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Credit: UN Photo/Manuel Elias

By Virginia Dignum
UMEA, Sweden, Mar 26 2019 (IPS)

UMEA, Sweden, 26 March 2019 (IPS) — At this year’s Davos economic forum, US executives warned that China may be winning the so-called Artificial Intelligence (AI) race with Europe. In another recent article, Bloomberg pointed out that countries are rushing to not be left behind.

The author also correctly pointed out that there’s still a long way to go before AI will be commercially viable. In its vision for AI, launched last December, the European Commission has described its concerns with the position of AI in this race, which some have claimed Europe already lost.

In my opinion, speaking of a ‘race’ is both wrong and dangerous to begin with. It puts the focus on competition and brings with it a sense of gloom and despair. So let me make two arguments: firstly, there is no race and secondly, if there was, it would the wrong race to engage in.

There’s no race because of the very definition of a race: it’s a competition of speed, usually judged by an objective measure like a clock or to a specific end goal. In AI developments however, we don’t have an end point! Nor do we have a specific time to stop.

Virginia Dignum

Therefore, there’s no way to determine when and where someone will win this so-called race. Suggesting that it can be won assumes a moment after which we can stop developing technology, and advancing humankind.

It’s the wrong race

It’s even more important to understand why it‘s the wrong race to engage in. The US and China are betting on machine learning developments, and in particular on deep learning, as the approaches that will achieve true AI, and enable them to ‘win’ that so-called race.

These approaches rely on the availability of huge amounts of data and computational power, to enable machines to perceive, or learn, characteristics of a particular domain. This approach is used to recognise faces in pictures, to determine the credit worthiness of mortgage applicants, and to diagnose cancer cells in scans or X-ray images.

All of these are relevant and important applications, and the progress achieved in the last few years is truly remarkable. The goal is not to win races, it’s to ensure the well-being of humankind and the environment.

However, these approaches are focusing on one aspect of intelligence: the ability to perceive patterns and make predictions based on those patterns. True intelligence, on the other hand, includes more than that, like the capability to reason, interact and decide based on little, incomplete and contradictory information. In short, we need to explore alternatives to statistical approaches to learning.
In fact, just a few weeks ago, a study analysing 25 years of AI research has concluded that the era of deep learning is coming to an end. Europe has traditionally been strong on symbolic approaches to AI and on (social) robotics.

Credit: NASA/Aubrey Gemignani

These are some of the areas that should be invested in and that will bring AI forward in the near future. Therefore, it would be a mistake to blindly follow US and China on their machine learning ‘race’ when we now have the opportunity to show the value of alternatives approaches, in which we Europeans may have an advantage.

The end of one kind of AI

Another reason why data-heavy approaches are not the way forward: they have a negative impact on human well-being and the environment. Any development that does not boost trustworthiness will ultimately not succeed.

There’s no business model for untrustworthy AI or unethical AI. The results and decisions taken by systems based on deep learning and neural networks are hard to understand and explain. Therefore they aren’t sustainable in areas where the trust of users and experts is crucial.

Moreover, current approaches are very environment unfriendly: the amount of (energy) resources needed to store and compute data are already comparable to the needs of a small city. This is not sustainable especially if this type of AI relies on exponential growth of data and computational power.

Europe is home to strong, world leading, fundamental research in AI, and known for a strong ethical background and respect for human rights. Putting these at the core of advances in AI will lead to breakthroughs that can really bring AI forward in ways that are both financially profitable and beneficial to human and environmental well-being.

But this will imply a new mindset when it comes to how we do business and how we create an inclusive decision-making process. Developing AI responsibly, grounded on ethical principles and human rights, doesn’t represent a burden on research and investment, but rather a stepping stone bringing this powerful technology forward.

More than a technical decision, Europe is the only place that, at the moment, can push for this vision and its required policies.

The goal is not to win races, it’s to ensure the well-being of humankind and the environment.

The post The Myth About the Race for Artificial Intelligence appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Virginia Dignum is a professor at the Department of Computing Science at Umeå University in Sweden. She heads the research group 'Social and Ethical Artificial Intelligence'.

The post The Myth About the Race for Artificial Intelligence appeared first on Inter Press Service.

By Jomo Kwame Sundaram and Anis Chowdhury
KUALA LUMPUR and SYDNEY, Mar 26 2019 (IPS)

The World Bank has successfully legitimized the notion that private finance is the solution to pressing development and welfare concerns, including achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) through Agenda 2030.

A recent McKinsey report estimates that the world needs to invest about US$3.3 trillion, or 3.8 per cent of world output yearly, in economic infrastructure, with about three-fifths in emerging market and other developing economies, to maintain current growth.

Jomo Kwame Sundaram

The world financing gap is about US$350 billion yearly. If new commitments, such as the SDGs, are considered, the gap would be about thrice the currently estimated gap as available public resources alone are not enough. Thus, for the Bank, the success of Agenda 2030 depends on massive private sector participation.

Maximizing finance
The Bank’s ‘Maximizing Finance for Development’ (MFD) strategy marks a new stage. It presumes that most developing countries cannot achieve the SDGs with their own limited fiscal resources and increasingly scarce donor overseas development assistance (ODA).

Bank prioritization of financial inclusion presumes that fintech-powered digital financial inclusion would increase growth, create jobs and promote entrepreneurship in developing countries.

The MFD purports to respond to the G20’s April 2017 Principles of MDBs’ strategy for Crowding-in Private Sector Finance for growth and sustainable development. The G20 has offered the Roadmap to Infrastructure as an Asset Class for energy, transport and water inter alia.

The 2017 MFD strategy recycled the Bank’s 2015 Billions to Trillions: Transforming Development Finance, arguing that MDBs should increase financial leverage via securitization to catalyse private investment, thus promoting capital markets by transforming bankable projects into liquid securities.

Anis Chowdhury

The MFD presumes that public money should mainly be used to leverage private finance, particularly institutional investments, to finance the purported US$5 trillion SDG funding gap.

Financialization coalition
The MFD strategy seeks to enable financialization and transition to securities-based financial systems in developing countries, complementing other initiatives by the Bank, IMF and G20. Such initiatives are expected to encourage investors to use environmental, social and governance criteria to attract, mobilize and sustain needed financing.

The MFD presumes that public money should mainly be used to leverage private finance, particularly institutional investments to finance the funding gap. Government guarantees are deemed necessary to ‘de-risk’ projects, especially for public-private partnerships (PPPs).

Meanwhile, the International Finance Corporation (IFC), a Bank subsidiary, is helping subsidize capital market involvement in infrastructure development; the MFD strategy envisages capital markets in ‘green bonds’, ‘social impact bonds’, infrastructure bonds and so on.

Securities markets are supposed to enable institutional investors to make desirable social and environmental impacts. MFD advocates claim that capital markets provide new solutions to development challenges such as inadequate infrastructure, and poor access to schooling, clean water, sanitation and housing.

The Financial Stability Board has also proposed measures to transform ‘shadow banking’ into securities-based finance, while the European Commission’s Sustainable Finance initiative seeks to similarly reorient institutional investors and asset managers.

Cascading financialization
The Bank’s ‘Cascade’ approach seeks to institutionalize this bias for private financing. It seeks to facilitate securities lending by enabling ‘repo’ market financing and hedging, and ‘rehypothecation’, i.e., allowing securities to be used repeatedly for new lending.

The Cascade approach seeks to accelerate financialization with measures to accommodate new asset classes, enable banks to engage in securities and derivatives markets with minimal regulation, deregulate financial institutions creating tradable assets from PPP projects, and facilitate capital flows ostensibly for development.

It presumes market imperfections and missing markets deter the private sector from financing sustainable development projects, and proposes to address such bottlenecks by ‘internalizing externalities’ and providing subsidies and guarantees to de-risk investments.

Tito Cordella notes that it prioritizes private finance even when a project is likely to be profitable if undertaken with public funds. He notes the tensions between maximizing private financing and optimizing financing for development, and some implications. Public options are only to be considered after all private options are exhausted or fail.

Thus, the Cascade approach presumes that the private sector is always more efficient, despite actual experiences. Clearly, it not only reflects an ideological preference for private finance, but also seeks to promote securities and derivatives markets, as market liquidity is among the core G20 Principles of MDBs’ strategy for crowding-in Private Sector Finance.

Hijacking development finance
The strategy would thus commit scarce public resources to ‘de-risking’ such financing arrangements to transform ‘bankable’ development projects into tradable assets. This means that governments will bear more of the likely costs of greater financial fragility and crises.

Such government measures will inadvertently undermine needed financial institutions such as development banks. There is no reason to believe that MFD will somehow create the capital market infrastructure to improve finance for SMEs or needed development transformations.

Once a project’s future revenue streams are securitized, the multilateral development banks’ environmental and social safeguards no longer apply. Contracts to repay securitized debt held by investors would be disconnected from the underlying project financed and its consequences.

Holders of these securities have no incentives to prioritize social or environmental goals. Private equity and hedge funds that have short-term incentives for profit-taking, including by asset-stripping, are not concerned with social, environmental or other public interests.

Not surprisingly, considerable doubt exists as to whether private capital markets and institutional investors can be incentivized to finance long-term public goods as these mechanisms serve the profit motive, not public welfare.

Anis Chowdhury, Adjunct Professor at Western Sydney University & University of New South Wales (Australia), held senior United Nations positions in New York and Bangkok.
Jomo Kwame Sundaram, a former economics professor, was Assistant Director-General for Economic and Social Development, Food and Agriculture Organization, and received the Wassily Leontief Prize for Advancing the Frontiers of Economic Thought in 2007.

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By GGGI
Seoul, Republic of Korea, Mar 26 2019 (IPS-Partners)

(GGGI) – The Global Green Growth Institute (GGGI) today announced the appointment of Susanne Pedersen as Assistant Director-General and Head of GGGI’s Investment and Policy Solutions Division (IPSD). Ms. Pedersen will be based in the organization’s Seoul headquarters and will assume her duties on June 3, 2019.

As Head of IPSD, Ms. Pedersen’s responsibilities will include strategic planning, implementation and delivery of GGGI’s projects and programs in Member and partner countries and the work of IPSD’s Thought Leadership, Green Investment Services, and 4 Thematic sector teams.

Susanne Pedersen

Serving as a member of the Management Team, Ms. Pedersen will play a key role in fostering an organizational culture that delivers strong performance and impactful outcomes.

“I see great potential in GGGI to deliver impact and make a difference in its Member and partner countries.” said Ms. Pedersen. “Throughout much of my career, I have supported emerging and developing economies in their transition to a low-carbon and sustainable future and am therefore extremely excited to help drive GGGI’s inclusive, environmentally sustainable, green growth agenda.”

A Danish national, Ms. Pedersen is currently the Managing Director at Climate-KIC Nordic Aps, where she is responsible for leading work within the Nordic Region under the Climate-Knowledge Innovation Community (KIC), which is Europe’s largest public-private partnership with more than 350 members addressing climate change through innovation.

“Sustainability and green growth have been an integral part of my focus areas and I look forward to contributing to GGGI’s thematic areas by leveraging my professional experience in urban transitions, technology development and innovation,” added Ms. Pedersen.

From setting up international daughter companies and establishing new service areas, to managing large-scale teams and projects, Ms. Pedersen brings a wealth of experience to GGGI.

“We are very excited to bring Ms. Pedersen on board and benefit from her more than two decades of work with international organizations, industry associations and the private sector as a manager, board member and strategic advisor,” said Dr. Frank Rijsberman, Director-General of GGGI.

About the Global Green Growth Institute (GGGI)

Based in Seoul, GGGI is an intergovernmental organization that supports developing country governments transition to a model of economic growth that is environmentally sustainable and socially inclusive. GGGI delivers programs in over 30 countries with technical support, capacity building, policy planning & implementation, and by helping to build a pipeline of bankable green investment projects. More on GGGI’s events, projects and publications can be found on www.gggi.org. You can also follow GGGI on Twitter and join on Facebook, YouTube and LinkedIn.

