Africa - INTER PRESS SERVICE

Anti-Austerity protests in 2006-2020. Credit: World Protests Platform

By Isabel Ortiz and Sara Burke
NEW YORK, Jan 13 2023 (IPS)

This week world leaders meet in Davos to discuss cooperation to address multiple crises, from COVID-19 and escalating inflation to slowing economic growth, debt distress and climate shocks.

Only three months earlier, finance ministers had gathered in Washington DC for the same reason. The mood was grim. The need for ambitious actions could not be greater; however, there were no agreements, evidencing the fragility of multilateralism and international cooperation.

Isabel Ortiz

Worse, policy makers -advised by the International Monetary Fund- are resorting to old, failed and regressive policies, such as austerity (now called “fiscal restraint” or “fiscal consolidation”), instead of much needed corporate/wealth taxation and debt reduction initiatives, to ensure an equitable recovery for all.

A recent global report alerts of the dangers of a post-pandemic wave of austerity, far more premature and severe than the one that followed the global financial crisis a decade ago. While governments started cutting public expenditures in 2021, a tsunami of budget cuts is expected in 143 countries in 2023, which will impact more than 6.7 billion people or 85% of the world population.

Analysis of the austerity measures considered or already implemented by governments worldwide shows their significant negative impacts on people, harming women in particular. These austerity policies are: targeting social protection, excluding vulnerable populations in need of support by cutting programs for families, the elderly and persons with disabilities (in 120 countries); cutting or capping the public sector wage bill, this is, reducing the number and salaries of civil servants, including frontline workers like teachers and health workers (in 91 countries); eliminating subsidies (in 80 countries); privatizing public services or reforming state-owned enterprises (SOEs) in areas such as public transport, energy, water; reforming hard-earned pensions by adjusting benefits and parameters, resulting in lower incomes for retirees (in 74 countries); (6) labor flexibilization reforms (in 60 countries); reducing employers’ social security contributions, making social security unsustainable (in 47 countries); and even cutting health expenditures despite COVID-19 is not over.

Sara Burke

Austerity and all the human suffering it causes is evitable, there are alternatives. There are at least nine financing options, available even in the poorest countries, fully endorsed by the UN and international financial institutions, from increasing progressive taxation to reducing debt. Policymakers must urgently look into these. Many countries have already implemented them.

In recent years, citizens have protested austerity all around the world. A recent study on world protests shows that nearly 1,500 protests in the period 2006-2020 were against austerity. Citizens demand better public services, social protection, jobs with decent wages, tax and fiscal justice, equitable land distribution, and better living standards, among others. Protests against pension reforms, and high food and energy prices have also been very prevalent. Recently, the jobs and cost-of-living crises have been accentuated by the COVID-19 pandemic, resulting in more protests despite lockdowns.

The majority of global protests against austerity and for economic justice have manifested people’s indignation at gross inequalities. The idea of the “1% versus the 99%,” that emerged a decade ago during protests over the 2008 financial crisis, has spread around the world, feeding grievances against elites and corporations manipulating public policies in their favor, while the majority of citizens continue to endure low living standards, aggravated by austerity cuts.

Let’s remember that trillions of dollars have been used to support corporations during the pandemic and to support military spending. Now people are being asked to endure austerity cuts, at a time when they are suffering a cost-of-living crisis. The 2023 meetings in Davos are being faced with new protests and demands to tax the rich.

Unless policymakers change course, we shouldn’t be surprised to see increasing waves of protests all over the world. Clashes in the street are likely to intensify if governments continue to fail to respond to people’s demands and persist in implementing harmful austerity policies. Governments need to listen to the demands of citizens that are legitimately protesting the denial of social, economic and civil rights. From jobs, public services and social security to tax and climate justice, the majority of protesters’ demands are in full accordance with United Nations proposals and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Leaders and policymakers will only generate further unrest if they fail to act on these legitimate demands.

Isabel Ortiz is Director of the Global Social Justice Program at Joseph Stiglitz’s Initiative for Policy Dialogue at Columbia University, former Director at the International Labour Organization (ILO) and UNICEF.

