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A photo of a field with parched grass in the province of Buenos Aires, an agricultural area par excellence in Argentina. The countryside is the source of more than half of the exports of this South American country, which is in dire need of foreign exchange to ease its economic crisis. CREDIT: Argentine Rural Confederations

By Daniel Gutman
BUENOS AIRES, Jan 30 2023 (IPS)

Martín Rapetti, a fourth generation farmer in the province of Corrientes in northeastern Argentina, has already lost more than 30 cows due to lack of food and water, as a result of the long drought that is plaguing a large part of the country. “There is no grass; the animals have to sink their teeth into the dry earth,” he says with resignation.

This extreme climatic phenomenon, which according to experts will become increasingly common, is much more than a threat of an uncertain future and already represents concrete damage: it will make Argentina, a global agricultural powerhouse, lose billions of dollars in exports this year, aggravating its economic crisis.

“The accumulation of three years with little rain makes the situation worse and worse. The streams and rivers are running dry and now the groundwater is also drying up,” Rapetti told IPS from the town of Curuzú Cuatía.“We also have to move forward with actions that go beyond the immediacy and that incorporate a climate perspective. In addition, we need political responses that strengthen our capacities, promote innovation and, ultimately, promote sustainable development.” -- Cecilia Nicolini

“The cows are in very poor body condition. And the production of grains, citrus fruits and vegetables is suffering…Of the 300 hectares that we have for growing rice, we were able to plant only 35 due to lack of water,” added Rapetti, who has a medium-sized farm.

The consequences go far beyond rural areas because this South American country, which faces a delicate economic situation with inflation soaring to almost 100 percent per year and 40 percent of the population living in poverty, depends heavily on the countryside to bring in foreign exchange and sustain the value of its devalued currency.

During the first half of 2022, according to the latest official data, 57.6 percent of national exports came from the production of soy and the main grains (corn, wheat, sunflower and barley) and from beef and by-products like leather and dairy products.

The drought will reduce exports in 2023 by nearly eight billion dollars and this will have a heavy direct impact on the state coffers, which will receive more than one billion dollars less in taxes on exports of soy, corn and wheat, the three crops that cover the largest agricultural area in the country.

These figures were released on Jan. 17 by the Rosario Stock Exchange, a reference point in Argentina’s agricultural economy.

This South American country of 46.2 million inhabitants depends to a great extent on the countryside to sustain its economy. Argentina is the third world producer of soy, behind the United States and Brazil, and the second producer of beef, according to data from the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).

Soy alone, which is the current star of Argentine exports, generated sales of 12.1 billion dollars (27.3 percent of total exports), according to the official statistics agency. This includes soybeans, soybean oil and meal and soy flour.

 

A plant in a vineyard suffering from the lack of water, in the province of Mendoza in western Argentina. That area of ​​the country, where crops depend on irrigation, is suffering the consequences of low levels in the reservoirs. CREDIT: Coninagro

 

How to prepare for the future?

Due to climate change, extreme events such as droughts or floods will occur with increasing frequency and intensity, the national secretary for Climate Change, Sustainable Development and Innovation, Cecilia Nicolini, told IPS.

“But these problems are not scenarios that we have to get used to or resign ourselves to. We need to adapt to their effects and transform our productive sectors to make them more resilient, while reducing their greenhouse gas emissions,” she added.

Argentina presented its National Plan for Adaptation and Mitigation to Climate Change in November.

The over 400-page document proposes managing agroforestry climate risks (from investments in infrastructure or promoting insurance for small farmers), bolstering water efficiency in industries and strengthening the meteorological monitoring network.

“We also have to move forward with actions that go beyond the immediacy and that incorporate a climate perspective. In addition, we need political responses that strengthen our capacities, promote innovation and, ultimately, promote sustainable development,” the official acknowledged.

Perhaps the most delicate aspect is that Nicolini herself estimated that the country needs 185 billion dollars in financing up to 2030 to implement the plan.

That is four times more than the record loan that the International Monetary Fund granted Argentina in 2018, a debt that since then has strangled economic growth. Nobody knows where this financing would come from, which Argentina demanded from developed countries at the last Conference of the Parties (COP27) on Climate Change, held in November in Egypt.

Cows and calves gather in search of food in the department of Curuzú Cuatiá, in the Argentine province of Corrientes. The drought has dragged on for three years now and in 2022 it was the main cause of forest fires, which affected more than 800,000 hectares in that northeastern province. CREDIT: CR

 

Financial assistance

On Jan. 20 Economy Minister Sergio Massa met with with the Liaison Board, which brings together the main agricultural business chambers, and promised to study a package of economic relief measures to be announced on Feb. 1.

In any case, he warned about the limits that the government faces in providing answers: “Perhaps there are solutions that are out of our hands. Argentina is not a country with a great capacity for State intervention, for reasons that we already know: indebtedness and difficulties in accessing markets.”

Beyond the difficult current situation, today agricultural producers themselves know that fundamental strategies will be needed to face extreme phenomena that are here to stay.

Mario Raiteri, a medium-sized producer of potatoes, beef, wheat, corn, soy and sunflowers in the town of Mechongué, 460 kilometers south of Buenos Aires, tells IPS that he grew up listening to his grandfather talk about the big floods in the 1940s and withering droughts in the 1950s, but that he had never experienced a phenomenon like the one seen in the last three years.

“My biggest worry is if this is just an occasional occurrence or if there really is starting to be a more frequent repetition of these events,” he said.

“In the second case, we need scientific organizations to give us new technologies designed to help us adapt. Knowledge is going to play a very important role, beyond other necessary issues, such as comprehensive agricultural insurance for family farms, because small producers will suffer the most,” he said.

In Argentina, 54.48 percent of the land area has been affected by water stress, according to the Drought Information System for Southern South America (SISSA), an institution created by governments and organizations to provide information and reduce vulnerability to this type of phenomena.

However, hydrologist Juan Borus, deputy manager of Information Systems of the National Water Institute (INA), said that in the last three years “there is not a single square centimeter of the territory that has not faced scarcity.”

Borus warns IPS that the country is currently plagued by dry rivers and lagoons that have shrunk and disappeared, and that the situation is not likely to improve for the remainder of the southern hemisphere summer and the fall.

The expert also warns about the impact on issues that have received less attention than agricultural production. One is the generation of electrical energy due to lack of water in the reservoirs, in a country that has committed to increasing hydropower generation as part of its climate change mitigation objectives.

Another issue is drinking water.

“Large cities on the banks of rivers should invest more money in pumping and purifying the water, because with lower levels of water in the rivers, the amount of pollutants and sediment is greater. And small towns that take water from drilling wells must deal with the decline of groundwater tables,” Borus said.

The crisis, he said, presents a great opportunity: “It is time for those who live in the humid part of the country to become aware of the need to take care of drinking water.”

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The rapid decline of insects is caused by multiple factors including climate change and agriculture, increases in the usage of insecticides and  herbicides, deforestation, urbanization, and light pollution. Credit: Zadie Neufville/IPS

By Esther Ngumbi
URBANA, Illinois, USA, Jan 27 2023 (IPS)

Recently, the United States Department of Agriculture granted a conditional license for the first-ever honeybee vaccine. This is an exciting step that will protect bees from American foulbrood disease and ultimately help to stop the alarming decline in their numbers.

But the honeybee is just one of the many described insect species whose declining numbers has entomologists like me, environmentalists, and everyday citizens who love insects including Monarch butterflies worried. Across the U.S. and around the world there is a growing body of evidence and trend of insect decline. It’s so bad, that many are calling it the insect apocalypse.

Currently, there are over 1 million described species. But in study after study, review after review the story has remained the same: we are losing insects at unprecedented rates. The rapid decline of insects is caused by multiple factors including climate change and agriculture, increases in the usage of insecticides and  herbicides, deforestation, urbanization, and light pollution.

Currently, there are over 1 million described species. But in study after study, review after review the story has remained the same: we are losing insects at unprecedented rates

Everyone should be worried about this trend. Insects, including bees, ants, butterflies, dragonflies, beetles, and grasshoppers, make up over 80% of terrestrial species on Earth. Insects are a keystone species that provide invaluable ecosystem services  – from pollination, to biological control to serving as bio-indicators of healthy soils and streams.

Annually, in the United States, the economic value of the vital ecosystem services performed by insects is estimated to be $57 billion.  In addition, over 75% of agricultural crop species and 85% wild flowering plants are pollinated by insects Furthermore, insects like dung beetles perform important functions like breaking down manure which is a service important to the U.S. cattle industry.

A world without insects would be disastrous. Insects are food to other species including birds and their demise would have catastrophic effects on food webs.

Human food and nutrition security also benefits from insects. Essential micronutrients in the human diet (antioxidants, vitamins A and C, lycopene, folic acid, and tocopherol) are derived from insect-pollinated crops, primarily citrus and other fruits and vegetables including tomatoes.

In total, pollinator mediated crops account for about 40% of global nutrient supply for humans. Conversely, the loss of insects can worsen hidden hunger (micronutrient deficiencies), which afflicts over 2 billion individuals globally. It can further threaten global food security and public, human, and environmental health.  Ultimately losing insects contributes to decreasing biodiversity with a devastating impact on life on Earth.

Clearly, we need insects. The U.S. government, policy makers, scientists like me and everyday citizens should act with urgency to prevent further declines in their numbers

Protecting insects from national and global declines will require a combination of approaches including several actions that individuals can take.

First, since habitat destruction is among the largest drivers of insect declines, it is important that countries — beginning with the U.S. — create diverse landscapes. This includes forestland, meadows, and prairies to provide a variety of food and nesting resources for insects.

Everyday citizens can contribute to the attainment of this goal by planting native plants and maintaining pollinator gardens. In addition, individuals who keep lawns can consider converting them to diverse natural habitats.

Second, we must reduce insecticide and herbicides usage. Managing pests and weeds can be done by using integrated pest management approaches or integrated vegetation management approaches. These approaches promote the use of safer alternatives and encompass multiple non-chemical methods such as the use of resistant cultivars, trap cropping, and crop rotation.

Third, we can reduce light pollution. Evidence available suggests that light pollution is a driver of insect declines as it interferes with insect foraging, development, movement and their reproductive success. Simple actions like turning outdoor lights off at night can make a huge difference.

Fourth, do your part to help reduce carbon emissions. Climate change is among the biggest drivers of insect decline. Simple actions by everyday citizens like biking to work and using renewable energy sources can make a difference.

Fifth, you can choose to become an ambassador and advocate for insects and insect conservation. Begin by learning about the local, regional, national, and global policies that are in place to protect insects to prevent further insect decline.

Furthermore, encourage elected officials and all forms of governments – from local to state to federal — to pass laws and policies to protect insects while implementing measures such as setting aside protected land spaces including parks to serve as refuge spaces for insects.

Complementing the above actions is the need to support research and educational institutions, professional societies, and  nonprofit organizations that are actively addressing insect decline issues through research and taking actions to protect our natural world and conserve ecosystems that are home to insect species. These include the Entomological Society of America , The International Center for Insect Physiology and Ecology, and  The Xerces Society.

Finally, research and research funding are needed both now and in the future. This can help facilitate discovery of more insect species, monitor and document insect biodiversity across a diversity of landscapes and ecosystems and help us understand all facets of insect biology in natural and managed settings.

We need insects. Our ecosystems need insects. We must commit to doing something to protect them. Their existence is essential for a sustainable future.

 

Esther Ngumbi, PhD is Assistant Professor, Department of Entomology, African American Studies Department, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

 

On March 6, 2022, Izyum Central City Hospital (Kharkiv oblast) was attacked as a part of what appears to have been a large-scale carpet-bombing campaign. Reportedly, the hospital team had also marked the hospital with a big red cross that could be seen from the air. Credit: UHC

By Ed Holt
BRATISLAVA, Jan 27 2023 (IPS)

While recent reports highlight the growing list of human rights abuses and war crimes committed by Russian troops in Ukraine, new research has laid bare the massive scale of arguably Russia’s most systematic and deadly campaign of rights violations in the country – the targeting and almost complete destruction of healthcare facilities.

According to a report released by the Ukrainian Healthcare Centre (UHC), 80% of healthcare infrastructure in one of Ukraine’s largest cities, Mariupol, was destroyed as Russian forces occupied the city.

It was left with practically no primary care, general hospitals, children’s hospitals, maternity hospitals, or psychiatric facilities, and large areas of the city were thought to have no medical care available at all.

 

On March 3, 2022, a Russian aircraft dropped unguided heavy bombs on the residential apartment buildings in the city center of Chernihiv; Chernihiv Regional Cardiac Center (Chernihiv oblast) was affected during the attack. At 12:16 pm, an aircraft dropped at least eight unguided bombs on Viacheslava Chornovola Street, according to verified dashcam footage. The bombing killed 47 civilians (38 men and nine women); another 18 people were injured. According to witnesses, the FAB-500 “dumb” bombs were used. No military targets in the area were confirmed by witnesses and international investigative organizations. Credit: UHC

Reports have been circulating for some time that a humanitarian catastrophe has already unfolded in the occupied city, and with the almost complete lack of healthcare provision, the threat of disease and sickness looms large among those still living there.

UHC says the destruction of Mariupol can only be compared with what happened to Grozny in Chechnya or Aleppo in Syria where Russia did its utmost to destroy each of these cities. And it claims that with its massive, indiscriminate shelling of civilian infrastructure, Russia “did not only violate certain regulations of international humanitarian law —[but] waged the war as if this law did not exist”.

“This destruction of healthcare facilities is a very, very serious war crime. Russia did the same in Syria, but in Ukraine, what it has also done is that it has not distinguished between military and civilian infrastructure – the goal has been to just destroy everything, and in Mariupol, we saw this philosophy at its most concentrated,” Pavlo Kovtoniuk, UHC co-founder and former Deputy Minister of Health of Ukraine, told IPS.

The Russian siege and eventual occupation of Mariupol was one of the earliest and clearest examples of the destruction and brutality which have come to define the war in Ukraine.

Pictures and drone footage of the city at the time showed the consequences of massive, indiscriminate bombardment by Russian forces, and in the months since Mariupol fell, Ukrainian officials have reported on what they claim are the appalling conditions facing those still living – its population has dropped from 425,000 pre-invasion to an estimated around 100,000 today as people have fled or been killed – in the city.

It is difficult to verify any such reports as access to the city and information about life there is strictly controlled by occupying authorities.

The Adonis Medical Center in Makariv was totally destroyed. The facility was situated close to the city center, surrounded by residential buildings, shops, and the City Council of Makariv. The hospital was not far from the bridge over the Zdvyzh River (around 200 m north). The bridge had an essential role in supply and reinforcements connecting Makariv to the E40 highway leading directly to the western part of Kyiv. Source: Kyiv Regional Health Department for UHC

But there were confirmed reports as early as last summer of mass protests in the city over a lack of water, electricity and heat, and sources with some access to locals in Mariupol have told IPS that the reports of severe hardship are largely accurate and that war crimes and human rights abuses are regularly being committed against the population.

Kovtoniuk said even without any direct access to Mariupol, it was certain that the situation there was “dire” for many and would almost certainly be the same in other occupied areas.

