Africa - INTER PRESS SERVICE

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

When US political leaders urged the Trump administration to either reduce or cut off arms supplies to Saudi Arabia – largely as a punishment for its indiscriminate bombings of civilians in the four-year old military conflict in Yemen—President Trump provided a predictable response: “If we don’t sell arms to Saudi Arabia, the Chinese and the Russians will.”

Perhaps in theory it’s plausible, but in practice it’s a long shot primarily because switching weapons systems from Western to Chinese and Russian arms— particularly in the middle of a devastating war– could be a long drawn out process since it involves maintenance, servicing, training, military advice and uninterrupted supplies of spares.

Asked for a response, Pieter Wezeman, Senior Researcher, Arms and Military Expenditure Programme at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), told IPS: “If, (very hypothetical) the USA and the UK would stop supplying arms to Saudi Arabia, this would be a major problem for Saudi Arabia, in military and financial terms”.

He pointed out that Saudi Arabia would find it very hard to maintain the US and UK weapons its armed forces largely rely on without the support of the large numbers of US and UK service personnel in the country right now.

The Saudi military might be able to keep the weapons going for a while, but presumably at a much lower operational level.

He said it will not only be very costly for Saudi Arabia to replace the expensive existing equipment — which is supposed to be in service for decades– but it also means that Chinese and Russian weapons will not be as high quality as what Saudis now receive from the USA and Western Europe.

And New York Times roving correspondent Nicholas Kristof says “some Saudis kept trying to suggest to me that if we block weapons sales to Riyadh, the kingdom will turn to Moscow.”

“That’s absurd. It needs our spare parts and, more important, it buys our weapons because they come with an implicit guarantee that we will bail the Saudis out militarily if they get into trouble with Iran.”

In an oped piece, Kristof said the Saudi armed forces can’t even defeat a militia in Yemen. So, how could they stand up to Iran?, he asked.

“That’s why we have leverage over Saudi Arabia, not the other way around.” The next step, he argued, should be a suspension of arms sales until Saudi Arabia ends its war in Yemen, for that war has made the US complicit in mass starvation.

The Times said last year that some US lawmakers worry that American weapons were being used to commit war crimes in Yemen—including the intentional or unintentional bombings of funerals, weddings, factories and other civilian infrastructure—triggering condemnation from the United Nations and human rights groups who also accuse the Houthis of violating humanitarian laws of war and peace.

In its World Report 2017, Human Rights Watch said the Saudi Arabia-led coalition has carried out military operations, supported by the United States and United Kingdom, against Houthi forces and forces loyal to former President Ali Abdullah Saleh since March 2015.

The coalition has unlawfully attacked homes, markets, hospitals, schools, civilian businesses, and mosques, the report said.

“None of the forces in Yemen’s conflict seem to fear being held to account for violating the laws of war,” said Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East director at Human Rights Watch. “UN members need to press the parties to end the slaughter and the suffering of civilians.”

Besides Saudi Arabia, the original coalition included the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar (until 2017), Egypt, Jordan, Morocco, Senegal and Sudan.

In a report released last February, Amnesty International (AI) said the weapons for the coalition, primarily to Saudi Arabia and UAE, have come mostly from Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Bulgaria, Czechia, France, Germany, South Africa, South Korea, Turkey, the UK and the US.

The London-based AI called on all states to stop supplying arms to all parties to the conflict in Yemen “until there is no longer a substantial risk that such equipment would be used to commit or facilitate serious violations of international humanitarian and human rights law.”

The only four countries that have announced suspending arms transfers to the UAE were Denmark, Finland, the Netherlands and Norway, according to AI.

Asked how dependent Saudi Arabia is on US arms, Wezeman told IPS that US is by far the largest arms supplier to Saudi Arabia.

SIPRI estimates that in 2014-18, the USA accounted for 68% of Saudi arms imports followed by the UK at a distant 16 per cent. Several other European countries accounted for most of the rest. China played a small role and Russia had not yet established itself as arms supplier to Saudi Arabia.

Asked about the current state of US arms sales to Saudi Arabia, Wezeman said the US supplies all types of weapons to Saudi.

But most important in value of the weapons that have been or are to be delivered are F-15 combat aircraft with a full set of advanced arms and Patriot and THAAD air defence systems.

But the list also includes M1A2 tanks, frigates, reconnaissance planes, light armoured vehicles, communication equipment, and basically anything needed to equip modern armed forces.

What is important is that these weapons come with a service package. Though exact data is scarce, the companies supplying the equipment also supply vital maintenance and repair services, he noted.

Compare with what happened in Iran in 1979, which also was highly dependent on US and UK arms, Tehran had to figure out by itself how to operate the equipment.

Possibly the Iranians were better prepared and trained for that than Saudi Arabia is now, but they struggled to continue to use the US equipment in the war with Iraq and had to resort to importing inferior weapons from China and North Korea.

It is very likely, said Wezeman, that Russia and China will happily step in and offer their weapons. However, it will take time before they can deliver large numbers of weapons and train the Saudi’s on new equipment based on different military doctrines. A full transition will probably take many years.

There are several of other cases where states have shifted between different suppliers, with different levels of success, he pointed out. Warsaw pact countries moved to NATO weapons, over several decades. Venezuela switched from US equipment to Russian and Chinese over a period of roughly a decade.

Citing conservative UN estimates, Ole Solvang, Policy Director at the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC), told IPS some 17,700 civilians have been killed in the fighting in Yemen since 2015.

An estimated 2,310 people have died from cholera according to the World Health Organisation (WHO), and 85,000 children under the age of five have died from starvation.

Solvang said more bombs and weapons in Yemen will only mean more suffering and death. “By providing such extensive military and diplomatic support for one side of the conflict, the United States is deepening and prolonging a crisis that has immediate and severe consequences for Yemen— and civilians are paying the price,” he noted.

Described as one of the world’s least developed countries (LDCs) and the poorest in the Arab world, Yemen continues to be devastated by a war with no end in sight.

Meanwhile, the results of a study commissioned by the UN Development Program (UNDP), released last week, confirm the worst: the ongoing conflict has reversed Yemen’s human development by 21 years.

The study warns of exponentially growing impacts of conflict on human development. It projects that if the war ends in 2022, development gains will have been set back by 26 years — almost a generation. If it continues through 2030, that setback will increase to four decades.

“The long-term impacts of conflict are vast and place it among the most destructive conflicts since the end of the Cold War,” warns the report; and further deterioration of the situation “will add significantly to prolonged human suffering, retard human development in Yemen, and could further deteriorate regional stability.”

“Human development has not just been interrupted. It has been reversed,” said UNDP Yemen Resident Representative, Auke Lootsma. “Even if there were to be peace tomorrow, it could take decades for Yemen to return to pre-conflict levels of development. This is a big loss for the people of Yemen.”

The writer can be contacted at thalifdeen@ips.org

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By Geneva Centre
GENEVA, Apr 25 2019 (IPS-Partners)

The current massive displacement of people worldwide has turned into a politicized crisis of solidarity, with closed border policies and the rise of xenophobic, populist trends. The blocking and harassment of search and rescue ships and of NGOs that legally attempt to pursue their activities compromises all efforts to save the lives of persons in distress in the Mediterranean Sea. States should respect the international legal framework in particular the maritime law and take responsibility for the lives of migrants and refugees.

These were the main conclusions of a debate organized by the Geneva Centre for Human Rights Advancement and Global Dialogue on Migration and Human Solidarity. The event was an opportunity for the Geneva Centre to officially launch its latest publication on the causes and consequences of migration today, including refugees and IDPs, entitled The Unprecedented Rise of People on the Move in the 21st Century. The panel discussion was held on 25 April 2019, at the United Nations Office in Geneva.

All the members of the panel were experts with first-hand experience in the migrant and refugee crisis, and their presentations highlighted concrete problems observed during their work on the ground, in coordinating rescue operations and aid distribution, or documenting and raising awareness of the situation. The panel included Monsignor Robert J. Vitillo, Secretary General of the International Catholic Migration Commission; Mr José Benavente, President of the French Association Pilotes Volontaires; Ms Julie Melichar, Citizen Mobilisation & Communication Officer at SOS Méditerranée; Ms Camille Pagella, journalist at L’Illustré and Mr Adrià Budry Carbó, journalist at Le Temps, joint recipients of the first ACANU (Association of Accredited Correspondents at the United Nations) Prize for Reporting on Human Rights Issues.

Ambassador Idriss Jazairy, Executive Director of the Geneva Centre, delivered opening remarks and moderated the panel debate.

In his opening remarks, Ambassador Jazairy deplored the tendency of most European States to avoid responsibility for lives lost due to the “Fortress Europe” syndrome. The Director of the Geneva Centre reiterated the need to distinguish between the migration crisis per se, which is caused by a lack of economic opportunities, poverty, as well as the adverse effect of climate change on people’s livelihood, and the refugee crisis, mainly triggered in the past by conflict and war, and increasingly by climate change. He underscored that the push factor of refugee flows is man-made and should be acknowledged as such. He reiterated that migration and displacement had been a constant part of humanity, and that the current migration flows are dubbed “a crisis” particularly by fabricated nationalist narratives.

Furthermore, Ambassador Jazairy noted that the Mediterranean Sea had turned into a liquid graveyard, quoting IOM global statistics revealing that over 3400 migrants and refugees lost their lives in 2018. At least 2’297 of these lives were lost in the Mediterranean Sea.

The Director of the Geneva Centre saluted the rise of civil society organizations willing to step in, to offer protection and to save migrants’ and refugees’ lives. He commended these rescue organisations for their endeavours, despite the criminalisation of their action to save lives, dubbed a “délit de solidarité”.

In his presentation, Monsignor Robert J. Vitillo deplored the growing trend to build legislative and administrative walls and barriers rather than to offer solidarity in the context of today’s displaced populations. In his presentation, he referred to Pope Francis’ Message for the Catholic Church’s 104th observance of the World Day of Migrants and Refugees, on 14 January 2018. In his address, Pope Francis highlighted the religious and moral leadership of the Catholic Church in offering “motherly love to every person forced to leave their homeland in search of a better future”. His Holiness also deplored the “collective and arbitrary expulsions of migrants and refugees, (…) particularly where people are returned to countries which cannot guarantee respect for human dignity and fundamental rights.”

Further quoting the words of Pope Francis, Monsignor Vitillo underscored that the problem of statelessness that numerous migrants and refugees faced could be easily tackled through “the adoption of nationality legislation in conformity with the fundamental principles of international law”. Monsignor Vitillo further presented the extensive work of the International Catholic Migration Commission, inspired since its creation in 1951 by Catholic Teaching. He concluded his remarks with a strong call for governments to improve their response to migrants and refugees, noting that “All human beings long for a better and more prosperous life, and the challenge of migration cannot be met with a mind-set of violence and indifference, nor by offering merely partial solutions.” Responding to Ambassador Jazairy’s question on the role of religious leaders in this crisis, he highlighted their pivotal role in countering the toxic narrative surrounding people on the move, and emphasized the importance of political will. In this regard, he spoke of the example of Uganda, a small country that had received 300 000 South Sudanese refugees.

Mr José Benavente, President of the French Association Pilotes Volontaires, deplored in his presentation the fatalities of the migratory routes in the Mediterranean region. He recalled the testimonies of displaced persons who pass through Libya to reach European soil that depict the inhumane conditions and violations of human rights characterizing these passages, including torture, human trafficking and sexual abuse.

Based on his first-hand experience, Mr Benavente offered a detailed description of the often improvised and always dangerous crossings of the Mediterranean Sea in wooden or inflatable boats. He underscored the overloading of boats, the dangers of asphyxiation with fuel vapours, the lack of food and water. Furthermore, he underscored that at the moment when these boats start drifting in high seas, the countdown for the lives of the refugees and migrants on-board starts.

As a pilot, Mr Benavente highlighted the fact that these boats are often difficult to spot at high sea. Oftentimes, he said, rescue ships arrive too late, only to find semi-floating shipwrecks and no survivors. In this regard, Mr Benavente and his partner created the Association Pilotes Volontaires, to respond to the need of quickly identifying persons in distress at sea by aerial means. They fly over a specific portion of international waters off the coast of Libya, where more than 20 000 lives were lost over the past four years.

Mr Benavente highlighted that, in 2018, Pilotes Volontaires in partnership with search and rescue ships identified 45 boats and saved more than 4000 persons. He concluded by underscoring the urgent need of the association for increased financial means and donations in order to pursue the rescue operations. Finally, he called for a concerted effort from the international community to ensure that rescue operations are carried efficiently, rapidly and in the full respect of International Maritime Law, which stipulates that all survivors must be disembarked in a safe port.

Ms Julie Melichar of SOS Méditerranée highlighted the work of SOS Méditerranée, noting that since the launch of their search and rescue operations, the Aquarius ship had welcomed more than 29,532 survivors on board. According to Ms Melichar, the objectives of the organization were threefold: rescue, protect and testify.

Echoing the concerns of previous panellists, Ms Melichar underscored the growing loss of lives at sea as a result of the lack of rescue capacities and of “recurring violations of international and maritime law.” She further deplored the ongoing blocking and harassment of search and rescue NGOs. In this regard, Ms Melichar recalled that at this moment, almost all NGO rescue ships are blocked from leaving European ports, with hundreds of people left to drown at sea, or unlawfully returned and exposed to inhumane conditions.

Furthermore, Ms Melichar recounted her experience during the first standoff of the Aquarius ship in 2018. As with other rescue ships, the Aquarius had fallen victim to political manipulation, stripped of its flag and blocked in various ports in the Mediterranean Sea on several occasions in 2018, until its activities were completely stopped towards the end of last year.

Ms Melichar denounced the actions of the Libyan Search and Rescue Region, created as a result of the Malta Declaration signed in February 2017. She remarked that NGOs had to pursue their role of testifying and condemning these violations of maritime law. With regard to the “délit de solidarité”, she noted that almost all legal investigations brought against humanitarian workers in the context of the crisis had been annulled because of lack of evidence, as NGOs worked in full respect of the legal framework. Finally, she concluded by deploring a “paradoxical situation: civil humanitarian ships, who conduct legal search and rescue operations and respond to the duty to deliver assistance, are being criminalised by States who do not uphold anymore the treaties and conventions that they have ratified.”

Journalists Camille Pagella of L’Illustré and Adria Budry of Le Temps recounted their experience on board the Aquarius ship in 2018, which resulted in the publication of a joint extensive coverage entitled “Piège en haute mer” that won the ACANU Prize for Reporting on Human Rights Issues. The documenting mission of the two journalists occurred in the context of the Italian elections last spring, and against the background of a growing populist trend, with European politicians pledging to block the activities of humanitarian ships in the Mediterranean Sea. Mr Budry described various attempts of the ships of the Libyan Coast Guard to harass and block the rescue actions of the Aquarius.

Similarly, Ms Pagella described a joint effort between the Aquarius and of the Astral ship of the NGO Proactiva Openarms, involving the transfer of over 100 persons in distress, blocked for hours by the Maritime Rescue Coordination Centre in Rome.