Sara Burke is Senior Policy Analyst at Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung (FES) New York

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US President Joseph R. Biden addresses the general debate of the General Assembly’s seventy-seventh session in September 2022. Credit: UN Photo/Cia Pak

By Norman Solomon and Jeff Cohen
SAN FRANCISCO, USA, Jan 13 2023 (IPS)

The current notion of a “moderate Republican” is an oxymoron that helps to move the country rightward. Last week, every one of the GOP’s so-called “moderates” voted to install House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, who won with the avid support of Donald Trump and got over the finish line by catering to such fascistic colleagues as Matt Gaetz and Lauren Boebert.

Recent news reports by many outlets — including the Washington Post, USA Today, The Hill, Bloomberg, CNN, NBC, Reuters, HuffPost and countless others — have popularized the idea of “moderate Republicans” in the House. The New York Times reported on “centrist Republicans.” But those “moderates” and “centrists” are actively supporting neofascist leadership.

Notably, Joe Biden made this implausible claim while campaigning in May 2019: “The thing that will fundamentally change things is with Donald Trump out of the White House. Not a joke. You will see an epiphany occur among many of my Republican friends.”

During his celebratory victory speech in November 2020, Biden bemoaned “the refusal of Democrats and Republicans to cooperate with one another,” proclaimed that the American people “want us to cooperate” and pledged “that’s the choice I’ll make.”

Later, as president, Biden came to a point when – in a ballyhooed speech last September — he offered some acknowledgment of ongoing Republican extremism, saying: “Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans represent an extremism that threatens the very foundations of our republic. Now, I want to be very clear up front: Not every Republican, not even the majority of Republicans, are MAGA Republicans”.

“Not every Republican embraces their extreme ideology. I know because I’ve been able to work with these mainstream Republicans. But there is no question that the Republican Party today is dominated, driven, and intimidated by Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans, and that is a threat to this country.”

But as with routine media coverage, Biden does not acknowledge that every Republican now in the House is functionally a “MAGA Republican.” Claiming otherwise — calling some of them “moderate Republicans” — is like saying that someone who drives a getaway car during an armed robbery isn’t a criminal. Those who aid and abet right-wing extremism are part of the march toward fascism.

If a handful of — by some accounts a half-dozen, by others as many as 20 — House Republicans are “moderates,” then such media framing normalizes and legitimizes their tacit teamwork with the likes of Trump and ultra-right Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene that made McCarthy the speaker. In the process, the slickly evasive language makes possible the continual slippage of public reference points ever-further to the right.

So, during last week’s multiple ballots that concluded with McCarthy’s win, Rep. Don Bacon of Nebraska was portrayed in the news as a “moderate Republican” who talked of seeking Democratic votes to help elect McCarthy and of possibly working with Democrats to find a “moderate” GOP speaker. Bacon labeled the anti-McCarthy holdouts “cowboys” and “the Taliban.”

But if Bacon is a “moderate Republican,” it’s odd that he would help lead a rally before the 2020 election with MAGA firebrand and Students for Trump leader Charlie Kirk, which ended with a yell from Bacon: “Making America great again!” Or that he voted both times against impeaching President Trump, including after the Jan. 6 Capitol assault.

Or that he cosponsors the extreme Life at Conception Act. Or that he has questioned climate science: “I don’t think we know for certain how much of climate change is being caused by normal cyclical changes in weather versus human causes.”

Looking ahead, you can bet that after years of being touted as “Republican moderates” in Congress, a few will be trotted out in prime time at the 2024 Republican National Convention to assure the nation that the party’s nominee — whether Donald Trump or Ron DeSantis or some other extremist candidate — is a great fit for the presidency.

The impacts of such deception will owe a lot to the frequent media coverage that distinguishes between the most dangerously unhinged Republican politicians who dominate the House and the “moderate” ones who make that domination possible.

Applying adjectives like “moderate” to congressional Republicans is much worse than merely bad word choices. Our language “becomes ugly and inaccurate because our thoughts are foolish,” George Orwell wrote, “but the slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts.”

And dangerous ones.

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’ while his next book, ‘War Made Invisible: How America Hides the Human Toll of Its Military Machine’, will be published in Spring 2023 by The New Press.

Jeff Cohen is co-founder of RootsAction.org, a retired journalism professor at Ithaca College, and author of Cable News Confidential: My Misadventures in Corporate Media. In 1986, he founded the media watch group FAIR.

