Africa - INTER PRESS SERVICE

Tanzanian ICT entrepreneur, Rose Funja, shows off one of the drones she uses as a key tool in her data mapping business. Credit: Busani Bafana/IPS

By Busani Bafana
BULAWAYO, Zimbabwe, Feb 11 2019 (IPS)

Six years ago while wondering how best to use her engineering skills, Tanzanian ICT entrepreneur Rose Funja decided to enter an innovation competition. Years later she has turned a digital idea into a viable business that helps smallholder farmers across the East African nation access credit.   

In Tanzania farmers struggle to obtain credit because many do not have bankable assets or a record of performance to offer as collateral. But Funja had an idea to help farmers, particularly women, obtain proof of land ownership that they could use as collateral to access credit.

It was a smart solution: using geographical information system (GIS) technology to generate useful information for farmers.

“A farmer might have a big piece of land, but if they do not have legal claim to it they cannot use it productively,” Funja tells IPS.

In 2013, she entered the AgriHack Talent Programme for East Africa, a competition organised by the Netherlands-based Technical Centre for Agricultural and Rural Cooperation (CTA).

Fungi’s idea was named second runner-up in the competition and she received a cash prize and mentorship from Buni Innovation Hub in Tanzania. In 2015, with a partner and students from the Bagamoyo University in Tanzania, Funja developed AgrInfo. She began working full-time in the business just a year later.

Now AgrInfo profiles farmers, the size and location of their farms, and the crops they grow on them. This data is then posted onto an online platform that financial institutions can access and use to assess the creditworthiness of farmers and their eligibility to qualify for loans.

“Actionable, real-time information is key in making decisions, especially in farming,” says Funja, who has a Bachelor of Science in Computer Engineering and a Master’s in Communication and Information Systems Engineering.

The African Development Bank notes that up to 12 million youth enter the job market across the continent each year while only three million jobs are created, leaving many unemployed. However, agribusiness offers innovative approaches for the youth to develop and roll out smart ICT solutions for smallholder farmers.

“ICTs are a game changer for agriculture development. Technology is offering young people economic benefits from selling goods and services using online platforms,” Funja tells IPS.

AgrInfo has been able to help, for a small fee, over 300 smallholder farmers in Tanzania’s capital city of Dodoma obtain access to financial institutions after mapping their farms.

“We have helped farmers know what they have and [they have been able to] use their land to access credit and buy inputs,” Funja says. Success has come about through trial and error, passion, and through creating value, explains Funja.

Plans are in the pipeline to grow the number of subscribers to the service to one million, and to extend the service to other actors in the agriculture value chain, such as government extension services.

A flying start

When she first started the business Funja used GIS and hand-held GPS gadgets to gather data.

Then in 2017 she was exposed, through CTA, to the applied use of Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS) and was trained in the business aspect of operating drones. UAS is based on drone technology and provides information faster and more accurately. Funja went on to become one of the pioneer multi-copter drone pilots in Tanzania.

CTA has collaborated with Parrot, a French drone manufacturer, to support technology start-ups develop precision agriculture in Africa. Running for two years from 2017 till this year, the CTA project aims to help establish approximately 30 enterprises that are run mainly by young entrepreneurs in African countries where there is enabling legislation.

Drones, though a relatively new technology in Africa, offer new opportunities to young ICT entrepreneurs to help farmers increase productivity, sustainability and profitability. Digital tools help in improving land tenure, assessing crops, pests and diseases, according to research by the CTA.

“Considering the fact that in 2017 drones were a new tech for Africa, our project played an important role in establishing an enabling environment,” Giacomo Rambaldi, Senior Programme Coordinator at CTA, tells IPS. “It supported the African Union’s (AU) appointed High Level African Panel on Emerging Techs in selecting ‘drones for precision agriculture’ as one of the most promising technologies which would foster Africa’s development.”

In January 2018, the AU Executive Council recommended that all Member States harness the opportunities offered by drones for agriculture.

Africa should prioritise the adoption, deployment and up scaling of drones for precision agriculture through capacity-building, supporting infrastructure, regulatory strengthening, research and development and stakeholder engagement, says a 2018 report titled Drones on the horizon: Transforming Africa’s Agriculture.

The report notes that optimising agricultural profit through increasing productivity and improved yield has been the result of the application of several innovative developments over the years, one of them being the use of drone technology.

“Whilst such interventions and the green revolution in particular, have benefited many developing countries, this has not been the case in Africa. This situation calls for a review of agricultural policies and practices, and an explicit understanding that enabling policies for the promotion of such drone technologies must be formulated,” the report recommends.

Drones for agriculture development

Funja tells IPS that while digital enterprises are attractive they need smart management, finances and full-time commitment.

“A digital application is just a tool, but value sells. If there is no value, there is no business,” says Funja.

The Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations says drone technology has great potential to support and address some of the most pressing problems faced by agriculture in accessing actionable real-time quality data. The agriculture sector will be the second-largest user of drones in the world in the next five years, according to research by Goldman Sachs.

Investment in ICTs could play a pivotal role in accelerating Africa’s agricultural transformation and can increase both the productivity and income of smallholder farmers, says development consultancy firm Dalberg Global Development Advisors.

“Africa sits on the majority of the world’s uncultivated arable land, but unlocking that large agricultural potential will require strategic deployment of ICT capabilities,” Andres Johannes Enghild, a consultant at Dalberg’s New York office tells IPS. “If new ICT solutions are harnessed well, they could, for example, improve market linkages for farmers and attract international investors.”

Despite Africa’s agricultural potential, it remains the region with the highest food and malnutrition rates in the world.

Today, farmers have limited access to better agronomic farming practices, an area where ICT can make a major difference. And Funja is of the entrepreneurs making this possible.

Related Articles

• DRC Farmers in “Schools Without Walls” Learn to Increase Harvest
• How Accurate Information About the Weather is Yielding Resilience for Zambia’s Smallholders
• Development of ICT Innovation Expected to Help in Fight Against Banana Disease in Rwanda

The post Farmers Secure Land and Food Thanks to ‘Eyes in the Skies’ appeared first on Inter Press Service.

By Jan Lundius
STOCKHOLM / ROME, Feb 11 2019 (IPS)

The Mediterranean Sea is currently a sea of death. On the 20th of June every year, i.e. The World Refugee Day, an organization called UNITED for Intercultural Action publishes a “List of Deaths”, summarising information on where, when and under which circumstances a named individual has died due to the “fatal policies of fortress Europa”. The data are collected through information received from 550 network organisations in 48 countries and from local experts, journalists and researchers in the field of migration. The list issued in 2018 accounted for 27 000 deaths by drowning since 1993, often hundreds at a time when large embarkations capsize. These deaths account for 80 per cent of all the entries,1 there are probably thousands more dead, corpses that were never found and/or not accounted for.

While considering seas as a place of death and barriers to human interaction it might be opportune to be reminded of their role as means of communication and trade, as well as transfer of culture and innovation. For thousands of years, humans have used the sea to enrich themselves and their communities by interacting with people from other cultures.

The Mediterranean – Sea of seas, hope and doom, Venus cradle and Sappho´s tomb. Over its waters Greeks, Phoenicians, Egyptians, Romans, Berbers, Italians, French, Normans, Turks, Slavs, Jews, Christians and Muslims have carried their goods, music, inventions, food and ideas, creating a mighty cultural mix reaching down to the southern shores of Maghreb and Egypt, and beyond, as well as all the way up to the coasts of the North – and Baltic Seas, spreading Greek philosophy, Roman law, Arabic science, poetry, art and culture and much more that have benefitted humankind. Almost every sea in the world has been serving humankind in a similar manner, as a powerful blender of cultures, proving that human mobility benefits us all.

A rosy picture? Let us not forget the shadows. Seas have always been scenes of bloody battles, ruthless piracy and slave trade, the last activity is doubtless one of humanity´s worst crimes. Between 1650 and 1900, more than 10 million enslaved Africans arrived in the Americas, while many had died during the passage across the Atlantic Ocean. During the same period, 8 million East Africans were enslaved and sent across the Indian Ocean to the Middle East and Asia. It was not only Africans who were brought in chains across the seas. European nations like Great Britain, France and Spain sent political prisoners, “vagrants” and other “undesirables” to their colonies. Between 1788 and 1868 more than 160 000 convicts were transported from Britain to penal colonies in Australia. Barbary pirates operating from North African ports carried out razzias on European coastal towns, mainly to capture slaves for the Ottoman slave market. It has been calculated that between 1530 and 1780 the Barbary corsairs enslaved approximately 1 250 000 people.

After the British Empire ended slavery in 1833 indentured labour became the most common means to obtain cheap workforce for its colonies, a practice that soon was employed by other nations as well. This meant that immigrants would contract to work for an overseas employer, generally for seven years. The employer paid the sea passage, the indentured labourer did not receive any wages, but was provided with food and shelter. Millions of people were brought across the seas under such conditions, mainly Asians, but some Europeans as well.

Nationalist political parties often complain that most migrants do not provide any benefits for the receiving country, that the majority of them are poor and uneducated. However, this is nothing new. American immigrants have often been depicted as entrepreneurial, sturdy workers building up a wealthy nation. When the Scottish author Robert Louis Stevenson in 1879, on his way to California, in steerage crossed the Atlantic he was amazed to find that most emigrants were not any strong, adventurous men eager to make a living and gain success in America, but mainly desperate and tired people trying to escape European persecution, poverty and unemployment.

The more I saw of my fellow passengers, the less I was tempted to the lyric note. Comparatively few of the men were below thirty; many were married and encumbered with families; not a few were already up in years. Now those around me were for the most part quiet, orderly, obedient citizens, family men broken by adversity, elderly youths who had failed to place themselves in life, and people who had seen better days.2

In spite of the desperation and misery of their ancestors, descendants of slaves, criminals and desperate, poor migrants have contributed to the creation of wealthy nations and impressive cultures. Europeans complaining about the influx of poor, uneducated people from distant cultures easily forget that several of their own ancestors found themselves in a similar state of poverty and desperation and that it was human mobility that in the end provided a solution for them and their children.

Christopher Columbus dreamt he would find an utopian India, but instead he discovered a “New World”, which in reality was a very old one and just like the Mediterranean, on which shore he was born, this world was dependent on another mighty, internal sea on which shores there lived people of different cultures – Arawaks, Tainos, Mayas, Aztecs and many more whose cultures eventually mixed with those of European conquerors, Africans slaves and indentured labourers from Europe and Asia.

In spite of immense suffering, wars and plagues a multifaceted mix of cultures developed, evident through a wide variety of food, religious beliefs and especially of music genres, like merengue, calypso, cumbia, rumba, reggae, son, salsa, gospel, jazz and blues. In modern times authors like García Márquez, Juan Rulfo, Miguel Angel Asturias, Marie Vieux Chauvet, Alejo Carpentier, Derek Walcott, Vidhiar Naipul, Jaques Romain, Zora Neale Hurston, Aimé Césaire, William Faulkner and other almost countless writers, story tellers, poets and singers bear witness about this unique blend of cultures created by Mexicans, Colombians, Haitians, Garifunas, West- and East Indians, Jamaicans, Pirates, Slaves, Maroons, Guanches, Turks, Andalusians, Jews, Gypsies, French, Dutch, Voodooists, Santeros, Muslims and Christians. What would the world have been without this blend of cultures along the shores of the Mediterranean – and the Caribbean Seas?

The same is true about the maritime trade, cultural and commercial exchange along the coasts of the Indian Ocean, beginning with the world´s earliest civilization in Mesopotamia, ancient Egypt and the Indian subcontinent. There ancient Romans, Arabs, Africans and people from Sri Lanka and India, and even Chinese, used the monsoon drifts and equatorial currents to connect with each other and spread their goods and cultures, creating culturally mixed, communicating societies along the coasts, like the African Bantu-Swahili culture, which spread its influence further inland.

South China Sea tells a similar story about human interaction across the waters and even if the Champas of Vietnam, the Chinese, the Japanese, the Malaysians, the Indonesians, the Dutch, the Portuguese and the Philippines have claimed superiority over that particular sea it has nevertheless carried goods, ideas, religions and inspiration between the different populations who inhabited and still inhabit its shores.

In the far north we find the North Sea, once ruled over by the Vikings with their superior longships; rading, trading and establishing colonies in Ireland, Iceland, England and on the northern coasts of France. In the Middle Ages and through the 15th century they were displaced by traders from Northern European coastal ports, the Hansa community, shipping grain, fish, timber, dyes, linen, salt, metals, wine, culture and art, following the old Viking, Finnish and Slav trade routes around the Baltic sea and down along the Russian rivers, even connecting with one of the most distant inland seas of them all – the White Sea, which linked the distant cultures of Finns, Sami people, Samoyeds and Russians, among other treasures giving birth to the stunning Karelian epic Kalevala, which like Homer´s Odyssey, among other things, is a tribute to the sea.

So, while we are probing the tragedy of the drowned refugees and migrants of the Mediterranean, let us not forget that the open seas of the world have not only served as routes for desperate migrants, asylum seekers, slavers, pirates and warriors, they have also been channels for civilization and friendship, providing vitality, strength and culture to the peoples of their shores. In spite of its shortcomings, mobility is part of human nature and cannot be blocked. Human interaction and communication is a blessing and instead of drowning people in their waves let us allow the seas to continue to bring cultures, inspiration and friendship between us all.

1 http://unitedagainstrefugeedeaths.eu/about-the-campaign/about-the-united-list-of-deaths/
The list does not only account for deaths occurring at sea, but also in detention blocks, asylum units and town centres.
2 Robert Louis Stevenson, Travels with a Donkey in the Cévennes and The Amateur Migrant. London: Penguin Classics 2004, p. 107.

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

The post Seas of Death and Hope appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Credit: UN Photo/Manuel Elias

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Feb 11 2019 (IPS)

The United Nations– once facetiously described as an institution whose bloated bureaucracy moves at the leisured pace of a paralytic snail — is steadily zooming into the field of fast-paced, cutting-edge digital technology where humans may one day be replaced with machines and robots.

Is this a glimpse into a distant future or a far-fetched fantasy?

The technological innovations currently being experimented at the UN include artificial intelligence (AI), machine-learning, e-translations (involving the UN’s six official languages where machines are taking over from humans) and robotics.

The United Nations says it has also been using unarmed and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), or drones, in peacekeeping operations, “helping to improve our situational awareness and to strengthen our ability to protect civilians”.

At a joint meeting of the UN’s Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) and its Economic and Social Committee, a robot named Sophia had an interactive session last year with Deputy Secretary-General Amina J. Mohammed.

Credit: UN Photo/Manuel Elias

Among the technological innovations being introduced in the world body, and specifically in the UN’s E-conference services, is the use of eLUNa –Electronic Languages United Nations — “a machine translation interface specifically developed for the translation of UN documents.”

What distinguishes eLUNa from commercial CAT (Computer-Assisted Translation) tools is that it was developed entirely by the United Nations and is specifically geared towards the needs and working methods of UN language professionals, says the UN.

