Africa - INTER PRESS SERVICE

Delivering humanitarian assistance in the form of cash sounds great: recipients get to choose exactly how to spend their money and aid organizations can respond faster and better track their giving. But in Nepal, more than two months after a major earthquake killed more than 150 people and destroyed or damaged over 60,000 homes, what’s […]

As hunger and food insecurity deepen, Africa is confronting an unprecedented food crisis. Estimates show that nearly 282 million people on the continent, or 20 percent of the population, are undernourished. Numerous challenges across the African continent threaten the race to achieve food security; research and innovative strategies are urgently needed to transform current systems […]

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By Kristalina Georgieva
WASHINGTON DC, Jan 16 2024 (IPS)

We are on the brink of a technological revolution that could jumpstart productivity, boost global growth and raise incomes around the world. Yet it could also replace jobs and deepen inequality.

The rapid advance of artificial intelligence has captivated the world, causing both excitement and alarm, and raising important questions about its potential impact on the global economy.

The net effect is difficult to foresee, as AI will ripple through economies in complex ways. What we can say with some confidence is that we will need to come up with a set of policies to safely leverage the vast potential of AI for the benefit of humanity.

Reshaping the Nature of Work

In a new analysis, IMF staff examine the potential impact of AI on the global labor market. Many studies have predicted the likelihood that jobs will be replaced by AI. Yet we know that in many cases AI is likely to complement human work. The IMF analysis captures both these forces.

Kristalina Georgieva

The findings are striking: almost 40 percent of global employment is exposed to AI. Historically, automation and information technology have tended to affect routine tasks, but one of the things that sets AI apart is its ability to impact high-skilled jobs. As a result, advanced economies face greater risks from AI—but also more opportunities to leverage its benefits—compared with emerging market and developing economies.

In advanced economies, about 60 percent of jobs may be impacted by AI. Roughly half the exposed jobs may benefit from AI integration, enhancing productivity. For the other half, AI applications may execute key tasks currently performed by humans, which could lower labor demand, leading to lower wages and reduced hiring. In the most extreme cases, some of these jobs may disappear.

In emerging markets and low-income countries, by contrast, AI exposure is expected to be 40 percent and 26 percent, respectively. These findings suggest emerging market and developing economies face fewer immediate disruptions from AI.

At the same time, many of these countries don’t have the infrastructure or skilled workforces to harness the benefits of AI, raising the risk that over time the technology could worsen inequality among nations.

AI could also affect income and wealth inequality within countries. We may see polarization within income brackets, with workers who can harness AI seeing an increase in their productivity and wages—and those who cannot falling behind.

Research shows that AI can help less experienced workers enhance their productivity more quickly. Younger workers may find it easier to exploit opportunities, while older workers could struggle to adapt.

The effect on labor income will largely depend on the extent to which AI will complement high-income workers. If AI significantly complements higher-income workers, it may lead to a disproportionate increase in their labor income. Moreover, gains in productivity from firms that adopt AI will likely boost capital returns, which may also favor high earners. Both of these phenomena could exacerbate inequality.

In most scenarios, AI will likely worsen overall inequality, a troubling trend that policymakers must proactively address to prevent the technology from further stoking social tensions. It is crucial for countries to establish comprehensive social safety nets and offer retraining programs for vulnerable workers. In doing so, we can make the AI transition more inclusive, protecting livelihoods and curbing inequality.

An Inclusive AI-Driven World

AI is being integrated into businesses around the world at remarkable speed, underscoring the need for policymakers to act. To help countries craft the right policies, the IMF has developed an AI Preparedness Index that measures readiness in areas such as digital infrastructure, human-capital and labor-market policies, innovation and economic integration, and regulation and ethics.

The human-capital and labor-market policies component, for example, evaluates elements such as years of schooling and job-market mobility, as well as the proportion of the population covered by social safety nets. The regulation and ethics component assesses the adaptability to digital business models of a country’s legal framework and the presence of strong governance for effective enforcement.

Using the index, IMF staff assessed the readiness of 125 countries. The findings reveal that wealthier economies, including advanced and some emerging market economies, tend to be better equipped for AI adoption than low-income countries, though there is considerable variation across countries.

Singapore, the United States and Denmark posted the highest scores on the index, based on their strong results in all four categories tracked.

Guided by the insights from the AI Preparedness Index, advanced economies should prioritize AI innovation and integration while developing robust regulatory frameworks. This approach will cultivate a safe and responsible AI environment, helping maintain public trust.

For emerging market and developing economies, the priority should be laying a strong foundation through investments in digital infrastructure and a digitally competent workforce.

The AI era is upon us, and it is still within our power to ensure it brings prosperity for all.

Kristalina Georgieva is a Bulgarian economist serving as the 12th managing director of the International Monetary Fund, since 2019.

— For more on artificial intelligence and the economy, see the December issue of Finance & Development, the IMF’s quarterly magazine.

IPS UN Bureau

 

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Gender inclusion remains an important non-technological innovative measure enhancing export performance. Women in developing countries such as Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka have long been involved in the agriculture and textile sector. Credit: Obaidul Arif/IPS

By Quratulain Fatima
ISLAMABAD, Jan 15 2024 (IPS)

The World Economic Forum is hosting world leaders in Davos from January 15-19 2024. One of the key themes for the forum this year is “Creating Growth and Jobs for a New Era” with a focus on creating economic gender parity.

The World Economic Forum states that “The potential gains from closing economic gender gaps could unlock a “gender dividend” of $172 trillion for the global economy while closing the gender investment gap could add $3 trillion to assets under management in the US alone.”  World Trade Organization (WTO) estimates that eliminating gender discrimination would lead to a 40% increase in productivity.

The potential gains from closing economic gender gaps could unlock a “gender dividend” of $172 trillion for the global economy while closing the gender investment gap could add $3 trillion to assets under management in the US alone.”  The World Trade Organization estimates that eliminating gender discrimination would lead to a 40% increase in productivity

Trade has remained a significant contributor towards increasing the economic stature of countries. Historically the trade has been observed through the gender neutral lens by practitioners and researchers.

However, in recent times, trade and gender links have been explored and efforts have been made to strengthen by international organizations including the World Economic Forum, United Nations Conference on Trade and Development,  International Labor Organization (ILO), International Finance Corporation, and World Bank among others.

Trade openness has been shown to have a positive impact on employment, wages, and very importantly the overall export performance of the country. Several studies have shown that both technological and non-technological innovations improve a country’s export performance. Gender inclusion remains an important non-technological innovative measure enhancing export performance.

Women in developing countries such as Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka have long been involved in the agriculture and textile sector.

Recently women’s participation in the ICT and service industry has also gained momentum in developing countries. It is, however, important to note that South Asia remains second lowest at 63.4% out of eight regions at the gender parity index 2023. Although its position improved by 1.1 percent from the year 2022 attributed to rising scores in countries like Pakistan, India, and Bangladesh; there is much to be done.

Women entrepreneurs are a very small portion of the export profile for developing countries. In a country like the United States that remains Pakistan’s biggest trade partner in textiles and related goods share of women exporters from Pakistan is minimal.

Trade development authority in Pakistan and Trade promotion bodies in developing countries have focused on improving women entrepreneurs’ participation in international trade through training and resources.

However, women’s participation in the trade shows even in the traditionally established Textile and Apparel sector that provide major access to industry buyers in the USA remains negligible for countries like Pakistan, India, and Bangladesh; all of which are very well established and reputed in the USA market hence lowered entry barriers for women.

Less visibility of women entrepreneurs in the export sectors especially for developing countries tied to the fact that women and men have unequal access to education, productive resources, transport, networks, and other resources that impact economic activity.

This in turn affects women’s ability to capture trade-related opportunities. General trade barriers such as deficient infrastructure and tiresome regulatory and documentation requirements also impact women more than men.

Evidence also suggests that women entrepreneurs are concentrated in relatively less profitable sectors and even in profitable sectors they lag behind men-owned businesses.

Women-led businesses also lack resources to expand into international markets and when they do they have relatively smaller trade volumes and higher trade costs making businesses less able to sustain losses in the short term. This chain translates into limited mobility to trade and has been one of the reasons that woman-led businesses got impacted worse during post COVID-19 crisis.

Several steps can be taken at the domestic and international markets to help women entrepreneurs reach their maximum potential in exportable sectors in trade.

Gender provisions in the trade policy and trade agreements are one of the most important steps. The WTO Declaration on Trade and Women’s Economic 2017 endorsed by 127 countries is seen as important towards women’s economic participation in the economies and international trade.

Some regional and bilateral trade agreements like the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA), and USMCA (United States–Mexico–Canada Agreement) are now actively adding gender language and provisions. Canada has been a pioneer in including gender chapters in its trade agreements, such as the one with the European Union (CETA) and the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP).

These chapters typically address topics like equal access to economic opportunities, fair treatment in the workplace, and support for women entrepreneurs. These examples can be emulated widely in bilateral and multilateral trade agreements further translating into gender provisions in the trade policy at the local level.

Enhancing the role of women in export sectors where women’s presence is already established can be very helpful. In the case of Pakistan, Bangladesh, and India, women are involved in farming and livestock management.

Facilitations for easy access to training, credit, and improved participation opportunities in agricultural extension services can encourage women’s participation in international trade. Both financial institutions and the private sector should be engaged in this agenda. Private –Public partnerships to ensure investment in export-oriented sectors to strengthen women-led small and medium-sized businesses need prioritization.

Women who have access to technology are more likely to participate in international trade. Access to technology gives women the opportunity to sidestep issues of restriction of mobility and overcome cultural barriers while providing equal opportunities to connect with consumers and buyers of their businesses. Studies have shown that access to phones and the Internet has improved incomes and economic opportunities for women in Pakistan, India, Bolivia, Egypt, and Kenya among others.

Country trade missions at embassies and consulates abroad must ensure that women are included in awareness webinars/ seminars conducted by trade offices of their countries abroad. These trade offices are also central facilitation centers for connecting exporters with buyers and managing Trade show participation. Increasing participation in trade shows, trade delegations and awareness of the importing country regulations/requirements will enhance women exporters’ opportunities to find business abroad.

The world needs to pay more attention to women’s inclusion in trade. Trade has been shown not only to reduce the economy but also the gender gap. The world needs equitable and inclusive prosperity through gender-inclusive steps on the economic and social front alike.

 

Flight Lieutenant Quratulain Fatima is a policy practitioner currently working as a Trade Diplomat for Pakistan on the West Coast USA. She has extensively worked in rural and conflict-ridden areas of Pakistan with a focus on gender-inclusive development and conflict prevention. She is a 2018 Aspen New Voices Fellow. Follow her on Twitter, @moodee_q.

 

Members of the UN Security-Council gather for a meeting on the maintenance of international peace and security in the Red Sea. 10 January 2024. Credit: UN Photo/Manuel Elías

By Norman Solomon
SAN FRANCISCO, USA, Jan 15 2024 (IPS)

Have you heard the one about the U.S. government wanting a “rules-based international order”?

It’s grimly laughable, but the nation’s media outlets routinely take such claims seriously and credulously. Overall, the default assumption is that top officials in Washington are reluctant to go to war, and do so only as a last resort.

The framing was typical when the New York Times just printed this sentence at the top of the front page: “The United States and a handful of its allies on Thursday carried out military strikes against more than a dozen targets in Yemen controlled by the Iranian-backed Houthi militia, U.S. officials said, in an expansion of the war in the Middle East that the Biden administration had sought to avoid for three months.”

So, from the outset, the coverage portrayed the U.S.-led attack as a reluctant action — taken after exploring all peaceful options had failed — rather than an aggressive act in violation of international law.

On Thursday, President Biden issued a statement that sounded righteous enough, saying “these strikes are in direct response to unprecedented Houthi attacks against international maritime vessels in the Red Sea.”

He did not mention that the Houthi attacks have been in response to Israel’s murderous siege of Gaza. In the words of CNN, they “could be intended to inflict economic pain on Israel’s allies in the hope they will pressure it to cease its bombardment of the enclave.”

In fact, as Common Dreams reported, Houthi forces “began launching missiles and drones toward Israel and attacking shipping traffic in the Red Sea in response to Israel’s Gaza onslaught.” And as Trita Parsi at the Quincy Institute pointed out, “the Houthis have declared that they will stop” attacking ships in the Red Sea “if Israel stops” its mass killing in Gaza.