The joint presentation highlighted the constant harassment attempts of the Libyan Coast Guard, which is often supported by European States, aimed at blocking the actions of humanitarian ships. They condemned the intimidation practices used by the Libyan Guards, as well as the externalization of the responsibility for the migrants and refugees in the Mediterranean Sea by the surrounding European States. They deplored the inhumane conditions in which migrants and refugees crossed the sea, the insecurity and lack of supplies, which they could witness first hand during their mission. Their poignant testimony reminded the audience that beyond the politicization of the migrants and refugee crisis, there was an ongoing humanitarian crisis that was overshadowed by populist narratives.

Referring to a question from the moderator on media disinformation and toxic narratives, Mr Budry remarked that it was important not to combat it, but to promote a counter-discourse of tolerance and solidarity completed by hard facts and figures. He noted that in the upcoming Spanish elections, the exclusion of the extreme right party Vox had rather benefitted the latter, as they would not be involved in public debates where their toxic discourse could be publicly challenged by others. Ms Pagella also referred to the role of the media of providing an objective, rigorously researched overview of the crisis, insisting on the importance of terminology.

During the Q&A session, Professor Michel Veuthey, Deputy Permanent Observer of the Permanent Delegation of the Sovereign Order of Malta, added that it was important to take preventive measures by ensuring harmonious integration of potential migrants in their countries of origin, and therefore, even more fundamentally, resolve the conflicts which lay at the source of these migratory crises (MENA and Sahel regions).

A representative from the Norwegian NGO Justice and Development referred to the ongoing internal conflict in Libya, observing that the bombing of refugee centres around Tripoli by the army of General Khalifa Haftar was inadmissible. A representative from ICMC brought up the issue of monitoring and addressing the problems of human trafficking inherent in the migrant crisis. Ambassador Jazairy observed that trafficking is a crisis within the broader refugee crisis, but the latter should be addressed in terms of repression of trafficking. Msgr Vitillo added that human trafficking was a broad issue in its own right, but that had little to do with refugees. Ms Melichar said that on rescue ships it is difficult to identify victims of human trafficking, but efforts were made in identifying certain categories of vulnerable persons such as unaccompanied minors, victims of torture and of sexual assault. A member of the audience referred to the situation in Colombia where the latter has increased its national debt so as to help Venezuelan refugees. Msgr Vitillo said that international solidarity versus national priorities was not an “either/or” issue, but a question of appropriate distribution of resources between priorities. Referring to Colombia, he added that in earlier days, Colombian refugees had also benefitted from the hospitality of Venezuelans.

Monsignor Robert J. Vitillo

Mr José Benavente

Ms Camille Pagella and Mr Adrià Budry Carbó

Ms Julie Melichar

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Claimant Eric Dooh shows the crude oil that has damaged the banks of the creek through his village in Ogoniland, Nigeria.

By Hans Wetzels
UNITED NATIONS, Apr 25 2019 (IPS)

When Ecuadorean diplomat Luis Gallegos first proposed a “Binding Treaty on Business and Human Rights,” many countries and environmental activists welcomed the idea with open arms.

Backed by South Africa, Mr. Gallegos urged the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva, Switzerland, to immediately begin negotiations to end human rights violations and environmental damage by transnational corporations.

In October 2018, 94 countries drew up a draft text for the binding treaty, which could address the issue of the complex global supply chain that currently makes it difficult to determine who is responsible for environmental damage or human rights violations. It should also give victims access to justice.

For two decades, Mr. Gallegos’s birth place of Ecuador waged a court battle to hold Chevron (formerly Texaco), a US-based multinational, accountable for oil spills and for allegedly dumping 16 billion gallons of toxic waste into waterways and open pits in the country’s Amazon jungle, affecting 30,000 indigenous people and campesinos in the area. The South American country tried without success to seek redress in American, Ecuadorian, Brazilian and Canadian courts.

130 oil spills in Nigeria’s Niger Delta in 2015 were reported by Amnesty International

Chevron in turn dragged Ecuador before the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague, Netherlands, for violating a 1997 bilateral investment treaty, and was awarded a hefty $112 million. A binding treaty on environmental damage might have prevented this kind of outcome.

Currently, there are voluntary guidelines for international businesses. One such set of guidelines is the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, which instruct corporations to respect human rights but leaves en-forcement in the hands of states.

In high-risk sectors such as agriculture, mining and the garment industry, most companies disregard these principles, says Corporate Human Rights Benchmark, a newly established research initiative funded by the Dutch, British and Swiss governments.

Multinationals easily avoid prosecution because no international legal framework exists to hold them accountable, Mr. Gallegos argues. A majority of UN member states and the African Union concur.

Ecuador is not the only country whose citizens or government is trying to keep multinationals in check. In 2016, some 40,000 Nigerian fishermen took Royal Dutch Shell, an oil company, to a British court over oil spillage in the Niger Delta region.

But the court ruled that a conflict with the company’s Nigerian subsidiary, Shell Petroleum Development Company (SPDC), could not be adjudicated in the United Kingdom.

Amnesty International reported in 2016 that SPDC’s operations in Nigeria’s Niger Delta region in 2015 alone had resulted in about 130 oil spills.

“There are few places on the planet where the impact of multinational companies on the environment are more visible than in the Niger Delta,” Nigerian diplomat Hashimu Abubakar told the Human Rights Council in Geneva.

After several rounds of consultations, the first draft of a Binding Treaty on Business and Human Rights was finally presented to the Human Rights Council in July 2018, raising hopes of adoption.

“Big multinationals always use their legal and financial firepower at the cost of people who don’t have a lot of resources,” Nigerian activist Esther Kiobel told Africa Renewal.

Ms. Kiobel is the widow of Dr. Barinem Kiobel, a former government official and one of the nine environmental campaigners executed by hanging in 1995 by Nigeria’s military government for protesting against oil pollution in the Niger Delta. She was a plaintiff in a landmark suit against the oil giant Shell.

“A new international treaty might give me the opportunity to get compensation and rehabilitate the name of my late husband,” adds Ms. Kiobel.

After fleeing Nigeria and gaining US citizenship, Ms. Kiobel took Shell before an American federal court in 2002. After years of litigation, the court dismissed the case in 2013, claiming that a conflict between a Nigerian business, the SPDC, and Nigerian claimants cannot be heard in an American court.

Undeterred, Ms. Kiobel has now filed a civil case in a Dutch court. “At this point we’re waiting for the Dutch court to set a date. Instead of facing me in court, they have been trying to prevent this case from even being heard before a judge,” says Ms. Kiobel.

Although the idea of a treaty draws huge international support, bringing EU countries and others in the West on board may be difficult if not impossible. So far, both powerful players in international diplomacy have yet to back the effort.

European diplomats are concerned that binding obligations for international business could harm international trade, documents retrieved in Brussels through a Freedom of Information request reveal.

“We were a little surprised by the vigour of European resistance against this treaty,” says Jane Nalunga of the Uganda-based nongovernmental organization (NGO) Southern and Eastern Africa Trade Information and Negotiations Institute (SEATINI).

SEATINI was established in 1996 to lobby policy makers and consult with western NGOs, the UN and other international organisations to push an agenda of sustainable and inclusive development.

“The problem is that African governments… fear that laws on human rights or the environment might chase away international investors,” said Ms. Nalunga.

“In Uganda a foreign company needs to take an environmental assessment. But the outcome is not legally binding. International legislation could make these assessments mandatory on the international level, thus ending the dynamic of African states competing for investment and neglecting their human rights responsibilities.”

The Binding Treaty on Business and Human Rights will not immediately lead to the land of milk and honey, argues Lucas Roorda, a policy adviser at the College for Human Rights in Utrecht, the Netherlands. Mr. Roorda wrote a dissertation on the liability of multinational corporations.

“A set of international rules would of course directly impact cases like Kiobel versus Shell,” he says. “But there’s also a lot of wishful thinking around this treaty. International rules can establish better access to justice for activists but wouldn’t solve the power discrepancy between multinationals and poor communities.”

He doubts that a full-fledged human rights court will be realized through international negotiations. “Setting up an international tribunal for human rights abuses costs a lot of money, while rich countries in Europe and the US are opposed to such a tribunal.”

Mr. Roorda prefers a treaty that lays out international norms that member states would then be obliged to legally adopt, adding, “That could actually make it easier to bring a case involving the Nigerian subsidiary of Shell before a Dutch court.”

While Ecuador’s treaty would make rules binding on an international level (through a tribunal, fines or some other mechanism), Mr. Roorda would like member states to adopt international rules agreed upon in the treaty but not create an international court.

The long-term impact of international legislation goes beyond the establishment of a tribunal, explains Ms. Nalunga. “Besides adjusting the direct power imbalance between international investors and the poor communities in which they operate, this treaty could end the discrepancy between trade agreements and human rights.”

Environmental and human rights activists and countries experiencing the impact of the activities of some multinationals may debate the best way to achieve the goal of holding multinationals accountable. What is not debatable is the need to end impunity.

*Africa Renewal is published in English and French by the Strategic Communications Division of the United Nations Department of Global Communications. Its contents do not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations or the publication’s.

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Excerpt:

Hans Wetzels is a writer for Africa Renewal* published by the United Nations

The post A Treaty to End Corporate Immunity? appeared first on Inter Press Service.

A young girl whose family fled the Boko Haram insurgency stands in front of a tent in a camp for internally displaced persons in Maiduguri, Nigeria. Boko Haram has abducted thousands of girls and forced them into unwanted marriages and enslavement. Credit: Sam Olukoya/IPS

By Sam Olukoya
MAIDUGURI, Nigeria, Apr 25 2019 (IPS)

“They forcefully took us away and kept us like prisoners,” Lydia Musa, a former Boko Haram captive who was abducted at the age of 14 during an attack on her village in Gwoza, in Nigeria’s north eastern Borno State, tells IPS. Musa and two other underaged girls were captured and forced to marry Boko Haram fighters in spite of their protests that they were too young to marry.

“You must marry whether you like it or not they told us as they pointed guns at us,” the now 16-year-old girl recalls.

Boko Haram’s violation of the rights of women and children paints a larger picture of human trafficking, forced marriages and enslavement in Nigeria.

As the extremist group enters the 10th year of its insurgency, it remains formidable enough to abduct women and children at will, continuing “to prey on women and girls as spoils of war,” Anietie Ewang, Nigeria country researcher at Human Rights Watch, said in a statement.

This West African nation has the highest incidence of Africans being trafficked through the Sahara Desert and the Mediterranean Sea to Europe. The north and north eastern parts of the country, where Boko Haram is active, have high incidences of forced marriages, while across the country there are frequent cases of young girls being ‘traded’ as modern day slaves.

The group, whose name means ‘Western education is forbidden’, is reputed to be among the five-deadliest terror groups in the world. It has been involved in a violent campaign for strict Islamic rule in north east Nigeria and in parts of the neighbouring states of Cameroon, Chad and Niger. More than 20,000 people have been killed since the start of the insurgency in 2009.

Boko Haram is also involved in the kidnapping, trafficking and enslavement of children and women. Hundreds of women and children have been abducted since the group’s insurgency started. But Boko Haram’s most well-known abduction occurred in April 2014, when 276 female students were taken away from their dormitory at the Government Secondary School, Chibok, in Borno State.

The abduction started a global campaign #BringBackOurGirls.

A few months after the Chibok girls were abducted, Boko Haram’s leader, Abubakar Shekau, said he would sell them. “I am the one who captured all those girls and I will sell all of them,” he said in an online video in which he justified human slavery. “Slavery is allowed in my religion and I shall capture people and make them slaves.”

Consequently there have been other mass abductions of children in the region since the Chibok incident. In March 2015, Boko Haram fighters abducted more than 300 children from Zanna Mobarti Primary School in Damasak; while 116 female students from the Government Girls Science and Technical College, in Dapchi, Yobe State, were abducted in February 2018 during an attack on the school.

“The way Boko Haram hold women and children against their will is by itself a form of slavery,” Rotimi Olawale of the group Bring Back Our Girls (BBOG) tells IPS. The group is involved in a powerful campaign for the speedy and effective search and rescue of the Chibok girls and other abducted women and children.

Olawale says Boko Haram is also using captives, like the Chibok girls, as “valuable bargaining chips” to collect ransoms and secure the release of their members held in Nigerian prisons. While many of the Chibok girls are still missing five years after their abduction, others escaped or were released by Boko Haram in deals made with the Nigerian government. But 112 girls are reportedly still missing.

In an apparent reference to Boko Haram, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) says that since 2012, non-state armed groups in north east Nigeria have recruited and used children as combatants and non-combatants, raped and forced girls to marry and committed other grave violations against children.

Accounts by others who escaped from Boko Haram’s captivity confirm this.

Ali Mohammed is also a former Boko Haram captive. He tells IPS that while in captivity he saw Boko Haram members using captive girls as sex slaves. “At night they freely go to where the girls are kept to pick them for sex,” he explains.

Another former Boko Haram captive who preferred to be called Halima says male children born through sexual slavery are being breed to be the new generation of Boko Haram fighters. Halima, who gave birth to twins (a boy and a girl), tells IPS how Boko Haram members always celebrate when a baby boy is born in their camps.

“Once they realise it is a male baby they will start shooting their guns into the air in happy mood saying that a new leader has been born,” she says.

“After I delivered the babies, they carried the male in jubilation and were chatting Allah Akbar, in contrast, they did not show any joy with the female, they did not even touch her.”

Boko Haram’s abduction of young persons are in part aimed at turning them into fighters. UNICEF says between 2013 and 2017 more than 3,500 children, most of whom were aged 13 to 17, were recruited by non-state armed groups who used them in the armed conflict in north east Nigeria. UNICEF says the true figures are likely to be higher because its figures are only of those cases that have been verified.

Musa confirms that while in captivity she saw abducted boys being trained to be Boko Haram fighters. “In the mornings, they normally teach them how to shoot guns and carry out attacks,” she says, adding that some of the boys were just 10 years old.

Boko Haram is also known to train children to become suicide bombers. A UNICEF report in 2017, says between January and August of that year, 83 children, mainly girls, were used by Boko Haram as suicide bombers. The UN’s children agency said this figure was four times higher than it was for 2016.

Attempts to use legislation to address such abuses as child marriage, sexual abuse, trafficking and abduction have failed in the past. In 2003, Nigeria adopted the Child Rights Act as a legal documentation to protect children from these abuses. Currently the country’s constitution does not have a minimum age of marriage. Though the Child Rights Act set the marriageable age as 18, it failed in part because a number of Nigeria’s 36 states refused to domesticate the law.

“It was also a failure in states where it was adopted because it only existed on paper and was not enforced,” Betty Abah, a women and children’s rights activist, tells IPS.

In 2016, Nigeria’s male-dominated senate voted against a Gender and Equal Opportunities Bill. The bill in part prohibits trafficking, sexual abuse and exploitation of women and children. The bill, which also prohibits forced marriage, set 18 as the minimum legal age for marriage.

According to UNICEF, 43 percent of girls in Nigeria are married off before they turn 18. Some of the lawmakers who voted against the bill cited such grounds as their religion which permitted underaged marriage.