“It is difficult to know too much about exactly what is happening in occupied areas, but we can see [the situation there] from the experience in areas which were once occupied and then retaken by Ukraine,” he explained.

Indeed, reports from liberated cities and testimony from people who managed to escape from occupied areas paint a picture not just of widespread war crimes and atrocities such as mass executions, rapes, torture, abductions, forced disappearances, imprisonment, and unlawful confiscation of property, but also of humanitarian catastrophes. People are without money, and jobs, unable to access any services, and are completely reliant on humanitarian aid.

Kovtoniuk highlighted that in Mariupol alone, the destruction has been so great – since the start of the invasion, four out of five general hospitals have been destroyed, but also five out of six maternity facilities, and there is no mental health care available – that there is no way comprehensive medical care can be continuing in the city.

“There may be some facilities still going, but there is no system, which is just as bad if not worse. What we also don’t know is the situation with drugs and their supply. What about people with chronic conditions who need them? Are there drugs for them, and if so, where are they coming from? Are some people simply not taking them anymore? This is course can be fatal for some people with certain conditions,” he said.

“Russian strategies have been to completely destroy healthcare, healthcare staff have been deported, civilians are being denied access to healthcare as facilities are being used solely to treat Russian soldiers, healthcare facilities are looted for equipment,” Kovtoniuk added.

Ukrainian Minister of Health Viktor Liashko said earlier this month that about one thousand Ukrainian medical facilities had been damaged or destroyed, while as of January 23, the World Health Organisation (WHO) has documented 747 attacks on healthcare facilities in Ukraine since the start of the invasion. Its officials have said these attacks are a breach of international humanitarian law and the rules of war.

Other groups, like UHC, are documenting and collecting evidence of alleged car crimes during the invasion and have said the attacks on healthcare are part of a wider, even more, destructive Russian military strategy in Ukraine.

“Attacks on medical facilities are considered particularly condemnable under international law. They have serious negative consequences for the safety and health of Ukrainians. Since Russia is using war crimes as a method of warfare, we can talk [of these attacks as being] deliberate actions to create a humanitarian catastrophe in Ukraine and a desire to make it uninhabitable,” Svyatoslav Ruban of the Centre for Civil Liberties human rights organisation in Kyiv told IPS.

Regional Children’s Hospital On March 17, 2022, Russian forces shelled the area in the city center of Chernihiv, where the hospital is located. Cluster munitions were used, launched presumably from the Uragan MLRS. Fourteen civilians were killed and another 21 injured as a result of the attack. Credit: UHC

Other rights groups have also condemned the targeting of healthcare facilities and workers. In its latest global report, Human Rights Watch (HRW) castigated Russian forces for a “litany of violations of international humanitarian law” in Ukraine, and Rachel Denber, Deputy Director of the Europe and Central Asia Division at HRW, told IPS: “Attacks on critical infrastructure which are carried out with the seeming intent to instil terror in the population and deliberately deprive people of essential services could be potential war crimes and illegal. These attacks in Ukraine are unlawful.”

“It is obvious that the authors of these attacks are fully aware of the harm they will cause, and the aim is to make living cumulatively untenable. These attacks on infrastructure impact millions of people, having an effect on hospital operation, water supplies, heating etc,” she added.

She also warned that the apparent Russian strategy of deliberately targeting Ukrainian civilian infrastructure was chillingly reminiscent of what its forces had done in Idlib in Syria in 2019-2020 – hospitals, schools and markets were repeatedly targeted during an 11-month Syrian-Russian offensive which ultimately left 1,600 people dead and another 1.4 million displaced.

HRW’s own report on the Idlib offensive documented scores of unlawful attacks in violation of international humanitarian law, or the laws of war. Meanwhile, UN investigators claimed Russian forces had been responsible for multiple war crimes.

“It would not surprise me if it turned out that the Russians are doing the same in Ukraine as they did in Idlib,” said Denber.

While Russian attacks on civilian infrastructure, including medical facilities, continue, the situation will not improve, said Kovtoniuk.

He pointed to Russian forces’ ongoing deliberate destruction of power, heating, and water plants, and potential subsequent health risks – damage to water and sewage systems led to a serious risk of a cholera epidemic in Mariupol last summer – as well as the effects of such attacks on the ability of medical facilities to continue functioning.

He said people outside Ukraine, including leaders in countries already supporting Ukraine, must not allow the current situation to be accepted as a new normal, nor let the conflict drag on.

“We have learnt to survive and adapt, but it is important that this situation is not normalised – that is the Russian aim, to normalise it like what happened in Syria. People have to understand that the pattern of Russian strategy is to not make a distinction between waging war on civilians and on the military. It is also critical to end this war as soon as possible. Its protraction is bad for Ukraine and bad for Europe,” he said.

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

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President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan of Türkey addresses the general debate of the UN General Assembly’s 77th session last September. Credit: UN Photo/Cia Pak

By Alon Ben-Meir
NEW YORK, Jan 27 2023 (IPS)

As Turkey approaches its centennial anniversary this October, President Erdogan is stopping short of nothing to win the election in June to fulfill his life-time dream of presiding over the celebration. The Turkish people should deny him this historic honor because of the reign of terror to which he has mercilessly subjected his countrymen.

Righting the Wrong

Had Turkey’s President Erdogan continued with his most impressive social, economic, judicial, and political reforms that he initiated and implemented during his first years in power, today’s Turkey would have been a great country, respected and prosperous while enjoying tremendous regional and global influence under his leadership.

Instead, Erdogan reversed his remarkable achievements on all domestic and international fronts in pursuit of building an authoritarian regime that could satisfy his unquenchable thirst for ever more power. Erdogan will stop short of nothing to win the upcoming elections in June.

He certainly hopes to preside on October 29 over the hundredth anniversary of the establishment of the Turkish Republic by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk and to be recognized as the new Atatürk (father) of modern Turkey. The Turkish people must deny him that honor because of his continuing horrific human rights violations.

To put in perspective as to why Erdogan does not deserve to preside over the anniversary and should be handedly rejected in the June elections, it is first necessary to provide a brief account of his relentless reign of terror and his unremitting campaign to harass and delegitimize the opposition parties to achieve his sinister objective.

Following the failed coup of July 2016, Erdogan arrested tens of thousands of innocent people, including hundreds of security officials, academics, and military personnel suspected of belonging to the Hizmet (Gülen) Movement and charged them with participating in the coup. He uses Article 301 of the Anti-Terror Act to crack down on dissent and even criminalize criticism of “Turkishness.”

He arrested hundreds of journalists accusing them of spreading anti-government propaganda, shut down scores of TV and radio stations, and imposed restrictions on the use of social media. Nearly 200 journalists have been imprisoned since 2016; currently 40 remain incarcerated in subhuman prisons, which blatantly defies the convention of freedom of press, especially in a NATO member state.

Thousands of university graduates are leaving the country in the search for job opportunities and to free themselves from Erdogan’s shackles. Leaving their country behind is causing an alarming brain drain, which is affecting just about every industry.

The Council of Europe and the University of Lausanne reports that Turkey has the largest population of prisoners convicted on charges related to terrorism. As Turkish journalist Uzay Bulut notes, “The report, updated in April 2021, shows that at the time there were a total of 30,524 inmates in COE member states who were sentenced for terrorism; of those, 29,827 were in Turkish prisons” [emphasis added].

As Leo Tolstoy observed in War and Peace, “One need only to admit that public tranquility is in danger and any action finds a justification… All the horrors of the reign of terror were based only on solicitude for public tranquility.” To that end, Erdogan proclaims to be a pious man, but he cynically uses Islam as nothing but an evil political tool to project a divine power to assert his dictatorial whims unchallenged.

The World Organization Against Torture (OMCT) reports that Erdogan conveniently uses Anti-Terrorism Law No. 3713, which was enacted by his AK Party-led, rubber stamp parliament to stifle freedoms and silence the voices of those who defend human rights. The law allows him to label peaceful human rights defenders as ‘terrorist offenders’.

OMCT states that “Official data show that in 2020, 6551 people were prosecuted under the anti-terrorism law, while a staggering 208,833 were investigated for ‘membership in an armed organization,’” typically those involved with the Gülen movement.

Erdogan continues his crackdown on his own Kurdish community which represents nearly 20 percent of the population, depriving them of basic human rights. His systematic persecution of the Kurds seems to have no bounds, as he accuses thousands of being supporters of the PKK, which he considers as a terrorist organization and which successive Turkish governments have been fighting for more than 50 years at staggering human and material cost.

He consistently demands that various Balkan and EU states extradite Turkish nationals whom he accuses of being terrorists to stand trial in his corrupted courts, denying them due process and subjecting them to ferocious torture in order to extract confessions for offences they never committed.

He is preventing Finland and Sweden from joining NATO unless Sweden extradites about 130 political refugees, mostly Turkish Kurds, to stand trial in Turkey. Sweden has rejected his demand knowing that once they reach Turkish soil, it will be tantamount to the kiss of death. To be sure, the rule of law in Erdogan’s Turkey has been effectively dismantled.

To improve his chances of being re-elected, Erdogan wants to ensure that the Kurdish political parties are denied representation in the Parliament. He has incarcerated many of the 56 members of the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) and removed its remaining members from the legislative process; he is determined to close the party altogether.

In addition, he arrested many members of the Democratic Regions Party (DBP), accusing them of unfounded terrorism-related offenses and illegally replacing them through government-appointed trustees.

Erdogan is asking the Biden administration to issue a statement in support of his policies to help him in his bid for reelection when in fact he is at odds with President Biden on a host of critical issues, including his egregious human rights violations, his refusal to allow Sweden and Finland to join NATO, his purchase of the Russian-made S-400 air defense system, his money laundering, and his ceaseless corruption.

And in 2019, he tried to block NATO’s plan for the defense of Poland and the Baltic states unless NATO identified the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces as terrorists.

One would think that if he is so desperate to be re-elected come June, he would make significant concessions both domestically and in his relations with the US and the EU. Why not offer amnesty to all political prisoners, free the journalists, stop harassing and jailing leaders of opposition parties, and fully adhere to human rights and the rule of law?

Why not drop his opposition to Sweden’s admission to NATO? Why not rescind his purchase of a second batch of S-400s and decommission those currently in use, which are totally incompatible with NATO’s air defense systems? Finally, why not restore the democratic principles which every member state of NATO is required to uphold?

But then, Erdogan’s obsession with absolute power has blinded him from seeing and feeling the plight of his own people, which only demonstrates his ignorance and shortsightedness. As Jorge Luis Borges aptly observed, “Dictatorships foster oppression, dictatorships foster servitude, dictatorships foster cruelty; more abominable is the fact that they foster idiocy.”

A number of years ago, Erdogan’s former prime minister Davutoglu told me that by the year 2023, Turkey will have restored the glory, the global influence, and prestige that the Ottoman Empire enjoyed in its heyday. Needless to say, Davutoglu’s prophecy has not come to pass.

To the contrary, today, Turkey’s economy, social and political order, and democracy are in complete disarray; Turkey is far from having “zero problems with neighbors,” and remains estranged from the US and the EU.

If Erdogan manages to be re-elected through cheating and by disenfranchising the opposition parties, he will celebrate the centennial anniversary while presiding over a country in retreat, with a disillusioned and despairing citizenry and diminishing regional and international stature. He will not be the new Atatürk even though he so frantically wants to portray himself as a great reformer leading a constructive and great power on the world stage.

Instead, Erdogan will be remembered with scorn and contempt for having squandered Turkey’s huge potential while degrading the anniversary that could have been Turkey’s greatest celebration in one hundred years.

Dr. Alon Ben-Meir, a retired professor of international relations at the Center for Global Affairs at New York University (NYU), taught courses on international negotiation and Middle Eastern studies for over 20 years.

IPS UN Bureau

 

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By Anis Chowdhury
SYDNEY, Jan 27 2023 (IPS)

As the year 2022 drew to an end, the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) warned, “Developing countries face ‘impossible trade-off’ on debt”, that spiralling debt in low and middle-income countries (LMICs) has compromised their chances of sustainable development.

Anis Chowdhury

In early December, an opinion piece in The New York Times headlined, “Defaults Loom as Poor Countries Face an Economic Storm”. And the World Bank’s International Debt Report highlighted rising debt-related risks for all developing economies—low- as well as middle-income economies.

Debt on the rise
Debt build-up accelerated in the wake of the 2008-2009 global financial crisis (GFC). The World Bank’s, Global Waves of Debt reveals that total (public & private; domestic & external) debt in emerging market and developing economies (EMDEs) reached an all-time high of around 170% of GDP ($55 trillion) – more than double the 2010 figure – by 2018, before the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Total debt in low-income countries (LICs), after a steep fall from the peak of around 120% of GDP in the mid-1990s to around 48% ($137 billion) in 2010, increased to 67% of GDP ($270 billion) in 2018.

Pandemic debt
The COVID-19 pandemic greatly lengthened the list of EMDEs in debt distress as rich nations and institutions dominated by them, e.g., the World Bank, failed to provide any meaningful debt reliefs or increase financial support to adequately respond to the health and economic crises.

The World Bank’s chief economist advised, “First fight the war [pandemic], then figure out how to pay for it”. The IMF’s managing director counselled, “Please spend, spend as much as you can. But keep the receipts”.

The World Bank’s International Debt Statistics 2022 reveals that the external debt stock of LMICs in 2021 rose to $9.3 trillion (an increase of 7.8% compared to 2020) – more than double a decade ago in 2010. For many countries, the increase was by double digit percentages.

Riskier debt
Over the past decade, the composition of debt has changed significantly, with the share of external debt owed to private creditors increasing sharply. At the end of 2021, LMICs owed 61% of their public and publicly guaranteed external debt to private creditors—an increase of 15 percentage points from 2010.

The private creditors charge higher interest rates, and offer little or no scope for restructuring or refinancing at favourable terms, as they maximise profit. The private creditors also usually offer credits for shorter duration, while development financing needs are for longer-terms.

Failed aid promises
Development needs of developing countries have increased many-folds, especially for meeting internationally agreed development goals, such as the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and now Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The LMICs’ estimated aggregate investment needs are $1.5–$2.7 trillion per year—equivalent to 4.5–8.2% of annual GDP— between 2015 and 2030 to just meet infrastructure-related SDGs. But the rich nations spectacularly failed to honour their promises of finance made at the 2015 UN conference on financing for development (FfD) in Addis Ababa.

In fact, they failed all their past aid promises, e.g., to provide 0.7% of their gross national income (GNI) as aid, a promise made over half a century ago. While aid hardly reached half the promised percentage of GNI, it in fact declined from the peak of around 0.55% of GNI in the early 1960s to around 0.34% in recent years. Oxfam estimated 50 years of unkept promises meant rich nations owed $5.7 trillion to poor countries by 2020!

At their 2005 Gleneagles Summit, G7 leaders pledged to double their aid by 2010, earmarking $50 billion yearly for Africa. But actual aid delivery has been woefully short. G7 and other rich OECD countries also broke their 2009 pledge to give $100 billion annually in climate finance until 2020.