But that would require genuine diplomacy — not the kind of solution that appeals to President Biden or Secretary of State Antony Blinken. The duo has been enmeshed for decades, with lofty rhetoric masking the tacit precept that might makes right. (The approach was implicit midway through 2002, when then-Senator Biden chaired the Senate Foreign Relations Committee’s hearings that promoted support for the U.S. to invade Iraq; at the time, Blinken was the committee’s chief of staff.)

Now, in charge of the State Department, Blinken is fond of touting the need for a “rules-based international order.” During a 2022 speech in Washington, he proclaimed the necessity “to manage relations between states, to prevent conflict, to uphold the rights of all people.” Two months ago, he declared that G7 nations were united for “a rules-based international order.”

But for more than three months, Blinken has provided a continuous stream of facile rhetoric to support the ongoing methodical killing of Palestinian civilians in Gaza. Days ago, behind a podium at the U.S. Embassy in Israel, he defended that country despite abundant evidence of genocidal warfare, claiming that “the charge of genocide is meritless.”

The Houthis are avowedly in solidarity with Palestinian people, while the U.S. government continues to massively arm the Israeli military that is massacring civilians and systematically destroying Gaza.

Blinken is so immersed in Orwellian messaging that — several weeks into the slaughter — he tweeted that the United States and its G7 partners “stand united in our condemnation of Russia’s war in Ukraine, in support of Israel’s right to defend itself in accordance with international law, and in maintaining a rules-based international order.”

There’s nothing unusual about extreme doublethink being foisted on the public by the people running U.S. foreign policy. What they perpetrate is a good fit for the description of doublethink in George Orwell’s novel 1984: “To know and not to know, to be conscious of complete truthfulness while telling carefully constructed lies, to hold simultaneously two opinions which cancelled out, knowing them to be contradictory and believing in both of them, to use logic against logic, to repudiate morality while laying claim to it . . .”

After news broke about the attack on Yemen, a number of Democrats and Republicans in the House quickly spoke up against Biden’s end-run around Congress, flagrantly violating the Constitution by going to war on his own say-so.

Some of the comments were laudably clear, but perhaps none more so than a statement by candidate Joe Biden on Jan. 6, 2020: “A president should never take this nation to war without the informed consent of the American people.”

Like that disposable platitude, all the Orwellian nonsense coming from the top of the U.S. government about seeking a “rules-based international order” is nothing more than a brazen PR scam.

The vast quantity of official smoke-blowing now underway cannot hide the reality that the United States government is the most powerful and dangerous outlaw nation in the world.

Norman Solomon is the national director of RootsAction.org and executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy. He is the author of many books including War Made Easy. His latest book, War Made Invisible: How America Hides the Human Toll of Its Military Machine, was published in 2023 by The New Press.

IPS UN Bureau

 

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Credit: Oxfam

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Jan 15 2024 (IPS)

The world’s rich are getting progressively richer while the world’s poor continue to be increasingly poorer.

In a new report released January 15, Oxfam says the wealth of the world’s five richest men has doubled since 2020 –even as five billion people were made poorer in a “decade of division.”

The study, published to coincide with the World Economic Forum in Davos, an annual gathering of mostly the world’s wealthiest and business elites, lists the top five billionaires: Elon Musk $245.5 billion, Bernard Arnault and family $191.3 billion, Jeff Bezos $167.4 billion, Larry Ellison $145.5 billion and Warren Buffett $119.2 billion— totaling about $869 billion in assets.

The fortunes of the five richest men have shot up by 114 percent since 2020 while the world’s poorest will not be eradicated for another 229 years, said Oxfam, a global organization that fights inequality to end poverty and injustice.

Oxfam predicts the world could have its first-ever trillionaire in just a decade while it would take more than two centuries to end poverty.

Asked about the status of women in a world of rising economic inequalities, Rebecca Riddell, policy lead for economic and racial justice at Oxfam America, told IPS: “Women pay the highest price for a broken global economy”.

Globally, she pointed out, men own US$105 trillion more wealth than women—equivalent to more than four times the size of the US economy—and women earn just 51 cents for every $1 made by men.

“Women are also especially harmed by the policies that fuel our inequality crisis, like tax breaks for the rich and cuts to public services,” said Riddell, one of the authors of the Oxfam report on inequality and global corporate power.

They carry out the vast majority of unpaid care work, which is vital to keeping our communities and economies afloat, and their labor is constantly undervalued in the workplace, she noted.

“We found it would take 1,200 years for women working in the health and social sector to earn what the average CEO at the biggest Fortune 100 companies makes in just one year,” declared Riddell.

Oxfam urges a new era of public action, including public services, corporate regulation, breaking up monopolies and enacting permanent wealth and excess profit taxes.

The study reveals that seven out of ten of the world’s biggest corporations have a billionaire as CEO or principal shareholder. These corporations are worth $10.2 trillion, equivalent to more than the combined GDPs of all countries in Africa and Latin America.

“We’re witnessing the beginnings of a decade of division, with billions of people shouldering the economic shockwaves of pandemic, inflation and war, while billionaires’ fortunes boom. This inequality is no accident; the billionaire class is ensuring corporations deliver more wealth to them at the expense of everyone else,” said Oxfam International interim Executive Director Amitabh Behar.

“Runaway corporate and monopoly power is an inequality-generating machine: through squeezing workers, dodging tax, privatizing the state, and spurring climate breakdown, corporations are funneling endless wealth to their ultra-rich owners. But they’re also funneling power, undermining our democracies and our rights. No corporation or individual should have this much power over our economies and our lives —to be clear, nobody should have a billion dollars,” he noted.

The study also singles out the following:

– Despite representing just 21 percent of the global population, rich countries in the Global North own 69 percent of global wealth and are home to 74 percent of the world’s billionaire wealth.
– Share ownership overwhelmingly benefits the richest. The top 1 percent own 43 percent of all global financial assets. They hold 48 percent of financial wealth in the Middle East, 50 percent in Asia and 47 percent in Europe.

Mirroring the fortunes of the super-rich, large firms are set to smash their annual profit records in 2023. 148 of the world’s biggest corporations together raked in $1.8 trillion in total net profits in the year to June 2023, a 52 percent jump compared to average net profits in 2018-2021.

Their windfall profits surged to nearly $700 billion. The report finds that for every $100 of profit made by 96 major corporations between July 2022 and June 2023, $82 was paid out to rich shareholders.

Bernard Arnault, the world’s second richest man who presides over luxury goods empire LVMH, has been fined by France‘s anti-trust body. He also owns France’s biggest media outlet, Les Échos, as well as Le Parisien.

Aliko Dangote, Africa’s richest person, holds a “near-monopoly” on cement in Nigeria. His empire’s expansion into oil has raised concerns about a new private monopoly.

Jeff Bezos’s fortune of $167.4 billion increased by $32.7 billion since the beginning of the decade. The US government has sued Amazon, the source of Bezos’ fortune, for wielding its “monopoly power” to hike prices, degrade service for shoppers and stifle competition.

“Monopolies harm innovation and crush workers and smaller businesses. The world hasn’t forgotten how pharma monopolies deprived millions of people of COVID-19 vaccines, creating a racist vaccine apartheid, while minting a new club of billionaires,” said Behar.

People worldwide are working harder and longer hours, often for poverty wages in precarious and unsafe jobs. The wages of nearly 800 million workers have failed to keep up with inflation and they have lost $1.5 trillion over the last two years, equivalent to nearly a month (25 days) of lost wages for each worker, according to Oxfam.

The report also shows how a “war on taxation” by corporations has seen the effective corporate tax rate fall by roughly a third in recent decades, while corporations have relentlessly privatized the public sector and segregated services like education and water.

“We have the evidence. We know the history. Public power can rein in runaway corporate power and inequality —shaping the market to be fairer and free from billionaire control. Governments must intervene to break up monopolies, empower workers, tax these massive corporate profits and, crucially, invest in a new era of public goods and services,” said Behar.

“Every corporation has a responsibility to act but very few are. Governments must step up. There is action that lawmakers can learn from, from US anti-monopoly government enforcers suing Amazon in a landmark case, to the European Commission wanting Google to break up its online advertising business, and Africa’s historic fight to reshape international tax rules.”

Oxfam is calling on governments to rapidly and radically reduce the gap between the super-rich and the rest of society by:

– Revitalizing the state. A dynamic and effective state is the best bulwark against extreme corporate power. Governments should ensure universal provision of healthcare and education, and explore publicly-delivered goods and public options in sectors from energy to transportation.
– Reining in corporate power, including by breaking up monopolies and democratizing patent rules. This also means legislating for living wages, capping CEO pay, and new taxes on the super-rich and corporations, including permanent wealth and excess profit taxes. Oxfam estimates that a wealth tax on the world’s millionaires and billionaires could generate $1.8 trillion a year.
– Reinventing business. Competitive and profitable businesses don’t have to be shackled by shareholder greed. Democratically-owned businesses better equalize the proceeds of business. If just 10 percent of US businesses were employee-owned, this could double the wealth share of the poorest half of the US population, including doubling the average wealth of Black households.

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

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By External Source
Jan 12 2024 (IPS-Partners)

 

 
Find the answer in this interview with Frédéric Castell, Senior Natural Resources Officer at FAO

 

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A moment of the march as it passes through Punjab. Led by women, the march was an unprecedented protest in Pakistan. Credit: Baloch Yakjehti Committee

By Karlos Zurutuza
ROME, Jan 12 2024 (IPS)

“We are the mothers, daughters, and sisters of the missing and murdered Baloch. We are thousands.” Mahrang Baloch, a 28-year-old doctor from Pakistan’s Balochistan province, is blunt when introducing herself and the rest of a group protesting in central Islamabad.

“We are asking for an end to enforced disappearances and extrajudicial killings. We also demand the elimination of private militias,” the young woman explains in a phone conversation with IPS.

Divided by the borders of Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan, Balochistan is the land of the Baloch, a nation of 15-20 million with a distinct language and culture. After the British withdrawal from India, they declared a state of their own in 1947, even before Pakistan did. Seven months later, however, Balochistan would be forcefully annexed by Islamabad

Baloch and the group arrived after a march that started in Balochistan last November. Nested in the country’s southeast and sharing borders with both Afghanistan and Iran, it’s the largest and most sparsely populated province in Pakistan, enduring the highest rates of illiteracy and infant mortality. It’s also the one most affected by violence.

Mahrang Baloch stresses that the trigger for the protest was the murder of a young Baloch man last November while he was in police custody. Following a two-week sit-in, the group decided to take the protest beyond the local province, embarking on a march to the Pakistani capital.

Clad in colourful traditional Baloch costumes and bearing portraits of their missing relatives, they received the warmth and support of tens of thousands along the way. However, the march was eventually blocked at the gates of Pakistan’s capital on December 20.

It was then that a police cordon permanently cut off their path on the outskirts of the city. The protesters refused to disband, so security forces responded with sticks, water jets and made hundreds of arrests.

Many women were dragged onto buses that took them back to Quetta, the provincial capital of Balochistan – 900 kilometres southwest of Islamabad. The rest set up a protest camp in front of the National Press Club, in downtown Islamabad.

After spending several hours in police custody, Baloch was eventually released. “We have carried the mutilated bodies of our loved ones. Several generations of us have seen much worse,” the young woman stresses.

She claims to be “mentally prepared” for the possibility of joining the long list of missing persons herself. “We have reached a point where neither forced disappearances nor murders can stop us,” adds the activist.

 

Mahrang Baloch during a speech in the centre of Islamabad. This young doctor has become a symbol for people who have been so retaliated against. Credit: Credit: Baloch Yakjehti Committee

 

Mutilated and in ditches

Divided by the borders of Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan, Balochistan is the land of the Baloch, a nation of 15-20 million with a distinct language and culture. After the British withdrawal from India, they declared a state of their own in 1947, even before Pakistan did. Seven months later, however, Balochistan would be forcefully annexed by Islamabad.

Violence has been rife ever since.

In a report released on January 2023, Human Rights Watch accused Pakistani security forces of committing “serious human rights violations which include arbitrary arrests and extrajudicial executions.”

In November 2021, Amnesty International published a report, titled “Living Ghosts,” calling on Islamabad “to end policies of enforced disappearances as well as secret and arbitrary detentions.”