“It sends a very bad signal that we have a long way to go if those who are supposed to make laws to protect women and children feel these laws are not necessary,” Abah says.

In the meantime, Musa, may have fled the captivity of Boko Haram but she is too terrified to return home. She now lives in Maiduguri, which is also in Borno State and about 130 kms from Gwoza.

She tells IPS she is home sick. “I am always praying for the crisis to end so that I can return home, for now I cant go back because I don’t want to risk being taken away by Boko Haram again.”

 

—————————————–The Global Sustainability Network ( GSN ) http://gsngoal8.com/ is pursuing the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal number 8 with a special emphasis on Goal 8.7 which ‘takes immediate and effective measures to eradicate forced labour, end modern slavery and human trafficking and secure the prohibition and elimination of the worst forms of child labour, including recruitment and use of child soldiers, and by 2025 end child labour in all its forms’.

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

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The post Women and Girls “Preyed on as the Spoils of War” appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

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

The post Women and Girls “Preyed on as the Spoils of War” appeared first on Inter Press Service.

By Geneva Centre
GENEVA, Apr 24 2019 (IPS-Partners)

A panel debate will be organized by the Geneva Centre for Human Rights Advancement and Global Dialogue – a think tank holding special consultative status with the UN Economic and Social Council –, in partnership with the World Against Racism Network and the Global Coalition for the International Decade for People of African Descent, on the surge of global racism, hate speech and religious intolerance around the world.

The debate entitled “Emergency Assembly on the Crisis of Global Racism“ will be held in room XI on 9 May, from 15:00 to 18:00, at the United Nations Office in Geneva.

The conference will be organized in a situation of renewed attention and alarm over the resurgence of racism at global level. It is taking openly aggressive forms expressed through Islamophobia, Arabophobia, Afrophobia and Christianophobia. The terrorist attacks of 15 March 2019 in Christchurch, New Zealand and of 21 April 2019 in Colombo, Sri Lanka have demonstrated clearly that world society lives in dangerous times when the rise of hate ideologies erupts into violence unexpectedly.

The conference will be held strategically in between two important events in Geneva that will bring international participants to the UN on the issue of racism. In its 6-9 May session the Group of Independent Eminent Experts will discuss the continued relevance of the DDPA and commemorate its 20th anniversary. On 10 May, OHCHR will organize a consultation on people of African Descent and a Permanent Forum on People of African descent to consider it as an integral part of the full and effective implementation of the DDPA.

In this connection, the Emergency Assembly will be a public platform to energize international action against racism and to influence the Human Rights Council and General Assembly to give increased priority to the work against racism in its resolutions to be adopted during 2019. The conference will likewise aim to rebuild a programme for implementing the DDPA as a whole.

The 9 May panel debate will be opened and moderated by the Executive Director of the Geneva Centre Ambassador Idriss Jazairy.

The conference will benefit from the participation of the following high-level panellists:

• (1) HE Refiloe Litjobo, Ambassador and Permanent Representative of Lesotho to UN in Geneva and Chair of the Intergovernmental Working Group for DDPA implementation;
• (2) Mr Ahmed Reid, Chair of the Working Group of Experts on People of African Descent;
• (3) Ms Edna Roland, Chair of the Group of Independent Eminent Experts on the Durban Declaration and Programme of Action;
• (4) Ms. Dowoti Desir, Chair of the NGO Committee Against Racism and Afrophobia;
• (5) Ms E. Tendayi Achiume, UN Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance;
• (6) Mr Jan Lönn, Secretary, World Against Racism Network.

All attendees who do not hold a UN badge are kindly requested to register by sending an email to info@gchragd.org

The post At the initiative of the Geneva Centre, a coalition of NGOs will organize on 9 May an Emergency Assembly on the rise of global racism and the implementation of the Durban Declaration and Programme of Action (DDPA) appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Photo: Courtesy of the Central Bank of Russia

By Olga Stankova
WASHINGTON DC, Apr 24 2019 (IPS)

Within a few short months after taking up her post as governor of the Central Bank of Russia in 2013, Elvira Nabiullina faced a growing economic crisis brought on by plunging oil prices, geopolitical tensions, and sanctions.

By December 2014, the exchange rate and the banking system were under severe pressure, and the economy was heading into recession. A decisive response was needed, and the central bank chose to float the exchange rate, announce an immediate move to inflation targeting, and step up the pace of banking reform. These bold policies have yielded significant positive results.

The first female governor of the Central Bank of Russia, Nabiullina was named 2015’s Central Bank Governor of the Year by Euromoney magazine and 2016’s Best Central Bank Governor in Europe by The Banker.

She has also appeared on Forbes’ list of the world’s most powerful women. In September 2018, she delivered the Michel Camdessus Central Banking Lecture at the IMF.

In this interview with Olga Stankova of the IMF’s Communications Department, Nabiullina, who previously served as Minister of Economic Development, discusses her experience leading Russia’s central bank during this challenging period.

Finance & Development (F&D): Inflation targeting—that is, when a central bank announces a target for inflation and manages inflation expectations through its policy actions—is often considered fairly complex and demanding for emerging market economies. What was the rationale for adopting this policy in Russia?

Looking at the experience of other countries, we saw inflation targeting as a policy that makes it possible to reduce inflation and maintain it consistently at a fairly low level. Of course, this policy can be challenging for emerging markets, because their financial markets are relatively shallow and – what is probably more important – inflation targeting requires the management of inflation expectations.

This is challenging in an emerging market where the public has lived through periods of high inflation, grown accustomed to high inflation, and does not believe that low inflation can be achieved over the longer term.

Of course, there were many critics of the decision to adopt inflation targeting, because Russia relies heavily on revenue from the extraction of natural resources. Many believed that this feature of our economy would limit the effectiveness of inflation targeting.

But I believe the decision was timely and warranted; indeed, the need for a transition became obvious after the 2008 crisis.

We, in any event, did not make an abrupt switch to inflation targeting. We had already begun to prepare for it after the 2008-2009 crisis. First, we developed the tools needed to refinance banks, and those tools made it possible to use interest rate policy—through the transmission mechanism—to manage inflation.

Second, we gradually moved to a more flexible exchange rate: from a fairly strictly managed rate to a floating rate.

Third—and very importantly—inflation targeting depends on the quality of models, projections, and analysis, so we also developed that capacity. I think that these three elements were crucial to ensuring that—in introducing inflation targeting—we were able to achieve the effects that we had promised the public.

Now, after four years of inflation targeting, I believe that this policy framework suits countries such as Russia—that is to say, emerging market economies. Many have adopted this policy, and I don’t know any examples of countries that officially switched from inflation targeting to different policies.

F&D: The exchange rate was floated at the peak of the crisis in late 2014. Were there any other good choices in that situation? And was managing the exchange rate for a while longer an option?

EN: Indeed, we had to move to a floating exchange rate during a period of elevated risks to financial stability. I am convinced, however, that this was not a reason to put off the decision. We would have simply spent some part of our gold and forex reserves and then would have needed to float anyhow.

In my view, the floating exchange rate has worked well to absorb external shocks and has facilitated a rapid adjustment of the balance of payments. We saw that again during the following cycle, in 2016. You will recall that in early 2016, oil prices fell, and thanks to the floating exchange rate, the effects on the financial markets as a whole were unremarkable.

F&D: You worked on the exchange rate policy before adopting inflation targeting. Would you advise countries looking at your experience to move to a floating exchange rate earlier in the process?

EN: We floated the exchange rate gradually. Before I came to the central bank, the corridor had already been widened, allowing increased flexibility of the exchange rate.

There is one issue that I would like to highlight: it is true that we floated the exchange rate during a period of financial stress, and at that moment, it was important to actually float it—not just talk about floating. All countries have a fear of floating, and during a difficult period of instability, that fear increases.

F&D: What has the CBR done to broaden public support for the policies you followed? And what was the role of communications during the crisis and the subsequent transition period?

EN: Communication was very important during the transition from one policy to another, both to explain to society what was happening and to demonstrate the benefits of the new policy. This was especially true because the transition to inflation targeting was accompanied by an unpopular measure—raising the policy rate—and the floating exchange rate also frightened people.

Inflation targeting, of course, requires a qualitatively higher level of communications with the market than other policies, as inflation targeting is based on the management of expectations and on forecasts. It was thus critically important for us to establish the needed communications.

We greatly expanded our communications toolkit, starting with announcing the dates of Board meetings a year in advance, which had not been done before. We also began to hold press conferences and provide more analytical materials, reports, interviews, and surveys, as well as arrange meetings with investors and analysts.

In addition, we also worked with the regions, where we met with business, analysts, and the regional leadership to make sure that our policies were understood. But the most fundamental element of our communications has been achieving our announced target. Only then do people start believing what you say, and your forecasts.

I want to mention one more important aspect of communications. At first, the focus was on ensuring that analysts and market professionals understood what we did. What is important now is to communicate with a broader business audience and the public, to build trust in our policy, and to give people greater confidence as they make their life and business plans, allowing them to rely on the fact that inflation is under control.

F&D: There has been fairly serious pressure on the central bank, including from business, to reduce the rate faster than you would like. What does it take to withstand that pressure?

EN: We have just consistently followed our policy. Our task was to show in practice that high interest rates were curbing inflation, and that interest rates in the economy would come down along with inflation. This is what started to happen in 2016-2017.

We see that mortgage lending, for example, began to develop; and the inflation outlook is very important for that type of lending. We are trying to show the business community that our policy is in its interest, and notably that it is needed lengthen the planning horizon.

These changes have of course not always easy for business. It is one thing when high inflation allows you to shift your costs into constantly rising prices, and another thing entirely when your ability to do this is more limited. In order to be competitive, you need to make efforts to raise labor productivity and lower costs.

This is a challenge for business, but we believe that low inflation is by now one of the structural factors that will change the model of economic development, enhance productivity.

Now we experience a temporary increase in inflation mostly because the VAT rate was increased, and we raised the key rate to prevent inflation from upward spiraling. We expect it to reach as much as 5.5-6% by the end of Q1, and then it will start decreasing. Once again, we’ve faced critics because of key rate, but we also see how fast people started to take low inflation as normal, how much they are concerned about its growth. And this helps to set our priorities straight: low inflation is important for everyone, we’ll do what’s needed to keep it within the target in spite of critics.

F&D: In retrospect, how do you assess the results of adopting inflation targeting in Russia? Are there some things that you might have done differently with the benefit of hindsight?

EN: I think that inflation targeting, like the floating exchange rate, has been working.

First, we are now able to actually achieve inflation targets. Sometimes we are told that we are attaining our goal of reducing inflation by raising interest rates too high and suppressing economic growth.

However, our calculations show that this is not really the case, because the present economic growth rate is close to the potential growth rate of 1½ to 2 percent.

The historically low level of unemployment is further evidence of this. In addition, raising economic growth using monetary policy when output is close to potential is not possible; one needs to make structural changes.

Inflation targeting is indeed accomplishing its central objective, which is to reduce inflation. Along with the floating exchange rate, inflation targeting has made the economy more resistant to external shocks.

Our policy has made it possible for both business and the public to have more confidence in ruble assets: that they will not be devalued, and that the purchasing power of the ruble will be maintained.

One indicator of this, among others, is de-dollarization of deposits. Regulatory measures have, of course, also played a role. In sum, I am confident that strategically we have taken the right decision, even if some fine-tuning might have been possible.

When some people talk about what happened in 2014, they say that everything should have been done earlier. But a month or two earlier would have changed little. A few years earlier? Yes, possibly that would have been better.

There is also the opposite criticism, which holds that when we raised the interest rate and floated the exchange rate, it was a mistake not to intervene in the foreign exchange market. The critics point to the risks to financial stability at that time and claim that, in the end, we let the exchange rate overshoot too much.

However, I believe it was absolutely necessary to go through that stage. To bring about a change in policy, it was important for people to see that the exchange rate was in fact floating and, therefore, that it should find its equilibrium level in the market. If we had intervened, we would have continued to waste gold and foreign exchange reserves while stoking expectations of further devaluation.

F&D: You also reformed the banking sector. What were the economic and political considerations behind your course of action?

EN: Stable economic growth requires a stable, strong financial system. A weak financial system cannot support economic growth. Our banking system had accumulated a range of problems that we have been tackling in recent years.

First, the banking system lacked sufficient genuine capital. You will recall that the banking system emerged very quickly in the early 1990s, and without capital. Even afterward, capital did not flow into the system in any significant amounts.

Second, as a result of the crises of 2008 and then 2014-2015, the quality of banks’ assets deteriorated. Those assets remained on banks’ balance sheets, and it was necessary to deal with them. Another reason is that banks were often used for unscrupulous practices. Their owners used them to finance their own business, with poor risk management, and there was money laundering.

It became obvious that the banking system had to be restructured, as it could not support growth, and it would continue to require large financial infusions to survive a crisis.

It is clear why it was necessary to provide such support in 2008 and 2014: it was impossible to let the banking system collapse, as this would have immediately led to a domino effect and contagion. We had to take measures on improving health of banking system to avoid new infusions in future.

We revoked about 400 licenses from unstable and fraudulent banks, and moreover. We had to restructure three large banks, and this led to an increase in the share of state ownership in the banking sector. We are trying to build regulation and supervision that treats banks equally, regardless of whether the state holds their shares.

We recognize that the market would like to see a reduction in the share of state ownership; we certainly intend to put banks in which we are temporarily holding a share back on the market as soon as there is an opportunity.

F&D: In 2013 you also assumed responsibility for nonbank financial institutions, and the central bank became a “mega-regulator.” Has that reform proven worthwhile, and how do you assess the results?

EN: It is probably quite rare for a central bank to be responsible not just for monetary policy and bank regulation and supervision, but also for the non-bank sector. Moreover, the functions of a securities commission have also been assigned to the central bank.

One feature of our economy is that our largest banks are part of groups that include insurance companies and private pension funds, and the risks are commingled. Seeing the full picture is difficult looking at the banking sector on its own. One also needs to look at the relationships between banks and other members of a financial group.

In our view, the mega-regulator approach has many benefits that became evident—for example, when we began to restructure the three large groups. We were able to take a consolidated view of an entire group and identify the risks within it, and that allowed us to understand the scale of the problems in those groups.

A holistic view of financial regulation also reduces regulatory arbitrage and makes it easier to ensure uniform approaches and standards.

It is likely that there are also some drawbacks to a mega-regulator. The central bank, on the one hand, issues money and implements monetary policy, while on the other hand it supervises banks, which includes the revocation of licenses.

It makes room for the public demand for the mega-regulator to solve banks’ problems by issuing money as we couldn’t prevent their collapses. And the mega-regulator has to survive under this pressure and should build walls between, for example, banking supervision and monetary policy.

But in spite of some controversies, I think that the idea of a mega-regulator is in my view very promising given the way the financial markets are developing. The boundaries between financial institutions are becoming blurred; there is digitalization of the financial system, ecosystems and platform solutions are emerging.

It is frequently said that bank regulation grew much tougher after the 2007 crisis, and that risks moved to other, less regulated parts of the financial sector. A consolidated approach helps us better oversee the shadow banking system.