Besides the UN headquarters in New York, the spreading eLUNa network includes the UN Office in Geneva (UNOG), the UN Office in Vienna (UNOV), the UN Office in Nairobi (UNON) and the Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (ESCWA) based in Beirut.

Secretary-General Antonio Guterres says the breakthrough has been brought on by a combination of computing power, robotics, big data and artificial intelligence—even as they generate revolutions in healthcare, transport and manufacturing worldwide.

“I am convinced that these new capacities can help lift millions of people out of poverty, achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and enable developing countries to leapfrog into a better future,” he predicted last year.

Addressing the executive heads of some 31 UN agencies last November, Guterres singled out some of the challenges emanating from global mega trends and technological advancements in four distinct areas — artificial intelligence; cyberspace; biotechnology; and the impact of technological applications on peace and security — “with a view to identifying specific entry points for UN engagement and to determine focus areas where the UN system can add value.”

He said, he is working with colleagues throughout the entire UN system to determine “how our organization can better harness the benefits and address the risks of new technologies, and how the United Nations itself can make better use of innovation.”

Christopher Fabian, Principal Adviser in the Office of Global Innovation at the UN’s children’s agency UNICEF, one of the agencies making headway in AI, told IPS that UNICEF is using Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence (ML/AI) for both programmatic and operational purposes.

Based on the “Principles of Digital Development,” (https://digitalprinciples.org/) the organization promotes applications and development of Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence with equity at their core, whether through fair and open training sets or through discussions on algorithmic equity and information poverty, he added.

For example, he pointed out, UNICEF is developing Magic Box (https://www.unicef.org/innovation/Magicbox), a collaborative platform that is made possible through the contributions of private sector partners such as Telefonica, Google, IBM, Amadeus and Red Hat, which share their data and expertise for public good.

By harnessing real-time data generated by the private sector, UNICEF can gain critical insights into the needs of vulnerable populations, and make more informed decisions about how to invest its resources to respond to disaster, epidemics and other challenges, said Fabian.

AI can improve efficiency through automation. Facial recognition is one example of this. Credit: UNICEF/TusharGhei/2018

In addition, UNICEF, through its Venture Fund, the first financial vehicle of its kind in the United Nations, collaborates with innovators on the ground in UNICEF programme countries to build and test new solutions at the pace required to keep up with the rapidly evolving challenges facing children.

The Venture Fund was launched by UNICEF in 2016 — a $17.9 million investment fund — applying lessons learned over 8+ years, undertaking the complex work of helping to identify and grow innovations for children.

The UNICEF Venture Fund makes $50–100K early stage investments in technologies — including data science and AI — for children, developed by UNICEF country offices or companies in UNICEF programme countries.

By providing flexible funding to early-stage innovators, it allows UNICEF to quickly assess, fund and grow open-source technology solutions that show potential to positively impact the lives of vulnerable children, declared Fabian.

Meanwhile, Guterres said new technologies could enhance the maintenance of peace and security, including disarmament and non-proliferation objectives, by providing new tools and augmenting existing ones.

For example, he noted, the use of shared ledger technology such as Blockchain in nuclear safeguards, or machine learning in multilateral disarmament verification — as the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization is pioneering.

Excerpts from an interview with UNICEF’s Christopher Fabian:

IPS: What is the upside and downside of automation– and particularly at UNICEF? Is reaching efficiency a key criterion?

Fabian: AI can help UNICEF in several ways — from deep learning algorithms that can learn underlying patterns in satellite imagery to map every school in the world, to predictive models that can help us prevent the spread of diseases. These type of solutions can help improve the reach and efficiency of programmes in the field as well as optimize the allocation of the scarce resources.

However, challenges are many. First, is the lack of quality training sets. Data around the most vulnerable populations is often scarce and inaccurate. As a collective, we need to start putting more resources towards collecting data from the ground, to validate existing records, and to debias these datasets.

But what happens once we have diverse, good quality datasets? We still need to keep working together to ensure that the data is used to build fair, inclusive algorithms. At UNICEF, we need to make sure that we are part of the conversations happening globally, so that we can bring the voice of children, in particular the most vulnerable, to the table.

As one of the efforts to mitigate these risks, UNICEF is a founding partner of the Partnership on AI to Benefit People and Society – and a member of several Working Groups including the ‘Fair, Transparent and Accountable AI’ and the ‘AI, Labor and Economy’-. The partnership was established to study and formulate best practices on AI technologies, to advance the public’s understanding of AI and its influences on people and society.

IPS: To the best of your knowledge, is UNICEF the only — or one of the few UN agencies –on the path to digitized, highly-automated operations?

Fabian: Initiatives around the use of Big Data, AI, blockchain and other digital innovations are being piloted in several UN agencies and programmes — and sometimes through joint collaborations among them.

In order to promote the sharing of these experiences and learn from each other’s successes and failures, UNICEF co-funded, together with the World Food Programme (WFP), the UN Innovation Network (https://www.uninnovation.network) — an informal, collaborative community of UN innovators interested in sharing their expertise and experience with others to promote and advance innovation within the UN System.

Similarly, frontier technologies and digitalization are one of the main priorities of the Secretary General. To strengthen digital cooperation and advance proposals among governments, the private sector, civil society, international organizations, academia, technical community and other relevant stakeholders in the digital space, the High-level Panel for Digital Cooperation was set.

The Panel is expected to raise awareness about the transformative impact of digital technologies across society and the economy, and contribute to the broader public debate on how to ensure a safe and inclusive digital future for all, taking into account relevant human rights norms.

IPS: Kai-fu Lee, author of “AI Superpowers” and a longtime tech executive, is quoted by the New York times as saying that AI will eliminate 40 percent of the world’s jobs within 15 years? And a report by the World Economic Forum (WEF), which met in Davos last month, has estimated that 1.37 million workers will be displaced by automation in the next decade. What is your prediction for UNICEF?

Fabian: According to recent studies, between 75 million and 375 million workers (3 to 14% of the global workforce) will need to switch occupational categories by 2030 if automation happens at a medium-to-rapid rate. Similarly, according to World Economic Forum, 65% of children entering school today, will have jobs that don’t exist yet. This means that even though many jobs will disappear, many new ones will be created.

However, there is a strong evidence of skills mismatch between young people and employers; young people are not learning the skills they need to get jobs. If we manage to understand the skills necessary for the future of jobs and are able to adjust education systems accordingly, children and youth will be more resilient to automation and better prepared for the future.

One of UNICEF’s efforts in this front is Information poverty, an initiative that aims at ensuring that every child has access to the right information, opportunity and choice.

Further Info — UNICEF Generation AI stats (i.e. stats UNICEF predicts/works with):

IPS: Do you think the benefits of AI at UNICEF will eventually spillover — and leading by example — into the UN secretariat and other UN agencies?

Fabian: Similar to question 3 (vis a vis UN Innovation Network and High Level Panel on Digital Cooperation —http://www.un.org/en/digital-cooperation-panel/). We are working with/through both groups and see support for the benefits of AI (and attention paid to identifying and mitigating risks) growing.

The writer can be contacted at thalifdeen@ips.org

The post Is UN Planning to Replace Humans with Machines & Robots? appeared first on Inter Press Service.

By Kunal Sen
HELSINKI, Finland, Feb 8 2019 (IPS)

Following on from Finn Tarp, my predecessor, is a daunting prospect, but I look forward to working with my colleagues at UNU-WIDER and with our many partners to build on the achievements of the past 10 years.

I was first acquainted with UNU-WIDER as a graduate student in the United States in the late 1980s. I came across several of the institutes publications which became classics in the field of development economics, including Hunger and Public Action by Jean Dreze and Amartya Sen, and Varieties of Stabilization Experience by Lance Taylor.

These publications had a profound impact on my own thinking, and since then many other UNU-WIDER publications have had similar transformative effects on successive generations of social scientists.

Kunal Sen

In a world where there are increasing asymmetries of knowledge creation and sharing between the Global North and South, UNU-WIDER is ideally placed to use the power of its global network to address the pressing questions in development.

The three interconnected transformations I am delighted to take the helm at UNU-WIDER, an institution which has been associated with some of the most advanced thinking in development economics.

UNU-WIDER has combined outstanding research with sustained policy engagement on some of the most pressing concerns affecting the living standards of the world’s poorest people.

WIDER impact
Over the past 33 years, and most recently under the leadership of my predecessor, Finn Tarp, in the last 10 years, UNU-WIDER has significantly advanced our understanding of the causes of poverty and inequality, climate change, the roots of gender inequality, and the challenges of structural transformation for low-income countries necessary to achieve the SDGs

In the new year, we launched our new work programme for 2019–23. This will be the most ambitious work programme that UNU-WIDER has undertaken so far. I believe the challenge of development is ultimately a question of transformation — how to bring about broad-based sustained improvement in multiple dimensions of wellbeing necessary to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

This involves transformation in three different dimensions: economies, polities, societies. The new work programme will address these dimensions of transformation, which will become the thematic foci of UNU-WIDER’s research in the coming years: Transforming Economies, Transforming States, and Transforming Societies.

Transforming Economies — the first thematic focus of UNU-WIDER’s new work programme — is at the core of any meaningful development strategy and set of policies.

Large-scale changes in the structure of economic activity and employment opportunities must take place if absolute poverty is to be reduced alongside addressing economic and social inequalities.

Economic transformation is also essential in delivering higher levels of income and increasing market activity. These are critically needed to improve the mobilization of domestic resources and establish an enlarged tax base that can finance the investments needed to achieve the SDGs.

But for meaningful economic transformation to take place, there needs to be a political transformation as well. This is why Transforming States will be the second thematic focus of UNU-WIDER’s work programme.

Capable and effective states are needed to work with the private sector to achieve higher rates of economic growth, but also to bring about a shift to more environmentally sustainable production.

At the same time, the state has a key role to play in providing necessary public goods and in shaping the transformation of societies in ways that yield greater empowerment — through proactive policies to help reduce marginalization of the poor and to achieve greater gender equality.

Accountable states that are responsive to the needs of their citizens are an essential factor in national development. The challenge is to build capable and legitimate states in difficult contexts, especially in fragile and conflict-affected environments.

The third thematic focus of the new work programme is Transforming Societies. Economic and political transformation needs to be accompanied by social transformation, such that every citizen can live in a socially inclusive and egalitarian society.

Increasing the capacities, resources, and confidence of individuals and their communities is a means to end poverty and to contain and reduce not only gender inequality, but other social inequalities as well.

This is now a pressing concern in many societies, especially when high inequality destabilizes political systems, increases state fragility, and hinders the transformation of economies.

The actions of both state and non-state actors (such as non-governmental organizations and community groups) matter in bringing about social transformation. The challenge for us is to understand the conditions under which such actions are possible, and when they can become transformative.

How will we get there?
These three themes are at the very centre of the UN’s 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. Much of our work will include mobilizing policy research, evidence, and action around selected goals of the 2030 Agenda as well as responding to the Agenda’s ‘call for increased support for strengthening data collection and capacity-building in Member States’.

With the three transformations in mind we will start the work with launching six flagship projects in 2019 — on informality, women’s work, social mobility, building capable states, structural transformation, and extractives.

As always, we welcome the UNU-WIDER network to engage with us in thinking through and taking action for a more sustainable and equitable future for all. How can this be practically done?

Keep an eye on calls for papers and research proposals coming out throughout the year, apply for visiting scholaror PhD fellowhip in order to visit and work with us.

Right now we have an open call for papers for the next WIDER development conference, being held 11-13 September 2019 in Bangkok, in partnership with UNESCAP. The theme of the conference is Transforming Economies – for Better Jobs.

We welcome submissions of proposals from you and I hope to meet many of you in Bangkok — it is your active participation in UNU-WIDER’s development conferences that have made these events the successes that they are.

The views expressed in this piece are those of the author, and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Institute or the United Nations University, nor the programme/project donors.

The post Transforming Economies, States, & Societies – Building Evidence for Achieving SDGs appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Kunal Sen is Director, UN University, World Institute for Development Economics Research (UNU-WIDER)

The post Transforming Economies, States, & Societies – Building Evidence for Achieving SDGs appeared first on Inter Press Service.

From Left to Right: Ambassador Masahiko Kiya, the Ambassador for TICAD 7,MOFA Japan, Ambassador Soloman Maina, Kenya’s ambassador to Japan and Siddharth Chatterjee, United Nations Resident Coordinator to Kenya. Credit: Kenya Embassy 10 January 2019

By Siddharth Chatterjee
NAIROBI, Kenya, Feb 8 2019 (IPS)

1. Why Blue Economy in Africa? What potentials does Africa have?

The blue economy in Africa is neglected, ignored or underexploited, but it can offer a range of African solutions to African economic problems. More than one-quarter of Africa’s population lives within 100km of the coast and derive their livelihoods there. According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), by 2020, the annual economic value of energy activities related to maritime affairs will reach EUR 2.5bn.1 Out of the 54 African countries, 34 are coastal countries and over 90% of African exports and imports are transported by sea. The territorial waters under African jurisdiction cover a surface area of 13 million km², with a continental shelf of some 6.5 million km² comprising exclusive economic zones (EEZ). The continent covers 17% of the world’s surface water resources. The strategic dimension of the blue economy is an indisputable reality for African countries. It is for this reason that it has been included in the African Union’s Agenda 2063 and that a practical handbook on the blue economy was prepared by the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa in March 2016.

According to an FAO study, the total gross added value of the fisheries and aquaculture sector in Africa is estimated at USD 24bn, i.e. 1.6% of the GDP of all African countries.2 Still according to FAO, this sector employs some 12.3 million people, but is largely underexploited. There is a need to professionalize the aquaculture and fisheries sector.

By any standards, Africa is at least underusing, possibly even drastically wasting, its blue economy potential. This must be rectified. By some estimates, the African maritime industry is already worth USD 1 trillion annually. But, with the right economic policies implemented, it could triple in just two years.

2. Why is Japan needed? What advantage does Japan have to be a partner country?

Japan is essentially a Blue economy and a global economic giant. Africa can learn and benefit from Japan. Let me start by commending Japan for co-hosting the Blue Economy Conference with Kenya and Canada in Nairobi in 2018.

If the continent is to establish a viable blue economy, African countries must begin with focus on the current limited infrastructure and capacities to assure maritime security and coastal protection. The second imperative is to establish partnerships, including innovative financing models, preferably driven by the private sector.

Kenya co-hosted the Sustainable Blue Economy Conference (SBEC) between the 26th and 28th November 2018 with Canada and Japan.3 SBEC aimed to make progress towards safeguarding and developing the world’s water bodies and the ecosystems that live therein. The conference hosted over 17,000 participants from 184 countries and sought to exploit the potential of oceans, seas, rivers, lakes by leveraging on the latest scientific knowledge and innovation while ensuring the proper conservation of the aquatic resources for generations to come. During the conference, President of Kenya Mr. Uhuru Kenyatta made several pledges including enhancing security in the high seas, combating illegal fishing while supporting sustainable and responsible fishing of endangered species and key fish stocks, among other things.

