelerate the receding of glaciers, said Islamabad-based climate change and sustainable development expert Ali Tauqeer Sheikh. “It’s also possible that instead of less water downstream, there could be much larger quantities if there are heat waves in the upper Indus basin. This may cause more early (than historical patterns) and irregular water flows,” he said.

While experts may dither over a sure-shot explanation for the current no-show/very little snow episode, Islamabad-based climate expert Imran Khalid, working with WWF-Pakistan, said these episodes with “either too little or too much precipitation” will continue to be experienced due to global warming.

“Therefore, plans and policies need to be in place to tackle such extreme scenarios.  These should entail enhancing the capacity of local communities to plan as well as utilizing instruments such as insurance mechanisms for an effective response,” he said.

“We should brace for the impacts,” agreed Vaqar Zakaria, the head of Hagler Bailly Pakistan, an environmental consultancy firm based in Islamabad, but rued: “We are not investing in the development of capacities, systems, and infrastructure to improve resilience; less water for crops, pastures, and micro- and even larger hydropower plants is what I would worry about most.”

And, added Sheikh, “Instead of raising alarm bells, we need to study the trends more closely and over longer periods of time rather than one or two seasons only.”.

Still, there are others who say Pakistan, not a major emitter but in the eye of a climate storm, could make a strong case for accessing the Loss and Damage Fund.

“The mechanisms for disbursement of funds (what little is available) are still in their infancy and, as such, cannot be relied upon to address the immediate needs of the communities,” said Khalid.

“I doubt our institutions would be able to submit a good proposal in time,” said Zakaria.

Therefore, said Khalid, with climate aberration episodes likely to recur, Pakistan must develop effective mechanisms for climate adaptation at the local level. “Having an effective adaptation scheme can serve to deter immediate loss and damage,” he pointed out.

Zakaria, however, remained skeptical. For those at the helm, he said, “the poor and vulnerable, hit the hardest by climate change, don’t figure in the resource allocation process.”
IPS UN Bureau Report

This feature is published with the support of Open Society Foundations.

 

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Excerpt:

Whether the late snow in Pakistan’s Gilgit-Baltistan region is an anomaly or an indication of the impacts of climate change, which brings erratic and at times devastating weather patterns, experts in the region believe not enough is being invested in the development of capacities, systems, and infrastructure to improve resilience.
 

Credit: IMF

By Allison Holland and Ceyla Pazarbasioglu
WASHINGTON DC, Jan 29 2024 (IPS)

As 2024 starts, the good news is that there haven’t been any notable requests by a low-income country for comprehensive debt relief since Ghana’s, more than a year ago. Despite this, vulnerabilities remain, with high debt servicing costs a growing challenge for low-income countries.

Financing pressures due to relatively high interest payments and the pace at which low-income countries need to repay debt are straining budgets. That prevents these countries from spending more on essential services or the critical investment needed to attract business, create jobs, improve prosperity, and build climate resilience.

One important metric is the share of revenues the government collects from its population through taxes and other fees that goes to pay its foreign creditors. While the scale of the burden differs greatly across countries, it’s generally about two and a half times higher than a decade earlier.

This means for a typical low-income borrower the share has risen to about 14 percent, from about 6 percent, and as much as 25 percent, from about 9 percent in some economies. This is one of the key indicators used in the framework for assessing debt sustainability that signals a country might be at risk of needing financial support from the IMF or of missing a debt payment.

Low-income countries also have significant debt repayments falling due in the next two years. They need to refinance about $60 billion of external debt each year, about three times the average in the decade through 2020.

But with many competing demands for financing, including from advanced and emerging market economies that are also trying to adapt to climate change, there’s a significant risk of a liquidity crunch—failure to raise sufficient financing at an affordable cost. That could in turn lead to a destabilizing debt crisis.

To address this financing challenge, we must understand why it’s happening and what affected countries and the broader international community can do to help.

Exacerbating liquidity squeeze

One factor was higher government borrowing and deficits to mitigate the impact of the pandemic and other external economic shocks. This has increased the level of debt and consequently the cost of servicing it. It’s encouraging that this trend is reversing as countries bring primary deficits back in line with pre-pandemic levels.

In addition, central banks have significantly raised borrowing costs to tame inflation. That makes it costlier for governments to raise new debt or refinance existing debt. While central banks may be done raising rates, it is not clear when they will start to cut, and this uncertainty may be reflected in volatile financial market conditions.

Low-income countries have also increasingly borrowed from the private sector—with about one third of financing coming from private creditors in the last decade compared with about one fifth in the previous decade.

This reflected a slowdown in financing from multilateral development banks (MDBs) in the earlier part of the decade and through official development assistance (ODA) agencies over 2020-22 compared to borrowing needs. This shift has increased both financing costs and vulnerability to global financial shocks.

Avoiding a costly debt crisis

Building resilience in the face of these trends requires countries to act. Some countries have made progress— for instance, Angola,The Gambia, Nigeria, and Zambia have taken steps to implement significant energy subsidy reforms to create space for development spending.

But many are lagging behind, especially in efforts to increase revenues, such as broadening the tax base, reducing tax exemptions, and increasing the efficiency of tax administration.

For instance, the typical Sub-Saharan African country raised only 13 percent of gross domestic product in revenues in 2022, compared with 18 percent in other emerging economies and developing countries and 27 percent in advanced economies.

And those with high debt vulnerabilities can’t afford to wait. Policy reforms are needed to boost growth and capture more revenue from that growth, for instance, through tax reforms. This will directly improve countries’ key debt metrics and ensure they can avoid a costly debt crisis.

However, reforms take time to deliver results, so countries should also proactively work on mobilizing funding at lower costs, in particular grants. For some, this might mean turning to the IMF for help.

This is indeed one of our key roles—helping countries bridge a financing gap while working with them to strengthen their policy frameworks. Other partners, particularly MDBs or providers of ODA, may also be willing to extend financing, especially to support reforms that help address global challenges such as climate.

And official creditors face their own limitations. Efforts to ensure the IMF has sufficient resources to meet our members’ needs, together with efforts to scale-up MDB support, are critical. In the same vein, efforts to protect ODA budgets will ensure the least fortunate have the opportunity to participate more fully in the global economy.

More systemic solutions needed?

It is not yet clear whether country-driven actions and scaled-up multilateral financial support will be sufficient to address these challenges, but some analysts have begun questioning whether a more systemic approach to reprofiling or refinancing debt is needed.

Low-income countries can already seek debt relief through the Group of Twenty’s Common Framework, including to reduce their immediate debt servicing burden. To date the Common Framework has only been used to help countries reduce the level of debt (with the exception of the debt standstill agreed for Ethiopia).

But it was also intended to provide more temporary liquidity relief. However, to be effective in that role would require greater predictability and speed. There has been progress—the agreement on a debt treatment by official creditors for Ghana took less than half the time it took for Chad two years earlier—but continued engagement on technical issues, including through the Global Sovereign Debt Roundtable (established last year by the IMF, World Bank and G20), is important.

Overall, the funding squeeze facing low-income countries must be closely monitored. A scenario where sufficient low-cost funding materializes is possible, but there are also scenarios where more ambitious reforms, stronger international cooperation, and faster improvements in the global debt restructuring architecture may be necessary to help them emerge stronger and more resilient.

Chuku Chuku, Neil Shenai and Madi Sarsenbayev contributed to this post.

Source International Monetary Fund (IMF)

IPS UN Bureau

 

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An area of illegal mining activity was raided by the Brazilian Federal Police in the eastern Amazon on Jan. 17, where their precarious installations and housing, as well as their equipment, were destroyed. The fight against illegal mining, especially in indigenous territories, intensified after a new tragedy of deaths of Yanomami indigenous people caused by encroaching garimpeiros or informal miners became headline news. CREDIT: Federal Police

By Mario Osava
RIO DE JANEIRO, Jan 29 2024 (IPS)

Artisanal mining, or “garimpo” as it is known in Brazil, has returned to the headlines as a factor in the deaths of Yanomami indigenous people, whose territory in the extreme north of Brazil suffers constant encroachment by miners, which has intensified in recent years.

In the first few days of the year, Yanomami spokespersons denounced new invasions of their land and the suspension of health services, in addition to the violence committed by miners or “garimpeiros”, which coincided with the fact that the military withdrew from areas they were protecting.

Furthermore, the media published new photos of extremely malnourished children. In response, the government promised to establish permanent posts of health care and protection in the indigenous territory.

“But what they are involved in there is not garimpo but illegal and inhumane mining practices,” said Gilson Camboim, president of the Peixoto River Valley Garimpeiros Cooperative (Coogavepe), which defends the activity as environmentally and socially sustainable when properly carried out.

“Garimpo is mining recognized by the Brazilian constitution, with its own legislation, which pays taxes, is practiced with an environmental license and respects the laws, employs many workers, strengthens the economy and distributes income,” he told IPS by telephone from the headquarters of his cooperative in Peixoto de Azevedo, a town of 33,000 people in the northern state of Mato Grosso.

Coogavepe was founded in 2008 with 23 members. Today it has 7,000 members and seeks to promote legal garimpo and environmental practices, such as the restoration of areas degraded by mining.

But it is difficult to salvage the reputation of this legal part of an activity whose damage is demonstrated by photos of emaciated children and families decimated by hunger and malaria, because the encroachment of miners pollutes rivers, kills fish and introduces diseases to which indigenous people are vulnerable because they have not developed immune defenses.

Garimpeiros and indigenous deaths

The humanitarian tragedy among the Yanomami people became big news in January 2023 when Sumaúma, an Amazonian online media outlet, denounced the deaths of 570 children under five years of age, due to malnutrition and preventable diseases, during the far-right government of former president Jair Bolsonaro (2019-2022).

Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who took office on Jan. 1, 2023, visited Yanomami territory and mobilized his government to care for the sick and expel illegal miners, destroying their equipment and camps. But a year later, the resumption of mining activity and a resurgence of hunger and deaths were reported.

Moreover, the entire extractivist sector has a terrible reputation due to tragedies caused by industrial mining. Two tailings dams broke in the southeastern state of Minas Gerais in 2015 and 2019, killing 289 people and muddying an 853-kilometer-long river and a 510-kilometer-long river.