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Women receive food rations at a food distribution site in Herat, Afghanistan. Credit: UNICEF/Sayed Bidel

By Chloe Bryer, Azza Karam, Ruth Messinger and Negina Yari
NEW YORK, Jan 12 2023 (IPS)

Can you imagine what it would be like if women were simply not allowed to step outside of their homes, let alone to work for a living? When women choose to do so, and they can afford it, then it is a matter of choice. When women mostly cannot, as is the case in Afghanistan now, not only is half the population imprisoned, but children go hungry, and communities sink deeper into poverty.

World Bank data (as incomplete as it is), indicates that the average number of female-headed households (i.e. households where women are the primary – if not the only – breadwinners), is around 25%.

What that means is, that on average, a quarter of all households around the world depend on women earning an income. Children, families, communities, and nations –depend on women’s work, to the tune of a quarter of their labour force.

Economists are still pointing to the obvious challenges of counting female labour, which often lies disproportionately on the frontiers of the formal economy, such that women continue to serve as reserve armies of labour and frontline workers during industrialization.

Economists who work to document these specificities, also point out that as soon as these frontiers expand or change, women are expelled or relegated to the shadows of the informal economy and piece-rate labour, identifying this as an all too frequent failure to recognize the importance of the kind of work many women engage in, which both keeps an economy running, and enables its expansion and growth.

The Covid-19 Pandemic should have resulted in a clear realisation that all hands are necessary on deck, with so many women actually needed as first responders–the backbone of the public health crisis – everywhere in the world.

As economies take a nosedive and the realities of recession hit many of us, all economies need to be kept running, if not to expand and grow.

And beyond these very real challenges to counting women’s work – and making that work count – there is another very critical reality: culture. Lest we think only of the vagaries of women who take over “men’s jobs” (whatever that means in today’s world), we need to stop being blind to the fact that women are needed to serve other women.

In fact, in many parts of the world, including the supposedly liberal and ‘egalitarian’ Western world, many women still prefer to receive life-saving direct services from other women – in public health, in sanitation, in all levels of education, in nutritional spaces, and many, many others.

Now let us pause a moment and consider humanitarian disaster zones, where women and girls often need to be cared for – and this can only be done by and through other women.

Then let us envision a reality one step further – let’s call it a socially conservative country, which is facing humanitarian disaster, and is heavily dependent on international organisations (governmental and non- governmental) for the necessary humanitarian support.

How is it conceivable that in such a context, women can be excluded from serving? And yet this is precisely what the Taliban have decreed on December 24, when it barred women from working in national and international NGOs. And this is after they banned women from higher education.

Many international NGOs halted their work in Afghanistan, explaining that they cannot work without their women staff – as a matter of principle, but also as a question of practical necessity. Yet, the United Nations – the premier multilateral entity – continues to see how they could compromise with the Taliban rule, for the sake of ‘the greater good – real humanitarian needs’.

Thank goodness they are letting the UN continue to work with their women employees, runs one way of thinking. We will not fail to deliver humanitarian needs, runs another UN way of thinking.

Of course, humanitarian needs are essential to human survival – and thus, should never be held hostage. But why is the United Nations being accountable for humanitarian needs only?

Meanwhile, the Taliban claim that these edicts about womens’ work and education are a matter of religious propriety, a claim which, as of this moment, is not strongly challenged by another multilateral entity – the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), encompassing 56 governments and members of the United Nations.

While individual governments have spoken out, this multilateral entity has remained relatively silent on the Islamic justice of such a decree. Is it because this multilateral religious entity sees no need to speak to humanitarian needs?

Or is it because it sees no value to hard economic realities where women’s agency plays a central role? Or perhaps it is because there is no unanimity on the Islamic justification behind such decrees?

In light of this hostage-taking of humanitarian relief efforts, a group of women of faith leaders, have come together to ask some simple questions of the two multilateral entities involved. They have sent a letter with over 150 international NGO sign ons.

Multilateralism is supposed to be the guarantor of all human rights and dignity, for all people, at all times. But as governmental regimes weaken, so do traditional multilateral entities heavily reliant on those governments. Time for community based transnational networks based on intergenerational, multicultural, gender sensitive leaders.