Japan’s support to the Blue economy will ensure that the Blue/ocean economy, will be “a major contributor to continental transformation and growth” as envisaged in the Agenda 2063, Furthermore the sector will benefit from Japanese expertise in maritime security and safety. Japan has proven expertise and demonstrated real contributions in ensuring freedom and safety of navigation, as witnessed by Japanese contributions to improving navigation safety in the Straits of Malacca.

I actually see Kenya as a gateway to Africa. Kenya has the ports. It has the infrastructure. It is interconnected. It is a beacon of hope in a region of instability. In fact it represents everything that we want to see happen all across Africa. And therefore to me Kenya becomes even more crucial in becoming the convener and the facilitator of the entire Blue Economy dialogue.

We as the UN family stand ready to support Japan in advancing a sustainable Blue Economy in Kenya.

3. What opportunities does Japanese companies have? How should Japan be involved in developing Blue Economy?

There five areas where Japan’s ocean industry expertise could be shared to promote the blue economy in the Africa region.4

i. Most African states are looking seaward for alternative non-conventional renewable sources of energy. There’s interest in offshore solar power as having high potential as a major source of energy. Japan private sector can help here. Japan’s largest solar power plant, the Kyocera Corporation’s Kagoshima Nanatsujima Mega Solar Power Plant, is an offshore technology built on reclaimed land jutting the waters of Kagoshima Bay, generating 70 MW of energy in Kagoshima City. The project has an annual power generation capacity of 78,800MWh and is expected to supply clean electricity to approximately 22,000 average households.

ii. While there’s been no commercial developments to date there’s still international interest in deep-sea mining in the Indian Ocean. For polymetallic nodules, Japan is a pioneer investor in the Indian Ocean and the International Seabed Authority entered into contract with Japan after the Law of the Sea Convention came into effect. Japan can help with mining technology, processing technology and environmental impact assessment. There’s also growing interest in developments in relation to deep water gas hydrates energy reserves (reservoirs of gas trapped in ice crystals) where Japan is at the cutting edge. India and Japan last year carried out a joint survey for gas hydrates using a Japanese drilling ship in the Indian Ocean. Japan has set itself the target of bringing methane hydrates into the mainstream by the early 2020s. Prime Minister Modi has listed work on gas hydrates among the top 10 potential areas of research for India.

iii. R&D in marine biotechnology is emerging as a promising sector for growth and employment in the Indian Ocean. The Indian Ocean region is rich in marine biodiversity: we’re likely to see the realisation of marine biotechnology potential, including the culture of a range of marine organisms for biofuels, bioremediation and bioproducts.

iv. Aquaculture is a key driver of the Blue Economy in the Indian Ocean providing food, nutrition and employment opportunities to the people in the region. Since capture fisheries face the problem of overfishing in the region, the challenges of food security can be addressed through aquaculture production. Aquaculture has the potential to transform the global food system for the better. Japan has tremendous skills in this industry and can assist African states in developing aquaculture systems that expand the range of foods and the nutritional content of those foods, while ensuring that the industry is economically and environmentally sustainable.

v. Japan can strengthen the digital blue economy in the Indian Ocean: the undersea cables and the electronic services that they can enable, such as broadband and data exchange. Japan can contribute to the growing digital fabric connecting the Indian Ocean: it’s got some of world’s top vendors of submarine cable systems.

4. What do you expect for TICAD 7? Could you tell us on what you are working with Japanese government for the conference?

UNDP is the longest serving co-organizer of TICAD process with the Government of Japan. Co-organizing TICAD process provides Japan and UNDP with important strategic advantages, including: (1) facilitating global discourse on Africa’s development; (2) promoting innovative partnerships; (3) Enhancing integration of the UN Development System; and (4) Enhancing strategic partnerships with Japan in Africa as the key driver of the corporate strategic partnership with Japan.

In addition to the issues raised above, we expect TICAD 7 to promote Africa’s blue/ocean economy to enhance sustainable use of marine resources, developing port facilities and facilitating marine transport. Furthermore we expect the issue of Africa’s infrastructure and connectivity to be high on the TICAD 7 Agenda as this will unlock the construction and management of quality transport infrastructure, such as ports, maritime corridors, airports, railroads, bridges and trunk roads that are efficient in view of life-cycle cost, reliable, safe, resilient against natural disasters and environmentally friendly, to strengthen connectivity in Africa, utilizing state of the art infrastructure technology.

5. What challenges does Africa have to develop Blue Economy? What infrastructures/rules/policies are needed?

From concerns around environmental sustainability to the dangers of corruption and a dearth of actionable data, policymakers need vast resources to get to grips with large swathes of their own territory.

There are also challenges related to climate change, rising sea temperatures, ocean acidification and rising sea levels.

There are current conflicts driven by lack of demarcation of maritime and aquatic boundaries. This has been a constant source of tensions between neighbouring countries, not only threating any long-term investment considerations, but also leading to irresponsible use of resources.

The continent needs to fast-track resolution of disputes and strengthen their maritime and riparian cooperation mechanisms. This will provide grounds for working on interstate economies of scale and develop strategies for bridging technical and infrastructure gaps among States.

In line with SDG 14, development of this sector must also promote social inclusion while ensuring environmental sustainability. In this respect, the continent owes special consideration to people living along the shores of oceans, lakes and rivers, essentially youth and women. The question of how this new frontier can address poverty reduction and hunger when leaving no one behind must be a central consideration. We need to be able to govern resources effectively and be able to utilise them in a way that’s transparent and inclusive.

Equally daunting is required transboundary negotiation among at least 38 African countries, intensive planning, intersectoral planning, intragovernmental coordination, extensive training and complex multi-stakeholder engagement.

The African Union has launched its 2050 Integrated Maritime Strategy in a bid to provide a broad framework for the protection and sustainable exploitation of Africa’s marine resources. At its heart lies the creation of a Combined Exclusive Maritime Zone of Africa (CEMZA), a common maritime space intended to boost trade, protect the environment and fisheries, share information and boost border protection and defence activities.

1 See Energy Technology Perspectives 2012, Pathways to a Clean Energy System, available at https://www.iea.org/publications/freepublications/publication/ETP2012_free.pdf
2 See FAO, (2014). The Value of African Fisheries, available at http://www.fao.org/3/a-i3917e.pdf
3 Japan joined Canada and Kenya in co-hosting SBEC and provided KEN Sh300 million funding for the conference; https://www.standardmedia.co.ke/article/2001300222/japan-offers-sh300-million-for-blue-economy-conference
4 See Anthony Bergin (2016). A vision in blue: Japan and the Indian Ocean, available at https://www.aspistrategist.org.au/25444-2/

The post Blue Economy: The New Frontier for Africa’s Growth & How Japan Can Help appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

An interview with Siddharth Chatterjee UN Resident Coordinator to Kenya by Nikkei Shimbun, Japan and reproduced by IPS.

The post Blue Economy: The New Frontier for Africa’s Growth & How Japan Can Help appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Even with a metre of snow outside in Ottawa, Canada, a wide variety of imported apples and other fruits are available in Canadian food markets. Credit: Stephen Leahy/IPS

By Stephen Leahy
ONTARIO, Canada, Feb 8 2019 (IPS)

Canada introduced a new healthy eating food guide January 2019 and, for the first time, the meat, dairy and processed food and beverage industries were not involved. Based on the recommendations of health and nutrition experts, the guide places a new emphasis on eating plants, drinking water and cooking at home.

Health experts have long warned that Canadians don’t eat enough vegetables, fruits and whole grains.  The new guide wants to shift diets toward a high proportion of plant-based foods like legumes, beans, and tofu and less dairy, eggs, meat and fish. It also warns parents to limit children’s consumption of fruit juices and sugar-sweetened milk beverages.

“Healthy eating is an important part of maintaining a healthy lifestyle and helps prevent chronic diseases like type 2 diabetes, heart disease, and some cancers,” said Theresa Tam, Chief Public Health Officer of Canada, in a statement.

Canada’s new guide is amongst the best in the world says Wayne Roberts, an independent food policy analyst and writer. “It’s comparable to Brazil’s excellent guide with its emphasis on eating fresh, unprocessed food,” Roberts told IPS.

The guide goes beyond advising Canadians what foods to eat but how to eat by recommending cooking at home, eating meals together and avoiding fast food said Jennifer Reynolds of Food Secure Canada, an alliance of organisations and individuals working together to advance food security.

Canada’s new healthy eating food guide. Courtesy: Government of Canada

Canadians spent 19 billion dollars on fast food in 2017, an average of 2,200 dollars per year for a family of four.

Unicef ranked Canada 37th out of 41 rich countries when it comes to providing healthy food for kids. The long road to developing a new food guide represents a whole new direction for food in Canada, said Reynolds in an interview. Despite a powerful food industry lobby, new legislation is expected this year to limit marketing of unhealthy food and drinks to children. 

Not only is shifting to more plant-based diets good for both health and the planet, it is a golden opportunity to re-direct Canada’s export-focused, commodity agricultural system to sustainable agriculture and support rural economies while addressing food insecurity, Reynolds said.

Despite living in a wealthy country, more than one in 10 Canadians cannot afford or have access to sufficient nutritious food to maintain health researchers at the University of Toronto report.

They recommend a national food policy that brings all sectors of government together to address this long-standing issue. Such a policy is sorely needed to not only address hunger and under-nutrition but also the challenges of climate change and the decline in rural economies, said Reynolds.

A national food policy could also address the shocking amount of waste in Canada’s food system where nearly 60 percent of all food produced is wasted according to a new report The Avoidable Crisis of Food Waste.

This is the first such analysis of any countries’ food production system said Martin Gooch, CEO of  Value Chain Management International (VCMI), a company that helps industries’ lower costs and improve the efficiency of their supply chains.

“I was astonished by the amount of waste in this industry,” Gooch told IPS.

The research is a “world first” because it measures weight using “a standardised system across the whole food value chain,” and includes all food types from both land and water. It also includes primary data from across the supply chain and consulted more than 700 food industry experts.

The value of all food that is lost or wasted in Canada is a staggering 49 billion dollars, said Lori Nikkel of Second Harvest, an agency that collects surplus food and gives it away to those in need. The VCMI study found that a third of Canada’s wasted food could be “rescued” and sent to communities in need.

Waste happens at all stages of food production including produce left to rot in the fields due to labour shortages, low prices or cancelled orders. Another major issue is the food industry’s focus on producing huge volumes of food as cheaply as possible over quality said Gooch. When a company in the orchard industry switched its emphasis to quality, it resulted in reduced costs, doubled profits while total volume produced was the same or less.

The lion’s share of food waste is during food production and processing the study found. Only 14 percent of food waste is at the household level. Best-before dates are the other major cause of food waste by both consumers and retailers. Product dating practices have nothing to do with food safety. Companies can use any date they wish. There are no standards or regulations, nor were best-before dates found on most products just 10 years ago said Gooch.

Given Gooch’s knowledge of Canada’s food waste he was quite surprised to see the Food Sustainability Index rank Canada among the best in the world in preventing food waste with a score of 97.80 out of 100. “That’s incorrect, we found an astonishing amount of waste in Canada’s food system,” he said. 

The Index was drawn up by the Italian foundation Barilla Center for Food and Nutrition and the Intelligence Unit of the British magazine The Economist. The index ranked 67 countries based on three categories: food and water loss and waste, sustainable agriculture and nutritional challenges. Canada ranked third overall, much to the surprise of everyone interviewed for this article. 

When IPS questioned the Barilla Center about food waste it said Canada ranked poorly, in fact 65th out of 67 counties with 80 kilograms (kg) of food waste per capita per year based their estimates. However, since Canada has a wide range of policies to address food waste it received a far higher final ranking on the Index. 

However, the VCMI study found that Canada’s actual per capita food waste was closer to 1,000 kg per year, per person not the estimated 80 kg. 

The third place overall ranking the Index is a result of Canada having strong policies. “While Canada does not perform particularly well in most cases on outcome metrics, the country does have strong policies to make changes, especially when compared to the United States,” Valentina Gasbarri of the Barilla Center told IPS in an email.

“We are open to discussions around what improvements could be made [to the Index],” Gasbarri said. 

Perhaps the index was weighted too much towards policy and intentions mused Roberts. “It certainly does not represent on the ground reality in Canada.” 

Related Articles

• Italy Has the ‘Greenest Agriculture’ in Europe, But it’s Not Sustainable
• Amidst Rising Hunger, BCFN Forum to Promote Food Sustainability
• India Uses Tech to Power its New Battle Against Malnutrition

The post Canada Implements New Food Guidelines, But What About the Food Waste? appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Poultry production is giving hope for deported migrants who make up the Association of Active Women Working Together for a Better Future, in the village of Los Talpetates, Berlin municipality in the eastern Salvadoran department of Usulután. Credit: Edgardo Ayala/IPS

By Edgardo Ayala
Feb 8 2019 (IPS)

Salvadoran farmer Lorena Mejía opens an incubator and monitors the temperature of the eggs, which will soon provide her with more birds and eggs as the chickens hatch and grow up.

Mejía is one of the beneficiaries of a project that seeks to offer productive ventures to women who, like her, have been deported from Mexico or the United States while they were attempting to achieve “the American dream.”

“I left because I worked in a factory in San Salvador, but the money wasn’t enough,” the 43-year-old woman told IPS in the yard of her home in the village of Talpetate, Berlin municipality in the eastern Salvadoran department of Usulután."Rural women are the motors of the economy, and at FAO we support returnees through inclusive and equitable processes." – Emilia González

In 1998, after a dangerous journey of several weeks, Mejia managed to settle in Dallas, Texas in the U.S.

She worked there in cleaning services at a school and in a hotel, but she returned to her country in 2001, with many broken dreams.

“Now I’m focused, together with my colleagues, on making this project grow,” she said.

Mejía and other local women farmers founded the Association of Active Women Working Together for a Better Future in 2010, and came up with an initiative that would offer productive opportunities to other returning migrants.

Currently, some 40 women make up this organisation, 15 of whom are involved in poultry production, who have received technical support from the state-run National Centre for Agricultural and Forestry Technology (Centa), as well as from the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) office in El Salvador.

The rest grow El Salvador staple crops: corn and beans.

In spite of the importance of the support from Centa and FAO for the women’s organisation, the Salvadoran State has not yet developed a strategy aimed at the economic reinsertion of returning migrants, and in particular women.

“Sometimes what you need is a little boost,” said Mejia.

In the small rural village of Talpetate, home to some 70 families, jobs are scarce and poverty is rampant.

According to official figures published in May 2018, 32.1 percent of rural Salvadoran households are below the poverty line, compared to 27.4 percent in the cities.

The project, which was launched in November 2018, provided each participating family with 25 hens to produce eggs.

