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In Dakar, staff members from UN Women Senegal and other UN agencies attend a presentation on sexual harassment in the workplace, part of the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women, 2016.

By Dulcie Leimbach
UNITED NATIONS, Mar 4 2019 (IPS)

As multilateralism takes a beating from President Trump amid the “new world disorder,” as one European diplomat put it, three women who know the United Nations inside and out through previous top leadership jobs have originated a Group of Women Leaders for Change and Inclusion.

The goal is to bring together former UN female colleagues who held top jobs as well to “partner and raise our voices on matters regarding women equality and multilateralism,” said Susana Malcorra, one of the three women who started the group.

“By now we are more than 25 and keep adding.”

The other two former UN leaders behind it are Helen Clark, who ran the UN Development Program from 2009 to 2017 and was the prime minister of New Zealand from 1999 to 2008; and Irina Bokova, a Bulgarian politician who was the director-general of Unesco from 2009 to 2017.

Dulcie Leimbach

They plan to advocate for gender equality and multilateralism through op-eds, papers, conferences, mentoring and other sources in multiple languages “to shed light into matters that each one of us have worked in our different fields of expertise,” Malcorra said.

Malcorra, an Argentine, was the chief of cabinet for UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon from 2012 to 2015 and previously led the UN Department of Field Support.

She left the UN to become foreign minister of her country under President Mauricio Macri. She left that post in 2017 to move to Madrid to be near her family, she said.

All three women were candidates in 2016 for UN secretary-general, to succeed Ban, a South Korean.

Of 13 candidates, seven were women. António Guterres, who ran the UN Refugee Agency for 10 years and was a prime minister of Portugal, was selected by the UN Security Council for a five-year term beginning Jan. 1, 2017.

No woman has ever headed the UN.

The three women are now affiliated with different academia, think tanks and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). The idea for the initiative, which has no outside financing yet, came from a conversation among the women, Malcorra said, at last fall’s annual General Assembly open debate. It took shape in November and December, when the “scouting” process began.

“We felt that, as candidates to become SG” — secretary-general — “it would be very powerful to launch this together.”

The trio are introducing the group as the International Women’s Day approaches, on March 8, and the yearly UN Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) kicks off for 11 days on March 11.

They will use their personal Twitter handles to promote the group and these hashtags: #WomenLeadersForPositiveChange; #WomenForMultilateralism; and #WomenLeadersForInclusiveChange.

The timing of the group’s debut coincides as other international efforts to reinforce multilateralism — the policy of countries working jointly to solve global problems — include France and Germany partnering for the first time as rotating presidents of the UN Security Council for March and April, respectively.

The launching also occurs as France and Germany work jointly to keep Europe unified while Britain exits from the European Union and some politicians elsewhere in Europe — such as in Hungary and Italy — seem intent on fragmenting the continent further.

This is a “loosely connected” network of women, former colleagues and friends, Malcorra said of the new group, “who share some serious concerns about the state of the world, the multilateral institutions and, particularly, about a trend to pushback policies regarding gender parity and women empowerment. The signs we see are very worrisome in this regard.”

The group has written an open, two-page letter, which begins: “We join our voices as women colleagues who have worked in governments and in multilateral organizations in support of promoting humanitarian relief, advocating for human rights principles and normative policies, advancing sustainable development, and resolving some of the world’s most complex conflicts.

“We ourselves have leveraged multilateralism in order to drive positive change for peoples and our planet. Now we collectively call attention to the need to achieve full gender equality and empowerment of women across all ambits of society and the critical importance of multilateralism as a vehicle in support of that.”

The space that women leaders now collectively occupy, the letter warned, was “not opened up easily and can never be taken for granted.”

It is signed by, among others, Sahle-Work Zewde, the president of Ethiopia who served as UN envoy to the African Union; Baroness Valerie Amos, a Briton who ran the UN’s Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs; Ertharin Cousin, an American who directed the World Food Program; Louise Fréchette, a Canadian diplomat who was a UN deputy secretary-general; Navi Pillay, a South African judge who was most recently the UN’s high commissioner for human rights; Mary Robinson, an ex-president of Ireland and former UN high commissioner for human rights; Zainab Bangura, a politician from Sierra Leone who was the UN’s envoy on sexual violence in conflict; and Radhika Coomaraswamy, a Sri Lankan who served as a UN envoy for children and armed conflict.

What can women bring to multilateralism that is different from what men can offer?

“What women always bring to the table: a different and enriching perspective,” Malcorra said. “But multilateralism is also key to the advancement of policy discussions about gender as the Beijing Conference [on women in 1995] proved. CSW is not moving as envisioned and we must keep pushing.”

The initiative, Malcorra added, will not finish in March. “We expect to continue until UNGA” — the annual UN General Assembly opening debate, in the fall.

*Previously, Dulcie Leimbach was an editor for the Coalition for the UN Convention Against Corruption; from 2008 to 2011, she was the publications director of the United Nations Association (UNA) of the USA, where she edited its flagship magazine, The InterDependent, and migrated it online in 2010. She was also the senior editor of UNA’s annual book, “A Global Agenda: Issues Before the UN.” She has also worked as an editorial consultant to various UN agencies. Before UNA, Leimbach was an editor at The New York Times for more than 20 years, editing and writing for most sections of the paper, including the Magazine, Book Review and Op-Ed.

The post Three Ex-UN Leaders Form Women’s Group to Save Multilateralism appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Dulcie Leimbach* was a fellow of the Ralph Bunche Institute for International Studies at the Graduate Center of CUNY from 2012 to 2017. She is the founder of PassBlue, for which she edits and writes, covering primarily the United Nations, West Africa, peacekeeping operations and women's issues.

The post Three Ex-UN Leaders Form Women’s Group to Save Multilateralism appeared first on Inter Press Service.

By Stella Paul
Mar 4 2019 (IPS)

Marie Lisa Dacanay is the president of Manila–based Institute for Social Entrepreneurship in Asia. With 20 years of experience in development management, social entrepreneurship and enterprise development, Dacanay is also a university professor and an acclaimed author with several books on social entrepreneurship in Asia.

Today, Dacanay was at the Regional Assembly of Organisations of People Affected by Leprosy in Asia where she presented some valuable ideas and advises on how to build successful models of social enterprises. The assembly was supported by the Nippon Foundation (TNF)/Sasakawa Memorial Health Foundation (SMHF).

In this video she tells IPS what models of entrepreneurship can especially be tried by how people from the most marginalised and vulnerable sections of the society – such as those affected by leprosy.

The post Building Successful Social Enterprises appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Filipino businessman Ariel Lazarte was diagnosed with Hansen’s Disease in 2014. Since his treatment he has built a successful business and has become a patron for those affected by the disease. Credit: Nalisha Adams/IPS

By Nalisha Adams
MANILA, Mar 4 2019 (IPS)

When Ariel Lazarte from Quezon City, Philippines, was first diagnosed with leprosy in 2014, his life seemed as if it were falling apart. But now more than four years later Lazarte’s life is a huge contrast from the poverty and isolation he experienced as a person affected by leprosy.

Now the owner of multiple businesses, including ones in transport and construction, and the owner of a large family home as well as an in-patient home for persons receiving treatment for leprosy, Lazarte was driven to become a success by his strong desire to help others.

“I didn’t get any help from my family, my friends, my relatives. I only trusted the doctor,” Lazarte tells IPS of the year he spent receiving treatment for leprosy, which is also known as Hansen’s Disease. “I was very thirsty for the help from others. I was in need.”

He was one of the participants of the Regional Assembly of Organisations of People Affected by Leprosy in Asia. The assembly is being held in Manila, Philippines, Mar. 3 to 5 and is supported by the Nippon Foundation (TNF)-one of the biggest private foundations in Japan that has been working to provide assistance to people with leprosy since 1975.

At the time of the diagnosis, the then 32-year-old who worked as a manager in a fast food store, was able to afford treatment at a private hospital. But instead of being cured, his condition worsened.

Eventually, he lost his job and felt more and more alone as his wife stopped sharing a bed with him and his friends stopped visiting. His wife’s dried fish kiosk business become their sole support of income and much of the money was spent on survival and not medicine.

And while he kept receiving treatment, he kept thinking: “I’m dying.”

Eventually Lazarte’s doctor told him he couldn’t cure him and referred him to the Jose Reyes Memorial Hospital. He began an 8-month treatment course that eventually cured him.

“The doctor promised me I would be helped. And I promised that I would help those with leprosy,” Lazarte says, explaining that it didn’t want others who were affected by the disease to experience what he did.

According to Dr. Maria Francia Laxamana, Assistant Secretary in the Philippines Department of Health, the country has 1,000 new leprosy patients a year. Of these only one in four receive treatment because many fear the social stigma.

Unique to the Philippines, jeepneys are long wheel based taxis, converted from American jeeps left in the country after World War II. Credit: Nalisha Adams/IPS

But after a year of treatment that cured him of Hansen’s Disease, Lazarte started fulfilling his promise.

Lazarte started small. With 15 dollars, he bought some shorts and pillows and began selling them. Soon he bought a tricycle – a Filipino transport bicycle with a small cab. And soon he owned seven of these.

And then later he was able to afford a jeepney. Unique to the Philippines, jeepneys are long wheel based taxis, converted from American jeeps left in the country after World War II.

He is now the owner of 12 jeepneys.

With the money from the businesses he built a 4-bedroom in-patient home for those receiving treatment for Hansen’s disease. Situated just outside the capital, it houses people receiving treatment at the Jose Reyes Memorial Hospital. The property also has a car so the patients can drive to the hospital, which is some 45 minutes away, for their check ups.

He’s very clear about what he spent the income from these business on in the early days. “I knew that my wife was able to support my children …so I kept on dreaming of having enough money to buy my afford to the house [for the leprosy patients].”

While they now have a large home and not all Lazarte’s income goes into the in-patient home, Lazarte says that wants the Hansen’s Disease patients to learn to self-sufficient. They have a garden to plant vegetables for resale and recently received funding for a poultry project.