Brazil is the world’s second largest producer of iron ore, following Australia. Iron ore is the main focus of industrial mining in the country.

Garimpo is mainly dedicated to gold, and accounts for 86 percent of its production. Garimpeiros also produce cassiterite (the mineral from which tin ore is extracted) and precious stones, such as emeralds and diamonds. Its major expansion, many decades ago, was along rivers in the Amazon jungle, to the detriment of indigenous peoples and tropical forests.

Indigenous people protest in the state of Roraima in northern Brazil against the invasion of Yanomami territory by garimpeiros or artisanal miners, who often practice illegally. CREDIT: Alberto César Araújo / Amazônia Real

Threat to the environment and health

Currently, 97.7 percent of the area occupied in Brazil by artisanal mining is in the Amazon rainforest, where it reaches 101,100 hectares, according to MapBiomas, a project launched by non-governmental organizations, universities and technology companies to monitor Brazilian biomes using satellite images and other data sources.

The production of gold uses mercury, which has contaminated many Amazonian rivers and a large part of their riverside population, including indigenous groups, such as the Munduruku people, who live in the basin of the Tapajós River, one of the great tributaries of the Amazon with an extension of 2,700 kilometers.

Garimpo dumps about 150 tons of mercury in the Brazilian Amazon rainforest every year, the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) estimates. The fear is that the tragedy of Minamata, the Japanese city where mercury dumped by a chemical industry in the mid-20th century killed about 900 people and caused neurological damage in tens of thousands, may be repeated here.

Brazil produced 94.6 tons of gold in 2022, according to the National Mining Agency. But the way it is extracted varies greatly, based mainly on informal mining, of which illegal mining makes up an unknown percentage.

Three prices govern this production, according to Armin Mathis, a professor at the Núcleo de Altos Estudos Amazónicos of the Federal University of Pará, who lives in Belém, the capital of this Amazonian state, with 1.3 million inhabitants.

The price of gold in Brazil; the price of diesel, which represents a third of the cost of gold mining; and the cost of labor are the three elements that determine whether the garimpo business is profitable, the German-born PhD in political science, who has been studying this activity since he arrived in Brazil in 1987, explained to IPS from Belém.

This mining was in fact artisanal, but it began to use machines, especially the backhoe, in the 1980s, which is why diesel increased its costs. And unemployment and periods of economic recession, in the 1980s and in 2015-2016, made garimpo more attractive.

In those periods and the following years, invasions of Yanomami territory, which also extends through the state of Amazonas in southwestern Venezuela, became more massive and aggressive. But the consequences for the native people living in vast areas of the rainforest only become news on some occasions, like now.

Small airplanes seized by police and environmental authorities were at the service of illegal miners in Roraima, an Amazonian state in the extreme north of Brazil. This is where most of the Yanomami Indians live, currently the main victims of illegal, mechanized mining. CREDIT: Federal Police

From artisanal to mechanization

Mechanization has restructured the activity. Machines are expensive and require financiers. Entrepreneurs have emerged to manage the now more complex operations, as well as others who only own and rent out the equipment.

In addition, the owners of small airplanes that supply the mining areas and facilitate the trade of the extracted gold became more powerful. The hierarchy of the business has expanded.

“We must differentiate between garimpo and the garimpeiros. This is not a rhetorical distinction. The garimpeiro, who works directly in the extraction of gold, is more a victim than a perpetrator of illegal, predatory and criminal mining. The person responsible lives far away and gets rich by exploiting workers in slavery-like labor relations,” observed Mauricio Torres, a geographer and professor at the Federal University of Pará.

“The garimpeiro, depicted as a criminal by the media, pays for the damage,” he told IPS by telephone from Belém.

The workers recognize that they are exploited, but feel that they are a partner of the garimpo owner, as they earn a percentage of the gold obtained. They work hard because the more they work, the more they earn.

A large part of the garimpeiros along the Tapajós River, where this kind of mining has been practiced since the middle of the last century, are actually landless peasant farmers who supplement their income in the garimpo business, when agriculture or fishing does not provide what they need to support their families, Torres explained.

Therefore, agrarian reform and other government initiatives that offer sufficient income to this population could reduce the pressure of the garimpo on the environment in the Amazon rainforest, which affects the region’s indigenous and traditional peoples, he said.

The situation of the garimpeiros also differs according to the areas where they work in the Amazon jungle, Mathis pointed out. In the Tapajós River, where the activity has been taking place for a longer period of time and is already legal in large part, coexistence is better with the indigenous Munduruku people, some of whom also became garimpeiros.

In Roraima, a state in the extreme north on the border with Venezuela and Guyana, where a large part of the territory is made up of indigenous reserves, illegal mining is widespread and includes the more or less violent invasion of Yanomami lands.

On the other hand, as the local economy depends on gold, the population’s support for garimpo, even illegal and more invasive practices, is broader than elsewhere. There, former president Bolsonaro, a supporter of garimpo, won 76 percent of the votes in the 2022 runoff election in which he was defeated by Lula.

Another component that aggravates the violence surrounding garimpo and, therefore, the crackdown on the activity, is the expansion of drug trafficking in the Amazon rainforest. The informality of the mining industry has facilitated its relationship with organized crime, whether in the drug trade or money laundering, said Mathis from Belém.

Credit: Vladimir Zivojinovic/Getty Images

By Andrew Firmin
LONDON, Jan 26 2024 (IPS)

Serbia’s December 2023 elections saw the ruling party retain power – but amid a great deal of controversy.

Civil society has cried foul about irregularities in the parliamentary election, but particularly the municipal election in the capital, Belgrade. In recent times Belgrade has been a hotbed of anti-government protests. That’s one of the reasons it’s suspicious that the ruling Serbian Progressive Party (SNS) came first in the city election.

Allegations are that the SNS had ruling party supporters from outside Belgrade temporarily register as city residents so they could cast votes. On election day, civil society observers documented large-scale movements of people into Belgrade, from regions where municipal elections weren’t being held and from Bosnia and Herzegovina and Montenegro. Civil society documented irregularities at 14 per cent of Belgrade voting stations. Many in civil society believe this made the crucial difference in stopping the opposition winning.

The main opposition coalition, Serbia Against Violence (SPN), which made gains but finished second, has rejected the results. It’s calling for a rerun, with proper safeguards to prevent any repeat of irregularities.

Thousands have taken to the streets of Belgrade to protest about electoral manipulation, rejecting the violation of the most basic principle of democracy – that the people being governed have the right to elect their representatives.

Facts that can’t be ignored: Serbian NGO @CRTArs has just published its latest findings on the election in #Serbia & #Belgrade. According to CRTA, there was an "organised migration of voters", which had a decisive influence on the close result of the election in Belgrade. https://t.co/a8POlE5VTy

— Andreas Schieder (@SCHIEDER) December 23, 2023

A history of violations

The SNS has held power since 2012. It blends economic neoliberalism with social conservatism and populism, and has presided over declining respect for civic space and media freedoms. In recent years, Serbian environmental activists have been subjected to physical attacks. President Aleksandar Vučić attempted to ban the 2022 EuroPride LGBTQI+ rights march. Journalists have faced public vilification, intimidation and harassment. Far-right nationalist and anti-rights groups have flourished and also target LGBTQI+ people, civil society and journalists.

The SNS has a history of electoral irregularities. The December 2023 vote was a snap election, called just over a year and a half since the previous vote in April 2022, which re-elected Vučić as president. In 2022, the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) pointed to an ‘uneven playing field’, characterised by close ties between major media outlets and the government, misuse of public resources, irregularities in campaign financing and pressure on public sector staff to support the SNS.

These same problems were seen in December 2023. Again, the OSCE concluded there’d been systemic SNS advantages. Civil society observers found evidence of vote buying, political pressure on voters, breaches of voting security and pressure on election observers. During the campaign, civil society groups were vilified, opposition officials were subjected to physical and verbal attacks and opposition rallies were prevented.

But the ruling party has denied everything. It’s slurred civil society for calling out irregularities, accusing activists of trying to destabilise Serbia.

Backdrop of protests

The latest vote was called following months of protests against the government. These were sparked by anger at two mass shootings in May 2023 in which 17 people were killed.

The shootings focused attention on the high number of weapons still in circulation after the wars that followed the break-up of Yugoslavia and the growing normalisation of violence, including by the government and its supporters.

Protesters accused state media of promoting violence and called for leadership changes. They also demanded political resignations, including of education minister Branko Ružić, who disgracefully tried to blame the killings on ‘western values’ before being forced to quit. Prime Minister Ana Brnabić blamed foreign intelligence services for fuelling protests. State media poured abuse on protesters.

These might have seemed odd circumstances for the SNS to call elections. But election campaigns have historically played to Vučić’s strengths as a campaigner and give him some powerful levers, with normal government activities on hold and the machinery of the state and associated media at his disposal.

Only this time it seems the SNS didn’t think all its advantages would be quite enough and, in Belgrade at least, upped its electoral manipulation to the point where it became hard to ignore.

East and west

There’s little pressure from Serbia’s partners to both east and west. Its far-right and socially conservative forces are staunchly pro-Russia, drawing on ideas of a greater Slavic identity. Russian connections run deep. In the last census, 85 per cent of people identified themselves as affiliated with the Serbian Orthodox Church, strongly in the sway of its Russian counterpart, in turn closely integrated with Russia’s repressive machinery.

The Serbian government relies on Russian support to prevent international recognition of Kosovo. Russian officials were only too happy to characterise post-election protests as western attempts at unrest, while Prime Minister Brnabić thanked Russian intelligence services for providing information on planned opposition activities.

But states that sit between the EU and Russia are being lured on both sides. Serbia is an EU membership candidate. The EU wants to keep it onside and stop it drifting closer to Russia, so EU states have offered little criticism.

Serbia keeps performing its balancing act, gravitating towards Russia while doing just enough to keep in with the EU. In the 2022 UN resolution on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, it voted to condemn Russia’s aggression and suspend it from the Human Rights Council. But it’s resisted calls to impose sanctions on Russia and in 2022 signed a deal with Russia to consult on foreign policy issues.