Dennis Alejo, a Salvadoran deported while trying to cross into the United States, has found in tomato production the best way to make a living and generate a handful of jobs in his native Berlin, in the eastern Salvadoran department of Usulután. Credit: Edgardo Ayala/IPS

According to the participants, income from the sale of eggs is still modest. But in the future, when production has increased, they expect to earn about 200 dollars a month as a collective.

That money is reinvested in the small collective farm, in order to improve and increase production, with more incubators and infrastructure.

“Rural women are the motors of the economy, and at FAO we support returnees through inclusive and equitable processes,” Emilia González, the U.N. organisation’s assistant representative for programmes in El Salvador, told IPS.

An important component of the project is that it also supports food sustainability, because part of the egg and poultry production goes to household consumption.

“We saved the money we would use to buy a few pounds of chicken,” Marlene Mejía, 46, another of the beneficiaries, told IPS.

She also tried to reach the United States, in 2003, as an undocumented migrant. But she only managed to make it partly across Mexico, before she got stuck in a town whose name she never knew.

After several days of confinement with very little food in a house run by migrant traffickers, she decided to return to her country.

The migration of Salvadorans to the United States is a phenomenon that has marked this small Central American country of 7.3 million people.

It is estimated that at least 2.8 million Salvadorans live in the United States, part of an exodus that intensified in the 1980s, when El Salvador experienced a bloody civil war (1980-1992).

Three planes arrive weekly from the United States with deportees, as well as three buses from Mexico.

According to official statistics, more than 26,000 Salvadorans were deported in 2018, mainly from Mexico and the United States. A high figure, but 1.2 percent lower than the total for 2017, which was 26,837.

For the past four years, Marlene Mejía has also been making pupusas, the most popular dish in El Salvador: a corn tortilla filled with beans, cheese and pork rinds, among other ingredients.

“If you have a job here, why suffer over there?” she asked.

The Salvadoran government offers some support for the economic reinsertion of returnees, through the project called “El Salvador is your home”, launched in October 2017.

According to data from the Foreign Ministry, 147 people received seed money to start up a project for economic and psychosocial reintegration, while another pilot project for the productive insertion of Usulután is aimed at 208 people.

But these are derisory amounts in terms of the number of beneficiaries, given the magnitude of the deportations and the country’s economic problems, so that most returnees find no economic stability, and government assistance falls far short.

“Evidently it is insufficient; a bigger effort is needed to be able to offer options to people when they return to their hometowns,” Jaime Rivas, a migration researcher at Don Bosco University, told IPS.

Some returnees manage to set up ventures on their own, with little or no governmental or international support.

Dennis Alejo, 30, has tried to cross the U.S. border five times since 2010.

The last time, in 2015, he managed to reach the outskirts of San Antonio, Texas, but the group of migrants with whom he had been crossing the desert for seven days was intercepted by the “migra”, as migrants popularly call agents of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

But he managed to escape and hide in the bush.

“I spent the whole night hugging the scrub to hide from a helicopter with a searchlight, which was looking for me,” he told IPS.

Now, through his own efforts, and overcoming all sorts of obstacles, Alejo grows good quality tomatoes on a small plot of land he rents in Berlin, thanks to the 1,800 plants he planted three years ago.

He also employs a dozen young people as pickers, and feels he’s preventing youngsters from risking their lives crossing deserts to get to the United States.

“I don’t pay them much, just five dollars a day, but if I had more support, I could employ more people,” he said.

Because Alejo also faces the lack of financial support to set up an irrigation system to boost production.

Related Articles

• Separated Central American Families Suffer Abuse in the United States
• Deported Salvadorans in Times of Trump

The post Deported Salvadoran Women Pin Their Hopes on Poultry Production appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Owen Barder is Senior Fellow at the Center for Global Development (CGD), Vice President and Director of CGD, Europe

By Owen Barder
WASHINGTON DC, Feb 7 2019 (IPS)

It is time for an open, fair, merit-based process to appoint the next President of the World Bank. And I’ll explain below why I think the Europeans may, at last, break the cartel that has prevented this.

The “Gentleman’s Agreement”

Since the Second World War, Europe and the United States have operated the so-called “Gentleman’s Agreement”—that the Bank would be led by an American while the International Monetary Fund (IMF) would be led by a European.

This carve-up is an accident of history. British economist John Maynard Keynes had assumed that Harry Dexter White, a US Treasury Department official, would be appointed to run the IMF.

But partly because of suspicion that White was a communist—perhaps even a Soviet agent—the US Treasury Secretary decided to back Eugene Meyer as President of the World Bank instead.

The US Government didn’t think they could expect to nominate the head of both major financial institutions, and so a European has run the IMF ever since.

In the last two decades there have been empty promises in summit communiques to replace this cartel with a merit-based system for these appointments, but the World Bank has always gone to the American nominee, and the IMF to a European. And as my colleague Nancy Birdsall pointed out yesterday, the behind-closed-doors process means the World Bank post has always gone to a man.

The first time that the American candidate for President of the World Bank faced serious challenge was in 2012. There were three nominees—Jim Kim, José Antonio Ocampo, and Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala—who were interviewed by the Executive Board, and the appointment went to a vote.

Though Okonjo-Iweala was clearly the better candidate, Kim was eventually selected. It was assumed he won European votes as payback to the United States for allowing Christine Lagarde to be appointed unopposed to the IMF. Okonjo-Iweala said at the time that, while she had not expected to win, the process “will never ever be the same again.”

Owen Barder

Now that President Trump has nominated David Malpass to succeed Kim, the time has come to find out if Okonjo-Iweala is correct. Will the other shareholders force a fair process based on merit?

If so, Malpass seems unlikely to emerge as the victor. If 2012 was the crack in the glass ceiling, will 2019 be the year that we punch through?

The election is by a simple majority of Board votes, and while the United States is the largest shareholder it has only 16 percent of the votes. The Europeans, between them, have about 30 percent.

So, the United States cannot veto the appointment of another candidate who has the backing of the other shareholders.

High stakes for all

The World Bank (and IMF) are of most importance to the countries which have least control over them. More than a quarter of 2017 commitments were in sub-Saharan Africa, which has less than six percent of votes.

European leaders should seriously take into account the views of the Bank’s main stakeholders when making their decision, not simply adjust their power-sharing agreement with the United States.

There is a lot at stake for all of us. We need an effective and legitimate World Bank to tackle global problems such as climate change, financial instability, and pandemic disease, as well as to share knowledge, ideas and capital to help countries to meet the global goals.

For as long as the US and Europeans conspire to shut out the rest of the world from the leadership of the World Bank, it is impossible for it to be really legitimate and effective.

Given the obvious reasons why it makes sense to have a properly merit-based process, why might the Europeans nonetheless continue with the anachronistic “Gentleman’s Agreement”?

Four possible reasons it may continue:

1. They want to retain the privilege of nominating the Managing Director of the IMF.
2. They are concerned that the US will cut contributions to the World Bank if the US nominee is snubbed.
3. They are concerned to maintain good diplomatic relationships with the US generally, and this seems like a relatively unimportant concession to make for that broader goal.
4. These decisions are made mainly by white men from Europe and America, whose instinct will be to maintain their privileged access to international appointments.

Reasons that may not hold water in 2019

For a start, most European countries accept the inevitability of merit-based appointments at the IMF. It would be a big gamble to back the US nominee at the World Bank in the hope that they might maintain their grip on the IMF one last time.

They are sceptical that a US President committed to putting “America First” will keep his end of that bargain. Malpass’s nomination might, at last, be what breaks European and US collusion. Nor is the prospect of reduced US financing of the World Bank a significant consideration.

The World Bank is depending on donor contributions less and less for its finances, and the UK is currently the largest contributor to IDA, so even if there were a sharp fall in US contributions—which would be a decision for Congress, not the White House—this would not make a very big difference to the overall finances of the Bank.

On the contrary, a change in the leadership arrangements might well open the way to much larger donations from emerging countries such as China and India, as well as other European donors, more than compensating from a reduction in US contributions.

With the decline in US funding of the World Bank, the threat of a cut of funding no longer needs to be taken as seriously as once it was. Would the Europeans be willing to risk this slight to the United States?

Many would: there is little political advantage at home from being seen to cozy up to the Trump administration. Most will reckon that the US is unlikely to pay an enormous amount of attention (after all, the present US administration doesn’t care much about the multilateral system).

For example, nobody batted an eyelid when the rest of the world rejected the US nomination of Ken Isaacs to lead the International Organisation of Migration, another post which had traditionally gone unopposed to the United States. The world community appears to be growing a spine.

The only remaining reason that this might not happen is the inertia of privilege. Decision-makers find it hard to imagine a world in which these choices are made by fair, open processes. But once we make the change, it will be hard to remember why it ever seemed so difficult.

What’s next?

The next step is for one or more of the influential shareholders—perhaps one of the larger European countries—to build support for a more open and contested process, rather than allow the US nominee to be nodded through.

For the UK, this is a teachable moment. All the rhetoric at the moment is that the UK’s development policy should do more to serve the UK “national interest” as well as reducing poverty and spreading prosperity.

Arguably, it is in the UK’s short-term national interest to shore up its alliance with the United States, because the UK needs them for security and economic reasons, perhaps more than ever as it leaves the EU.

But it is also in the UK’s long-term national interest to have an effective, rules-based, multilateral system with legitimate institutions. Reforming the governance of the World Bank, and having a President who commands global respect, will help the UK achieve long-term goals of shared, sustainable development.

From a development point of view, there is no doubt that the UK should back a better candidate than Malpass. From a short-term foreign policy point of view, the temptation might be to go along with Trump’s pick.

Penny Mordaunt, UK Governor of the World Bank, is going to have to choose a side: the UK’s long-term interest in development, global soft power and the multilateral system, or its short-term interest in its relationship with the United States.

Her choice will send a powerful signal about whether the UK remains seriously committed to international development, or if the country has subsumed all that beneath short-term foreign policy considerations.

Potential candidates

There is time to nominate an alternative to David Malpass. Excellent candidates might include Nancy Birdsall, José Antonio Ocampo (again), Suma Chakrabarti, Kristalina Georgieva, Sri Mulyani Indrawati, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala (again), Maria Ramos, Minouche Shafik, and Tidjane Thiam. Let the candidates—including David Malpass—make their case, and see if the world can coalesce around the best person. It is time to call time on the Gentleman’s Agreement.

The link to the original article:
https://www.cgdev.org/blog/time-gentlemen-please

The post Time, Gentlemen, Please—Next President of the World Bank appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Owen Barder is Senior Fellow at the Center for Global Development (CGD), Vice President and Director of CGD, Europe

The post Time, Gentlemen, Please—Next President of the World Bank appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Erin Myers Madeira who leads the Nature Conservancy’s Global Programme on Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities says that communities outperform the government and other stakeholders in stopping deforestation and degradation. The Akaratshie community from the Garu and Tempane districts have been able to restore degraded land. Credit: Albert Oppong-Ansah/IPS

By Tharanga Yakupitiyage
UNITED NATIONS, Feb 7 2019 (IPS)

Sustainable land management is becoming more important than ever as rates of emissions, deforestation, and water scarcity continue to increase. But what if you don’t have rights to the land?
While the impact of agriculture on land is well known, the relationship between land degradation and land tenure seems to be less understood.

In fact, research has shown that insecure land tenure is linked to poor land use as communities have fewer incentives to invest in long-term protective measures, thus contributing to environmental degradation.

“Establishing secure tenure and secure rights to territory and resources for indigenous people and local communities is one of the most important things we can do around achieving positive outcomes for conservation,” said Erin Myers Madeira who leads the Nature Conservancy’s Global Programme on Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities.

“Communities outperform the government, other stakeholders in stopping deforestation and degradation,” she added to IPS.

Despite holding customary rights to more than half of the earth’s lands, indigenous people and local communities legally own only a 10 percent slice.

Resources and Rights also found the legal recognition of community forest tenure rights also still remains adequate, amounting to just over 14 percent of forest area as of 2017.

While this is partially a result of a lack of government policies, land grabs by companies which fail to acknowledge communities’ ancestral lands are increasingly common around the world.

In 2006, 200 families lost access to their land in Cambodia’s Sre Ambel district to make way for a sugar plantation.

In Liberia, Liberian farmers were evicted after the government allocated 350,000 hectares to Malaysian multinational corporation Sime Darby, causing widespread resentment and conflict in the area.

According to the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD), 35 percent of the remaining available cropland across Africa has been acquired by large entities, with over 70 million hectares allotted for biofuels.

Many have put up a fight against the expanse but it came with a deadly cost.

According to Global Witness, a record 201 environmental defenders were killed in 2017 trying to protect their land from mining, agribusiness, and other industries.

Drone visual of the area in Upper East Region, Ghana prior to restoration taken in 2015. Credit: Albert Oppong-Ansah /IPS

People-Led, Better-Led

Karina Kloos Yeatman, the Women’s Land Rights Campaign Director at Landesa, highlighted the importance of people-led conservation and sustainable land management but the first step is land rights.

“If we aren’t looking forward and thinking about land use and land tenure security and finding more solutions to help people make long term investments to sustainably use their land, we are going to continue to see an even larger influx of climate migrants and people being displaced,” she told IPS.

Yeatman particularly pointed to successes of how secure lands rights have led to increase long-term investments in sustainable soil and forestry management.

For instance, smallholder farmers with secure rights in Ethiopia were 60 percent more likely to invest in soil erosion prevention.

In forests where indigenous land rights have been recognised, deforestation rates have dramatically declined.
In Bolivia, deforestation is 2.8 times lower within tenure-secure indigenous lands.

This has not only helped halt land degradation, but such measures have also mitigated forest-based emissions and curbed global warming.

Both Yeatman and Madeira noted that land rights alone is not enough to promote sustainable land management, but rather four pillars. These are securing the rights to territories and resources; support strong community leadership and local governance; promoting multi stakeholder collaborations, allowing local communities to engage in high levels of decision-making and; identifying environmentally sustainable economic development opportunities in line with communities’ cultural values and sustainable management.

“It’s when you have the four of those ingredients that is when you end up with enduring conservation, communities who have the power to protect those peoples and who can also benefit economically from their stewardship of those places,” Madeira said.

In an effort to curb logging and deforestation, Peru’s Shipibo-Conibo indigenous communities residing in the Amazon enlisted over 6,000 hectares—80 percent of their territory—into the country’s conservation programme and helps manage the land in a way that provides sustainable sources of income.

As part of the National Programme for Forest Conservation, communities receive 3 dollar per year for every hectare they assign to conservation which amounts to potential earnings of at least 18,000 dollar. In order to receive the payment, they must commit to protecting the forest.

A significant proportion of the money received is thus invested back into the forest and its communities who engage in activities such as ecotourism and the sustainable extraction of forest resources.