“I started my own pathway for my own direction,” he tells IPS.

Related Articles

• First Asian Leprosy Assembly Calls for Greater Social Inclusion for the Affected
• Leprosy Remains a Stubborn, Unseen Problem in the Philippines
• A Leprosy-free Philippines by 2020?

The post Leprosy Survivor Creates Hope and Support for Others Affected by Disease appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Landscaper Elaine Caparroz, 55, nine days after being brutally beaten in her residence by a man with whom she had an eight-month Internet relationship. Aided by the doorman of her building, she survived with bruises on her entire body, a broken tooth and 60 stitches. Hers is just one of the more high-profile cases of women murdered or assaulted in Brazil, which in 2018 totaled 4.7 million or 536 every hour. Credit: EBC

By Mario Osava
RIO DE JANEIRO, Mar 4 2019 (IPS)

Crime, a key issue in far-right President Jair Bolsonaro’s election in Brazil, has a dimension that is gaining in visibility and could turn against his government: gender violence.

Elaine Caparroz, a 55-year-old landscaper, was beaten for four hours in the early hours of Jan. 16 in her own home. As a result, she was unrecognisable, lost a tooth and needed 60 stitches.

This was the highest-profile case in recent days in this country of 209 million people, where so far this year, up to Feb. 22, there were 176 victims of femicide and 109 unsuccessful gender-based murders, according to the daily monitoring of cases by Jefferson Nascimento, a lawyer and researcher from São Paulo, based on press reports."The new laws encourage women to report the attacks, but many cases of violence remain hidden, because women are afraid, they do not believe in the judicial system, many depend financially on their violent husbands, and there is a lack of effective policies." -- Ana Miria Carinhanha

Caparroz’s attacker, with whom she had an Internet relationship for eight months before taking him into her home, was caught in the act, arrested and charged with attempted femicide, which was specifically defined as a crime in Brazil in 2015, with stiff penalties as it is considered to have aggravating factors.

Other cases of women killed or wounded by gunshots or knives, sometimes in front of their children, have shaken Brazil so far this year, drawing more attention to the statistics and the perception of an increase in gender-based violence in Latin America’s giant.

There were 4.7 million physical attacks in 2018, or 536 per hour, according to the report “The Victimisation of Women in Brazil” by the Brazilian Public Security Forum, in its second edition released on Feb. 26. In the first edition, with data from 2016, there were respectively 4.4 million in total, or 503 per hour.

In 2018, the attacker was known by the victim in 76.4 percent of cases, compared to 61 percent in 2016 – most often the partner, ex-partner, ex-boyfriend or neighbor.

The data is based on a survey carried out by the Datafolha Institute, which interviewed 2,084 people across Brazil on Feb. 5-6.

“We have laws and protocols, but there is a lack of public policies to deal with violence. Women’s police stations, for example, cover less than 10 percent of Brazil’s 5,570 municipalities, and most are concentrated in the wealthier regions, the South and Southeast,” said Marisa Sanematsu, director of content at the Patricia Galvão Agency, a women’s rights organisation based in São Paulo.

This is a result of the apparent contradiction between the passage of several laws that stiffened the sentences for crimes against women and the rise in gender-based violence.

In 2006, the Maria da Penha Law established harsh penalties for domestic violence and discrimination against women, in addition to creating specific courts and mechanisms to protect and assist victims.

The Minister of Women, Family and Human Rights, Damares Alves, inherited functions from the now-defunct secretariats of Policies for Women, Racial Equality and Human Rights. She describes herself as “extremely Christian” and forms part of the ultraconservative religious core of Jair Bolsonaro’s government, which defends the traditional family, rejects “gender ideology” and prioritises the fight against organised delinquency but not against gender violence. Credit: EBC

The law is named after a woman who was left paraplegic by two murder attempts by her then husband in 1983.

The mother of three, now 74 years old, became an activist for women’s rights.

In addition, since 2015, a new law on femicide has classified it as an “atrocious crime” which is an aggravating factor that leads to harsher sentences than other homicides.

“Legislative advances in and of themselves are of little use if they are not accompanied by protective measures, support networks for victims, and actions to ensure that the laws are enforced,” argued Sanematsu.

Because of this, many women are afraid to report the attacks, as they have no protection against possible reprisals, and have nowhere to turn for the defence of their rights, she said.

“The new laws encourage women to report the attacks, but many cases of violence remain hidden, because women are afraid, they do not believe in the judicial system, many depend financially on their violent husbands, and there is a lack of effective policies,” said Ana Miria Carinhanha, a lawyer who works with Criola, an organisation that advocates for the rights of black women.

And the situation is getting worse due to the economic crisis and the consequent scarcity of public resources and also due to the conservative orientation of the extreme right-wing government, which came to power on Jan. 1 with a markedly sexist discourse whose 22-member ministerial cabinet includes only two women.

In addition to prioritising the fight against alleged “gender ideology,” which is supposedly poisoning education and society, Bolsonaro signed as one of his first measures a decree that makes it easier to keep firearms at home and at work.

The government has also pledged to extend to civilians the authorisation to carry weapons in public places, which is becoming more and more widely permitted – as well as criticised – in the United States, in the wake of a spate of school shootings and other mass killings.

“This increases the risk of femicide and also further inhibits women for reporting attacks, out of fear of guns,” which are traditionally used by men and are “a deceptive defence mechanism,” lamented Sanematsu, a journalist who specialises in gender violence.

Millions of women poured onto the streets in demonstrations ahead of the October elections, under the slogan #EleNão (#NotHim) to prevent the triumph by Bolsonaro, known for making misogynistic, racist and anti-democratic statements during his years as a lawmaker, between 1990 and 2018.

The protests failed to block the election of the former army captain, although a lower percentage of women than men voted for him.

It is now clear that for the government the priority is the fight against organised crime, especially drug trafficking, and corruption. Its approach to the question of domestic violence, “is still unclear, which is a bad sign, even though society considers it an important problem and is demanding solutions,” said Sanematsu.

For this reason, women’s rights groups are organising protest marches throughout Brazil on Mar. 8, International Women’s Day, against femicide and other sexist violence, general violence, and the expansion of access to firearms.

According to a report by the Brazilian Public Safety Forum, 42 percent of attacks on women occur in the home, compared to 29 percent on the street.

Black women are the most frequent victims. The survey found that 28.4 percent of black women suffered physical aggression in 2018, against 27.4 percent of all Brazilian women over 16 and 24.7 percent of white women.

The “structural racism” in the country also means that more black people in general are murdered, and that black women are less covered by public policies and earn lower wages, said Carinhanha.

That is why Mar. 8 will also be marked by demonstrations by black women and campaigns against racism, she announced.

“The new government promotes institutional and personal violence, and is aggressive and intolerant of civil society organisations,” and in response society must mobilise, she argued.

“Women are the great force against violence and for equality in Brazil today, along with the new generation of young people,” said historian Daniel Aarão Reis, a professor at the Federal University Fluminense, in Niterói, a city near Rio de Janeiro.

In his opinion, they should avoid the fragmentation that occurred in the United States, where the recent growing female protagonism has been marked by “identity patterns separating black and white women.”

He also warned that in the early days of Bolsonaro’s government, women’s advocates took sometimes contradictory actions and decisions, and said they should be “more cohesive” and more forceful now that the opposition and popular protests are growing.

The post Violence Fuels Mobilisation by Women against Brazil’s Anti-Gender Equality Government appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

This article is part of IPS's coverage of International Women's Day, celebrated on March 8.

The post Violence Fuels Mobilisation by Women against Brazil’s Anti-Gender Equality Government appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Extreme weather associated to climate change has resulted in million of dollars in loss and damage in St. Vincent and the Grenadines over the past few years. Credit: Kenton X. Chance/IPS

By Kenton X. Chance
KINGSTOWN, Mar 4 2019 (IPS)

In the tiny eastern Caribbean nation of St. Vincent and the Grenadines, proverbs relating to the weather are very common.

Everyone knows that “Who has cocoa outside must look out for rain”, has nothing to do with the drying of the bean from which chocolate is made or the sudden downpours common in this tropical nation.

So when the government of St. Vincent and the Grenadines announced in 2018 that there was a need to put aside some money for “a rainy day” because of climate change, citizens knew that the expression was both figurative and literal.

In this country, highly dependent on tourism, visitors stay in hotel and other rented accommodation have to contribute 3 dollars per night to the climate change fund.

They join residents who had been contributing to the Climate Resilience Levy, for over one year, paying a one percent consumption charge. The funds go into the Contingency Fund.

As with many other small island developing states, St. Vincent and the Grenadines has had to struggle to finance mitigation and adaptation for climate change.

In the year since the Climate Resilience levy was established, 4.7 million dollars has been saved for the next “rainy day”.

The savings represents a minuscule portion of the scores of million of dollars in damage and loss wrought by climate change in this archipelagic nation over the last few years.

In just under six hours in 2013, a trough system left damage and loss amounting to 20 percent of the GDP and extreme rainfall has left millions of dollars in damage and loss almost annually since then.

The 4.7 million dollars in the climate fund is mere 18 percent of the 25 million dollars that lawmakers have budgeted for “environmental protection” in 2019, including climate change adaptation and mitigation.

However, it is a start and shows what poorer nations can do, locally, amidst the struggle to get developed nations to stand by their commitments to help finance climate change adaptation and mitigation.

“Never before in the history of independent St. Vincent and the Grenadines have we managed to explicitly set aside such resources for a rainy day,” Minister of Finance Camillo Gonsalves told lawmakers this month as he reported on the performance of the fund in its first year.

He said that in 2019, the contingency fund is expected to receive an additional 4.7 million dollars.

“While this number remains small in the face of the multi-billion potential of a major natural disaster, it is nonetheless significant. If we are blessed with continued good fortune, in the near term, the Contingency Fund will be a reliable, home-grown cushion against natural disasters,” Gonsalves told legislators.

He said the fund will also stand as an important signal to the international community that St. Vincent and the Grenadines is committed to playing a leading role in its own disaster preparation and recovery.