The European Parliament is at least prepared to voice concerns. In a recent debate, many of its members pointed to irregularities and its observation mission noted problems including media bias, phantom voters and vilification of election observers.

Other EU institutions should acknowledge what happened in Belgrade. They should raise concerns about electoral manipulation and defend democracy in Serbia. To do so, they need to support and work with civil society. An independent and enabled civil society will bring much-needed scrutiny and accountability. This must be non-negotiable for the EU.

Andrew Firmin is CIVICUS Editor-in-Chief, co-director and writer for CIVICUS Lens and co-author of the State of Civil Society Report.

 

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The International Court of Justice orders Israel to “take all measures within its power” to prevent further bloodshed in Gaza in line with Genocide Convention obligations. The Court also calls for the immediate release of all hostages. The order was read by the Judge Joan E Donoghue, President of the Court. Credit: UN

By Cecilia Russell
JOHANNESBURG, Jan 26 2024 (IPS)

The International Court of Justice today told Israel to take all measures within its power to prevent a genocide in the Gaza Strip.

Judge Joan E. Donoghue, the court’s president, read the order directing the State of Israel to abide by temporary measures to stop the humanitarian crisis facing the Palestinian population in Gaza from worsening.

Donoghue said that the facts and circumstances were sufficient to conclude that some of the “rights claimed by South Africa and for which it is seeking protection (for the Palestinian people in Gaza) were plausible.”

The International Court of Justice (ICJ), the main court of the United Nations, issued its ruling in the case South Africa submitted regarding the application of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide in the Gaza Strip. You can read the full order here. 

“The court is not called upon for purposes of its decision on the request for the indication of provisional measures to establish the existence of breaches of obligations under the Genocide Convention, but to determine whether the circumstances require the indication of provisional measures for the protection of rights under that instrument,” she explained.

Quoting from UN General Assembly Resolution 96 of December 11, 1946, she said genocide shocks “the conscience of mankind.”

Before going through the list of provisional measures, she quoted high-profile members of the United Nations, including its Secretary General, António Guterres, who warned the Security Council on December 6, 2023, that health care in Gaza was collapsing.

“Nowhere is safe in Gaza, amid constant bombardment by the Israel Defense Forces and without shelter or the essentials to survive. I expect public order to break to completely break down soon, due to the desperate conditions rendering even limited humanitarian assistance impossible.”

He then went on to warn that the situation could get worse, “including epidemic diseases and increased pressure for mass displacement into neighboring countries. We are facing a severe risk of the collapse of the humanitarian system. The situation is fast deteriorating into a catastrophe, with potentially irreversible implications for Palestinians as a whole.”

Donoghue told the court that it considers the rights in question in the proceeding plausible.

“The court considers that the plausible rights in question in this proceeding, namely, the right of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip to be protected from acts of genocide and related prohibited acts identified in Article 3 of the Genocide Convention and the right of South Africa to seek Israel’s compliance with the latter’s obligation under the convention, are of such a nature that prejudiced them and was “capable of causing irreparable harm.”

She pointed out that the provisional measures didn’t have to match those South Africa requested.

In terms of the order:

• Israel must, in accordance with its obligations under the Genocide Convention, take all measures within its power to prevent the commission of all acts within the scope of Article 2 of the Convention, which deals with the destruction of a group in whole or in part. This includes killing groups of members of the group, causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group, and deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part. It was also prevented from imposing measures that were intended to prevent births within the group. Article 2
• The court further considered that Israel must ensure, with immediate effect, that its military forces do not commit any of the acts designed to destroy a group, and the State of Israel must take measures within its power to prevent and punish the direct and public incitement to commit genocide in relation to the members of the Palestinian group in the Gaza Strip.
• The court ordered Israel to take immediate and effective measures to enable the provision of urgently needed basic services and humanitarian assistance to address the adverse conditions of life faced by Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.
• Israel must also take effective measures to prevent the destruction and ensure the preservation of evidence related to allegations of acts within the scope of Articles 2 and 3 of the Genocide Convention against members of the Palestinian group in the Gaza Strip.
• Israel must submit a report to the court on all measures taken to give effect to the order within one month of the order. “The report so provided shall then be communicated to South Africa.

“The court reaffirms the decision given in the present proceedings and in no way prejudges the question of the jurisdiction of the court to deal with the merits of the case or any questions related to the admissibility of the application or to the merits themselves.”

She added that the court was gravely concerned about the fate of the hostages abducted during the attack in Israel on October 7, 2023, and held since then by Hamas and other armed groups, and called for their immediate and unconditional release.

 

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The International Court of Justice in the Hague heard the South Africa versus Israel case earlier this month. Credit: ICJ

By Cecilia Russell
JOHANNESBURG, Jan 26 2024 (IPS)

The International Court of Justice will deliver it’s order for provisional measures submitted by South Africa in the case of South Africa versus Israel today.

South Africa argued that the scale of destruction resulting from the bombardment of Gaza and the deliberate restriction of food, water, medicines, and electricity demonstrated that the government of Israel and its military were intent on destroying Palestinians as a group, which was in violation of the UN Genocide Convention.

The case was argued on January 10 and 11, 2024, and today’s decision is only likely to deal with jurisdiction and the provisional measures that South Africa asked the court to impose.

The provisional measures include:

• that military operations are immediately ceased;
• that the State of Israel take reasonable measures within its power to prevent genocide, including desisting from actions that could bring about physical destruction;
• rescind orders of restrictions and prohibitions to prevent forced displacement and ensure access to humanitarian assistance, including access to adequate fuel, shelter, clothes, hygiene, sanitation and medical supplies;
• avoid public incitement;
• ensure the preservation of evidence related to allegations of acts and
• submit a report to the court on all measures taken to give effect to the order.

South Africa argued that the scale of destruction resulting from the bombardment of Gaza and the deliberate restriction of food, water, medicines, and electricity demonstrated that the government of Israel and its military were intent on destroying Palestinians as a group.

Israel disputed this, saying that the country had a right to defend itself in the face of the October 7 massacre in Israel. It was argued that South Africa brought a fundamentally flawed case. 

IPS will update the outcome later today.

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

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• South Africa’s Genocide Case Flawed, Premature, Inaccurate, says Israel
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Rural Kenyans are forging a path toward a more sustainable future and protecting their lives and livelihoods from climate change through regenerative agriculture, nurturing hope for their communities and the environment.
 

By Ulysses Dorotheo
BANGKOK, Thailand, Jan 26 2024 (IPS)

A hot debate on electronic smoking devices is expected to engage governments, scheduled to meet in Panama from 5-10 February for the tenth session of the Conference of Parties (COP) to the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (WHO FCTC).

The WHO FCTC, the first health treaty, was developed to address the global tobacco epidemic and to ensure that governments are supported in implementing comprehensive and effective tobacco control strategies.

Earlier in 2016, the governments during COP8 made a decision to either prohibit or restrict the manufacture, importation, distribution, presentation, sale and use of electronic nicotine delivery systems (e-cigarettes). Since then, more than 45 countries and jurisdictions have banned e-cigarettes as a precautionary principle (Figure 1).

Figure 1: Countries that have banned e-cigarettes

Electronic smoking devices (ESDs), which include e-cigarettes (or vape products) and heated tobacco products (HTPs), has grown into a multi-billion dollar industry estimated to be worth about USD 18 billion in 2022 to about USD 46 billion by 2030.

While the tobacco and vape industries claim these devices are safer than traditional cigarettes and can be used by smokers to quit, no country has approved them as cessation tools. ESDs cannot help smoking cessation as studies show the nicotine in ESDs keeps its users addicted to tobacco products, and most smokers who took up ESDs to quit smoking ended up using both ESDs and traditional cigarettes (dual use).

ESDs are not harmless. Current research indicates that ESD pose health risks, as aerosols from these devices contain nicotine as well as toxic chemicals, volatile organic compounds, and heavy metals that may damage the lung and heart.

WHO warning to act urgently on e-cigarettes

Last month, the WHO issued an urgent call to control e-cigarettes to protect children and the general population. According to WHO’s statement, “E-cigarettes with nicotine are highly addictive and alarming evidence has emerged of adverse population health effects.”

According to WHO, 88 countries have no minimum age at which e-cigarettes can be bought and 74 countries have no regulations for these harmful products.

A number of high-income countries with declining smoking prevalence but who legalized e-cigarettes are now grappling with increasing youth vaping, such as Canada, New Zealand, U.K. and USA. Low-and-middle-income countries who are already struggling to overcome the burden of the tobacco epidemic now face a double burden with nicotine addiction.

But despite the growing evidence that ESDs are dangerous and highly addictive, the tobacco and nicotine industry aggressively market these devices, particularly to youth.

The industry and its lobbyists pressure governments to approve sales of these new products with routine arguments about loss of taxes and smuggling, while simultaneously exaggerating their virtues.

Youth targeted in new nicotine products

The ASEAN region’s 213 million youths are an easy target for the tobacco industry which employs a host of marketing tactics to lure these young people. In 2019, about 14% of Filipino adolescents aged 13 to 15 years reported using ESDs, alongside nearly 15% (2022) of Malaysian and 11% (2018) of Indonesian teens.

ESDs come with a variety of flavors, most of which are made to attract young people, such as fruity, candy-based, and dessert-like flavors. Over 16,000 e-liquid flavors are sold in the market currently, and there is clear evidence these flavors harm the body.

Food flavors are meant to be used in foodstuff to be digested, not inhaled into the lungs which harms the respiratory system. This harm is seen in cases where young vapers have suffered collapsed lungs and have been admitted to intensive care.

Promoted as cool, lifestyle must-haves, the tobacco industry also entices the youth to use ESDs through social media platforms such as Instagram and Facebook, and through sponsorships of events and concerts.

To ban or restrict electronic smoking devices

In the ASEAN region Singapore imposed a ban on these devices in 2011 to prevent unchecked use of ESDs. They also consider ESDs as starter products which may cause nicotine addiction and lead consumers to use both ESDs and cigarettes later in life.