Farmers undertaking periodic pruning at vegetation Susudi, in the Upper East Region of Ghana. Credit: Albert Oppong-Ansah/IPS

One Step Forward, Many More To Go

While tenure can look different in various contexts, Madeira highlighted the importance of governments and companies respecting land rights as well as the inclusion of indigenous people and local communities to shape sustainable land management planning.

“A lot of the development decisions are made far away from the ground in board rooms. The extent to which indigenous people and local communities are excluded from those decisions, you’re going to get these poor outcomes,” she told IPS.

Yeatman urged corporations to be aware of the complexities surrounding land tenure and support local communities to ensure a sustainable future.

“[Companies] often have 50-100 year leases and if they want the land to be sustainable, they need to help those farmers secure their land rights and help have access to information and inputs to diversify so that they are not degrading their lands,” she said.

Consumers also have a role to play, Yeatman noted, as they delve into the stories behind the products and companies they buy from.

Oxfam’s campaign Behind the Brands provides a scorecard, assessing how the world’s 10 largest food and beverage companies are measuring up against a number of indicators including support for women farm workers, reducing greenhouse gas emissions, and respecting rights to and sustainably using land.

For instance, French multinational company Danone and American manufacturer General Mills are ranked among the lowest on the land indicator as it has not committed to zero tolerance for land grabs and does not require its suppliers to consider how such acquisitions affect livelihoods.

While it is easier said than done, there have already been positive developments across the world.

Most recently, the Malaysian government file a lawsuit against local government of Kelantan state for failing to uphold the land rights of its indigenous people Orang Asli, many of whom lack formal titles, as it continues to grant licenses to logging companies and agricultural plantations.

“Rapid deforestation and commercial development have resulted in widespread encroachment into the native territories of the Orang Asli,” Attorney-General Tommy Thomas said in a statement.

“Commercial development and the pursuit of profit must not come at the expense of the Temiar Orang Asli and their inherent right, as citizens of this country, to the land and resources which they have traditionally owned and used,” he added.

Similarly, Myanmar, which has among the highest rates of deforestation in Asia, plans to transfer over 918,000 hectares of forest land to community management by 2030 in order to help prevent illegal logging and allow traditional residents to practice sustainable forestry.

There is still a long way to go but action is necessary to prevent the dwindling of land and natural resources essential for everyone’s survival.

Related Articles

• The Silent, Invisible Crisis Destabilising Communities Could be a Subject of Hope
• Poverty-Stricken Communities in Ghana are Restoring Once-Barren Land
• Gender Gap Made Worse by Land Degradation

The post The Right to Life, Liberty, and Land appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Yilmaz Akyüz is former Director, UNCTAD, and former Chief Economist, South Centre, Geneva

By Yilmaz Akyüz
GENEVA, Feb 6 2019 (IPS)

At a time when the world economy is seen poised for yet another financial turmoil, there is a widespread recognition that emerging economies (EMEs) are particularly vulnerable because of their deepened integration into the global financial system.   What is less appreciated is the implication of financial globalization and integration for external wealth distribution between emerging and advanced economies and resource transfers from the former to the latter.

This is the subject matter of a new study by this author on external balance sheets of emerging economies, focussing on nine G-20 EMEs (Argentina, Brazil, China, India, Indonesia, Mexico, Russia, South Africa and Turkey) and four major advanced economies, the US, Japan, Germany and the UK.

The new millennium has seen a rapid increase in gross external assets and liabilities of EMEs, both as a result of ultra-easy monetary policy in major advanced economies (AEs) and capital account liberalization in EMEs ‒ a process of deepened integration described as Playing with Fire.

Almost 90 per cent of outstanding external assets and liabilities of G-20 EMEs have been accumulated since the turn of the century.  Although debtor-creditor relations and foreign direct investment (FDI) within the Global South have been growing rapidly, a very large proportion of gross external assets and liabilities of EMEs are still with AEs.  This is true not only for financial assets and liabilities but also for FDI. Even in China less than 20 per cent of the stock of outward FDI are in other EMEs.

Yilmaz Akyüz

While foreign investment and lending in EMEs have reached unprecedented levels, even EMEs with current account deficits have been able to accumulate large amounts of gross external assets because inflows of capital have often exceeded what is needed to finance deficits.  In fact, with the exception of China and Russia, which have run current account surpluses since 2000, the entire foreign assets accumulation in G20 EMEs has relied on borrowed money, resulting in significant leverage in external balance sheets.

There are also significant changes in the structure of external balance sheets of EMEs.  The share of equities (FDI plus portfolio equity) in total external liabilities increased and the share of debt declined as governments sought to shift from debt to equities by opening up equity markets and liberalizing FDI regimes on grounds that equity financing is more stable and less risky than debt.

The share of equities in gross external assets also increased, but not as fast as in liabilities. Consequently, the net equity position (external equity assets minus liabilities) of G20 EMEs taken together, which was already negative at the beginning of the century, deteriorated further.

The share of international reserves in total external assets increased rapidly as countries sought to build self-insurance against speculative attacks, often with borrowed money.  The share of local currency in external sovereign debt increased as bond markets have been opened to foreigners to pass the currency risk. But the corporate sector has come to account for a growing part of external debt of EMEs by increasingly borrowing in international markets in dollars to benefit from lower rates.

These changes in the size and composition of external balance sheets of EMEs have not only generated new channels of transmission of external financial shocks (discussed in Playing with Fire), but also resulted in significant transfer of resources from EMEs to AEs.

Resource transfers from the South to the North through financial channels will continue unabated as long as capital flows remain unrestricted, the international reserves system favours a handful of rich countries which can also pursue self-seeking policies without regard to their global repercussions.

First, they have rendered the value of their existing stocks of external assets and liabilities more susceptible to changes in global financial conditions, notably asset prices and exchange rates, leading to capital gains and losses and altering their net foreign asset positions (NFAP or net external wealth, that is, the difference between gross external assets and liabilities).

Over the short term, these valuation changes can be much more important than current account balances in the movement of NFAP, particularly at times of severe instability as was seen during 2008-09. Since foreign assets and liabilities of EMEs are mainly with AEs, these gains and losses entail redistribution of external wealth between the Global South and the North.

Indeed, there is a strong negative correlation between year-to-year changes in net external wealth of nine G20 EMEs and four major AEs in the new millennium and a large proportion of such changes is accounted for by capital gains and losses rather than current account balances.

In the long-term current account remains a main determinant of net external wealth of nations, but capital gains and losses resulting from valuation changes can also be important.   Since the beginning of the century the NFAP of most G-20 EMEs deteriorated because of sustained current account deficits.

The NFAP of two surplus EMEs, China and Russia, improved, but not as much as their cumulative current account surpluses because they both suffered large amounts of capital losses on their outstanding external assets and liabilities.

For instance, China had a cumulative current account surplus of over $3 trillion during 2000-2016 but its net external wealth increased by only $1.6 trillion. By contrast the US had a cumulative current account deficit over $8 trillion during the same period but its net external debt deteriorated by less than $7 trillion because of capital gains. Even though some smaller G-20 EMEs also had capital gains, the nine EMEs taken together suffered capital losses in the order of $1.9 trillion during 2000-2016 while the four AEs enjoyed capitals gains over $1.6 trillion.

Second, with the expansion of gross foreign assets and liabilities, international investment income receipts and payments have gained added importance in the current account. Generally, EMEs are red in net international investment income not only because their external liabilities exceed assets, but also because the rate of return on their foreign assets falls short of the rate of return on their foreign liabilities.

Their liabilities are concentrated in high-yielding equities while a large proportion of their assets consists of low-yielding reserve assets. For this reason, even some EMEs with positive net external wealth positions such as China and Russia have deficits in net international investment income.

Furthermore, all EMEs including China earn lower return on their outward FDI than they pay on inward FDI. They also pay more on their external debt liabilities in risk premia than they receive on their external debt assets including reserves (US Treasuries), other bonds or deposits abroad.  The shift to domestic currency debt by governments of EMEs has widened the return gap between debt liabilities and assets because the exchange rate risk assumed by foreign investors needs to be compensated.

By contrast, the return differential between external assets and liabilities is positive for all four major AEs.  The US registers the highest positive return differential and runs a surplus on its international investment income balance despite having a negative net external wealth in the order of some 25 per cent of its GDP.

The return on its outward FDI is higher than in all other countries and exceeds by a large margin the return it pays on its inward FDI. As the country issuing the dominant reserve currency, the US also earns higher return on its external debt assets than it pays on its external debt liabilities (mainly Treasuries), thereby enjoying what is commonly known as “exorbitant privilege”.

The nine G-20 EMEs taken together have been transferring around 2.7 per cent of their combined GDP per year in the new millennium mainly to AEs as a result of the negative return gap between their foreign assets and liabilities and capital losses resulting from changes in asset prices and exchange rates.

These resource costs are incurred in large part because EMEs favour a particular structure of external balance sheets (highly liquid low-yielding assets, less liquid high-yielding liabilities) that is believed to be more resilient to external financial shocks.

This means that, in effect, EMEs are transferring large sums of resources to AEs in order to protect themselves against the shocks created mainly by policies of the very same countries. This is underpinned by an international reserves system that allows a handful of reserve-issuing countries, notably the US, to constantly extract resources from the rest of the world.

On the other hand, it is not clear if EMEs can adequately protect themselves against shocks when capital can move freely. Judicious use of capital account measures can secure reasonable protection while avoiding such costs.

For instance, one would not need to issue high-yielding liabilities to acquire large stocks of low-yielding reserves assets as self-insurance if inflows of fickle capital are effectively controlled.

Resource transfers from the South to the North through financial channels will continue unabated as long as capital flows remain unrestricted, the international reserves system favours a handful of rich countries which can also pursue self-seeking policies without regard to their global repercussions.

The post Financial Globalization, North-South Wealth Distribution and Resource Transfers appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Yilmaz Akyüz is former Director, UNCTAD, and former Chief Economist, South Centre, Geneva

The post Financial Globalization, North-South Wealth Distribution and Resource Transfers appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Shared bonds and styles: “We have a strong affinity with Eritreans,” says Mekelle resident Huey Berhe, noting how most Tigrayans have Eritrean relatives, and vice versa. “We are the same people. I can feel the agony of isolation they have endured; I have lots of friends whose families were separated by the war.” Credit: James Jeffrey/IPS

By James Jeffrey
ADDIS ABABA, Feb 6 2019 (IPS)

The sudden peace between Ethiopia and Eritrea, and the opening of their previously closed and dangerous border, sent shockwaves of hope and optimism throughout the two countries. But a new issue has arisen: whether Eritreans coming into Ethiopia should still be classed as refugees.

“Asmara! Asmara! Asmara!” There is a new cry from the boys leaning out of minibuses picking up customers in the cities of Ethiopia’s Tigray region, which straddles the border with Eritrea. Here a minibus stops for a lunch break during its 300-kilometer journey between Mekelle, the Tigray capital, and the Eritrean capital, Asmara. The historic shift in Ethiopia-Eritrea relations means Eritreans can cross one of the world’s former most dangerous borders without a passport or permit. Credit: James Jeffrey/IPS

 

More nuanced reality: Eritreans cuing at the Eritrean border check point, before heading north to Asmara, illustrates how not all Eritreans want refugee status in Ethiopia, despite most media narratives leaving out the nuances and portraying an endless flow of feeling Eritreans. “I went from Addis Ababa to Asmara after the border opened to see my father for the first time in 26 years—he died 10 days after I arrived,” says Senait, an Eritrean who moved to the Ethiopian capital after marrying an Ethiopian but wasn’t able to visit her family after war broke out in 1998 between the two countries, thereby closing the border. “Now I am going back to take his brother, my uncle, to live in Asmara. It will be better for him to be with family there than in Addis. But I will return to my family in Ethiopia.” Credit: James Jeffrey/IPS

 

Long awaited freedom of movement: The wide palm tree-lined avenues of Mekelle, and its marketplace, have seen a rush of Eritreans coming to reunite with family and enjoy the more vibrant social life and shopping scene, before returning to Eritrea. Credit: James Jeffrey/IPS

 

Long awaited freedom of movement: Once known for hosting convoys of camels carrying salt from the Danakil desert, Mekelle’s bustling market has lately seen an increase in sales of cereals, construction materials and petrol. “In Eritrea they are limited to how much they can take out of the bank each month, but here they can get money sent by relatives abroad,” says Teberhe, a Mekele entrepreneur. “They are taking back construction materials in case building restrictions are reduced at home.” Credit: James Jeffrey/IPS

 

Shared bonds and styles: The back and forth over the border is helped by many people in Eritrea and Tigray having shared the same language, religion and cultural and social traditions going back centuries before Eritrea’s independence from Ethiopia in 1993. Credit: James Jeffrey/IPS

 

Shared bonds and styles: “We have a strong affinity with Eritreans,” says Mekelle resident Huey Berhe, noting how most Tigrayans have Eritrean relatives, and vice versa. “We are the same people. I can feel the agony of isolation they have endured; I have lots of friends whose families were separated by the war.” Credit: James Jeffrey/IPS

 

Peace—but also prosperity?: “Business is pretty good,” says Tesfaye, who usually works at the cement factory outside Mekelle but at the weekend earns extra money by exchanging Ethiopian birr and Eritrean nakfa for travelers crossing the border. “It’s a good opportunity while the banks aren’t changing money yet.” The open border has seen merchandise and trade flowing freely both ways, and merchants in Tigray cities and in Asmara profiting by the uptick, with talk of only more economic activity to come. Credit: James Jeffrey/IPS

 

Motoring to Mekelle: Description of picture and occasion: Tired-looking cars with the distinctive Eritrean registration plate beginning ER1 can be seen joining minibuses on the main road through Tigray to the border or parked around Mekelle. “We’ve had lots of Eritreans staying,” says Ruta who owns Lalibela Hotel in the center of Mekelle. There’s also been a surge in room rentals in Mekelle thanks to Eritreans looking for work. Credit: James Jeffrey/IPS

 

Refugee process still continues: A worker photocopying refugee application forms at the Tigray office for Ethiopia’s Administration for Refugee and Returnee Affairs, known as ARRA. “Ethiopia is a signatory to the Geneva convention on refugees, so for now there is no change in their refugee status,” says Tekie Gebreyesas with ARRA. “The relationship between the two countries has improved, but the internal situation in Eritrea is still the same.” Credit: James Jeffrey/IPS

 

Glued to the reforming prime minister: Lunchtime diners watch a broadcast showing Ethiopia’s popular new leader, Abiy Ahmed, who shocked all by offering peace to Eritrea. The dilemma that Ethiopia now faces over Eritrean refugees reflects a challenge at a global level to better understand the realities of refugee life. “Refugees are always portrayed as victims,” says Milena Belloni, who has researched Eritrean refugees for a decade. “It misses the reality, that they have capabilities and come with dreams, desires and aspirations.” Credit: James Jeffrey/IPS

 

Refugees and peace not a contradiction: The Tigray city of Shire, not far from the border and where the UNHCR’s regional office is, has also seen its fair share of Eritrean arriving. A UNHCR worker who wasn’t willing to be quoted noted that around the world almost all countries receiving refugees do so while at peace with the country refugees are leaving—hence there is nothing unusual about Ethiopia and Eritrea reconciling while the refugee flow continues. Credit: James Jeffrey/IPS

 

Travel opens eyes: Ethiopian airlines has restarted flights to Asmara, though Ethiopians often choose the cheaper option of taking a domestic flight between Addis Ababa and Mekelle, before continuing by bus. The overall situation and options available remain fluid, and there could be even more changes ahead. “I don’t think there is any way back now for the Eritrean government,” Teberhe says. “Eritreans are experiencing freedom—the genie is out of the bottle.” Credit: James Jeffrey/IPS

*Some names have been changed or omitted due to the requests of those interviewed.