Dr. Reynold Murray, a Vincentian environmentalist, welcomes the initiative, but has some reservations.

“I am worried about levies because very often, the monies generally get collected and go into sources that don’t reach where it is supposed to go,” he told IPS.

“That’s why I am more for the idea of the funding being in the project itself, whatever the initiative is, that that initiative addresses the climate issues.

“For example, if you are building a road, there should be the climate adaption monies in that project so that people build proper drains, that they look at the slope stabilisation, that they look at run off and all that; not just pave the road surface. That’s a waste of time, because the water is going to come the next storm and wash it away.”

Murray told IPS he believes climate change adaptation and mitigation would be best addressed if the international community stands by its expressed commitments to the developing world.

“My honest opinion is that a lot of that financing has to come from the developed countries that are the real contributors to the greenhouse problem,” he told IPS.

“That is not to say that the countries themselves have no obligation. We have to protect ourselves. So there must be a programme at the national level, where funds are somehow channelled into addressing adaptation and mitigation. The mitigation is more with the large, industrialised countries, but small countries like us, especially the Windward Islands, mitigation is our big issues…”

St. Vincent and the Grenadines is making small strides as a time when the finance minister said the 437 million dollar budget that lawmakers approved for 2019 and the nation’s long-term developmental plans, must squarely confront the reality of climate change.

“This involves recovery and rehabilitation of damaged infrastructure, investing in resilience and adaptation, setting aside resources to prepare for natural disasters, adopting renewable energy and clean energy technologies, and strengthening our laws and practices related to environmental protection,” the finance minister said.

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• Accelerating the Caribbean’s Climate Resilience
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The post Saving for a ‘Rainy Day’ Takes on New Meaning in Caribbean appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Dr Maria Francia Laxamana, the Assistant Secretary in the Philippines Ministry of Health, eels strongly about the social exclusion and stigma experienced by the leprosy patients and is eager to make a notable change in the way the society perceives leprosy and those who live with it. Credit: Stella Paul/IPS

By Stella Paul
MANILA, Mar 3 2019 (IPS)

Dr. Maria Francia Laxamana is the Assistant Secretary in the Philippines ministry of health. With nearly two decades of  work both as a senior government official and also as an expert in several non-government organisations, Laxamana has deep insight into the issue of leprosy in this Southeast Asian nation and the challenges faced by those who are affected by the disease.

She feels strongly about the social exclusion and stigma experienced by the leprosy patients and is eager to make a notable change in the way the society perceives leprosy and those who live with it.

On the sidelines of the ongoing  Regional Assembly of Organisations of People Affected by Leprosy in Asia in Manila, Laxamana tells IPS how a new, holistic approach is needed to eradicate leprosy  and  improve the quality of life for all leprosy patients. She also informs how small measures like helping the children of leprosy-affected families can help remove societal stigma and  pave ways for social inclusion.

Inter Press Service (IPS): How and at what point is it decided to separate a family from the community?

Dr Maria Francia Laxamana (MFL): Previously, it was the government that decided. If a child tested positive, it would be separated from the mother. That used to be very harsh.  But now, its not like that anymore. Now if a baby shows the symptoms, the baby is tested and if the results are positive, then the baby is treated along with the mother and the father, but it stays with the parents. The treatment now is family based.

IPS: Typically, how who are the leprosy patients in the Philippines?

MFL: Actually, generally those who are afflicted by leprosy are poor people. The main reasons are that  (lack of) nutrition, lack of awareness, remote location of their areas and lack of access to the services.

IPS: Have you met anyone whose condition matches this? How did it change you?

MFL: Yes. In the Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao, I met a woman – a mother of a 2 year old boy. She already had visible physical symptoms and her hands were already deformed. I asked her, have you been receiving the treatment? She said, ‘No, I don’t go to the health center anymore because the staff there say I can infect them’.  So I told her, you have to be tested before anyone can say you are infective. But in my mind, I thought, so this is what is the progress we have had: we have done advocacy, awareness generation  – everything and yet the staff here are not willing to go near the patients.

That’s when I learnt that there had not been any amendment or reviews of the previous policies. I also asked myself, why is the budget for leprosy so low? And I came to think that there maybe also lapses in our government, maybe leprosy is not  a priority for  our government. Maybe they think that there isn’t a Hansen’s disease here in the Philippines anymore.

IPS: You had left the government job to work with the non governmental organisations, such as USAID, EU, Save the Children, among others. But you returned in 2016. How are you working differently this time?

MFL: When I was offered the position of the Assistant Secretary–which is a part of the Executive Committee (a high level decision-making group), I thought that I could now make actual impact by discussing an issue with my fellow committee members and making constructive recommendations for deciding on a new policy. For example, while working for the non-government organisations, I discovered that we are making policies without any inclusion of inputs from local level, from the communities. And that is something I can now raise this issue to the national government.

IPS: What changes do you expect to see in next five years?

MFL: I have been talking to the sanatoriums in the Philippines. They have many in-house lepers who are not active anymore, they are just living in the sanatoriums compounds. What we did was turning some parts of the sanatoriums into general hospitals. We can have fund the hospitals with facilities and equipments, so that outside patients can go in for treatment and the in-house patients can continue to get treated, but the outsiders will know that they are not active anymore. This will augment financial resources.

So, right now I am telling the sanatoriums that let us develop the standards based on the facilities , equipment and the human resources that they need. Once we have this standard, we can propose to the government for a specific, yearly budget  allocation for the leprosy programme.

IPS: You are very vocal about social inclusion of the affected people and their families. How can this be achieved ?

MFL: A great way to do this is to take a holistic approach by providing the affected people opportunities to education, employments, training etc. For example, in Culion, I met a leprosy affected family whose daughter wanted to go to college and become a nurse. So I said, maybe we can ask the governor of the state to provide her a scholarship. Now, if such a child is brought to a college and given the opportunity to study, she can interact with a hundred others there and inform them about her family, their life. People around her can understand that she is not infective – this way a new level of engagement can begin.

Related Articles

• A Leprosy-free Philippines by 2020?

The post Q& A: We Need a Holistic Approach to Eradicate Leprosy appeared first on Inter Press Service.

By Stella Paul
MANILA, Mar 3 2019 (IPS)

Dr Maria Francia Laxamana, assistant secretary of health in the Department of Health, Philippines outlines her recommendations for a leprosy country by 2020.

She spoke to IPS the first ever Regional Assembly of Organisations of People Affected by Leprosy in Asia.

The three-day regional event was organised by the Philippine government-run Culion Sanitarium and General Hospital (CSGH), the Coalition of Leprosy Advocate of the Philippines, and the Sasakawa Memorial Health Foundation (SMHF). The foundation has been actively supporting the fight to eradicate leprosy worldwide since 1975.

According to Laxamana, only one in every four in the Philippines seek out medical treatment for the disease and social stigma is one of the main reasons why they hide their condition.

For the Philippines to achieve the global target of reducing leprosy cases by 2020, it would be crucial to have policies that could look at the disease in the local context and can provide solutions that are locally applicable.

 

The post A Leprosy-free Philippines by 2020? appeared first on Inter Press Service.

When it comes to sustainability of non-profits working in the field of leprosy, Sasakawa Memorial Health Foundation Executive Director Dr. Takahiro Nanri said that while the foundation was prepared to support organisations, a financial investment would inevitably be limited. Credit: Nalisha Adams/IPS

By Ben Kritz
MANILA, Mar 3 2019 (IPS)

Strengthening the participation of persons affected by leprosy, or SPP, has proven to be an effective strategy in reaching out to often isolated sufferers in local communities throughout Asia. A significant challenge to civil society organisations, however, is finding enough management talent to maintain and expand the programmes.

Capacity building, providing organisational and management training to SPP participants doing the heavy lifting for leprosy advocacy groups in their work in individual countries, was highlighted as a significant priority by the participants at the Regional Assembly of Organisations of People Affected by Leprosy in Asia in Manila on Mar. 3.

Starting from scratch

The challenge is made even more difficult because many programme volunteers come from marginalised communities, or have had their own education interrupted by complications or social ostracism associated with leprosy.

Amar Bahadur Timalsina, president of International Association for the Integration, Dignity and Economic Advancement (IDEA), Nepal, told IPS that capacity-building is likely the biggest problem facing his organisation. “Many of the people working with us are completely uneducated, and some are even illiterate,” Timalsina said. Many of Nepal’s leprosy patients are found in poor communities, and face significant discrimination.

“Right now, we are focusing on building the capacity of our board members and programme managers,” Timalsina said. “Fortunately, we are able to work with the Leprosy Mission Nepal, who are able to provide us with expertise in business management, finance, and social programme management.”

The discrimination that prevents leprosy sufferers from accessing education and seeking out medical and social assistance in Nepal is perhaps a bit stronger than in some other countries, as it is still part of the law in one respect. In his presentation to conference delegates, Timalsina highlighted IDEA Nepal’s efforts to amend a constitutional prohibition of marriage between leprosy sufferers and unaffected persons, and to include information on leprosy in the country’s health education curriculum.

Differing approaches

While the capacity-building challenge is a common priority, organisations in different countries have adopted different approaches to addressing it. For example, the focus of PerMaTa Indonesia, which means Gem in Bahasa, places heavy emphasis on emotional and social support for persons affected by leprosy. The organisation also directs much of its attention to youth. PerMaTa’s Yuliati explained that the social focus helped leprosy patients gain acceptance, which is particularly important for young people to have continued access to education. Over the long term, it will help the skills capacity of the organisation; in the short term, however, PerMaTa must still rely on some degree of outside expertise.

China’s Handa faces a similar challenge, but has actually been able to quantify its need for expertise. The organisation, which has about 3,500 members across 14 provinces and serves nearly 9,500 beneficiaries, has structured its board so that one-third of its members are private-sector professionals, Handa representative Qi Xiuli told the conference delegates. With this arrangement, overall policy objectives are generated by persons affected by leprosy who make up two-thirds of the board, while the professional board members take charge of practical implementation of the organisation’s initiatives.