Hong Kong, like Singapore, banned ESDs in 2022 as a response to the growing youth uptake for these products. Other countries who have banned ESD in the ASEAN include Thailand, Laos and Brunei. Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines legalized e-cigarettes and face a big youth vaping problem.

Australia adopted a prescription only approach to e-cigarettes, while HTPs are banned. The United States, through its Food and Drug Administration regulates ESDs on the basis of age restrictions, health warning labels, ingredients disclosure, and marketing restrictions.

Some governments have implemented stringent regulations on the basis of price or tax measures, product standards control, health warning labels and restrictions on marketing and advertisements. Policies however should also cover age restrictions, flavor bans, and smoke-free regulations.

Eight million deaths due to tobacco are eight million deaths too many. With ESDs, history cannot repeat itself. At COP10, governments will be presented with a once-in-a-generation opportunity to ensure that the tobacco industry cannot deceive anymore. Governments must perform their mandate to protect the people’s right to good health and well-being and to work towards a healthy, tobacco-free world.

Dr Ulysses Dorotheo is the executive director of the Southeast Asia Tobacco Control Alliance. He is also a member of the World Health Organization’s Civil Society Working Group on Non-Communicable Diseases and the World Heart Federation Tobacco Experts Group.

IPS UN Bureau

 

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By External Source
Jan 25 2024 (IPS-Partners)

 

 
Land rights are fundamental for three things.

One: economic development. No country in the world has gone from low income to Middle income to high income without clear land and property rights and markets. It is a core part of the economy.

Second, poverty elimination, the most important asset of most poor families around the world is their land is their house if that is not secure then the most important asset that they have the most important opportunity to escape poverty and to build for the next generation is going to be lost.

And third: for the environment. Without clear property rights those that take care of the land and those that protect the forest will not have the energy and the desire to invest in that protection because at any point they will lose them. So it’s important for the economy, for poverty, for the environment.

Cadasta Foundation
https://cadasta.org/

 

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Posters conmemorating two Armenian prisoners on the streets of Yerevan. The total number of detainees remains unknown. Credit: Edgar Kamalyan

By Anush Ghavalyan
YEREVAN, Armenia, Jan 25 2024 (IPS)

On July 29, 2023, Vagif Khachatryan, a 68-year-old Armenian retiree, woke up early in Nagorno Karabakh —a self-proclaimed republic in the Caucasus region—to travel to Armenia. He needed to undergo delicate heart surgery.

Despite the pressing medical emergency, it was not an easy decision. The only road that connected Nagorno Karabakh with Armenia and the rest of the world had been cut off for seven months by the Azerbaijani army. Even if he was travelling in an International Committee of the Red Cross car, Khachatryan knew he could face trouble.

He was arrested that day by the Azerbaijani border guard service. Four months later, a military court in Baku handed him a 15-year sentence for crimes allegedly committed during a war fought more than 30 years ago.

Vagif Khachatryan is yet another victim of a conflict that has its roots in the Soviet Union. After the collapse of the USSR in 1991, Armenians remained the majority in Nagorno-Karabakh, but the enclave was officially on the territory of the newborn Republic of Azerbaijan.

A war was already unravelling in Karabakh. The Armenian victory also led to the forcible displacement of hundreds of thousands of Azerbaijanis. In September 2020, the latter launched an offensive through which they took over two-thirds of the territory under Armenian control.

But there were still more than 100,000 Armenians left.

In December 2022, Baku blocked the only road connecting Artsakh with Armenia and the rest of the world, depriving its inhabitants of the most basic supplies including food and medicines. It was that lack of medical assistance that pushed Vagif Khachatryan to his fate seven months later.

With Khachatryan already in prison, the blockade on Nagorno Karabakh was lifted in September 2023 in the wake of a new Azeri attack. The road was opened so that the Armenians remaining in the enclave fled en masse to Armenia.

Senior international bodies like the European Union Parliament accused Azerbaijan of carrying out “ethnic cleansing” against the Armenian residents of Nagorno-Karabakh. Today, Karabakhis are restarting from scratch in Armenia, the Khachatryans among those.

“The fact that my father has a heart disease gives me hope that he will not be tortured in Azerbaijani custody,” Vera Khachatryan told IPS by telephone from Jermuk, 170 kilometres southeast of Yerevan.

Her father’s arrest, she said, has also had an impact on her mother. “She suffers from new health and psychological problems which only add to those derived from forced displacement,” explained the displaced woman.

On September 28, Karabaj authorities issued a decree dissolving the self-proclaimed Nagorno Karabakh Republic as of January 1, 2024.

Political leaders of Nagorno Karabakh during one of the last masses celebrated in the enclave. Eight of them are today in Azerbaijani prisons. Credit: Edgar Kamalyan / IPS

 

Secrecy

On December 13, 2023, a prisoner exchange took place: Azerbaijan released 32 Armenian soldiers in exchange for the last two Azerbaijani soldiers under Armenian custody. Armenia’s support for Azerbaijan to host the United Nations Climate Summit in Baku was also part of the deal.

Both sides described it as “a sign of goodwill.”

“Azerbaijan uses the prisoners´ issue as a political tool to put pressure on Armenia or to obtain something in return,” Siranush Sahakyan, representative of the Armenian prisoners’ interests at the European Court of Human Rights told IPS by phone.

“No repatriation conducted by Baku other than the prisoner swap was held under an amnesty or any other legal procedure,” stressed Sahakyan.

Armenia claims that more than 100 prisoners of war and civilians remain in Azerbaijan, including three former presidents of Nagorno-Karabakh, the speaker of parliament and members of the cabinet. Baku says the total number of Armenian prisoners in its custody is 23.

Other than the contradicting figures, their state also poses a major source of concern. In a March 2021 report, Human Rights Watch denounced that the Armenian prisoners of war suffered abuse in Azerbaijani custody and called on Baku to release “all remaining prisoners of war and civilians.”

Faced with Baku’s inaction, Yerevan appealed to the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR).

Protest in Stepanakert (the capital of Nagorno Karabakh) after the closure of the road that connected the enclave with Armenia, in December 2022. After nine months of blockade and an Azerbaijani attack, all Karabakh residents fled to Armenia. Credit: Edgar Kamalyan / IPS

 

“Azerbaijan is obliged to submit a report on arbitrarily detained senior officials to the ECHR before the end of January 2024,” Hasmik Samvelyan, spokesperson for the Armenian Representation for International Legal Affairs, reminded IPS in a telephone conversation.

For the time being, the International Committee of the Red Cross is the only independent body that has access to Armenian prisoners.

“Our representatives have visited all the captives detained in Baku and checked the conditions in which they are held,” Zara Amatuni, ICRC communications officer in Armenia, told IPS by telephone.

Several of the prisoners’ relatives confirmed to IPS that they had the opportunity to speak with them. The ICRC mediates to facilitate communication by telephone every 30 to 40 days. The organisation avoided giving more details after appealing to the importance of confidentiality.

“We present our observations only to the competent authorities,” the ICRC press officer stressed to IPS.

Repatriated prisoners have also consistently refused to talk to journalists about the conditions of their imprisonment, and that´s also the Armenian state´s policy. Many see it as a way to avoid triggering a reaction from Azerbaijan that could worsen the imprisonment conditions.

 

Families fleeing Nagorno Karabakh after the Azerbaijani attack in September 2023. Several political organisations and human rights defenders accused Azerbaijan of launching “a campaign of ethnic cleansing” against the Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh. Credit: Siranush Sargsyan / IPS

 

Waiting for justice

During an international forum on the future of Nagorno Karabakh held on December 6 in Baku, Azerbaijani president Ilham Aliyev declared that the Armenian prisoners “are waiting for Azerbaijani justice to rule.”

The recent wave of repression against the media and any voice critical of the Government does not invite hope. Last December, Amnesty International denounced the arrests of at least six independent Azerbaijani journalists in just one month on “fabricated” charges.

In its latest world freedom report, the Freedom House claimed Azerbaijan is one of the 57 countries classified as “not free” out of the 159 studied. The Washington-based NGO denounced “numerous arbitrary arrests and detentions”. It also described Azerbaijan’s judiciary as “corrupt and subordinate to the executive.”

Another of those waiting for Azerbaijani justice to rule is Vicken Euljeckjian. This Lebanese who also has Armenian nationality was captured along with Maral Najarian —another Lebanese Armenian— by Azerbaijani soldiers while driving from Yerevan to Nagorno-Karabakh on November 10, 2020, a day after the Russian-brokered ceasefire was announced.

Four months after their arrest, Beirut secured Najarian´s release, but not Euljeckjian´s. The latter was sentenced to 20 years in prison in June 2021. His name, however, appeared on the list of prisoners to be swapped on December 13, 2023, but a last-minute surprise prevented it.

“After three years of separation, pain and despair, we were very excited to hear that he would finally be released. Suddenly, his name was replaced with that of another prisoner three hours before the exchange,” Vicken´s wife Linda Euljeckjian recalled to IPS by phone from Beirut.

Hoping to ease the process, Linda and her daughter travelled to Yerevan to meet with Armenian officials. But the latter could do little, so the family also approached senior Lebanese officials.

“After pressure from the local media, the Lebanese government appears to be interested in discussing the issue of my husband’s repatriation with Azerbaijani officials,” said Linda.

While she waits for the release of her husband, the issue of Armenian prisoners of war and civilians in Azerbaijan remains among those to be settled in a conflict inherited from the 20th century.

Food insecurity and food waste create a paradox that necessitates us to creatively address these two interlinked issues. Credit: Claudia Ciobanu / IPS

By Ifeanyi Nsofor and Esther Ngumbi
SILVER SPRING, Maryland / URBANA, Illinois, USA, Jan 25 2024 (IPS)

Ten percent of Americans live in food-insecure households. At the same time, the average U.S. family of four spends $1,500 each year on food that ends up uneaten. Food is the single most common material found in landfills; and food waste is responsible for 58% of landfill methane emissions released to the atmosphere. Food insecurity and food waste create a paradox that necessitates us to creatively address these two interlinked issues.