F&D: You are seen as a very independent central banker. How did you manage to overcome pressure and criticism?

EN: Well, we have not quite overcome it yet.

F&D: At least you stayed the course.

EN: When serious changes are being made, there are always a lot of critics. That said, surveys showed for many years that inflation was the number one problem for people, but it has now dropped far down the list. For us, this is an important policy outcome. Low inflation has a positive effect on people’s social well-being.

For business, low inflation allows for a reduction in interest rates— over the long-term and not just as a one-off result. This is very different from giving someone cheap money, reducing rates, and afterwards rates rise dramatically, because inflation has spiraled up.

F&D: You are now viewed as a very successful central banker. Is this the result of your analytical approach and correct calculations, or was there some luck involved?

EN: I think that it is important to simply implement policy in a consistent way. The goal of transitioning to inflation targeting was already announced before I came to the central bank, and much preparatory work had already been done. It was important to be consistent during turbulent times, rather than panicking and flailing about. It was also vital not to put off necessary decisions. The problems facing central banks usually do not simply “go away.” A late decision carries high costs for society. And a populist monetary policy has negative consequences even if it seems easier.

F&D: What leadership qualities are essential for success as a central banker?

EN: First, find professionals you can rely on and do not be afraid to surround yourself with strong people. Stimulate debate, so people are not afraid to express their opinion. And then, on this basis, take a decision, and do not deviate from it.

It is important for people who work at a central bank to understand that they are working for the public good, for long-range goals. We need to deliver on our promises to society. That is a key principle for me and for our staff.

In any policy, including monetary policy, it is not possible to avoid compromises. However, it is important to understand that there are limits to compromise.

Opinions expressed in articles and other materials in IMF’s Finance & Development are those of the authors; they do not necessarily reflect IMF policy.

Finance & Development, the IMF’s quarterly print magazine and online editorial platform, publishes cutting-edge analysis and insight on the latest trends and research in international finance, economics, and development. F&D is published quarterly in English, Arabic, Chinese, French, Russian, and Spanish, and is written by both IMF staff and prominent international experts.

The post Russia’s First Female Central Bank Governor in a Challenging Job appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Olga Stankova is with the Communications Department at the International Monetary Fund (IMF)

The post Russia’s First Female Central Bank Governor in a Challenging Job appeared first on Inter Press Service.

New UN-ASEAN study reveals slow but devastating impacts of drought in the region

By PRESS RELEASE
MANDALAY, Myanmar, Apr 24 2019 (IPS-Partners)

(ESCAP news) – Future scenarios of drought in many parts of South-East Asia may become even more frequent and intense if actions are not taken now to build resilience, according to the latest joint study by the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP) and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).

Launched today at the 34th Meeting of the ASEAN Committee on Disaster Management, the study Ready for the Dry Years: Building Resilience to Drought in South-East Asia offers clear analysis on the principal risks in the region. The study is released against the backdrop of the ongoing drought in almost all countries in South-East Asia with social and economic impacts already being felt very strongly in Cambodia, the Philippines, Thailand and Viet Nam.

As reported by the study, the cumulative impacts of drought in the region strikes hardest at the poor and heightens inequality, as well as degrades land and increases the prospects of violent conflict. Droughts can also be particularly damaging in countries where many people rely on agriculture for primary employment (61% in Lao PDR, 41% in Viet Nam, 31% in Indonesia, 27% in Cambodia and 26% in the Philippines).

Over the past 30 years, droughts have affected over 66 million people in the region. However, due to their slow-onset, droughts are often under-reported and under-monitored, resulting in conservative estimates on its impact in the region. The study points out that the future could be even worse. With climate change, many more areas are likely to experience extreme conditions with severe consequences.

“More dry years are inevitable, but more suffering is not. Timely interventions now can reduce the impacts of drought, protect the poorest communities and foster more harmonious societies,” said United Nations Under-Secretary-General and Executive Secretary of ESCAP Armida Alisjahbana.

Increasing resilience to drought will require much better forecasting and more efficient forms of response, at both national and regional levels. Ready for the Dry Years proposes three priority areas of intervention for ESCAP and ASEAN – strengthening drought risk assessment and early warning services, fostering risk financing instruments that can insure communities against slow-onset droughts and lastly, enhancing people’s capacities to adapt to drought.

“The priority areas of intervention highlighted in this report will contribute to the development of policy responses to mitigate the impact of future drought and eventually will strengthen efforts on building the ASEAN Community that is resilient to drought,” said Secretary-General of ASEAN Dato Lim Jock Hoi.

The study was produced as part of ESCAP and ASEAN’s close collaboration on disaster risk reduction under the ASEAN-UN Joint Strategic Plan of Action on Disaster Management.

Read the full report: click here

For media enquiries, please contact:

ESCAP: Mr. Ricardo Dunn, Chief, Strategic Communications and Advocacy Section, ESCAP, T: (+66) 2288 1861/ E: dunn@un.org

ASEAN: Community Relation Division, ASEAN Secretariat, E: crd@asean.org

The post More dry years ahead for South-East Asia appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

New UN-ASEAN study reveals slow but devastating impacts of drought in the region

The post More dry years ahead for South-East Asia appeared first on Inter Press Service.

By Luis Felipe López-Calva
UNITED NATIONS, Apr 24 2019 (IPS)

Sustainability is constitutive of the concept of development. Just as economist Amartya Sen has argued that there is no point in discussing the relationship between development and democracy, because democracy is constitutive of the concept of development, there is no point of trying to disentangle sustainability from the notion of development itself.

A key foundation to promoting sustainable development is thus strengthening resilience. We know that the development trajectory is not linear. Shocks of many different types disturb this path, and vulnerability to these shocks can slow down (or even reverse) progress. Resilience is the ability to return to a predetermined path of development in the shortest possible time after suffering from an adverse shock.

Luis Felipe López-Calva

For countries in the Caribbean, the challenge of strengthening resilience is particularly acute as nations suffer recurrent extreme weather-related events. Countries are continuously struggling to rebuild in the wake of the economic, social, and environmental damages inflicted by frequent exogenous shocks, such as tropical storms—storms which climate scientists have warned us are only getting wilder and more dangerous due to global warming.

This makes the probability of distribution over intensity of shocks one with “thicker tails” which in turn makes insurance more complex and expensive. As a recent IMF report found, “natural disasters occur more frequently and cost more on average in the Caribbean than elsewhere—even in comparison to other small states.” Since 1950, 324 disasters have taken place in the Caribbean, inflicting a loss of over 250,000 lives and affecting over 24 million people.

This #GraphForThought uses data from the International Disaster Database EM-DAT to look at the damages caused by storms in the Caribbean during the period 1963-2017. As the graph cycles through time, we see countries repeatedly experiencing storms.

Each grey dot represents a country’s loss in property, crops, and livestock due to total storm damages in a given year – expressed as a percentage of its national GDP (using GDP from the year before the storm).*

On average over time, we can see that countries in the Caribbean suffer yearly losses due to storm damages equivalent to 17% of their GDP (for years that they were hit by storms). Of course, this varies greatly across nations both due to the severity of storms as well as the size of countries’ GDP—ranging from an average loss of 1% in Trinidad and Tobago to an average loss of 74% in Dominica. In 2017 alone, Dominica lost the equivalent of 253% of its GDP (during Hurricane Maria).

This was just two years after it lost the equivalent of 92% of its GDP (during Hurricane Erika). These losses are compounded by losses resulting from other extreme natural events, such as earthquakes, floods and droughts.

The repercussions from these damages have long-term consequences at the national level. A recent cross-country study on the impact of cyclones on long run economic growth found that impacts on GDP persist as much as twenty years later.

Moreover, they find that “for countries that are frequently or persistently exposed to cyclones, these permanent losses accumulate, causing annual average growth rates to be 1-7.5 percentage points lower than simulations of “cyclone-free” counterfactuals.”

Thus, developing resilience to the repeated shocks faced by countries in the Caribbean is critical for ensuring their ability to pursue long-term growth. As the World Development Report 2017 argues “long-term growth is less about how fast one grows than about how often you trip along the way.”

The damage caused by extreme weather events can also lead to long-term consequences at the household-level. Using data on typhoons in the Philippines, a recent study found that in addition to the loss of durable assets, household income was reduced which is passed on through decisions to spend less on items such medicine, education, and high nutrient foods—decisions which may have long term consequences for the development of human capital.

In order to mitigate the serious consequences of shocks on development, we need to focus on strengthening resilience. The capacity of the countries in the region to strengthen the resilience of households will depend on the processes that allow households to make decisions that help them build their adaptation mechanisms.

Efficient, effective and flexible social protection systems to incorporate victims; early warning systems for disasters; investment in mitigation of environmental risks; and impact-resilient social services and infrastructure, are some of the ways through which governments in the region could build and strengthen resilience.

Moreover, in order to effectively strengthen resilience, we need to rethink how we evaluate it. Traditionally, economists have approached this notion from a perspective of ‘flows’ – such as GDP, consumption or income.

However, if we rely solely on this type of approach, efforts to strengthen resilience could take place at the expense of the depletion of the ‘stock’ of assets. For example, the recovery of GDP at the expense of natural capital.

Thus, if we truly believe that ‘sustainability is a constitutive element of development’, we need to move from an evaluation space defined by ‘flows’ to one that also includes a measure of ‘stocks.’ We need to think more broadly about the ‘wealth of nations’ by valuing not only their GDP but also their stock of natural, physical, human and social capital.

* Note: The sample is restricted to countries and years for which both storm data and GDP data are available.

The post After the Rain: The Lasting Effects of Storms in the Caribbean appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

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

The post After the Rain: The Lasting Effects of Storms in the Caribbean appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Diego Matom, a member of the Ixil indigenous community, poses happily with his family, surrounded by fresh loaves of bread which were baked thanks to community electricity generation, which has given his business a big boost, in the 31 de Mayo village in the mountainous ecoregion of Zona Reina, in northwestern Guatemala. Credit: Edgardo Ayala/IPS

By Edgardo Ayala
USPANTÁN, Guatemala, Apr 23 2019 (IPS)

In the stifling heat, Diego Matom takes the bread trays out of the oven and carefully places them on wooden shelves, happy that his business has prospered since his village in northwest Guatemala began to generate its own electricity.

And it managed to do so against all odds, facing down big business and the local authorities.

“The bakery used to operate with a gas oven, but the cost was very high because baking took a long time; now everything is faster and cheaper,” Matom told IPS, surrounded by his freshly baked loaves of bread.

Matom, a 29-year-old Ixil Indian, lives in the village of 31 de Mayo, located in the ecoregion of Zona Reina, Uspantán municipality, in the northwestern department of Quiché, Guatemala.

The village, some 300 kilometers north of the capital, was the first of four in the area to build its own hydroelectric plant, driven by necessity, since the state does not bring basic public services to this remote region.

There is no piped water, and medical and educational services are scarce, as is the case in many rural areas of this Central American nation of 17.3 million inhabitants.

In the communities of Zona Reina, water for human consumption comes from the springs perched in the mountains surrounding the villages, which is stored in tanks from which it is piped.

The 31 de Mayo power plant, called Light of the Heroes and Martyrs of the Resistance, consists of a turbine that generates 75 kW and is powered by the waters of the Putul River, channeled by a two-kilometer concrete channel into a 40-cubic-meter tank.

From there, the water runs down with enough pressure to move the turbine in the engine room.

The name of the village recalls the date on which some 400 Ixil and Quiché indigenous families were resettled there by the government in 1998, after the end of the 1960-1996 civil war.

These families were part of the so-called Communities of Population in Resistance, which during the conflict had to flee to the mountains due to repression by the army, which considered them supporters of the left-wing guerrilla.

Once resettled, each family received a small plot of land, where they plant corn and cardamom (Elettaria cardamomum), of which Guatemala is the world’s largest producer and one of the top exporters.

Following the example of 31 de Mayo, three other communities in Zona Reina struggled to become self-sufficient in electricity: El Lirio in May 2015, La Taña in September 2016 and La Gloria in November 2017.

The machine house for the mini-hydropower dam in the 31 de Mayo village, which provides energy to some 500 families and has served as a model for self-generation from community dams to extend throughout the Zona Reina ecoregion in the municipality of Uspantán in northwestern Guatemala. Credit: Edgardo Ayala/IPS

Unlike large-scale dams, which typically use 100 percent of river flow, community dams use only 10 percent, maintaining normal flow and preventing communities from running out of water downstream.

The four mini-hydroelectric plants supply the four villages where they are located and five neighbouring villages, benefiting a total of 1,000 families. But much remains to be done to promote access to energy throughout the Zona Reina, where there are a total of 86 villages.

But word is spreading and there is already another project approved for eight other villages, in the neighbouring ecoregion of Los Copones, that will share the energy generated with 11 neighbouring communities. The plan has received 1.25 million dollars in development aid financing from Germany.

The population in the Zona Reina is mainly indigenous, composed mainly of the Q’eqch’is, although they live alongside other Mayan peoples, such as the Ixil.

“Now that we have electricity we can do whatever we want, the kids come home from school and plug in their computers and do their homework,” said Zaida Gamarro, 31, a resident of La Taña.

Life used to be more difficult because at night the villagers used candles or lanterns for which they had to buy kerosene regularly, Gamarro told IPS during a tour of the villages that have community dams, located in a mountainous area where travel by road is difficult.

Several businesses such as the Matom bakery have also emerged, along with mechanics’ garages, carpentry workshops and several shops that can now use refrigerators.

“The business is going well, because we are located on the main street, and people are interested in our refrigerated products,” said José Ical, 38, a native of La Gloria and the owner of a small grocery store.

These efforts were made possible thanks to European development aid funds and local work by the environmental collective MadreSelva, in charge of designing and executing micro-hydroelectricity projects.

The families pay an average of 30 quetzals (about four dollars) per month for energy – less than what is paid by families in municipalities on the main power grid.

Countercurrent self-generation

The idea for local inhabitants to produce their own energy clashed with the interests of international consortiums and ran into resistance from mayors allied with those groups, said those interviewed in the communities.

A man shows the 27-cubic-meter tank of the La Taña community hydropower system, one of four installed in this remote mountainous region populated mostly by indigenous people in the northwestern department of Quiché, Guatemala. Credit: Edgardo Ayala/IPS

Specifically, they accused the Italian transnational company Enel Green Power, which runs the Palo Viejo Hydroelectric Project in the area, of carrying out a smear campaign against community dams.

A community hydroelectric plant, they said, runs counter to the system by which the state grants concessions to companies, which become the sole providers of those services.

The company, they added, maneuvered to divide the 31 de Mayo community, convincing some 100 families to abandon the project and thus weaken it, through a South African Pentecostal evangelist, Gregorio Walton, who offered solar panels to those who left the community project.

“There is a great deal of manipulation on the part of Enel, it wants to make people believe that the community project can’t work, that only the company can provide good electricity,” said Regina Ramos, from the community of 31 de Mayo.

Enel Green Power representatives did not respond to IPS’ request for comment.