Related Articles

The post Ethiopia Juggles Refugees and Shoppers Coming from Eritrea Amid New Peace appeared first on Inter Press Service.

At Narok County, Kenya, during a discussion by anti-FGM campaigner Agnes Pareyio from Tasaru Ntomonok Initiative (TNI). The picture was taken at a school run by TNI for girls escaping FGM and child marriage. Credit: Equality Now/ Tara Carey

By Divya Srinivasan
NEW DELHI, Feb 6 2019 (IPS)

According to official data on the global prevalence of Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) released by UNICEF there are 200 million women and girls in the world who have been cut. Shocking though this statistic is, it seriously underestimates the nature and scale of the problem.

In 2015, when the United Nations was in the process of adopting the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), civil society organizations successfully led the fight for eradication of FGM to be included in the targets and as one of the 230 global indicators used to measure progress.

Target 5.3 of the SDGs now requires all 193 countries which signed onto the SDGs to take action to end FGM and to measure prevalence of FGM within their countries.

The figure of 200 million is based on official representative data which is available for only 30 countries, 27 of which are in Africa. However, small-scale data and anecdotal evidence shows that FGM is occurring in over 30 other countries, many of which have passed laws banning the practice.

This includes at least 13 countries in Western Europe, as well as Australia, Canada, Georgia, India, Malaysia, Pakistan, Russia, Singapore, Sri Lanka, Thailand, and the United States.

Thanks to growing activism from within practising communities, new information is now available that shows FGM is practised by both indigenous and immigrant communities in all continents except Antarctica.

Survivors, activists and grassroots organisations are courageously working to end FGM and have conducted small-scale research surveys to document its prevalence, provide support to affected women and girls, and advocate with legislatures, courts and local authorities to introduce and enforce legal bans.

The type of statistical information being provided is invaluable in the effort to end FGM because it pushes governments to take action and provides a baseline from which we can measure the scale and effectiveness of interventions.

However, their work is woefully underfunded and lacks sufficient international support. The United Nations, which designated 6th February as the International Day of Zero Tolerance for Female Genital Mutilation in 2003, has so far failed to dedicate adequate funds to eradicate FGM at a global level, particularly in Asia, the Middle-East and the Americas.

Even the UNFPA and UNICEF Joint Programme to Accelerate the Abandonment of FGM/C only covers some of the countries traditionally acknowledged to practise FGM.

The past year has demonstrated the monumental challenges faced by anti-FGM campaigners the world over, caused partly by gaps in understanding about the nature and extent of FGM in countries where it is not historically acknowledged to occur.

For instance, in India, despite the existence of independent studies documenting FGM within the Bohra community, the Indian government has sought to deny the existence of FGM in the country because of a lack of official representative data.

In November 2018, a District Judge in the U.S. state of Michigan dismissed charges brought against two doctors and six others accused of subjecting nine girls to FGM. Judge Bernard Friedman struck down a 20-year old federal law banning FGM on the technical grounds that it was unconstitutional because the power to outlaw the practise belonged to individual states, not Congress.

It is estimated that 513,000 women and girls are at risk or have been subjected to FGM in the United States. Although Judge Friedman’s ruling currently applies only to the Eastern District of Michigan, it potentially leaves tens of thousands of women and girls unprotected and in increased danger of being cut

Despite referring to FGM as ‘a despicable practice’, his order demonstrated a fundamental lack of understanding about the discriminatory nature of FGM -which is carried out primarily to control the sexuality of women and girls – as well as the widespread nature of its occurrence within the U.S. The US Government has appealed against his ruling.

In August 2018, an appeals court in Australia overturned the country’s first FGM conviction in 2015 against a priest and mother from the Bohra community, who were found guilty of performing FGM on two young sisters.

Here again, the court ruling was not based on support for FGM but instead on the technical grounds that the type of FGM purported to be practised by the Bohra community, which involves cutting the clitoral hood, did not fall under the existing legal definition of FGM.

A request was put forward by the court asking the Government to consider expanding the law. FGM had been criminalized in the Australian state of New South Wales since 1994 and its definition has not been updated since then despite the World Health Organisation later adopting a more comprehensive definition and classification, which includes cutting of the clitoral hood.

The globalised nature of FGM requires not only a global response, but also a nuanced one that is tailored to meet the particular contours of FGM as it is practised in different countries or communities.

We need to update existing FGM laws and draft new ones to ensure that all types of FGM are covered within its ambit, as cutting of any kind violates the human rights and health of women and girls.

In line with target 5.3 of the SDGs, governments need to collect prevalence data on FGM in all countries where it is known to be practised, and report on their efforts to address the issue.

UNICEF is the organisation responsible for supporting countries in generating, analyzing and using dates for this target. This includes leading methodological work, developing international standards, and establishing mechanisms for the compilation and verification of national data, and maintaining global database.

The United Nations is failing in this commitment and needs to fund and pilot anti-FGM efforts in countries where it has not traditionally done so.

The medical community needs to intensify research efforts and publish disaggregated research and data that does not merely look at FGM generally, but analyses the health consequences for each type of FGM individually, particularly Types I and IV for which available medical research is scarce.

The fight to end FGM globally clearly stands at a turning point. There is rising backlash against the activism to eradicate FGM, and there is a threat of regression that risks losing hard-won gains.

For instance, in Kenya a petition has been filed asking the Court to declare as unconstitutional the Prohibition of Female Genital Mutilation Act, which was enacted in 2011, and to abolish Kenya’s Anti-FGM Board.

However, 2018 also provided positive evidence that untiring efforts to end FGM through activism and legal bans undeniably work, with sustained efforts resulting in a “huge and significant decline” of women and girls across Africa being subjected to FGM between 1990 and 2016.

We need to learn from the fantastic work being done in Africa, adapt the strategies according to regional and cultural contexts, and implement them in every country where we know FGM is being practised.

Through the SDGs, activists and countries have made strong public commitments to ending FGM throughout the world by 2030. To achieve this goal, political commitments must now be put into action fully by accelerating and globalising efforts, collecting and circulating reliable data, and providing the proper funding needed to eradicate FGM once and for all.

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

For details of the current campaigns, please visit www.equalitynow.org; on Facebook @equalitynoworg and Twitter @equalitynow.

The post A Truly Global Effort is Needed to Eradicate FGM by 2030 appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Divya Srinivasan is South Asia Consultant for international women’s rights organisation Equality Now*

The post A Truly Global Effort is Needed to Eradicate FGM by 2030 appeared first on Inter Press Service.

By Geneva Centre
GENEVA, Feb 6 2019 (IPS-Partners)

(Geneva Centre) – On the occasion of the International Day of Zero Tolerance for Female Genital Mutilation (FGM), Ambassador Idriss Jazairy, Executive Director of the Geneva Centre for Human Rights Advancement and Global Dialogue, reiterates the urgent need to eliminate all forms of violence and discrimination against women and girls, in particular FGM, which is a practice that violates women and girls’ fundamental rights such as their right to health, their right to be free from torture and cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment, and even their right to life.

Idriss Jazairy

The UN estimates that at least 200 million girls and women around the world have undergone some form of FGM. The procedure is mostly concentrated in countries in Africa and the Middle East, but is also common in several Asian countries. Ambassador Jazairy underscores the fact that this practice is however not limited to these regions and unfortunately occurs in Western societies at a worrying rate as well, as FGM persists amongst immigrant populations living in Western Europe or North America.

A report on Intensifying global efforts for the elimination of female genital mutilation produced by the UN Secretary-General in July 2018 deplored the prevalence of FGM around the world and showed that in order to fully eradicate it, it was imperative to address its root causes, including gender discrimination and gender inequality, which are similar to those of other harmful practices, such as child, early and forced marriage. The report deplored the fact that against the background of population movement across borders, the practice was taking on global dimensions, where increasing numbers of girls and women, including those from refugee and migrant populations, were subjected to it.

Against this background, the Executive Director of the Geneva Centre noted that: “We encourage States to adopt comprehensive plans of action to eradicate FGM, taking into account the need for targeted support for groups of women and girls facing multiple and intersecting forms of discrimination, including migrant and refugee populations, rural women, and indigenous women.”

Furthermore, Ambassador Jazairy called for a concerted effort from international stakeholders, including international organizations, civil society, grassroots movements, and lawmakers, to raise awareness about the long-lasting consequences on women and girls of this cruel and obsolete practice, which is deeply-rooted in negative norms and stereotypes, and has no grounding or standing in Islam. “This custom has an enormous damaging impact on women’s physical and mental health, and perpetrates the pervasive cycle of discrimination and violence against women and girls within societies where it is still practiced,” he said.

In this respect, the Executive Director of the Geneva Centre saluted the high-level political commitment to eliminating this practice showcased by the Government of the United Kingdom, which announced in November a £50 million pledge aimed at ending FGM by 2030. This financial commitment by the British government is the biggest donor investment aimed at eradicating FGM by an international donor. This pledge constitutes a positive step forward in raising the awareness of the international community on this woeful practice that will affect almost 70 million girls by 2030, unless drastic action is taken, according to UNFPA. Ambassador Jazairy strongly encouraged other States to follow suit.

Finally, the Geneva Centre’s Executive Director reiterated that FGM represents a gross violation of human rights, and calls for its prohibition and full eradication, in line with Target 5.3 of Sustainable Goal 5 on Gender Equality.

The post On the occasion of the International Day of Zero Tolerance for Female Genital Mutilation, the Geneva Centre strongly calls for the eradication of this woeful practice appeared first on Inter Press Service.

By Idriss Jazairy
GENEVA, Feb 5 2019 (IPS)

History testifies that there is no end to its evolution despite what some have claimed. This is because aspirations of its actors are in constant flux and because the quest for an « ideal city » is asymptotic.

Each generation wants to put its imprint on the present and to be the architect of its future in the pursuit of its own ideal.

Idriss Jazairy

The generations of the XXth century in the Arab region availed themselves of this opportunity through their struggle for the restoration of their dignity predicated on recovery of their nation’s sovereignty. This had an immediate effect on improving their condition at the time. They then set about charting the future society they aspired to and where equality would hopefully prevail. The spirit of the times was that such equality could best be pursued by socialist ideologies whether of the secular kind as pursued in part of the Middle East or blended with a statist concept of faith as was the case in other parts of the MiddleEast and in parts of North Africa. The effectiveness of these ideologies rested on an all-encompassing view of society which became co-terminous with the nation-state.

The nation-state is a modern concept on which contemporary advanced countries have built their identity as development contributed to the obsolescence of more narrow concepts of allegiance. While this was a more or less irreversible internal evolution in the global North, it was not necessarily so in the Arab region where tribal or regional allegiances remained vibrant though contained by what remained an exogenous socialist ideology. Commitment to the latter was narrowly related for newly liberated countries to patriotic anti-colonialism.

With the collapse of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and of the Communist ideology which nurtured state socialism in the Arab region, the new generations there found themselves deprived of the cementing effect of a nation centralised through statism.

So the younger generations which now represent about two-thirds of the total population of the region are spurred by two factors :

First, they do not consider like their forebears that their quest for dignity is nurtured by thirst for sovereignty as the latter is already a given. These cohorts consider that the search for dignity must henceforth be nurtured by participation in decision-making and by promoting a culture of accountability in the field of human rights rather than one of compliance. So the search for dignity which for their elders was turned outwards is pursued by the younger generation why turning inwards. For the former, perceived dignity deficits led them to vent their anger outwards. For the latter, it lead them to vent it inwards. In the « digital era », social media and their borderless manipulation amplify this phenomenon. The elder and the younger generations remain bound however by a shared opposition to foreign invasion which compounds their anger

Second, as the statist pillars of nationhood that were exogenously inspired became more brittle following the weakening of the Communist ideology worldwide, the youth in the Arab region were and still are at a loss to find an alternative cementing ideal for the nation whose unity has been built in advanced countries through an indigenous maturing process of national preeminence.

Hence anger amongst the youth is coupled with a perceived and probably excessive sense of powerlessness which leads it to become detached from current affairs or to seek refuge in a community of faith rather than one based just on the nation. To a considerable extent, the lack of a perceived long term ideal for the future led the youth also to excavate one from the pre-colonial past i.e. the euphoric vision of an Islamic nation (that by all accounts never really existed) . Alternatively the loss of a societal compass is leading to re-activating sub-identities at the regional, local or tribal levels.

As in all social movements, there are aberrant individuals or groupings which exploit anger and frustration to pursue self-serving objectives of accessing power through violence in one case or through undermining national unity in the other.

That youth anger can thus be taken advantage of in the digital era gives a measure of its loss of momentum in the search for a common ideal. This explains why the Arab commotion called « Arab spring »was hardly more than social spasms generated by anger but deprived of a credible ideal for the longer term.

The ideal that can really mobilize the youth may be one based on the promotion of equal citizenship rights for all. This rights-based leitmotif is advocated by all the major world religions, creeds and value-systems. It is applicable for believers and non believers alike and works for unity of purpose at the national and at the international level. It will ultimately make irrelevant or obsolete the marginalizing and even oppressive connotations of concepts of ethnic, religious or gender minorities. It will cloak all individuals in a nation with the same right to dignity. Indeed the concept of minorities will seamlessly yield to that of social components of diversity in unity.

And ultimately equal citizenship rights is the gateway to peace as proclaimed at the World Conference held at the UN in Geneva on 25 June 2018 on Religions, Creeds and Value Systems joining Forces to Promote Equal Citizenship Rights under the patronage of HRH Prince Hassan of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan

Idriss Jazairy – Former Ambassador, Executive Director of the Geneva Centre on Human Rights Advancement and Global Dialogue, an NGO think-tank in consultative status with the UN.

The post The Upcoming Generations Can Lift the Arab Region out of Its Current Crisis appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Richard Danziger is IOM’s Regional Director for West and Central Africa

By Richard Danziger
UNITED NATIONS, Feb 5 2019 (IPS)

Without a doubt, migration is a defining issue of this century. One billion people, one-seventh of the world’s population, are migrants. Some 258 million people are international migrants, 40 million are internally displaced and 24 million are refugees or asylum seekers.

In 2018, there was no longer a single state that can claim to be untouched by human mobility.