Rev Dr Chloe Bryer is Executive Director, Interfaith Center of New York; Prof Azza Karam is Secretary General, Religions for Peace; Ruth Messinger is Social Justice Consultant, Jewish Theological Seminary; and Negina Yari is Country Director, Afghans4Tomorrow

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Indian doctoral students are stuck due to Australian visa delays. Credit: Unsplash

By Neena Bhandari
Sydney, Jan 12 2023 (IPS)

When Megha Jacob, who had been applying for a doctoral degree at various overseas universities, received an offer from the Australian National University’s Department of Chemistry to do a fully funded PhD, she was thrilled and immediately accepted the position.

It was January 2022. She submitted her visa application and resigned from her job at the Indian Institute of Technology Madras. One year later, she is still waiting for her visa to be processed.

Several international Indian students enrolled in doctoral degree courses in Australia’s leading universities have been waiting for their visas to be approved for months, some for up to two years. “The protracted delays have put our lives on hold. We seek clarity and a definitive timeline so we can plan our future,” say students from one of the WhatsApp groups formed by Indian doctoral students facing Australian visa processing delays.

Since the easing of Australia’s stringent COVID-19 restrictions, these students allege, the visa processing time for doctoral degree students has increased. “The median processing time for offshore student visa application was 18 days for the Postgraduate Research Sector in November 2022,” an Australian Department of Home Affairs (DHA) spokesperson tells IPS. However, the most recent processing time on the DHA website for 500 – Student visa (subclass 500) Postgraduate Research Sector shows 90 percent of applications are processed in 10 months.

Processing times will take some time to improve as the department works through older applications in the backlog, according to DHA. Processing times can vary due to applicants’ circumstances, including how long it takes to perform required checks on the supporting information provided by the applicant; and how long it takes to receive information from external agencies. This particularly relates to health, character and national security requirements.

Jacob says, “I have been submitting additional information, such as published research papers, but the last updated date on my visa application page on the DHA portal is still nine months old! I wonder if there is a technical glitch in the system or has my application fallen through the cracks.”

“When I called the DHA last month, I was told that waiting time for 90 percent of applicants is nine months [now its 10 months], and for the remaining 10 percent of applicants, we do not know how long it’s going to take. Presumably, some of us are in that 10 percent. But we don’t know why and what has placed our application in that category,” she adds.

Many students in the WhatsApp group have individually reached out to the DHA through email, the complaints section or via phone, but they have received only generic responses. “I have even written to the Commonwealth Ombudsman and received a similar reply that they are conducting necessary background checks, which can take several months,” says Deepak Chahal, who has a master’s from the Indian Institute of Space Science and Technology in Thiruvananthapuram (Kerala).

Chahal, who enrolled as a doctoral student in Macquarie University’s Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics in December 2020, has been waiting for the past two years for his visa to be processed. He says, “I had begun working remotely due to COVID-19 restrictions, but I can’t continue remotely anymore as I need access to Australian observatories to collect data and the lab to analyse it. I’ve already spent two years doing the research, so abandoning it now is not an option.”

For students in the field of applied science, technology and engineering, working remotely is not an option as they require access to a host of resources –laboratory, equipment, data, fast internet connectivity, and availability of supervisors to oversee their experiments.

“We are losing precious research time as we don’t even know if our visa application will be successful after all this waiting. Our lives are hanging in the balance,” says a 26-year-old applicant from Mumbai (Maharashtra), enrolled in The University of Sydney’s School of Chemistry, who requested anonymity. He applied for his visa in August 2022, as his date of joining was October 1. [Students can submit their application no later than six weeks before their course starts and no earlier than 12 weeks.] He has had to defer his research until his visa application is finalised.

Indian High Commissioner to Australia, Manpreet Vohra, tells IPS, “Many Indian doctorate students with admissions secured at various Australian universities have indeed been waiting for a very long time for their visas to be issued. This has delayed their research and, in some cases, has also jeopardised the grants that have been assured to them. We have been raising this matter regularly with Australian authorities and have urged them for early redressal of the difficulties that the doctorate students are facing.”

The DHA data shows that the higher education sector visa grant rate for 2022-2023 was 76.5 percent to November 30, 2022.

One beacon of hope, these students say, has been the support from Australian universities and the faculty. Dr Clement Canonne, Lecturer at the University of Sydney’s School of Computer Science, recently Tweeted on his personal account: “My hope for 2023 is not to have to raise the PhD and Postgraduate Research #AustralianVisas processing delays issue anymore, and to see not only the current backlog processed, but also increased transparency & communication from @ausgov for applicants.”