Capacity tied to financial sustainability

Beyond the day-to-day goal of carrying out programmes and managing organisations in an efficient way, capacity-building is key to helping the various organisations secure financial sustainability.

In a group discussion, Dr. Arturo Cunanan, Director of the Philippines’ Culion Sanitarium and General Hospital and the country’s foremost leprosy advocate, pointed out the need for organisations to secure a substantial initial investment in order to be able to work on sustainability. Cunanan suggested that this might be one way organisations could address their capacity gaps.

“That initial investment may be in the form of a financial investment, but it could also be a technical or capacity investment,” Cunanan told the conference delegates.

Sasakawa Memorial Health Foundation Executive Director Dr. Takahiro Nanri pointed out, however, that a financial investment would inevitably be limited. “You can start off with grants from government or non-government sources, you can gather some financial resources in the form of membership fees, but these are limited,” Nanri said. “In order to be truly sustainable, the organisation has to create an income-generating programme,” and for that, the organisation would need sufficient expertise.

Having that capacity, however, would make achieving sustainability much easier, boosting the organisation’s credibility to potential donors. “We know you probably couldn’t generate real income to sustain your organisation for quite some time,” Nanri told the delegates. “But we [Sasakawa Foundation] could justify supporting you for, say, three years, if we could see that you were able to develop a business plan that would be viable in that amount of time.” Expertise in business and management is needed to be able to develop such plans.

Fortunately, most organisations seem to be successfully balancing the goals of becoming self-reliant and accessing enough expert help in planning and carrying out financial and operational strategies. In the group discussions, however, all the conference participants agreed that greater public awareness of their work would greatly benefit their respective organisations’ goals.

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Coalition of Leprosy Associations of the Philippines (CLAP) community outreach organisers Jennifer Quimno (left) and Michelle Ann Oreo (right). Credit: Ben Kritz/IPS

By Ben Kritz
MANILA, Mar 3 2019 (IPS)

Jennifer Quimno could put anyone at ease. So when she travels across the Philippines as part of peer to peer programme that helps identify new leprosy cases, people generally allow her to examine them.

“We met a young boy, about 16 years of age, who had symptoms of leprosy, and we needed to examine and send pictures of his skin rashes to the doctors for diagnosis,” Quimno told IPS. Quimno, herself a former leprosy patient, was able to put the teenager at ease. “One of his rashes was on his buttocks. He was a little embarrassed to show it at first, but when I asked him nicely, he let us take a look.”

That unique sensitivity toward persons affected by leprosy is a valuable resource in identifying new cases and encouraging patients to seek treatment, Frank Onde, the president of the Coalition of Leprosy Advocates of the Philippines (CLAP) explained.

“Strengthening the participation of persons affected by leprosy is the most effective way to reduce the burden on government health departments,” explained Onde, one of the keynote speakers at the Regional Assembly of Organisations of People Affected by Leprosy in Asia. The assembly is being held in Manila, Philippines, Mar. 3 to 5.

Helping their own

Under the programme organised by CLAP, former patients are trained in community outreach and help to identify potential cases for diagnosis and treatment. Using people who have personal experience with the disease helps to reduce the reluctance of leprosy sufferers to seek treatment, Onde said. Not only can the outreach workers relate on a personal level with others affected by leprosy, also known as Hansen Disease, their own experience also helps healthcare personnel make accurate diagnoses, he added.

Launched in the cities of Manila and Cebu in November 2018, the programme, ‘Strengthening Participation of People Affected by Leprosy in Leprosy Service’, known as SPP, is currently working among known affected communities. It pursues the twin objectives of gathering demographic information to update the Philippine Department of Health database and identifying relapse or new leprosy cases.

Quimno, who is a field health officer with the regional Department of Health office in Cebu, said that personal experience helps to build trust. “We know what they are experiencing,” she explained. “We can also tell them exactly what the consequences of not seeking timely treatment will be.”

Coalition of Leprosy Associations of the Philippines (CLAP) president Frank Onde (left), and CLAP volunteers Mark Anthony Esparas (centre) and Ariel Lazarte (right). Credit: Ben Kritz/IPS

Grassroots connections

While CLAP’s activities are officially supported at the national government level—the coalition is represented on the Department of Health’s National Leprosy Advisory Board—it is at the smallest level of government where the initiatives of the coalition’s individual organisations are substantially embraced.

“We coordinate with local government units at the municipal and barangay [village] level, including the mayor’s office and the city or municipal health official’s office,” Quimno explained. “Since our individual member groups are the ones doing most of the work right in their own communities, they are really embraced by their local officials.”

Mark Anthony “Macoy” Esparas, a CLAP outreach volunteer in Manila, agreed. “We do receive a lot of help from the local governments,” he told IPS. “What we do is helping them as well.”

CLAP advisor Joseph “Boyet” Ongkiko highlighted the success of one CLAP member group in Cotabato, Mindanao, southern Philippines, which formed a cooperative of motorcycle taxi drivers to provide livelihoods for people affected by leprosy. “At first, the community was reluctant to patronise the drivers,” Ongkiko told the conference attendees. “Now, they have been accepted so well, that the cooperative even has non-Hansenite members.”

Other livelihood activities pursued by the member groups of CLAP—the coalition represents a total of 19 local organisations across the Philippines—include production and marketing of various household products, clothing, and small-scale farming.

Financial sustainability challenge

While CLAP’s initiatives are steadily gaining traction among people affected by leprosy and local communities alike, the organisation is concerned about its prospects for sustainability.

“That is our biggest challenge right now,” Onde said. “At the moment, our financial support is really only coming from the Sasakawa [Memorial Health] Foundation, and we would like to better secure our future.”

Financial sustainability is a common worry for leprosy advocacy groups throughout the region, but in the Philippines, Onde explained, CLAP and other organisations face a unique challenge. In 2013, a large-scale conspiracy dubbed the “Pork Barrel” scam and involving the misappropriation of billions in legislators’ development funds was exposed. Funds intended for local projects were diverted to fabricated non-government organisations and then pocketed by the scam perpetrators, including a number of lawmakers.

“Since the Pork Barrel scam, it has become difficult for a lot of civil society groups, not only us, to attract donors,” Onde said. “So one of our important tasks is to try to share information about what we’re doing to convince potential financial supporters that we are a legitimate, sustainable organisation.”

One advantage for CLAP is its close connection to the government’s own leprosy control efforts. “We have a consultative role in the government’s National Leprosy Control Programme and the Leprosy Roadmap 2016-2022,” Onde said. “That does help give us some credibility, and of course, we strive to do good work to match that.”

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Amar Bahadur Timalsina, president of IDEA, Nepal, a group founded by people with leprosy for people with leprosy, is in agreement that there needs to be greater inclusion for those affected by the disease. Timalsina was affected by disease, also known as Hansen’s disease, as a child. Credit: Stella Paul/IPS

By Stella Paul
MANILA, Mar 3 2019 (IPS)

Growing up in Kathmandu, Nepal, Amar Bahadur Timalsina wasn’t allowed to attend school as a young boy because he was affected by leprosy. But decades later, after treatment and being able to re-integrate into his community, the boy who was once denied an education is now inspiringly the principal of a school of 400 students.

“I suffered from leprosy when I was 12 years old. At that time I was forced to leave my village and my community,” Timalsina told IPS.

But after that Leprosy Mission Nepal supported me with a recommendation letter, he was subsequently able to attend an orphanage “where I got an opportunity to continue my studies.”

“At my school there are 400 students and 30 staff. Now if I go to my village, there is no discrimination, no stigma and everyone welcomes me like any other person,” he said.

Timalsina, who is president from the International Association for the Integration, Dignity and Economic Advancement (IDEA), Nepal, a group founded by people with leprosy to support others with the disease, is in agreement that there needs to be greater inclusion for those affected by it.

Participants at the Regional Assembly of Organisations of People Affected by Leprosy in Asia kicked off today, Mar. 3 in Manila, Philippines, made a vocal appeal to adopt and embrace greater social inclusion and build a stigma-free society for those affected by leprosy

The three-day regional event, which is the first of its kind to be held, was organised by the Philippine government-run Culion Sanitarium and General Hospital (CSGH), the Coalition of Leprosy Advocate of the Philippines, and the Sasakawa Memorial Health Foundation (SMHF). The foundation has been actively supporting the fight to eradicate leprosy worldwide since 1975.

Participants at the Regional Assembly of Organisations of People Affected by Leprosy in Asia kicked off today, Mar. 3 in Manila, Philippines, made a vocal appeal to adopt and embrace greater social inclusion and build a stigma-free society for those affected by leprosy. Credit: Stella Paul/IPS

“The biggest challenge before us today is stigma,” said Dr. Maria Francia Laxamana, Assistant Secretary in the Philippines Department of of Health and one of the key speakers at the conference.

According to Laxamana, only one in every four in the Philippines seek out medical treatment for the disease and social stigma is one of the main reasons why they hide their condition. So, for the Philippines to achieve the global target of reducing leprosy cases by 2020, it would be crucial to have policies that could look at the disease in the local context and can provide solutions that are locally applicable.

For example, we should not be looking at leprosy just as a disease, but take a holistic approach and provide the affected people with a package of support that includes not only drugs, but also education, vocational skill trainings and employment. Such a package will not only help improve their quality of life, but also pave the way for greater social inclusion, resulting in removal of social stigma, she said.

“Integration is very important and we as a foundation, hope, we can contribute to the integration [of people affected by leprosy] with the society,” said Dr. Takahiro Nanri, Executive Director of SMHF and the second key speaker of the day. Reiterating the dedicated and continuous support of the foundation to eradication of leprosy, Nanri informed that SMHF has been organising regional assemblies across the world, including Africa, Latin America and the current one in Asia, to facilitate greater engagement and participation of all experts and leaders working on the disease.

Alice Cruz, United Nations Special Rapporteur on the elimination of discrimination against persons affected by leprosy and their family members, pointed out that social exclusion and stigma was having a devastating effect particularly on the children of those affected by Hansen’s disease. Addressing the assembly virtually, Cruz emphasised the need for sensitisation of school teachers because in many countries children with leprosy were expelled from schools by  the teachers themselves.