“We don’t want companies like Enel, they just come to destroy our rivers and leave the community nothing,” said Max Chaman Simac, president of the Amaluna Nuevo Amanecer Association of La Taña.

Enel’s Palo Viejo power plant began to operate in March 2012, with a capacity of 85 MW. The consortium now has five hydroelectric plants in Guatemala. In total, it has 640 plants in Europe and the Americas.

The inhabitants of these villages maintained that the consortium was able to enter the region thanks to the permit granted by the then mayor of Uspantán, Víctor Hugo Figueroa.

“He was part of a strategy of land grabbing, in favour of extractive projects,” one of MadreSelva’s members, José Cruz, told IPS.

Other projects flourish

Meanwhile, the MadreSelva collective has sought to develop agroecological projects that help conserve ecosystems, especially in watersheds, and at the same time generate incomes for families.

Taking advantage of the organisation originally set up for the energy projects, a group of women now produce eco-friendly shampoos and soaps made from plants, ash, salt and other ingredients.

The families thus save money on basic products, and some of the women have also started to market them.

“We are encouraging people to plant home gardens, including herbs like rosemary, chamomile, etc., as well as the usual vegetables,” Mercedes Monzón, an activist in charge of these projects on the part of Madre Selva, told IPS.

Another initiative in this direction is the production of natural broths, based on rosemary, basil, dill, parsley and other aromatic herbs, which reduces the purchase of these products, whose wrappers bring pollution to the area.

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The post Against All Odds, Indigenous Villages Generate Their Own Energy in Guatemala appeared first on Inter Press Service.

By Lahai J. Samboma
LONDON, Apr 23 2019 (IPS)

When former footballer George Weah became president of Liberia in 2018, media practitioners felt they had in him a democrat who would champion media freedoms. “But we were mistaken,” journalist Henry Costa told IPS.

Any objective assessment of the relationship between West Africa governments and media organisations will conclude that, but for a few exceptions, the outlook for press freedom in the sub-region is a bleak one.

From Cameroon and Ghana, to Nigeria, Liberia and Senegal, journalists and media organisations are being attacked for simply doing their jobs. The fact that these attacks emanate from mostly state actors, who as a rule remain unpunished, points to a culture of impunity.

Liberia is a case in point.
“The president does not like criticism,” said Costa, owner of Roots FM and host of the station’s popular Costa Show. “And because we are critical of some policies, our offices have been attacked on two occasions by armed men and our equipment damaged and some stolen.”

Some would say Costa was lucky, for the corpse of another journalist, Tyron Brown, was dumped outside his home last year by a mysterious black jeep. A man has confessed to killing the journalist in self-defence but his colleagues are not convinced. They believe the murder was a message – mind your words or you could be next.

This climate of fear was heightened when Weah accused a BBC correspondent being against his government. Then Front Page Africa, a newspaper that has been critical of successive governments, was fined 1.8 million dollars in a civil defamation lawsuit brought by a friend of the president.

Mae Azango, a senior Front Page Africa reporter, said the government’s new tactic was to “strangulate the free press” by refusing to pay tens of thousands owed for media advertisements. “One minister said since the media does not write anything good about the government, it won’t pay debt owed, which will compel some media outlets to shut down,” she said. “Some media houses have not paid staff for up to eight months.”

In Ghana, once Africa’s top-ranked media-friendly country, things have deteriorated to the level where a sitting politician openly called on supporters to attack a journalist whose documentary on corruption in Ghanaian football exposed him. Ahmed Divela was subsequently shot dead last January. In 2015 another journalist, George Abanga, was also shot dead on assignment.

In March 2018 Latif Iddrisu, a young reporter, was covering a story when he was dragged into the Accra headquarters of the police and given a merciless beating which left him with a fractured skull.
Iddrisu told IPS by phone: “Journalists are being threatened with assault and death by politicians and people in power because they feel threatened by our exposés.” He doubts whether the passage of freedom of information (FOI) legislation will improve matters.

This position is borne out in Nigeria where the passing of FOI laws has not deterred officials from denying journalists access to information they need to carry out their jobs. According to Dapo Olorunyomi, the Central Bank and the Nigerian National Petroleum Company (the NNPC) are the “most opaque institutions” in the country. Olorunyomi, editor-in-chief of Premium Times Newspaper, added: “So you are allowed to write what you want, but if you get it wrong you suffer the consequences.” He and journalists working for him have been arrested on several occasions to get them to reveal their sources.

The case of Jones Abiri is instructive. The journalist was incarcerated for two years without trial. And physical attacks on reporters have increased four-fold in recent times. Figures show that attacks on journalists and the press quadrupled in 2015-2019, compared to the preceding five year period.

Media academic Dr Chinenye Nwabueze maintains that the violence heightens during elections. “In the ‘season’ of elections, a journalist operates like a car parked – at owner’s risk,” he told IPS. “You could end up in the crossfire between opposing parties or thugs.”

The same story of violence and intimidation against journalists is replicated in francophone countries like Cameroon, Senegal, Cote d’Ivoire and Mali. The most serious of them is Cameroon, where the government continues to prosecute media critics in military or special courts. As Angela Quintal, Africa Program Coordinator of the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) told IPS, “Cameroon is the second-worst jailer of journalists in sub-Saharan Africa, and the second in the world for jailing journalists on false news charges.”

Sierra Leone and the Gambia are the two countries that emerge relatively blemish-free in our survey of the landscape of press freedom in West Africa. Both have relatively new governments that have promised repeal criminal libel laws that their predecessors had used to clamp down on the media. From Sierra Leone, reporter Amadu Lamrana Bah of AYV Media told IPS: “The president says he is committed to repealing [criminal libel laws] and the process is on.”

His statement echoes that of Sheriff Bojang Jr, president of the Gambia Press Union, who said: “We no longer work in a fearful or repressive environment, but our major problem is the lack of information coming out of government, the total lack of transparency. But the government have promised to make changes.”

This is a reference to the absence of FOI legislation in the country, which the government has promised to “deal with in due course”. But the Gambians only have to look to similarly “blemish-free” Sierra Leone, to realise that FOI will count for nought if the authorities are not prepared to honour its provisions – as this reporter discovered while researching a story on sexual violence against Sierra Leonean women and another on diamond mining.

The Ministries of Justice, Mines, and Information in Freetown refused to provide the information we requested, even though they had initially promised they would. That recent experience came to mind when, during his interview for this piece, Liberian reporter Henry Costa said the Weah government “were pretending to be tolerant” but “would go to their old tricks” when economic hardships trigger anti-government protests and the media begin to report on them.

Since Sierra Leone and the Gambia are currently implementing International Monetary Fund policies, it is only a matter of time before those policies begin to bite the people. If the “Costa equation” is correct, then it is likewise only a matter of time before we find out whether the “blemish-free” authorities in Freetown and Banjul are as toxic to press freedom as their counterparts in Cameroon and Ghana, or indeed, their immediate predecessors.

“Journalists do essential work to keep the public informed, often in difficult circumstances in West and Central Africa,” Sadibou Marong, the Regional Media Manager for Amnesty’s West and Central Africa Office, told IPS.  “They must be protected to do their work freely, and without fear of attacks or threats. Governments in the region should promote media freedom and protect media workers and organisations.”

Related Articles

• ‘You Cannot Muzzle the Media’: Nigerian Journalists on Press Freedom under Buhari
• Attacks on Media in the Balkans Sound Alarm Bells for Democracy
• Q&A: Rodney Sieh on how Liberia’s press is faring under Weah presidency
• Sudan’s Journalists Face Continued Extortion and Censorship by National Security Agency
• The Shrinking Space for Media Freedom in Uganda

The post Bleak Outlook for Press Freedom in West Africa appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Illustration by Cliff van Thillo

By Karishma Asarpota
DUBAI, Apr 23 2019 (IPS)

Though climate policies aim to reduce GHG emissions, they miss out on emphasizing the importance of urban planning policies

Cities that have ratified the Paris Agreement and pledged to reduce carbon emissions are adopting climate action plans aimed at reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.

These plans promote the improvement of infrastructure efficiency in urban areas, incentivize residents to reduce energy consumption and increase renewable forms of energy production. These goals are becoming the accepted global norms for climate action policies whether it is based in Vancouver, Oslo, Dubai or Hong Kong.

A common theme amongst these strategies is the emphasis on improving the environmental performance of urban infrastructure such as transport, energy production, building design and waste management. Another point to note is that a lot of cities orient their climate strategies to respond to the contribution from GHG emissions.

For example, in Oslo 63% of GHG emissions are contributed from transportation. This is reflected in Oslo’s Climate and Energy Strategy where most of the actions are aimed at reducing transport related GHG emissions.

On the contrary, in Hong Kong, about 70% of greenhouse gas emissions are caused from generating electricity almost entirely used in buildings. Hong Kong’s Climate Action Plan places a heavy emphasis on reducing building related energy use and GHG emissions.

This seems like a sensible approach that is based on emissions data accompanied by engineered solutions that are tested by simulation models. For example, energy policies suggest that the efficiency of heating systems in a building can be increased by upgrading to a heat pump or improving circuiting.

This is no doubt a viable solution. But heating efficiency can also be improved if buildings are designed in response to the local microclimate to be able to retain heat thus reducing the amount of energy needed in the first place.

However, modelling tools lack the precision and capability of integrating factors like microclimate and density. This gap is visible in climate strategies as the emphasis on urban development patterns is weak.

The link between climate action plans & urban development plans

A lot of policies in climate strategies propose changes to the organization of urban areas. For example, almost every city encourages its residents to walk and cycle more to reduce the dependency on cars.

While they also emphasize that more infrastructure to support pedestrians and cyclists should be put in place, they fail to demonstrate what this will look like. Will this change the way in which we build our neighborhoods?

Perhaps we will need wider pavements and narrower roads? These questions are left for urban development plans to answer. But how many of them actually pick up where climate strategies leave off?

Urban development plans in cities are usually responsible to lay out the vision for future developments or to make changes to existing development. Cities that have tried to respond to energy efficiency or GHG reduction in their urban development plans do so by promoting the implementation of neighbourhood energy systems (NES), increasing walkability or advocating for green building design.

All these measures can undoubtedly help, but are not being implemented fast enough through policies or regulations. Promoting this through awareness programs or pilot projects is not as effective for a widespread change.

For example, In Oslo, ‘role model’ or pilot projects aimed at reducing energy consumption or GHG emissions are meant to inspire change and serve as an example of efficient and sustainable urban development.

Oslo’s Climate and Energy Strategy presents an example of best practice but does not mandate the adoption of sustainable design principles as a norm for future urban development.

A similar example is seen in Dubai, where Dubai Sustainable City – which is a neighbourhood with a low carbon impact – is seen as a pioneer example of sustainable urban development in the city.

But the development lies about 30 km away from the center of the city, disconnected from any public transit line making residents dependent on using a car for daily commute. This counters emissions that residents save by living in the neighbourhood. Are these disconnected sustainable urban development projects really helping?

The impact of neighbourhood energy systems

One can argue that it is perhaps easier to implement regulations that have a direct technological application, for example, implementing green building design or a Neighbourhood Energy System (NES). Even though these measures are beneficial, they undermine the importance of architectural or urban design and planning solutions.

Let’s take an example of a neighbourhood urban development plan for West End in Vancouver. One part of the plan advocates for policy based design solutions such as passive design, climate change adaptation for infrastructure and public space design.

The plan also strongly advocates for a Neighbourhood Energy System (NES), where heat is produced at a central point and then distributed to individual buildings. This is a viable option only in a dense neighbourhood. So, in a way, urban development is guided by the implementation of energy infrastructure.

The West End plan is one of the better examples. But what it fails to address is space between buildings. Energy systems, building design and infrastructure design are addressed individually. Will the connection between these areas make a difference to how the neighbourhood is planned?

Green Building Design

Let’s look at building design. Globally, about 36% of emissions are contributed from buildings and about 39% of energy is consumed by buildings. This can be helped if buildings consider the local microclimate and use principles of passive solar design, which means that buildings are designed to store, reflect and distribute the sun’s energy.

This would result in the building consuming less energy for heating or cooling. Many studies show that passive design strategies in buildings can help to decrease energy consumption by almost 80%! Yet climate strategies don’t mandate the adoption of passive building design strategy for every building in the city.

We often find that cities promote green building rating systems like LEED (Leadership in Energy Efficient Design) or BREEAM (Building Research Establishment Environmental Assessment Method).

For example, in Hong Kong, BEAM is the prefered green building rating system. In addition to this, the city has developed two additional regulatory tools, B(EE)R (or Building Energy Efficiency Regulations) and BEEO (or Building Energy Efficiency Ordinance).

Energy use is monitored and improved through these measures. However, these regulations don’t say much about passive solar design.

In Dubai, Al Safat Green Building regulations, which is a locally developed building regulation aimed at improving efficiency and life cycle of buildings, has been implemented only since 2017. Since its inception the first level of the guidelines are mandatory for all new buildings.

But this does not include essential passive design principles such as building orientation or the proportion of glass that buildings are allowed to use. Going forward, all building councils and municipalities need to ask if there is any purpose of buildings regulations that are not able to mandate passive solar design strategies.

But can climate strategies still be successful?

Climate strategies in cities are able to provide directives and set out targets to align with the global emissions target. This is a step in the right direction but is not sufficient. Climate strategies set out concrete targets to reduce GHG emissions and energy use.

However, climate action plans are never able to say that they can achieve their goals through adopting the proposed measures. The proposed actions are never equated to any numerical data that can indicate to what extent it can help to achieve the goals.

This shows that although climate strategies are able to provide directive a lot more needs to be done if we want to truly achieve a low-carbon future. The role of urban planning and design is crucial in responding to climate sensitive design because it is able to challenge existing norms that don’t contribute to energy efficiency. Planning can help to bridge the gap between the organization of space (architectural and urban design) and decision making in cities.

A good example of this the ‘complete streets’ program launched in Vancouver. This policy based design strategy aims to promote safe, well maintained and environmentally responsible streets in Vancouver at the neighbourhood level.

Through this program communities can come together and design the components of streets in their neighbourhood. What makes this program likely to be successful is that it is a part of the city’s 2040 transport vision and funding for its implementation has been secured in late 2018.

We need to start seeing more policy-based design solutions that respond to local conditions in cities. These solutions should be accompanied by an implementation strategy to help it become more widespread.

• Karishma Asarpota’s work addresses climate changes related issues in cities, especially involving the energy transition. She is experienced in working on urban development projects in Europe, Middle East, India and Brazil and is actively engaged with YOUNGO (youth constituency of UNFCCC) as a coordinator of the Cities Working Group.

The post Why Climate Action Plans are not Good Enough to Deliver a Low-Carbon Future in Cities appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Karishma Asarpota* is an urban planner, blogger and researcher who holds a Master of Science degree in Urbanism from Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands.

The post Why Climate Action Plans are not Good Enough to Deliver a Low-Carbon Future in Cities appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Privatization is expected by many to promote competition and eliminate corruption. In practice, the converse has been true as privatization beneficiaries have successfully colluded and engaged in new types of corruption to maximize their own gains.