Promoting private finance
Meanwhile institutions dominated by rich nations – the World Bank and OECD, in particular – promoted private financing of development. The World Bank, the IMF and multilateral regional development banks, e.g. Asian Development Bank jointly released From billions to trillions, just before the 2015 FfD conference.

The document optimistically but misleadingly advised governments to “de-risk” development projects for enticing trillions of dollars of private capital in public private partnerships (PPPs). While de-risking effectively meant governments bearing financial risks, or socialise private investors’ loss, PPPs are found to have dubious impacts on SDGs, especially poverty reduction and enhancing equity.

Meanwhile the OECD donors advocated “blended finance” (BF) to use aid money to leverage, again trillions of dollars of private capital. But as The Economist noted, BF is struggling to grow, stuck since 2014 “at about $20 billion a year…far off the goal of $100 billion set by the UN in 2015”, despite suspected double counting. Like PPPs, BF has effectively transferred risk from the private to the public sector. On average, the public sector has borne 57% of the costs of BF investments, including 73% in LICs.

Collateral damage
In the wake of the GFC the rich countries followed so-called unconventional monetary policies that kept interest rates exceptionally low – in some cases at zero – for a decade. This saw capital flowing from rich countries to EMDEs in search for higher returns, as exceptionally low interest rates enticed EMDE governments and businesses.

The opportunity to borrow at low rates also made the EMDE governments lazy in their domestic revenue mobilisation efforts. Such policy complacency was rewarded by the donor community, especially the World Bank, through its now discredited Doing Business Report, encouraging a harmful race to the bottom tax competition among countries to cut corporate and other direct taxations. The World Bank and IMF also advised to remove or lower easier to collect indirect taxes, e.g., excise duties in exchange for regressive and difficult to implement goods & services or value-added tax in poorer countries.

Bleeding revenues
Meanwhile transnational corporations (TNCs) continue to avoid and evade paying taxes using creating accounting, aided by tax havens, mostly situated in rich nations’ territories. Developing countries lost approximately $7.8 trillion in illicit financial flows from 2004 to 2013, mostly through TNCs’ transfer mispricing, or the fraudulent mis-invoicing of trade in cross-border tax-related transactions.

African countries received $161.6 billion in 2015, primarily through loans, personal remittances and aid. But, $203 billion was extracted, mainly through TNCs repatriating profits and illegally moving money out of the continent.

International tax rules are designed by the rich nations. They continue to oppose developing countries’ demand for an inclusive international tax regime under the auspices of the UN.

Perfect storm
Global supply-demand mis-matches due to the pandemic, the Ukraine war and sanctions are a perfect recipe for a perfect storm. The advanced countries’ inflation fight is causing adverse spill-over on developing countries.

Higher interest rates have slowed the world economy, and triggered capital outflows from developing countries, depreciating their currencies, besides lowering export earnings. Together, these are causing devastating debt crises in many developing countries, similar to what happened in the 1980s.

In October 2022, a United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) report estimated that 54 countries, accounting for more than half of the world’s poorest people, needed immediate debt relief to avoid even more extreme poverty and give them a chance of dealing with climate change.

Rich nations fail again
As pandemic debt distress became obvious, the G20 countries devised the so-called Debt Service Suspension Initiative (DSSI) for 75 poorest countries, supposedly to provide some modest relief between May and December 2020. DSSI does not cancel debt, but only delays re-payments, to be paid fully later with the interest cost accumulating – thus effectively “kicks the can down the road”. As the private lenders refused to join the G20’s initiative, unsurprisingly only 3 countries expressed interest in DSSI. Moreover, the G20 initiative does not address debt problems facing MICs, many of which also face debt servicing, including repayment issues.

Although the IMF acted innovatively at the start of the pandemic debt distress with debt service cancellation for 25 eligible LICs (estimated at $213.5 million), the World Bank’s Chief refused to supplement, let alone complement the IMF’s debt service cancellation for the most vulnerable LICs. Nonetheless, the Bank’s President hypocritically advocates debt relief as “critical”. He wants to have the cake and eat it too; apparently wanting to increase lending, but without sacrificing the institution’s AAA credit rating.

China debt trap diplomacy?
Meanwhile the rich nations accuse China of “debt trap diplomacy” that China is deliberately pushing loans to poorer countries for geopolitical and economic advantages. Less than 20% of LICs external debt is owed to China as against more than 50% to the commercial lenders.

Most Chinese loans are concessional, and China has provided more debt relief than any other country, bilaterally negotiating around $10.8 billion of relief since the onset of the pandemic.

Unsurprisingly, independent studies debunked the Western accusation. And China has emerged as a major source of development finance for poorer countries. A recent IMF study concluded, “Beijing’s foreign assistance has had a positive impact on economic and social outcomes in recipient countries”.

Damaging trade-off
Rising debt servicing in the face of higher import costs, falling export revenues and declining remittances, are forcing developing countries to a damaging trade-off. They are forced to service external debt owed to rich nations and international financiers at the cost of development.

For many African nations, the increased cost of debt repayments is the equivalent of public health spending in the continent, according to the UNCTAD. But, “No country should be forced to choose between paying back debts or providing health care”.

IPS UN Bureau

 

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The loss of soil fertility means that land is now less productive and many cereals, vegetables and fruits are not as rich in vitamins and nutrients as they were 70 years ago. Credit: Paul Virgo/IPS

By Paul Virgo
ROME, Jan 26 2023 (IPS)

In a wiser world, the term ‘treating someone like dirt’ would be a good thing. After all, 15 of the 18 nutrients essential to plants are supplied by soils and around 95% of the food we eat comes directly or indirectly from them, according to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).

So dirt is actually a precious resource that deserves to be treated with respect, care and perhaps even a little love.

Unfortunately, humanity has been treating soil ‘like dirt’ in the traditional sense of the term, abusing it with pollution, unsustainable industrial agricultural practices and the overexploitation of natural resources.

The result is that about one third of the world’s soils are degraded, the FAO says. At this rate, 90% of all soils are set to be degraded by 2050.

“When we talk about soil health, we then get to human health,” Carolina Olivera, an agronomist with the FAO’s Global Soil Partnership (GSP),” told IPS.

The quality of the food is also decreasing. Food now has more macronutrients and less micronutrients, which means we do not have enough elements to synthesize vitamins, to synthesize other metabolisms that are very important for our organism

“We are here now with high levels of soil degradation because of many factors, some natural. You can have soil erosion because there is a steep slope and water is circulating and taking all the sediments. But, above all, you can also have bad soil management, intensive practices, bad livestock practices with too many animals per hectare, and monocropping, so no rotation.”

“If we have monocropping, soils will not be in good health because the same crop is always extracting the same nutrients, so some nutrients will be missing. It’s the same as with human diets. If we always eat sugar, we will have too much sugar and not enough vitamins. Biodiversity is very important for everything, starting with soils and right the way up to our diets”.

The loss of soil fertility means that land is now less productive and many cereals, vegetables and fruits are not as rich in vitamins and nutrients as they were 70 years ago.

“This nutrient imbalance in soil will affect crops, it will affect plants and it will affect humans and all nutrition,” Olivera explained. It will affect it with decreasing yields. Yields are decreasing every day. Farmers are increasing the quantity of fertilizers they use and they don’t understand why yields are still decreasing.

“The quality of the food is also decreasing. Food now has more macronutrients and less micronutrients, which means we do not have enough elements to synthesize vitamins, to synthesize other metabolisms that are very important for our organism.

“So you have hidden hunger, where you have enough calories but you don’t have enough minerals or the adequate specific minerals that you need to have good nutrition and good health. The result is that we have some immunity diseases and other kinds of diseases developing.

“So it’s a long chain, from the soil to the nutrients, and to the quality of nutrition humans can have in the end”.

The climate crisis is making things worse, with higher temperatures sucking moisture out of the soil to make it less fertile and harder to handle. In a chemical analysis, you can have all the elements in the soil, so you don’t understand why there is a problem,” Olivera said.

“But then, when you start looking at the soil in detail, you can see, for example, that the soil is compacted, like concrete. So the chemical elements are there. But it’s like concrete, so the roots cannot penetrate and the roots cannot grow. So this is soil health.

Another consequence of the climate crisis, more frequent extreme weather events, is bad for soil health too, with severe droughts often being followed by storms and floods that wash away sediments, The FAO is taking action at many levels to combat the problem.

 

If we have monocropping, soils will not be in good health because the same crop is always extracting the same nutrients, so some nutrients will be missing. Credit: Paul Virgo/IPS

 

The GSP, for example, has developed digital mapping systems that illustrate soil conditions so countries and national institutions can boost their capacities and make informed decisions to manage soil degradation.

It has also produced guidelines to help national governments adopt policies for soil management and for the sustainable use of fertilizers. The UN agency is also rolling up its sleeves to help smallholder farmers in the Global South, who are among the blameless victims of the climate crisis, to cope with the impact global heating is having on their soils.

Its initiatives on this front include the ‘soil doctors’ farmer-to-farmer training programme. “This means we train a farmer and that farmer trains the whole community – with their own language,” Olivera said.

“We provide them with posters with drawings so the farmer is able to explain to other farmers. We also provide them with some very simple exercises, such as digging a hole in the soil to see the texture and see the smell of the soil and see why one smell is good and another is bad. And we show them to feel it, as they do every day, but also providing them with the scientific knowledge to support them in their everyday work.

“For example, when you have soil that is not breathing because of too much water, it smells like rotting food. In that case, we can do some drainage, we can establish some practices, dig some terraces. So we learn with them. We see from the environment what we can do, what materials we have access to, see if we can circulate the water better by digging canals. And together we also select the practices that they can teach to other farmers”.

The FAO does not need to pay the farmers to pass on the knowledge, as being a soil doctor brings its own rewards.

“We provide them with visibility within their communities. We call the soil doctors champion farmers because they are the farmers who are always trying new things. They are the ones who are worried about their community and are willing to learn a lot. They are happy when they learn. We provide them with knowledge and with kits to do some testing in the field.

Another important incentive for them is that they become part of a community of soil doctors around the world. “They can exchange experiences with each other. You can have a soil doctor in Bolivia exchanging with one in the Philippines because, for example, they both grow cocoa. So belonging to a network is important for them too as they sometimes feel very isolated in their field.

“I recently went to Bangladesh to give farmers soil-doctor certificates and they were so proud. They said the soil is ours and it is what we are going to leave to our children. We need to make decisions about our soils ourselves and we have the capacity to do so”.

In a tourism-dependent economy, sustainable finance will promote sustainable fisheries, maritime transport, and tourism. Credit: UNDP

By Christopher Marc Lilyblad
MINDELO, Cabo Verde, Jan 26 2023 (IPS)

On 20 January, the world’s best sailors arrived in Mindelo, Cabo Verde, completing the initial leg of the 2023 edition of The Ocean Race. Coinciding with this stop was the launch of Cabo Verde’s first blue bond at the Ocean Summit, an event jointly organized by The Ocean Race and the Government of Cabo Verde on the sidelines of the grueling round-the-world race. United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres was in attendance as this year’s keynote speaker.

The bond was launched on Cabo Verde’s Blu-X sustainable finance platform, a regional platform for listing and trading sustainable and inclusive financial instruments.

The issuance will raise domestic, regional, and global investment in Cabo Verde’s rising ocean economy while divesting capital from industries responsible for sea-level rise, pollution, and other transgressions against ocean rights.

In brief, the winds of sustainable finance are filling the sails of a local blue economy heeling towards global Ocean Rights.

Consistent with its blue seal, up to US$1 million in proceeds (minimum US$500,000) will supply affordable loans to microentrepreneurs and startups in coastal communities, emphasizing financial inclusion to ensure widespread access to the new value generated from the growing blue economy.

The remaining US$1.5 million foresees structural investments in small and medium-sized enterprises operating in the maritime and fisheries sectors.

Notably, this is the first initial public offering, or IPO, listed on the Blu-X sustainable finance platform. This means anyone, anywhere with access to the digital Blu-X platform can invest via their computer or phone, including foreign investors and members of Cabo Verde’s sizable diaspora.

Furthermore, this marks the first private issuance that does not rely on a public guarantee but is solely backed by market demand. With a ‘greenshoe’ (or ‘blue aquasocks’, rather?) option of an additional US$ 1 million triggered if demand for bond subscriptions exceeds the initial US$2.5 million, the blue bond could ultimately generate US$3.5 million in private and market-driven finance for a sustainable blue economy.

In a race against time during the UN’s Ocean Decade, this initial blue bond listing offers a potentially game-changing test case for Cabo Verde’s blue finance ambitions.

The strategic partnership between the Cabo Verde Stock Exchange (Bolsa de Valores de Cabo Verde – BVC) and UNDP under Cabo Verde’s integrated national financing framework (INFF) has already led to four sustainable bond issuances totaling USD32.5 million.

Building on this momentum, the blue bond’s proceeds are exclusively destined for sustainable marine- and ocean-based projects generating returns for the economy, society, and environment – the triple bottom line.

With funding from the UN’s Joint SDG Fund and UNDP’s strategic and technical support, the Blu-X team at the BVC guided the Cabo-Verdean International Investment Bank through the process of issuing the bond framework, following an external review process that ensures adherence to blue principles.

What actually ‘counts as’ blue has recently been established through a new blue bond regulation in November 2022, enacted under the authority of Cabo Verde’s capital market regulatory agency.

The regulation draws on the Atlantic Technical University’s blue taxonomy, derived from a scientific study of existing blue economy activities and the potential of Cabo Verde’s shores.

The first of its kind in Africa, the regulation reflects the country’s pioneering role in defining blue finance norms, standards, and principles, which closely aligns with the Ocean Race’s Sustainability Charter and corresponding calls for a Universal Declaration of Ocean Rights anchored at the United Nations.

By hoisting the blue flag, Cabo Verde is again signaling its emergence as a global front-runner. Indeed, since the first blue bond issuance by Seychelles in 2018, these financial instruments have mostly been treated as a subsidiary category of green bonds in financial markets. However, what was once seen as a ‘shade of green’ is now emerging as a primary colour of its own.

Building on this initial proof of concept, the proliferation of blue bonds has the potential to transform financing for Cabo Verde’s strategic sustainable development agenda: Ambition 2030.

In a tourism-dependent economy vulnerable to external shocks, the growth of sustainable finance and the blue economy will accelerate socio-economic decentralization and sectorial diversification, from fisheries and maritime transport to nautical sports and ocean-based technology.

As a small island developing state that is “99 percent ocean,” this stands to benefit the local communities that depend on marine environments and maritime spaces for their livelihoods.

Blue economy impact investing poignantly illustrates why marine environments and biodiversity should be preserved not only as ends in themselves but also as catalysts for value creation.

As more and more people subscribe to the idea that protecting ocean resources is vital for maintaining and growing economies, we will see an upsurge in innovative businesses, initiatives and transactions that advance marine conservation.

The growth of blue entrepreneurship and investment paves the way for greater collaboration spurring collective action capable of avoiding a tragedy of the ocean commons.