 

(GGGI Seoul HQ)
HeeKyung Son, Communications Specialist
+82 70-7117-9957
H.Son@GGGI.org

 

(GGGI Seoul HQ)
Daniel Muñoz-Smith, OIC Head of Communications
+82 70-7117-9961
Daniel.MS@GGGI.org

 

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One of the last 1,000 wild Bactrian Camels. Gobi Desert, Mongolia. Credit: mammalwatching.com

By Jon Hall
UNITED NATIONS, Mar 26 2019 (IPS)

Late last year the World Wide Fund for Nature released their Living Planet Report for 2018. WWF’s estimates were stark: populations of mammals, birds, fish, reptiles, and amphibians have, on average, declined by 60 percent between 1970 and 2014.

The Earth is estimated to have lost about half of its shallow water corals in the past 30 years. A fifth of the Amazon has disappeared in just 50 years, and 2018 marked the worst level of deforestation in history.

This is a tragedy for nature. And an unfolding tragedy for humanity: the destruction of the environment is threatening the planet’s life support systems that we all rely on every day for our air, water and food.

The impact on people’s lives is already apparent with 3.6 billion people facing water scarcity at least one month a year, and 3.1 billion people drinking water with a risk of contamination.

The 2019 Global Risks Report from the World Economic Forum identified “Major biodiversity loss and ecosystem collapse (terrestrial or marine)” as both one of the most likely and most serious global risks with “irreversible consequences for the environment, resulting in severely depleted resources for humankind as well as industries.”

Fortunately, there is already a good deal of work underway to develop “nature-based solutions” that harness the power of nature to tackle social and economic challenges.

UNDP has been working around the world with partners to trial these ideas and many have significant implications for human development work. Environmental concerns often hit the poorest the hardest.

Not only are poor communities most vulnerable to crop failure or flooding, because of climate change for example, but they are also less resilient – or unable to recover from – such natural disasters.

Moreover, protecting nature is of critical concern to those who care about equity between generations, and it is clear from the data that the challenges faced by the current generation dwarf in comparison to those that the next generation will face if most environmental indicators continue their current trajectory.

For World Wildlife Day, the Human Development Report Office has released guidance to both inspire and assist UN country teams to investigate how nature-based solutions could help a nation’s human development.

The material looks at solutions that can help tackle climate change, improve the management of land and water (both fresh and marine), and help maintain biodiversity directly. We use case studies to show how nature-based solutions can help promote human development and help wildlife.

One example from Namibia looks at the broader development benefits national parks can bring to a country and those who live near them.

Namibia has some of the world’s most spectacular national parks and wildlife. Indeed, one-half of the country falls within national protected areas or communal or private conservancies.

But protected areas often struggle to receive adequate funding, often because there is an under-valuation of their economic benefits, resulting in under-investment by the government.

UNDP’s economic analysis indicated that the protected area (PA) system contributed up to 6 percent of Namibia’s GDP. And this was only counting park-based tourism without including the value of other ecosystem services.

The study showed that further investment in PAs could lead them to contribute up to 15 percent of GDP in the medium-term.

Namibia’s Ministry of Environment and Tourism used the figures to negotiate a 300 percent increase in the state budget for park management and development.

Working with UNDP, the government has strengthened the national park system in several ways and developed important national policies.

Perhaps the most important was the Tourism and Wildlife Concessions Policy, regarded as one of the world’s best models for protected area concessions, and probably the only one with such a strong emphasis on, and provision for, supporting the livelihoods of rural people living in and around protected areas.

Another example – looking at the importance of the bio-economy – comes from Colombia, a nation that shelters more than 10% of the planet’s biodiversity.

A Colombian company has begun extracting blue dye from the fruit of the Jagua Tree (Genipa americana). The new product is for many purposes better than chemical based dye.

The benefits are being shared with both the Colombian state and local communities who supply the fruit from which the dye was developed. And so the Jagua Fruit, a resource that used to have no economic use, began to generate income and improved livelihoods for local communities.

If the world is to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals there must be a greater focus on development that allows both people and the planet to prosper.

We hope that the next generation of national human development reports from across UNDP program countries will embrace and promote the nature-based solutions needed for that to happen.

*The HDialogue blog is a platform for debate and discussion. Posts reflect the views of respective authors in their individual capacities and not the views of UNDP/HDRO.

The post The Destruction of the Environment: An Unfolding Tragedy for Humanity appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Jon Hall is Policy Specialist at the Human Development Report Office, UNDP

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Maths and physical science teacher Peter Tabichi picture after the Keriko Mixed Day Secondary School teacher has won the one million dollar Global Teacher Prize at a ceremony in Dubai. Credit: Busani Bafana/IPS

By Busani Bafana
DUBAI, Mar 25 2019 (IPS)

A maths and physical science teacher from an impoverished  school in Kenya’s Rift Valley, Peter Tabichi, has won the one million dollar Global Teacher Prize, becoming the first teacher from Africa to clinch the prize established to honour the profession.

Tabichi (36) emerged the winner from a top list of 10 nominees from Brazil, Georgia, Netherlands, United Kingdom, India, United States, Argentina, Australia and Japan.

“I cannot believe it,” Tabichi, told IPS at a press conference after he was named winner. “This is a motivation for teachers in Kenya, Africa and the world. It affirms that teaching is the best profession and I will continue to make a change by teaching.”

The Global Teacher Prize is the largest prize of its kind that recognises an exceptional teacher who has made an outstanding contribution to the profession but also to highlight the important role of teachers in society.

Actor Hugh Jackman announced that Kenya teacher Peter Tabichi was winner of the Global Teacher Prize. Courtesy: Global Education and Skills Forum – an initiative of the Varkey Foundation

Actor Hugh Jackman announced Tabichi’s name at a glittering ceremony that sent the packed hall into thunderous applause. Tabichi was recognised for his dedication, hard work and passionate belief in his students’ talent. Thanks to his efforts the poorly resourced Keriko Mixed Day Secondary School in Nakuru County, in remote rural Kenya, has emerged victorious after taking on the country’s best schools in national science competitions.

Citing his father as his inspiration for becoming a teacher, Tabichi, a member of the Franciscan Brotherhood, gives away 80 percent of his monthly income to help the poor students in his school, many of whom come from poor families–almost a third are orphans or have only one parent–with many going without food at home. The students have difficult experiences ranging from drug abuse, teenage pregnancies, early school dropout, young marriages and there have been cases of suicide.

The school itself has only one computer, a poor internet connection, and a student-teacher ratio of 58:1.

“Every day in Africa we turn a new page and a new chapter,” said Tabichi. “This prize does not recognise me but recognises the continent’s young people…as a teacher working on the frontline I have seen the promise of its young people—their curiosity, talent, their intelligence and their belief.”

The story of Africa, a young continent bursting with talent

Kenya’s President Uhuru Kenyatta, congratulated Tabichi on winning the award in a special video message broadcast at the ceremony in which he described Tabichi as a shining example of what the human spirit can achieve, not just for Kenya and Africa, but also for the rest of the world.

“Peter your story is the story of Africa, a young continent bursting with talent,” Kenyatta said. “Your students have shown that they can compete among the best in the world in science, technology and all fields of human endeavour. All we need is to give them the right support.”

The Global Teacher Prize, open to all working teachers, is part of the Varkey Foundation’s commitment to improving the status of teachers across the world. In their Global Teacher Status Index in November 2013—the first attempt to compare attitudes towards teachers in 21 countries—the study found that between a third and half of the parents surveyed would ‘probably’ or ‘definitely not’ encourage their children to enter the teaching profession. The Global Teacher Status index in 2018 showed for the first time a direct link between teacher status and pupil performance as measured by PISA scores.

“I want to congratulate Peter Tabichi for winning the Global Teacher Prize 2019. I hope Peter’s story will encourage others to enter the teaching profession and shine a spotlight on the truly inspiring work teachers do to make tomorrow brighter than today,” said Sunny Varkey, founder of the Varkey Foundation.

In an earlier interview with IPS Tabichi said if he won he would use the prize money strengthen the Talent Nurturing Club, the Science Club and inter-school science project competitions at the school.

He also planned to “invest in a school computer lab with better internet connectivity.” And said that he would also promote kitchen gardening and production of drought tolerant crops in the community at large.

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At the 63rd UN Commission on the Status of Women(CSW), which concluded last week, advocates called for girls and women to have more power and leadership in humanitarian action.

By Marcy Hersh
NEW YORK, Mar 25 2019 (IPS)

As a long-time advocate, I’ve been invited to speak at dozens of global conferences about the needs of girls and women in humanitarian emergencies.

And while I’ve had the opportunity to understand this issue in good depth throughout my career, there’s still one glaring problem: I’m not, and have never been, a woman affected by a humanitarian emergency.

As a native New Yorker, I’ve never known what it’s like to get my period in a war zone, where menstrual hygiene products are in short supply. As a new mother, I don’t know what it’s like to give birth in a refugee camp, where maternal health services are rarely available.

And as a women’s rights activist, I don’t personally know what it it’s like to advocate in places where even uttering words like “gender equality” can be a life sentence.

But I speak English, have an American passport, and know all the humanitarian acronyms by heart – so it’s much easier to invite someone like me to into humanitarian decision-making circles in New York and Geneva than to wrestle with visas and language barriers and engage the women bravely advocating in Syria, Lebanon, and beyond.

If we really want to better understand and address the needs of girls and women in these complex environments, it shouldn’t be this way.

That’s why I was pleased to see so many more representatives from women-focused civil society organizations (CSOs) take the stage at events surrounding the UN Commission on the Status of Women this month.

Women like Olfat Mahmoud, a Palestinian nurse and refugee who stands at the podium at an event called “Does Humanitarian Aid Need a Feminist Facelift?” – hosted by Women Deliver – where she gave an opening speech. And Diana Abou Abbas, a Lebanese LGBTQIA+ activist who confidently claimed a seat at the panel to share her own experiences.

They’re not who you’d expect to hold the mics at CSW, but they are who we need to hear from most.

“I’m really blessed to be here to speak with people like you, and to remind you that we exist,” said Olfat, who leads the Palestinian Women’s Humanitarian Organization (PWHO) in her speech to international dignitaries, donors, and decision-makers in a tightly-packed room.

In truth, I can’t help but feel that we are the lucky ones to hear from people like her. Women-focused CSOs like Olfat’s are leading activities that many international organizations deem too difficult at times of conflict and disaster, like expanding access to sexual and reproductive services for refugee girls and women.

Too often, these services – like access to contraception, maternal care, and emergency obstetrics – are rarely provided in first-line humanitarian responses, if at all. Grassroots women leaders prove that providing these services is feasible and life-saving in even the most complex environments.

“I was a nurse…and always called by other NGOs to raise women’s awareness on her children’s health or family’s health…but nothing about her [own health] as a woman. We started [PWHO] to fill the gap,” Olfat describes.

At the meeting, Olfat shares PWHO’s experience working with religious leaders to ensure access women’s health programs in refugee camps where they work. Soon after, Diana describes her work with Marsa Sexual Health Center – the Beirut-based health clinic that provides safe and non-discriminatory sexual health services to the hardest-to-reach populations in Lebanon, including LGBTQIA+ people, adolescents, refugees, and others.

Both organizations have documented research and best practices to show what works in these difficult contexts – lessons that would be invaluable to international organizations that have reached a standstill on these issues.

There is growing global recognition that hearing more from experts at women-focused CSOs like PWHO and Marsa Sexual Health Center is critically needed to make humanitarian responses more effective. For example, the Call to Action on Protection from Gender Based Violence (GBV) in Emergencies – a groundbreaking partnership which includes commitments from over eighty countries and NGOs to better address GBV – is working hard to enhance local leadership to help fuel more progress on this issue.

Partners are increasing looking to women-focused CSOs to develop roadmaps to help implement the Call to Action, including in Nigeria and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where this work has already begun.