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

At the risk of reiterating what should be obvious, the question of private or public ownership is distinct from the issue of competition or market forces. Despite the misleading claim that privatization promotes competition, it is competition policy, not privatization, that promotes competition.

Jomo Kwame Sundaram

Privatization the problem, not the solution
Instead, privatization has typically been accompanied by collusion, which undermines competitive pricing. Formal and, more commonly, informal collusion is rife. Informal collusion is more likely among those involved in public or transparent bidding to provide privatized or contracted-out services.

Transparent institutions and arrangements, such as public auctions and open, competitive bidding for contracts, have often been compromised by secret, informal collusion. Typically, those with political connections and insider information are better able to secure lucrative contracts and such other business opportunities.

Greater public transparency and accountability were expected to promote greater efficiency in achieving the public interest while limiting waste and borrowing. But contrary to such claims, privatization itself does not ensure transparency and accountability, or address corruption. As it is rarely implemented on an arm’s length basis, it may also contribute to other problems, including new types of corruption.

Hence, privatization does not enhance efficiency except to augment profits. The public sector can be more efficiently run, as in some economies. Hence, the challenge is to ensure that the public sector is better run. Greater public accountability and a more transparent public sector can help ensure greater efficiency in achieving the public and national interest while limiting public sector waste and borrowing.

Ascertain problems to determine solutions
Correlation does not imply causation. An enterprise may be better run after privatization due to managerial reforms, behavioural changes or organizational improvements. But if such improvements could have been achieved without privatization, then one cannot conclude that privatization is needed to bring about desired reforms.

It is important to consider the organizational and managerial reforms, including incentive changes, which might be desirable to achieve superior outcomes. One should not assume that privatization is the answer regardless of the question or the problem at hand.

After all, many SOEs were set up precisely because the private sector was believed to be unable or unwilling to provide certain services or goods. In many instances, the problems of an SOE are not due to ownership per se, but rather to the absence of explicit, feasible or achievable objectives, or the existence of too many, often contradictory goals.

In other cases, poor managerial and organizational systems, blocking flexibility, autonomy and needed reforms, as well as cultures supportive of them, may be the key problem. Such reforms may well achieve desired objectives and goals, or even do better, at lower cost, thus proving to be the superior option.

Many SOEs have undoubtedly proven to be problematic and inefficient. However, privatization has not proved to be the universal panacea for the myriad problems of the public sector it has been touted as. As such, the superior option cannot be presumed a priori, but should instead be the outcome of careful consideration of the nature and roots of an organization’s malaise.

SOE reform or government procurement often superior
SOE reform is often a superior option for a variety of reasons although there are no ‘one size fits all’ solutions regardless of circumstances. Problems need to be analysed in context and solutions cannot be assumed a priori.

It would be erroneous to presume that public ownership is always a problem. There may be other problems which are not going to go away without properly identifying and resolving them.

Desirable changes, resulting in improved performance and outcomes, may take place following the privatization of a particular SOE. But even this does not mean that privatization per se is responsible for these improvements unless state ownership itself has blocked needed changes, in which case there may well be compelling cases for privatization in such situations.

Another alternative, of course, is government or public procurement. Generally, public-private partnerships (PPPs) are much costlier than government procurement. With a competent government, government procurement is generally more efficient and much cheaper.

Yet, international trade and investment agreements are eroding the rights of governments to pursue government procurement. With a competent government and an incorruptible civil service, and competent accountable consultants doing good work, efficient government procurement has generally proved far more cost-effective than PPP alternatives.

The post Privatization Promotes Collusion and Corruption appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Privatization is expected by many to promote competition and eliminate corruption. In practice, the converse has been true as privatization beneficiaries have successfully colluded and engaged in new types of corruption to maximize their own gains.

The post Privatization Promotes Collusion and Corruption appeared first on Inter Press Service.

By Jan Lundius
STOCKHOLM / ROME, Apr 23 2019 (IPS)

Trump´s electoral success was preceded by a rise of chauvinistic politics in most of Europe, paired with electoral triumphs of far-right candidates in several other countries. A development accompanied by revelations of corrupt leaders laundering and transferring illegally obtained money, aided by financial institutions finding the means to do so. The world seems to move away from a rule-based order to a state of affairs dominated by might and wealth. World leaders´ private business dealings thrive within a global environment where laws intended to protect human rights are becoming increasingly ineffective. Foreign policies appear to be adapted to private gains and personal vendettas. Global financial systems seem to be crafted to facilitate kleptocracy and money laundering, while repression and violence smite whistle-blowers and daring journalists. Endeavours supported by propaganda and smear campaigns orchestrated by political/financial consultants and private investigation firms. All this is made possible through complicated schemes using the internet.

Within the boundless ambiance of cyberspace, we find WikiLeaks, founded to facilitate the proliferation of classified documents revealing opaque, often illicit activities. Julian Assange was, and remains a member of the organisation’s nine-member advisory board, making final decisions about which documents to be published on the site. Wikileaks´s servers are located in Sweden, nevertheless, this has not hindered Swedish authorities from rejecting Assange´s applications for a working permit.

WikiLeaks publishes information that people in power does not want the multitude to know and thus constitutes a kind of investigative journalism, which is particularly relevant today. An example – in 2016 more than 11 million documents detailing financial information about 214,488 offshore entities were leaked from a Panamanian law firm to the German newspaper Südeutsche Zeitung. These documents revealed hidden theft and corruption endemic to several Governments. No one could seriously repudiate the correctness of publishing them.

By 2015, WikiLeaks had published more than 10 million documents and was by Assange described as” a giant library of the world’s most persecuted documents.” 1 In 2009, WikiLeaks posted a classified video showing US helicopter crews killing18 people in Iraq, including two Reuters journalists. The same year, WikiLeaks published a quarter of a million diplomatic cables originating from classified US Government files, followed by the publication in 2010 of a trove of secret documents related to the US detention facility in Guantánamo.

The Empire stroke back. Shortly after the Iraqi videos had been released United States authorities began to investigate Assange, intending to prosecute him under an Espionage Act from 1917. Assange was by then a hero of free speech. WikiLeaks had uncovered indiscriminate killing, hypocrisy, and corruption, as well as being instrumental in sparking the Arab Spring. In 2009, Assange received Amnesty International Media Award for WikiLeaks´s reporting of extrajudicial executions in Kenya. He was being called The Rockstar of Free Speech.

However, after 2010 rumours surfaced about Assange as being excessively self-asserting, blinded by success and ruling WikiLeaks as his personal fiefdom. Furthermore, Assange was accused of being biased, curbing anything criticising Russia. Suspicions accentuated during the 2016 US presidential election when WikiLeaks published emails from Hillary Clinton´s private email account, apparently leaked by Russian agents. 2

Since 2011, Assange had under constant surveillance been isolated in London´s Ecuadorean embassy, living in a small windowless room equipped with a mattress, sunlamp, computer, kitchenette, shower, treadmill, and bookshelves. In an adjoining room he received a steady stream of visitors. Assange suffered from the horrors of confinement, though until the last few months of his immurement he was, like he had been for most of his life, through his computer connected with the world. He reminded of the Genii of Disney´s Aladdin, who confined to his golden lamp stated: ”It’s all part of the whole genie gig: Phenomenal cosmic power … itty-bitty living space.”

Whenever Assange was displeased he unloaded his WikiLeaks weapon. When the Ecuadorean president Lenin Moreno during the last year of Assanges´s stay at the London embassy ordered the closing down of his internet connection, Assange threatened to release documents proving that Moreno was guilty of corruption, perjury and money laundering. Assange´s account was reopened, though on 11 April this year he was dragged out of the Ecuadorian embassy. How had he ended up there?

In August 2010, Assange visited Sweden to inspect WikiLeaks´s servers. During his stay he was by two women accused of rape and sexual misconduct. Assange was arrested in his absence, after initial questioning he had escaped to London, where he was apprehended. A British court decided to extradite Assange, though by then Ecuador had already granted him political asylum and a safe haven within its embassy.

There may be good reasons for Assange´s fear of being extradited to the US, though that does not exempt him from suspicions of sexual misconduct. The women´s detailed stories about their encounters with Assange and his statements about Sweden as the” Saudi Arabia of Feminism” suggest that tales about his sordid behaviour might be true, indicating that the Swedish incident was not the ”honey trap” his defenders claimed it to be.

Julian Assange had a difficult childhood, growing up in over thirty Australian small towns before he in his mid-teens settled with his mother in Melbourne. His father left even before Julian was born and since then his mother was involved with several men, among them Leif Meynell, a controversial cult leader. Assange´s schooling was capricious, though since childhood he was a computer wizard and later studied programming, mathematics and physics at the University of Melbourne, though not completing any degree, busying himself with computer related business. In his teens, Assange married and had a son, but divorced after a few years. Assange´s family life is enigmatic. A former spokesperson of WikiLeaks claimed that Assange admitted having ”multiple children” with various women. According to police documents he has ”at least” four children, though the locations of the children and their mothers are unknown. It appears as if Assange, like many other computer nerds, spends more time in cyberspace than in the real world.

Apparently was Assange´s mistrust of the West fuelled during his years of confinement, making him increasingly numb to abuses committed by the Kremlin, which he viewed as a ”bulwark against Western Imperialism”. The US, Great Britain and Sweden caused him trouble, something Russia never did, it even supported him. Assange has declared that the US Democratic Party is “whipping up a neo-McCarthyist hysteria about Russia” and defends WikiLeaks´s lenient treatment of Russian offences by stating: “Every man and his dog is criticizing Russia. It’s a bit boring, isn’t it?” In April 2012, when WikiLeaks’s funding was drying up under American pressure, with Visa and MasterCard refusing to accept donations, the state/controlled network Russia Today began broadcasting a show hosted by Assange through a link from the Ecuadorian embassy. In 2016, Assange criticized the regime-critical Novaya Gazeta’s coverage of the Panama Papers, suggesting it “cherry-picked” documents to achieve ”optimal Putin bashing, North Korea bashing, sanctions bashing, etc.” 3

Should Assange be deported to and convicted in the US? It could be a dangerous stimulus for others to persecute whistle-blowers and truth-tellers. Nevertheless, did he not serve Russian interests? Probably, but that does not affect the truth of and benefits from other WikiLeaks disclosures. Is not Assange a flawed individual? Maybe, and if he committed crimes he ought be judged for them, but not for being a journalist and whistle-blower.

What in the eyes of some jurists makes Assange a dubious hero is that his methods might have violated press ethics by supporting criminal activities . When Chelsea Manning in 2009 revealed military secrets to WikiLeaks he was a US soldier, serving as intelligence analyst at an army unit in Iraq. He was working under oath to maintain secrecy and was accordingly in 2013 convicted for ”aiding the enemy”. Legal scholars argued that the relationship between Assange and Manning was that of a journalist and his source, while others maintained that Assange went beyond press ethics by actively helping Manning to crack passwords to gain access to secret military databases.

If guilty or not of crimes committed in Sweden and the US, Assange´s case nevertheless reveals the precariousness of journalism. He was by Trump hailed as a hero when WikiLeaks revealed information supporting his candidacy. However, he might just as well be condemned as a villain by anyone who considers Wikileaks´s information to be damaging. Under all circumstances, as long as corrupt criminals and politicians use cyberspace for transgressions and enrichment, we are in dire need of other visitors to that space; journalists and computer nerds willing to enter it to reveal misdeeds and crimes.

1 . Sontheimer, Michael (2015) ”Spiegel-Gespräch: ´Wir haben es noch drauf´,” Der Spiegel 18.7, Nr. 30.
2 . Mazetti, Mark and Katie Benner (2018) ”12 Russian Agents Indicted in Mueller Investigation”, The New York Times, July 13.
3 . Erlanger, Steven and Nicholas Casey (2019) ”Julian Assange’s Seven Strange Years in Self-Imposed Isolation”, The New York Times, April 11.

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

The post Lost in the Cyberworld? The Enigmatic Mr Assange appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Students from the Agrarian University La Molina in agrometeorology field practice, in Lima, Perú. Photo: WMO/Marlene Dapozzo Moali.

By Editor, UN
Apr 22 2019 (IPS-Partners)

Mother Earth is a common expression for the planet earth in a number of countries and regions, which reflects the interdependence that exists among human beings, other living species and the planet we all inhabit.

The Earth and its ecosystems are our home. In order to achieve a just balance among the economic, social, and environmental needs of present and future generations, it is necessary to promote harmony with nature and the Earth.

International Mother Earth Day is celebrated to remind each of us that the Earth and its ecosystems provide us with life and sustenance.

This Day also recognizes a collective responsibility, as called for in the 1992 Rio Declaration, to promote harmony with nature and the Earth to achieve a just balance among the economic, social and environmental needs of present and future generations of humanity.
International Mother Earth Day provides an opportunity to raise public awareness around the world to the challenges regarding the well-being of the planet and all the life it supports.

Mother Earth: Education and Climate Change

Climate change is one of the largest threats to sustainable development globally and is just one of many imbalances caused by the unsustainable actions of humankind, with direct implications for future generations.

The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Paris Agreement encourage international cooperation among parties on climate change education, training, public awareness, public participation and public access to information.

During the commemoration of 10th anniversary of International Mother Earth Day, the Ninth Interactive Dialogue of the General Assembly on Harmony with Nature will be held on 22 April 2019 in the Trusteeship Council Chamber. The Interactive Dialogue is to discuss the contributions of Harmony with Nature in ensuring inclusive, equitable and quality education on taking urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts and to inspire citizens and societies to reconsider how they interact with the natural world in the context of sustainable development, poverty eradication and climate justice, so as to ensure that people everywhere have the relevant information and awareness for sustainable development and lifestyles in Harmony with Nature.

Climate Action

To boost ambition and accelerate actions to implement the Paris Agreement on Climate Change, UN Secretary-General António Guterres will host the 2019 Climate Action Summit on 23 September to meet the climate challenge.

The post International Mother Earth Day appeared first on Inter Press Service.

By Purnaka L. de Silva
NEW YORK, Apr 22 2019 (IPS)

I returned from attending a three-hour Easter Sunday mass at the Fordham University Church around midnight New York time on April 20, 2019, when my phone rang and a colleague asked me what’s going on in Sri Lanka? I said what is going on? He said there were a series of coordinated terrorist bombings with multiple fatalities and scores of injuries in my native country. For the next four and a half hours I was on the phone trying to piece together what happened, including reaching out to Sri Lanka’s Secretary of Defence Hemasiri Fernando.

The toll as of Monday, April 22 is 290 dead and 500 injured. Sri Lanka’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs confirmed that 36 foreigners died, with 20 still unidentified; and those identified include: 5 British (2 with dual US nationality), 3 Danes, 1 Dutch, 1 Portuguese, 2 Turks, 3 Indians and 1 Japanese.

This is the second time in history that the Indian Ocean island of Sri Lanka has been bombed on an Easter Sunday morning when the faithful were at prayer. The first was a coordinated air attack on the capital Colombo, launched from aircraft carriers of the Imperial Japanese Navy at 7:30 a.m. on Easter Sunday, April 5, 1942 – the same date that the U.S. Pacific Fleet in Pearl Harbor was also attacked in a different time zone.