Baloch human rights organization Voice for Baloch Missing Persons (VBMP) points to more than 7,000 missing people in the last two decades.

It was exactly for that reason that Mahrang Baloch was first imprisoned at 13, when she was protesting the disappearance of her father, Gaffar Lango, in 2006 in Quetta. After his release, Lango would be kidnapped again three years later. His body was found savagely mutilated in a ditch in 2011.

Next on the list was her brother Nasir, who was abducted in 2018. “That was a turning point for me. It was clear that no one was safe, that it could happen to anyone,” recalls the activist.

Mahrang Baloch become one of the drivers of change that the traditionally conservative Baloch society is undergoing through civil platforms such as the Baluche Unity Committee (BYC). They launched this protest.

From a less visible position, Saeeda Baloch, a 45-year-old Baloch woman who works for an NGO she prefers not to disclose, has devoted herself to raising funds to offer food and shelter to the participants. Her reasons are powerful.

“My husband was shot to death in 2011 when he was working collecting information about the disappeared and the killed. Moreover, his brother and my nephew have been missing since 2021,” Baloch explains to IPS by phone from Quetta.

He says the initiative has been highly successful “despite the violence they had to face in Islamabad.”

“Women have taken to the streets, many of them spending sub-zero nights with their babies. I can’t think of a more eloquent image of the determination of our people,” says the activist.

 

The group arrives at the entrance of Islamabad. The march was blocked on the outskirts of Pakistan’s capital. Credit: Baloch Yakjehti Committee

 

Solidarity

It was not the first time that Baloch men and women marched to the capital of Pakistan to protest over enforced disappearances. In October 2013, an initiative that started in the permanent protest camp of Quetta turned into a foot march to Islamabad.

It was led by a 72-year-old man known as Mama Qadeer. His son’s body was recovered 800 kilometres from Quetta, where he had been kidnapped. He had two gunshot wounds to the chest and one to the head, cigarette burns on his back, a broken hand, and torture marks all over his body.

The figures of the so-called Great March for the Disappeared were as impressive as they were terrifying: 2,800 kilometres in 106 days during which 103 new unidentified bodies appeared in three mass graves.

“What differentiates both protests is the great participation of women in the last one and, above all, its leadership,” Kiyya Baloch, a Norway-based journalist and analyst of the Baloch issue, explains to IPS by phone.

“This last march has already become a movement. Other than gathering great support in Balochistan, the Baloch who live in the province of Punjab, historically more silent, have also mobilized for the first time,” the expert emphasises.

The expert also highlights the support received from sectors of Pakistan’s also neglected Pashtun minority, as well as from international personalities including activists Malala Yousafzai and Gretha Thunberg and the writer Mohamed Hanif.

The renowned British-Pakistani novelist made public that he had returned an award he had received in 2018. “I cannot accept this recognition from a State that kidnaps and tortures its Baloch citizens,” Hanif posted on his X account (formerly Twitter).

So far, the Pakistani government has turned a deaf ear.

In a televised appearance in January, Pakistani Prime Minister Anwar-ul-Haq Kakar referred to the protesters as “relatives of the terrorists” before adding that “anyone who supports the protest or writes about it should join the guerrilla.”

 

A protester makes graffiti in a Baloch town. The participants have had to reconcile activism and family for weeks. Credit: Baloch Yakjehti Committee

 

“Enemies of humanity”

At 80 years old, Makah Marri set foot in the capital of Pakistan for the first time in her life in the heat of the protest. She does not even speak Urdu, the country’s national language, but she is a well-known face at the numerous protests for the missing held in Balochistan.

She misses her son, Shahnawaz Marri. She has not heard from him since he was taken away in 2012. “What the relatives of the disappeared suffer is daily mental torture,” Marri recalls over the phone to IPS from Islamabad.

The images of the old woman, lifting the photo of her son above her head or being treated on the floor after fainting, have gone viral on social media. Today, she takes advantage of the conversation with the press to ask the rest of the world for “attention and support” for their cause.

The “enemies of humanity,” she emphasizes, not only took away her son but also the father of her grandchildren.

 

A view of the International Court of Justice where South Africa has launched a case accusing Israel of genocide in Gaza. Credit: UN Photo/ICJ-CIJ/Frank van Beek. Courtesy of the ICJ.

By Cecilia Russell
JOHANNESBURG, Jan 12 2024 (IPS)

Israel disputed both South Africa’s jurisdiction and the provisional measures that it demanded the International Court of Justice impose on the State of Israel to prevent genocide.

Israel’s co-agent, Tal Becker, said in his opening address that Jewish people’s experience of the Holocaust meant that it was among “among the first states to ratify the Genocide Convention, without reservation, and to incorporate its provisions in its domestic legislation. For some, the promise of ‘never again for all people’ is a slogan. For Israel, it is the highest moral obligation.”

He then accused the South African government of bringing a fundamentally flawed case, which would in effect deny the country’s right to defend itself.

“The applicant has now sought to invoke this term (genocide) in the context of Israel’s conduct in a war it did not start and did not want. A war in which Israel is defending itself against Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and other terrorist organizations whose brutality knows no bounds.”

Giving details of the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, which he said was “the largest calculated mass murder of Jews in a single day since the Holocaust,” he accused South Africa of trying to “weaponize the term genocide against Israel,” delegitimizing the country and its right to defend itself.

“What proceeded under the cover of thousands of rockets fired indiscriminately into Israel? Was the wholesale massacre, mutilation, rape, and abduction of as many citizens as the terrorists could find before Israel’s forces repelled them openly, displaying elation. They tortured children in front of parents and parents in front of children. Burned people, including infants alive, systematically raped and mutilated scores of women, men, and children. All told, some 1200 people were butchered that day, more than 5500 names, and some 240 hostages abducted, including infants, entire families, persons with disabilities, and Holocaust survivors, some of whom have since been executed, many of whom have been tortured, sexually abused, and stabbed in captivity.”

Becker said the applicant is essentially asking the court to substitute the “lens of armed conflict between a state and a lawless terrorist organization with the lens of a so-called genocide of a state against a civilian population” and that Israel’s action against Hamas was legitimate defense of the country.

Members of the Delegation of Israel Credit: UN Photo/ICJ-CIJ/Frank van Beek. Courtesy of the ICJ.

Professor Malcolm Shaw argued that the applicants right to approach the court was premature as there was no dispute between the countries.

He argued that Israel had responded to the applicant on December 27, 2023, “in good faith,” and had attempted to hand deliver notes, but the South African Department of International Relations rejected them because it was a public holiday and instructed them to try again on January 2, 2024.

However, before the notes could be delivered, South Africa launched the court application on December 29, 2023.

Shaw also said statements relied on by South Africa to show intent to commit genocide were not grounded in the policy frameworks of Israel.

He argued that the Prime Minister, during ministerial committees, issued directives “time and again” on methods to prevent a humanitarian disaster, which included looking at solutions to ensure a supply of water, food, and medicine and the construction of field hospitals.

“The remarks or actions of a soldier do not and cannot reflect policy,” Shaw told the court, saying it’s response included statements from, for example, the Minister of Defense on October 29, which made it clear that the country was fighting Hamas and not the people of Gaza, and from the President declaring that the country was operating militarily according to international law.

These decisions show that Israel lacked “genocidal intent” and said its actions were contrary to the South African argument inherent in the rights of any state to defend itself, which is “embedded in customary international law and enshrined in the UN Charter.”

Galit Raguan, Director of the International Justice Division, Ministry of Justice of the State of Israel, told the court that it was “astounding that in yesterday’s hearing, Hamas was mentioned only in passing and only in reference to the October 7 massacre in Israel. Listening to the presentation by the applicant, it was as if Israel were operating in Gaza against no armed adversary. But the same Hamas that carried out the October 7 attacks in Israel is the governing authority in Gaza. And the same Hamas has built a military strategy founded on embedding its assets and operatives among the civilian population.”

She said urban warfare will always result in tragic deaths, harm, and damage.

Using the example of the blast at al-Ahli Arab Hospital, which was blamed on the Israeli Defense Force (IDF), it was in fact independently confirmed as the result of a failed launch from within Gaza.

“South Africa does not consider the sheer extent to which Hamas uses ostensibly civilian structures for military purposes. Houses, schools, mosques, facilities, and shelters are all abused for military purposes by Hamas, including as rocket launching sites. Hundreds of kilometers of tunnels dug by Hamas under populated areas in Gaza often cause structures above to collapse,” she told the court.

Raguan also disputed South Africa’s version of Israel’s efforts to mitigate civilian harm.

“Here, the applicant tells not just a partial story but a false one. For example, the application presents Israel’s call to civilians to evacuate areas of intensive hostilities ‘as an act calculated to bring about its physical destruction.’ This is a particularly egregious allegation that is completely disconnected from the governing legal framework of international humanitarian law.”

Instead of 24 hours, as South Africa alleges, “the IDF urged civilians to evacuate to southern Gaza for over three weeks before it started its ground operation. Three weeks that provided Hamas with advanced knowledge of where and when the IDF would be operating.”

Raguan asked the court: “Would Israel work continuously with international organizations and states, even reaching out to them on its own initiative, to find solutions to these challenges if it were seeking to destroy the population? Israel’s efforts to mitigate the ravages of this war on civilians are the very opposite of the intent to destroy them.”

Dr Omri Sender elaborated on the humanitarian efforts, saying that more aid was reaching Gaza than before the war.

“The accurate average number for trucks specifically carrying food is 70 trucks a day before the war and 109 trucks a day over the last two weeks… Access to water has also been a priority. As with food supplies, there is no restriction on the amount of water that may enter Gaza. Israel continues to supply its own water to Gaza through two pipelines.”

Christopher Staker, a British barrister representing Israel, questioned whether “provisional measures require a state to refrain from exercising a plausible right to defend itself.”

The court, he argued, needed to take into account that Hamas was considered a terrorist organization by Israel and other countries, and secondly, it committed a large-scale terrorist attack on Israeli territory, so the country had a right to defend itself. The country was also taking steps to alleviate the humanitarian situation.

Staker also argued that the provisional measures would not constrain Hamas.

“This would deprive Israel of the ability to contend with this security threat against it. More rockets could be fired into its territory, more of its citizens could be taken hostage, raped, and tortured, and further atrocities could be conducted from across the Gaza border.”

The court’s president, Judge Joan Donoghue, closed proceedings and said the decision of the court would be communicated as soon as possible.

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

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Excerpt:

On day two at the International Court of Justice, Israel replies to South African arguments that the country is in contravention of the Genocide Convention.

Surviving the flood at Ahoada in Rivers state Nigeria. Credit: Wikicommons

By Omer Javed and Dan Beeton
WASHINGTON DC, Jan 12 2024 (IPS)

The world faces the existential threat of a climate change crisis, and it is becoming increasingly clear that the outcome of the latest UN climate summit, COP28 — hosted as it was by the CEO of one of the world’s largest oil companies, and filled with a record number of fossil fuel lobbyists — is not going to do much to change that.

Even calls to “phase-out” fossil fuels were met with foot-dragging from the COP28 president and Saudi Arabian delegates. Meanwhile, highlighting the gravity of the challenge at hand, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) pointed out that the last decade (2011–2020) was the warmest on record. Along with the COVID pandemic, this likely contributed to an increase in absolute poverty over the same period.

A key question that COP28 was supposed to tackle is how low- and middle-income countries will be able to pay for climate crisis response and adaptation. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has been thrust into a key role in this regard, but it should not escape criticism for its own climate hypocrisy.

For the Fund to truly begin to join the fight against the climate crisis, it must first end its pointless, unfair, and damaging surcharge policy. The Biden administration could ensure that the Fund instead plays a crucial role in responding to climate challenges by supporting a major new issuance of IMF reserve assets.

Currently, the IMF’s solution is to offer more debt to already severely debt-burdened countries. An October paper from the United Nations Development Programme Global Policy Network noted: “At least 54 developing economies are suffering from severe debt problems,” of which 28 are among “the world’s top-50 most climate vulnerable countries.”

And more than 70 percent of climate finance for these countries has been in the form of loans, as a recent letter from 141 civil society groups points out.

Moreover, a Development Finance International-led report notes the lopsided spending priorities being forced on developing countries, many of which are highly vulnerable to climate change. Among these, “debt service is 12.5 times higher than the amount spent on climate adaptation,” a number projected to “rise to 13.2 times” in the next year.