“Success requires investing in local organizations…and making this investment sustainable,” Diana describes at CSW. Globally, only 3% of humanitarian aid went to local and national organizations in 2017 – and much less to those focused on girls and women.

A key takeaway from CSW was the need to scale up flexible and long-term investment in women-focused CSOs, who know the context, entry points, and opportunities to deliver humanitarian assistance most effectively.

Put simply: building a more feminist humanitarian system requires handing over the mic and power to women-focused CSOs in conference rooms, press rooms, and boardrooms. It suggests letting go of some of our own power as international advocates to let women lead and set the agenda – and trust that our collective action for girls and women in humanitarian emergencies will be stronger because of it. It means relinquishing our speaking roles at international convenings so that the MVPs on the ground have a seat at the table.

After all, as Olfat so rightly put it: “Women are the backbones of our communities. They are the future. If we want strong communities, we need strong women.”

I couldn’t have said it better myself.

The post What They Need: Money, Resources, & a Seat at the Table appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Marcy Hersh is the Senior Manager for Humanitarian Advocacy at Women Deliver, whose Humanitarian Advocates Program elevates the voices of women, and the organizations they lead, to help ensure they have a seat at the decision-making table.

The post What They Need: Money, Resources, & a Seat at the Table appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Credit: Lalsu Nogoti

By Saahil Kejriwal and Rachita Vora
Mar 25 2019 (IPS)

The remarkable story of an Adivasi lawyer and social activist who has led peoples’ movements against state development policies, and sought redress for human rights violations of his people in conflict-ridden regions of Maharashtra.

Lalsu Nogoti is an independent elected member of the Zila Parishad in the district of Gadchiroli, Maharashtra. He is also the first lawyer from the Madia Gond Adivasi community in that district. A firm voice against large-scale diversion of forest land for numerous mining projects, Lalsu has also been part of several peoples’ movements against the state’s development policies. The focus of his work is on the effective implementation of laws that protect Adivasi rights.

He has been engaged in seeking redress for human rights violations of Adivasis resulting from the crossfire between Maoist insurgent and paramilitary operations in the district. His vision lies in ensuring that the Madia Gonds retain their rights over natural resources of the region. In 2017, he was selected for the Indigenous Fellowship Programme by the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner of Human Rights.

In this interview with IDR, Lalsu highlights the importance of engaging with law and politics to bring about social change, and the important role that local self governance plays in securing the rights of Adivasi groups.

 

Could you tell us about your early life?

I think the first turning point of my life was when I was three or four, and my father passed away. I come from a remote village, Juvvi, in Gadchiroli which borders Chhattisgarh’s Bastar region. In our tribal community—we are Madia—there is a custom of remarriage, so my mother remarried and returned to her home state, Chattisgarh. The community looked after me. I would help with all kinds of chores, from guarding the farm from birds to grazing the cattle.

Later, the village elders sent me to Lok Biradari Prakalp, at Hemalkasa, so that I could get food and shelter. That was a project by Ramon Magsaysay Award winner, Dr. Prakash Amte. I went to school there. I could not write until I was in grade 5, and I understood very little, but I studied hard. Each year, I stood among the top five in the annual exams. When I topped my grade 10 exams, Prakash bhau offered to send me for higher studies.

Throughout my childhood, there were people who supported me along the way. I was raised by the community around me, and I was offered help at various points, which I never refused. While pursuing higher studies, I would do any work that came my way—chopping tree branches, sweeping, helping in the School for the Disabled, and working at Yuvagram.

One day, Dr Dhairyasheel Shirole, a trustee of Fergusson College, Pune, was visiting Anandwan. Bharati vahini, one of my guardians, asked him, “Here is a Madia boy who is good at his studies and is honest. Would you take him to Pune to study further?” Bharati vahini also told him that I was an orphan, and had no money.

My law degree may have given me technical knowledge, but working with the community, I learn new things every day. You can become literate and aware through formal education, but the knowledge of local challenges can only come from working with people.

Fergusson had an ‘earn and learn’ scheme—if I found work, I could earn money and pay for my education. So I decided to go. A few other Adivasi students from Hemalkasa were offered the same opportunity, but weren’t willing to travel so far.

This was a time of many firsts for me: my first time travelling by train; and the first time I was made aware of my Adivasi background. People made fun of me for not speaking Marathi. I never learned Marathi because Madia is my tribe’s language. No one in my village speaks Marathi even today.

But by the time I graduated college, I had a degree with a specialisation in Marathi literature. I then went on to study law.

 

What made you choose law as a career?

When I was in college, many Madias were becoming doctors, but not lawyers. I felt that fighting the issues we were facing needed a knowledge of the law, and so I enroled in ILS law college.

At the time, you would rarely find Adivasi students in these colleges; they were scared to go to such places. My roommate at Fergusson asked me why I wanted to study at ILS. He said, “You will fail. It’s quite hi-fi. You don’t know English.”

I was not afraid to fail. In fact, when I stood first and informed my community, they asked, “Is that a good thing or bad?” They were really not bothered.

Apart from completing law, I also got a master’s in sociology, a bachelor’s degree in journalism, and a master’s in communication and journalism.

In 2006 I returned from Pune to Nagpur, where I practiced law for one year. I had studied law to be able to help my people, but soon realised that the Nagpur Court was inaccessible for them. If I continued working there, I would have earned well but I wouldn’t have served the people for whom I studied law. I wanted to help my people directly, be with them, and discuss their issues face-to-face. And so, I moved to Aheri and worked at the court there.

In the years since, I worked with many organisations on issues relating to tribal rights, including Srujan, Tata Trusts, Ecotech, and Oxfam India.

 

In 2016, you entered politics by contesting the local election. What prompted you to do this?

I used to believe politics was a dirty game. But having been closely involved with local governance, I have come to believe that in addition to the law, politics is an important tool for social change. In fact, if we keep shying away from politics, no good person will ever enter this space.

The Lok Sabha or Vidhan Sabha are not going to work for the poor. And so we have to enter politics, so we can make laws that are useful for us. For instance, because I helped translate the Forest Rights Act from Marathi to Gondi and Madia, I was able to bring the issues of the Adivasis into those documents.

 

Can you tell us about your experience with using the gram sabha as a tool for local self-governance?

The gram sabha has emerged as an important local government body, one that can make laws and rules for the village. The seat of government in Mumbai is not the only government. The local government at the village level also has the same powers—for instance, managing the market and what goods can be sold freely, regulating or curtailing money lending activity, and deciding what village-level initiatives are introduced and how their funding is allocated.

The gram sabha’s role in local governance has been strengthened with the passing of two acts: The Forest Rights Act (FRA) and the Provision of Extension to Scheduled Areas Act (PESA). These have been important instruments of social change.

 

Credit: Lalsu Nogoti

 

Could you elaborate?

Let us first talk about the Forest Rights Act (FRA). Before it was passed in 2006, no law had ever mentioned that traditional forest dwellers and scheduled tribes have been subjected to historical injustice. This was the first time that the government acknowledged the injustice, saying that the Act was an effort to correct this.

The Act has also been crucial because it recognises the rights of scheduled tribes and other traditional forest dwellers over forest land. Over the years, these rights have been curtailed as a result of increasing state control over forests, as well as developmental and conservation activities. The FRA, with its provision of individual forest rights (for homestead and agriculture), community rights (for gram sabha rights over forest resources) and community forest resource rights (for gram sabhas to use, manage and protect forest resources), has guaranteed tenurial security over Adivasi peoples’ land and livelihoods.

The FRA also recognises ‘Habitat rights’ of the Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Groups (PVTG),1 a subcategory of scheduled tribes (ST) that is characterised by low literacy and nutrition levels, and subsistence level of economy. My tribe, Madia, was also declared a PVTG by Union Ministry of Tribal Affairs. This provision is among the most important within the FRA, as it extends beyond the administrative units of the household or the village, and recognises the rights of a larger clan of villages of the same community—in Bhamragad area for instance, there are 108 villages that form a habitat, or ilaka. This traditional structure, with its own traditional leadership, offers livelihood and resources, as well as being socially and spiritually important to the community.

In practice, there are many steps that the people must take to claim these rights (the overall process is controlled at a state level); there are also many Adivasi groups who are eligible to claim these rights but don’t know that they can. This is where the gram sabha’s role becomes even more important, because all initial claims must first be submitted to and verified at the village level.

 

And what about the PESA Act?

The PESA Act was passed in 1996. The right to forest produce is the most important part of it. For the first time, the people and the gram sabha can collect the tendu leaves on their own without the interference of middlemen. They can package it, and sell directly to companies. The Act lists many other items as well, including resin, honey, lac, timber, and bamboo. With PESA, more and more people in my area have been able to establish ownership rights over forest produce.

Where I work, the gram sabha is dealing directly with the company. These are new processes, not only in Bhamragad but in many places across the district. And there is much work that activists are doing across the district. The ownership rights over forest produce have resulted in higher incomes, and we are now seeing higher expenditure on education and health.

Adivasi culture and the forest are intricately linked. Where there is a forest, the culture remains alive. PESA thus looks after both.

Under PESA, the gram sabha has the authority to handle financial dealings of an area, and control or manage local trade. This helps the people regulate the sale of intoxicants like alcohol or tobacco, and curtail informal moneylending. Further, the PESA Act covers land acquisition and displacement. Now, if anyone wants to buy land for mining, they have to consult the gram sabha and take their consent after a public hearing.

FRA and PESA are very important tools to strengthen the gram sabha and ensure autonomy of the Adivasis. Using these laws, we can increase awareness among people, and give them the confidence to raise their voices.

We have now started a movement to spread legal literacy in Adivasi areas—about FRA, PESA, Biodiversity Act, RTI—and bring about societal change by law. We have also translated the constitution in Marathi.

 

What are some of the challenges associated with your work?

Given that we work in a Naxalite area, engaging with the law and politics can be especially challenging. The local police believe that if Naxalites support a law, the government must oppose it. Thus, for them, anybody who supports that law is assumed to be a Naxalite. The police ask people if they agree with, or support, the PESA act. If they do, they are branded as a Naxalite.

Another challenge is that the laws keep changing to suit the ruling government. When the ruler changes, the language changes. For our grassroots activists who believe in this law and support it, the challenge is sustaining that support, especially when someone sitting in the capital can change the law, or cancel it all together.

We also have limited resources, and limited connection with the outside world, especially people located in the corridors of power. Then, what is my strength? Sitting in Bhamragad, I can’t do much. Even still, it is important for me to stay here, and work for my people. My law degree may have given me technical knowledge, but working with the community, I learn new things every day. You can become literate and aware through formal education, but the knowledge of local challenges can only come from working with people.

Apart from challenges in carrying out my work, there are other, more deep-rooted challenges that Adivasis face, chief among them being language. Indian states are divided linguistically—Marathi is spoken in Maharashtra, Gujarati in Gujarat, Bengali in West Bengal. Gondi speaking people have been living in this country from the beginning, but have been scattered across different states, due to which they must learn different state languages. I am in a ‘Marathi cage’. My mother is in Chhattisgarh, where they have to learn Hindi; she’s in a ‘Hindi cage’. In this way, we are left unable to communicate with each other. Our own language has suffered because of this. Plus, we don’t have a formal organisation or structure. Our community is our area of work. There is no office. Our village—Gotul or local space—is our office. So how can we band together, work together on these cultural and political issues for our people?

Translated from Marathi into English by Anupamaa Joshi.

 

Footnotes

1. PVTG is a subcategory of scheduled tribes (ST), characterised by a pre-agricultural level of technology, stagnant or declining population, extremely low literacy rate and subsistence level of economy. There are 75 listed PVTGs in India.

 

Saahil Kejriwal is an associate at IDR. He is responsible for sourcing and editing content, along with online and offline outreach. He has completed the Young India Fellowship, a postgraduate diploma in liberal studies, from Ashoka University. Prior to that, Saahil worked as an instructional designer at NIIT Ltd. Saahil holds a BA in Economics from Hansraj College, University of Delhi. He spent his early years in Guwahati, Assam.