“Teachers in endemic ares should be trained on leprosy ad the schools should be one of the first places to raise awareness on leprosy’s signs and symptoms, but also on the human dignity and rights of the persons affected,” she said.

Dr Arturo Cunanan, chief of CSGH, said that while those working in the field always talk about the social stigma and discrimination that people with leprosy face, the question is how to measure this. “Usually, government will not address issues of human rights, not unless they know about the issue of burden.”

There are representatives from six nations in the region attending  the assembly: Philippines, Japan, Indonesia, China, Nepal and Kiribati. While some are working with the government at the policy level, others are working directly with the affected communities and are expected to  share their respective experiences and impacts to find a common, collective way to fight leprosy more effectively in the future.

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Ronald Jackson, Executive Director of the Caribbean Disaster Emergency Management Agency (CDEMA), told IPS in an interview that the ambitions around establishing strong early warning systems in the Caribbean date back to the early 2000s. Credit: Desmond Brown/IPS

By Desmond Brown
BRIGDETOWN, Mar 3 2019 (IPS)

Caribbean countries have been signalling their willingness to dedicate time and resources to implement and sustain effective multi-hazard early warning systems.

Most countries located in the hurricane belt face being impacted during the yearly Atlantic Hurricane Season. But all Caribbean countries face another challenge—climate change

Ronald Jackson, Executive Director of the Caribbean Disaster Emergency Management Agency (CDEMA), told IPS in an interview that the ambitions around establishing strong early warning systems in the Caribbean date back to the early 2000s.

But he said, “it still remains incipient, despite the fact that there has been some level of investment in the area over time.”

“I think Jamaica would have been the farthest advanced way back in the 90s with the Rio Cobre warning system which included a community warning infrastructure as well as telemetre gauges linked to the met offices and to the National Disaster Management Office,” he said

Jackson believes countries “have gotten more caught up . . . in the opportunities of climate change . . . and less so with advancing what is considered to be adaptation.”

The CDEMA head said his unit has been working with its partners to look at framing a common vision, recognising the need for a more comprehensive investment in establishing people-centred early warning systems at national level.

“We have so far delivered a solutions package for four of our members—Antigua & Barbuda, Dominican Republic, Saint Lucia and St. Vincent and the Grenadines—looking at their gaps and using that to define the priority areas for investment to establish these early warning systems.”

Excerpts of the interview follow:

Inter Press Service (IPS): What is the state of early warning systems in the Caribbean?

Ronald Jackson (RJ): We are trying to implement interventions around an integrated early warning systems agenda in all our 18 states by 2024, which is the sort of end cycle of this particular strategy. We’ve broken that up into bite size amounts from the point of view of how we are going to try to attract investments at a specific juncture over the life of that strategy, but by 2024 certainly to address the needs of the 18 [Caribbean Community] CARICOM member states as it relates to integrated people-centred early warning systems.

In Guyana for example, they don’t have hurricanes, but they do have flood issues which would require them looking at a flood warning system that is linked to tropical cyclonic events. A country not faced with challenges related to significant flood events may also want to look at their tsunami warning systems. So, we are targeting having a full system in each of our states by 2024.

IPS: What, if anything, would you like to see countries do differently?

RJ: We have gotten more caught up I would think in the opportunities of climate change, which is really the energy aspect of it, and less so with advancing what is considered to be adaptation. There is more of a heavier occupation on the opportunities of climate, which is good.

The opportunities are in the area of renewable energy and how best we can capitalise on that and I think it is a necessary process that we must embark on and embark on fully because of the benefits to be derived.

You can reduce the cost of energy, allowing you to release additional resources into areas of resilience building—one of which is early warning. But the area which is categorised as adaptation in climate change, which is where you will see people use the language more around risk reduction and prevention, is an area that has not gotten the same level of focus as the climate mitigation aspect which is where you look at clean energy, reductions of emissions and so on. That for us is where the greatest threat is. The human security element of climate change is where we should be focusing heavily because we’re talking about people being displaced. You’re talking about floods, you’re talking about the loss of livelihoods. That’s where the greatest threat for Caribbean Small Island Developing States (SIDS), and in fact any developing island nation, lies. They have to face the challenge of having limited land masses and resources and having that constantly being impacted by the changing climatic conditions—sea level rise, saline intrusion, water scarcity, flood conditions and other environmental and health related issues—all aligned to climate change.

IPS: Given the challenges Caribbean countries have been facing, could it be that there still exist some misconception regarding adaptation?

RJ: As it relates to adaptation, we seem to think a lot of the interventions required are new. They are not new, we’ve been grappling with those things that are packaged under the theme of adaptation for some time. These are largely programme areas at national level which if you look at the analysis they have never, in my mind, in the last 20 years or decade or so received very strong budget allocations. That’s what the analysis is showing us. There could be a lot of questions or reasoning around that. It could be how countries determine what are the main priorities of the day given the limited resources and the fiscally strangling environment in which they are operating.

IPS: Which takes us to the issue of funding. As is the case with almost everything else, procuring funds is an issue. What has been the experience of countries getting funds for sustaining Multi-Hazard Early Warning Systems?

RJ: There is programme support from international sources. The challenge there is that it’s been ad-hoc—either financing one element or two elements of the four elements of people-centred early warning. Part of it is also sustainability because there are different elements that exist. The problem also is, can you maintain the infrastructure? Can you replace the parts in a timely manner? So, there is also a sort of maintenance issue that is linked to budget allocation.

*Interview edited for clarity.

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Large tracts of land in the Sinhapura area of Sri Lanka’s North Central Polonnaruwa Province. Globally, 80 percent of such land degradation is caused by agriculture. Credit: Sanjana Hattotuwa/IPS

By Tharanga Yakupitiyage
UNITED NATIONS, Mar 2 2019 (IPS)

As the environment continues to degrade and natural resources deplete at unprecedented rates, spelling disastrous consequences for societies, a new tool aims to bring financial institutions into the fight to protect nature.

Launched by the Natural Capital Finance Alliance (NCFA), ENCORE is the world’s first comprehensive tool linking environmental change with its economic consequences, allowing financial institutions to assess and act on risks.

“We look at various ways of making sure that financial institutions and businesses understand that nature is a provider of services that they depend upon and that needs to be recognised so that you can better take it into consideration when you make decisions,” United Nations Environment Programme Finance Initiative’s (UNEP FI) Programme Leader Anders Nordheim told IPS.

FirstRand Group’s Head of Environmental and Social Risk Management Madeleine Ronquest echoed similar sentiments to IPS, stating: “Awareness about the importance and value of natural capital and the importance of biodiversity and natural habitat needs to be raised…the ENCORE tool is a good solution for risk mapping of a portfolio and creating insight to various natural capital risks that have to be addressed as well as for understanding what the knock on impact is.”

Natural capital is the world’s stock of natural resources such as soil, water, and clean air, all of which are vital for economic activity.

Any negative changes in natural capital impact the businesses that depend on it, and thus the financial institutions that lend or invest in those companies.

This mindset, which places an economic value on nature and therefore connects nature and the economy, is a useful way to engage with financial institutions, Nordheim noted.

“When you talk abut natural capital sometimes there is the implication that it puts a price a nature which is not at all what we are about. It is really about recognising the value of it and how it is needed in society,” he said.

“Our aim is to arrive at a society that is in balance with nature where there is no overexploitation or degradation of environmental assets, where everything is sustainable and productive,” Nordheim added.

However, we have a long way to go to reach this vision.

According to the U.N. Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD), land quality is getting worse as over 75 percent of the world’s land surface is significantly and negatively impacted by human activity.

Globally, 80 percent of such land degradation is caused by agriculture. Since 1950, 65 percent of Africa’s cropland, which millions depend on, has been affected by land degradation by mining, poor farming practices, and illegal logging.

The consequences of the growing problem includes more and severe droughts, increased food insecurity, and massive economic losses.

A showcase assessment of the FTSE 100 Index using ENCORE found that 13 of the 18 sectors representing 1.6 trillion dollars in market capitalisation were associated with production processes that are highly dependent on nature. Agriculture, aquaculture and forest products were among the sectors that will experience the most economic loss as land degradation and natural resource depletion accelerates.

UNCCD puts the figure much higher, estimating that the global economy will lose a staggering 23 trillion dollars by 2050 through land degradation.

ENCORE enables financial institutions to assess environmental risks and its impact on natural capital assets and production processes.

“Especially in a financial institution quantifying risk brings the message home far more effectively than by having a pure academic discussion. It is for this reason that we not only want to place a value on nature but also demonstrate financial impact if this risk is not mitigated. It certainly changes the conversation,” Ronquest said.

FirstRand was among the first institutions to use ENCORE to identify environmental risks in South Africa.

Agriculture is one of the most important sectors in the South African economy. However, land degradation due to soil erosion, unsustainable farming practices, and one of the country’s worst droughts has impacted the economy and food security.

Ronquest noted that FirstRand is already experiencing natural capital risk and credit default in their agriculture portfolio, and stressed the importance of working in collaboration towards sustainable societies.

“Skills transfer to young farmers is important and this is one of the areas where the bank funds and facilitates the process to support a growing community of sustainable and resilient farmers,” she told IPS.

Many institutions like FirstRand have already begun investing in green projects in light of environmental challenges such as climate change.

In the United States, investment in renewable energy industry surpassed 40 billion dollars in 2017.

A financial sector survey show that such investments will increase, reaching up to one trillion dollars between 2018 and 2030.

While action around climate change is crucial, Nordheim highlighted the need for financial institutions to also pay attention to degradation caused by human activity.

“It all links back to human action, but sometimes in these discussions we find that there is a very strong focus on climate change as increases of temperature without broadening the debate into including how temperature variations then affect other connected systems,” he said.

“I think one of the challenges we have is that it is maybe not happening at the scale and speed that we would want to see. But it is happening,” Nordheim added.