Timeline in infamy – April 21, 2019

Around 8:45 a.m. on Easter Sunday morning five massive explosions simultaneously rocked Colombo, western Sri Lanka:

• 18th century St. Anthony’s Shrine Roman Catholic Church in Kochchikade, near Colombo harbor, 3.4 km from Colombo.
• St. Sebastian’s Roman Catholic Church in Katuwapitiya, Negombo, 10.2 km north of Sri Lanka’s Bandaranaike International Airport (32.4 km north of the capital).
• Shangri-La 500 room 5-star hotel downtown Colombo
• Kingsbury 229 room 5-star hotel downtown Colombo
• Cinnamon Grand 483 room 5-star hotel downtown Colombo

9:05 a.m.

• Zion Protestant Christian Church in Batticaloa on the eastern seaboard of Sri Lanka, 318.1 km from Colombo.

1:45 p.m.

• Tropical Inn Guest House in Dehiwala near the zoo, 10.2 km south of Colombo.

2:15 p.m.

• Two explosions at suspected safe house in Dematagoda on the northwestern outskirts 3.1 km from Colombo, owned by a spice trader, allegedly the father of one of the suicide bombers. At least three police officers died in the blasts including Special Task Force (STF) police commandos, with seven suspects arrested.

Late Sunday night

• A 6-foot pipe bomb was located and destroyed near Bandaranaike International Airport by the Sri Lanka Air Force.

 
Perpetrators

An internal Sri Lanka Police circular dated April 11, 2019 issued by Deputy Inspector General Srilal Dassanayake noted: “warning of plan to launch a campaign of suicide attacks led by Mohammed Zahran of National Thawheed Jama’ath (NTJ) has been received by intelligence sources, and request extreme precautions be taken.”

A fact commented on in the aftermath of the first wave of bombings by Defence Secretary Hemasiri Fernando, who confirmed that some of the attacks were carried out by suicide bombers.

Sri Lankan authorities have arrested 24 suspects and at least 1 woman as of Monday in an ongoing investigation to root out all the terrorists, who may number 30 with 20-30 targets, according to a suspect arrested down Ramakrishna Road, Wellawatte, 8.0 km south of Colombo.

At least three of the suicide terrorist bombers have been identified, all local Sri Lankan Muslims allegedly from eastern Sri Lanka:

• Mohamed Azzam Mohamed registered as a guest the previous night and blew himself up during the Easter breakfast buffet in Taprobane Restaurant – Cinnamon Grand Hotel. Apparently he queued patiently before triggering his explosives.
• Zahran Hashim – Shangri-La hotel.
• Abu Mohammad – Zion Protestant Christian Church, Batticaloa.

Active measures taken

• 3:00 p.m. curfew lifted at 6:00 a.m. Monday morning to enable security forces to apprehend wanted terror suspects in ongoing hunt and stop escapees.
• Blocking all major social media platforms and messaging Apps to prevent spread of misinformation and rumors.
• Maintaining law and order to stop any retaliation (e.g. Mosque petrol bombed in Putlam, 132.9 km north of Colombo; arson attacks on two Muslim owned shops in Kalutara, 43.5 km south of Colombo).
• U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and Australian police teams in place to help with forensic investigations.

National Thawheed Jama’ath (NTJ)

Five years ago on March 24, 2014 the Peace Loving Moderate Muslims in Sri Lanka (PLMMSL) urged the Government of Sri Lanka to ban without delay an Islamic religious movement calling itself the (National) Thawheed Jama’ath “because it was fast becoming a cancer within Sri Lanka’s Muslim community.”

It is alleged that NTJ headed by Moulavi Zahran had holed up in Kattankudi, 327 km east of Colombo, and recruited impressionable Muslim high school students to travel to Syria via Turkey. The hypothesis is that following military defeat at the hands of multinational forces, these Daesh or so-called Islamic State (IS) associated recruits had returned to Sri Lanka.

These allegations are yet to be proven beyond reasonable doubt in a court of law. Having said that I would argue that the spectacular terrorist bombings on Easter Sunday perpetrated on wholly unsuspecting Christians, tourists and citizens could be a last hurrah from Daesh to demonstrate to their supporters and the world at large that they are not defeated. Every suicide bombing though is a defeat for Daesh as they are losing cadres on each occasion.

Quo Vadis?

So where do we all go from here? Sri Lanka will recover, as it has done commendably from the decades long brutal civil wars and bloodletting that ended ten years ago. What of the human spirit and fragile inter-communal harmony between minority Christians, Muslims and majority Buddhists in Sri Lanka, and beyond?

That is the greatest challenge moving forward and Sri Lanka’s fractious political leaders have to demonstrate true statesmanship, and invest the required time, effort and resources in partnership with all faith leaders to make a difference.

Thereby, defeating the forces of darkness, ignorance and evil, and bringing enlightenment, peace and harmony to a beleaguered land. Similar actions must be taken by world leaders to overcome growing dystopia and unchecked authoritarianism that is haunting the 21st century, putting the planet and liberal democracy in dire peril.

The post Sri Lanka’s Easter Sunday Carnage: Quo Vadis? appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Dr. Purnaka L. (“PL”) de Silva is Director, Institute for Strategic Studies and Democracy (ISSD) Malta

 

“If we believe in absurdities we shall commit atrocities” - Voltaire

The post Sri Lanka’s Easter Sunday Carnage: Quo Vadis? appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Attendees at an FAO sub-regional training workshop on gender and livestock in Harare, Zimbabwe.

By Kingsley Ighobor
UNITED NATIONS, Apr 22 2019 (IPS)

Government staffer Souhayata Haidara enjoys talking about her life in a patriarchal society. Her career is a triumph of patience and perseverance, she tells Africa Renewal with a smile and a wink.

Ms. Haidara, currently the Special Adviser to Mali’s Minister of Environment and Sustainable Development, says she was lucky not to be married off at age 14 like some of her peers. Her father resisted pressure from suitors and relatives and insisted that the teenager be allowed to complete high school before getting married.

“In our culture, people believe education is for boys and that the women must marry and stay at home,” she says.

Women’s economic empowerment is anchored by education, maintains Ms. Haidara, who earned a degree in environmental science in the US on a scholarship from the United States Agency for International Development.

“I couldn’t be where I am today without education. I earn an income. I educated my three children—a boy and two girls, now grown. I have a six-year-old granddaughter who is getting the best grades in class. That makes me very happy.”

But Brandilyn Yadeta, a 32-year-old Ethiopian, missed out on education. “I had a baby at 19 and the father traveled abroad without letting me know. Since then, I continue to struggle to take care of my child, which is my priority, above my education.” She is a small-scale trader.

If the father refuses to pay child support for his child, what options does a woman have? “What can I do?” Ms. Yadeta asks with frustration and regret.

Ms. Yadeta and others like her in Africa are unsung heroes—taking care of the family, a job mostly unrecognized by their society. Yet in monetary terms, women’s unpaid work accounts for between 10% and 39% of GDP, according to the UN Research Institute for Social Development, which provides policy analysis on development issues.

The International Labour Organisation (ILO) states that women are disproportionately laden with the responsibility for unpaid care and domestic work. It highlights this issue to make the case for economic empowerment of women, which is now a front-burner topic in development literature.

Countries making reforms

A World Bank report titled Women, Business and the Law 2019: A Decade of Reform states that sub-Saharan Africa “had the most reforms promoting gender equality [of any region].” In fact, six of the top 10 reforming countries are there—the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Guinea, Malawi, Mauritius, São Tomé and Príncipe, and Zambia.

Despite a protracted political crisis, the DRC made the most improvement based in part on “reforms allowing women to register businesses, open bank accounts, sign contracts, get jobs and choose where to live in the same way as men,” states the report.

Mauritius introduced civil remedies for sexual harassment at work and prohibited discrimination in access to credit based on gender. Among the civil remedies, employers are prohibited from sexually harassing an employee or a job seeker while an employee must not sexually harass a fellow employee. Mauritius also mandated equal pay between men and women for work of equal value.

$95 billion

is the amount that sub-Saharan Africa loses yearly because of the gender gap in the labour market. São Tomé and Príncipe equalized mandatory retirement ages and the ages at which men and women can receive full pension benefits—a move that increased the country’s female labour force participation by 1.75%.

The World Bank’s report by no means suggests that all is well with women in these countries. The report merely highlights the positive incremental changes that these countries are making.

The DRC, for example, may have implemented some pro–women’s empowerment reforms, but women in that country still have no land or inheritance rights, according to the Global Fund for Women, a nonprofit.

Theodosia Muhulo Nshala, Executive Director of the Women’s Legal Aid Centre, a nonprofit in Tanzania, tells Africa Renewal that “men and women [in Tanzania] have equal rights to land ownership, thanks to the Village Land Act of 1999; however, customary laws exist that prevent women and girls from inheriting land from their husbands and fathers.”

While women’s participation in the labour force (mostly in the informal sector) is high in many sub-Saharan Africa countries—86% in Rwanda, 77% in Ethiopia and 70% in Tanzania—only in eight countries (Gabon, Ghana, Kenya, Libya, Namibia, South Africa, Uganda and Zimbabwe) do more than 50% of women own bank accounts, according to the Global Financial Inclusion Database, which regularly publishes country-level indicators of financial inclusion.

Not a zero-sum game

Economically empowering women is not a zero-sum game in which women win and men lose, notes Urban Institute, a policy think tank in Washington, D.C. Rather, Mckinsey Global Institute, a US-based management consulting firm, forecasts that, “A ‘best in region’ scenario in which all countries match the rate of improvement of the fastest-improving country in their region could add as much as $12 trillion, or 11 percent, in annual 2025 GDP.”

And UN Women, an entity for gender equality and women’s empowerment, states: “Investing in women’s economic empowerment sets a direct path towards gender equality, poverty eradication and inclusive economic growth,”

On the flip side, since 2010 sub-Saharan African economies have lost about $95 billion yearly because of the gender gap in the labour market, says Ahunna Eziakonwa, Director of UNDP’s Regional Bureau for Africa (see interview on page 22). “So imagine if you unleash the power, talent and resolve of women.”

Empowerment is limited

Experts believe that women’s economic empowerment is the key to achieving the African Union’s Agenda 2063, a continental framework for socioeconomic transformation of the continent, and several goals in the UN’s 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

That includes Goal 1, ending poverty; Goal 2, achieving food security; Goal 3, ensuring good health; Goal 5, achieving gender equality; Goal 8, promoting full and productive employment and decent work for all; and Goal 10, reducing inequalities.

Aspiration 6 of Agenda 2063 envisages an “Africa whose development is people driven, relying on the potential offered by people, especially its women and youth, and caring for children.”

Taking action

What can countries do to empower women economically?

In a blog for the World Bank, Cape Verde’s Minister of Finance, Planning and Public Administration Cristina Duarte and the World Bank’s Vice President for Infrastructure Makhtar Diop recently encouraged “support [for] young women during adolescence—a critical juncture in their lives.”

The Empowerment and Livelihood for Adolescents programme in Uganda, which “uses girl-only clubs to deliver vocational and ‘life skills’ training,” is a good example, according to Ms. Duarte and Mr. Diop.

The World Bank recommends, among other actions, the passage of laws that foster financial inclusion. Ms. Eziakonwa believes that countries must expunge laws that are obstacles in women’s way, including those that prohibit them from owning land.

South African journalist Lebo Matshego is urging women’s rights activists to use social media to lobby against those customs and traditions that infringe on the rights of women.

Vera Songwe, head of the Economic Commission for Africa, the first woman to lead the organization, says women, especially in rural areas, need access to the internet to be able to take advantage of new technologies.

The UN Secretary-General’s 2018 CSW report titled Challenges and Opportunities in Achieving Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Rural Women and girls advises countries to “design and implement fiscal policies that promote gender equality and the empowerment of rural women and girls by investing in essential infrastructure (ICT, sustainable energy, sustainable transport and safely managed water and sanitation).”

According to Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, a former president of Liberia, affirmative action is the way to go. She says that “now is the time for preferential treatment of women,” such as quotas on jobs and access to credit.

UN Women supported a review of Kenyan public procurement in 2013, and Kenya now reserves a minimum of 30% of annual government spending for women. In 2017, through its Women’s Economic Empowerment programme,

UN Women reported successfully training 1,500 women vendors in Nairobi to participate and benefit from the government supply chain. This is one example of an action in line with Ms. Sirleaf’s suggestion.

The quality of jobs that women do also matters, writes Abigail Hunt, a researcher with the Overseas Development Institute, a UK-based think tank. “Empowerment is limited when women enter the labour market on unfavourable terms.

This includes women’s engagement in exploitative, dangerous or stigmatized work, with low pay and job insecurity.” In other words, women need access to high-paying, safe and secure jobs.

“The road to women’s economic empowerment is irreversible,” maintains Ms. Sirleaf. “It’s taking a while to get it, but it’s coming; no one can stop it.”

*Africa Renewal (ISSN 2517-9829) is published in English and French by the Strategic Communications Division of the United Nations Department of Global Communications. Its contents do not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations or the publication’s

The post Economic Empowerment of Women Good for All appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Kingsley Ighobor is a writer at Africa Renewal,* published by the United Nations

The post Economic Empowerment of Women Good for All appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Illustration: Tarique Aziz

By Sunita Narain
NEW DELHI, Apr 22 2019 (IPS)

Our acceptance of climate change doesn’t keep pace with our energy consumption reduction. However, the latest International Energy Agency’s (IEA’S) Global Energy and CO2 Status Report for 2018 has some good news.

It offers where possible answers lie in our quest to mitigate climate change. This is what we should discuss. But transitions in energy use will be contested and even be more difficult, if we don’t factor in climate justice.

IEA’s report finds that global energy consumption is up — twice the average rate of growth since 2010. This is because of robust economic growth in the world and weird weather, ironically because of climate change.

As a result, energy-related carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions are up, with the power sector accounting for two-thirds of the growth in emissions. Oil demand increased by 1.3 per cent in 2018 and so has the demand for coal.

Sunita Narain

But the latter is slower and more sluggish than the period before. Still, coal-based power plants were the single largest contributor to the growth in emissions in 2018.

IEA estimates that CO2 emitted from coal combustion was responsible for over 0.3°C of the 1°C increase in global temperature over the pre-industrial levels.

But here is the good news that has the potential to turn around the energy trajectory that jeopardises our future. First, natural gas is replacing coal for generation of power — roughly 24 per cent of the growth in natural gas use in the world was because it was being substituted for coal in power plants.

This happened mostly in the US and also in China — where its domestic policy to clean air pollution (called the Blue Skies initiative) pushed for curtailment of coal use in industrial boilers and power plants.

Without this shift, CO2 emissions would have been 15 per cent higher, estimates IEA. However, we need to note that gas does have higher methane emissions — a potent greenhouse gas (GHG) — and this is not accounted for by the IEA assessment in its CO2 balance sheet.

Secondly, renewable energy — solar, wind, hydel and bioenergy — is now a big part of the power balance sheet of the world. Renewable-based electricity generation increased by 7 per cent.