Rachita Vora is Co-founder and Director at IDR. Before this, she led the Dasra Girl Alliance, a Rs. 250 crore multi-stakeholder platform that sought to empower adolescent girls in India. She has a decade of experience, and has spent the past eight years working in the areas of financial inclusion, livelihoods and public health. She has led functions across strategy, business development, communications and partnerships, and her writing has been featured in the Guardian, Stanford Social Innovation Review, Next Billion and Alliance Magazine. Rachita has an MBA from Judge Business School at Cambridge University and a BA in History from Yale University.

This story was originally published by India Development Review (IDR)

The post Q&A: “The Knowledge of Local Challenges Can Only Come from Working with People” appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Dr. Arturo Cunanan is the Medical Centre Chief of Culion Sanitarium and General Hospital in the Philippines and one of the most experienced experts on Hansen’s disease, also known as leprosy, in the world today. Credit: Stella Paul/IPS

By Stella Paul
MAJURO, Mar 25 2019 (IPS)

His multiple awards and degrees aside, Dr. Arturo Cunanan is known as a people’s doctor; one who has profound belief in the human rights of every person affected by Hansen’s disease, commonly known as leprosy.
Considered one of the most experienced experts on the disease in the world today, Cunanan is currently the Medical Centre Chief of Culion Sanitarium and General Hospital in the Philippines. He is the first director of the hospital who is a direct descendant of people affected by Hansen’s disease who were isolated and segregated in Culion. The island of Culion, where the hospital is based, was originally set up as a leper colony at the turn of the 20th century, with the hospital been founded to solely treat patients with Hansen’s disease. However, from 1994, the Culion Sanitarium and General Hospital began general hospital services.

Currently in the Marshall Islands, in the northern Pacific, to review the national leprosy programme for the atoll nation, Cunanan tells IPS about the importance of viewing leprosy as an ordinary disease and how the failure to do so leads to continuous stigma.

“Integration of leprosy in the mainstream is important and it is also important to see that leprosy is treated as an ordinary disease and not as a special disease. Leprosy then becomes an ordinary disease. But if you treat leprosy as a special disease, then those with leprosy can become more stigmatised. People who have leprosy, can live a normal life. This is the message,” he tells IPS.

Recipient of several national and international awards, including the 2015 Gandhi Peace Prize, Cunanan earned his Masters in Public Health and Hospital Administration at the University of the Philippines and a Doctorate (PhD) in Health Systems and Policy at the National Institute of Health, University of Leeds as an International Ford Foundation Scholar.

He is also a consultant with the World Health Organisation and has provided his leadership in reviewing the National Leprosy programmes across the Micronesia region.

Cunanan is also the implementer of Sasakawa Memorial Health Foundation/Nippon Foundation’s projects in Culion and the Philippines that are related to leprosy and human rights, preservation of leprosy history, and various socio-economic projects that improve quality of life of people affected by leprosy and their families.
Excerpts of the interview follow:

Inter Press Service (IPS): Can you elaborate on how treating leprosy as a special disease leads to more stigmatisation and violates the rights of a person affected by it?

Arturo Cunanan (AC): Leprosy is one of the oldest known diseases in human history. It’s a biblical disease; there are instances of Jesus meeting men suffering from leprosy—men who were described as unclean and who became clean after Jesus touched them. The fear of leprosy and the social reaction to leprosy—both are are old.

In modern times, we have seen governments bring in laws that were built on the rule of detection and segregation. All of this only alienated a leprosy-affected person further.

But the truth of the day is: leprosy is curable. A person with leprosy can live a normal life. He can get treated—free of charge—for his disease. But, if we continue to treat leprosy as a special, extraordinary disease, it will perpetuate the alienation and it will also perpetuate the fear and stigma.

IPS: What happens when a leprosy-affected person faces stigma?

AC: First, they are socially, economically, and culturally isolated. People in their village, neighbourhood, society stop making contact with them and their families. But it ultimately violates their rights to respect and dignity.
Let me give you an example. In Culion, we get visitors. Some of them ask me if they can visit some leprosy-affected people. I tell them, look around you—everyone here has been affected by leprosy. But they look around and they do not want to believe what they see: normal people, with a normal physical appearance.

What these visitors are expecting to see is a person who has severe physical deformity, because in their minds, they [the visitors] have the image of a leprosy-affected person like that—a demonised image.
So, I tell them, these are people, no matter how severely they are affected by the disease—they are people like you and me, they have a right to a life of respect and dignity. How would you feel if someone looked at you in shock and fear, maybe disgust and gasp? This is what stigma and isolation leads to—the total denial of dignity.

IPS: How does this affect the treatment of leprosy?

AC: There are several reasons why a person affected by leprosy doesn’t seek treatment and social stigma is one of them. The person is afraid that once he has been confirmed as a person who has leprosy, the reaction of society will be severe towards him and his family.

They will not be included in any social or cultural events, nobody will visit them at their homes, and nobody will continue social relations with them. This will affect them economically also, they will not be employed like before. All of this discourages the person from going to the health centre and reporting his condition as he wants to avoid this social stigma.

IPS: You often say that Leprosy treatment needs to be integrated into the general health service system. What does that mean?

AC: This means that leprosy treatment can be made available at the local level. At every health centre, someone should be skilled enough to at least raise suspicion—if not fully detect—when he or she notices a possible case of leprosy.

For example, a person visits the health centre with a visible patch on his or her body which maybe numb. If a staff member at the health center can suspect that this could be a leprosy case, he could share this with the person and refer this person to a more skilled health worker to another clinic that specialises on leprosy. This way, a detection, confirmation and treatment could then begin.
But if the staff member is not capable of this, then he could simply give him an ointment for a skin rash and send him back home.

Especially in the islands, where people live a simple life, in close contact with the sun, sand and salt water, small skin marks like a patch would not usually make a person suspicious of his body or make him go to a leprosy clinic straightaway. But if even one person at the health centre can think that this might be leprosy, it could be a big help.

The third point is, even when the treatment begins, the person affected by leprosy may not take his medicines regularly or may not monitor his health conditions such as a sign of reactions etc on a regular basic and this could affect him adversely. But, if the staff at his local health center can communicate with him that he must report back if there is a reaction, he will do so.
So, it is key to have leprosy treatment integrated in the general health service, so there are skilled workers at every level of the health system.

Related Articles

• People Affected by Leprosy in Latin America Unite for Their Rights and Their Voice
• Q&A: Important to Treat Anyone Suffering from Leprosy as an Equal Individual
• Living with Leprosy on the Climate-Vulnerable Kiribati Island Atolls

The post Q&A: Why Treating Leprosy as a Special Disease Violates the Rights of the Person Affected by It appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

IPS Correspondent Stella Paul interviews DR ARTURO CUNANAN, one of the world’s leading experts on leprosy and Medical Centre Chief of Culion Sanitarium and General Hospital in the Philippines.

The post Q&A: Why Treating Leprosy as a Special Disease Violates the Rights of the Person Affected by It appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Credit: David Symonds in The Economist, 24 July 2008

By Jan Lundius
STOCKHOLM / ROME, Mar 25 2019 (IPS)

These lyrics are from Fire, the only hit by The Crazy World of Arthur Brown, which in 1968 sold over one million singles. Brenton Tarrant played it in his car while he triumphantly left the Al Noor Mosque in Christchurch, New Zealand. He had just gunned down around 100 unarmed worshippers and was on his way to another mosque to continue the slaughter before Friday prayers ended on 15 March. His murderous rampage finished by the Linwood Islamic Centre, where he could not find the entrance. He shut a man and his wife, whom he encountered outside the building and then shattered a window with a hail of bullets, killing five more inside, while he shouted that everyone had to leave the mosque. A courageous shop keeper rushed out and throw a credit card reader at Tarrant, who rushed back to his car followed by the shop keeper, who shattered the windshield with a handgun he had picked up from the ground. Tarrant run away, but was almost immediately restrained by police who had been able to trace him.

Tennant had by then shot and killed 50 individuals, aged between 2 and 71 years. He had used two semi-automatic rifles, two shotguns and a lever-action rifle, all purchased online from a local gun store. Tennant live-streamed the 17 minutes Al Noor Mosque massacre at Facebook Live. Nine minutes before initiating his killing spree he had posted links to a 73-page manifesto, The Great Replacement, on Twitter and 8chan and emailed it to 30 recipients, among them The Prime Minister´s Office and various media outlets.

Contrary to many Islamist terrorists, who are prepared to die for their beliefs, Tennant wanted to be taken alive and use his trial as an opportunity to appear as a martyr for his beliefs and use his deeds as propaganda for them. Exactly like another white supremacist before him, the Norwegian Anders Berling Breivik, who in June 2011 in cold blood slaughtered 77 totally unprotected and surprised individuals, most of them youngsters between 14 and 18 years. Breivik´s statements in court and his 1,500 pages long manifesto served as an inspiration for Tennant.

Condemnations and condolences arrived immediately after the horrific event. Almost every nation leader sent his/her “heart-felt” sympathies to the people of New Zealand and Muslims around the world. Donald Trump twittered: “My warmest sympathy and best wishes goes out to the people of New Zealand after the horrible massacre in the Mosques.” This was normal procedure, though Trump did three days after his first tweet post another one: “The Fake News Media is working overtime to blame me for the horrible attack in New Zealand. They will have to work very hard to prove that one. So Ridiculous!” Trump had before that declared that he did not view white nationalism as a rising threat: “I don’t really. I think it’s a small group of people that have very, very serious problems, I guess.” Perfectly in line with previously expressed views when Trump had assumed that any Muslim lone wolf slayer represented views of all Muslims: “I think Islam hates us”. This while any person who in the name of some whacky right-wing ideology had massacred people, like the Las Vegas shooter who killed 58 people, according to Trump represented no one else but himself. Such people are according to Trump just crazy: “The wires were crossed pretty badly in his brain. Extremely badly in his brain. And it’s a very sad event.” Trump´s line of thinking may thus be connected with the fact that his administration cut funding for the Department of Homeland Security’s Countering Violent Extremism (CVE) programme – except to address Islamic-inspired terrorism.

Trump seems to express inclinations towards extreme narcissism and cynical populism. He has during his presidency revealed a behaviour characterized by exaggerated feelings of self-importance, excessive need for admiration and a lack of empathy. However, there is apparently also a large dose of populism characterizing his way of expressing himself. Particularly in his cynical use of xenophobia. Trump has repeatedly whipped up fear off criminal elements and potential terrorists illegally crossing US borders: “They’re sending us not the right people. The US has become a dumping ground for everyone else’s problems.” Using vulgar expressions Trump has declared that many migrants come from places he defined as “shithole countries”.

Trump behaves like a performer blinded by his own success and like many others who use the Internet as a political platform he indulges in rude attacks on perceived opponents and enemies. He is fond of using offensive dubs and verbal barrage like an “extraordinarily low IQ person”, against people with other views than his own. Simultaneously he showers inflated praise on those who support him. Candace Owens, an Afro-American conservative commentator and political activist, who Tarrant in his manifesto declared to be the one who had “influenced [him] above all” has by Trump been acclaimed as someone who

is having a big impact on politics in our country. She represents an ever expanding group of very smart ‘thinkers,’ and it is wonderful to watch and hear the dialogue going on … so good for our Country!

Trump had of course been delighted by Owens´s declaration that “the left hates America and Trump loves it!”

It may be claimed that Trump did not create a maniac like Brenton Tarrant, who in his manifesto hailed the US President as “a symbol of renewed white identity and common purpose.” However, opinion makers who use a derogative language, making fun of “political correctness” and subscribe to blatant generalizations, inspire others to do that as well.