UN images of migrants

About 423 million people are living in the Economic Community of West African States, a 15-member grouping whose aim is to promote economic integration in a region where the unemployment rate is sometimes 20%—inevitably leading to migration.

The protection of migrants is a core value of the International Organization for Migration (IOM), the UN migration agency. Globally, but especially in the Sahel region, abuses against migrants have grown more frequent along the migration routes. Human trafficking and smuggling exacerbate the vulnerability of migrants, especially those without access to documentation.

The IOM’s Regional Office for West and Central Africa maintains the conviction that anchored IOM’s founding 65 years ago: that all men and women are equal members of the same human family in which freedom, protection and dignity are not luxuries to be reserved for the lucky few but fundamental rights for all humankind.

2.5 million people in need of humanitarian assistance and 690,000 are internally displaced

Migration across the Sahel region is a complex issue, and managing it involves major challenges, including insufficient migration data, weak border management and controls, the recurrent need for humanitarian assistance, irregular migration and human trafficking.

Without effective bilateral or regional mobility agreements, thousands of workers will migrate.

Richard Danziger

Migration is often associated with poverty, but other factors also drive the phenomenon, including youth unemployment, climate change and urbanization.

Employment-seeking migration accounts for the biggest share of intraregional mobility as youth migrate from one country to another looking for better job opportunities.

Widespread population displacement is also linked to violent conflicts and unstable environmental conditions. Conflict in the Central African Republic, for example, has left an estimated 2.5 million people relying on humanitarian assistance and 690,000 internally displaced.

Migrants fleeing violence have spilled across the borders of neighboring countries, particularly Cameroon, Nigeria, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Chad and the Republic of Congo. The current situation represents a challenge not only for the affected countries but also for the region.

In view of this growing crisis, a well-managed, orderly migration framework that incorporates practical, humane and rights-based operational solutions is needed. Strengthening mobility schemes in the region will foster regular and circular migration, allowing people to work abroad legally, return home safely and participate in the development of their communities of origin.

This strategy must also ensure the mobility of cross-border communities, but such mobility raises border management challenges in the absence of effective identity management systems and given limited capacities to ensure surveillance and control over the extensive and porous borders throughout the region.

Stakeholders will have to take coordinated action to address issues such as threats to public health, despoiling of natural resources, the loss of critical years of education and job training.

An increasing number of migrants are reconsidering migration—especially irregular migration—and want to make it at home before taking undue risks by going abroad. Legal channels and regional mobility schemes could help this group.

To ensure the safety of vulnerable populations along migratory routes who lack legal options to migrate or return home, IOM, together with African Member States and the European Union, launched in December 2016 the EU-IOM Joint Initiative on Migrant Protection and Reintegration to provide immediate assistance to stranded migrants along the routes. Almost 40,000 people have received assistance since the launch.

West and Central Africa face some of the world’s greatest challenges—climate change and desertification, displacement due to conflict, galloping population growth and a youth bulge. But thanks to the resilience of the population of almost half a billion, these are also regions of enormous potential.

Sound migration policies and close cooperation among countries within the regions and on the continent with other countries of destination will help realize that potential, as will commitment by all concerned states to implement the new Global Compact for Migration.

The link to the original article
https://www.un.org/africarenewal/magazine/december-2018-march-2019/confronting-challenges-migration-west-and-central-africa

The post Confronting the Challenges of Migration in West & Central Africa appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Richard Danziger is IOM’s Regional Director for West and Central Africa

The post Confronting the Challenges of Migration in West & Central Africa appeared first on Inter Press Service.

By Geneva Centre
GENEVA, Feb 5 2019 (IPS-Partners)

(Geneva Centre) – A new publication entitled “Women’s Rights in the Arab Region: Between Myth and Reality” has been released by the Geneva Centre for Human Rights Advancement and Global Dialogue. On 15 September 2017, the Geneva Centre organized a meeting on the same theme in cooperation with the Permanent Mission of the Arab Republic of Egypt at the United Nations Office in Geneva. It was held as a side-event to the 36th session of the UN Human Rights Council.

The conference held in the format of a panel debate sought to review the remaining challenges and to deconstruct the existing myths regarding women in the Arab region. As became evident during the debate, women worldwide are still suffering, to different degrees, from the grip of patriarchy, and these challenges are not specific to any culture, but are common to all countries.

The panel highlighted the negative impact of the stereotypical representations of Arab and Muslim women, and the resulting intersecting forms of discrimination. Despite the efforts of the international community, and the comprehensive international legal framework on women’s rights, major setbacks persisted all around the world.

The present publication features the proceedings of the above-mentioned panel discussion, as well as the written contributions from the renowned panellists that participated in the side-event, which include HE Ms Hoda Al-Helaissi, Member of Saudi Arabia’s Shura Council and former Vice-Chairperson at King Saud University, Ambassador Naela Gabr, Member of the UN Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women, Ambassador Dubravka Simonovic, UN Special Rapporteur on violence against women, its causes and consequences, Dr.Susan Carland, Researcher and Director of Monash University’s Bachelor of Global Studies in Australia, Ms Sarah Zouak, Co-founder of the French association Lallab and HE Ms Tahani Ali Toor Eldba, Minister of State at the Ministry of Justice of the Sudan.

It also contains a study signed by Ambassador Naela Gabr and edited by Ambassador Idriss Jazairy, Executive Director of the Geneva Centre, which seeks to underscore the lessons learned from the debate and to broaden the discussion to other regions of the world.

The post The Geneva Centre issues its latest publication on women’s rights in the Arab region appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Dilum Abeysekera is Founder & CEO, LEEG-net | LexEcon Consulting Group*

By Dilum Abeysekera
COLOMBO, Sri Lanka, Feb 5 2019 (IPS)

The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development adopted by all United Nations Member States in 2015 has entered its fourth year of implementation.

In terms of the estimated cost and the universal coverage of both developed and developing countries, it is the biggest ever development program that is being implemented to end poverty, protect the planet and ensure that all people enjoy peace and prosperity.

LEEG-net (Legal & Economic Empowerment Global Network – https://www.leeg-net.org ) is a multi-disciplinary network of professionals and a pro bono partnership for the Goals launched in January, 2017 in response to the global call-to-action extended by the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

It plays a catalytic role in implementing the SDGs by promoting legal innovation and empowerment of the poor and disadvantaged groups towards addressing the “greatest global challenge of eradicating poverty” – the unifying thread throughout the 17 Goals.

According to LEEG-net, the focus on legal innovation is an ongoing quest for new strategies and ways of thinking about what the law can do in the field of development.

The focus on legal empowerment as a human rights-based approach to development is an attempt to make the law work for the poor and disadvantaged groups by enhancing their capacity to resist poverty and get over it.

LEEG-net links the two themes by virtue of their shared importance in finding solutions to sustainable development challenges.

Current status of the implementation of SDGs

The Sustainable Development Goals Report 2018 published by the United Nations reviews progress in the third year of implementation of the 2030 Agenda.

The report states that the rate of global progress is not keeping pace with the ambitions of the Agenda, necessitating immediate and accelerated action by countries and stakeholders at all levels.

The 2018 SDG Index and Dashboards report published jointly by Bertelsmann Stiftung and the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN) provides a ranking of countries by the aggregate SDG Index of overall performance.

It also presents an updated assessment of countries’ distance to achieving the SDGs. Key findings include:

(a) The Report states “For the first time, we are able to show that no country is on track to achieve all the goals by 2030.
For example, Sweden, Denmark, and Finland top the 2018 SDG Index, but they need to significantly accelerate progress towards achieving some goals, including Goal 12 (Sustainable Consumption and Production) and Goal 13 (Climate Action)”

(b) Most G 20 countries have started SDGs implementation, but important gaps remain.

(c) Achievement gaps are greatest towards universal completion of secondary education.

(d) Countries experiencing conflict have experienced some of the sharpest reversals, particularly towards achieving Goal 1 (No Poverty) and Goal 2 (No Hunger).

(e) Progress towards sustainable consumption and production patterns is too slow. High-income countries obtain their lowest scores on Goal 12 (Sustainable Consumption and Production) and Goal 14 (Life Below Water).

(g) High-income countries generate negative SDG spillover effects.

Human rights foundation of the SDGs

The 2030 Agenda is grounded in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and other international human rights treaties.

According to an analysis of the Danish Institute for Human Rights, around 92% of the 169 SDG targets are based on the provisions of international human rights treaties and labour conventions.

LEEG-net perceives the 2030 Agenda and the SDGs as a restatement of universal human rights that encompass the three dimensions of sustainable development – social, environmental and economic.

The SDGs can be seen as a goal-based operational plan for realizing human rights including the right to development as recognized by international, regional and national instruments.

The “human rights foundation” of the 2030 Agenda justifies the adoption of a human rights-based approach to implementing the SDGs. A human rights-based approach to development seeks to achieve development objectives by following a legal roadmap.

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948), the two International Covenants adopted in 1966 respectively on Civil and Political Rights, and Economic, Social and Cultural Rights along with other human rights instruments operative at the international, regional and national levels constitute the legal roadmap of a rights-based approach to development.

With the objective of advancing the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, LEEG-net seeks to incorporate business-friendly and human rights-based approaches (or a holistic approach) into national action plans for implementing the SDGs.

The proposed mechanism is the promotion of legal, economic and technological empowerment of people including the poor and disadvantaged groups within the human rights foundation of the SDGs.

This process is visualized by the infographic named SDG Temple of Justice – an outline of a blueprint developed by LEEG-net team (web: https://www.leeg-net.org/sdg-temple-of-justice).

This blueprint seeks to prioritize policies and actions to advance eightfold rights that are considered imperative for developing countries in particular if they are to fully realize the SDGs.

These rights, as depicted by pillars of the infographic, are Gender Equality, Property Rights, Contract Rights, Business Rights, Labour Rights, Right to an Effective Remedy, Right to Information, and the Right to Development. Click on the pillars of the SDG Temple of Justice infographic to see how these rights critically impact on achieving the SDGs.

Member States’ commitment to adopting business-friendly approaches, including efficient legal and regulatory frameworks, promotes innovation, employment and inclusive growth.

As supported by empirical evidence, actions taken by State institutions that promote, protect and assure the rights of businesses (irrespective of their size) have had a direct impact on reducing poverty.

Economies with better business regulation have lower levels of poverty on average (Doing Business-2018, World Bank). Such commitments are required to help achieve SDGs 1, 2, 5, 8 and 10 in particular.

LEEG-net considers the Ease of Doing Business (EODB) score as an effective indicator for measuring the “SDG-readiness” of national business regulatory frameworks.

The EODB score has been developed by World Bank’s Doing Business team to indicate an economy’s position to the best regulatory practice in relation to 10 indicator sets – the best score is set at 100, and the worst performance is set at 0.

LEEG-net believes that a considerable number of SDG targets of the 2030 Agenda can be easily met if countries maintain an EODB score of 80 or more.

Web: www.leeg-net.org | www.lexecongroup.com

The post Business-Friendly & Rights-based Approaches to Achieve SDGs appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Dilum Abeysekera is Founder & CEO, LEEG-net | LexEcon Consulting Group*

The post Business-Friendly & Rights-based Approaches to Achieve SDGs appeared first on Inter Press Service.

By Chakravarthi Raghavan and Jomo Kwame Sundaram
GENEVA and KUALA LUMPUR, Feb 5 2019 (IPS)

In Davos in late January, several powerful governments and their allies announced their intention to launch new negotiations on e-commerce. Unusually, the intention is to launch the plurilateral negotiations in the World Trade Organization (WTO), an ostensibly multilateral organization, setting problematic precedents for the future of multilateral negotiations.

Chakravarthi Raghavan

Any resulting WTO agreement, especially one to make e-commerce tax- and tariff-free, will require amendments to its existing goods agreements, the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) and the Trade-Related Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) agreements. If it is not an unconditional agreement in the WTO, it will violate WTO ‘most favoured nation’ (MFN) principles.

This will be worse than the old, and ostensibly extinct ‘Green Room’ processes — of a few major powers negotiating among themselves, and then imposing their deal on the rest of the membership. Thus, the proposed e-commerce rules may be ‘WTO illegal’ — unless legitimized by the amendment processes and procedures in Article X of the WTO treaty.

Any effort to ‘smuggle’ it into the WTO, e.g., by including it in Annex IV to the WTO treaty (Plurilateral Trade Agreements), will need, after requisite notice, a consensus decision at Ministerial Conference (Art X:9 of treaty) . It may still be illegal since the subjects are already covered by agreements in Annexes 1A, 1B and 1C of the WTO treaty.

Consolidating power of the giants
Powerful technology transnational corporations (TNCs) are trying to rewrite international rules to advance their business interests by: gaining access to new foreign markets, securing free access to others’ data, accelerating deregulation, casualizing labour markets, and minimizing tax liabilities.

Jomo Kwame Sundaram

While digital technology and trade, including electronic or e-commerce, can accelerate development and create jobs, if appropriate policies and arrangements are in place, e-commerce rhetoric exaggerates opportunities for developing country, especially small and medium enterprises. Instead, the negotiations are intended to diminish the right of national authorities to require ‘local presence’, a prerequisite for the consumer and public to sue a supplier.

The e-commerce proposals are expected to strengthen the dominant TNCs, enabling them to further dominate digital trade as the reform proposals are likely to strengthen their discretionary powers while limiting public oversight over corporate behaviour in the digital economy.

Developing countries must be vigilant
If digital commerce grows without developing countries first increasing value captured from production — by improving productive capacities in developing countries, closing the digital divide by improving infrastructure and interconnectivity, and protecting privacy and data — they will have to open their economies even more to foreign imports.

Further digital liberalization without needed investments to improve productive capacities, will destroy some jobs, casualize others, squeeze existing enterprises and limit future development. Such threats, due to accelerated digital liberalization, will increase if the fast-changing digital economic space is shaped by new regulations influenced by TNCs.

Diverting business through e-commerce platforms will not only reduce domestic market shares, as existing digital trade is currently dominated by a few TNCs from the United States and China, but also reduce sales tax revenue which governments increasingly rely upon with the earlier shift from direct to indirect taxation.

Developing countries must quickly organize themselves to advance their own agenda for developmental digitization. Meanwhile, concerned civil society organizations and others are proposing new approaches to issues such as data governance, anti-trust regulation, smaller enterprises, jobs, taxation, consumer protection, and trade facilitation.

New approach needed
A development-focused and jobs-enhancing digitization strategy is needed instead. Effective national policies require sufficient policy space, stakeholder participation and regional consultation, but the initiative seeks to limit that space. Developing countries should have the policy space to drive their developmental digitization agendas. Development partners, especially donors, should support, not drive this agenda.

Developmental digitization will require investment in countries’ technical, legal and economic infrastructure, and policies to: bridge the digital divide; develop domestic digital platforms, businesses and capacities to use data in the public interest; strategically promote national enterprises, e.g., through national data use frameworks; ensure digitization conducive to full employment policies; advance the public interest, consumer protection, healthy competition and sustainable development.