Ronquest urged all stakeholders to consider the relationship between nature, economy, and the well-being of all.

“The interconnectedness of the natural environment and the economy is undeniable. When one is neglected the other will suffer. In a country where a lot of work needs to be done to address social injustice, poverty and inequality; food security, land degradation and water security will only inflate the negative social impact and have a severe impact on the developing economy,” she said.

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The Philippines has the highest incidence of leprosy of any country in the region – about 1,700 new cases have been identified in each of the last three years. Credit: moyerphotos/CC by 2.0

By Ben Kritz
MANILA, Mar 2 2019 (IPS)

The stubborn challenge of diagnosis and treatment of leprosy among difficult to reach populations in the Philippines should soon become easier with the rollout of a mobile app connecting field health workers with physicians and clinics.

Officially launched at the end of January after years of testing, the app was created by Philippine developer MetaHelix in cooperation with the Department of Health (DOH) and pharmaceutical company Novartis. It will allow barangay (village) health workers to connect remotely with specialists to confirm diagnoses and plan treatment of isolated leprosy patients.

First launched as a pilot in 2014, the Leprosy Alert and Response Network System (LEARNS) app allows healthcare workers to “send images of suspect leprosy lesions and symptoms to a specialist”.

“LEARNS promotes early case finding and helps reduce delays in diagnosis and treatment,” Novartis said in a statement when the app was launched. “LEARNS also provides data for disease surveillance, patient education, and report generation.”

The new mobile application that was tested in the Philippines for more than a year highlights ongoing efforts against leprosy, or Hansen’s Disease, which is sometimes called “the world’s oldest diagnosed disease”.

In most of the world leprosy is largely considered a disease of the past. According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), leprosy was eliminated as a global public health problem in 2000 because it had a prevalence of less than 1 case per 10,000 people.

However, one of the few remaining places where the disease remains an elevated public concern is the Philippines, which makes the country an appropriate venue for the “Regional Assembly of Organisations of People Affected by Leprosy in Asia,” being held in Manila from Mar. 3 to 5.

The conference is a joint project of the Philippine government-run Culion Sanitarium and General Hospital (CSGH), the Coalition of Leprosy Advocate of the Philippines (CLAP), and the Sasakawa Memorial Health Foundation (SMHF), and seeks to find ways to overcome the last stubborn obstacles to completely eradicating leprosy.

The issues faced by public health advocates and victims of the disease in the Philippines are emblematic of problems faced throughout the region: Difficult detection and treatment of often isolated sufferers, a lack of public awareness and understanding of leprosy, and low prioritisation of public health efforts to treat leprosy and its social impact on the part of governments.

Hidden in plain sight

The treatment of leprosy in the Philippines throughout most of the country’s history has been typical of the way societies everywhere have handled it. Largely ostracised by communities and even their own families, leprosy sufferers were isolated in dedicated facilities and kept out of sight. The two best-known facilities in the Philippines are the CSGH, once the largest facility of its kind in the world, located on Culion Island in the Western Philippines; and the Tala Sanitarium – officially known as the Dr. Jose N. Rodriguez Memorial Hospital – located in Caloocan, a distant suburb of Manila.

Although both facilities are still technically operational, better understanding of the disease and its low communicability has allowed health officials to shift most of their efforts to community-based treatment. According to Dr. Mary Ann Navarro, a Department of Health administrator in Palawan, where a minor outbreak of leprosy among indigenous people was detected in late 2017, in sitio treatment is often the only feasible approach.

“Better treatment options and the relatively low risk of transmission means that it’s not necessary to isolate patients,” Navarro told IPS. “Many cases, such as the ones discovered last year here [in Palawan] are among people with little access to healthcare, so our best option is to bring treatment to them.”

“That also helps to reduce some of the social stigma patients face, by giving us a chance to educate their communities and eliminate some of the fear of the disease,” she added. “Changing social attitudes still is a big challenge, however.”

Situations like the outbreak in Palawan, where eight cases were discovered among an indigenous community in the southern part of the island, are relatively rare. Most cases, according to a local government official, are individuals who remain in the community, but often struggle for acceptance.

“To our knowledge, we have about 10 people from this barangay who come to the health centre for treatment,” Alexander “Bong” Medina, chairman of a barangay in San Jose Del Monte in Bulacan Province north of Manila told IPS.

“The treatment is provided free, and we do our best to assist them socially, but it’s difficult,” Medina explained. “These are poor, what you might call marginalised people to begin with, and they often don’t realise there is assistance available until it’s too late, or they are afraid to come in because of the shame. And we don’t really have resources to go seek them out.”

Persistent problem

The Western Pacific Regional Office of the WHO views the Philippines as somewhat of an outlier in terms of leprosy incidence. The Philippines has the highest incidence of leprosy of any country in the region – about 1,700 new cases have been identified in each of the last three years, although that rate is half what it was a decade ago – and is largely responsible for the region being behind the rest of the world in achieving the 1 in 10,000 benchmark.

According to data from the Philippines’ Department of Health, although the overall prevalence of leprosy is less than 0.4 cases per 10,000, 1,660 new cases were identified in 2017 alone, with about 6.7 percent of those being children under the age of 15. This Southeast Asian nation, which comprises some 7,000 islands, has a population of over 104 million.

To address the problem, the Philippine government in 2016 launched the National Leprosy Control Programme (NLCP), a multi-agency effort involving the DOH, WHO, and a number of private sector and NGO partners with the goal of “a leprosy-free Philippines by 2022.”

To better calibrate the programme’s response and identify pockets where leprosy is still prevalent, the first major initiative of the NLCP is the completion of a baseline population survey, being conducted in cooperation with the Regional Institute for Tropical Medicine and expected to be completed sometime this year.

The programme is also working to raise public awareness and understanding of the disease by promoting various activities, such as World Leprosy Day in January, a national-level Leprosy Control Week in February, and National Skin Disease Detection and Prevention Week, which is held the second week of November.

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By Vijay Prashad
Mar 1 2019 (IPS-Partners)

(Tricontinental) – The mood in Caracas (Venezuela) is sombre. It appears that the attempted coup against the government that began on 23 January is now substantially over (as the Venezuelan Foreign Minister Jorge Arreaza tells me). The Lima Cartel is divided. The Europeans have cold feet. On the one-month anniversary of that attempt, a massive crowd of the poor gathered in the centre of Caracas to demonstrate their support for the Bolivarian Revolution. An elderly couple carried a sign which captured the mood – Somos los Invisibles. Somos los Invensibles. Venceremos (We are the Invisible. We are the Invincible. We will Overcome).

It is hard to gauge the numbers of people at that rally. A picture from a drone suggests a large crowd, but it misleads. Most crowd counting software assumes a certain body size and a certain amount of space between people in a crowd. Those assumptions do not apply in this case. The supporters of the government and of the Bolivarian Revolution bear the marks of their history on their bodies. They are small and thin, darker skinned and worn by decades of work that has earned them just about enough to survive. The reason why they adore Hugo Chavez – his image everywhere – and why they call themselves Chavistas is that it was the arrival of Chavez in the 1990s that gave them hope and that inspired their political activity. Not for them the accusations that this government – led by Nicolas Maduro – is responsible for their hunger. They know that their Bolivarian Revolution is a process and that they are active in that process.

This Wednesday, thirty years ago, thousands of Venezuela’s poor felt maligned by the increase in bus fares. They ran across their country, their rage captured in the disorder they produced. That event is called the Caracazo. It is this event that inaugurates the Bolivarian Revolution. A few days before the anniversary, I visited Mariela Machado, a Black, poor, working-class woman who leads a community in one of the many self-organised housing projects in Caracas. It was the Caracazo and Chavez that gave her the strength to overcome the centuries of disparagement and poverty that weighed on her. She, and her neighbours, had done their best to build a community – with a common kitchen, a bakery, a meeting hall and shared space that is clean and decent. Most of the leaders of such neighbourhoods are women – all are poor, most are workers, many are Afro-Venezuelans. I asked Mariela what would happen to her and her neighbourhood if this government fell. ‘We would be evicted,’ she told me. The fierce defence of the Chavistas against the overthrow of their government is linked to their fear that whatever changes had come in their lives would now be reversed. The old humiliation would return.

Even if the attempt to overthrow the government in Caracas is now mostly over, there is fragility in the Venezuelan government. It is a fragility shared with most countries of the tricontinent – of Africa, Asia and Latin America. Public finances across the world have been damaged by the departure of trillions of dollars away from the reach of governments and of productive activity. It is estimated that there is between $21 and $32 trillion in the tax havens. Global financial stock markets toy with over $200 trillion. This is social wealth diverted to unproductive uses. No schools are built with this money. No hospitals are built with this money. Profits on financial investment race to the rich, who have ceased to pay taxation and have ceased to risk their wealth in productive investments. The billionaires are on a tax strike and an investment strike. These two strikes – tax strike and investment strike – are their weapons in the class struggle (as laid out in our first Working Document, In the Ruins of the Present). Because of these strikes and the fragile global commodity chain, almost a billion people cannot find work that sustains them, while those who have work find their humanity broken by their jobs.

There is fragility in Venezuela’s reliance upon oil and its lack of food sovereignty. There are some long-term fundamental problems of the Venezuelan economy that long predate the arrival of Chavez and that will continue for some time yet. These are problems common to most countries – such as Nigeria – that have large populations, that rely upon oil exports that finance the imports of just about everything. The vulnerabilities are many. Burkina Faso’s Thomas Sankara would say, ‘he who feeds you, controls you’. It is an important reminder. Talk of increasing food production in Venezuela is important – and urgent (take a quick journey with Ricardo Vaz to Mérida, where the native potato is being rescued). All this will require deeper land reform, but also changes in the culture of consumption that have been produced by the inflow of oil rent. Juan Pablo Pérez Alfonso – one of Venezuela’s great oil ministers – called oil the ‘devil’s excrement’. He remains correct.