There were 1608 Indian nationals enrolled in Doctoral Degree courses out of the 96,005 Indian international students enrolled across all education sectors as of the year-to-date October 2022, according to a spokesperson for the Australian Government’s Department of Education. International students from India across all education sectors contributed $3.729 billion to the Australian economy in the 2021-22 financial year.

Speaking in his personal capacity and not expressing an official university viewpoint, Canonne tells IPS, “Students from India’s premier STEM institutes have many other options. When they, and Chinese and European students, choose to come to work with us, it’s because the research aligns. It’s really disheartening when these exceptional students are accepted, we work hard to apply for funding and get the grant, but then we can’t use the money to do the research for which it is meant because the students’ visa applications are pending for months, even years.”

The Department of Education data shows that in 2019, internationals accounted for 61 percent of Higher Degree Research students in engineering and related technologies and 57 percent in Information Technology.

“We chose Australia because it was a “perfect fit” when it came to the high ranking of Australian universities, professors in our field of research, lab facilities and other resources, full scholarship and shorter duration to complete a PhD in 3.5 years as against five years in most other countries,” says Parkarsh Kumar from Ranchi (Jharkhand), who is enrolled in UNSW Sydney’s Department of Material Science.

He says, “I completed my master’s degree from National Taiwan University on a scholarship and had two job offers, which I declined because I wanted to do a PhD and one day become a professor in an Indian institution. I was a role model in our family and community, but now everyone jokes that don’t be like him because I am sitting at home since January 2022 waiting for my visa application to be processed.”

Many of these students had left their jobs to pursue research, some against the wishes of their parents and elders. The long visa processing delays have caused them mental and financial stress. “If I apply for a job, I am asked why have I not worked for the past 10 months. If I say it’s because I am waiting for my Australian student visa, they immediately reject, stating that then there is no certainty on how long you will work for us,” says Jacob, who has socially isolated herself because while her family is very supportive, the societal pressure of being constantly asked, “When are you going to Australia?” is too much for her.

The long visa delay is prompting some to apply for a PhD in other countries or get a job. The Group of Eight (Go8), representing Australia’s leading research-intensive universities, in its submission dated December 16, 2022, to Australia’s 2023-24 Permanent Migration Program inquiry, noted that “visa backlogs are not just about the number of applicants in the queue, but about the critical expertise that Australia is missing out on, or stands to lose, because of avoidable processing delays.” It urged the DHA “to consider ways to improve and streamline visa assessment processes to facilitate migration in areas of priority or strategic need.”

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By Luis Brizuela and Jorge Luis Baños
HAVANA, Jan 11 2023 (IPS)

Félix Morffi supports the energy needs of his home with the help of the sun, in some cases through handcrafted solutions that make the most of an alternative source that is abundant in Cuba, but still used very little.

With two tanks, glass, aluminum sheets, as well as cinderblocks, sand and cement, the 86-year-old retiree created, in 2006, a solar heater that meets his household needs.

“You build it today and tomorrow you have hot water; anyone can do it, and if they have a bit of advice, all the better,” said the retired mid-level machine and tool repair technician who lives in the municipality of Regla, one of the 15 that make up Havana.

 

 

He also designed and made a dryer that uses the heat of the sun to dehydrate fruits, spices and tubers, which he assembled mostly with recycled products such as pieces of wood, nylon, acrylic and aluminum sheets.

On the roof of his house, 16 solar panels imported in 2019 provide five kilowatts of power (kWp) and help run his small automotive repair shop where he works on vehicles for state-owned companies and private individuals, an independent enterprise that he set up next to his house.

The innovator believes that despite the economic conditions, with a little ingenuity people can take advantage of the natural elements, because “the sun shines for everyone; the wind is there and costs you nothing, but your wealth is in your brain”

In addition to covering his household needs, he provides the surplus electricity to the national grid, the National Electric Power System (SEN).

Morffi said more training is needed among personnel involved in several processes, and he cited delays of more than a year between the signing of the contract with Unión Eléctrica and the beginning of payments for the energy surpluses provided to the SEN, as well as “inconsistency with respect to the assembly” of the equipment.

Although Cuba has a national policy on renewable energy sources, “there is still a lot of ignorance and very little desire to do things, and do them well. Awareness-raising is needed,” he argued.

The innovator believes that despite the economic conditions, with a little ingenuity people can take advantage of the natural elements, because “the sun shines for everyone; the wind is there and costs you nothing, but your wealth is in your brain.”