Contributions to the “loss and damage” climate fund have also been far from satisfactory. Reports note that the US, the EU, and other rich countries have failed to meet their pledges to provide $100 billion per year.

Meanwhile, high-level UN officials estimate that these countries will actually need to spend about $1 trillion per year on climate response by 2025, and about $2.4 trillion per year by 2030.

These countries face debt distress partly because the IMF demands they follow overly broad austerity policies as conditions to receive the loans. This is an avoidable problem, considering that the IMF possesses a ready and appropriate alternative: Special Drawing Rights (SDRs), a reserve asset intended to be issued during times of crisis.

The Fund last allocated $650 billion worth of SDRs in August 2021, in response to the COVID pandemic. But now even countries battered by the climate crisis, such as Pakistan, a third of which was flooded in 2022, are being pushed to take on more debt while the US Treasury Department refuses to green-light a new major SDRs issuance.

This points to the root of the problem: the governance structures of the IMF and World Bank. The US by itself has a veto over decisions, and in practice can control most of what the IMF does, because other high-income countries — mostly in Europe — almost always line up with the United States, giving high-income countries 60 percent of voting power, thereby leaving most of the world without a voice at the IMF.

Critics point out that most of the 2021 SDRs went to rich countries, since they provided the most to the IMF’s resources (their membership quotas); while efforts to rechannel those SDRs have also been wanting both in terms of speed and quantity.

Worse, the IMF’s rechanneling mechanisms turn the SDRs — an international reserve asset that countries receive without any debt or conditions attached — into loans, with conditions attached.

The IMF is contributing to the global debt crisis in other ways. It continues to levy surcharges, essentially, “junk fees” added onto its non-concessional lending. Writing for Eurodad, Daniel Munevar highlighted how climate crisis-ravaged Pakistan faced surcharges of $122 million in 2023, and another $69 million in 2024.

A country that faced catastrophic flooding in 2022, that is one of the most vulnerable to climate change, and that was simultaneously facing possible default, should not be forced to pay surcharges. Moreover, many countries in similar circumstances, such as Armenia, Jordan, and even war-torn Ukraine, also face surcharges.

A recent CEPR report noted, “The IMF will charge over $2 billion per year in surcharges through 2025,” which is unnecessary and counterproductive, given the already constrained fiscal space of developing countries.

Time is quickly running out. The IMF must be brought into the twenty-first century if it is to play a constructive role in ending the climate crisis. The IMF should end its punitive, unnecessary, and counterproductive surcharge policy. And there must be a new major allocation of SDRs to enable developing countries to better deal with debt distress and meet their goals for climate-resilient spending.

This will require leadership by President Biden, since the US is the largest contributor to IMF resources and has the greatest say in IMF decisions. The COP meetings could even be used for timing a yearly release of climate-related SDR allocations to highly climate-vulnerable countries, as suggested under Barbados’s “Bridgetown Initiative.”

These steps would at least show that the Fund is addressing the climate crisis with the leadership and seriousness required.

Omer Javed holds a PhD in Economics from the University of Barcelona, and previously worked at the International Monetary Fund. His contact on ‘X’ (formerly ‘Twitter’) is @omerjaved7.

Dan Beeton is the International Communications Director for the Center for Economic and Policy Research (cepr.net) in Washington, DC. He Tweets at @Dan_Beeton.

IPS UN Bureau

 

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Blinne Ni Ghralaigh KC makes her arguments as the Israeli legal team listen intently. Credit: Cecilia Russell/IPS

By Cecilia Russell
JOHANNESBurg, Jan 11 2024 (IPS)

Far from the mayhem, destruction, and humanitarian crisis in Gaza, the South African government argued in the International Court of Justice in the Hague that it had an obligation and a right to bring a case to halt a genocide by the Israeli government and its military.

The top legal team, composed of both South African and international human rights lawyers, spent over two and a half hours arguing that it had an obligation as a signatory to the Genocide Convention to bring this case and that the court had an obligation to accede to the provisional measures included in the application, which include an immediate suspension of its military operations against Gaza and the prevention of acts of genocide against Palestinian people.

Professor Vaughan Lowe KC summarized the arguments heard throughout the day succinctly, saying:

South African Justice Minister Ronald Lamola and Vusi Madonsela, Ambassador to the Netherlands, both wearing South African colors, with the legal team at the International Court of Justice in the Hague. Credit: Chrispin Phiri/SA Ministry Justice and Correctional Services

“South Africa believes that the publicly available evidence of the scale of the destruction resulting from the bombardment of Gaza and the deliberate restriction of food, water, medicines, or electricity available to the population of Gaza demonstrates that the Government of Israel, not Jewish people or Israeli citizens, the government of Israel, and its military are intent on destroying the Palestinians in Gaza as a group and are doing nothing to prevent or punish the actions of others who support that aim.

“And I repeat, the point is not simply that Israel is acting disproportionately. The point is that the prohibition on genocide is an absolute, peremptory rule of law. Nothing can ever justify genocide,” he told the court.

“This is not a moment for the court to sit back and be silent.”

The preceding arguments included the reasons the court should act—and act urgently.

Blinne Ni Ghralaigh KC argued that if the bombardment continued, there would be irreparable harm to the Palestinian people, where entire multigenerational families would be obliterated.

She referred to what she termed a “terrible new acronym” that emerged from the Israeli action.

“WCNSF—wounded child, no surviving family.”

The first of two photos shared during proceedings. A big whiteboard at a hospital in northern Gaza, one of the hospitals targeted during the siege. The whiteboard is wiped clean as it is no longer possible to do surgical cases. Credit: Cecilia Russell/IPS

The second is the same whiteboard shattered after an Israeli strike on November 21, 2023. The author of the words, Dr Mahmoud Abu Jayla, and two of his colleagues were killed in an Israeli strike. Credit: Cecilia Russell/IPS

Ghralaigh argued there was no merit in the argument of Israel that it was not responsible for the humanitarian crisis; she told the court that humanitarian workers stretching as far back as the Killing Fields of Cambodia had not seen a humanitarian crisis so utterly unprecedented that they had “not the words to describe it.”

She also accused the international community of erring in their duty to prevent genocide.

“Now, notwithstanding the genocide conventions and recognition of the need to rid the world of the odious scourge of genocide, the international community has repeatedly failed. It failed the people of Rwanda. It had failed the Bosnian people and the Rohingya, prompting this court to take action,” Ghralaigh argued, saying it failed again by ignoring the early warnings and the grave risk of genocide to the Palestinian people.

“The international community continues to fail the Palestinian people, despite the overt, dehumanizing genocidal rhetoric by Israeli government and military officials, matched by the Israeli army’s actions on the ground—despite the horror of the genocide against the Palestinian people being live streamed from Gaza to our mobile phones, computers, and television screens—the first genocide in history where its victims are broadcasting their own destruction in real time.”

Professor Max Du Plessis argued that South Africa had jurisdiction to bring this matter to court. Quoting the court’s findings in the case filed by The Gambia against Myanmar in 2019, he said: “All the States’ parties to the Genocide Convention have a common interest in ensuring that acts of genocide are prevented.”

This court action should not have come as a surprise. Professor John Dugard explained that the South African application followed a long series of diplomatic efforts to express concern about the Israeli action in Palestine.

“South Africa has a long history of close relations with Israel. For this reason, it did not bring the dispute immediately to the attention of the court. It was harder as Israel responded to the terrible atrocities committed against his people on the 7th of October with an attack on Gaza that resulted in the indiscriminate killing of innocent Palestinian civilians, most of whom were women and children,” Dugard told the court. “The South African government repeatedly voiced its concerns in the Security Council and in public statements that Israel’s actions had become genocidal.”

Adila Hassim, an attorney, gave a detailed account of the effects of the bombardment on the civilian population when she informed the court that Israeli forces had killed 23,210 Palestinians during the continuous attacks over the previous three months, with 70% of them thought to be women and children. Some 7,000 Palestinians are still missing, presumed dead under the rubble.

“Palestinians in Gaza are subjected to relentless bombing, wherever they go. They are killed in their homes, in places where they seek shelter, in hospitals, in schools, in mosques, in churches, and as they try to find food and water for their families. They have been killed if they failed to evacuate in the places to which they have fled, and even while they attempted to flee along Israeli-declared safe routes,” Hassim said.

Showing photographs of mass graves, she told the court: “More than 1,800 Palestinian families in Gaza have lost multiple family members, and hundreds of multi-generational families have been wiped out with no remaining survivors. Mothers, fathers, children, siblings, grandparents, aunts, and cousins are often all killed together. This killing is nothing short of the destruction of Palestinian life. It is inflicted deliberately. No one is spared. Not even newborn babies.”

Advocate Tembeka Ngcukaitobi said the genocidal rhetoric was nurtured at the highest level of the state.

“There is an extraordinary feature in this case that Israel’s political leaders, military commanders, and persons holding official positions have systematically and in explicit terms declared their genocidal intent,” he said, referring to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s public address when he declared war on Gaza, where he warned of an unprecedented price to be paid by the enemy.

On October 28, Ngcukayitobi said Netanyahu referred to the people of Gaza as the Amalekites, a biblical reference to the retaliatory destruction of a people, men and women, children and infants with their cattle and sheep, camels, and donkeys, considered the enemies of the Israelites.

The language of genocide had not stopped there, as the Palestinian people were often referred to as “human animals.”

Other high-level politicians also made comments that confirmed the country’s genocide intent.

Israel’s Energy and Infrastructure Minister, MK Israel Katz, called for the denial of water and fuel: “As this is what will happen to a people of children: kill us and slaughter us.”

Ngcukaitobi said there was no ambiguity. “It means to create conditions of death for the Palestinian people in Gaza to die a slow death because of starvation and dehydration, or to die quickly because of a bomb attack or snipers.”

South African Justice Minister Ronald Lamola told the court this was brought in the spirit of Nelson Mandela’s humanity, and the country unequivocally condemned the targeting of civilians by Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups in the taking of hostages on October 7, 2023.

Vusi Madonsela, SA Ambassador to the Netherlands, read the provisional measures that the South African government requests the court consider, including responding to the application as a matter of urgency. Among others, these include:

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

Israel will respond on Friday, January 12, 2024.

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

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The International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague, the Netherlands.

By Diana Buttu
TORONTO, Canada, Jan 11 2024 (IPS)

The Institute for Middle East Understanding (IMEU) published the following Q&A with human rights attorney and political analyst Diana Buttu on South Africa’s genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice ICJ). The court is scheduled to hold hearings on the petition January 11-12.

She is a former advisor to Palestinian Authority President and Palestine Liberation Organization Chairman Mahmoud Abbas.

Question: What is the International Court of Justice (ICJ) and how does it differ from the International Criminal Court (ICC)?

Diana Buttu: The International Court of Justice is part of the United Nations system and deals with legal disputes between states. The International Criminal Court, which Israel does not recognize the jurisdiction of, deals with claims against individuals. Israel signed onto the UN Genocide Convention, as did South Africa. Therefore, the ICJ has the jurisdiction to deal with the petition being brought by South Africa.

Q: Why is South Africa filing the petition before the ICJ? What is being requested?

DB: Any country that is a signatory to the Genocide Convention can file a petition to the ICJ. They do not need to be directly affected. That said, it is very powerful that South Africa, a country that lived under a racist apartheid regime, is making a claim against the apartheid regime of Israel.

Diana Buttu

South Africa is seeking an expedited hearing and is hoping that the ICJ will issue a ruling calling upon Israel to immediately halt all military attacks and allow food and other humanitarian supplies to enter Gaza. To that end, South Africa has requested that the ICJ should order Israel “to cease killing and causing serious mental and bodily harm to Palestinian people in Gaza, to cease the deliberate infliction of conditions of life calculated to bring about their physical destruction as a group, to prevent and punish direct and public incitement to genocide, and to rescind related policies and practices, including regarding the restriction on aid and the issuing of evacuation directives.”

Q: What exactly is South Africa alleging?