An example of this is the Swedish “shock jock” PewDiePie, who due to his more than 89 million YouTube subscribers, in 2016 was listed among Time Magazine´s “100 most influential people”. PewDiePie, whose real name is Felix Kjellberg, makes millions of dollars annually. My high school pupils made me listen to him entertaining and impressing his overwhelmingly young listeners by his ridiculously exaggerated, puerile and fake melodramatic persona, pouring out expletives and pointless jokes, often precariously close to “forbidden” themes like racism and misogyny. An approach called memeing, i.e. expressing inane and dumb assertions while appearing as if you are serious about them. I did not find PewDiePie´s idiotic ramblings funny, only annoying, though Tarrant wrote in his manifesto: “Remember lads, subscribe to PewDiePie.”

By simply clicking “send” we may all reach any madman with our baseless generalizations. By setting up blogs, vlogs, Instagram – and Facebook accounts we may share our opinions and “facts” without realizing that with this power comes responsibility. A world leader like Trump cannot excuse himself from the fact that his statement about certain immigrants, even if they in this case were criminally charged members of the infamous MS 13 gang, might have grave consequences:

You wouldn’t believe how bad these people are. These aren’t people. These are animals.

Expressions like “we and them”, indicating a right to mistreat others, even innocent children, in the name of our own superiority, may convince ice-cold mass murderers like Anders Breivik and Brenton Tarrant that they have been doing humanity a service by annihilating “enemies to our way of life”.

No – Trump and PewDiePie, you cannot convince me that you are any innocent bystanders. Each and everyone of us is responsible for his/her own discourse and actions. Not any of us is an autonomous being. For better or worse, we are all connected to one another. Accordingly, our words have effects and do not for one second assume that hate speech is beneficial for human co-existence.

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 Words Matter: Trump and the Massacres in Christchurch appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

I am the god of Hell Fire

and I bring you fire.
I'll take you to burn!
Fire, I'll take you to learn.
I'll see you burn!
                 Jacob Louis Plant

The post Words Matter: Trump and the Massacres in Christchurch appeared first on Inter Press Service.

António Guterres, is Secretary-General of the United Nations

By António Guterres
BUENOS AIRES, Mar 25 2019 (IPS)

I see five issues that will be central to implementing the Paris Agreement on climate change and achieving the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. South-South Cooperation can offer solutions to all of them.

First, rising inequality both between and within countries is eroding trust and deepening a sense of injustice. Globalization has enabled many people to escape poverty – but its benefits are not shared equitably and its costs fall disproportionately on the poor and vulnerable.

António Guterres

Cooperation can enable developing countries to learn from each other and grow more quickly, close income gaps and build inclusive, resilient societies.

Second, climate change is the defining issue of our time, and we are losing the race. 2018 was the fourth hottest year on record and natural disasters are impacting nearly every region.

That is why I am bringing world leaders together at a climate action summit in New York in September. I am calling on leaders to bring concrete, realistic plans that raise ambition on mitigation, adaptation, finance and innovation.

We must enhance nationally determined contributions by 2020, in line with reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 45 percent over the next decade.

We need fundamental shifts to support green financing and increase investment in climate action from billions to trillions.

The Green Climate Fund must become fully resourced and operational. And the pledge to mobilize 100 billion dollars a year by 2020 for climate action in the developing world, including mitigation and adaptation, must be implemented.

South-South cooperation will be vital to ensure mutual support and exchange of best practices, to enhance adaptation and increase the resilience of developing countries and communities facing the devastating impacts of climate change.

South-South Cooperation can also support the transformation of economies dependent on fossil fuels, with strategies that reinforce both sustainable development and environmental protection.

Third, infrastructure and energy needs are set to expand enormously, thanks to population growth and urbanization in the Global South.

Some 60 percent of the area that is expected to become urban by 2030 has yet to be built. If we get this wrong, we will lock ourselves into a high-emissions future with potentially catastrophic consequences.

But if we get infrastructure right, it will be an opportunity for development cooperation, industrial transition and growth, cross-border trade and investment, climate change mitigation and adaptation, and sustainable development.

Fourth, gender has been described as the docking station for the SDGs, since it offers opportunities to engage on different crosscutting issues. It must be at the heart of all efforts if we are to succeed.

We have seen significant progress for women over the past forty years. More girls are in school; more women are doing paid work. Harmful practices like female genital mutilation and child marriage are in decline.

But this progress is not complete; indeed, we are seeing a pushback against our efforts and in some cases the gender equality gap is widening.

This affects us all, because where women are better represented in politics, we see improved social protection and increased spending on development. When women have access to land and credit, harvests increase. When girls are educated, they contribute more to their communities and break cycles of poverty.

And let’s not forget that countries with the highest number of women in parliament, in national security institutions, and as farmers, are indeed in the Global South.

Fifth, the multilateral development system must be better positioned to support South-South cooperation and implement the 2030 Agenda.

South-South cooperation has evolved significantly over the last decades – but multilateral institutions, including the United Nations, have not kept up.

I am grateful to Member States for recognizing the role of the United Nations in the outcome document for the South-South Conference (in Buenos Aires). We will take up the mandates you are entrusting to us, and you can count on my personal commitment to make sure the ongoing reforms of the United Nations reinvigorate our support for South-South cooperation.

We also need to realign financing for sustainable development and unlock the trillions that will deliver the 2030 Agenda.

South-South cooperation can never be a substitute for official development assistance or replace the responsibilities of the Global North set out in the Addis Ababa Action Agenda and the Paris Agreement.

South-South Cooperation must also involve young people, civil society, the private sector, academia and others, building innovative partnerships and extending the reach of initiatives. It must harness the potential of new technologies and digitalization that create opportunities and promote inclusivity.

South-South cooperation is a global exercise of all countries of the South to benefit everyone, including the Least Developed Countries. Every country, every partner has something to share or teach, whatever their circumstances.

This conference is a starting point.

Later this year, over the course of a week in September, Heads of State will gather in New York for the Sustainable Development Goals Summit and the Climate Action Summit. They will discuss Universal Health Coverage, Financing Sustainable Development and the Global Partnership to support Small Island Developing States.

All these meetings are aimed at accelerating implementation of the 2030 Agenda and the Paris Agreement, which were born from a consensus on the common interests that bind us together.

Now is the time to stake out that common ground again and take bold and transformative action.

Together, we can achieve the Sustainable Development Goals, we can beat climate change, and transform the lives of people around the world.

I thank the Government and people of Argentina for hosting this Conference.

Forty years ago, the landmark international conference on South-South Cooperation resulted in the Buenos Aires Plan of Action for Promoting and Implementing Technical Cooperation among Developing Countries.

Since then, the Buenos Aires Plan of Action, known as BAPA, has been the foundation and reference point for South-South cooperation, based on principles of national ownership, equality and non-conditionality.

BAPA transformed the dynamics of international cooperation.

It highlighted the value of a different form of cooperation, based on the exchange of knowledge and appropriate technologies among nations facing similar development challenges.

Across the global South, we have seen remarkable advances since BAPA. Thanks in part to South-South cooperation, millions of women, men and children have been lifted out of extreme poverty. Developing countries have achieved some of the fastest economic growth rates ever seen and have set global standards for sustainable development.

As we gather again in Buenos Aires, we recognize and celebrate the long journey we have walked together.

But we also recognize our common challenges.

Today, we are here to ensure that South-South cooperation remains responsive to the evolving realities of global development and the changing needs of developing countries as they implement the 2030 Agenda.

We have an opportunity to develop and strengthen frameworks for South-South cooperation; improve systems and tools; increase transparency; and strengthen accountability.

*Extracts from a keynote address by Secretary-General Antonio Guterres to the Conference on South-South Conference in Buenos Aires on March 20, 2019.

The post South-South Cooperation: a Path to Implementing UN’s 2030 Agenda appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

António Guterres, is Secretary-General of the United Nations

The post South-South Cooperation: a Path to Implementing UN’s 2030 Agenda appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Participants taking part in the colloquium "The role of communication in the challenge of South-South cooperation", organised in Buenos Aires by Inter Press Service (IPS) Latin America, within the framework of the Second High-Level United Nations Conference on South-South Cooperation. Credit: Daniel Gutman/IPS

By Daniel Gutman
BUENOS AIRES, Mar 24 2019 (IPS)

Communication can be a key tool for the development of cooperation among the countries of the global South, but the ever closer relations between them do not receive the attention they deserve from the media.

This conclusion arose from the meeting organised by Inter Press Service (IPS) Latin America in Buenos Aires on Mar. 22, during the third and final day of the Second High-Level United Nations Conference on South-South Cooperation, which brought together representatives of almost 200 countries in the Argentine capital.

“The role of communication in the challenge of South-South cooperation” was the colloquium that brought together journalists, political analysts and officials from international organisations in Africa, Latin America, the Caribbean and Asia."There is little coverage on what progress has been made in trade, technology or health cooperation among the countries of the South, which may seem very different among themselves but are quite similar in terms of their needs." -- Mario Lubetkin

The colloquium, organised by the regional branch of the international news agency IPS, was one of the parallel meetings to the conference and the only one dedicated to communication.

“Forty years ago, when the first conference, also held in Buenos Aires, approved the Plan of Action that forms the basis of South-South Ccoperation, there was awareness that communication was key,” said Mario Lubetkin, assistant director-general of the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO).

“However, that notion has been lost and communication has not kept up with the changes that have taken place since then. This creates a vacuum for our societies,” said Lubetkin, the moderator of the meeting.

“There is little coverage on what progress has been made in trade, technology or health cooperation among the countries of the South, which may seem very different among themselves but are quite similar in terms of their needs,” concluded Lubetkin, a former director general of IPS, an international news agency that prioritises information from the global South.

In front of an audience made up mainly of journalists and other media workers, the debate was oriented towards the most appropriate tools for developing countries to better disseminate news from the global South, the latest term coined to define the group of nations in Africa, Latin America and Asia.

The president of IPS Latin America, Sergio Berensztein, stressed that “today there is an opportunity for nations like ours, thanks to the fact that there is no longer the biloparity of the Cold War era, nor the unipolarity of the years that followed. Today we are in a time of what we call apolarity.”

Berensztein stressed that at a time when there is a renaissance of protectionism and nationalism in the world, it is necessary for journalists to reinforce the idea of cooperation and ensure that a plurality of voices is heard on the international stage.

“We are living in a moment of crisis in which the old has not fully died yet and the new has not yet been fully born. That is why it is a time of uncertainty and accurate information is an element that favors the peaceful resolution of conflicts,” said Berensztein.

View of the room where the meeting on the role of communication in promoting South-South cooperation was held in Buenos Aires, organised by Inter Press Service (IPS) Latin America. The participants agreed that media outlets in the global South must generate attractive content that will allow them to combat a news agenda imposed by the countries of the industrialised North. Credit: Daniel Gutman/IPS

The power of the large media based in countries of the industrialised North, which tend to impose their journalistic agenda on a global level, was present in the debate as a worrying factor and as evidence of the failure of initiatives aimed at bringing about a new and more balanced information and communication order.

“What is the best way to foment the mass circulation of information about the global South, in order to escape this problem?” was one of the main questions that arose during the two-hour debate, held at a hotel in the Argentine capital.

From the city of Lagos, in a videoconference, the news director of the Nigerian Television Authority, Aliyu Baba Barau, called for strengthened cooperation between media outlets and journalists from developing countries, through the organisation of trips and mechanisms that favour the sharing of resources.

“Nigerian TV permanently shares its resources with other countries,” he said as an example of what can be done in terms of cooperation in media projects in the South.

“The mechanism of South-South cooperation and its advantages need to be understood not only by those who lead our nations, but also by the global community,” said Baba Barau.

Media representatives from China played a prominent role in the exchange of ideas and reflected the strong interest in Asia’s giant in achieving closer ties with Africa and Latin America.

Participants included Zhang Lu, deputy editor of China Daily, the country’s largest English-language news portal; Cui Yuanlei, Mexico correspondent for the Xinhua news agency, which distributes information in several languages (including Spanish); and Li Weilin, team leader of the CCTV television network in São Paulo, Brazil.

Li said the media in emerging countries should not depend on the information distributed by the news networks of industrialised countries, and said journalism should be a way to share experiences.