Pro-active measures needed
Following decades of economic liberalization and growing inequality, and the increasing clout of digital platforms, international institutions should support developmental digitization for national progress, rather than digital liberalization. Developing country governments must be vigilant about such e-commerce negotiations, and instead undertake pro-active measures such as:

Data governance infrastructure: Developing countries must be vigilant of the dangers of digital colonialism and the digital divide. Most people do not properly value data, while governments too easily allow data transfers to big data corporations without adequate protection for their citizens. TNC rights to free data flows should be challenged.

Enterprise competition: Developing countries still need to promote national enterprises, including through pro-active policies. International rules have enabled wealth transfers from the global South to TNCs holding well protected patents. National systems of innovation can only succeed if intellectual property monopolies are weakened. Strengthening property rights enhances TNC powers at the expense of developing country enterprises.

Employment: Developmental digitization must create decent jobs and livelihoods. Labour’s share of value created has declining in favour of capital, which has influenced rule-making to its advantage.

Taxation: The new e-commerce proposals seek to ban not only appropriate taxation, but also national presence requirements where they operate to avoid taxes at the expense of competitors paying taxes in compliance with the law. Tax rules allowing digital TNCs to reduce taxable income or shift profits to low-tax jurisdictions should be addressed.

Consumer protection: Strong policies for consumer protection are needed as the proposals would put privacy and data protection at risk. Besides citizens’ rights to privacy, consumers must have rights to data protection and against TNC and other abuse of human rights.

Competition: Digital platforms must be better regulated at both national and international level. Policies are needed to weaken digital economic monopolies and to support citizens, consumers and workers in relating to major digital TNCs.

Trade facilitation: Recent trade facilitation in developing countries, largely funded by donors, has focused on facilitating imports, rather than supply side constraints. Recent support for digital liberalization similarly encourages developing countries to import more instead of developing needed new infrastructure to close digital divides.

Urgent measures needed
‘E-commerce’ has become the new front for further economic liberalization and extension of property rights by removing tariffs (on IT products), liberalizing imports of various services, stronger IP protection, ending technology transfer requirements, and liberalizing government procurement.

Developing countries must instead develop their own developmental digitization agendas, let alone simply copy, or worse, promote e-commerce rules developed by TNCs to open markets, secure data, as well as constrain regulatory and developmental governments.

Chakravarthi Raghavan, Editor-emeritus of South-North Development Monitor SUNS, is based in Geneva and has been monitoring and reporting on the WTO and its predecessor GATT since 1978; he is author of several books on trade issues.
Jomo Kwame Sundaram is Senior Adviser with the Khazanah Research Institute. He was an economics professor and United Nations Assistant Secretary General for Economic Development.

The post Beware Proposed E-commerce Rules appeared first on Inter Press Service.

A fisher in Barbados. The Caribbean’s fish stocks have been affected by climate change. Credit: Desmond Brown/IPS

By Desmond Brown
GEORGETOWN, Feb 5 2019 (IPS)

In recent years Caribbean Community (CARICOM) countries have experienced escalated climate change impacts from hurricanes, tropical storms and other weather-related events thanks to global warming of 1.0 ° Celsius (C) above pre-industrial levels. And it has had adverse effects on particularly vulnerable countries and communities.

CARICOM countries and other small island and low-lying coastal developing states have long been calling for limiting the increase in average global temperatures to below 1.5 °C above pre-industrial levels by the end of the century in order to avoid the worst impacts of climate change.

Regional countries have also noted with grave concern the findings of the  Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5 °C. The report noted that climate-related risks for natural and human systems including health, livelihoods, food security, water supply, human security and economic growth are significantly higher at an increased global warming of 1.5 °C than at the present warming levels of 1 °C above pre-industrial levels.

Particularly worrisome for small island developing states (SIDS) is the finding that 70 to 90 percent of tropical coral reefs will be lost at a 1.5 °C temperature increase and 99 percent of tropical coral reefs will be lost at a 2 °C temperature increase.

Dr. Douglas Slater, Assistant Secretary General at the CARICOM Secretariat, told IPS that they have been working closely with the Alliance of Small Island States grouping. “The CARICOM SIDS grouping is considered a very important link and we are really leaders in the SIDS movement,” he said.

He said that at last year’s 24th Conference of the Parties (COP24) of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), the region had been able to ensure, to some extent, that the procedures for the implementation of the Paris Climate Agreement were clearly outlined.

Excerpts of the interview follow:

Dr. Douglas Slater, Assistant Secretary General at the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) Secretariat, says the region needs to recognise the importance of implementing some of the measures as recommended by technical institutions that will help to build climate resilience. Credit: Desmond Brown/IPS

Inter Press Service (IPS): How is the CARICOM region doing with its climate change fight?

DS: Starting from COP21 in France, certain decisions were made. The region thought that [at COP24] we needed to ensure that the procedures for the implementation of the Paris Climate Agreement and the modalities were clearly elucidated and outlined. To some extent I would say that that was achieved.

Another issue that we took [to COP24] and lobbied hard for, was a response to the IPCC 1.5 study.

The world is already looking to limit global warming to below 2 °C. We insisted that it should be no more than 1.5°C. Now, it might sound like they are close, but the differences are so significant, especially as it relates to us.

I must say that we had a hard task convincing them to accept the language of the findings of the IPCC. In fact, majority of the parties supported the findings and the actions to respond to it. But there were some major players [who did not] and because we work on consensus, it couldn’t find its way into the outcome document in a forceful way that was supportive of what we wanted.

There were four main countries, some real heavy rollers—the United States, Russia, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia—who resisted that. We will continue and there will be other opportunities. In fact, there is a meeting in May of this year where we’ll continue to push.

IPS: Were there any other tangible outcomes?

DS: We did get some language that will encourage parties to work towards what we want. There is also the issue of the Talanoa Dialogue, which was decided from the previous COP Presidency—Fiji. The word suggests working together in an inclusive cooperative way to ensure that a lot of issues, including the Nationally Determined Contributions, are adjusted to meet the times. That had some challenges being accepted wholesale too, but I think it is correct to say that Parties acknowledged what was happening and gave some commitment to increase the ambition to reduce greenhouse gases.

But it is a continuing struggle and we have to keep sounding our small but powerful voices because climate change is existential to us. Already, coming out of the hurricane season in 2017, we have had first-hand experience of what can happen to us and we don’t want a repeat of that.

IPS: Given the political cycle in the Caribbean where you could have a change in administration every five years or less, do you find that when an administration changes the drive and level of attention to climate change also changes?

DS: It is my feeling, based on my observation over the years, that the political parties in the region understand the impact that climate change can cause on us and in general are strongly supportive. So, it’s not a major issue. It might just be degrees of emphasis or so, but I don’t think there’s a challenge there. I think it is clear to all of our political leaders that climate change is a reality and it can devastate our sustainability, especially economic sustainability.

In my opinion, it doesn’t matter which administration is there, the policy should be aimed at addressing resilience to climate change and I think by and large that has been happening.

IPS: What major challenges remain for individual countries in the region or as a collective of SIDS? 

DS: I think we need to recognise the importance of implementing some of the measures as recommended by our technical institutions that will help to build resilience. Let us take hurricanes, for example. One of the reasons why you get significant damage is that the building codes that we have been using need updating. I think if we do that it will build a more resilient region. I think the message is there, but the implementation takes some time due to a lack of resources.

We have been working on that.

I know Dominica, especially post Hurricane Maria, are really working assiduously to build the first climate-resilient country probably in the world. That augers well for the region. We are hoping whatever we can gain from that experience can be disseminated in the entire region.

I am particularly concerned about some individual member states of CARICOM. Such as, for example, Haiti. I [bring up] Haiti because of land degradation and its impact, which we are dealing with now. We hope that Haiti can adjust to understanding the need for reforestation because that is a resilience measure.

I think if our individual member states can work with the various ministries and the regional institutions and we can mobilise the resources, that is the big challenge.

We know in general what we need to do. There’s a willingness to do it, the challenge is having the resources to.

We have some excellent institutions like CDEMA [Caribbean Disaster Emergency Management Agency] which really is on the ball, but they need resources sometimes to respond to some of the challenges.

We are working with some international organisations and some other international development partners to see how we can pull that together. But it’s a work in progress.

*Interview edited for clarity.

Related Articles

• It is Imperative for the Caribbean to Have a Seat at the COP24 Negotiating Table
• VIDEO: On the way to COP24 – The Caribbean Will Not be Left Out
• The Caribbean Island of Mayreau Could be Split in Two Thanks to Erosion
• The Caribbean Reiterates “1.5 Degrees Celsius to Stay Alive”

The post Q&A: Continuous Struggle for the Caribbean to be Heard in Climate Change Discussions appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

IPS correspondent Desmond Brown interviews DOUGLAS SLATER, Assistant Secretary General at the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) Secretariat.

The post Q&A: Continuous Struggle for the Caribbean to be Heard in Climate Change Discussions appeared first on Inter Press Service.

By Jan Lundius
STOCKHOLM / ROME, Feb 4 2019 (IPS)

Is there a connection between sex education, gender equality and promiscuity? On this website, Fabiana Fraysinnet recently denounced a Brazilian crusade against sex education conducted by conservative and religious sectors. Such initiatives are common in several other countries, where politicians and religious leaders accuse sexual education of blurring boundaries between male and female and thus foment homosexuality and transsexualism, as well as a moral relativism undermining family structures and adherence to religious guidance and dogma.

An opposite position is reflected by the personal motto of the Norwegian-Swedish journalist and socialist agitator Elise Ottosen-Jensen, who in 1933, together with a number of radical medical doctors founded the Swedish Association for Sexualiity Education (RFSU):

I dream of the day when every new born child is welcome, when men and women are equal, and when sexuality is an expression of intimacy, joy and tenderness.

Through her work as a journalist Elise Ottosen-Jensen had gained insights into the everyday life of working-class women. Scarce resources, hard work and domestic violence were common problems. Her conviction that the many unwanted pregnancies were a problem for several families and also a threat to women´s health and well-being turned her into an outspoken promotor of contraceptives and an agitator against the so-called sex laws, which prohibited use of contraceptives and penalized homosexuality. Until 1938 Swedish laws forbade the use of, information about, as well as distribution and marketing of contraceptives and it was not until 1944 that homosexuality was decriminalized. In 1955, sexual education was made compulsory in Swedish schools.

While I studied pedagogy in the 1970s the Brazilian educator and philosopher Paulo Freire´s Pedagogy of the Oppressed was obligatory reading for all future Swedish teachers. Freire stated that pupils simply memorized “facts” transmitted by their teachers, maintaining that all education instead ought to problematize what appears to be simple truths and provoke students to “self-determination”. I was taught that the Swedish school was supposed to support the ”development of critically thinking individuals,” able to dispute generally accepted dogmas and opinions.

Sexual education was part of that agenda and connected to gender equality. It was emphasized that all over the world girls and women are facing social, economic and cultural barriers impeding their education and livelihoods and that even more lack comprehensive sexuality education, which serves as a tool for women to take control of their bodies, to plan their future and avoid unintended pregnancy, child-, early- and forced marriages.

Some educators soon developed Freire´s theories into something they labelled as “anti-oppressive education”, i.e. a commitment to empower youngsters from minority groups by making them question norms that determine people’s perceptions of what is “normal”. Such views have increasingly come to influence the current Swedish debate about the rights of people who identify themselves as LGBTQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer).

Swedish radicals have recommended that children are given “gender neutral names”, while children´s books address norm changing themes, for example Kalle som Lucia, “Kalle as Lucia”. This particular story is about a boy who wants to be Lucia. In all Swedish schools winter solstice is celebrated by processions headed by a beautiful girl chosen by the pupils to be Lucia, Bringer of Light. While connecting traditional gender roles to normative change, books like Kalle as Lucia are supposed to teach kids that it is OK to be different.

Another Swedish norm changing initiative has been the replacement of the Swedish words for she and he with the neutral hen (from the Finnish gender neutral hän). Such efforts have been criticized as “ridiculous”, or even worse – as a Government supported scheme to blur the difference between the sexes, described as an integrated part of efforts to secure gender equality, which in reality is an entirely different endeavour. Gender equality aims at fomenting equal access to resources and opportunities for people of different sex, it does not at all seek to abolish biologically conditioned differences between women and men.

People who use bio-determinism as an argument against gender equality, claiming that promoting equal rights for women and men is a violation of religious and natural laws, ignore the fact people are able to change. John Stuart Mill, the 19th century economist and promoter of women’s emancipation, emphasized the dangers of bio-determinism:

Of all the vulgar modes of escaping from the consideration of the effect of social and moral influences upon the human mind, the most vulgar is that of attributing the diversities of conduct and character to inherent natural differences. 1

We have over time developed social patterns that resist aggression and selfish behaviour. While living close together, humans have used their superior brains to comprehend how violence and excessive dominant behaviour are intrinsically bad for the survival of our specie. Humans are able to change their habitats, instead of exclusively adapting to them, something that is due to the fact that human beings are genetically programmed to make use of reason, culture and free will, an endeavour supported by education aimed at promoting openness, mutual support and compassion.

Ignorance about reproductive health is currently threatening to increase rates of teen pregnancy, communicable diseases, misogyny and abuse of girls and adolescents. Attacking gender equality and sex education in the guise of opposition to norm criticism may prove to be harmful to the entire society and not the least the wellbeing of women, whose health is threatened by the bigotry of religious leaders, harmful traditions and prejudiced politics.

Some years ago, I visited Andean communities, interviewing women about their life situation. I had previously found that as a foreign man one of the best ways of approaching reticent women in rural settings had been to do so in the company of a local midwife. What worried me during my encounters with Andean women was their often poor state of health and I assumed it was the midwife´s presence that made them reveal their pains.

Several suffered from vaginal prolapse and other conditions affecting the female reproductive system. Ailments caused by congenital malformations, or difficulties during pregnancies that came too early in life and often had been far too frequent. Women´s suffering could also have been a consequence of difficult deliveries, poor hygiene, deficient preventive healthcare, hard work, badly treated infections and venereal diseases. Disease affecting productive organs were generally suffered in silence, considered to be shameful since everything connected with female bodies was burdened by prejudices, chauvinism and religious narrow-mindedness. My meeting with these women made me realize that gender equality is not only an issue of equity between men and women, but physical differences between males and females have to be addressed as well.

We are able to change our destiny for the better by liberating ourselves from shackles of intolerance supported by murky traditions and misinterpreted biological determinism. This is one reason to why gender equality, and not the least – unrestricted access to healthcare and sex education for both women and men, benefit the entire mankind. Fear of male power loss and an assumed spread of homosexuality cannot be allowed to forbid sex education and become an obstacle to women´s health and wellbeing.

1Collected Works of John Stuart Mill: Principles of political economy. University of Toronto Press. p. 319

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

The post Sex Education and Women´s Health appeared first on Inter Press Service.