DB: South Africa alleges that Israel is committing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza, where 2.3 million Palestinians, half of them children, are trapped with nowhere to escape to. Since October 7, Israel has been carrying out a massive military assault by land, air and sea, on Gaza, which is one of the most densely populated places in the world. Israel’s assault is one of the most destructive and deadly bombing campaigns in history, killing more than 1 percent of the population of Gaza up to this point. At the same time, Israel has cut off food, water, and medical supplies, as part of a deliberate attempt to starve the population.

Israel has also driven nearly the entire population out of their homes in an act of ethnic cleansing, particularly in the north of Gaza. So far, Israel has destroyed or damaged 355,000 homes (approximately 60% of all homes in Gaza); displaced 1.9 million Palestinians (85% of the total population) and has left all of Gaza without food, clean water or sanitation.

Israel’s military has also targeted hospitals and other health care facilities in Gaza as part of its ethnic cleansing campaign. According to South Africa’s petition, “Israel has bombed, shelled and besieged Gaza’s hospitals, with only 13 out of 36 hospitals partially functional, and no fully functioning hospital left in North Gaza. Contagious and epidemic diseases are rife amongst the displaced Palestinian population, with experts warning of the risk of meningitis, cholera and other outbreaks. The entire population in Gaza is at imminent risk of famine…”

According to South Africa’s petition, Israel is:

1. Engaged in the mass killing of Palestinians in Gaza, a large proportion of them women and children —who are estimated to account for around 70% of the more than 21,110 fatalities. According to reports, Israeli soldiers have also summarily executed civilians;

2. Deliberately causing starvation and dehydration amongst Palestinians in Gaza by cutting of supplies of food, water, and electricity, and the destruction of bakeries, mills, agricultural lands and other methods of food production and sustenance;

3. Causing serious mental and bodily harm to Palestinians in Gaza, including through maiming, psychological trauma, and inhuman and degrading treatment;

4. Forcibly displacing – ethnic cleansing – around 85% of Palestinians in Gaza so far — including children, the elderly, and the sick and wounded — as well as causing the large scale destruction of Palestinian homes, cities, towns, refugee camps, and entire regions in Gaza, precluding the return of a significant proportion of Palestinians to their homes;

5. Destroying Palestinian life and society in Gaza, through the destruction of Gaza’s universities, schools, cultural centers, courts, public buildings and records, libraries, churches, mosques, roads, infrastructure, utilities and other facilities necessary to the sustained life of Palestinians in Gaza as a group, alongside the killing of entire family groups — erasing entire oral histories in Gaza — and the killing of prominent and distinguished members of society;

6. Imposing measures intended to prevent Palestinian births in Gaza, through the reproductive violence inflicted on Palestinian women, newborn babies, infants, and children;

7. Failing to provide for or to ensure the provision for the medical needs of Palestinians in Gaza, including those medical needs created by other genocidal acts causing serious bodily harm, including through directly attacking hospitals, ambulances and other healthcare facilities in Gaza, killing doctors, medics and nurses, including the most qualified medics in Gaza, and destroying and disabling Gaza’s medical system; and

8. Failing to provide and restricting the provision of adequate shelter, clothes, hygiene or sanitation to Palestinians in Gaza, including the 1.9 million internally displaced people, compelled by Israel’s actions to live in dangerous situations of squalor, alongside the routine targeting and destruction of places of shelter and the killing and wounding of those seeking safety, including women, children, the disabled and the elderly.

Q: What is necessary to establish that genocide is taking place?

DB: According to the UN’s Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:

(a) Killing members of the group;
(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

Based on this, two elements are required: the intent to destroy in whole or in part a national, ethnical, racial or religious group and the act of doing so. In the petition, South Africa lays out both elements by highlighting numerous statements demonstrating the intent to commit genocide on the part of senior Israeli officials, including Prime Minister Netanyahu, the President of Israel, the Minister of Defense, the National Security Minister, the Minister of Energy and Infrastructure, the Minister of Finance, the Minister of Heritage, the Minister of Agriculture and the Deputy Speaker of the Knesset. The petition also highlights the alarm bells raised by a number of UN experts warning that Palestinians are at risk of genocide. It also highlights the many acts that Israel has carried out since October 7 to meet those elements above.

Q: What will happen if the ICJ finds that Israel is committing genocide?

DB: At this stage, what is being sought is a provisional order asking that Israel cease its attacks against Palestinians in Gaza. For a provisional order, it is not necessary to prove that Israel is committing genocide; but rather that the acts complained of fall within the Genocide Convention.

That said, if after hearing the full case the court finds that Israel is committing genocide, this obligates not only Israel but also countries around the world to act to stop genocide. First, according to the ICJ, every UN member state must undertake to comply with a decision of the ICJ in any case to which it is a party. If they do not comply, the other party may go to the UN Security Council which may take measures to give effect to the judgment.

Beyond that, however, the crime of genocide does not just bind the party committing genocide but binds third party states too, whether or not they have ratified the Genocide Convention. What this means is that ALL states are bound and therefore must take measures to stop the genocide as well as measures not to aid Israel in committing genocide. This, of course, can take different forms including by imposing an arms embargo on Israel, boycotting and sanctioning Israel, and prosecuting war criminals.

For more information, contact Chris at chris@imeu.org or (202) 903-3271.

IPS UN Bureau

 

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The headquarters of the International Criminal Court in The Hague, the Netherlands. Credit: Adam Mørk

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Jan 11 2024 (IPS)

The continued devastation of Gaza by Israel has triggered widespread charges of war crimes, genocide, forced displacement, ethnic cleansing, starvation as a weapon of war and mass killings of civilians – over 22,000 at last count—compared to 1,200 killings by Hamas.

These accusations have prompted growing demands for intervention by the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague, which has remained silent while its Prosecutor Karim Khan is accused of double standards and playing politics.

The New York-based Foreign Press Association (FPA), which was scheduled to host a zoom discussion later this week, said “with more than 20,000 Palestinians dead, areas of Gaza turned to rubble, ICC prosecutor Karim Khan has yet to investigate either Israel or Hamas for the deaths, on and after 7 October– despite his exemplary hair-trigger speed against (Russian President) Vladimir Putin fo war crimes committed in Ukraine”.

With South Africa’s referral of Israel to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) for genocide, and the U.S.’s continued strong support for the Netanyahu government’s military response as geopolitical context, many are looking for the International Criminal Court to take action — if only as a warning to the parties, but so far Karim Khan, the British barrister serving as ICC prosecutor, shows no sign of action, reinforcing allegations of “rich country justice,” said FPA.

Ian G Williams, author, writer, broadcaster and FPA president, told IPS Khan is approaching the prosecution with all the caution of a Sheriff in Old Alabama prosecuting a KKK lynch mob.

“With his accomplices in Washington, he has done more to substantiate the global South’s suspicions of the bias of UN justice than anyone would have dreamt,” declared Williams, a former President of the UN Correspondents Association (UNCA).

Karim Khan

Mouin Rabbani, Co-Editor, Jadaliyya, an independent ezine produced by the Arab Studies Institute, told IPS Karim has consistently demonstrated that he is unfit for the position of ICC Prosecutor.

“At a time when he should be working overtime to address the ICC’s legitimacy deficit, he has politicised the position well beyond what its credibility can bear”

Shortly after assuming his post, he reassured the Security Council he would only prioritise cases that were referred to his office by the Council, and effectively ignore others — most prominently Palestine and Afghanistan, he pointed out.

“When Russia invaded Ukraine several months later, this modus operandi went out the window and within a year he indicted the head of state of a permanent member of the Council”, Rabbani said.

“Meanwhile he treated the much older investigation into Palestine as if it did not exist.
Khan, in other words, has consistently demonstrated an addiction to pandering to the priorities of Western power”.

Since 7 October, Rabbani argued, his double standards are once again on visible display: he has repeatedly and explicitly denounced Palestinian organisations in the strongest possible terms, suggesting he has already reached conclusions about their conduct, while refusing to consider similar statement with respect to Israel and its conduct.

“Rather, he has suggested that the Israeli judiciary rather than the ICC is the appropriate venue to hold Israeli war criminals accountable — despite numerous human rights organisations and independent investigations having denounced this system as a sham. It is entirely possible that Khan will indict only Palestinians and leave Israeli suspects to be declared innocent by Israeli courts”.

His refusal to investigate “the Situation in Palestine” beyond claiming an investigation exists without offering any evidence it is actively being pursued, was in fact cited by South Africa in its ICJ submission regarding Israel’s genocide in Gaza. Tellingly, Khan has been entirely mum on this case, and indeed on other Israeli crimes, Rabbani said.

“Khan has become a central enabler of Israeli impunity. Western leaders in fact routinely demur when challenged on Israeli war crimes, claiming these are within the purview of Khan while knowing full well Khan considers them within the purview of the recess of his filing cabinet”.

The ICC will remain incapable of pursuing Israeli crimes until Khan is replaced by a prosecutor committed to conducting the job in accordance with its mandate and terms of reference, declared Rabbani.

Addressing the 193-member UN General Assembly on January 9, Riyad Mansour, Permanent Observer of the State of Palestine to the UN, said: “I stand here representing a people being slaughtered, with families killed in their entirety, men and women shot in the streets, thousands abducted, tortured and humiliated, children killed, amputated, orphaned, scarred for life. No people should endure this. This must stop. “

The whole world, he pointed out, is calling for an immediate humanitarian ceasefire, 153 states across the globe have voted for a ceasefire, the moral voices of our time have pleaded for a ceasefire, the Secretary General and the United Nations have called for a ceasefire, the humanitarian organizations have urged a ceasefire. They all know the horrors need to end and the only way to end them is a ceasefire.

“This assault is without precedent in modern history in the scale and pace of killing of children, of UN personnel, of medical and rescue teams, of journalists. This is a war of atrocities. How can you reconcile opposing these atrocities and vetoing a call to end the war that is leading to their commission?” asked Mansour.

A roundtable of experts convened by Democracy for the Arab World Now (DAWN) has concluded that the assault on Gaza by Israel, including mass killing of at least 22,000 civilians, the forced displacement of nearly 1.9 million Palestinians, deprivation of essentials like water and electricity, and denial of humanitarian access, coupled with explicit declarations of intent by Israeli officials to destroy the population of Gaza, likely amounts to genocide under the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.

“Expert analysis of Israeli government statements revealing their intent to destroy Palestinians in Gaza, combined with military actions on the ground, including mass killings, forced displacement, and the deprivation of items essential to life in Gaza, suggest that the crime of genocide is being committed against the Palestinian population,” said Sarah Leah Whitson, Executive Director of DAWN.

Meanwhile, the ICC says it investigates and, where warranted, tries individuals charged with the gravest crimes of concern to the international community: genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity and the crime of aggression. As a court of last resort, it seeks to complement, not replace, national Courts, and is governed by an international treaty called the Rome Statute.

There are 123 member countries, but dozens of governments are not ICC parties, including China, India, Russia, and the United States.

The ICC has over 900 staff members from approximately 100 States with 6 official languages: English, French, Arabic, Chinese, Russian and Spanish. But the two working languages are English and French.

According to ICC, so far, there have been 31 cases before the Court, with some cases having more than one suspect. ICC judges have issued 40 arrest warrants: 21 people have been detained in the ICC detention centre and have appeared before the Court. 15 people remain at large. Charges have been dropped against 7 people due to their deaths.

ICC judges have also issued 9 summonses to appear. The judges have issued 10 convictions and 4 acquittals.

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

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Social media has become a lifeline for many women and girls in Afghanistan but not all can afford it. Credit: Learning Together

By External Source
Jan 10 2024 (IPS)

The prevalence of social media usage among Afghan women and girls has surged since the Taliban assumed control of the country in August 2021. Faced with restrictions confining them to their homes, many women find solace in the messaging app WhatsApp.

The Taliban’s prohibitions on women attending school, university, and work have spurred an increased reliance on WhatsApp for maintaining connections with friends, sharing thoughts and information, engaging in discussions, and even participating in foreign language online classes and accessing online libraries.

Farhat Obeidi, 23, lives with his parents and two brothers in Kabul. She was a fourth-year psychology student at Kabul University when she was banned from attending university by the Taliban.

“After we were banned from university, I couldn’t meet my friends anymore. I kept in touch with my friends through WhatsApp. We created groups, and our professors shared all the course materials with us through these groups. Even our friends who could not afford to have smartphones were in contact with us using the cell phones of their families, and they were able to take part in our online study groups”, Farhat says.