Both these issues are not just American problems, they are global. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, up to one third of all food produced goes to waste. And in a cruel twist, even as so much food goes to waste, more than one billion people are food insecure globally.

On the issue of food insecurity, countries have taken several approaches to address it, including policy level interventions. The White House, for example, created a task force to investigate the issue of hunger and food insecurity. It included it as a social determinant of health.

According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, up to one third of all food produced goes to waste. And in a cruel twist, even as so much food goes to waste, more than one billion people are food insecure globally

In Kenya, the government in collaboration with the World Bank through initiatives such as the Kenya Climate Smart Agriculture and the National Agriculture Rural Inclusive Growth Project project is addressing food insecurity by deploying multiple strategies including providing farmers with inputs, offering them extension and climate advisory services, and facilitating market access.

It is important for governments to address these issues, but we must all do more. Here are five more ideas for tackling food insecurity and food waste.

First, tackle food waste at the production level. A recent study showed that inefficiencies in agricultural supply chains contribute 1.3 billion tons of food waste as it moves along to stores, restaurants and homes.

The U.S. government can promote a range of technological advancements to address this, including utilizing drones and cell phones and other technologies to accurately map what is being produced where and when including the expected yields, and timeframes.

Doing so would facilitate ensuring that all produced food can be marketed. Start-ups focused on ensuring all food that is produced is sold to consumers including through gleaning are at the forefront, championing these kinds of initiatives of urban gleaning programs in the US.

For example, there is a national map of gleaning, that rescues foods that would otherwise go to waste. These gleaning innovations serve a dual purpose – tackling hunger and food waste. Such innovations deserve to be promoted and invested in.

Second, farmers must develop innovative new crops that are resilient to climate change, easy to cultivate and packed with nutrients. An example is the biofortified orange-fleshed sweet potato developed at the International Potato Center and funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

This species of potato grows with less water, can withstand disease and contains nutrients necessary for growth and development. For example, it is fortified with vitamin A to protect children from vitamin A deficiency, which typically causes blindness, diarrhea, and immune disorders.

Research published in the International Journal for Vitamin and Nutrition Research shows that orange-fleshed sweet potato improves vitamin A status, increases the availability of different micronutrients and reduces vitamin A deficiency, and therefore reduces child mortality rates.

Third, introduce marketing innovations that encourage consumers to not only focus on buying better looking products, but also ensure that consumers can still buy not so perfect foods.

For instance, Asda recently introduced the UK’s first supermarket ‘wonky vegetable’ box. It contains enough ugly potatoes and knobbly carrots to feed a family of four for an entire week for just £3.50. The ‘wonky vegetable’ box contains in-season winter vegetables and salad ingredients at a price that is 30% cheaper than standard lines. Customers love wonky fruit and veg and sales have steadily increased.

Fourth, integrate artificial intelligence and big data analytics and support these recent innovations. To date, artificial intelligence has been utilized in the modern day to help tackle several challenges and it could be utilized to facilitate tackling this dual challenge.

These technologies can be used to forecast disruptions in the supply chain by using historical data that’s combined with real time data. In so doing, companies involved in food distribution can proactively anticipate and prepare for any logistical and weather-related challenges that may disrupt scheduled food supply and distribution channels.

Lastly, celebrate the use of innovative ways to address food waste in order to inspire others.

In Ghana, Elijah Amoo Adoo, founder of Food for all Africa – West Africa’s largest food bank found that 46% of the food produced on farms in the country goes to waste because of poor logistics and inefficient marketing.

Consequently, Food for all Africa collects leftover food close to its expiry date from local restaurants, supermarkets, food distribution companies, and rural small-hold farmers, and redistributes to disadvantaged children in orphanages, hospitals and lower-income schools. This is significant in a country where 28% of all children aged five years and below are stunted.

Of course, it will be important to consider barriers to innovations that address the dual challenge of food waste and food insecurity. These barriers range from availability of incentives to consumer willingness to accept and pay for these innovations as well as the relevance of these innovations to specific regions and cultures. But the tradeoff is worth the work – reduced hunger and reduced waste, and millions of lives improved.

 

Dr. Ifeanyi M. Nsofor, MBBS, MCommH (Liverpool) is Senior New Voices Fellow at the Aspen Institute, Senior Atlantic Fellow for Health Equity at George Washington University, 2006 Ford Foundation International Fellow.

Esther Ngumbi, PhD is Assistant Professor, Department of Entomology, African American Studies Department, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

 

Airstrikes destroy buildings in the Gaza Strip. Credit: UNRWA/Ashraf Amra

By Jake Johnson
NEW YORK, Jan 25 2024 (IPS)

A coalition of 16 leading human rights organizations issued a joint statement Wednesday calling on all nations to immediately stop sending weapons to both Israel and and Palestinian militants, warning that continued arms transfers risk exacerbating what’s already one of the worst humanitarian crises in modern history.

The groups—including Save the Children International, Doctors of the World, Oxfam International, and Amnesty International—said arms transfers must stop as long as it’s possible they will be “used to commit or facilitate serious violations of international humanitarian or human rights law.”

“Israel’s bombardment and siege are depriving the civilian population of the basics to survive and rendering Gaza uninhabitable,” reads the groups’ statement. “Today, the civilian population in Gaza faces a humanitarian crisis of unprecedented severity and scale.”

“Furthermore, Palestinian armed group-led attacks killed around 1,200 people and took hundreds of Israeli and foreign hostages, including children, and continue to hold more than 130 hostages captive inside Gaza,” the statement continues.

“Armed groups in Gaza have continued to indiscriminately fire rockets toward population centers in Israel, disrupting school for children, displacing and threatening the lives and well-being of civilians. Hostage-taking and indiscriminate attacks are violations of international humanitarian law and must end immediately.”

Individual groups such as Human Rights Watch have previously called for an arms embargo on Israel and Palestinian militants, but Wednesday’s call represents the first coordinated appeal from top humanitarian groups for an immediate end to weapons transfers since Israel began its latest assault on Gaza in October.

The groups urged the United Nations Security Council—which has been stifled by the U.S., Israel’s top arms supplier—to adopt a resolution imposing a weapons embargo on the Israeli government and armed Palestinian groups in Gaza, where most of the population is displaced and at risk of starvation after three and a half months of incessant Israeli bombing.

“American taxpayers should not be subsidizing war crimes,” Martin Butcher, policy adviser on arms and conflict at Oxfam International, said during a press call on Wednesday, stressing that most of Israel’s arms come from just a handful of powerful nations—the U.S., Germany, and the United Kingdom.

The U.S. alone has provided Israel with more than 10,000 tons of weaponry since October 7, including 2,000-pound bombs, tank ammunition, and drones. Hamas, meanwhile, “fights with a patchwork of weapons built by Iran, China, Russia, and North Korea,” The Associated Press reported last week.

The humanitarian coalition noted in its statement that Israel has used its vast military arsenal to destroy a large portion of “Gaza’s homes, schools, hospitals, water infrastructure, shelters, and refugee camps.”

“The indiscriminate nature of these bombings and, a pattern of apparently disproportionate civilian harm they routinely cause, is unacceptable,” the groups said.

“All states have the obligation to prevent atrocity crimes and promote adherence to norms that protect civilians.”

The global appeal for an arms embargo comes as conditions on the ground in Gaza are deteriorating by the hour as Israeli forces assail the enclave, imperiling its remaining hospitals and adding to the grisly death toll.

Israel, which is facing a genocide case at the International Court of Justice, claims it is targeting Hamas militants—but in reality no one has been safe from its wide-ranging attack on the territory. A majority of those killed by Israeli forces in Gaza since October have been women and children, and an estimated 90% have been civilians.

As the humanitarian coalition said in its statement, “Gaza today is the most dangerous place to be a child, a journalist, and an aid worker.”

Alexandra Saieh, head of humanitarian policy and advocacy at Save the Children, said during Wednesday’s press call that arms transfers to Israel are “directly fueling the death and destruction in Gaza.”

Israel’s relentless bombing and siege, Saieh added, are “choking the humanitarian response as levels of starvation and children are forced to have limbs amputated without anesthetics.”

The only way to stop the bloodshed and allow aid to reach desperate Gazans, the humanitarian groups argued, is an immediate arms embargo and a lasting cease-fire—proposals that the U.S. has actively opposed.

Twice since October 7, the U.S. State Department has bypassed Congress to expedite arms sales to the Israeli government, which has used American-made weaponry to massacre civilians in the Gaza Strip.

“All states have the obligation to prevent atrocity crimes and promote adherence to norms that protect civilians,” the groups said. “The international community is long overdue to live up to these commitments.”

Jake Johnson is a senior editor and staff writer for Common Dreams.

Source: Common Dreams

IPS UN Bureau

 

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A woman worker on a farm in Jordan. Credit : Abdel Hameed Al Nasier/ILO

By Hisham Allam
CAIRO, Jan 25 2024 (IPS)

Dr. Zeinab Al-Momany, a prominent social entrepreneur, sheds light on the journey of empowering women farmers in Jordan and the Arab world, where women often work long hours for low pay and lack labour recognition.

As the visionary behind the Sakhrah Women’s Society Cooperative and the Specific Union for Productive Farmer Women in Jordan (SUFWJ), Al-Momany shares her perspectives with IPS on the challenges faced by women farmers, the impact of organizations like SUFWJ on rural economic growth and women’s rights, and the profound implications of climate change for women in agriculture. 

A Pioneering Journey

Al-Momany, boasting a diverse background in business management and holding a Ph.D. in Philosophy of Management, laid the foundation for the Sakhrah Women’s Society Cooperative in 2007. This cooperative, a pioneering endeavor in Jordan and the Arab world, focuses on enhancing the capacities of small agricultural organizations. Her commitment to empowering female farmers and advocating for their rights has transcended borders, uniting 22 women’s organizations, and now the SUFWJ has 5000 members. Her leadership extends globally, serving as the President of the Arab Farmer Network (Arrinina) and as a member of prestigious organizations such as the World Farmer Organization (WFO) and Climate Change and Food Security (CCFS). In 2008, she was honored with the Schwab Foundation Social Entrepreneur of the Year award.