He said, for example, that during the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro, CCTV produced coverage for people in Kenya to see how Jamaica’s star runners were trained, and for Jamaica to meet the Kenyan runners who perform so well in the long-distance and medium-distance races.

Roberto Ridolfi, Assistant-Director General of FAO’s Programme Support and Technical Cooperation Department, stressed that the countries of the South “do not have a shared past, but they do have the same future.”

Ridolfi said communication has a key role to play in the arduous path towards Agenda 2030 for Sustainable Development and its 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which seek to improve the quality of life of the world’s population and bring the South into line with the level of development in the North.

“The media and journalists have the mission of attracting audiences with news linked to sustainability. The proliferation of plastics in the oceans, the devastation of forests or the problems plaguing food production are issues that should be on the agenda,” he said.

Like the other panelists, Ridolfi lamented that societies are unaware of the South-South cooperation mechanisms that have emerged in recent years and said journalists have a lot of work to do in that regard.

“We have yet to demonstrate to the world the real value and benefits of South-South cooperation,” the FAO official said.

The need for African, Asian, Latin American and Arab media to get to know each other better was recognised as a necessity.

The local participants were particularly emphatic about this, since Argentina is a country with deep cultural ties with Europe, where little is known about what happens in the countries of the regions of the South, beyond catastrophes and conflicts.

The challenge, now that new technologies have democratised communication but have also put it at risk, is to generate information from the South in attractive formats that allow a better understanding of the realities and opportunities in developing countries and between the countries and regions of the South.

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Traffickers held hostage a group of Bangladeshi fortune seekers in Benghazi, forced families at home to pay ransom

By Shariful Islam
Mar 23 2019 (IPS-Partners)

Mominur Islam had paid Tk 3 lakh to some manpower brokers in Naogaon to go to Malaysia as a worker.

The brokers, who were actually members of a human trafficking gang, sent him to Benghazi of Libya where he was confined to a den and tortured on a regular basis for ransom.

Mominur Islam

“Torture for ransom was an everyday affair,” 21-year-old Mominur, who recently returned home, told The Daily Star about his 13-day captivity.

“They used to slap and kick me, beat me with an iron pipe and even put out burning cigarettes on my body.”

On February 16, he along with eight other fortune seekers from Bangladesh was taken to the den where 30 other Bangladeshi youths were already confined for ransom, Mominur said.

He was lucky enough to get released and return home after police in Bangladesh had caught three members of the gang.

Saifullah of Begumganj in Noakhali was arrested in an Uttara hotel while two of his cohorts — Ehsan Russell of Bumna in Barguna and Gulzar Hossain of Raninagar in Naogaon — were held at Shahjalal International Airport.

Mashiur Rahman, deputy commissioner (north) of Detective Branch of DMP, said they arrested the trio upon receiving complaints from Mominur’s mother Bithi Akhter.

“Instructed by Saifullah, his associates in Libya released Mominur on February 28 and Mominur returned home on March 2,” he added.

Bithi filed a case with Airport Police Station on March 4 and the next day Mominur made a statement before a magistrate describing his ordeal.

DB Sub-Inspector Nasir Hossain, the investigation officer of the case, said, “The traffickers showed us live video of releasing the rest but we are not sure whether they were freed or taken to another den.”

Though there was no visa on the passport of Mominur, an officer of Airport Immigration Police officer said he first went to Sharjah on a tourist visa on February 12.

“The human traffickers are taking people abroad using such visas,” said the official on condition of anonymity as he is not authorised to talk to the media.

“We stopped allowing people to go to Dubai on tourist visa but we had to resume it after an influential quarter convinced the authorities,” he further said.

Mominur said he and other job seekers went to Libya from Sharjah en route to Tunisia.

After they flew to Sharjah from Dhaka by an Air Arabia flight, a person called Monir received them at the airport and took them to a hotel where they stayed for two days.

Monir arranged their air tickets for Tunisia to where they travelled without any hassle.

In Tunisia, another Bengali speaking man received them and arranged their tickets for a Benghazi-bound flight.

Mominur said after they landed at the Benghazi Airport on February 16, a trafficking ring member named Zahid took them to the den in Tukra area.

THE TORTURE CELL

Mominur said there were many rooms in the den guarded by Bangladeshi and Libyan people. “One of the rooms was used as torture cell,” he said.

“If anyone dared talk to other inmates, he would be tortured severely.”

Through video calls, they used to show the pictures of torture to the victims’ family members and even threaten to kill the hostages if ransom was not paid.

Mominur’s mother said she had given Tk 1 lakh to Abdus Sattar of Naogaon and his two sons Abdus Salam and Abul Kalam as their counterparts in Libya threatened to kill her son and dump the body into the sea.

“They again asked her to give another Tk 2 lakh to Shafiullah, Russell and Gulzar,” Bithi added.

This time she sought help from the Detective Branch of police.

Earlier on January 8, Mominur’s family gave Sattar and his sons Tk 3 lakh after they assured her of sending Mominur to Malaysia where his father is already working as a labour.

She said they decided to send Mominur, who passed SSC in 2017, to Malaysia to ease their financial hardship.

“We took a loan of Tk 3 lakh from a bank and relatives,” she said.

She borrowed Tk 1 lakh at a high interest rate from a lender without having a clue as to how she would repay the loans.

A HOTSPOT OF TRAFFICKING

According to the Police Headquarters data, 7,840 people fell victim to human trafficking between February 2012 and June last year.

The Rapid Action Battalion data shows they rescued 810 victims — 704 male and 106 females — and arrested 600 suspected human traffickers since 2006.

There are extensive reports on human trafficking gangs in Libya who kidnapped Bangladeshis seeking jobs abroad and held them hostage for ransom.

Some 24 Bangladeshis among 200 migrants from Asia, Africa and the Middle East died when two vessels carrying about 500 migrants, including 78 Bangladeshis, sank into the sea after leaving Zuwara off the Libyan coast for Italy in September 2015.

In November 2016, Libyan police rescued at least 65 Bangladeshis from a traffickers’ den in Tripoli.

This story was originally published by The Daily Star, Bangladesh

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Excerpt:

Traffickers held hostage a group of Bangladeshi fortune seekers in Benghazi, forced families at home to pay ransom

The post Tortured in Libya appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Aerial photo of the vast freshwater resources in the Hudson Bay Lowlands, Ontario, Canada, October 2018. Credit: 2018 Human Rights Watch

By Editor Human Rights Watch
TORONTO, Mar 22 2019 (IPS-Partners)

World Water Day on March 22, 2019 is a reminder that many of Canada’s First Nations communities do not have safe drinking water, Chiefs of Ontario and Human Rights Watch said today.

The groups issued a draft guide on the human right to water for First Nations communities and advocates. This guide will be open for comment through September 6, and then finalized.

“Most Canadians have easy access to fresh water, but many First Nations communities in Canada face a daily struggle to get safe drinking water,” said Amanda Klasing, acting women’s rights co-director at Human Rights Watch. “We hope this guide will serve as an important tool for communities to help them achieve their right to a safe water supply.”

Human Rights Watch conducted research in First Nations communities in Ontario in 2015 and 2016, and found that the Canadian government had violated a range of international human rights obligations by failing to provide a safe water supply to First Nations reserves.

Since that time, the federal government has taken steps to increase transparency in situations in which First Nations communities have long been without a safe water supply and to work more closely with the communities to address the problems. The government recently announced new investments to support ongoing efforts to eliminate and prevent long-term drinking water advisories.

But as of February 4, there were 62 long-term drinking advisories throughout Canada. The Neskantaga First Nation in Northern Ontario, for example, has had a water boil advisory in place for the last 23 years.

The Chiefs of Ontario continue to apply pressure and influence governments to provide safe potable drinking water – which is a human right – for First Nations peoples, leading toward a sustainable future and one that is based on truth and reconciliation.

Despite some progress, the government has failed time and again to deliver on its promises for safe drinking water. In developing the guide, Human Rights Watch and Chiefs of Ontario seek to develop an additional tool for First Nations to build their advocacy for safe drinking water access. The guide provides an overview of the legal framework behind the human right to water and recommendations on how to engage government officials on the topic. The commentary period will be helpful in producing a final guide to address the needs of communities and advocates.

“We need to guide and inspire a process of truth and healing leading toward reconciliation between First Nations and Canada,” said Chief Shining Turtle, of Whitefish River First Nation and member of the Chiefs of Ontario Environment Committee. “Collaboration on a renewed relationship based on inclusion, respect, and mutual understanding is paramount. Let’s begin this important process first by protecting our sacred water, in the spirit of true partnership.”

It is often those who least contribute to water crises around the world who are most affected by the outcome, Human Rights Watch and the Ontario Chiefs said. World Water Day 2019 serves as a reminder that everyone all over the globe should have access to safe drinking water and sanitation. Canada has played an important role in promoting efforts to meet this goal globally. First Nations communities are on the front lines of demanding that Canada should meet this obligation at home as well.

“Water is life. It is recognized that women are the sacred keepers of the water and know that it’s a gift that connects all life,” said Ontario Regional Chief RoseAnne Archibald. “Water is significant to our way of life and livelihoods, and we recognize our inherent responsibilities as caretakers to protect water. Our responsibilities and our rights include all aspects to the use of water, jurisdiction and stewardship over use and access to water, and the protection of water.”

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Excerpt:

On World Water Day, New Guide to Water Rights

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A man walks down a street in central Lusaka, the capital of Zambia, on November 12, 2014. Prime TV, an independent station in Zambia, was recently suspended by the country's media regulator. Credit: Gianluigi Guercia/AFP

By Editor, CPJ
CAPE TOWN, Mar 22 2019 (IPS-Partners)

(CPJ) – Zambia’s minister of information and broadcasting should grant an appeal requested by the privately owned Prime TV broadcaster and allow the station back on air after the country’s media regulator suspended its license for 30 days for alleged unprofessionalism, the Committee to Protect Journalists said today.

The Independent Broadcasting Authority, the government agency that oversees the country’s media, suspended Prime TV’s license from March 4 to April 2 for allegedly featuring “unbalanced coverage, opinionated news, material likely to incite violence and use of derogatory language,” particularly in its reporting on recent by-elections in Shesheke district, according to a statement from the authority. Prime TV was ordered to conduct in-house trainings on media ethics during its suspension, according to the statement.

The authority’s ruling came in response to a complaint lodged by the ruling Patriotic Front party, according to the African press freedom group AFEX.

On March 5, Prime TV filed an appeal with Information and Broadcasting Minister Dora Siliya, the station’s director, Gerald Shawa, told CPJ. Shawa told CPJ on March 18 that he had not yet received a response to his request.

“The Independent Broadcasting Authority should not suspend news organizations simply because they report critically and disagree with the ruling political party,” said CPJ Africa Program Coordinator Angela Quintal. “The minister of information and broadcasting must do the right thing and uphold Prime TV’s appeal so that it is able to broadcast immediately.”

The suspension came amid increased tensions between Prime TV and the Patriotic Front. The broadcaster’s offices were raided by police in November 2018, after it aired footage that authorities alleged was defamatory to the president, according to the Media Institute of Southern Africa, a regional press freedom group.

In late January, the party’s secretary-general, Davies Mwila, announced that Prime TV journalists were barred from covering any Patriotic Front activities, according to AFEX.

On February 13, the party’s deputy media director, Antonio Mwanza, said the broadcaster “must be closed down,” and said the Independent Broadcasting Authority had been “directed to revoke [Prime TV’s] license,” AFEX reported.

CPJ’s phone calls to the offices of Mwila and Mwanza, and emails to Mwila, did not receive a response.

In the appeal letter, seen by CPJ, Shawa asked the minister to reduce the penalty to a warning. Prime TV was previously reprimanded by authorities in April 2018, but was able to continue broadcasting, according to the Independent Broadcasting Authority statement.

CPJ’s phone calls to Siliya went unanswered. The Independent Broadcasting Authority’s director-general and board secretary, Josephine Mapoma, did not answer calls or respond to CPJ’s messages on Whatsapp.