In his backyard, a small solar panel keeps the water flowing from a well for his barnyard fowl and an artificial pond holding a variety of ornamental fish as well as tilapia for family consumption.

The construction of a small biodigester, about four cubic meters in size, is also at an advanced stage on his land, aimed at using methane gas from the decomposition of animal manure and crop waste, for cooking.

Morffi, who manages these activities with the backing of several family members, also plans to import three small wind turbines of 0.5 kWp each and a new batch of 4 kWp solar PV panels.

His vision is to turn his house into a space for the production and promotion of renewable energies in Cuba.

To this end, he has the support of the non-governmental Cuban Society for the Promotion of Renewable Energy Sources and Respect for the Environment (Cubasolar), of which Morffi has been a member since 2004.

Since 2014, Cuba has had a Policy for the Development of Renewable Energy Sources and their Efficient Use. And in 2019, Decree Law 345 established regulations to increase the share of renewables in electricity generation and steadily decrease the proportion represented by fossil fuels.

According to studies, this archipelago of more than 110,800 square kilometers with an annual average of 330 sunny days receives an average solar radiation of more than five kilowatts per square meter per day, considered to be a high level that provides enormous potential in terms of energy.

The solar energy program appears to be the most advanced and with the best opportunities for growth. Over the last decade, several solar parks have been built, providing more than 75 percent of the renewable energy produced locally.

But clean sources account for just five percent of the island’s electricity generation, an outlook that the authorities want to radically transform, setting an ambitious goal of 37 percent by 2030.

2022 Year in Review: As conflicts rage, international dialogue remains ‘the only hope’ for peace. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine creating global upheaval, and war, conflict, and unrest blighting all parts of the world in 2022. The UN stressed the importance of international dialogue, and announced plans for a new peace agenda. Credit United Nations

By Herbert Wulf
DUISBURG, Germany, Jan 11 2023 (IPS)

If our societies are to become resilient and sustainable, our priorities must change towards de-escalation, including in diplomacy and economy.

Putin’s war against Ukraine has not only damaged the international cooperative security architecture, it has permanently destroyed it. The Helsinki Act of 1975, the Charter of Paris of 1990 and the NATO-Russia Founding Act of 1997 created a basis for security cooperation in Europe – even ‘a new era of democracy, peace and unity’, as the Charter of Paris was euphorically titled. At least, that is how the heads of state saw it in the decade after the end of the Cold War.

Today, the war in Ukraine casts a long shadow over European and global security. Cooperation and collaboration have been replaced by military confrontation. Economic cooperation has been shattered, fear of dependency in the energy sector has led to a turning point and the concept of the positive effect of economic interdependence (‘change through trade’) has proven to be a misperception not only in the case of Russia but also with respect to the relationship of the USA and its Asian and European allies against China.

On the contrary, the turn towards confrontational, essentially military-based defence policies can be felt all over the world. Global military spending is at an all-time high of over two trillion US dollars.

Given the budget announcements for the next few years, this sum will continue to rise rapidly in the future. Nuclear weapons have come back into focus. After Russia’s surprising attack, which was hardly considered possible, it is understandable that now – as a first reflex – arms are being upgraded, that economic dependencies are being reduced and, of course, there are concerns about critical infrastructure.

It is not only about traditional military threats. The boundaries between war and peace have become blurred. Hybrid warfare, the use of mercenaries, cyber warfare, destruction of critical infrastructure, undermining social cohesion with disinformation campaigns and election interference, sanctions and other measures of economic warfare have become the standard of international conflict.

De-escalation on three levels

Is there a way out of the constant political, economic and above all military escalation? Despite the apparent hopelessness of an end to the power struggle with Putin, despite the escalated situation in East Asia, despite the many now less noticed wars and conflicts – be it Yemen, Syria, Afghanistan or Mali – it is necessary to think about the possible end of these wars. This should happen in parallel on three levels: security, diplomacy and economy.

With all understanding for the hectic procurement of new weapons now being commissioned in the sign of the turn of the times, it should be noted that security policy is more than defence with weapons. Even if there is currently no path in sight for a negotiated solution to the Ukraine war, such a solution should still be considered.

Ultimately, this war can only be ended through agreements at the negotiating table. Even though Russia started the war in Ukraine in violation of international law and is obviously committing war crimes, in the long term there can be no peace in Europe without Russia and certainly not against Russia.