Farhat says that the use of social media has helped in reducing the pressures and psychological problems caused by the unemployment of women and girls. Since the apps have no time and place restrictions, the women can stay connected also with friends and relatives who have immigrated. Using the app is safe and messaging is possible even when the internet connection is poor.

Nilab Noori, a resident of Kabul, says that the easiest way to be in touch with a large number of friends and colleagues at the same time is to create groups on messaging app.

“Although virtual communication can never be as effective as being present in the community, school and university, this method has helped women and girls to communicate with each other.”

Power outages in Afghanistan prevent young people who study online from continuing their education. Another obstacle is the high price of the internet connection or its poor quality.

“Since the majority of women have lost their jobs and income, and most Afghan families live below the poverty line, women can hardly afford the internet access”, Nilab says.

Tamna Alkozi had to quit her online studies, because she could not afford the fast internet connection. She used to study at Coventry University of England online via Zoom. 

At the same time, Tamna was working as a volunteer in one of the non-governmental organizations. Her task was to run online educational programs related to the mental health of adolescents and young people. The organization paid for her internet usage.

“After finishing my work, I couldn’t continue my studies because the Zoom program requires a fast internet connection which I couldn’t afford”, Tamna says.

Sara (pseudonym) was a first-year student of a fine arts faculty who was banned from going to university.

“Our professors left Afghanistan after the political changes and opened an online class for us from abroad. I had one online class a week, but I could not participate because I did not have internet access”, Sara says.

The lack of security in cyberspace causes concern among women, especially activists. Those who live inside Afghanistan cannot express their opposition to the Taliban group even through social media because it will cause their account to be shut down and even get them arrested.

Marina (pseudonym) is a journalist who works online under a pseudonym. “I used to share my reports with the media through WhatsApp, but my number was blocked and my account was deleted”, Marina says.

When she asked the telecommunications company why her number was blocked, they told her that they had received an order from the Taliban, and they could not activate the number again. 

Marina says that several women’s rights activists who are imprisoned by the Taliban have been traced and arrested through social media. She says the Taliban is violating people’s privacy by checking people’s personal mobile phones and WhatsApp messages at checkpoints.

 

Internet connections are in high demand in Afghanistan, but the content remains tightly controlled under the influence of the Taliban. Credit: Learning Together

 

Sexualized online abuse and hate speech targeting women in Afghanistan has significantly increased. Afghan Witness, an open-source project run by the non-profit Center for Information Resilience, collected and analyzed over 78,000 posts written in Dari and Pashto — two local Afghan languages — directed at almost 100 accounts of politically active Afghan women between June-December 2021 and the same period of 2022.

The number of abusive posts tripled during that time. Afghan Witness said it found the online abuse was “overwhelmingly sexualized,” with over 60% of the posts in 2022 containing terms such as “whore” or “prostitute.”

Some politically active women have decided to deactivate their social media accounts.

Despite these challenges, the use of social media has seen significant growth in Afghanistan. A recent survey indicates that over nine million of the 40 million Afghan population use the internet and engage with at least one social media platform. The majority of young Afghans prefer Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram, and TikTok.

Excerpt:

The author is an Afghanistan-based female journalist, trained with Finnish support before the Taliban take-over. Her identity is withheld for security reasons

An office worker is conducting a financial review on a whiteboard. Credit: Pexels / Karolina Grabowska. Source: https://www.pexels.com/photo/report-paper-on-a-white-board-7876383/

By Vatcharin Sirimaneetham
BANGKOK, Thailand, Jan 10 2024 (IPS)

When students from poor families in developing countries are offered places at prestigious universities, they are often faced with a tough choice. One option is to accept the offer and create more debt, likely through borrowing from a loan shark, to pay for tuition fees. Another option is to forgo this opportunity, which could be the first in family generations, and start working as low-wage workers.

Which option is better?

If what matters is the ability to repay debt in coming months, then entering the labour market not only avoids creating new debt but also generates income. Yet, if one adopts a longer-term view and considers that tertiary education could offer higher earnings, and thus ability to pay off debt, and savings in the long run, then going to a university seems more viable.

While governments are different from individuals in many ways, this is also the nature of choices that policymakers in developing countries face. They embark on ambitious development pathways, such as providing universal healthcare services and boosting renewable energy production, which are good for people and the environment in the future, but they often mean additional sovereign borrowing and debt today.

Should governments borrow more to invest in development, or should they give up these investments to attain ‘sustainable’ public debt level, as perceived by creditors and financial markets?

Arguably, investments to foster equitable and green development do not bode well with the current approaches on public debt sustainability analysis adopted by international financial institutions and credit rating agencies.

This is because returns to investment in development only become clearly visible in the long run, but the current approaches prioritize a country’s ability to meet debt obligations in the near term. There is a risk that too much emphasis is being put on reducing short-term debt distress risk at the cost of social and environmental welling.

Given the lack of a long-term, development-aligned approach to assess public debt sustainability, ESCAP in its Economic and Social Survey of Asia and the Pacific 2023 proposes a new, ‘augmented’ approach to supplement the existing approaches.

This augmented approach duly considers the scale of a country’s investment needs to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and how such investment can reduce, rather than increase, the government debt-to-GDP ratio in the future. For example, investing in the SDGs would raise the potential GDP level amid a more educated and healthier workforce, technological innovation, and climate-resilient economies.

The augmented approach also considers the sovereign debt implications of pursuing national SDG financing strategies and structural development policies. In the same way that many students seek financial grants and part-time jobs to make their university education a reality, governments also actively explore domestic and international financing options to fund their development ambitions. This financing aspect should form a critical part of any debt sustainability analysis.

Unlike traditional approaches, the augmented approach does not categorize debtor countries into a low or high risk of public debt distress based on some common thresholds. This is because ‘sustainable’ debt level should be country specific, depending on the gap between development progress and goals, among others.

Instead, based on the ESCAP Macroeconomic Model, this new approach illustrates different trajectories of government debt levels under different policy scenarios and adverse shocks. This helps policymakers make informed choices on how to strike a balance between achieving the SDGs and maintaining public debt sustainability in the long run.

The analysis on Mongolia as a pilot country in the Survey 2023 shows that investing in the SDGs would, as expected, result in a surging government debt level initially due to large spending needs. Yet, after considering the sizeable socioeconomic and environmental benefits of investing in the SDGs as well as a package of policies aimed at promoting a green and diversified economy, mobilizing fiscal resources and attracting private finance for development, government indebtedness is expected to fall notably in the long run.

Going beyond policy research, the augmented public debt sustainability analysis was discussed at the fourth session of the Committee on Macroeconomic Policy, Poverty Reduction and Financing for Development in early November 2023. During a dedicated session, high-level government officials also highlighted policy actions that Mongolia, Pakistan and Viet Nam have undertaken to balance the SDG attainment with long-term public debt sustainability.

The augmented approach is also implemented as part of ESCAP’s technical assistance for its member States. For example, ESCAP is working with the Ministry of Planning and Investment (MPI) of Viet Nam to study the fiscal, socioeconomic and environmental implications of policies on carbon pricing, poverty reduction, and investments in information and communications technology. A national workshop was organized in mid-December 2023.

Vatcharin Sirimaneetham is an Economic Affairs Officer at ESCAP.

IPS UN Bureau

 

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Bangladeshi women cooperative farmers underwent training and support on climate-tolerant agricultural practices, which helped them cope with the adverse consequences of extreme weather events in the coastal regions. Credit: Rafiqul Islam/IPS

By Rafiqul Islam
PATUAKHALI, BANGLADESH , Jan 10 2024 (IPS)

In the past, Salma Begum, 40, lost her crops every year due to natural disasters. She lives with her five-member family in Ashabaria village under Rangabali upazila, a remote coastal island in Patuakhali district.

“We did not have enough livelihood options in the coastal area where we live. Cyclones, coastal floods, and tidal surges have been having adverse impacts on agriculture, making it difficult for my wage-laborer husband to find work regularly,” she said.

“We have no arable land either,” said Salma, a mother of three.

Now, the Local Government Initiative on Climate Change (LoGIC) project, jointly implemented by the Bangladesh government and UNDP for delivering adaptation benefits to vulnerable coastal people, has ushered in a ray of hope for Salma and many others since they got training on climate-tolerant livelihood practices.

After the training, eight women of Ashabaria village, including Salma, formed a group, and each member of the group received Taka 30,000 (USD 273) from the project’s Climate Resilient Fund (CRF) through their bank accounts. Later, they deposited the money in a group bank account.

“With the money we received from the CRF, we first leased arable land from a local landlord at Taka, which cost us one lakh (USD 910), and we started climate-resilient agriculture under cooperatives last year,” said Salma, who is also the group leader.

She said they sowed mug dal, also known as mung bean, and paddy on the agricultural land.

“Because torrential rain damaged our paddy field just before harvesting the food grain, we were unable to make a profit from cultivating that paddy last year. But this year we earned a profit of Taka 20,000 (US$ 180) by sowing mug dal. We got Taka 2,500 each from the profit.”

Shahnaj Akter, another member, said that before starting a new venture, they sit together and take any decisions in consultation with each other.

“We work together on the crop field too. During the mug dal cultivation, we ourselves sowed and harvested the cash crop. And even we ourselves processed mug dal before selling it,” she said.

Shahnaj said they also received training on sheep and duck farming and vegetable cultivation. Now she spends several hours a day at her homestead, where she has built a duck farm and is cultivating vegetables.

“Now I have 20 ducks at my farm. I get eggs every day and sell them. I get meat too from my duck farm. So, I am now supporting my family financially by selling vegetables and eggs,” she said.

“In the past, we led a miserable life as we did not have enough income. Now, after starting agriculture under cooperatives, we are now able to support my family,” said Rabeya Begum, a mother of five.

Building Climate Resilience

Led by the Local Government Division of the Ministry of Local Government Rural Development and Cooperatives, the LoGIC project is providing the Community Resilience Fund (CRF), aiming to help the most climate-vulnerable women build resilience to climate change by enabling them to take climate-adaptive livelihoods.

Through this CRF support, the women apply community-based approaches to invest in climate-adaptive livelihoods like sunflower production, climate-tolerant rice, dal and watermelon cultivation, and more.

Maksudur Rahman, the project’s community mobilization facilitator, said the climate-vulnerable coastal women developed business plans together and accordingly leased arable lands from landowners within their surrounding neighborhood. Later, they prepared the land for cultivating climate-tolerant crop varieties.

“We provide technical support for them. The LoGIC project also facilitates market linkages and networking support for women farmers so that they can sell their agricultural products,” he said.

Project coordinator AKM Azad Rahman said about 2,013 groups of women farmers have so far been formed under the project in the climate-vulnerable regions of Bangladesh, supporting around 35,000 women through the CRF scheme.

Extreme Weather Hits Coastal Agriculture Hard

Bangladesh is one of the most vulnerable countries to climate change, while cyclonic storms, flooding, and storm surges severely affect agriculture in the country’s coastal area every year. Once a natural disaster hits the coastal region of Bangladesh, it damages a huge area of crop fields, putting local farmers in peril.

According to an estimate from the Department of Agricultural Extension (DAE), Bangladesh incurred crop loss worth Taka two billion due to the recent cyclone Midhili that lashed the country’s coast.

The cyclone damaged 432.6 hectares of Aman paddy, and pea, mustard, Boro paddy seed beds, betel, and lentils were affected too.

Mahmud Hasan, chairman of Maudubi Union Parishad at Rangabali, said climate change is severely affecting agriculture in the country’s coastal area.

He said there is plenty of rainwater during the monsoon but a scarcity of water during the dry season.

“Pulse and watermelon cultivation faces setbacks during the dry season for lack of freshwater as the groundwater level drops drastically at that time,” he said.

Farmer Saifuddin Mito said they had to sow Aman paddy twice this year as their paddy seedbeds were damaged earlier due to excessive rainfall, resulting in an increase in the cost of crop production.

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

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The aging of America’s population is expected to have mounting effects on government programs, businesses, healthcare institutions, communities, families and individuals. Credit: Maricel Sequeira/IPS

By Joseph Chamie
PORTLAND, USA, Jan 9 2024 (IPS)

As the signs of population aging are crystal clear and widely available, many countries are taking steps to address the far-reaching effects of that momentous demographic trend. A notable exception is the United States, a country that seems neither ready nor willing to deal with the aging of its population.