Chando Kasolo, the Independent Broadcasting Authority board chair and permanent secretary for information and broadcasting services, told CPJ via WhatsApp, “the ban stays unless and until revoked by the minister [Siliya].”

He added that CPJ should “keep out of this as foreign ‘interference’ is not viewed kindly here.”

Kasolo was quoted by independent news website Zambia Reports as saying there was no political interference in the decision to suspend Prime TV, and that he would have resigned if that were the case.

According to the Independent Broadcasting Authority statement, the authority also suspended Valley FM Radio of Nyimba for 60 days for “unprofessional conduct” and revoked the licenses of two other radio broadcasters due to nonpayment of licensing fees. The authority also granted 22 new radio broadcast licenses on March 4, according to the statement.

Journalists have been jailed and harassed in Zambia over recent years, and numerous media organizations suspended by national authorities, according to CPJ’s reporting.

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By Geneva Centre
GENEVA, Mar 22 2019 (IPS-Partners)

(Geneva Centre)– The rise of exclusionary politics and xenophobic discourses can only be addressed by embracing diversity and promoting empathy between people, it was concluded in a panel debate held yesterday at the United Nations Office in Geneva.

The meeting “Celebration of diversity: beyond tolerance the path towards empathy” was organized on the margins of the 40th regular session of the UN Human Rights Council by the Geneva Centre for Human Rights Advancement and Global Dialogue and the Permanent Mission of the United Arab Emirates to UN Geneva. It was held on the occasion of the 2019 International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination.

In a message of support to the co-organizers of the debate, HRH Prince El Hassan bin Talal’s appealed to Christians and Muslims to raise their collective voices in repulsion and condemnation of terrorist and violent extremist attacks like the ones witnessed in Christchurch, New Zealand. “Terrorism has no nationality and religion but is an aberration that can be stimulated by irresponsible political discourse thousands of miles away,” HRH Prince El Hassan said.

“The terrorists intended to spread fear and hatred. On the contrary, we are here today to send a message of peace, tolerance and human brotherhood,” the Ambassador and Permanent Representative of the United Arab Emirates to UN Geneva, HE Obaid Salem Al Zaabi, added in his statement.

In this connection, the moderator of the debate, the Geneva Centre’s Executive Director Ambassador Idriss Jazairy, observed that the world is “witnessing a rise of exclusionary politics and a vociferous repetition of discourses of division.” “In such a context, diversity is being rejected as an alleged source of weakness,” he added.

Ambassador Jazairy reiterated the importance of identifying “inspiring ideals to foster unity in diversity and to be guided by our common humanity.” “Tolerance is not an end in itself, but it is the path that leads to empathy. The latter is the gateway to peace,” he underlined in his opening remarks.

Echoing Ambassador Jazairy, Reverend Dr Peniel Rajkumar, the World Council of Churches’ Programme Coordinator at the Office of Interreligious Dialogue and Cooperation, highlighted that “hospitality and empathy have something to offer – as they both have the element of moving beyond our own comfort zone into the life of the other.”

In his opening remarks, Mr Alexander Mejia, Director of the UNITAR Division for People and Social Inclusion, spoke of the importance of dialogue in the framework of the 2030 UN Agenda for Sustainable Development which has to be people-centered and where peace and tolerance have been put in priority. In this regard, faith based organizations need to play a major role and focus on those left behind.

Giving examples of Spain and Fiji, he illustrated successful efforts in combatting violent extremism, youth radicalization and building community resilience. Mr Mejia added that it is crucial to garner the support of public opinion in promoting tolerance and acceptance of the Other.

Tolerance and empathy will open pathways for dialogue and lasting peace

The conference focused on the outcome of the historical visit of HH Pope Francis and the Great Imam of Al-Azhar HE Sheikh Ahmad Al-Tayyib to the United Arab Emirates in February 2019.

During the visit, the Joint Document entitled “Human Fraternity for World Peace and Living Together” was adopted on 4 February 2019 by these Eminent Dignitaries reiterating the importance of harnessing the collective energy of religions and faiths to uphold equal citizenship rights and in the promotion of tolerant and inclusive societies.

Dr Farouk Hamada, Spiritual Advisor to the Court of the Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi, underlined that the future of humanity lies in the promotion of peace and security but that a tiny minority of terrorist spread fear, hatred and destruction.

A great responsibility therefore rests with religious and lay leaders as well as educational institutions. In this context, he cited the example of the UAE which represents a contemporary model of cooperation, co-existence and tolerance with 200 nationalities among which the law makes no distinction in terms of rights and justice.

A unique development – he said – was the meeting on 4 February 2019 in Abu Dhabi between HH the Pope and the Grand Imam of Al Azhar resulting in the adoption of the Joint Document on Human Fraternity which built upon the foundations of tolerance and convergence laid by the founder of the UAE HH Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan. Dr Hamada added that the 25 June World Conference expressed the same principles and vision. The speaker added that the current President of the UAE HH Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan followed the same path and proclaimed 2019 as the Year of Tolerance in the country.

In this regard, the Permanent Observer of the Sovereign Order of Malta to UN Geneva, HE Ambassador Marie-Thérèse Pictet-Althann, stated that the Joint Document on Human Fraternity is a recipe for addressing the “challenges humanity faces in its efforts to restore and spread a culture of tolerance.”

“It supports the view of citizenship based on equal rights and obligations, demonstrating the need to reject any form of discrimination as well as the term of minority, which brings about sentiments of inferiority and isolation,” she added.

Ambassador Jazairy in turn cited the provisions contained in the Joint Document on Human Fraternity, stating that it “expresses almost identically” the fundamental values and messages contained in the Outcome Declaration of the World Conference on “Moving Towards Greater Spiritual Convergence Worldwide in Support of Equal Citizenship Rights” that was adopted on 25 June 2018 at the World Conference on religions and equal citizenship rights.

This conference which was held by the Geneva Centre and its partners in Geneva on 25 June 2018 under the Patronage of HRH Prince El Hassan bin Talal of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan and which received strong support by the UN Secretary-General through a video message.

“They both contain vibrant calls to celebrate diversity, promote a culture of fraternity and cultivate profound empathy towards the Other,” he said.

It was also noted at the panel that a resolution was unanimously adopted by the participants at the XIV International Conference on “A New Concept for Human Security” held on 26 October 2018 in Belgrade by the European Centre for Peace and Development – UN University for Peace, endorsing the World Conference Outcome Declaration.

The Geneva Centre has likewise submitted draft resolutions to The League of Arab States, the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation, the African Union and to the Organizing Committee of the 5th World Forum on Intercultural Dialogue requesting the endorsement of the Outcome Declaration. The participants expressed their keen desire to join in supporting this milestone Outcome Declaration.

In conclusion, the former Permanent Representative of Yemen to UN Geneva, Dr. Ebrahim al-Adoofi, moved that the meeting address a message of appreciation to the government of New Zealand in the wake of the terrorist attacks of Muslims praying in two mosques in Christchurch on 15 March. The meeting which adopted this proposal unanimously felt that the handling of the aftermath of this terrible event stood out as a shining example of the potential of convergence between world religions and a recognition that it is empathy and not ethnicity that create and maintain the community.

During the meeting, the panellists and the audience observed a minute of silence in solidarity with all innocent victims of violence and hatred worldwide.

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Young migrant women record a video during a digital media workshop aimed at building their skills and confidence. The training was conducted by WACC partner Ideosync Media Combine. Credit: Ideosync Media Combine

By Marites Sison
TORONTO, Mar 22 2019 (IPS)

When the most devastating flood in Bihar’s history came in 1987, Renu Devi recalled that the rampaging waters and landslides had swept away people who were sleeping, along with their beds.

There was no water to drink and people went hungry for days in the aftermath of the disaster. “It was the most painful time. Sometimes I think no one should suffer so much,” said Renu, who recorded her experience in a two-minute video that included recent photographs of her, as well as historical images found online of the great flood.

The flood – which destroyed more than 1.7 million homes and killed 1,399 people and 5,302 animals – had brought Renu and her husband to the slums of JJ camp, on the outskirts of Delhi, where they have lived in a shanty ever since.

“We had lost everything then,” she said. They had no money to buy a train ticket, so they sold the watch that her mother had gifted her son-in-law. “We sold that and bought a 25-rupee ticket to come to Delhi.”

Renu was one of 20 migrant women and girls who produced a video after taking part in a year-long project implemented by WACC partner Ideosync Media Combine, which sought to empower migrant women by building their skills and confidence through the use of digital media.

Women and girls from three urban areas on the outskirts of Delhi – the JJ slum cluster colony on the Faradibabad Bypass Road, Khan Badarpur Border and Palla Urban Village – learned how to operate mobile phones and use them to take photographs, record audio and video, edit short photo stories and browse the Internet.

The project, Fair/Dem Sarai, developed a training manual with audio/visual stories focusing on freedom of expression, gender equality, right to information and other human rights, and shared this in workshops that were often held on doorsteps and laneways of the communities.

The goal was not simply to teach them new skills, but to “open a new window of possibilities” for women and girl migrants who often have no voice in their homes and communities.

“Women and migrants are also vulnerable because of existing patriarchal structures that restrict their mobility and make them victims of other forms of violence,” said Lorenzo Vargas, WACC Program Manager for Communication for Social Change.

Ideosync Media Combine, in its project report, noted that the lives of young girls living in these communities are often restricted because the city is known to be unsafe for women.

The project also wanted to record the experiences of Delhi’s migrants, which often do not find their way into the mainstream media. Its initial research showed that women and girls in these communities were concerned about such issues as domestic violence, lack of sanitation, unemployment, safety, drug and alcohol abuse.

“Most women work from home and a large number of girls drop out from school before completing secondary education,” the report noted.

Migrant women learn how to use a mobile phone to tell their stories during a new media training conducted in the outskirts of Delhi. Credit: Ideosync Media Combine

While access to mobile phones and the Internet are generally available in these areas, they are largely used by men, it added. Many women who were initially interviewed said they had no use for new technology or felt inadequate because of their lack of education.

After taking part in the project, however, women and girls found “they wanted to tell stories – stories of how they came to be in the city and what it means to them,” said the report. “They cried as they recorded their own voice and spoke of the hardships they have endured to eke out a living here. Girls told stories about their mothers, questioned gender inequality, learned to report on garbage and education issues.”

In a video testimonial, Poornima, a young girl from Tajpur Pahadi, Badarpur, spoke enthusiastically about how she learned how to take better photographs and make a video that she could show to her community. She expressed the hope that other girls would be given the same opportunity.

“I just want that every girl should get a chance to do something in their life. I am feeling good,” she said, adding that she would teach others so they, too, can tell their own stories.

Nirmal, a middle-aged migrant, said in video testimonial that she learned how to use the cellphone, browse the Internet and YouTube, take photographs, videos and audio recording. “Now I am not dependent on anyone, anymore,” she said.

Most of the participants said they would use their new skills to document events in their community. “These trainings will help us further. It’s a good way to solve community problems,” said Kusum, from Block B, Madanpur Khadar, in another testimonial.

Participants produced 37 stories in total, which have had several public screenings in communities and have helped them establish ties with local NGOs.

Migrant woman learns how to use a cellphone to browse the Internet during a training workshop. Credit: Ideosync Media Combine

While most participants “found it hard to focus on just their migration experience,” the report said there were several stories around the tyranny of landlords, lack of electricity in their homes, the hardships of earning a living on the streets as vegetable vendors facing police violence, the longing for their language, the injustice of the newly-introduced digitally-verifiable identity card (Aadhaar) system, which several of them are unable to access to get support as people living below the poverty line. (Most migrants are from the states of Rajasthan, Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and Gujarat.)

The project – which ran from February 10, 2018 to February 28, 2019 – produced many “unintended positive consequences,” among them a marked increase of levels of capacity and reported self-confidence, the report said.