Respect for Russian security interests, however difficult this may be because of Russian aggression and Putin’s fantasy ideas of Russia, is a prerequisite for de-escalation and serious negotiations.

Geopolitics that maximises only one’s own advantages leads to a dangerous dead end: the clash is pre-programmed.

Many countries rely on a militarily supported geostrategic foreign policy. China’s assertive military, foreign and economic policies are rightly viewed with concern. But the EU also wants to become militarily autonomous.

The US is trying to find partners for its policy conducted in competition with China. Other powers such as Australia, Japan or India are also positioning themselves in rivalry to China.

Instead of focusing on geopolitics, it is necessary to focus on values (democracy, human rights) and binding rules (international law), even if Putin is blatantly violating international law and ‘democracy’ is a foreign word in China. It is necessary to change the narrative significantly.

‘The West’, which demands rule of law and democracy with rigour, has all too often emphasised these values and principles in a know-it-all manner – ‘the West against the rest’. Often enough, double standards were applied and these values were not observed by ‘the West’ itself, such as in the so-called war on terror and the war in Iraq.

If these principles and projects for democracy and against autocracy are to be convincing, then one must completely abandon the concept of ‘the West’ and try to cultivate partnership-based – and not Euro-centric (or ‘Westro-centric’) – relations with democratic countries. In short, geopolitics that maximises only one’s own advantages leads to a dangerous dead end: the clash is pre-programmed.

Is the sole answer of ‘the West’ to keep the upper hand in the geopolitical competition by military means? Economically, it makes sense to reduce dependencies and diversify supply chains. This cannot be done through radical decoupling, but must be done gradually.

Obviously, the shock of the pandemic, but above all Russia’s possibilities to blackmail by stopping energy deliveries, have changed the priorities a little. But by no means all priorities. At no time since the early 1990s has the military burden on global income been as high as it is today: well over two per cent with a trend towards further increases.

The need for timely disarmament

Should the new era (Zeitenwende) consist only of a return to old-fashioned patterns of the military-supported use of force? Arms control is not taking place at the moment. The United Nations and other arms control forums have been pushed to the side. But arms control and de-escalation must already now be considered, even if the Kremlin is still opposed to them and the Chinese leadership is hardly responsive to them at present.

The continuation of the current course leads globally to a situation that is becoming more dangerous than the confrontation in the heyday of the Cold War, since the world is now also seriously endangered by the climate crisis.

Almost all arms exports are accounted for by the G20 and 98 per cent of nuclear warheads are stored in their arsenals.

Although the risks of climate change and armament are well known, there is currently no reversal of this trend in sight. The two crises are heading towards a seemingly unavoidable catastrophe. After the old-world order – with a halfway functioning multilateralism, compromises and give-and-take – was replaced by nationalist aspirations, which then led to a breach of international law in the case of Russia, by an emphasis on nuclear weapons and by the pursuit of supposed self-interest, the goals of the climate agreements are being missed and arms control treaties are being ground down.

Geopolitically ambitious powers such as China, India, Turkey, Brazil, South Africa or Saudi Arabia must be integrated into arms control efforts. Almost ‘naturally’, the G20 summits offer themselves as a forum for this.

The G20 initially focused their talks primarily on macroeconomic issues, but have since also negotiated on sustainable development, energy, the environment and climate change – but not seriously on global security policy.

However, the G20 member countries are responsible for 82 per cent of global military spending. Almost all arms exports are accounted for by the G20 and 98 per cent of nuclear warheads are stored in their arsenals. Today’s military-based arms efforts are concentrated in the G20.

Since the members of this exclusive G20 club are also the main perpetrators of climate change, they bear the main responsibility for the two current catastrophic trends.

Moreover, there are links between climate and arms policy that are most clearly reflected in the wars and violent conflicts of the last decades, the movements of refugees, migrant flows and corresponding counter-reactions.

If our societies are to become more resilient and more ecologically sustainable, then priorities must be changed, and then such a large share of resources cannot be permanently poured into the military – without any prospect of de-escalation. Our current shift must therefore contain more than the present rearmament.

Since the members of this exclusive G20 club are also the main perpetrators of climate change, they bear the main responsibility for the two current catastrophic trends. So, it is time to remind them of their responsibility and urge them to turn back. Perhaps the fact that India is chairing the G20 this year can be used to put security policy prominently on the forum’s agenda.