In other words, by reshaping economic incentive structures along these lines and leveraging their effects in local coastal communities, sustainable finance enhances cognizance of global ocean sustainability principles and incentivizes corresponding human action.

The Ocean Race Cabo Verde presented by Blu-X marks a growing interest in Cabo Verde’s emerging blue standard. Inspired by these blue finance bearings, perhaps others will soon chart a similar course, with the prospect of collectively raising an entire fleet racing towards the UN Ocean Decade finish.

Christopher Marc Lilyblad is Head of Strategy and Policy Unit, a.i. UNDP Cabo Verde; Development Economist & Head of Strategy and Economic Cluster, a.i. UNDP Guinea-Bissau

Source: UNDP

IPS UN Bureau

 

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It may be an election ploy but Rahul Gandhi’s Bharat Jodo Yatra has captured the imagination of many Indian commentators who hail its non-sectarian message. Source: BJY/Twitter

By Mehru Jaffer
GOA, INDIA, Jan 26 2023 (IPS)

When countless supporters of the Indian National Congress, the main opposition party, arrive in Srinagar on January 30 to hoist the Indian flag, they would have walked 3,570 kilometres over 150 days.

The Congress Party organised the Bharat Jodo Yatra (BJY), a long march to counter what it calls the divisive politics of the ruling party. The exercise was to revive the idea of India as a country united in all its diversity. The BJY is led by senior Congress leader Rahul Gandhi, 52, who met countless citizens on the way at a time when Prime Minister Narendra Modi has not held a single press conference in the last nine years that he has been in power.

Founder and editor of The Citizen Seema Mustafa told the IPS Rahul Gandhi gained by leading the BJY.

“He has emerged as a leader of substance with courage and honesty and compassion on display. What the Congress Party has gained will only be known once Congressmen can take it all forward. Other gains and losses will come after that, but for now, the BJY has indeed cut through the prevailing atmosphere of fear and hate,” said Mustafa.

The BJY will culminate in the Himalayan region of Kashmir on January 30 but will it receive the same kind of welcome as it has in the rest of the country, is the question. For nearly half a century, the people of Kashmir have complained of Delhi’s stepmotherly attitude towards them.

Spymaster and former head of India’s Intelligence agency, the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW), AS Dulat, had a personal invitation to join the BJY. He walked for one hour with Rahul Gandhi, but Dulat did not say whether they talked about the troubled province of Kashmir.

Dulat’s latest book, A Life in the Shadows, is about Kashmir, a place he loves passionately. He was first posted to Kashmir in the late 1980s. As a former Prime Minister’s advisor on Kashmir, he understands the Kashmiri psyche and empathises with the problems in the province. Because he is seen as a problem solver and well-wisher of all the people suffering in Kashmir, including separatists, militants, and Pakistanis, he is called Mr Kashmir.

In the book, he implies that the problem of militancy is no longer about joining Pakistan or seeking independence but resistance to the harsh majoritarian policies of muscular power tactics used against the people of Kashmir by the present government in Delhi.

Rahul Gandhi greets well-wishers during the Bharat Jodo Yatra, which started in September 2022 and is due to be completed by January 30, 2023. Source: BJY/Twitter

Dulat told the media that participating in the BJY was a wonderful experience. Gandhi wrote in a letter inviting Dulat to join the march, “We listen to anyone who wants to be heard. We offer no judgment or opinion. We walk to unite every Indian regardless of their gender, caste or religion because we know they are equal citizens. We walk to fight hatred and fear.”

Dulat commented: “I think what this young man is doing is certainly something exceptional… incredible.”’ He doesn’t think that anyone will ever do it again, and nobody is going to walk so many kilometres again.

However, his walk has had its critics – with the Defence Minister Rajnath Singh accusing Gandhi of tarnishing the image of India by creating the impression that only hatred prevails in the country.

The BJY was started last September on the southern tip of the Indian peninsula in Kanyakumari, and it has marched non-stop through 12 provinces. During the march, Gandhi spent time with scores of citizens from different walks of life. After walking about 25 kilometres daily in two shifts, the Congress workers slept in makeshift accommodations at night.

Talking to IPS, a professor at Delhi’s Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), Zoya Hasan, agreed that the march had succeeded.

“If crowds are any indicator, the BJY got an enthusiastic response in all the states it traversed. This shows that there is still space in the country for inclusive politics,” Hasan said.

Many see the march as altering the country’s mood. It has brought hope into the lives of citizens who have been feeling increasingly fearful of their future and security. Largely ignored by (mainly pro-government) mainstream media, the BJY has been streaming live on social media. Watching supporters walk thousands of miles and meet hundreds of thousands of people of all faiths mingling, embracing, shaking hands and making friends has reinforced positive ideas of bonhomie and togetherness amongst citizens.

Ever since the Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) came to power in 2014, the mood in the nation has been grim. Apart from tackling the never-ending scourge of poverty, the country has had to deal with repeated incidents of public violence.

The BJP has been criticised for being communitarian, and commentators say this, at best, ignores and, at worst, encourages violence by citizens against each other and divides Indian society by religious affiliation.

Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen, in an interview, Sen had told Le Monde, the French daily newspaper, that the Indian government is one of the most appalling in the world because it is communitarian in the narrowest sense of the term. It harms India by attacking Muslims and propagating the idea that Hindus form the nation.

Many consider the BJY march a success as a political protest against the alleged divisive politics of the right-wing ruling party in power.

“I joined the march and walked with Rahul Gandhi not because I am a fan of the Congress Party but because I thought the young man (Rahul Gandhi) has stood up for the right values at the right time, and I support similar values,” filmmaker Saeed Mirza said at the launch of his latest book I Know The Psychology of Rats in Goa recently.

“I believe every Indian who wants love and inclusiveness should be participating in the yatra beyond political identity. Although it is a predominately Congress-organised event, it is not exclusively a Congress event. So every Indian has been welcomed with open arms, and that is how it should be. If political pettiness comes in the way, it will be a self-defeating attitude,” said Tushar Gandhi, who joined the march last November. Tushar is Mahatma Gandhi’s great-grandson, and Rahul Gandhi is the great-grandson of Jawaharlal Nehru, the first Prime Minister of India.

The Congress Party says the objective of the BJY is to fight against the politics of fear, bigotry and prejudice and the economics of livelihood destruction, increasing unemployment and growing inequalities.

“What the yatra has achieved is way beyond what the sceptics anticipated. They have been proved wrong, and I include myself in the category. A suffocated nation was waiting for some such happening,” wrote journalist Saeed Naqvi.

Hasan adds that the BJY has refurbished the Congress’s credentials as a party of national unity and social cohesion, upholding the values of secularism, the welfare of the masses and their constitutionally granted rights. This marks an important wedge in a hyper-nationalist narrative of the ruling party’s politics.

Hasan said the impact of the BJY was that the ruling party wasn’t setting the narrative but was forced to react to the Congress Party. While only time will tell whether the march will bring electoral gains to the Congress Party in the general elections to be held in 2024, Hasan says:

“It is the necessary first step in building a politics of change.”

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

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Solar panels with a capacity to generate 30 kilowatts no longer work in the Darora Community of the Macuxi people, an indigenous group from Roraima, a state in the far north of Brazil. The batteries only worked for a month before they were damaged because they could not withstand the charge. CREDIT: Boa Vista City Hall

By Mario Osava
BOA VISTA, Brazil, Jan 25 2023 (IPS)

“Our electric power is of bad quality, it ruins electrical appliances,” complained Jesus Mota, 63. “In other places it works well, not here. Just because we are indigenous,” protested his wife, Adélia Augusto da Silva, of the same age.

The Darora Community of the Macuxi indigenous people illustrates the struggle for electricity by towns and isolated villages in the Amazon rainforest. Most get it from generators that run on diesel, a fuel that is polluting and expensive since it is transported from far away, by boats that travel on rivers for days.

Located 88 kilometers from the city of Boa Vista, capital of the state of Roraima, in the far north of Brazil, Darora celebrated the inauguration of its solar power plant, installed by the municipal government, in March 2017. It represented modernity in the form of a clean, stable source of energy.

A 600-meter network of poles and cables made it possible to light up the “center” of the community and to distribute electricity to its 48 families.

But “it only lasted a month, the batteries broke down,” Tuxaua (chief) Lindomar da Silva Homero, 43, a school bus driver, told IPS during a visit to the community. The village had to go back to the noisy and unreliable diesel generator, which only supplies a few hours of electricity a day.“The solar panels were left here, useless. We want to reactivate them, it would be really good. We need more powerful batteries, like the ones they put in the bus terminal in Boa Vista.” -- Lindomar da Silva Homero

Fortunately, about four months later, the Boa Vista electricity distribution company laid its cables to Darora, making it part of its grid.

“The solar panels were left here, useless. We want to reactivate them, it would be really good. We need more powerful batteries, like the ones they put in the bus terminal in Boa Vista,” said Homero, referring to one of the many solar plants that the city government installed in the capital.

Tuxaua (chief) Lindomar Homero of the Darora Community is calling for new adequate batteries to reactivate the solar power plant, because the electricity they receive from the national grid is too expensive for the local indigenous people. Behind him stands his predecessor, former tuxaua Jesus Mota. CREDIT: Mario Osava/IPS

Expensive energy

But indigenous people can’t afford the electricity from the distributor Roraima Energía, he said. On average, each family pays between 100 and 150 reais (20 to 30 dollars) a month, he estimated.

Besides, there are unpleasant surprises. “My November bill climbed to 649 reais” (130 dollars), without any explanation,” Homero complained. The solar energy was free.

“If you don’t pay, they cut off your power,” said Mota, who was tuxaua from 1990 to 2020.”In addition, the electricity from the grid fails a lot,” which is why the equipment is damaged.

Apart from the unreliable supply and frequent blackouts, there is not enough energy for the irrigation of agriculture, the community’s main source of income. “We can do it with diesel pumps, but it’s expensive; selling watermelons at the current price does not cover the cost,” he said.

“In 2022, it rained a lot, but there are dry summers that require irrigation for our corn, bean, squash, potato, and cassava crops. The energy we receive is not enough to operate the pump,” said Mota.

A photo of the three water tanks in the village of Darora, one of which holds water that is made potable by chemical treatment. The largest and longest building is the secondary school that serves the Macuxi indigenous community that lives in Roraima, in northern Brazil. CREDIT: Mario Osava/IPS

Achilles’ heel

Batteries still apparently limit the efficiency of solar energy in isolated or autonomous off-grid systems, with which the government and various private initiatives are attempting to make the supply of electricity universal and replace diesel generators.

Homero said that some of the Darora families who live outside the “center” of the village and have solar panels also had problems with the batteries.

Besides the 48 families in the village “center” there are 18 rural families, bringing the community’s total population to 265.

A solar plant was also installed in another community made up of 22 indigenous families of the Warao people, immigrants from Venezuela, called Warao a Janoko, 30 kilometers from Boa Vista.

But of the plant’s eight batteries, two have already stopped working after only a few months of use. And electricity is only guaranteed until 8:00 p.m.

“Batteries have gotten a lot better in the last decade, but they are still the weak link in solar power,” Aurelio Souza, a consultant who specializes in this question, told IPS from the city of São Paulo. “Poor sizing and the low quality of electronic charging control equipment aggravate this situation and reduce the useful life of the batteries.”

The low quality of the electricity supplied to Darora is due to the discrimination suffered by indigenous people, according to Adélia Augusto da Silva. The water they used to drink was also dirty and caused illnesses, especially in children, until the indigenous health service began to chemically treat their drinking water. CREDIT: Mario Osava/IPS

In Brazil’s Amazon jungle, close to a million people live without electricity, according to the Institute of Energy and the Environment, a non-governmental organization based in São Paulo. More precisely, its 2019 study identified 990,103 people in that situation.

Another three million inhabitants of the region, including the 650,000 people in Roraima, are outside the National Interconnected Electricity System. Their energy therefore depends mostly on diesel fuel transported from other regions, at a cost that affects all Brazilians.

The government decided to subsidize this fossil fuel so that the cost of electricity is not prohibitive in the Amazon region.

This subsidy is paid by other consumers, which contributes to making Brazilian electricity one of the most expensive in the world, despite the low cost of its main source, hydropower, which accounts for about 60 of the country’s electricity.

Solar energy became a viable alternative as the parts became cheaper. Initiatives to bring electricity to remote communities and reduce diesel consumption mushroomed.

But in remote plants outside the reach of the grid, good batteries are needed to store energy for the nighttime hours.

Part of the so-called “downtown” in Darora, which has lamp posts, houses, a soccer field and a shed where the community meets. A larger community center is needed, says
the leader of the Macuxi village located near Boa Vista, the capital of the northern Brazilian state of Roraima. CREDIT: Mario Osava/IPS

A unique case

Darora is not a typical case. It is part of the municipality of Boa Vista, which has a population of 437,000 inhabitants and good resources, it is close to a paved road and is within a savannah ecosystem called “lavrado”.

It is at the southern end of the São Marcos indigenous territory, where many Macuxi indigenous people live but fewer than in Raposa Serra do Sol, Roraima’s other large native reserve. According to the Special Secretariat for Indigenous Health (Sesai), there were 33,603 Macuxi Indians living in Roraima in 2014.

The Macuxi people also live in the neighboring country of Guyana, where there are a similar number to that of Roraima. Their language is part of the Karib family.

Although there are no large forests in the surrounding area, Darora takes its name from a tree, which offers “very resistant wood that is good for building houses,” Homero explained.

The community emerged in 1944, founded by a patriarch who lived to be 93 years old and attracted other Macuxi people to the area.

The progress they have made especially stands out in the secondary school in the village “center”, which currently has 89 students and 32 employees, “all from Darora, except for three teachers from outside,” Homero said proudly.

A new, larger elementary and middle school for students in the first to ninth grades was built a few years ago about 500 meters from the community.

Water used to be a serious problem. “We drank dirty, red water, children died of diarrhea. But now we have good, treated water,” said Adélia da Silva.

“We dug three artesian wells, but the water was useless, it was salty. The solution was brought by a Sesai technician, who used a chemical substance to make the water from the lagoon drinkable,” Homero said.

The community has three elevated water tanks, two for water used for bathing and cleaning and one for drinking water. There are no more health problems caused by water, the tuxaua said.

His current concern is to find new sources of income for the community. Tourism is one alternative. “We have the Tacutu river beach 300 meters away, great fruit production, handicrafts and typical local gastronomy based on corn and cassava,” he said, listing attractions for visitors.

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Despite unprecedented challenges, 2022 also opened windows of opportunity to move the needle around critical anti-corruption issues, such as anti-money laundering, asset recovery, beneficial ownership, and renewable energy. Credit: Shutterstock.

By Sanjeeta Pant
Sanjeeta Pant, Jan 25 2023 (IPS)

The G20 India Presidency is marked by unprecedented geopolitical, environmental, and economic crises. Rising inflation threatens to erase decades of economic development and push more people into poverty. Violent extremism is also on the rise as a result of increasing global inequality, and the rule of law is in decline everywhere. All of these challenges impact the G20’s goal of realizing a faster and more equitable post-pandemic economic recovery.