Half of the trainees bought their own mobile phones and one started his own YouTube channel and became quite popular with his regular posts after the project. An older migrant woman learned how to navigate the web and now regularly uses YouTube and Google search engines to explore new designs for her tailoring shop.

“The project went very well,” said Ram [LAST NAME], executive director of Ideosync Media Combine. “In some ways, the network of migrant women is still finding its feet. But, all in all, it is a much more stable and coherent community communication process than when we started.”

The project has brought together a group of committed and informed women from the community “who have begun to recognize the need for raising their voice,” Ideosync’s report noted. “In this sense, this project has worked towards empowering migrant women to advance their communication rights in order to advance other rights as well.”

The post A New Window for Delhi’s Migrant Women & Girls appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Marites Sison is Communications Officer at the World Association for Christian Communication (WACC)

The post A New Window for Delhi’s Migrant Women & Girls appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Group of refugees supported by South Florida's Refugee Assistance Alliance organization.

By Rose Delaney
MIAMI, Mar 22 2019 (IPS)

South Florida has long been known as a haven for refugees and migrants. Widely referred to as the “gateway to Latin America”, 1 in every 5 Florida residents is an immigrant. Significantly, the “sunshine state” welcomes 1,000 new settlers every day.

At present, The State of Florida’s refugee program is the largest in the United States, resettling more than 25,000 refugees and 2,000 asylum seekers each year.

South Florida’s refugee population is predominantly made up of Cubans and Haitians. Interestingly enough, Cubans account for over 80% of arrivals per year.

Due to the high numbers of migrants arriving from Latin America and the Caribbean, Florida’s diverse refugee communities from countries such as Syria, Iraq Palestine, and Ethiopia are often overlooked.

Oftentimes, the resources needed by these small refugee groups are limited, due to the absence of socio-cultural understanding, and lack of services available to them in their native language.

Although the Syrian refugee population in South Florida only amounts to roughly 90 people, groups such as the Refugee Assistance Alliance and Muslim Women’s Organization of South Florida are determined to help not only Syrian, but all underserved refugee communities.

Undoubtedly, according to Refugee Assistance Alliance’s founder and executive director, Kristen Bloom, refugee families’ main setback comes through their lack of English. Although the refugee resettlement process offers English classes, many cannot attend due to limited transportation, lack of childcare and conflicting schedules.

Furthermore, as English classes cater to predominantly Hispanic students with English-Spanish bilingual teachers, oftentimes, the families feel both culturally and linguistically isolated in the classroom and prefer to stay at home.

Significantly, non-profit groups have placed a keen focus on educating the Mothers of the households with no external occupation, as they are the least likely to be exposed to the language.

Refugee advocates believe by empowering the female head of the family, all the other family members will feel confident in their new surroundings.

For example, an ongoing Syrian refugee gathering, “A Taste of Syria” held in Miami, empowers Syrian chefs, always women, to cook food and earn a profit from it.

For many Syrian women, this is the first time they have provided for their family financially and it has granted them with a new sense of purpose.

Last month, a second-generation Cuban migrant recounted the story of his father’s journey to the United States at a Taste of Syria event. His father was met with open arms in an American restaurant as a waitress proclaimed “Welcome to America” and did not charge him for his meal.

The man claimed that most Floridians know what it’s like to be uprooted from the country of their birth and start all over again.

He extended a warm welcome to all the refugee families present. “We want you to thrive and succeed here.” He said to the group of refugees at the dinner, just as the waitress said to his father many years ago, “Welcome to America”.

Ultimately, the main objective for all refugee families in the United States is to become self-sufficient. Ideally, the families will pass on the skills they have learned to incoming refugees as “mentors.”

Refugee support organizations across South Florida would no longer need to exist if this goal is met. However, refugee rights advocates hope that if incoming refugee numbers increase, they will always have someone to help.

Unfortunately, the incoming refugee quota in the United States is at a historic low. Surprisingly, in 2018, only 11 Syrian refugees were admitted in North America.

What’s more, for Fiscal Year 2019 (FY 2019) the Trump administration proposes a resettlement cap of 30,000 refugees. This figure lies in stark contrast to Obama’s cap of 110,000 refugees in FY 2017.Oftentimes, due to strict vetting processes, the quota is not even met.

Many Floridians are unaware of the small yet underserved Syrian, Iraqi, Ethiopian etc. refugee communities that surround them.

By advocating for refugee rights and empowering them through entrepreneurship, education and inclusion, the divisive “fear” and stigmatization shadowing refugees and migrants will eventually break down.

As a global society, we must continue to include refugees in our communities, so they may become self-sufficient and contribute in the most impactful way.

The post South Florida’s Underserved Refugee Communities appeared first on Inter Press Service.

By Iris Hsu
TAIPEI, Mar 22 2019 (IPS)

Reporting on China’s harassment of journalists has never been easy. Lately it’s been getting much harder, which suggests that conditions for the press could be worsening.

At least 47 journalists were jailed in China at the time of CPJ’s 2018 prison census and I am investigating at least a dozen other cases, but the details are hard to verify.

The reason: authorities are deliberately preventing information from getting out–and they are getting really good at it.

Among the cases I’m investigating are the arrests in December of 45 contributors at Bitter Winter, a religious and human rights news website, who were detained and interrogated for exposing details about Xinjiang’s secret camps; reports from December 14 that police in Tianjin arrested a woman for exposing an outbreak of African swine fever on her WeChat account for the alleged crime of “spreading rumors”; the arrests from 2016 to 2018 by Xinjiang police of at least 30 Uighur editors working for local newspapers and television broadcasters; and the case of a woman who live-streamed police breaking into her apartment and taking her away in August, as an officer asked, “What did you say on the internet?”

Information was so scarce on the latter cases, that CPJ was unable to confirm who the journalists were and if they were still detained at the time of our prison census.By ensuring little to no information is available on these individuals, Chinese authorities are able to prevent widespread coverage and avoid being held to account for their actions.

In researching these cases and others I identified at least five methods China uses to try to prevent coverage of journalist arrests.

Sealing court records

Chinese laws require courts to make verdicts public on court websites as long as they don’t contain “state secrets.” However, I was unable to find records for any of the journalists on our prison census, or in the other cases under investigation, including for reporters convicted of “picking quarrels and provoking trouble.”

Ding Lingjie, the editor of Minsheng Guancha (Civil Rights and Livelihood Watch), is one of several journalists imprisoned on that charge, whose records should have been made public.

As testament to the opacity of Chinese judicial system, only six judgments from 2018 are posted on the website of the Beijing Shijingshan People’s Court, which is handling Ding’s case. No data is available for last year, but the Beijing court system says the court has taken on over 5,600 cases since January 1, which gives an idea of the scale of the cases it handles. In December, it sentenced Ding in a closed hearing to one year and eight months in prison, according to news reports.

Authorities also physically block lawyers from reading their clients’ court papers. On February 13, Zhang Zanning, who represents Huang Qi, founder of the human rights news website 64 Tianwang, was not allowed to see his client and was denied access to court records because “the judge was on vacation.”

A day later, when Zhang returned to the detention center, authorities blocked him again without providing a reason and told him that his law firm was no longer handling the case, according to Radio Free Asia and Zhang’s statement on Minsheng Guancha.

In another example, the state-owned newspaper People’s Daily reported on September 10 that Shaanxi authorities had made 96 arrests in a month in connection to “fabricating news reports” and “news blackmailing.”

Despite combing through public court judgments on China Judgements Online, a public access service that allows users to review verdicts, orders, mediation documents, and notices, I was unable to find any records relating to the arrests.

Censoring news coverage

Chinese authorities often issue instructions to media outlets forbidding coverage of a reporter’s arrest or trial. When the Mianyang Intermediate People’s Court held a trial for Huang, Chinese media received an order from the government to not “report, republish, or comment without prior arrangement” on Huang’s case, according to China Digital Times, a California-based media organization that reports on uncensored news in China.

In cases that don’t involve politics or human rights, authorities allow some reporting but often key details, such as the suspect’s name and alleged crime, are redacted.

Take the Shaanxi arrests last year of people whom authorities called “fake journalists.” Authorities said they detained 96 people, and shut down five social media accounts, 15 local broadcasters, and 45 apps on accusations of spreading illegal political information or rumors, according to news reports.

However, only a few vague reports appeared in media outlets or on the website of the Shaanxi Provincial Administration of Radio and TV. These scant news reports failed to provide names, which made the task of beginning to verify any of the 96 arrests near to impossible.

Blocking foreign IPs and VPNs

Last year, authorities officially banned the unauthorized use of virtual private networks (VPNs), a service many in China rely on to circumvent the infamous “Great Firewall.” In October, companies providing VPN services said they had detected a higher frequency of authorities attempting to block VPNs, leading to suspicions that the government had deployed on-the-ground censors to work against them.

When I called the Cyberspace Administration of China for comment, an official said that he had no information on the matter and refused to redirect my call.

In January, I experienced connectivity lags while browsing Chinese websites, including China’s largest online search engine Baidu, public security bureau websites, and the social platform Weibo, from Taiwan, where I’m based. Access was blocked entirely and restored only when I switched to other devices and used a different IP address.

The experience suggests that authorities not only attempt to control the use of internet within China’s borders, they also try to keep its so-called “internet sovereignty” intact by denying searches from outside the country.

Cutting police station phone lines

After China’s use of “re-education camps” to detain up to a million Uighur minorities came to international attention in 2017, it became more difficult to contact public security bureaus in Xinjiang for confirmation or comment on arrests. I found that police and officials no longer answered my calls and several listed numbers were no longer connected.

Xu Xiaoli, the wife of award-winning photojournalist Lu Guang who disappeared in the region in November, experienced the same issue. She said on Twitter that when she tried to contact police in Xinjiang for information about her husband, “none of the listed numbers worked.”

On the rare occasions that I do get through to an official, they refuse to answer my questions. In September, I attempted to contact the Urumqi Public Security Bureau to ask about detained scholar and blogger Ilham Tohti and his fellow students. Several calls went unanswered before a female official answered the phone.

As soon as I identified myself, she hung up. I made another call and the same official answered. This time she yelled at me, seemingly in panic, and told me to never call this number to ask questions again.

Intimidating lawyers, family and friends

As well as declining to comment on detentions, China has threatened family, friends, and lawyers. Authorities held Pu Wenqing, the mother of jailed journalist Huang, in an undisclosed location for nearly two months, with no contact with friends or activists, according to news reports.

Even after her release on January 21, police called her and ordered her not to post anything online, according to Radio Free Asia. The officer who made the calls told Radio Free Asia that he was under state security orders to monitor internet traffic about Huang’s case. Pu is still under surveillance today, a 64 Tianwang volunteer told me.

While Pu was under detention, Guangdong’s Department of Justice disbarred Huang’s lawyer Liu Zhengqing for “using language that endangers state security and slanders others,” according to reports.

Huang’s previous lawyer Sui Muqing was disbarred for “using uncivilized, offensive wording” and other poor behavior while representing a fellow lawyer, and for bringing a cell phone to take photos of a rights activist in a detention center whom he was representing, according to news reports and Sui’s Twitter account.Both Sui and Liu had been vocal about Huang’s case. They talked to the media and posted case updates regularly on social media platforms and human rights websites.

I found in late 2018 that lawyers with whom I had previously spoken were now declining to talk about the detained journalists they represent. At least two told CPJ they could not speak for fear of retaliation from the government.

Despite attempts by China to censor and silence the press, journalists continue to report on critical social issues–even if it means they risk arrest. And CPJ continues to investigate and publicize their cases.

*Prior to joining CPJ, Hsu interned at Human Rights Watch, Center for Arms Control and Nonproliferation, and the Atlantic Council. Hsu obtained her master’s degree in international affairs from American University. She speaks Mandarin and French and lives in Taipei.

The post How Many Journalists are Jailed in China? Censorship Means We Don’t Know appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Iris Hsu* is China correspondent for the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ)

The post How Many Journalists are Jailed in China? Censorship Means We Don’t Know appeared first on Inter Press Service.