Dr. Zeinab Al-Momany has been working to empower women farmers in Jordan and beyond. Credit: SUFWJ

SUFWJ’s Impact on Women Farmers

Established in 2007, SUFWJ has significantly shaped the landscape for women farmers in Jordan. SUFWJ has successfully increased the number of women who own land, championed wage equality, and enabled free health and social insurance thanks to its effective programs. The union’s initiatives have empowered 120 women farmers in leadership roles, offered health insurance to 578 families, trained 7,000 women and girls, and provided micro-finance loans to 800 women and girls.

“The union has been able to increase the percentage of land ownership through a project that began with its implementation in 2007, pointing out that the percentage was 2.7, and according to statistics, it has increased to 5.5 percent,” she says.

“The union launched the health insurance project in 2014 and is still working with the support of USAID FHI to provide free health insurance to female farmers through the Ministry of Social Development. The insurance covered 558 families in the northern and central Ghor areas (in Jordan) and is seeking to reach the southern Ghor.”

Addressing Challenges and Inequality

Al-Momany draws attention to the unequal laws affecting female farmworkers, emphasizing the disparities in comparison to their foreign counterparts. SUFWJ, through its robust advocacy program, channels efforts toward changing laws and regulations concerning female farmers. The focus is on advocating for their rights to health insurance, social security, equal wages, and improved working conditions.

She pointed out that the union has amended the internal system of the General Farmers Union, where the law used to require female farmers to own 10 dunums (about 1 hectare) of land to join the union, but after the amendment, female farmers were allowed to join by renting land. She mentioned that the union is currently working on the labor and workers’ law so that they are eligible for social security and health insurance to protect their rights.

Economic Empowerment Initiatives

Al-Momany shed light on the union’s economic empowerment program, which identifies the needs of female farmers and formulates action plans every two to five years based on these needs. The goal is to address the specific challenges women farmers face, set clear objectives, and implement targeted programs to achieve sustainable progress.

Al-Momany referred to the law as “unequal” and explained that despite doing the same arduous work as foreign workers, female farm workers receive low wages, have no leave rights, and do not have organized contracts to protect their rights.

Climate Change and Future Initiatives

Through the union, efforts have been directed at raising awareness of climate change issues, increasing green areas, and aiding women farmers in transitioning to clean and renewable energy. The initiatives include providing loans for installing solar panels instead of electricity, digging wells for rainwater collection, and installing solar heaters. The union also supports organic farming, extracting organic fertilizers, and spearheading projects on environmental diversity and the conservation of forests and animals.

The most affected by climate change are farmers and women farmers, especially with the rise in temperature. Working in agriculture at this high temperature affects their health due to their exposure to the sun for long periods, as it affects crops, the work of women farmers, and the national product. Jordan also suffers from water scarcity, and with the effects of climate change, the salinity rate increases, leading to a problem in the quality of soil, crops, and water availability.

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

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By Yasmine Sherif
NEW YORK, Jan 24 2024 (IPS-Partners)

Education is the bedrock of peace, the foundation of strong societies, and the building block for a better world. This year, as we celebrate the Sixth International Day of Education under the theme of ‘learning for a lasting peace’, we call on world leaders to end wars and armed conflicts and focus on our common humanity to embrace the vast potential learning offers in uniting our world.

Our world is being torn apart by injustice, oppression, racism, xenophobia, fear, greed and violent conflict. School-aged children bear the brunt. No child in Gaza – over 600,000 girls and boys – has access to education. In Afghanistan, 80% of school-aged Afghan girls and women – 2.5 million girls and women – are out of school and are systematically denied their human right to an education due to their gender. In Ukraine, 300,000 children are at risk of learning losses over this school year. In Sudan, 19 million children are out of school today amidst the ongoing brutal conflict. In Ethiopia, 7.6 million children are not in the classroom due to compounding challenges – including armed conflicts, the impact of climate change and forced displacement.

Around the world, over 224 million crisis-affected children are denied education, often occupied with seeking protection and survival, girls are being forced into child marriage, and both boys and girls are being forcibly recruited as child soldiers. The safety, protection and hope of the school and their teachers is long gone.

224 million children impacted by the compounding impacts of armed conflicts, climate change and forced displacement are in dire, urgent need of quality education.

The world made a promise to future generations to ensure education for all through Sustainable Development Goal 4. UN Member States made a legal commitment to the right to an education in binding human rights conventions. This promise and legal commitment must be realized in order to end extreme poverty, aid-dependency, and the vicious circle of violations of children’s rights and dignity. “No peace which is not peace for all,” as the late UN Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld said.

As global fund for education in emergencies and protracted crises within the UN, Education Cannot Wait has a proven, innovative model of bringing together governments, UN agencies, civil society, private sector and, above all, local communities, to rapidly deliver quality education for the world’s most vulnerable girls and boys. Working across the humanitarian-development-peace nexus, joint programming allows for a holistic education approach to achieve an inclusive, continued quality education in emergencies and protracted crises. Together with all our partners, Education Cannot Wait (ECW) has reached over 9 million crisis-affected girls and boys with a quality education in just a few years.

Whether we jointly deliver a First Emergency Response or a Multi-Year Resilience Investment, we are together investing in transformative pathways towards sustainable development. This means that refugee and forcibly displaced girls and boys like Mariam* in Burkina Faso and Leonardo* in Colombia now access a child-centred and holistic education.

This includes early childhood education, accelerated learning, mental health and psychosocial support, school feeding, school supplies and equipment, gender-sensitive water and sanitation facilities, cash-transfers to incentivize school attendance, vocational training to enter the workforce, risk management to stay safe, and trained teachers that foster young talents and nurture the ideals of compassion, community and the common good.

To deliver on our promises outlined in the Sustainable Development Goals, legal commitments in the UN Covenant on Social, Economic and Cultural Rights, the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and other international accords, we urgently need more financial resources to deliver the hope and opportunity of an education for girls and boys living on the frontlines of these conflicts and crises. ECW calls on our strategic donors, philanthropic foundations and the private sector to reach our target of US$1.5 billion so that ECW and our partners worldwide can reach 20 million crisis-affected girls and boys with quality education by 2026.

By giving all children and adolescents the opportunity to realize their right to an education, by not leaving any one of them behind through affirmative action for girls, children with disabilities and refugees, and by empowering them to sustain hope, feel that their lives have a meaning despite all they have experienced, and keep pursuing their dreams, we are indeed investing in humanity and peaceful co-existence on the globe. Instead of investing in more wars, leading to more human suffering, injustices and extreme poverty, let us heed the words of Nelson Mandela, “Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.”

* Names changed to protect identity.

Yasmine Sherif is Executive Director Education Cannot Wait (ECW)

 

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Excerpt:

International Day of Education Statement: Education Cannot Wait Executive Director Yasmine Sherif

Many unemployed youth in Zimbabwe are taking to gambling to support themselves. Credit: Jeffrey Moyo/IPS

By Jeffrey Moyo
HARARE, Jan 24 2024 (IPS)

Twenty years after completing high school in Zimbabwe, 38-year-old Tinago Mukono still has not found employment, and in order to survive, he has switched to betting, turning it into a form of employment.

Every day throughout the week, Mukono leaves his home to join many others like him in betting clubs strewn across Harare, the Zimbabwean capital, with the hope of making it.

With Zimbabwe’s economy underperforming over the past two decades since the government seized white-owned commercial farms, unemployment has stood out as the country’s worst burden.

According to the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU), over 90 percent of Zimbabweans are jobless.

Such are many, like Mukono, who has desperately found betting to be the panacea.

“I wake up every day to come bet here in town. I do soccer betting, and sometimes I win, but sometimes I also lose, but I keep trying,” Mukono told IPS.

He (Mukono) spoke recently from inside a soccer shop, typically a local betting hall, where other men like him sat with their eyes glued to television and computer screens displaying soccer games, horse races, and dog races.

Littering the floor with betting receipts, many, such as Mukono, closely studied television and computer screens displaying payout dividends and other information gamblers like him hoped would help them bet victoriously.

Yet in the past, betting never used to be popular in this southern African nation, but as economic hardships grew, affecting many like Mukono, betting has become the way to go.

In the past, where it occurred in Zimbabwe, betting was often limited to the state lottery, horse betting, and casinos.

Now, whether they win or lose as they bet, with no survival options, many, like Mukono, find themselves hooked on the vice, which local police have gone on record moving in to quell, with claims that some of the betting clubs are illegal and behind a spate of robberies and money laundering in the country.

Of late, betting clubs have seen a rise in the number of patrons who frequent these places each day from morning until late as people try out their luck, battling for redemption from mounting economic hardships.

Mukono, like many other people involved in betting, said that without a job for years on end, betting for him has turned into a profession.

“I might not be reporting to someone, but for me, this is some form of job because at times I earn money, which feeds my family,” said Mukono.

Rashweat Mukundu, researcher with the International Media Support (IMS), said, “I think there are significantly reduced means or ways upon which young people, especially the youth and young male adults, can survive in Zimbabwe because of the high rate of unemployment and lack of economic opportunities, and so betting and gambling have become a way of survival.”

“So, you see the increasing number of betting houses; you see the increasing numbers of young people who go out to bet. This is a clear indication that the economic fundamentals are off the rails and many people are having to look for ways to survive outside of what you would normally expect such people to be doing,” Mukundu told IPS.

However, economists like Prosper Chitambara see otherwise.

Chitambara, who is the chief economist with the Labor and Economic Development Research Institute of Zimbabwe (LEDRIZ), said: “There are some people who are more predisposed to risk-taking through gambling or betting activities, but mental health conditions and even substance abuse are key drivers of gambling, and of course mental health is also a function of the state of the economy.”

With countrywide economic hardships coupled with unemployment, many, like Mukono, have taken to sports betting in order to raise money for survival.

In fact, across Zimbabwe, local authority halls that used to team with recreational activities have now been converted into betting clubs where gambling thrives, with many, like Mukono, frequenting them in their desperate quest to earn a living.

Meanwhile, there are no stringent rules governing Zimbabwe’s gambling sector, with betting still viewed as a pastime rather than an economic activity.

But with many Zimbabweans like Mukono now taking up betting as employment, betting club employees have a word of advice.