This, as IEA puts in perspective, is Brazil’s total energy electricity demand and one-point higher than the annual growth rate since 2010. China accounted for 40 per cent of the increase in renewables; Europe some 25 per cent and interestingly, both the US and India witnessed 13 per cent increase in renewable energy growth.

Renewable energy accounted for a quarter of the global power output in 2018, second after coal. In Germany and also in the UK, renewable energy provided over 35 per cent of the electricity.

Without the switch to gas and increased use of nuclear and renewables, CO2 emissions would have been 50 per cent higher, for the same economic growth that the world saw in 2018, says IEA. This is not small. This is not to be scoffed at. But this is not enough.

The problem is the unequal nature of wealth in the world and the fact that this energy transition has to be made even as significant parts of the world need more energy — to light up homes, to cook food and to run their industries. This is the challenge and this is where we totally fall short.

The US, for instance, desperately needs to reduce its total GHG emissions — its contribution to the stock of gases already in the atmosphere is massive (almost a quarter). It has to reduce.

But in 2018, its CO2 emissions actually increased by 3.7 per cent. This is despite the fact that it substituted coal for gas and so, brought down its emission intensity. In other words, it has increased its emissions to such an extent that it has negated any gains it could have made because of this shift.

This is also when methane is not being added to its emission balance sheet. This is not good; not good at all.

Similarly, the use of oil — primarily used for road transportation — increased at higher rate in the US, even when compared to China and India. This is when ownership and use of personal vehicles is already gargantuan and gross in the country.

So, how will the world contract its emissions? How will it still provide the right to development of the poor and the now emerging countries? Will it and can it? This is what needs to be discussed. This is the inconvenient truth of climate change action.

The post Global Energy Consumption is Up — So Are Emissions appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Sunita Narain is Editor, Down To Earth based in New Delhi

The post Global Energy Consumption is Up — So Are Emissions appeared first on Inter Press Service.

The state of journalism and press freedom around the world is declining according to a new press index by Reporters Without Borders (RSF). Credit: Miriam Gathigah/IPS

By Tharanga Yakupitiyage
UNITED NATIONS, Apr 19 2019 (IPS)

Journalists around the world are increasingly seeing threats of violence, detention, and even death simply for doing their job, a new press index found.

In the 2019 World Press Freedom Index, Reporters Without Borders (RSF) has found a worrisome decline in media freedoms as toxic anti-press rhetoric have devolved into violence, triggering a climate of fear.

“The scene this year is fear. And the state of journalism and press freedom around the world is
declining… but also in the traditional press freedom allies—countries in Europe and here in the
United States,” said RSF’s Executive Director Sabine Dolan during the launch of the index.

RSF Secretary-General Christophe Deloire echoed similar sentiments about the dangers of declining press freedom, stating: “If the political debate slides surreptitiously or openly towards a civil war-style atmosphere, in which journalists are treated as scapegoats, then democracy is in great danger…Halting this cycle of fear and intimidation is a matter of the utmost urgency for all people of good will who value the freedoms acquired in the course of history.”

Of 180 countries evaluated in RSF’s index, only 24 percent were classified as “good” or “fairly good” compared to 26 percent in 2018.

The Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region continues to be the most dangerous area for journalists as they face violence due to ongoing conflicts while also being deliberately targeted, imprisoned, and killed.

For example, Emirati blogger Ahmed Mansoor was sentenced to 10 years in prison after criticising the United Arab Emirates’ (UAE) government on social media.

He was accused of “publishing false information, rumours and lies” which would “damage the UAE’s social harmony and unity.”

The persecution of MENA’s journalists has even extended past its own borders as seen through the brutal murder of Jamal Khashoggi in the Saudi Consulate in Turkey.

Such a chilling level of violence has provoked fear among the region’s journalists, causing many to censor themselves.

But of all the world’s regions, it is the Americas that has seen the largest dip in its press freedom score.

Nicaragua for instance fell 24 places to 114th, making it one of the steepest declines worldwide—and with good reason.

What started as protests against controversial social security reforms has turned into one of the biggest crackdowns on dissent and media in the Central American nation.
Nicaraguans covering demonstrations have been treated as protestors or members of the opposition and have been subject to harassment, arbitrary arrest, and death threats.

Some have been charged with terrorism including Miguel Mora and Lucia Pineda Ubau, journalists for the news agency 100% Noticias.

Further north, the United States’ media climate is now classified as “problematic” as a result of an increasingly toxic anti-media rhetoric.

Over the last year, media organisations across the country received bomb threats and suspicious packages including CNN, forcing evacuations.

In June 2018, after expressing his hatred for the Capital Gazette newspaper on social media, Jarrod Ramos walked into the newsroom and killed four journalists and a staff member.

Most recently, Coast Guard lieutenant Christopher Paul Hasson was arrested for planning a terrorist attack targeting journalists and politicians.

Such anti-media sentiment is partially fuelled by U.S. President Donald Trump who has called journalists “enemy of the people.”

“When this becomes constant, it’s almost normalised and it percolates to large segments of the
population. And this is how it has contributed to create this climate of fear for journalists,” Dolan said.

According to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), over 11 percent of the president’s tweets have insulted or criticised journalists and news media.

In reference to a particular tweet by Trump which states that it is “disgusting” that the press can write whatever they want, former White House Correspondent Bill Plante noted that the U.S. is in a very “dangerous place” now.

“It is one thing to steer news coverage, by putting things out there or leaking certain stories or trying to avoid coverage of other things—it’s entirely another to threaten reporters and to say that news coverage shouldn’t be allowed,” he said.

This rhetoric has not only impacted journalists in the U.S., but has also spilled over abroad as world leaders from Venezuela to the Philippines use terms like “fake news” to justify human rights violations and crackdowns on press freedom.

But it is not all bad news.

Ethiopia made an unprecedented 40-place jump in the Index after new Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed took swift steps to improve press freedom including the release of all detained journalists.

While such progress is promising, there is a long way to go to secure press freedom globally, especially as it seemingly regresses.

“The only weapon we have is truth. The problem is that in today’s media environment along with social media, we can be overwhelmed. So we have to come out there with more effort than ever to get the truth out,” Plante said.

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• Don’t “Whitewash” Khashoggi’s Murder

The post Media Landscape Marked by “Climate of Fear” appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Rilli Lappalainen, Bridge 47’s founder and steering group chairperson. Credit: A D McKenzie/IPS

By A. D. McKenzie
BELGRADE, Apr 19 2019 (IPS)

Bridge 47, a Finland-based organisation created “to bring people together to share and learn from each other”, put global citizenship education (GCED) centre-stage at a recent annual meeting of civil society.

International Civil Society Week (ICSW) meeting was held last week from Apr. 8-12 in Serbia’s capital, Belgrade.

Co-hosted by the Johannesburg-based global civil society alliance CIVICUS and Serbian association Civic Initiatives, the event overall brought together more than 850 delegates from around the world, with Bridge 47 being the “biggest event partner”.

The organisation’s sessions had more than 170 people taking part, and four sessions. But it was their sessions on dialogue that showed how often people misconstrue what others are trying to say and how that can lead to conflict and aimed to help diverse groups bridge communication gaps.

In an exercise on silent communication, participants later explained in words what it was they’d been trying to communicate. Many of the “listeners” had got the signals wrong.

“This meeting showed how we need to act together,” said Rilli Lappalainen, Bridge 47’s founder and steering group chairperson. “It showed how we need to allow the space for dialogue, and that dialogue is the essence of peaceful society. If we really want to make a change, we need to cooperate and communicate, rather than everyone sitting in their own box.”

Lappalainen said the name of the organisation comes from Target 4.7 of the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), set in 2015 for achievement by 2030.

Goal 4 is to “ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all”.

Target 4.7 is to ensure that by 2030 “all learners acquire the knowledge and skills needed to promote sustainable development, including, among others, through education for sustainable development and sustainable lifestyles, human rights, gender equality, promotion of a culture of peace and non-violence, global citizenship and appreciation of cultural diversity and of culture’s contribution to sustainable development”.

That is a mouthful, and some people may be put off by the usual UN-speak, but Lappalainen told IPS the simple message is that educators, rights defenders and civil society groups need to “join forces” across different sectors and to “build bridges”.

For the UN, an indicator of Target 4.7 is the “extent to which (i) global citizenship education and (ii) education for sustainable development, including gender equality and human rights, are mainstreamed” at all levels.

“This was the first time the UN recognised non-formal and informal education,” said Lappalainen. “Formal education is absolutely needed but it’s not enough, and we need to recognise the importance of learning outside of the school system. Part of our work is that we advocate for governments to give the space and respect for this kind of education.”

Officials say that GCED is an important system to teach mutual respect. According to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO), global citizenship education is a response to the continuing challenges of human rights violations, inequality and poverty that “threaten peace and sustainability”.

The agency says that GCED “works by empowering learners of all ages to understand that these are global, not local issues and to become active promoters of more peaceful, tolerant, inclusive, secure and sustainable societies”.

Christopher Castle, chief of UNESCO’s section for Health and Global Citizenship Education, said in an interview that it was important for schoolchildren to be given the opportunity to think about values such as “solidarity and cooperation”.

In addition to children, global citizenship education can benefit youth and adults, says UNESCO. This learning can be provided in various ways, but the main method in most countries will be through the formal education system. As such, governments can integrate the concept either as part of existing programmes or as a separate subject.

The “values” of global citizenship have long been discussed, but the concept gathered momentum with the launch of the UN Secretary-General’s Global Education First Initiative (GEFI) in 2012. This identified “fostering global citizenship” as one of the three priority areas of work, along with access to and quality of education.

During ICSW, participants at the Bridge 47 events included teachers, administrators and various members of civil society groups. Tom Roche, a furniture-maker from Ireland and founder of the NGO Just Forests, said the education sessions were useful in learning to create links and to navigate divides.

“We often have to work with people who have opposing views from us,” he told IPS, “We need skills to be able to understand everyone.”

Roche said that as a carpenter, he began questioning the use of imported wood in furniture-making and became concerned about the destruction of forests. Over the years, he has developed educational resources for schools in Ireland, to inform students about the effects of society’s dependence on wood, he said.

He also gives input to policies for “responsible wood procurement”, despite lack of understanding from some associates. “People used to say: ‘oh, you’re a tree-hugger’, and I would say that ‘no, we need to be responsible about how we cut down trees,’” he told IPS.

Roche added that he was at the Belgrade meeting to show support as well for the “frontline defenders” of the environment and of forests, many of whom have been attacked and even murdered over the past decade.

“The issue is very important at this meeting, and it should be,” he said, pointing out that the GCED events provided “new ways to deliver the same message”.

Along with communication exercises, Bridge 47 said that the use of story-telling, art and satire was important to have an impact on social movement. (Amsterdam-based cartoonist Floris Oudshoorn did live drawings of the group’s ICSW discussions, for instance, covering climate change, rights activism and a range of other issues.)

“We want to encourage active citizenship,” said Nora Forsbacka, Bridge 47’s project manager. “We want citizens to speak out and take action, to reflect on our place in the world and the privileges we carry. All this requires a significant transformation in how we think about things.”

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The post Activists Spotlight Education for Development and Rights appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

This article is part of a series on the current state of civil society organisations (CSOs), which was the focus of International Civil Society Week (ICSW), sponsored by CIVICUS, and which took place in Belgrade, April 8-12.

The post Activists Spotlight Education for Development and Rights appeared first on Inter Press Service.

By Bethlehem Mengistu
ADDIS ABABA, Apr 19 2019 (IPS)

Following 2018 elections in Ethiopia, a record-breaking number of women now hold leadership positions in the country’s government. But women still struggle to rise up the ranks in other sectors.

I am thrilled to witness the fantastic changes that have taken place in Ethiopia over the recent months, with women assuming leadership positions at the highest levels of government.

The best part of this narrative is that little Ethiopian girls will now see a woman president or minister as the new ‘normal’, and no longer the exception. I find this quite inspiring!

But in my field of work – the water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) sector – we are yet to see a sensible percentage of women in leadership roles. The participation of women is most often seen in community water supply management frameworks, where women are included within the team that manages the water supply system.

Bethlehem Mengistu

This is important as the intention is to sustain the benefits of the system by both genders, but also ensure both men and women are equally engaged. However at sector level (i.e. where policy, resourcing and planning are usually discussed and decided upon) there are very few female decision-makers.

Where are the women?
I am often one of the only women leaders in the meetings I attend.

And when the question ‘why aren’t there more women present?’ is raised, the response is often ‘there aren’t enough qualified women out there’.

This is not an accurate response. There are qualified women out there, but we need a reform in the sector’s approach to reaching those women professionals.

For example, organisations like CARE Ethiopia have achieved good results through reforming their entire recruitment process.

CARE re-graded all their job descriptions, re-advertised positions 1 to 3 times if no women applied, head hunted, instituted a competency-based assessment system with written examination (coded so the panel does not see which applicant wrote it), and assessed and reconfigured the interview questions using a gender lens.

This has brought the organization closer to meeting parity.

Lessons from a (woman) leader

However, getting women a seat at the table is not enough. Leading in a sector that is traditionally male-dominated comes with a distinct set of challenges, as I soon found out:

• I was and still am the youngest female in most sector meetings. For some time after I assumed the directorship, most assumed I was in an administrative or a support role rather than a leadership role (until I corrected them). It’s not enough to be in a role or to sit at the table.

• Speaking up confidently is critical (I have a colleague that is fond of the saying ‘fake it till you make it’). The greatest barrier that I and most of my female leader friends face in speaking up is fear of being ostracized or scorned – the dreaded ‘imposter syndrome’.

• I have learned that respect comes when one’s voice is heard. I have seen how our voices can help shape policy and perspective. I choose to ensure my presence is known as a leader and that it’s to be regarded as a contributor for good. Nearly three years into my current role as director, my voice is now sought after, and I can choose to be picky about how I collaborate with others.

• Trusting my voice by learning to control self-doubt was quite tasking, but I soon learnt to spot patterns of negative thought, identify them for what they were and train myself to trust my expertise. This led to speaking up more at meetings, ensuring I usually always sat at the front and participated.

• Celebrating unapologetically is not as easy as it sounds. I always found it interesting that many women in meetings, when introducing themselves, state their name and then their familial status while the men state their name and then their title. This is linked to the fact that the type of accomplishments that are given weight by society is what we sub consciously align ourselves with to garner acceptance.

• Finding a sisterhood to lift and celebrate one another has been paramount to my confidence. Given that most of the issues we face as women are partly similar, I find it very helpful to surround myself with women leaders who are on a similar journey and with similar moral values. One of my mentors is a woman whom I deeply admire, and she provides me with invaluable support.

I am thrilled that this past year has been the year where barriers have been shattered, and we are seeing better gender balance in leadership. We are invited to the party, but it is important for the rules of engagement at the party to be equally accessible.

The post Women in Ethiopia Still Struggle Despite Leadership in Government appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Bethlehem Mengistu is WaterAid Country Director in Ethiopia

The post Women in Ethiopia Still Struggle Despite Leadership in Government appeared first on Inter Press Service.