But as India prioritizes its agenda for 2023, it is corruption that is at the heart of all of these other problems- and which poses the greatest threat to worldwide peace and prosperity.

 

An Idea Whose Time Has Come

Although the G20 has repeatedly committed to the Financial Action Task Force's (FATF) anti-money laundering standards, member countries have been slow to implement policy reforms

Despite unprecedented challenges, 2022 also opened windows of opportunity to move the needle around critical anti-corruption issues, such as anti-money laundering, asset recovery, beneficial ownership, and renewable energy. When global leaders meet during the G20 Indian Presidency , they must prioritize and build on this progress, rather than make new commitments around these issues that they then fail to implement.

According to the UN, an estimated 2-5% of global GDP, or up to $2 trillion, is laundered annually. Although the G20 has repeatedly committed to the Financial Action Task Force’s (FATF) anti-money laundering standards, member countries have been slow to implement policy reforms. In the wake of the Russian invasion of Ukraine and ineffective economic sanctions against Russian oligarchs, governments have started reexamining existing policy and institutional gaps, especially recognizing the role of Designated Non-Financial Businesses and Professions (DNFBPs), also known as “gatekeepers.”

G20 member countries are responding to concerns and criticisms from their national counterparts regarding failures to adopt FATF recommendations and clamp down on “dirty money.” Grappling with the need to be able to prosecute money-laundering cases and recover billions of dollars worth of frozen assets, they are also amending national laws to be able to do so.

Lack of beneficial ownership transparency is also aiding the flow of laundered money globally. The G20 recognizes beneficial ownership data as an effective instrument to fight financial crime and “protect the integrity and transparency of the global financial system.”

The Russian invasion helped drive home this message, especially among countries that are popular destinations for those buying luxury goods and assets. FATF’s amendment of its beneficial ownership recommendations in early 2022 was timely. Member countries are also introducing new reporting rules, and fast-tracking policies and processes to set up beneficial ownership registers. While there are still gaps in the proposed policies – as identified here– these are important first steps.

Similarly, the transition to renewable energy, initially raised as an environmental issue and then as a national security concern is increasingly gaining attention from a resource governance perspective. Given the scale of the potential investment, there is a need to tackle corruption in the energy sector to avoid potential pitfalls resulting from a lack of open and accountable systems as we transition to a net zero economy.

The cross-cutting nature of the industry means a wide range of issues– from procurement and conflict of interest in the public sector to beneficial ownership transparency- need to be considered. The global energy crisis and the Indonesian Presidency’s prioritization of the issue have helped build momentum around corruption in the renewable energy transition, and this focus must continue.

 

Calling on India

Corruption-related issues identified here are transnational in nature and have global implications, including for India. For instance, with money laundering cases rising in India, it cannot afford to regard it as a problem limited to safe havens like the UK or the US. The same is true for the lack of beneficial ownership transparency or corruption in the renewable energy transition, which fuels illicit financial networks in India and beyond, and which often transcend national borders.

Finally, corruption has a disproportionate impact on the global poor. Almost 10% of the global population lives in extreme poverty, many of whom live in countries such as India. The G20, under the Indian Presidency, provides a unique opportunity to ensure the voices of the most vulnerable are heard at the global level. By prioritizing the anti-corruption agenda and building on past priority issues and commitments, the Indian government can lead efforts to bridge the North-South divide.

Sanjeeta Pant is Programs and Learning Manager at Accountability Lab. Follow the Lab on Twitter @accountlab

 

Billionaire wealth surged in 2022 with rapidly rising food and energy profits. The report shows that 95 food and energy corporations have more than doubled their profits in 2022. Credit: Clae

By Baher Kamal
MADRID, Jan 25 2023 (IPS)

Gone are those times when catastrophes were measured in terms of human suffering. Now, with an exception: Ukrainians victims of the Russian invasion, everything is calculated in just money.

Following such a solid trend, major financial, business-oriented institutions, like the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and the European Central Bank, are now devoted to calculating if and how big the recession will be, ergo, how much money could be won or lost due, of course, to the Ukrainian proxy war.

The richest 1 percent grabbed nearly two-thirds of all new wealth worth $42 trillion created since 2020, almost twice as much money as the bottom 99 percent of the world’s population, reveals Oxfam's new report “Survival of the Richest

They, likewise the establishment’s politicians and media, just talk about inflation, stagflation, economic (read financial) slowdown and commerce.

Rare mention is made of the victims and human suffering of the other 56 armed conflicts still spreading worldwide. Haitians do not matter, nor do Yemenis, Syrians, Somalis, Ethiopians, and a long list of human beings whose lives are broken by wars and climate disasters they did not cause.

 

Inequality reaches highest peak ever

In yet another evidence of this trend, a global movement of people working together to end the injustice of poverty: Oxfam International, has now revealed that the richest 1% bag nearly twice as much wealth as the rest of the world over the past two years.

“The richest 1 percent grabbed nearly two-thirds of all new wealth worth $42 trillion created since 2020, almost twice as much money as the bottom 99 percent of the world’s population, reveals Oxfam’s new report “Survival of the Richest.

“During the past decade, the richest 1 percent had captured around half of all new wealth.”

Super-rich outstrip their extraordinary grab of half of all new wealth in the past decade, and billionaires’ fortunes are increasing by $2.7 billion a day even as at least 1.7 billion workers now live in countries where inflation is outpacing wages, it reported on 16 January 2023.

“A tax of up to 5 percent on the world’s multi-millionaires and billionaires could raise $1.7 trillion a year, enough to lift 2 billion people out of poverty.”

“Survival of the Richest” was published on the opening day of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. In it, Oxfam explains, the elites are gathering in the Swiss ski resort as extreme wealth and extreme poverty have increased simultaneously for the first time in 25 years.

 

The rich’s wildest dreams

“While ordinary people are making daily sacrifices on essentials like food, the super-rich have outdone even their wildest dreams. Just two years in, this decade is shaping up to be the best yet for billionaires —a roaring ‘20s boom for the world’s richest,” said Gabriela Bucher, Executive Director of Oxfam International.

“Taxing the super-rich and big corporations is the door out of today’s overlapping crises. It’s time we demolish the convenient myth that tax cuts for the richest result in their wealth somehow ‘trickling down’ to everyone else. Forty years of tax cuts for the super-rich have shown that a rising tide doesn’t lift all ships —just the super-yachts.”

 

The rich capture 16 trillion US dollars

Billionaires have seen extraordinary increases in their wealth. During the pandemic and cost-of-living crisis years since 2020, $26 trillion (63 percent) of all new wealth was captured by the richest 1 percent, while $16 trillion (37 percent) went to the rest of the world put together.

A billionaire gained roughly $1.7 million for every $1 of new global wealth earned by a person in the bottom 90 percent. Billionaire fortunes have increased by $2.7 billion a day. This comes on top of a decade of historic gains —the number and wealth of billionaires having doubled over the last ten years, adds the report.

 

Profiting from destruction

“Billionaire wealth surged in 2022 with rapidly rising food and energy profits. The report shows that 95 food and energy corporations have more than doubled their profits in 2022. They made $306 billion in windfall profits, and paid out $257 billion (84 percent) of that to rich shareholders.”

Oxfam further reports that the Walton dynasty, which owns half of Walmart, received $8.5 billion over the last year. Indian billionaire Gautam Adani, owner of major energy corporations, has seen this wealth soar by $42 billion (46 percent) in 2022 alone. Excess corporate profits have driven at least half of inflation in Australia, the US and the UK.

At the same time, at least 1.7 billion workers now live in countries where inflation is outpacing wages, and over 820 million people —roughly one in ten people on Earth— are going hungry. Women and girls often eat least and last, and make up nearly 60 percent of the world’s hungry population.

“The World Bank says we are likely seeing the biggest increase in global inequality and poverty since WW2. Entire countries are facing bankruptcy, with the poorest countries now spending four times more repaying debts to rich creditors than on healthcare.”

 

Many poorest people pay more taxes than billionaires

Oxfam is calling for a systemic and wide-ranging increase in taxation of the super-rich to claw back crisis gains driven by public money and profiteering. Decades of tax cuts for the richest and corporations have fueled inequality, with the poorest people in many countries paying higher tax rates than billionaires.

It explains that Elon Musk, one of the world’s richest men, paid a “true tax rate” of about 3 percent between 2014 and 2018. Aber Christine, a flour vendor in Uganda, makes $80 a month and pays a tax rate of 40 percent.

And that worldwide, only four cents in every tax dollar now comes from taxes on wealth. Half of the world’s billionaires live in countries with no inheritance tax for direct descendants.

“They will pass on a $5 trillion tax-free treasure chest to their heirs, more than the GDP of Africa, which will drive a future generation of aristocratic elites. Rich people’s income is mostly unearned, derived from returns on their assets, yet it is taxed on average at 18 percent, just over half as much as the average top tax rate on wages and salaries.”

 

The vital 5 percent

According to new analysis by the Fight Inequality Alliance, Institute for Policy Studies, Oxfam and the Patriotic Millionaires, an annual wealth tax of up to 5 percent on the world’s multi-millionaires and billionaires could raise $1.7 trillion a year…

… This figure would be enough to lift 2 billion people out of poverty, fully fund the shortfalls on existing humanitarian appeals, deliver a 10-year plan to end hunger, support poorer countries being ravaged by climate impacts, and deliver universal healthcare and social protection for everyone living in low- and lower-middle-income countries.

Any chance that this will ever happen?

 

The African Pharmaceutical Technology Foundation will be hosted by Rwanda. It is part of the African Development Bank’s commitment to spend at least USD 3 billion over the next ten years to support Africa's pharmaceutical and vaccine manufacturing sector. Medical and pharmaceutical experts pose for a group photo with their colleagues during the forum to introduce the newly launched African Pharmaceutical Technology Foundation last month in Kigali. Credit: Aimable Twahirwa/IPS

By Aimable Twahirwa
KIGALI, Jan 25 2023 (IPS)

A few months after German biotechnology company BioNTech announced the establishment of the first-ever local vaccine manufacturing in Rwanda, experts believe the successful implementation of such initiatives across the continent will require countries to acquire know-how while encouraging potential industrial partners in the pharmaceutical industry.

Experts emphasise the need to prioritise technology transfer to revamp Africa’s pharmaceutical industry with a key focus on vaccine manufacturing capacity and building quality healthcare infrastructure.

This is because, while pharmaceutical products are manufactured in countries such as South Africa, Kenya, Morocco and Egypt, the latest estimates by the World Health Organization (WHO) show that the continent currently imports more than 80 percent of its pharmaceutical and medical consumables.

During the forum, which took place recently in Kigali, experts elaborated on some challenges and current opportunities to boost the health prospects of a continent battered for decades by the burden of several diseases and pandemics such as COVID-19, with very limited capacity to produce its medicines and vaccines.

Participants at the forum, which focused mainly on operationalising the first-ever African Pharmaceutical Technology Foundation discussed how the African Union should achieve its target of having 60% of vaccines needed on the continent by 2040.

While the continent imports more than 70% of all the medicines it needs, gulping $14 billion annually, Dr Yvan Butera, Rwandan Minister of State in the Minister of Health, emphasised the need to mobilise additional financial resources for African countries that need them most to procure vaccine.

“The new initiative comes as a solution since most of [African] countries still face a challenge in receiving them on time,” the senior Rwandan Government official told the forum.

As current efforts to expand the manufacturing of essential pharmaceutical products, including vaccines, in developing countries, particularly in Africa, experts argue that concerted efforts to promote technology transfer are urgently needed. According to official estimates, Africa imports more than 70% of all the medicines it needs, gulping $14 billion annually.

Commenting on this situation, Professor Padmashree Gehi Sampath, Special Adviser to the President on Pharmaceuticals and Health, African Development Bank and Director of Global Access in Action, Harvard University, told delegates that technology transfer is critical, and the new initiative will help African countries to look at what are their technology needs.

“Most pharmaceutical companies in Africa are using different kinds of technology (…) it is important to boost their capacity, which has been hampered by intellectual property rights protection and patents on technologies, know-how, manufacturing processes and trade secrets,” the senior bank official told IPS.

Yet Africa’s public health challenges are well known; some experts believe that enhancing access to these technologies for pharmaceutical companies is critical to addressing numerous challenges facing the continent’s pharmaceutical industry.

According to Dr Hanan Balkhy, Deputy Director General World Health Organization (WHO), the continent faces many challenges before it can produce its medicines.

“Africa suffers from the repetitive occurrence of preventable diseases and epidemics, and the large part of medicines and vaccines to treat or prevent these diseases are imported from outside the continent,” Balkhy told delegates.

When fully established, the African Pharmaceutical Technology Foundation, which the bank has already approved, will be staffed with world-class experts on pharmaceutical innovation and development, intellectual property rights, and health policy.

The foundation also has the mandate as a transparent intermediator advancing and brokering the interests of the African pharmaceutical sector with global and other southern pharmaceutical companies to share IP-protected technologies, know-how and patented processes.

Dr Precious Matsoso, a co-chair of the international negotiating body of the WHO on Pandemic Prevention, Preparedness and Response, stressed the importance of ensuring the African health system is resilient.

“Establishing the African Pharmaceutical Technology Foundation, by the bank, is a milestone to address these barriers we are facing, such as health equity,” she said.

Although the foundation is being established under the auspices of the African Development Bank, it will operate independently and raise funds from various stakeholders, including governments, development finance institutions, and philanthropic organisations.

Dr Richard Hatchett, Chief Executive Officer of the Coalition of Epidemic Preparedness Initiative (CEPI), told delegates that this foundation was initiated in timeously since Africa needs to learn from the lessons pandemic, which can be an important step to build resilience of its health system.

“These health care innovative solutions will help in saving lives on the continent,” he said.

So far, Rwanda has been selected to host the African Pharmaceutical Technology Foundation. A common benefits entity, the foundation will have its own governance and operational structures. It will also promote and broker alliances between foreign and African pharmaceutical companies.

However, some experts also emphasised the need to prioritise the African patent pharmaceutical industry to implement the new initiative successfully.

Professor Carlos Correa, Executive Director, South Centre, Geneva, pointed out that it was important for the region to have their own framework.

“Manufacturing capacity [in Africa] is there, but technology capacity is crucial to develop vaccines for Africa (….) Timely transfer of technology is also important,” he said.

During the forum, some panellists also stressed the need to establish a partnership between African pharmaceutical companies with their counterparts from other continents, such as Europe.

According to Brigit Pickel, Director General for Africa in the Germany Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development, this partnership is important for vaccine manufacturing. It applies to the production and supply of other pharmaceutical products.

“We recognise the importance of promoting local pharmaceutical products across the value chain in Africa,” she said.

Apart from technology transfer, Professor Fredrick Abbott, Edward Ball Eminent Scholar Professor, Florida State University, USA, pointed out that this initiative cannot work without sustainable funding.

“Countries need to develop domestic resources because providing funding is a critical step to ensure the continuity of promising clinical development programs of vaccines and drugs,” Abbott told IPS.