“Honestly, one cannot substitute betting with employment. Surely, it should not be something individuals should opt for to rely on for their economic needs,” Derick Maungwe, one of the staffers at a local betting club in central Harare, told IPS.

But owing to joblessness, said Maungwe, it has become some form of employment for many Zimbabweans.

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

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Climate Justice Fellowship. Graphic: Wilson Mgobhozi

By IPS Correspondent
UNITED NATIONS, Jan 24 2024 (IPS)

IPS Noram and its UN Bureau is offering an exceptional opportunity for two journalists to develop their understanding of climate change justice.

The fellowship will run from April to September 2024 and will include a six-module capacity-building course on understanding climate finance, using data and visuals for storytelling, using artificial intelligence (AI) for reporting, researching, and telling compelling complex stories for a broad audience.

Candidates will be expected to produce six features during the fellowship that use the lessons learned during capacity building.

Fellows who complete the course and their features will have the opportunity to attend a major climate conference, where they will be able to hone their skills and build their knowledge and contacts.

Each fellow will receive a stipend for the duration of the programme.

Preference will be given to candidates who report on rural communities and geographic areas seldom covered by the mainstream. We are also looking for candidates who haven’t had the opportunity to attend a major climate conference. Candidates should have at least two years’ experience and be proficient in English (although English doesn’t have to be their mother tongue).

Please send your CV, two samples of your work, and motivation to this email address:
ipsfellowship60@gmail.com

 

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African women on the frontline of peacekeeping.

By Devi Palanivelu
UNITED NATIONS, Jan 24 2024 (IPS)

For over a year, a group of United Nations peacekeepers from Ghana led by Captain Esinam Baah regularly patrolled the “blue line” or the demarcation line between Lebanon and Israel, and visited neighbourhoods in the area, checking in with local families and making sure they were safe.

In 2022, Baah was one of the 173 Ghanaian women peacekeepers who served in the UN Interim Mission in Lebanon. She was also one of the 6,200 uniformed women peacekeepers – military and police personnel – serving in the world’s 12 peacekeeping missions which are mostly in Africa (6) and the Middle East (3).

These women are seen as a beacon of hope and protection for millions of civilians, many of them women and girls, who are struggling to keep safe while helping to rebuild their lives and communities after wars.

Captain Baah (right) visits a Lebanese family in Southern Lebanon. Credit: UNIFIL

“There are some in the town who are not very comfortable with an unknown man talking to their females so, because I am a woman, I am able to approach any female, in any town, because they see me as a woman and I am not a threat,” says Baah.

Gender parity in peacekeeping, especially among its leaders and uniformed personnel, has long been a priority for the United Nations. The organization, which depends on its member countries to provide military and police contingents, has launched several initiatives over the years, including urging and incentivizing troop-and-police-contributing countries to deploy more women peacekeepers.

“The world will be a better place with gender equality. We should, therefore, continue to challenge gender stereotypes, call out discrimination, draw attention to biases and seek out inclusion,” says Ghanian Commodore Faustina Anokye, the Deputy Force Commander of the UN Mission for the Referendum in Western Sahara, on critical ways to overcome the gender barriers.

Over the years, some progress has been made. Between 1957 and 1989, there were only 20 uniformed women in peacekeeping. As of September 2023, there were 6,200. But progress has been slow and particularly low among the military contingents. Out of the more than 70,000 uniformed peacekeepers, including over 62,000 troops, less than 10 percent are women.

More than half of these women are from Africa. Among the over 120 countries that contribute both troops and police, Egypt, Ethiopia, Ghana, Rwanda, Senegal, South Africa and Zambia are some of Africa’s largest contributors of uniformed women peacekeepers today.

Pioneers and trailblazers

“Together, with all the other women pioneers, we have a responsibility to carry the torch and break down the gender stereotypes, prejudices and barriers against women in the field of corrections and security,” says Téné Maïmouna Zoungrana, a corrections officer from Burkina Faso who served in the UN Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in the Central African Republic (MINUSCA).

Zoungrana was awarded the first-ever UN Trailblazer Award for Women Justice and Corrections Officers in 2022. Working under MINUSCA’s mandate to help build-up the national capacity to maintain law and order, she was instrumental in creating an all-women rapid intervention team, and recruiting and training local prison officers at the Ngaragba Central Prison – considered the largest and the most notorious prison in Bangui.

Téné Maimouna Zoungrana is a corrections officer from Burkina Faso who served with MINUSCA. Credit: MINUSCA/ Hervé Serefio

“In my professional environment, the field of security, women are often placed second or even ignored, because of stereotypical perceptions that men are better suited for the job. I had the courage and strength, and vocation, to break down barriers and assert myself confidently in this field,” adds Zoungrana.

Restrictive and biased deployment opportunities, gendered perceptions of the role of women, lack of family-friendly policies, and insufficient women in national militaries and police forces are some of the reasons for the lack of gender parity, according to the UN Uniformed Gender Parity Strategy, which was launched in 2018.

Female peacekeepers like Zoungrana act as role models for many women and girls. Her work helps to break down traditional gender barriers, and motivates and empowers local women to take on non-traditional roles monopolized by men in the security sector – improving their access to meaningful jobs and contribution to society, and helping to build their confidence.

Peacekeepers also play a critical role in putting in place gender-sensitive outreach programmes designed specifically to cater to the unique needs of women and girls. Military Gender Advisor Steplyne Nyaboga from Kenya, who won the UN Military Gender Advocate of the Year award in 2020, was one such peacekeeper.

She trained a military contingent of more than 15,000 troops, who served in the UN Mission in Darfur (now closed), on gender dynamics and strengthened the mission’s engagement with Darfuri women.

“Peacekeeping is a human enterprise: placing women and girls at the center of our efforts and concerns will help us better protect civilians and build a more sustainable peace,” says Nyaboga.

Over the decades, international norms and conventions have been adopted to include women in peace processes – to make sure women are represented in peace negotiations, support women civil society organizations and address the gender imbalance among decision-makers that continues to exist today.

In 1995, the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing, China, formalized the urgent need to address women’s empowerment and inclusion in conflict resolution among other priorities, paving the way for the adoption of the landmark UN Security Council resolution 1325 on Women, Peace and Security in 2000 – which acknowledged and highlighted the importance of women’s contributions to conflict prevention and resolution, peacekeeping and peacebuilding.

More recently in 2019, the Elise Initiative Fund, hosted by UN Women, was established to provide countries with financial incentives and support to increase the number of uniformed women peacekeepers. By 2022, it had invested $17 million to support 21 national security institutions, including in Uganda, Senegal and Ghana, and two peacekeeping operations such as the UN Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in Mali.

Senegalese and Nigerian UN police officers attend an Elise Initiative Fund-sponsored training with the Malian Police Officers at a police academy in Bamako, Mali. Credit: MINUSMA/Marco Dormino

“It is now time to live up to those commitments and walk the talk. We need to bring the voices of women to the negotiation table in political and peace processes. We must empower them through capacity-building and provide the support they need to be heard. This is a must for sustaining peace,” says the UN Assistant Secretary-General for Africa Martha Ama Akyaa Pobee.

On the ground, the indispensable work of women peacekeepers continues to make a major impact especially in the lives of local women and girls. Jackline Urujeni, who commanded a force of 160 Rwandan police officers, half of whom were women, in the UN Mission in South Sudan, faces many questions about her work in a traditionally patriarchal security structure.

“Women here (in South Sudan) have asked me a lot of questions, especially when they understand that I’m the commanding officer of a big group of police officers. They ask me: “How can you be a commander? Don’t you have men in your country?” says Urujeni, who believes that women peacekeepers “play a big role in inspiring girls and women.”

“I noticed that girls and women here are gradually becoming aware of their rights to become who they want to be. They understood that girls don’t exist just to get married and have babies. We are opening their eyes to new possibilities, to new choices that they should be allowed to make.”

Source: Africa Renewal, United Nations

IPS UN Bureau

 

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By Jomo Kwame Sundaram
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia, Jan 24 2024 (IPS)

At high cost and with dubious efficiency, public-private partnerships (PPPs) have increased private profits at the public expense. PPPs have proved costly in financing public projects.

PPPs’ high costs
Eurodad has shown high PPP costs mainly due to private partners’ high-profit expectations. Complex PPP contracts typically involve high transaction costs. Worse, contracts are often renegotiated to favour the private partners.

Jomo Kwame Sundaram

They also take advantage of lower government borrowing costs compared to private borrowers. Most PPP debt costs are ultimately borne by host governments but are often obscured by the secrecy of contracts.

PPPs are often not on official government books or accountable to legislatures. PPPs thus often avoid transparency and accountability, invoking the excuse of private commercial confidentiality.

Such ‘off-budget’ government-guaranteed liabilities often make a mockery of supposed government debt limits. Investors generally expect much higher returns from developing countries than developed economies, supposedly due to the greater risks involved.

These ‘fiscal illusions’ obscure transparency and undermine government accountability, generating huge, but little-known public liabilities. High and rising interest rates threaten new government debt crises as economic stagnation spreads.

High fiscal risks
The high costs and fiscal risks of PPPs drain government resources, resulting in public spending and fiscal resource cuts. With growing demands for fiscal austerity, from the IMF and markets, PPPs’ high costs threaten government spending, especially for social services.

A 2018 IMF Staff Note warned PPPs reduce fiscal policy space: “while spending on traditional public investments can be scaled back if needed, spending on PPPs cannot. PPPs thus make it harder for governments to absorb fiscal shocks, in much the same way that government debt does.”

But such warnings have not deterred the Fund and World Bank from promoting PPPs. Worse, austerity measures rarely significantly increase budgetary resources, forcing governments to rely even more on PPP financing.

PPPs the problem, not solution
Growing reliance on PPP financing to address climate change is new, but no less problematic. This purported PPP solution has worsened financial vulnerabilities in developing countries, also undermining sustainable development and climate justice.

The 27th UN climate Conference of Parties’ outcome statement urged multilateral development banks to “define a new vision and commensurate operational model, channels and instruments that are fit for the purpose of adequately addressing the global climate emergency”.