Over the course of the past week, almost five hundred people from 87 countries representing political groups and movements came to Caracas for the International Assembly of the Peoples – a new initiative that aims to create a platform for solidarity campaigns and to better connect sections of the Left. Reports of the deliberations – which were smart and imperative – made it to no mainstream press. Reporters from People’s Dispatch and ALBA as well as a few other services covered the discussions, which ranged from solidarity for the Venezuelan people to serious consideration of the way money and fake news has subverted electoral democracy. It will take time to digest the implications of these discussions – and it will take time to see what kinds of common actions develop. Certainly, the first common action is to make sure that there is no military intervention in Venezuela and to push for an end to the strangulation of the Venezuelan economy.

The governments of India and Pakistan are playing with fire. Aerial attacks on each other’s territory threatens to widen the conflict. The majority of Indians and Pakistanis – like the majority of Venezuelans – will not gain from a war. Suffering will be their coin. There are so many real problems that bedevil the countries of South Asia – hunger being one of them. Just before the aircraft fired across the border, hundreds of workers marched to the Indian parliament to demand higher wages and pensions and to prevent the privatisation of the child care centres. They handed over a petition that had 40 million signatures to the government.

The protest of the child care (anganwadi) workers brought to mind Wislawa Szymborska’s poem, The End and the Beginning (translated by Johanna Trzeciak):

After every war
someone has to clean up.
Things won’t
straighten themselves up, after all.

Someone has to push the rubble
to the side of the road,
so the corpse-filled wagons
can pass.

Someone has to get mired
in scum and ashes,
sofa springs,
splintered glass,
and bloody rags.

Someone has to drag in a girder
to prop up a wall.
Someone has to glaze a window,
rehang a door.

Photogenic it’s not,
and takes years.
All the cameras have left
for another war.

We’ll need the bridges back,
and new railway stations.
Sleeves will go ragged
from rolling them up.

Someone, broom in hand,
still recalls the way it was.
Someone else listens
and nods with unsevered head.
But already there are those nearby
starting to mill about
who will find it dull.

From out of the bushes
sometimes someone still unearths
rusted-out arguments
and carries them to the garbage pile.

Those who knew
what was going on here
must make way for
those who know little.
And less than little.
And finally as little as nothing.

In the grass that has overgrown
causes and effects,
someone must be stretched out
blade of grass in his mouth
gazing at the clouds.

The post We Are the Invisible. We Are the Invincible. We Will Overcome. appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

From the desk of the Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research

The post We Are the Invisible. We Are the Invincible. We Will Overcome. appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Illustration: Michael Waraksa

By Christine Lagarde
WASHINGTON DC, Mar 1 2019 (IPS)

March 8 marks International Women’s Day, which provides a chance to reflect on the struggle for greater gender equality.

The roots of this annual event reach back more than a century, yet its focus on respect and opportunities for women remains strikingly relevant today—from sexual harassment and violence to unequal laws and unfairness in the workplace, where women are too often underemployed, underpaid, and underpromoted.

Unequal or unfair treatment can marginalize women and hinder their participation as productive individuals contributing to society and the economy in invaluable ways.

Yet when I consider the rich tapestry of organizations and individuals who can make a difference to ensure women have equal opportunities, I also see a crucial role for policymakers.

They can use their positions to design policies that help women and girls access what they need for a fulfilling life—including education, health services, safe transportation, legal protection against harassment, finance, and flexible working arrangements.

The IMF recommends these kinds of policy measures to its member countries—and works with many governments to examine how policies affect women.

In recent years we have increased our emphasis on women’s empowerment precisely because, beyond the important ethical considerations, it also represents a missed opportunity in the pursuit of macroeconomic stability and inclusive growth—where the IMF’s expertise lies.

Our research has shown, for example, that if women’s employment equaled men’s, economies would be more resilient and economic growth would be higher.

Our new estimates show that, for the bottom half of countries in our sample in terms of gender inequality, closing the gender gap in employment could increase GDP by an average of 35 percent—of which 7–8 percentage points are productivity gains due to gender diversity.

Adding one more woman in a firm’s senior management or corporate board—while keeping the size of the board unchanged—is associated with an 8–13 basis point higher return on assets. If banks and financial supervisors increased the share of women in senior positions, the banking sector would be more stable too.

The IMF’s 189 member countries face many different challenges, but empowering women remains a common denominator and a global imperative for all those who care about fairness and diversity, but also productivity and growth of societies and economies that are more inclusive. If we can achieve this, we all gain.

*Opinions expressed in articles and other materials are those of the authors; they do not necessarily reflect IMF policy.

The post A Global Imperative: Empowering Women is Critical for World’s Economy & People appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Christine Lagarde* is Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF)

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By Armida Salsiah Alisjahbana
BANGKOK, Thailand, Mar 1 2019 (IPS)

Equal rights have been demanded and promised for generations, but last year a shift occurred in the women’s movement. Across Asia and the Pacific and around the world, women demonstrated to condemn a status quo which continues to deprive too many women and girls of respect and equal opportunity.

This is a momentum we must maintain to achieve gender equality in Asia and the Pacific, an ambition which lies at the heart of the United Nations’ 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

Education is key. It remains the passport to better jobs, higher incomes and improved life chances. Progress in our region has been made and rightly celebrated, but equal numbers of boys and girls enrolled in education belies high dropout rates and lower attendance and attainment levels for girls.

This is particularly acute in rural areas, where in many countries only very few girls from poor households complete secondary education. Improving health care coverage, particularly sexual and reproductive health, is another imperative.

Again, women living in rural and remote areas are particularly disadvantaged, contributing to high maternal mortality rates in parts of Asia and the Pacific and teenage pregnancies with enduring societal consequences.

Executive Secretary Armida Salsiah Alisjahbana

This inequality of opportunity contributes to placing women at a considerable disadvantage in the labour market. Over the past thirty years, female labour market participation has declined in Asia and the Pacific, where only half of all women are economically active.

This is in part because women are relied on to give up to six hours of unpaid care work a day, stifling careers and ambitions and undermining equal political representation. Corporate leadership positions remain the preserve of men.

Today, for every ten men in work in the Asia-Pacific region there are only six women, the majority of whom are trapped in precarious, informal employment, characterised by low wages and hazardous working conditions.

With such considerable barriers remaining to gender equality, the United Nations Economic Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific is supporting a bold coordinated response, which must include gender responsive budgeting.

This approach ensures the different needs of women and men are part of budgetary decisions for the public expenditure which underpins the design of government programmes and activities. This is particularly important in shaping the provision of social protection, education and health care and the design of infrastructure.

By placing a greater focus on women’s needs, gender responsive budgeting has been shown to make a major contribution to reducing the burden of unpaid work and enhancing women’s opportunities for leadership in the workplace and in political and public life.

Gender responsive budgeting could also be used to create a more supportive environment for women entrepreneurs who are proven catalysts for change and a reliable means of increasing women’s share of the workforce.

Women employ other women, who in turn, are known to spend more on their families, helping give children a healthy diet, a solid education and reliable health care. As potential GDP gains from gender equality in work and society are enormous in our region, up to eighteen percent in parts of South Asia, this is an opportunity we cannot afford to miss.

Yet this entrepreneurial potential is currently frustrated by a lack of access to finance and ICT tools for business development. Seventy percent of women-owned micro, small and medium enterprises are underserved by financial institutions in developing countries.

Women-owned enterprises are consistently smaller and concentrated in less profitable sectors. Innovative technology could be deployed to reduce gender barriers and promote digital inclusion.

This requires support for businesswomen to mainstream ICT across business operations, make their financial management more robust and their outlook more responsive to new technologies.

Put simply, women’s empowerment requires action on all fronts. It begins with equal opportunity to education and health care services, delivered through targeted investments, better attuned to women’s needs.

Supporting women entrepreneurs with better access to finance and ICT can then keep women in work, enabling their businesses to innovate, remain competitive and expand.

These businesses are essential incubators for future generations of women’s leaders, but will also contribute to a more gender equal environment today. Women’s empowerment cannot wait in Asia and the Pacific.

The post Education Key to Gender Equality in Asia & the Pacific appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Armida Salsiah Alisjahbana is UN Under-Secretary-General and Executive Secretary of the UN Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP).

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Condom use is low among youth aged 15-19. Credit: M.Sayagues/IPS

By Tharanga Yakupitiyage
UNITED NATIONS, Mar 1 2019 (IPS)

In light of rates of sexually transmitted infections (STIs) and unintended pregnancies, governments are exploring ways to tackle taboos around condoms.

In a new study, the UN Population Fund (UNFPA) reviews the availability and accessibility of condoms, hoping to dismantle potentially harmful misconceptions.

“Many countries want to implement [CAP], but they are very anxious because they will be asked where the evidence is,” UNFPA’s senior HIV prevention advisor Bidia Deperthes told IPS.

“We don’t put enough money to really understand the behavior and to have this study that can really guide us and put condoms in places where people really need them…the condoms in terms of volumes seems to be out there, but are they really reaching the people who need to use them?” she added.

Increasingly, it is youth that need them the most.

According to the UN Children’s Fund, HIV rates among adolescents and young people aged 15-19 are rising. In 2016 alone, 260,000 young people of the same age were newly infected with HIV.

With a new generation who did not face the HIV epidemic in the 1980s and 1990s, Eda Algur, who headed the research, pointed to the importance of condoms.

“Because of things like pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) and the fact that we have so many medications for [HIV], it may be less on people’s minds,” she told IPS.

“Rates are going down in all other age groups but teenagers of high school age are particularly at risk in 2019. It should be a main concern and a main reason for advocating for condoms,” Algur added.

Beyond HIV, more than 1 million STIs are acquired everyday worldwide with the second highest rate occurring among 15-19 year olds.

However, a majority of adolescents do not have access to any adequate or affordable STI services.

While male condoms are among the most effective methods against HIV and STIs, misconceptions around contraception have resulted in backlash.

“The contention comes from a lot of civil society and parents and students voicing concerns that making condoms available would kind of be a green light for students—almost telling them that it is ok to have sex,” Algur said.

Deperthes echoed similar sentiments, noting that governments also shy away despite the statistics.