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

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An activist during COP27 in Egypt. Credit: Oliver Kornblihtt / Mídia NINJA

By Bibbi Abruzzini
BRUSSELS, Jan 25 2023 (IPS)

In 2022, Saudi Arabia “quietly” sentenced Salma al-Shehab to 34 years in prison over her Twitter activity, marking the longest Saudi sentence ever for a peaceful activist. Fast forward and award-winning Ugandan author Kakwenza Rukirabashaija was charged with two counts of “offensive communication” after making unflattering remarks about the president and his son on Twitter. The message is clear: your well-crafted 280 characters can land you in jail.

But what if, not only your online expressions could put you behind bars, but that the internet, today’s window to the rest of the world shuts down? No internet connection at all, 100% offline. It is not a plot from a sci-fi movie gone wrong, this is happening today. Access Now and the #KeepItOn coalition documented in 2021 for instance, at least 182 internet shutdowns in 34 countries as a tactic to suppress dissent and quell unrest.

In a survey collecting the views of 7,500+ civil society organizations that together serve 190 million people, 95 percent said the internet is critical to their ability to do their work, but 78 percent said that a lack of internet access, tools, or skills limits their ability to serve their communities effectively.

The data, based on the largest survey of civil society regarding the barriers they face in a digitalizing world, was published today in a report by Connect Humanity: “State of Digital Inequity: Civil Society Perspectives on Barriers to Progress in our Digitizing World”.

The survey finds that while civil society sees the internet as critical, a lack of access to technology limits their impact.

Digitalisation: what civil society networks have to say

To understand some of today’s challenges and solutions when it comes to rights-based digitalisation, we reached out to civil society networks across Africa grappling with this issue.

Technology advances have brought increased surveillance and new risks for civic space – for example, in the Democratic Republic of Congo, access to internet and text messages services were limited during election periods. All of a sudden you couldn’t write a message on WhatsApp, whatever its nature.

“African countries that went to the polls in recent years have developed an affinity to restrict internet access before, during and after elections especially in countries where there are disputes,” explains Leah Mitaba of the Zambia Council for Social Development.

Zambia held elections in 2021 amidst unprecedented political and legal volatility. The elections presented immense risks not only for voters and political activists, but also for civil society organisations working on anti-corruption and environmental rights. But sadly, other examples abound: in 2021 only, governments shut down the internet in Chad, Zambia, Niger and Uganda ahead of and on the days of national elections.

“We have seen in the last five years, a close link between internet cuts and Chad’s important moments of political dispute,” says Abdoulaye Diarra, Amnesty International’s Central Africa researcher. Chad has experienced over 2.5 years in total of internet cuts or disruptions since 2016 amid increased repression of civil society and human rights activists, including a “bloodshed” in October that killed at least 50 protesters and injured dozens of others.

There are extreme cases of “digital darkness” in the region as well. Since the conflict began in Tigray, Ethiopia, in November 2020, authorities have used internet shutdowns as a weapon of information control and censorship. November 4, 2022 marks two years of deliberate internet blackouts affecting the lives of approximately six million people in Tigray and indirectly millions more.

“The shutdown is having an immense impact on my life, and I doubt if words can really express it. It felt like my worst nightmare,” says Mulu, a PhD student in Tigray.

The effects of Internet Shutdowns

In the words of Felicia Anthonio, #KeepItOn campaign manager and fighter of internet shutdowns with Access Now, “for too long, internet shutdowns have been too easy a decision for governments to make, and too easy an action for them to implement”. It’s almost as if you had a switch you could strategically turn on and off at your will.

Restrictions on the space of African civil society organisations have become more severe in the dual context of the COVID-19 pandemic and the insecurity affecting countries in the region, explains Comlan Julien Agbessi, Regional Coordinator of the Network of West African NGO Platforms (REPAOC). NGOs and associations are being accused of having “hidden agendas” or benefiting from important funds from “occult networks”.

“Some entities or umbrella organisations are considered by the government as counter-powers or related to the opposition because of their legitimate role in alerting, questioning, raising awareness and denouncing abuses and human rights violations”.

Defenders continue to be subjected to intimidation, judicial harassment and arrests for their online activities in Nigeria, Ethiopia, Togo and Burkina Faso. Fortunately, citizens and activists are also rising to the occasion. There are a lot more cases of citizens actually going to court to challenge government decisions around internet issues. There is the example of Togo, where Togolese citizens and civil society organisations went to court to challenge the government shutdown of the internet and they won the case.

“Disconnected citizens are actually citizens that are kept away from opportunities,” in the words of Gbenga Sesan of the Paradigm Initiative, a pan-African organisation which offers digital opportunities to young people.

“Both a blessing and a curse”

In 2021 Nigerians started using Virtual Private Networks to bypass the government ban on Twitter. The government had ordered internet providers to block the micro-blogging site, alleging it was being used to undermine “Nigeria’s corporate existence” through the spreading of fake news that could potentially have “violent consequences”. Once again, voicing your opinions online, could put you behind bars.

Fake news and the continued sustained critique of civil society online, is also warping perceptions and boosting polarisation in an already fragile context.

“There are a lot of myths on the work of nonprofits in Nigeria, that need to be dispelled, and the digital space is key to this, and very important for this kind of work,” according to Oyebisi Oluseyi, Coordinator at the Nigeria Network of NGOs.

In the words of the civil society platform of Cape Verde, PLATONG, digitalisation has been “both a blessing and a curse”. The COVID-19 pandemic, in particular, galvanized many African civil society organisations to embrace virtual platforms to carry out many of their activities.

With the emergence of the pandemic digital tools have turned into “a resilience tool” that allowed confined actors or those with limited movement to continue to function, explains civil society leader Comlan Julien Agbessi. “If they did not exist, they would have had to be invented, otherwise all human activity outside the biological and physiological functions of individuals would have come to a halt.”

But the high cost of internet access remains a challenge. And the situation is worse for rural based communities whose access is either non-existent or very limited because of poor connectivity and unsustainable costs. Those served by civil society often lack internet access, limiting the potential impact of organizations. Just 12 percent of respondents to the Connect Humanity survey strongly agreed that the communities they serve have internet connectivity. A lack of digital skills is also a major barrier and organizations struggle to pay for core technologies. 43 percent of organizations said internet access was too expensive, with 64 percent struggling to pay for computers. 67 percent said the cost of internet access is too high for their communities.

Internet access is a basic right: if we have common problems, we also have common solutions.

Communities are building their own internet infrastructure to connect, and protect, the unconnected. Decentralised networks – where internet or communication services are localised rather than monopolised by governments or corporate giants – are rising and giving users more control and protection in countries where censorship and internet shutdowns pose an increasing risk of “digital authoritarianism”.

“When we close digital divides, we expand educational opportunities, improve public health, boost economies and create new opportunities for work. We have the knowledge and tools to get this done — now we need governments, investors, and philanthropic funders to do what the corporate sector has been unable to do — work with communities and commit the finances to make digital equity a reality for all,” said Chris Worman, Head of Strategy at Connect Humanity.

During the Covid-19 pandemic, internet access was a lifeline for many — and must today be understood as an essential public good for individuals and for organizations who provide services. This was reflected in the survey run by Connect Humanity and TechSoup, with additional distribution from CIVICUS, FORUS, NTEN, and WINGS, which showed that 91 percent of respondents believe internet access is a basic right.

We heard the promises that the digital space was going to expand, rather than restrict, our rights, while witnessing with our own eyes how this promise has been distorted and twisted. The gap or should we say – the crater – that characterizes those who have access to the digital space and those who don’t, will narrow down over the years, so they say, but this doesn’t mean that our collective rights are going to be upheld. What is access without protection? What is democratic about the digital space if most of the world’s population doesn’t have a say in how it’s being constructed and how it’s going to evolve? Are we building an ally or our worst enemy? And lastly, do we feel part of the digital process, or are we just passive consumers, or even worst, as activists we have a target on our back?

IPS UN Bureau

 

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A Security Council meeting in progress. Credit: United Nations

By Purnaka L. de Silva
NEW YORK, Jan 25 2023 (IPS)

The United Nations Security Council (UNSC) is the principal organ within the United Nations System that is mandated under the tenets of the UN Charter for maintaining international peace and security. The focus here is to prevent and resolve international conflicts and disputes – i.e., using diplomatic means and leverage, as well as international treaties and laws that protect human rights and govern the rules of war.

In this regard, the Security Council helps maintain a balance of power between belligerents, working towards de-escalation of hostilities. Russia’s unlawful War of Aggression against the sovereign nation-state of Ukraine, shows in stark contrast of the limitations of the Security Council.

In other words, today, one of the five great powers that make up the Security Council’s P-5 permanent members is a principal belligerent – i.e., transgressing the laws of war, and committing crimes against humanity, war crimes and other gross violations of humanitarian law, bordering on genocide against peoples and their inalienable culture, not to mention freedom.

In more general terms, in the long decades since the end of World War Two, the Security Council has been able to deal more-or-less-successfully with threats to peace and security in many countries – i.e., despite the vagaries of the Cold War, proxy wars, civil wars, military coup d’état, ethnic conflicts, Islamist insurgencies, and terrorist attacks in the global north and global south alike – as well as global insecurity resulting from Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) and the specter of Nuclear War (Mutually Assured Destruction).

Among its arsenal, the Security Council has the mandate to impose draconian economic sanctions and authorize military intervention under Chapter 6 and Chapter 7 of the UN Charter. The veto power enjoyed by each of the five permanent Security Council members, negate such measures, as in the case of Russia today in Ukraine.

Regarding Human Security, the Security Council is mandated to promote international cooperation and respect for human rights, using all avenues available under international law – i.e., working in tandem with other international bodies, such as the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague to ensure that perpetrators are held to account and prosecuted to the full extent of the law for crimes against humanity, atrocity crimes, war crimes, etc.

The Security Council also works with the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) and UN Migration (IOM) to provide humanitarian assistance, basic needs, and security to protect millions of vulnerable peoples (e.g., women, girls, boys, the elderly, disabled, and men), many who are legally identified as Refugees and Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs).

International Laws, however, are yet to be agreed upon to protect Climate Refugees, which is a pressing issue of great import.

The reason that Mr. Putin’s War of Aggression in Ukraine has caused such consternation within the UN Security Council is because it is such an essential cog in the international security system, and having it fail so spectacularly, does not bode well for Human Security. The Security Council is the only organ within the UN System with the mandate, authority, and frankly gravitas to take collective action to counter international security threats and maintain peace and security.

The Security Council’s inability to do so in Ukraine does not augur well and any further weakening of its mandate could indeed lead to a third World War with catastrophic consequences for humanity. The Security Council’s decisions or non-decisions have an enormous impact on Human Security, as it can and does shape the international security landscape.

Most importantly, it reinforces in a positive fashion, negation of the misconduct of rogue UN member states, authoritarian regimes, and non-state armed groups.

The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) defines Human Security as “protecting the vital core of all human lives in ways that enhance human freedoms and human fulfillment”. It is a methodology to comprehend and act upon, international security-related vulnerabilities involving the safety of non-combatant communities and individuals, as opposed to the security of nation-states, and protecting state borders from invasion (as in the case of Ukraine today).

Conceptually, Human Security advocates for protection from existential threats – i.e., hunger (famine), disease and pandemics (Ebola), tyranny (authoritarian regimes, war, armed conflict), genocide, torture, unjust incarceration, forced migration/displacement (conflict, climate change).

Human Security is a broad concept that takes into consideration economic, social, cultural conditions, and the environmental safety and well-being of peoples. It covers a wide gamut of security issues from physical, food, economic, health, environment, community, and individual protection, and to political freedom.

For the Security Council to be truly successful in implementing its mandate to maintain international peace and security, it must encounter and overcome the manifold vicissitudes and challenges threatening International Security and Human Security. Anything less would be to fall short of fulfilling its singularly unique mandate. How can we support the seminal work of the Security Council?

Faith-based Non-Governmental Organizations and Religious Orders have a unique mandate and responsibility to protect the faithful, and it has been argued forcefully by the Secretary-General of Religions for Peace, Professor Azza Karam, that multifaith action can literally move mountains.

And hence, the power of faith-based NGOs and religious orders must be gathered as a potent force to speak and act in one voice to support the Security Council in its quest to maintain global peace and security and protect Human Security.

What is the problem in this equation? Human beings are notoriously short-sighted, selfish, corrupt, and ego-centric, be they international civil servants, policy makers, or religious and faith leaders. The Security Council’s mostly secular bureaucrats appear to be more interested in working with countries with the greatest geostrategic influence and entities with the deepest pockets (such as those that attend the World Economic Forum in Davos), rather than with well-intentioned faith-based NGOs and religious orders.

On the flip side, leaders of faith-based NGOs and religious communities are more interested in doing their own thing (i.e., serving their own self-interests, communities, and organizations/institutions), as opposed to working together in unison to support the Security Council to maintain international peace and security and protect Human Security.

In fact, the Russian Orthodox Patriarch of Moscow Kirill is a staunch supporter of Mr. Putin’s illegal War of Aggression in Ukraine, which is an extreme case. ‘Just Wars’ supported by religious leaders simply beggars’ belief.

While the Security Council in its hubris and self-importance tends to discount the long-standing power of faith-based NGOs and religious orders, certain UN member states are paying serious attention and engaging them through national security bodies, ministries of the interior and officially mandated local faith-based entities – i.e., United Arab Emirates, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Qatar, Germany, UK, Italy, Finland, United States of America, India and most recently Israel, among others.

Millions of dollars are spent per annum to attract pliant faith-based NGO and religious leaders, have them feted and made to feel important. What is the quid pro quo? It is a grey area that needs much more scrutiny, regulation, and oversight.

Undoubtedly, the Security Council and progressive faith-based NGOs and religious orders must work together for international peace and security. Nevertheless, as the old proverb goes, “you can take a horse to water, but you cannot make it drink”.

For real change to happen trust and respect is a must, where the Security Council overcomes its prejudices, and draws on the collective power of diverse faith leaders who are genuinely committed with a track record to seeking to secure peaceful coexistence – in serious fashion – with all parties willing to listen to each other and work together for the greater common good.

Humanity is at a tipping point, especially in the context of Climate Change, which is exacerbated by large, medium, and small-scale wars and armed conflicts, and global public health crises (COVID-19). Investing in renewables, as opposed to polluting fossil fuels, and significantly changing how we, especially in the global north, maintain our economies, consumption patterns and livelihoods is the pragmatic choice.

We seem hell bent however on doing the exact opposite, while paying lip service and pretending that we are ‘doing good’. There are many examples, Germany, recently decided to demolish an abandoned village and restart coal mining, while at the same time arresting Greta Thunberg the young doyen of the environmental movement who was among many peaceful protesters.

In fact, Exxon’s scientists presented extremely accurate climate models internally that predicted Global Warming in the 1970s! When are we going to wake up and heed our collectively lived experiences and save humanity and the planet in the process.

Paper presented at the Ninth Annual Symposium on the Role of Religion and Faith Based Organizations in International Affairs – Theme: “Securing People’s Wellbeing and Planetary Sustainability” at the UN Church Center, 777 UN Plaza, New York on Tuesday, January 24, 2023.