America’s government and its citizens appear ill-prepared to address the daunting consequences of population aging for the country’s economy, workforce and entitlement programs. Among those challenging consequences are the rising costs of programs for the elderly, the need for financial aid and long-term care for many older people and the dwindling financial resources of elderly households.

Many countries, including the United States, are well along in the demographic aging of their populations. While some countries, such as France, Germany, Italy, Japan and South Korea, have median ages above 40 years, other countries, including China, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States, have median ages of nearly 40 years (Figure 1).

 

Source: United Nations.

 

America’s elected officials tend to avoid addressing population aging. It seems that by ignoring or paying little attention to population aging, its many weighty consequences will diminish or simply go away.

The consequences of population aging for America’s federal budget, its economy, workforce and the overall well-being of its citizens are not imaginary and will not go away by simply ignoring them. On the contrary, the aging of America’s population is expected to have mounting effects on government programs, businesses, healthcare institutions, communities, families and individuals

However, the consequences of population aging for America’s federal budget, its economy, workforce and the overall well-being of its citizens are not imaginary and will not go away by simply ignoring them. On the contrary, the aging of America’s population is expected to have mounting effects on government programs, businesses, healthcare institutions, communities, families and individuals.

In ten years, for example, the U.S. federal government is expected to be spending half its budget on those aged 65 years or older. That spending will be used to support elderly Americans largely for health care and retirement benefits. Without sufficient government assistance, many elderly Americans will have to forgo needed care or rely on the uncertain assistance and care from family and friends.

While a secure retirement is a widespread desire across America, the financial resources of most Americans are not sufficient to cover their retirement expenses. Among households headed by someone 55 years and older, nearly half of them lack some form of retirement savings. Also, close to 30 percent of those who are retired or nearing retirement do not have retirement savings or a defined benefit plan.

In addition, the health conditions of America’s elderly are both worrisome and costly. About 80 percent of Americans 65 or older have at least one chronic condition, with about 68 percent having two or more.

It is estimated that nearly a half of elderly Americans are affected by arthritis, a quarter have some type of cancer and a fifth have diabetes. A third of the elderly have cognitive issues with approximately half of them having dementia.

Millions of older Americans are struggling with health challenges and increasing numbers are in need of caregiving services. Many elderly Americans also find it challenging to obtain or pay for the additional services they need as they age.

It is estimated that approximately 70 percent of U.S. adults aged 65 years and older will require long-care at some point, with the average length of stay in long-term care about three years. In 2021, the average annual costs of long-term care in America ranged between $35,000 and $108,000.

The median age of the U.S. population, which was about 27 years in 1965, has reached a record high of nearly 40 years. The median age of America’s population is continuing to rise and is projected to be 43 years by mid-century.

In addition, the proportion of America’s population age 65 years or older is also expected to continue rising. Whereas approximately 9 percent of the U.S. population was 65 years or older in 1965 when the Medicare program was established, by 2022 the proportion had almost doubled to 17 percent. That proportion is expected to nearly double again by the century’s close when approximately one in three Americans will be 65 years or older (Figure 2).

 

Source: United Nations.

 

Furthermore, the U.S. will face noteworthy demographic aging turning points in the near future. Beginning in 2030, for example, all of America’s baby boomers will be older than 65 years. Also, in 2034 the share of America’s population age 65 years or older is expected to surpass that of children under age 18 year for the first time in the country’s history.

A major demographic force behind the aging of populations is low fertility. Whereas America’s fertility rate was nearly three births per woman in 1965, today it has declined to nearly a half child below the replacement level at 1.7 births per woman. Moreover, the country’s fertility levels are expected to remain well below the replacement level throughout the remainder of the century.

Increasing longevity among the elderly is also contributing to the aging of America’s population. U.S. life expectancies for males and females at age 65 years have risen markedly over the past sixty years. From 13 and 16 years for males and females in 1965, life expectancies at age 65 rose to 16 and 19 years by 2000 and further increased by 2022 to approximately 18 and 21 years, respectively. By mid-century, U.S. life expectancies at age 65 for males and females are expected to reach 20 and 22 years, respectively (Figure 3).

 

Source: U.S. Social Security Administration.

 

America’s major government programs for the elderly are being seriously affected by population aging. As a result of the increase in both the absolute and relative numbers of the elderly, the two largest programs, Medicare and Social Security, are rapidly approaching insolvency, which is expected in 6 and 13 years, respectively.

The U.S. Congress needs to act responsibly to address the expected funding imbalances and the insolvencies in those two programs. Not doing so would lead to across-the-board benefit cuts or abrupt changes to benefits or tax levels.

Democrats are by and large committed to maintaining funding for Social Security and Medicare, programs that were established by the democratic administrations of President Franklin Roosevelt and President Lyndon Johnson, respectively. The Democrats believe that all Americans have the right to a secure and healthy retirement and are committed to preserving Social Security and Medicare for future generations.

Over the years, public opinion polls have repeatedly demonstrated overwhelming support for those two programs. For example, approximately 80 percent of Americans support Social Security and oppose reducing benefits, and 70 percent are against increasing premiums for people enrolled in Medicare.

Republicans, in contrast, are reluctant to raise taxes and have resisted increasing funding for the government’s major entitlement programs. They claim that with Social Security and Medicare facing insolvency if cuts to benefits and costs are not made, those two programs will not be available for future generations. Republicans in general prefer the private sector, freedom of choice and individual responsibility, such as private retirement investment accounts and a voucher system for private health insurance.

Besides congressional actions, educational and community programs are needed to encourage responsible behaviors among Americans in preparing for and during old age. Men and women need to adopt behavior, take action and develop habits early on in their lives that promote their economic security, personal health and overall well-being in their retirement years.

In sum, the United States seems neither ready nor willing to deal with the aging of its population. But demography doesn’t care. As the U.S. population continues to become older over the coming years, America’s elected officials, the private sector, social institutions, communities, families and individuals will be obliged to cope with the inevitable, momentous and far-reaching consequences of population aging.

Joseph Chamie is a consulting demographer and a former director of the United Nations Population Division. He is the author of numerous publications on population issues, including his recent book, “Population Levels, Trends, and Differentials”.

Yamide Dagnet, Director of Climate Justice at the Open Society Foundations, addresses the forum Financing for Resilience: Overcoming Hurdles to Catalyse Regional Action and Locally-led Adaptation and Loss and Damage Finance at COP28 in Dubai. Credit: OSF

By Alison Kentish
SAINT LUCIA , Jan 9 2024 (IPS)

As a child on the French-Caribbean island of Guadeloupe, Yamide Dagnet dreamed of launching rockets into space.

She stuck to science, discovering her path in chemical engineering. She became a scientist focused on critical reactions to solving real-world problems like improving water quality in the United Kingdom.

Her attention to detail, observation skills, and grounding in science eventually led her to a career in climate negotiations and climate justice.

As Director of Climate Justice at the Open Society Foundations (OSF), she is committed to the organization’s cause of expediting a fair, transparent, low-carbon, and resilient transition in our societies.

Reflecting on her journey, she acknowledges that the task is daunting, but she remains optimistic for the future. Her roots as an islander fuel her drive to fight for a more just and resilient world.

“Vulnerable countries, including Islanders, have played a critical role in shaping negotiations and the outcome of climate negotiations over time by bringing both tangible experience and a moral voice to this issue while also bringing solutions. Even as small Islanders, we always felt that we were big on solutions,” she said in a sit-down with IPS.

The move from chemical engineering to climate justice director may be non-traditional, but for Dagnet, it was a transition hinged on applying her principles and skills from the lab to the policymaking table.

“I kept the spirit of problem-solving in an unexpected career move. I see negotiations and the diplomatic world not as chemical reactions among products but as chemical reactions among people—a people alchemy,” she said.

The Changing Nature of Climate Negotiations

When Dagnet entered the field of climate negotiations, the focus was predominantly technical, she told IPS. Things have changed since then. The talks have morphed into a more political sphere, increasingly shaped by geopolitical dynamics. It is a shift that Dagnet says requires an understanding of the diverse interests of countries at the negotiating table.

“When I joined the negotiations, we were just getting into the implementation of the Kyoto Protocol,” she said, adding, “Over time, everything that would affect geopolitics would affect the climate negotiations as well. That was really key to creating trust and understanding for landing the Paris Agreement itself. The Paris Agreement was no longer just a climate agreement. It had become a socio-economic and environmental agreement that had to be contextualized.”

“Now that we’re getting into the implementation phase again of a complex agreement, to reach that breakthrough, we have to understand the different interests of countries—200 countries, 200 different interests.”

The composition of the annual climate talks is also different, reflecting the change from a technical gathering to one with more glaring political hues.

“There’s been what had started to be an exercise, and a gathering of initiated diplomats and technocrats expanded to bring all hands on deck for implementation. More from the private sector, more from civil society, and more from indigenous people, women, and youth. So, there has been a progression in terms of inclusion, but also more interests and a greater risk of corporate capture over time.”

Climate Negotiations, then the Open Society Foundations

While working as a chemical engineer in the UK, Dagnet was involved in water quality. It was an opportunity to ensure that products in contact with drinking water were safe and of the highest standards. It was during that time, already working with inspectors, that she became more familiar with the nexus between climate and water, along with the safety plans that needed to be put in place to mitigate the impacts of climate change on drinking needs.

In 2007, she was then detached to France’s Minister of Environment and Sustainable Development, in their international division, where she gained valuable experience leading delegations, establishing cooperation, and twinning programs between France and Eastern European countries. The primary goal was to enhance the capacity of countries seeking access to the European Union. It was a defining experience for her, helping her to test different means of capacity building to reflect what could be most effective and sustainable.

It made for a smooth transition to the climate arena.

“I was privileged to join the UK climate team at a time when the UK was a climate leader—enacting the first climate change bill, setting up the first climate change committee, and relying on much data and evidence emerging from the UK greenhouse gas inventory I was responsible for. Being the UK deputy focal point for the IPCC at a time when the IPCC won the Nobel Peace Prize. Joining the UK climate delegation under UNFCCC at the turning point of the negotiations to shape the Paris Agreement,” she said.

“While negotiating for the interests of the UK, I was in a very unique and diverse delegation that had a comprehensive outreach strategy with different countries that were also committed to coalition building outside and within the negotiations. I was keen to first have the opportunity to use my problem-solving skills and the fact that I wanted to really look into solutions and put those solutions into action, not just for the UK, not just for the EU, but for the rest of the world, including the most vulnerable countries.”

The opportunity came to join an internationally renowned, US-based think tank, the World Resources Institute, in 2012 and advance robust research, analysis, and policy recommendations for designing a new rule-based climate regime.

“It’s convening power was really interesting, and for me, making sure that you do not produce creative solutions that are put on a shelf, but how to really look at the power and interaction with different stakeholders, not just governments, but the faith community, different civil society constituencies, how to really, again, build bridges and test ideas, to really come up with something that has legitimacy.”

To do that, Dagnet organized several consortiums. The task was not easy, but it was necessary.

“I learned the power of consortiums. First, it’s more difficult to work in a consortium because it’s actually a platform of negotiations where you don’t navigate just one mindset, one view, one way of addressing an issue; but by creating the right consortium, you bring the legitimacy and credibility that represent different views from different countries, which in the end really helped us to get the traction and inference necessary to shape a meaningful agreement.”

After almost a decade, the Open Society Foundations was a natural fit for her knowledge and passions to work as a funder to empower the field, support new ideas and analysis, take grassroots and legal actions, and engage in diplomatic and advocacy efforts. Her priority has been supporting just resilient outcomes, especially in neglected areas like adaptation to climate change and politically sensitive issues like losses and damage. How you face climate impacts you cannot even adapt to—that will cost lives and livelihoods and generate irreversible economic and non-economic (e.g., cultural, social) damages. Another area of focus was the implications of a just energy and industrial transition, ensuring equitable use and deployment of critical minerals, minimizing unintended environmental adverse effects and social or labor abuse, while spurring the ability for resource-rich mineral countries to move up the manufacturing ladder. All of these are matters of justice, equity, and human rights. Ensuring accountability and inclusion within national and international processes like the COP was critical.

COP28

The former climate negotiator was in Dubai, UAE, for the 2023 climate talks.