For instance, when countries such as the Philippines and South Africa considered implementing condom availability programs (CAP) in secondary schools, communities pushed back, noting that it will promote students to initiate sex.

UNFPA also found that opponents of CAP believe such programs will increase promiscuity and sexual activity among students as well as adopt other risky sexual behaviors.

“This stems from view of condoms as a device for sex, rather than for protection during sex,” the study states.

However, upon reviewing existing research across seven countries, UNFPA observed that such fears are unfounded.

Data overwhelming show that CAP does not increase sexual activity nor does it lead to more sexual partners.

Rather, CAP has lead to an increase in condom acquisition and use, suggesting safer sex among students.

In fact, some were up to three times more likely to acquire condoms with CAP than without.

All studies also found a decrease in STI rates for students with CAP compared to those without.

In New York City, CAP has been implemented since the early 1990s, largely as a result of the HIV epidemic in the 1980s and 1990s. Similar programs can be seen across the United States, and it has led to a decrease in risk of HIV infection.

Surveys also showed that a majority of students and parents believed CAP would not increase sexual activity, and 60 percent of parents in one study thought that condoms should be made available in high schools.

While condom use has generally increased over recent decades, there is still a gap between availability and need in sub-Saharan Africa. In 47 countries in the region, the estimated male condom need in 2015 was 6 billion but only approximately 3 billion were distributed.

Algur highlighted the effectiveness of CAP, especially when combined with comprehensive sexuality education.

Two studies revealed that combining CAP with sex education programs resulted in the greatest uptake of condoms.

But the lack of published data on the subject is a missed opportunity for countries to understand and tailor programs.

“I think this study showed us that there is a real value to evaluating these programs when they exist…by presenting in that fashion that this is a program worth investing money into because it does have a positive outcome on students’ health will be the way to go,” Algur told IPS.

Deperthes stressed the need to be inclusive, starting with the parents who must be involved at every step of the way in order to ensure the success and effectiveness of such programs.

“You educate them, you advocate them, you show them the data—they will be your partners, not opponents. If you don’t do that, then of course it will backfire,” Deperthes said.

The post The Misconceptions of Contraception appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Hassan Hussein, a refugee from Syria, pleads with police to allow his family into a registration centre for migrants and refugees in Preševo, southern Serbia. Credit: Sam Tarling/Oxfam

By Shannon Scribner
WASHINGTON, Feb 28 2019 (IPS)

While natural hazards like hurricanes, exacerbated by climate change, are causing people to migrate, it’s conflict, violence and persecution that have forced more than 68.5 million people from their homes today, exposing them to higher risks and increased vulnerability, especially women and children.

Vulnerable people on the move face massive risks and uncertainty to find safety and opportunity for themselves and their families. Unfortunately, in many cases they are taken advantage of and their rights ignored, forced to work in terrible conditions for little, or in some cases, no money.

Elsewhere, 120,000 people crossed the Central Mediterranean in 2017 – the migrant route with most deaths recorded in the world, and nearly 2,900 migrants recorded killed or missing on that route in the same year.

Most of them traveled on smugglers’ boats departing from Libya, Tunisia or Egypt, risking their lives in search of safety and opportunity in Italy and beyond.

The reality of the harrowing journey in search of safety in Europe came into sharp focus when three-year-old Alan Kurdi’s [initially reported as Aylan Kurdi] image made headlines when he drowned in the Mediterranean after fleeing Syria with his family.

Recently, a little refugee boy from Mali also drowned in the Mediterranean. In preparation for the ill-fated trip, he had stitched a school report to his clothes to show European authorities what a good student he was.

In the Northern Triangle of Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, thousands of Central Americans are arriving at the U.S.-Mexican border, fleeing domestic and gang violence, state corruption and impunity, climate induced droughts, and economic hardship in their home countries.

We see women bearing the brunt of violence and poverty with high levels of sexual and gender-based violence, and alarming levels of femicide. It is not uncommon for a girl and her family to be targeted and even killed by gangs if she refuses to become a gang member’s sex slave.

And once at the border, children have died due to the difficult journey they are taking and as a result of medical care not being available on time.

In the US, there are countless examples of workers being exploited, many of whom are migrants. Oxfam published a report detailing how the poultry industry exploits vulnerable people who have few other options to take on the most dangerous and thankless jobs in the poultry plants.

Because of their precarious situations, most workers are afraid to speak out or do anything that might jeopardize their jobs. Oxfam reported that some workers were forced to wear adult diapers because they did not have adequate bathroom breaks.

As part of Oxfam’s Behind the Barcodes campaign, Oxfam has also worked with laborers in Southeast Asia and elsewhere for more rights and protections. In the seafood industry, workers find themselves in conditions akin to modern slavery.

Female migrant workers especially, who perform jobs like peeling the shrimps for cheap shrimp cocktail you can buy at your grocery store, are often subjected to illegal recruitment and have their travel documents and wages confiscated.

The UN and the international community do acknowledge the plight of modern slavery and the challenges migrant workers face around the world, but more needs to be done.

Unfortunately, instead of helping address and resolve the displacement crisis with thoughtful, humane policies, and a genuine sense of shared responsibility,too many leaders are using scare tactics and depicting migrants and refugees as violent criminals and terrorists, when they are in fact the ones fleeing violence and also have much to offer to their new communities.

These leaders around the globe are doing this with a blatant disregard for international humanitarian law, human rights and global norms that are meant to protect the most vulnerable amongst us.

This was demonstrated in the Trump Administration’s inhumane policies separating children from their families and in trying to deny women who are victims of domestic violence from seeking asylum in the United States.

There has been some progress to help migrants and refugees from the UN. In 2016, President Obama hosted a UN Summit for Refugees and Migrants. The Summit led to countries committing to a $4.5 billion increase in global humanitarian funding. Following the Summit at the UN General Assembly, 193 UN member states agreed to coordinate and cooperate to improve the global response to the migration crisis.

They agreed to do such things as ease pressures on countries that host most refugees, like Bangladesh, Uganda, Ethiopia, Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey. They committed to building refugees’ self-reliance through access to education and livelihoods, expanding access to resettlement and other complementary pathways, and fostering conditions for refugees to voluntarily return home.

They also agreed to start working on a Global Compact for Refugees and a Global Compact for Migration that was recently endorsed at the end of last year.

The compacts include such things as recognition of the need for meaningful participation by refugees and host communities in decision making and commitments to uphold the human rights of all migrants regardless of status.

On the downside, the compacts aren’t binding so there is no way to legally hold endorsers accountable. And, the United States retreated from its leadership role in protecting refugees and withdrew from the Global Compact on Migration.

Overall, the mass migration taking place globally presents opportunities but also huge risks for those who aren’t protected along the way or when they arrive.

Many think of slavery as a thing of the past, but it still exists today, affecting millions around the world, as people make desperate decisions for a better life.

We need more protections and more implementation of the systems we have in place to achieve a more safe and just world for everyone.

The post Slavery is Not a Thing of the Past, It Still Exists Today Affecting Millions appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Shannon Scribner is Associate Director of Humanitarian Programs and Policy at Oxfam America

The post Slavery is Not a Thing of the Past, It Still Exists Today Affecting Millions appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Diego Garcia island, which hosts a United States military base in the Indian Ocean. (Photo: NASA)

By Arul Louis
UNITED NATIONS, Feb 28 2019 (IPS)

Mauritius has scored a victory over Britain at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in a case involving the decolonisation of the strategically important island of Diego Garcia that is home to a United States military base.

The ICJ said on Monday that Britain must give up to Mauritius control of the Chagos Archipelago where the Indian Ocean military base is located on the Diego Garcia island.

The opinion issued in The Hague by the court’s majority that included Judge Dalveer Bhandari of India said that the decolonisation of Mauritius “was not lawfully completed” when it attained independence because Britain carved away the Chagos Archipelago from Mauritius and retained control of it.

The opinion handed down by the majority of 13 judges said Britain “is under an obligation to bring to an end its administration of the Chagos Archipelago as rapidly as possible.”

The sole dissenter was American Judge Joan E. Donoghue. Britain is not represented on the bench after it withdrew the nomination of Judge Christopher Greenwood for re-election in 2017 when he could not get a majority of the votes in the General Assembly against Bhandari.

The court gave the opinion, which is non-binding, at the request the United Nations General Assembly made in a 2017 resolution.

Vehemently opposed by the US and Britain, the resolution received the vote of 94 countries while 15 voted against it and 65 abstained.

Britain has opposed the referral to the court saying it was a bilateral matter with Mauritius and indicated it would reject it.

There is unlikely to be any challenges to the US Diego Garcia base from Mauritius, either.

“We are not asking for the dismantling of the base”, Prime Minister Pravind Jugnauth Mauritian said after the ICJ opinion, according the Mauritian newspaper L’Express.

It reported that he did not want to reveal the next step that his country was going to take but said he wanted Britain “to recognise the unity of Mauritius”.

Britain cut off the Chagos Archipelago from Mauritius in 1965 before granting it independence in 1968.

The people living on Diego Garcia were forcibly removed from there by the colonial administration and it was leased to the US, which set up its strategic Indian Ocean military base on the island.

About 50 countries gave the court written statements, some against Britain and other in support of it.

Vishnu Dutt Sharma, the Legal Adviser of the External Affairs Ministry submitted India’s statement that said that the process of decolonisation was not completed because Britain had not complied with UN resolutions for it.

In the 1970s and 1980s India had vehemently opposed the US base in Diego Garcia.

Then-Prime Minister Indira Gandhi called the base 2,000 kilometres from India as a threat to India.

Since then the strategic environment and India’s interests have changed due the rise of China and the threats to navigation from piracy. India is now developing close defence ties with the US and toned down its rhetoric.

When the resolution to refer matter to the court was taken up at the UN in 2017, India’s Permanent Representative Syed Akbaruddin said that while supporting the position of Mauritius as “a matter of principle” to uphold the process of decolonisation and the respect for sovereignty of nations, “India shares with the international community, security concerns relating to the Indian Ocean”.

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