Dr Purnaka L. (“PL”) de Silva is Faculty and University Adjunct Professor of the Year 2022 at the School of Diplomacy and International Relations at Seton Hall University, New Jersey.

IPS UN Bureau

 

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Credit: UNICEF/2022/Adebayo

By Yasmine Sherif and Stephen Omollo
NEW YORK, Jan 24 2023 (IPS)

“Is it a sin to be a girl? We don’t want to be at home and illiterate. We want to go to school, study and be intelligent.”

In just a few words, this plea for education from a young Afghan girl has captured the world’s attention. Her heartbreaking question shows how the Taliban’s recent ban on girls attending secondary school and university – effectively ending education opportunities for all Afghan girls and women – is not only violating their fundamental human right to education but shattering countless hopes and dreams in an instant.

Elsewhere in the world, millions of other girls living through humanitarian crises are also being deprived of the right to go to school. In their case, it isn’t necessarily a proclamation that bars them from learning, but hunger, conflict or the consequences of extreme weather induced by the climate crisis, sometimes a combination of all of these. And underpinning this, gender inequality means that the sheer fact they are girls means their education and rights often aren’t prioritized.

For example, at present, hunger is causing huge damage to girls’ education opportunities in the Horn of Africa, the Sahel, Haiti and other hotspots around the word.

Yasmine Sherif and Stephen Omollo. Credit: Education Cannot Wait (ECW)

The reasons for this are many and interconnected. When food is scarce, it is often girls who shoulder the responsibility of travelling long distances to find sustenance, or caring for siblings while their parents do so, leaving little time for their studies. When small quantities of food are shared amongst a family, evidence shows girls often eat least and last, making it difficult for them to focus and truly benefit when they do go to school.

Elsewhere, from Ukraine to South Sudan, conflict is disrupting girls’ education as families are forced to flee for their safety – indeed, half of all refugee children are out of school.

Whatever the reason, when girls are forced to drop out of school, it isn’t just their education and life opportunities that suffer. Adolescent girls in particular then become even more vulnerable to violence, exploitation, early pregnancy and harmful practices, from child marriage to female genital mutilation. Indeed, the chances of a girl marrying as a child reduce by six percent with each year she remains in secondary education.

Inclusive, quality education is a lifeline which has a profound effect on girls’ rights. But more needs to be done to make this a reality.

Girls in crisis settings are nearly 2.5 times more likely to be out of school than those living in countries not in crisis. One reason for this is that in emergencies and protracted crises, education responses are severely underfunded. The total annual funding for education in emergencies as a percentage of global sector-specific humanitarian funding in 2021 was just 2.9%.

Yasmine Sherif pictured in Lebanon speaking to a young child at an ECW-supported facility. Credit: Education Cannot Wait (ECW)

Together with partners, Plan International and Education Cannot Wait (ECW), the UN’s global fund for education in emergencies and protracted crises, are calling for this proportion to be increased to at least 10% of humanitarian financing. This must include increased multi-year investments in the institutional capacities of local and national actors.

Today, on International Day of Education, we stand in solidarity with girls in Afghanistan and in all other crisis affected countries to say “education cannot wait.” Education is not only a fundamental human right, but a lifesaving and life-sustaining investment for girls affected by crisis. We must stand with girls as they defend this right.

Next month, when world leaders will gather in Geneva at the Education Cannot Wait High-Level Financing Conference, we urge donor governments to immediately increase humanitarian aid to education. We must translate our promises into action through bold, courageous and substantive financing.

This funding is essential if we are to build resilience in the most climate-exposed nations, where the consequences of extreme weather will all but certainly pose a threat to girls’ education in the years to come. Education budgets – which declined by two-thirds of low- and lower-middle-income countries after the onset of COVID-19 – must be protected and increased, especially in crisis-affected countries.

Investments should be geared towards building stronger education systems and tackling gender inequality and exclusion, with girls’ needs prioritized at every stage of programming. Governments should also ensure that refugee and internally displaced children aren’t overlooked, and make concrete commitments towards inclusive quality education for displaced children and youth at the Global Refugee Forum in December of this year.

Right now, 222 million crisis-affected children and adolescents are in need of urgent education support and more than half of those are girls. It is critical that Education Cannot Wait is fully funded with a minimum of US$1.5 billion in additional resources over the next four years, so that partners such as Plan International and others can deliver the critical programmes needed.

Too often, girls’ voices are silenced during emergencies, leaving their experiences invisible and their needs ignored and overlooked. It’s up to us to change this, for a more just, equal and peaceful world.

About the Authors
Yasmine Sherif is the Director of Education Cannot Wait, the UN’s global fund for education in emergencies and protracted crises.

Stephen Omollo is Chief Executive Officer of Plan International, a child rights and humanitarian organisation active in more than 80 countries globally.

IPS UN Bureau

 

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The Mayan Train (TM), run by the government’s National Tourism Development Fund (Fonatur), threatens the Mayan Jungle, the second largest in Latin America after the Amazon rainforest. its ecosystems and indigenous communities, as well as underground caves and cenotes - freshwater sinkholes resulting from the collapse of limestone bedrock that exposes groundwater

By Emilio Godoy
PLAYA DEL CARMEN, Mexico, Jan 24 2023 (IPS)

The Mayan Train (TM), run by the government’s National Tourism Development Fund (Fonatur), threatens the Mayan Jungle, the second largest in Latin America after the Amazon rainforest. its ecosystems and indigenous communities, as well as underground caves and cenotes – freshwater sinkholes resulting from the collapse of limestone bedrock that exposes groundwater.

The most ambitious megaproject of the government of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador involves at least 1,681 hectares and the felling of 300,000 trees, according to the original environmental impact study, with an investment that has so far run up to around 15 billion dollars, 70 percent of the initially planned cost.

 

 

The plan is for the TM, with 21 stations and 14 stops on seven routes, to start running at the end of 2023 through 78 municipalities in the southern and southeastern states of Campeche, Quintana Roo, Tabasco and Yucatán, home to a combined total of 11.1 million people.

In Quintana Roo there are at least 105 flooded caves over 1,500 meters in length and 408 underwater caves. The porous karst soil of the peninsula represents a threat to the megaproject, which has forced the authorities to change the layout.

In addition, between Playa del Carmen and Tulum – 61 km apart in the south of Quintana Roo – there are at least 13 cenotes.

The Mayan Train, which covers four aquifers and 49 bodies of water along its route, includes a station in Playa del Carmen and another in Tulum, in Section 5.

Fabiola Sánchez, an activist with the non-governmental organization Voces Unidas (United Voices) de Puerto Morelos, talks about the potential impact of the railway in the municipality of Puerto Morelos, in Quintana Roo.

The concern of environmentalists stems from the 2020-2030 Urban Development Program, which they accuse of favoring hotel and real estate interests, to the detriment of citizen participation and sustainable planning, and of favoring the creation of the railway.

Deforestation and urban expansion can result in waters with more sediment in the reefs off Puerto Morelos, greater generation of solid and liquid waste, leaching, and more pollution, that would put even more pressure on an ecosystem that is already disturbed by human activities.

The trains will transport thousands of tourists and cargo, such as transgenic soybeans, palm oil and pork, major agricultural products in the region.

The Mexican government promotes the megaproject as an engine for social development that would create jobs, boost tourism beyond the traditional sites and bolster the regional economy.

Credit: White House

By Norman Solomon
SAN FRANCISCO, USA, Jan 24 2023 (IPS)

Denial at the top of the Democratic Party about Joe Biden’s shaky footing for a re-election run in 2024 became more untenable over the weekend. As the New York Times reported, investigators “seized more than a half-dozen documents, some of them classified, at President Biden’s residence” in Delaware.

The newspaper noted that “the remarkable search of a sitting president’s home by federal agents — at the invitation of Mr. Biden’s lawyers — dramatically escalated the legal and political situation for the president.”

Donald Trump’s obstructive refusal to cooperate with the federal investigation into the far more numerous classified documents in his possession stands in sharp contrast with Biden’s apparently full cooperation with the Justice Department. Yet Biden now faces a documents scandal that’s sure to fester for quite a while — the average length of special counsel investigations has been upwards of 900 days — and the impacts on his plans to seek re-election are unclear.

Meanwhile, here’s an assumption so routine that it passes as self-evident among power brokers and corporate-media journalists: Democratic voters are presumed to be mere spectators awaiting Biden’s decision on whether to seek a second term.

Hidden in plain sight is a logical question that remains virtually off-limits to raise in standard political discourse: Why not ask them?

What a concept. Biden could actually seek guidance from the Democratic base — the people who regularly turn out to vote for the party’s candidates, give millions of small-dollar donations and do priceless volunteer work in support of campaigns to defeat Republicans.

Biden’s decision on whether to run again should be seen as much more than just a matter of personal prerogative. Rather than treating it as such, Biden could put party and country first by recognizing that the essential Democratic task of defeating the Republican ticket in 2024 will require widespread enthusiasm from grassroots Democrats.

Biden would be boosting the chances of beating the GOP by including those Democrats in the decision-making process as he weighs whether to officially declare his candidacy.

But there’s one overarching reason why the Biden White House has no interest in any such idea. The president doesn’t want to ask the question of loyal Democratic voters because he probably wouldn’t like the answer. His stance is clear: It’s my party and I’ll run if I want to.

A glimmer of that attitude showed through during a news conference shortly after the midterm election. Noting that “two-thirds of Americans in exit polls say that they don’t think you should run for re-election,” a reporter asked: “What is your message to them?” Biden’s reply: “Watch me.”

Later, CNN and CNBC polls found that nearly 60 percent of Democrats didn’t want Biden to run again. Yet from all indications, he still intends to do just that.

Defying the wishes of most of the party’s voters could be spun as leadership, but a more fitting word is hubris. Whatever the characterization, it runs a serious risk of self-defeat.

For instance, only wishful thinking leads to a belief that the Democratic presidential nominee next year can win without a strong turnout from those who represent the party’s bedrock base and its future — the young.

Biden’s “watch me” attitude is especially out of whack in relation to youthful Democratic voters. A New York Times poll last summer found that a stunning 94 percent of them under age 30 said they didn’t want Biden to be the party’s nominee.

Such a disconnect spells trouble if Biden does run. Too many young people might heed the “watch me” attitude by declining to volunteer or vote for Biden before he goes down to defeat.

In normal times, a president’s renomination has been his for the taking. But in this case, when most of the party’s supporters don’t want him to run, exercising raw intra-party leverage to get nominated would indicate a high degree of political narcissism. It’s hardly a good look or an auspicious path.

If he runs in 2024, Joe Biden would be the foremost symbol of the status quo — not a good position to be in when faux populism will predictably be the name of the Republican game.

In a poll last November, only 21 percent of registered voters told Hart Research that the country was “headed in the right direction” while 72 percent said it was “off on the wrong track.”

For the president, gaining the Democratic nomination next year would likely be much easier than winning the White House for a second time. If Biden is content to become the party’s nominee again while ignoring the majority of Democrats who don’t want him to run, he’ll be boosting the chances that a Republican will get to work in the Oval Office two years from now.

To prevent such a catastrophe, grassroots Democrats will need to directly challenge the party elites who seem willing to whistle past the probable graveyard of Biden’s second-term hopes.

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

IPS UN Bureau

 

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Credit: UNICEF/UNI280376/Tremeau

By External Source
NEW YORK, Jan 24 2023 (IPS)

As we mark the International Day of Education, world leaders must make good on their promise of providing quality education for all by 2030.

Education is our investment in peace where there is war, our investment in equality where there is injustice, our investment in prosperity where there is poverty.

Make no mistake about it, there is a global education crisis that threatens to unravel decades of development gains, spur new conflicts, and upend economic and social progress across the globe.

As UN Secretary-General António Guterres highlighted at last year’s Transforming Education Summit: “If we are to transform our world by 2030 as envisaged by the Sustainable Development Goals, then the international community must give this (education) crisis the attention it deserves.”

When Education Cannot Wait (ECW), the United Nations global fund for education in emergencies and protracted crises, was founded in 2016, we estimated that 75 million crisis-impacted children required education support. Today, that number has tripled to 222 million.

Of the 222 million children whose right to an education has been ripped from their hands by the multiplying impacts of conflict, climate change and other protracted crises, an estimated 78 million are out of school all together – more than the total populations of France, Italy or the United Kingdom.

Even when they are in school, many are not achieving minimum proficiencies in reading or math. Think about this terrifying statistic: 671 million children and adolescents worldwide cannot read. That’s more than 8% of the world’s total population. That’s an entire generation at risk of being lost

As we have seen from the war in Ukraine, the challenges of the Venezuelan migration to Colombia and South America, the unforgiveable denial of education for girls in Afghanistan, and a devastating climate change-driven drought in the Horn of Africa that has created a severe hunger crisis for 22 million people, we are living in an interconnected world. The problems of Africa, the Middle East, South America, and beyond are the problems of the world that we share together.

Every minute of every day, children are fleeing violence and persecution in places like Myanmar, the Sahel, South America and the Middle East. Every minute of every day, boys are being recruited as child soldiers in Somalia, the Central African Republic and beyond. Every minute of every day, the climate crisis brings us closer to the end of times, and children go hungry because they are denied their right to go to school, where they might just have their only meal of the day. And amid conflict, migration and climate change, governments like Colombia are struggling to secure the most basic living and education conditions for children in hard-to-reach borders.

It’s an assault on our humanity, a moral affront to the binding promises outlined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and a giant step backwards in our persistent efforts – against all odds – to find peace in our times.

There is hope. By embracing a new way of working and delivering with humanitarian speed and development depth, ECW and its strategic partners have reached 7 million children in just five years, with plans to reach 20 million more of the next four years.

Imagine what an education can mean for a child of war? In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, 13-year-old Nyota lost her father and brothers in a brutal attack on her village. Her family’s home was burnt to the ground.

In a country where 3.2 million children are out of school, Nyota’s future was bleak. Would she be a child bride, the victim of sexual violence, another tragic statistic in a forgotten crisis?

No. She did not give up. With the support of an innovative programme funded by ECW, Nyota is back in school. “When I have completed my studies, I dream of becoming the President of my country to end the war here. That will allow children to study in peace and not endure the same horrible things that I have.”

Nyota is not alone: we have received inspiring letters from girls and boys in over 20 crisis-affected countries across the world that underscore the amazing value of education in transforming lives and creating a better future for generations to come.

On February 16, world leaders are gathering for the Education Cannot Wait High-Level Financing Conference in Geneva. Hosted by ECW and Switzerland – and co-convened by Colombia, Germany, Niger, Norway and South Sudan – the conference provides world leaders, businesses, foundations and high-net-worth individuals with the opportunity to deliver on our promise of education for all. The aim is to raise US$1.5 billion for the next four years.

As the co-conveners of this seminal event, we are calling on the people of the world to invest in the promise of an education. It’s the best investment we could make in delivering on the Sustainable Development Goals.

Nyota and millions like her are not giving up on their dream, and we shouldn’t give up on them. We have promises to keep.