But historical experience and recent trends show PPPs cannot be the solution. Advocates claim PPPs deliver better “value for money”, but evidence of efficiency gains is inconclusive at best.

An African Forum and Network on Debt and Development (Afrodad) study found Ghana’s Sankofa gas project failing. Much touted efficiency gains were all very context-specific, relying on project design, scale, regulation and governance.

Efficiency gains were typically very costly, mainly due to insufficient private investments and other such cost savings. Profits were also increased by cutting jobs and hiring cheaper, insufficiently trained and qualified staff.

Human costs
The public should be wary and sceptical of growing reliance on PPPs to provide infrastructure and public services. Unsurprisingly, such PPPs prioritise commercial profitability, not the public interest.

Corporations are accountable to shareholders, not citizens. Worse, regulating and monitoring private partners are difficult for fiscally constrained governments with modest capacities, vulnerable to political and corporate capture.

Unsurprisingly, PPPs have typically imposed higher costs on citizens. Public services provided by PPPs usually charge user fees, or payments for services. This means access to services and infrastructure depends on capacity to pay.

Thus, PPPs maximise private profits, not the public interest, undermining public welfare and the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), worsening inequalities. PPPs’ high fiscal costs worsen fiscal austerity measures, reducing other public services, often needed by the most vulnerable.

Inevitably, PPPs prioritise more profitable services and those easier-to-serve. Public healthcare is especially vulnerable as profit and insurance imperatives compromise service delivery. There is no evidence PPPs can better address the health challenges most developing countries face.

Health PPPs worsen public access to essential services, subverting progress towards ‘health for all’ and ‘universal health care’. Private provisioning, including PPPs, has never ensured equitable access to decent healthcare for everyone. Pretending or insisting otherwise is simply wishful thinking.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, countries relying more on private healthcare provision generally fared worse. Those without means cannot afford private charges, especially by providers who face few constraints to raising their charges.

U-Turn?
After a critical report by its Independent Evaluation Group, the World Bank – long a leading promoter of private financing of education – had to change its earlier approach to financing public education.

The International Finance Corporation, the Bank’s private sector lending arm, has also worsened educational access, quality and equity. It had to stop investing in pre-tertiary (kindergarten to grade 12) private schools from mid-2022.

Despite overwhelming evidence that the Bank should stop abusing public funds to promote PPPs, the new Bank leadership has still not abandoned this financing strategy thus far. Instead, the SDGs and the urgent need for more effective climate action have been invoked to give it a new lease of life.

IPS UN Bureau

 

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Young Rwandan citizen scientists record bird sounds in the forests in a project that plays a pivotal role in the country's bird protection. Credit: Planet Birdsong Foundation

By Aimable Twahirwa
NYAMASHEKE, RWANDA, Jan 23 2024 (IPS)

Claver Ntoyinkima wakes up early in the morning, at least three times a week, and goes into the Nyungwe rainforest to record bird vocalizations.

Ntoyinkima is one of several community members in a remote village in rural southwestern Rwanda who volunteer with a group of scientists to help boost wildlife conservation.

Relying on a voice application installed on his mobile phone, which is connected to a parabolic reflector with a dedicated cable, the 50-year-old tour guide and his team walk long distances every week to collect sounds from various birding hotspots in this area.

“Love for birds is critical when it comes to engaging many young people in this career,” Ntoyinkima told IPS while referring to his second profession of bird sound recording.

To better protect the birds, the veteran tour guide has been able to launch the Nyungwe Birding Club, bringing together about 86 members of local communities living in Gisakura, a remote village located on the outskirts of the Nyungwe rainforest in southwestern Rwanda. Thanks to this mobilization, members of the club, which also consists of 26 young students from primary and secondary schools, were equipped with skills on how to record bird sounds.

The initiative is part of joint efforts by the Planet Birdsong Foundation, an international UK-based charity organization, and the Center of Excellence in Biodiversity and Natural Resource Management at University of Rwanda seeking to connect people with nature through bird sound listening, recording, and audio processing.

Conservation experts believe that birds are important indicators for the biodiversity and health of a habitat where they are sometimes visible but more widely audible. Researchers are now convinced that audio recognition skills are vital for effective monitoring and guiding, especially in forests and wetlands.

“We are engaging youth from rural communities through local bird clubs, site guides, schools, and colleges,” Hilary MacBean, trustee of the Foundation, told IPS.

It is a major task to collect mass data covering the sounds of various species across various birding hotspots in this East African country.

Nyungwe natural reserve is known to be home to 278 species of birds—26 of those are found only in the few forests of the Albertine Rift. The latest scientific estimates show that there are seven other important birding areas in Rwanda, including three wetland areas at Akanyaru (south), Nyabarongo river system (south), and Rugezi swamp (north), where there are efforts to recover the biodiversity from human activities that led to the degradation of these hotspots. The urban wetland in Kigali city has also received massive investment and is radically improving.

“This task requires much practice for people so that they are able to decode all those different bird songs and calls,” Ntoyinkima said.

At present, the first ever Rwandan citizen science initiative, which has been running since 2021, focuses on equipping young students, many from rural communities, with the skills to observe, audio record, and scientifically label birds by their sounds, songs, and calls.

By using affordable sound recording equipment aimed at entry-level citizen scientists, participants are trained in audio-data collection, verification, preparation, and storage for both higher-level scientists and other citizen scientists.  Currently, different existing teams deployed across birding hotspots in Rwanda are divided into categories, including recordists and verifiers.

Experts also point out that using the available dataset with multiple records of the songs and calls of the bird population has been crucial to ensuring the protection of species that are forest-dependent.

Through the “Bioacoustics Recording” initiative, which the foundation and other stakeholders jointly run, MacBean has been involved in mentoring and training young bird guides from Rwanda for international tourism while also educating local guides and students about bird sounds.

Hilary MacBean of the Planet Birdsong Foundation has been involved in mentoring and training Rwandan young bird guides for international tourism while bringing awareness and knowledge of bird sounds to local guides and students. Credit: Planet Birdsong Foundation

“Key focus has been on equipping communities with skills on how to work with bioacoustics data collected in the field as a means to identify bird species in the recordings with confidence,” she said in an exclusive interview.

During the implementation phase, data collection is done by using a smart phone with downloadable free apps and a ParaChirp, an acoustic parabolic reflector designed for educational use to promote learning about birds and product design.  The technology focuses mainly on individual bird songs and calls collected in their natural or semi-natural habitat.

The latest official estimates by the Rwanda Environment Management Authority (REMA) show that Rwanda boasts more than 703 bird species, making it one of the countries with the highest concentration of bird populations in Africa.

However, Protais Niyigaba, the Nyungwe Forest National Park’s manager, told IPS that much effort has been put into providing migratory birds with safe habitats and breeding sites.

“These solutions with available recording data are currently helping to understand the routes of these migratory birds and make sure visitors are able to locate them easily by sound,” Niyigaba said.

The project had uploaded 226 recordings as of the time of the Foundation’s 2023 audit report, with 37 of those being in national parks. The number of recordings is constantly growing, with multiple records of the songs and calls of about 120 bird species across Rwanda.

By December 2024, the Foundation has set a goal of generating 275 recordings, including 75 bird sounds, from existing national parks across Rwanda. The target set for 2025 is 300 species, according to official projections.

“We create music from bird sound and, in the Rwandan context, focus on the community benefits of citizen science, bird sound collection for scientific monitoring, and building the identification skills of tourist guides,” MacBean said.

With this integration of bird sound recordings to protect and preserve these species and their habitats, stakeholders focus on labeling the collected data so that their identification, locational and time data, behavioral data, and habitat data are all recorded. The sounds are then validated by assigned verifiers, processed, and stored for use in science.

Recordings generated by Planet Birdsong’s citizen scientists are stored globally with e-bird, and researchers are collaborating with the Macaulay Library at Cornell University to ensure access to locally recorded bird sounds for both citizen scientists and specialists.

For the specific case of Rwanda, data collected in Rwanda is also supplied to the Rwanda Biodiversity Information System developed by the Centre of Excellence in Biodiversity and Natural Resource Management at University of Rwanda for use in local natural science. Yet these innovations are playing pivotal roles in Rwanda’s bird protection, and some researchers believe that maintaining data availability is essential for effective bird biodiversity conservation.

Professor Beth Kaplin, a prominent conservation scientist based in Rwanda, told IPS that getting local researchers, students, and youth involved in data collection and management is important to developing a sense of ownership and stewardship of the data recording for bird sounds.

Despite current efforts, conservation experts point out that limited funding to support people and pay their fieldwork expenses is another major challenge affecting project implementation since the majority of local residents work mainly on a volunteer basis. Some individuals engaged in the project also have problems with equipment such as phones and PCs, plus the cost of the internet.

Dr Marie Laure Rurangwa, a Rwandan female conservation scientist, told IPS that one of the challenges facing people engaged in this activity is much about processing time with much editing [of recordings] and the skillsets needed in terms of sound recognition for different bird species.

Rurangwa is a co-author of the latest peer review study showing how land use change (modification from primary forest to other land use types) has affected bird communities within Nyungwe forest in Rwanda

“Access to some of these remote birding hotspots has been another challenge for recordists because of limited resources and a lack of appropriate equipment to reach these remote areas,” Rurangwa points out.

But in Gisakura, a remote village nestled on the outskirts of Nyungwe Forest, Ntoyinkima and his team are trying to use affordable means in their field recording by splitting into small groups of five people each.

Before their deployment to various sites inside and outside the forest, each group has to travel several kilometers to reach the selected birding hotspots.

As they walk quietly along a narrow trail and water flows beneath their feet, the team has to stop sometimes to better identify birds through their vocalizations.

Yet most trained people are able to capture data and generate robust, sound recognition results. Expert verifiers are sometimes asked to provide support when some recordists are stuck for identification or to confirm when in doubt.

“These young people are still volunteering here, but in most cases, the majority of them end up being hired as tour guides because they are well trained in bird vocalizations,” Ntoyinkima said.

 

Credit: Visuals for video are by Aimable Twahirwa and Planet Birdsong Foundation

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

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