Like many, she welcomes the landmark announcement of the operationalization of the Loss and Damage Fund on the first day of COP as a hard-won victory. “Two hundred countries, including a petrol state, have agreed to move away from fossil fuels and to operationalize a loss and damage fund that has taken so long to be established,” she said. “Now that we’ve got a roadmap, we have an initial capitalization, even if it only represents less than 1 percent of what is really needed.”

She, however, says that there is no place for complacency. Those breakthroughs are decades away, still little, very late, and lacking the necessary pace needed to effect the change needed.

Moreover, Dagnet says the new climate deals have shortcomings. She is particularly concerned about some of the controversial technologies mentioned in the agreements, which lack sufficient safeguards and measures to minimize unintended adverse impacts on frontline communities and the environment. For instance, “the reference to transition fuels, which, without the right accountability mechanisms, could be overused and used as a license to delay some of the radical changes that need to be done.”

Looking Forward

The next year is poised to be an interesting one on the international climate scene, with an eye on how the commitments on energy and roadmap to build resilience will be transformed into tangible actions and how ongoing campaigns to reform the global finance infrastructure will pan out.

“2024 is really shaping as being about the means of implementation to keep 1.5 alive and build resilience within that threshold. We know that the UAE, Azerbaijan, and Brazil committed to the delivery of a financial framework through their “road map to mission 1.5 C. There needs to be a strong mobilization of different stakeholders to support, inform, shape those frameworks, and make them a reality,” says Dagnet.

She took the opportunity to express her appreciation to all partners, especially frontline communities, who often risk their lives in this climate change battle. “Without them, we would not have secured these hard-won breakthroughs.”

Dagnet expressed her hopes that their efforts will be redoubled and rewarded in the future.

“We need to pull up our sleeves. There’s a lot of work to do, which can only be effective if we create and harness the synergies and intersections between climate and health, climate and nature, and climate and trade.

And as for Dagnet’s work—no matter what, “I think I will remain a climate and social justice avenger.”

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

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Dr. Martin Luther King and Mrs. King are greeted by Ralph Bunche on a visit to the United Nations in 1964. Credit: UN Photo
 
Ralph Bunche received the 1950 Nobel Peace Prize for his late 1940s work as a United Nations mediator in the Palestine conflict. He called himself 'an incurable optimist'. Bunche was the first African American and person of color to be so honored in the history of the prize.

By Ben Phillips
ROME, Jan 9 2024 (IPS)

All through this week, leading up to January 15th, the world will commemorate Martin Luther King. In a world as wounded as ours is today, the lessons of his life’s work offer a vital opportunity for healing.

But the opportunity to hear his message continues to be obstructed: too many of the soundbites of TV pundits and the tweets of politicians are, once again, not distilling the insights of Dr King, but are serving instead to obscure a library of wisdom behind wall-to-wall repetition of the same few lines, extracted from their context, of one speech.

This is not a mistake, it is a tactic, and we owe it not only to the legacy of Dr King but to the future of our world to ensure that his authentic message is shared.

The true message of Martin Luther King is not a saccharine call for quietude or acceptance, but an insistence on being, as he put it, “maladjusted to injustice.” It represents not an idle optimism that things will get better but a determined commitment to collective action as the only route to progress.

When Dr King said “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice”, he didn’t mean this process is automatic; as he noted, “social progress never rolls in on wheels of inevitability; it comes through the tireless efforts of people.”

And he was clear that advancement of progress requires the coming together of mass movements, “organizing our strength into compelling power so that government cannot elude our demands.”

Children from a dozen countries met with the President of the General Assembly and toured the United Nations on a federal holiday in the United States honouring the late civil rights leader and Nobel Peace Prize laureate, Martin Luther King Jr. 17 January 2023. Credit: Paulina Kubiak, United Nations

Justice, Dr King taught, is never given, it is only ever won. This always involves having the courage to confront power. Indeed, he noted, the greatest stumbling block to progress is not the implacable opponent but those who claim to support change but are “more devoted to order than justice.” As he put it, “frankly I have yet to engage in a direct action movement that was ‘well-timed’ in the view of those who have not suffered unduly; this ‘wait!’ has almost always meant ‘never.’”

When the civil rights movement’s 1962 Operation Breadbasket challenged companies to increase the share of profits going to black workers and communities, it was only after the movement showed that they could successfully organize a boycott that those companies, in Dr King’s words, “the next day were talking nice, were very humble, and [later] we signed the agreement.” As he noted when challenged by “moderates” who asked why he needed to organize, “we have not made a single gain without determined pressure…freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor, it must be demanded by the oppressed.”

Advancing progress, he emphasized, involves challenging public opinion too. Organizers cannot be mere “thermometers” who “record popular opinion” but need to be “thermostats” who work to “transform the mores of society”. In 1966, for example, a Gallup Opinion poll showed that Dr King was viewed unfavourably by 63 per cent of Americans, but by 2011 that figure had fallen to only four per cent.

Often, people read the current consensus view back into history and assume that Dr King was always a mainstream figure, and imagine, falsely, that change comes from people and movements who don’t ever offend anyone.

Dr King’s vision of justice was a full one. It called not only for the scrapping of segregation, but for taking on “the triple prong sickness of racism, excessive materialism and militarism.” He challenged the “economic conditions that take necessities from the many to give luxuries to the few” and noted that “true compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar, it understands that an edifice which produces beggars, needs restructuring.”

He spoke out against war not only for having “left youth maimed and mutilated” but for having also “impaired the United Nations, exacerbated the hatreds between continents, frustrated development, contributed to the forces of reaction, and strengthened the military-industrial complex.”

He noted how “speaking out against war has not gone without criticisms, there are those who tell me that I should stick with civil rights, and stay in my place.” But he insisted that he would “keep these issues mixed because they are mixed. We must see that justice is indivisible, injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”

When I went to Dr King’s memorial in Atlanta I did so to pay my respects at his tomb. But arriving at the King Center I found a vibrant hub of practical learning, at which activists and organizers working for justice were revisiting Dr King’s work and writings not as history that is past but as a set of tools to help understand, and act, in the present.

Together, we reflected not only on his profoundly radical philosophy, but also on his strategies and tactics for advancing transformational change. Conversations with Dr King’s inspirational daughter, Bernice, were focused not on her father’s work alone; instead, she asked us what changes we were working for, and how we were working to advance them.

This year, on 10th January, the King Center is hosting a Global Summit, a series of practical conversations accessible to everyone, for free, online. I’m honoured to be panelist. It is open for sign ups here.

“Those who love peace,” noted Dr King, “must learn to organize as effectively as those who love war.” And he even guided us how.

Ben Phillips is the author of How to Fight Inequality, Communications Director of UNAIDS, and a panelist at the King Center Global Summit on 10th January.

IPS UN Bureau

 

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BioNTainers, facilities equipped to manufacture a range of mRNA-based vaccines have been inaugurated in Rwanda in December 2023. Credit: Aimable Twahirwa/IPS

By Aimable Twahirwa
KIGALI, Jan 8 2024 (IPS)

An agreement signed between the Rwandan government and the Africa Pharmaceutical Technology Foundation (APTF) gives impetus to Africa’s domestic industry with the hope of helping the continent tackle vaccine inequity and fill the critical gap in vaccine manufacturing.

The agreement to operationalize the foundation was signed in Kigali, Rwanda, in late 2023.

What is important, according to stakeholders, is to focus efforts on building a resilient and self-reliant pharmaceutical industry for the continent. This became apparent during COVID-19, when, for example, COVAX, a multilateral mechanism for equitable global access to COVID-19 vaccines, helped lower-income economies achieve two-dose coverage of 57 percent, compared to the global average of 67 percent.

Both officials and scientists take delight in pointing out that the benefit of having such an initiative is to close the vaccine equity gap between African countries and the world’s developed nations.

During the implementation phase, the African Development Bank (ADB) has committed to investing up to USD 3 billion over the next decade in the development of pharmaceutical products.

The foundation, which is ready to hit the ground running in January 2024, will dedicate its core mandate to addressing some of the common challenges facing African indigenous pharmaceutical companies, including weak human and institutional capacities and low technical capacity for using and applying new technologies.

“The Foundation was a pledge that Africa will have what it needs to build its own health defense system, which must include a thriving African pharmaceutical industry and a quality healthcare infrastructure, ADB President Dr Akinwumi Adesina said.

These solutions, according to experts, aim to close technical capacity gaps in their use and lack the ability to focus on the production of basic active pharmaceutical ingredients for drugs or antigens for vaccines.

Professor Padmashree Gehl Sampath, Chief Executive Officer of the APTF, told IPS that access to know-how, technologies, and processes for manufacturing pharmaceutical products is clearly needed on the continent to ensure the sustainability of financial investments.

She, however, points out that, with the current move to ensure the sustainability and reliability of the domestic pharmaceutical industry in Africa, it is not enough just to have financial, infrastructural, strategic, and regulatory support.

“There is a need for a clear and coherent focus on technology transfer and knowledge sharing for capacity building and diversification within the pharmaceutical value chain,” she said in an exclusive interview.

While technology is described as the main transformative tool that will enable the development of a competitive pharmaceutical industry in Africa, Sampath stresses the need to build policy capacity to facilitate the sector.

According to her, this can be done by implementing the flexibilities contained in the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property and then also enabling local companies to access domestic markets.

In a move to overcome these challenges, the foundation’s work received a major boost with a memorandum of understanding signed in December 2023 in Kigali, Rwanda, to partner with the European Investment Bank.

The European Investment Bank will be a partner in the foundation’s “regional biosimilars program for the production and innovation of relevant biosimilars in Africa and to facilitate the creation of common active pharmaceutical ingredients parks in any chosen specific sub-region of Africa,” the organization said in a press release.

According to Sampath, there is a need to remove barriers to domestic innovation in Africa.

“We need to work with our universities and public research institutions to transform them into centers of excellence,” she said.

During the implementation phase, the first modular elements of the German company’s factory, BioNTech, based on shipping containers, were delivered to the Kigali construction site in March and were then assembled to form the so-called BioNTainers that were inaugurated in December 2023.

The company, which developed the most widely used COVID-19 vaccine in the Western world with its U.S. partner Pfizer, developed a plan in 2022 to allow African countries to produce its Comirnaty-branded vaccine under the supervision of BioNTech.

BioNTech said the initial vaccine factory could, over the next few years, be part of a wider supply network spanning several African countries, including Senegal and South Africa.

At the time BioNTech announced plans to expand into Africa, the shipment of coronavirus vaccine doses manufactured in the West to the continent had been delayed, which had been the subject of much criticism.

“The African Union has come together to make a firm commitment not to find ourselves in this situation again,” Rwandan President Paul Kagame said at the inauguration ceremony of the plant site located in Masoro, a suburb of Kigali.

The company, which developed the most widely used COVID-19 vaccine in the Western world with its U.S. partner Pfizer, developed a plan in 2022 to allow African countries to produce its Comirnaty-branded vaccine under the supervision of BioNTech.

“What BionTech’s partnership with Africa demonstrates is that vaccine technology can be democratized, but we could not have reached this point without a wider set of partnerships.” Kagame said.

Gelsomina Vigliotti, Vice President at the European Investment Bank, said that the bank is committed to working with its partners to strengthen public health and health innovation across Africa.

“Strengthening access to finance is essential to scaling up pharmaceutical investment and innovation across Africa,” Vigliotti said.

An important manifestation of Africa’s scientific and technological innovation capability, according to experts, is the application of innovations to its pharmaceutical industry development.

The newly-established plant, located in the suburb of Rwanda’s capital city, Kigali, is expected to start by producing 50 million vaccines, but production will increase depending on the demand for mRNA-based vaccine candidates to address malaria and tuberculosis.

But researchers and policymakers argue that trust and cooperation are critical for the successful implementation of this innovation.

The latest estimates by the World Health Organization (WHO) show that industrial development should be combined with national policy for universal health coverage so that local vaccine production can address local health needs.

Before the inauguration of the BionTech factory in Rwanda, there were fewer than 10 African manufacturers with vaccine production, which are based in five countries: Egypt, Morocco, Senegal, South Africa, and Tunisia.

The capability to produce vaccines in Africa, according to the UN agency, requires a fully integrated approach, pulling together some key elements including finance, skills development, regulatory facilities, and technology know-how.

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

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