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• FEATURED TRANSLATION – FRENCH

Excerpt:

Our investment in education – especially for children caught in crisis and conflict – is our investment in a better future.
The following statement is Co-Signed by: Federal Councillor of the Swiss Confederation, Ignazio Cassis; Federal Minister for Economic Cooperation and Development, Germany, Svenja Schulze; Minister of Education, Niger, Ibrahim Natatou; Minister of International Development, Norway, Anne Beathe Tvinnereim; Minister of General Education and Instruction, South Sudan, Awut Deng Acuil; Minister of Education, Colombia, Alejandro Gaviria; Former UK Prime Minister, UN Special Envoy for Global Education and Chair of ECW’s High-Level Steering Group The Rt. Hon. Gordon Brown

Mapuche activist Maria Hueichaqeo stands in front of the ruca (traditional Mapuche circular house) built on the Antu Mapu campus, which serves as the headquarters for the work of the Tain Adkimn Mapuche Indigenous Association, aimed at raising awareness in Chilean society of the situation of indigenous peoples and of how the Chilean state has mistreated them up to now. CREDIT: Orlando Milesi/IPS

By Orlando Milesi
SANTIAGO, Jan 24 2023 (IPS)

Mapuche indigenous leaders were hit hard by what they see as a collective defeat: the rejection in a September referendum of a plurinational, intercultural constitution proposed to Chile by an unprecedented constituent assembly with gender parity and indigenous representatives.

“We felt devastated, some leaders cried. This defeat never crossed our minds because we thought this was going to change,” Nelly Hueichan, president of the Mapuche Trepeiñ Community, a women’s collective in the Lo Hermida municipality on the southside of Santiago, told IPS.

“For our people there has never been an easy solution…This is not the first time that we have been defeated,” added the 64-year-old activist.

“It was a tremendous challenge and an opportunity to change this society that has discriminated against us so much,” she said. “Now we have to stand up and resume the fight. We continue to organize and get ourselves ready.”

Hueichan came to Santiago when she was 17, from San Juan de la Costa, in the province of Osorno, 930 kilometers to the south. Her first job was as a domestic worker.

More than 13 million of Chile’s 19.5 million people voted in the Sept. 4 referendum, when 61.86 percent of voters (7,882,238) cast their ballot against the draft constitution and only 38.14 percent (4,859,039) voted to approve it.

Thus, voters rejected the proposal approved by more than two-thirds of the 154 elected members of the constituent assembly that sought to turn Chile into a plurinational and intercultural state.

According to the last census, 1.8 million Chileans belong to an indigenous group. The Mapuches make up the largest native community (80 percent of the total). They come from the south of the country, but half have moved away from there, mainly to Santiago. The next biggest communities are the Aymaras (7.1 percent) and the Diaguitas (4 percent), followed by the Atacameño, Quechua, Rapa Nui, Colla, Chango, Kawésqar and Yagán peoples.

The rejected constitution contained “the dreams of those who were not and have not been in power; it proposed a new path for Chileans that the citizens did not want to take,” said Mapuche linguist and professor Elisa Loncón, who presided over the first period of the constituent assembly.

Salvador Millaleo, a Mapuche professor at the University of Chile Law School, told IPS that “without a doubt indigenous peoples were harmed and damaged the most, because the proposal that was rejected had the most comprehensive framework of rights that has ever been put forth.”

The campaign for the “no” vote ahead of the referendum argued that excessive rights would be given to indigenous people, giving them a privileged position over other Chileans. The fearmongering played on long-standing racism embedded in Chilean society.

The Trepeiñ Community, presided over by Nelly Hueichan, brings together 35 Mapuche members who live in the municipality of Lo Hermida, mainly women with a similar background of labor and social discrimination. Their activities and meetings are carried out in a ruca (traditional Mapuche dwelling) that they also lend to other local residents to hold activities for social benefit. CREDIT: Orlando Milesi/IPS

 

Racism and repression

This racism was nourished by the repressive policies imposed on indigenous people by successive governments, especially the 1973-1990 dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet.

Back then, the conflict over ownership of land claimed by indigenous groups but now in private hands, especially of forestry companies, was declared non-existent. In addition, Mapuche activists were tried and sentenced as terrorists, when they carried out actions demanding the return of their ancestral lands.

Indigenous leaders are demanding reparations for the violation of the human rights of the Mapuche people during crackdowns by the authorities and argue that priority must be given to the issue of usurped lands.

The poor handling of the Mapuche question means that the southern regions where most of them live are the poorest in Chile, plagued by precarious jobs and high unemployment, as well as serious deficiencies in education, infrastructure and healthcare.

“A fairly generalized climate has been generated among the political elites that are opposed to or do not prioritize the rights of indigenous peoples,” said Millaleo.

This environment contrasts with the one prevailing during the 2019 protests under the government of rightwing president Sebastián Piñera (2018-2022), when Mapuche flags were raised in the massive demonstrations.

“Back then we were all very happy, but the leaders had little awareness that they had to consolidate this support, adopt strategies, seek broader backing in the indigenous world and among non-governmental organizations, and keep people in the territories informed,” said Millaleo.

The triumph of the “no” vote was the other side of the coin from the majority election of independent constituents in May 2021, which culminated in the installation two months later of a constituent assembly presided over by Loncón.

The Ceremonial Center of Indigenous Peoples, located on José Arrieta avenue in the municipality of Peñalolén, was inaugurated in May 2022. Sitting on 4.2 hectares of land it represents expressions and promotes traditions and customs of the Mapuche, Aymara and Rapa Nui cultures present in the municipality. CREDIT: Orlando Milesi/IPS

 

False threat

María Hueichaqueo chairs one of the 130 Mapuche organizations in Santiago: the Tain Adkimn Mapuche Indigenous Association in the working-class municipality of La Pintana, where the population is 16 percent indigenous.

At the same time, rightwing politicians convinced many voters that indigenous people would take over the Chilean territory if the new constitution was approved.

“Nowhere in the world have indigenous peoples seized land that was ancestrally ours,” said Hueichaqueo. “In some cases mechanisms, treaties or agreements have been created to solve conflicts over land.”

Hueichaqueo, 57, moved to Santiago from Chol Chol, a municipality in the Araucanía region, 700 kilometers south of the capital.

“I was born in a ruca (traditional Mapuche house) and at the age of seven months I came here with my mother. My father is a cacique (chief) and lives in the Lonko José Poulef Community in Chol Chol,” she told IPS at the Antu Mapu (Land of the Sun) campus, the largest University of Chile campus, where the Faculty of Agronomy and Veterinary Medicine is located.

According to Hueichaqueo, “what is happening is that the powers that be do not want to lose power. They feel that if the indigenous peoples have rights, their power will decline.”

The activist acknowledged that “we were unable to make a deeper analysis of the situation we were experiencing, in order to better understand what kind of representatives we needed in the constituent assembly.”

 

Indigenous errors

“Unfortunately not all of our indigenous brothers and sisters handled themselves well in the assembly,” she said. “Some took very extreme positions not in line with the real situation in the country. We are aware of the land claims and the violations of human rights. But that has to do with the State and we were talking about a new constitution, about everyone living together in the same territories.”

According to Hueichaqueo, the indigenous constituents distanced themselves from the organizations. To illustrate, she pointed out that some were elected with a large number of votes but then, in their own territories, a majority voted against the draft constitution.

Millaleo said that another mistake made by the indigenous representatives was “not daring to ask the radicalized groups that did not support the constituent assembly process to put down their weapons, and to clearly differentiate themselves from these groups.”

Hueichaqueo said that now the Mapuche people “are in a state of reflection. But we’re not sitting with our arms crossed, because indigenous peoples have a history of more than 500 years of mobilization and demands, and they are not going to stop us because of a constituent assembly that failed.”

“If it is not us, it will be our children, and if it is not our children it will be our grandchildren, but our demands will continue to be voiced as long as the Chilean State does not listen to the peoples and does not recognize the rights that it needs to recognize,” she said.

 

María Hueichaqueo stands surrounded by figures that represent men and women on the Antu Mapu university campus (“land of the sun” in Mapuche), in Santiago. They welcome students who attend an elective course to learn Mapudungun (Mapuche or Araucanian language) and to study indigenous inclusion in the history of Chile. CREDIT: Orlando Milesi/IPS

 

New attempt to rewrite the constitution

Hueichaqueo said she was “pessimistic regarding how much progress can be made in any new constitution that could be drafted because neither the State nor the government nor the political class are delivering democratic, participatory and governance guarantees” in this new process.

The Chilean Congress approved a new process with a committee of 24 experts elected by an equal number of votes from the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies, which will draft a new constitution. It will start working on Mar. 6, the same day that another technical-administrative commission of 14 experts also appointed by Congress will be installed.

On May 7, 50 members of a joint Constitutional Council will be elected by Chile’s voters, with a gender balance and a minimum number of indigenous representatives. It will have five months to set forth a new constitution drawn up based on the preliminary draft created by the experts.

On Dec. 17, the new draft constitution will be submitted to a referendum.

But according to Loncón, this strategy is aimed at continuing to exclude indigenous people.

“Today they intend to write the new constitution with a discredited political elite, which will never speak the language of the peoples because they are not the peoples, and we can suspect that they only seek to maintain their positions of power and their benefits,” she said.

 

The poet’s view

For 50-year-old poet Elicura Chihuailaf, the first Mapuche to win the National Literature Prize, in 2020, it is difficult to understand the defeat “after it seemed that the majority of the population of Chile began to recognize it also has native heritage.”

Speaking to IPS from Cunco, 736 kilometers south of Santiago, he said that he sees ignorance among Chileans about the world view of native peoples.

“Everything that happened had to do to a great extent with the media, because of that superficial and alienated group that owns the media,” he asserted.

In his opinion, “history has been handled in a manner biased by the vested interests of a small group that I have called the superficial or alienated Chile, which has written its own version of history.”

“It ignores what was and continues to be the occupation of a territory, of a country, which was called and continues to be called ‘wal mapu’, the meeting of all the lands”, in the Mapuche language, Chihuailaf said.

“When you talk about development, it is said that the native peoples do not want it, but our peoples say we want development, but with nature and not against it,” he argued.

The award-winning poet said “the first step to recover the dignity of this country is for the popular classes to recognize their identity, and acknowledge that it comes from native peoples and that all cultures are important.”

“That the most beautiful blackness, the most beautiful yellowness, the most beautiful whiteness and the most beautiful brownness are neither more nor less than others,” he said.

 

Pope Francis and Yohei Sasakawa, Goodwill Ambassador for Leprosy Elimination led a global appeal to end leprosy and the stigmatization of those impacted. The pope’s statement was read to the second international symposium on Hansen’s Disease in Rome hosted by the Holy See, Sasakawa Leprosy (Hansen’s Disease) Initiative, the French Raoul Follereau Fondation and the Italian Association Amici di Raoul Follereau. Credit: Joyce Chimbi/IPS

By Joyce Chimbi
NAIROBI, Jan 24 2023 (IPS)

In the four years preceding the COVID-19 pandemic, the spread of leprosy or Hansen’s disease, seemed to be losing steam. Between 2016 and early 2020, new case numbers remained more or less constant.

The coronavirus pandemic has impacted leprosy services, making it harder for those affected by leprosy to receive treatment and disability care and disrupted leprosy case findings, leading to a large drop in cases from 2020 despite many undiagnosed and untreated leprosy cases.

“Leprosy is an ancient infectious disease, but it is curable. Early detection and treatment of leprosy are of utmost importance. We must promote finding new cases and ensuring they are treated. I have seen many people with disability for lack of treatment,” says Yohei Sasakawa, WHO Goodwill Ambassador for Leprosy Elimination.

In an effort to draw world attention to zero leprosy transmission, zero discrimination, and zero exclusion, the Holy See, Sasakawa Leprosy (Hansen’s Disease) Initiative, the French Raoul Follereau Fondation and Italian Association Amici di Raoul Follereau are co-hosting the second international symposium on Hansen’s Disease in Rome, January 23 to 24, 2023.

The first international symposium was similarly held at the Vatican and was titled ‘Towards Holistic Care for People with Hansen’s Disease, Respectful of their Dignity’. The outcome was a lull in the spread of Hansen’s disease until the COVID-19 pandemic.

In the wake of disruptions caused by COVID-19, speakers and participants expressed fears and concerns that the situation has and will worsen.

The ongoing symposium is, therefore, a global appeal to leave no one behind in the fight against leprosy and to end stigma and discrimination. Additionally, to examine the progress made since the first international symposium and the barriers that still stand in the way to a leprosy-free world.

Importantly, the symposium included the launch ceremony for Global Appeal 2023 to End Stigma and Discrimination against Persons Affected by Leprosy.

As such, the symposium is an opportunity to discuss zero discrimination and hear testimonials and best practices with special attention to the role of religious leaders, perspectives of key actors from the global leprosy community, as well as recommendations and suggestions on the best way forward.

More broadly, the symposium is a platform for consideration of how socially vulnerable individuals and communities, especially those consisting of persons with disabilities due to diseases, have been affected by the impact of the coronavirus pandemic and propose ways to lift their plight.

Those who spoke on behalf of symposium organizers, including Pope Francis, emphasized that leprosy is curable and treatment in the early stages can prevent disability. Left untreated, leprosy can cause progressive and permanent damage to the skin, nerves, limbs and eyes.

A statement read out on behalf of Pope Francis encouraged the global community to emulate the good Samaritan, not to turn a blind eye and pass by as people affected by leprosy as shunned and ostracized from the community.

“We have become accustomed to passing by. We cannot forget our brothers and sisters. This is a wonderful opportunity to build inclusivity. To work on three areas: zero disease, helping those affected through care and treatment, spiritual nourishment and reinstating them back into the society,” the statement read in part.

Speaking at the symposium, a representative of Novartis said multidrug therapy (MDT) is the backbone towards zero leprosy, and its free availability has reduced the global disease burden by 95 percent in the past three decades.

Novartis MDT donations have helped to treat more than 7.3 million patients since 2000, significantly interrupting the transmission of leprosy and prevent disabilities. But there is still a long way to go.

Novartis said that an estimated 200,000 new cases of leprosy are detected every year, and an estimated 2.3 million people are living with a disability caused by leprosy.

Among the new cases, WHO says approximately 7,198 new cases were detected with grade 2 disabilities (G2D), and the new G2D rate was recorded at 0.9 per million population.

Disability in leprosy is defined by the WHO grading system; grade 0 indicates an absence of disability, while grade 1 means loss of protective sensibility on eyes, hands and feet. Grade 2 is more severe as it indicates the presence of deformities or visible damage to the eyes, hands or feet.

Sasakawa emphasized that it is not enough that people receive treatment, “for even after they are medically treated and cured, they remain afflicted by leprosy. Discrimination is age-old, deep-rooted and ongoing.

Novartis says collaboration is key and re-engaging those who may have been lost along the way. In all, speakers such as Dr Benedict Quao stressed the need to focus, prioritize, strategize and work together at the national, regional and global levels. This, he said, will produce a sustainable roadmap.

Quao leads the National Leprosy Programme in Ghana and is also a member of the Global Partnership for Zero Leprosy, underpinned by how aligned action can boost progress towards zero leprosy and zero stigma and discrimination.

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

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