After all, India has refused to adopt Western sanctions against Russia, citing its own interests. In doing so, the government in Delhi – similar to some other countries in the G20 group (Brazil, South Africa and Turkey) – has kept an open door for potential talks. In order to enable a turning point towards a global security order and cooperation in the climate crisis, more is needed than the current clear military positioning of ‘the West’ in confrontation with Russia.

It is to be hoped that the leading powers of the Global South will strive for a rules-based, multilateral world order within the framework of the G20 talks. That there are possibilities for a security order that looks beyond Europe, as hinted at by Indian Foreign Minister Jaishankar, when he confidently stated: ‘Europe’s problems are the world’s problems, but the world’s problems are not Europe’s.’

Herbert Wulf, Director of the Bonn International Center for Conversion (BICC) from its foundation in 1994 until 2001, is currently a Senior Fellow at BICC and an Adjunct Senior Researcher at the Institute for Development and Peace, University of Duisburg/Essen where he was previously a Deputy Director.

Source: Source: International Politics and Society (IPS)-Journal published by the International Political Analysis Unit of the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung, Hiroshimastrasse 28, D-10785 Berlin

IPS UN Bureau

 

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The FSO Safer, moored off Yemen's west coast. Credit: UNRCO Yemen

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Jan 11 2023 (IPS)

The long-delayed salvaging of an abandoned tanker, the FSO Safer off the Yemeni coast, has been described as a humanitarian disaster waiting to happen.

The rusting vessel, according to the UN, has remained anchored for more than 30 years. But off-loading and maintenance of the vessel ceased back in 2015, following the start of a devastating civil war in Yemen.

Greenpeace International Project lead Paul Horsman told IPS: “We are staring a major disaster in the face.”

It is unacceptable, he argued, that UNDP, the UN body in charge of facilitating the Safer salvage operations, is creating delays through their internal bureaucracy, potentially adding massive increase in costs, jeopardising an agreement that took years of negotiations to reach, and putting at risk people of Yemen and the Red Sea.

For over a year, everyone has been warning of the imminent danger presented by the Safer. The solution is clear, the technology and expertise are available, ready and able, and the money is there, he added.

“If the Safer leaks or, worse, explodes, it is the UNDP that will carry the blame. They should just get out of the way and allow those who do know what they are doing to get on with the job,” declared Horsman.

Asked for a response, Russell Geekie, Senior Communications Advisor to the UN Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator for Yemen, told IPS under the leadership of the UN Resident Coordinator, UNDP has been working with other UN specialized agencies and partners to urgently implement the UN-coordinated plan to prevent a massive oil spill from the FSO Safer, off Yemen’s Red Sea coast.

The salvage operation, he said, will take place within the context of the crisis in Yemen, which greatly complicates the work to prepare and implement the operation.

“The salvage operation can only begin once a suitable vessel is in place to receive the oil from the FSO Safer”.

At present, he said, the main challenge to the start of the operation is the limited availability of suitable vessels to store the oil. The price in the global market for these vessels has sharply increased – largely as a result of the war in Ukraine.

“UNDP is working with a maritime broker and other partners to find the most suitable solution, fast-tracking processes whenever possible”, he added.

At a UN press briefing last September, David Gressly, UN Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator for Yemen, said the long-delayed salvage operations can begin, now that more than $75 million had been pledged to carry out the vital operation.

The briefing, on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly. was co-hosted by partners in the proposed rescue effort, namely, the Netherlands, the United States, and Germany.

Gressly said that once the pledges are fully converted into cash for the initial salvage operation, with more than $77 million promised from 17 countries, an extra $38 million was still needed for phase two – the installation of safe replacement capacity to secure the one million barrels of oil on board.

The UN plan is for this to be done through transferring the oil to a secure double-hulled vessel, as a permanent storage solution, until the political situation allows it to be sold or transported elsewhere, said Gressly.

But Greenpeace International has remained sceptical because the issue of the FSO Safer, it says, should have been dealt with months ago, before weather conditions deteriorated.

Last autumn, all seemed set fair for the salvage operation, and Smit Boskalis, one of the world’s most experienced salvage companies, was all set to get the operation underway, Greenpeace said.

“But this momentum appears to have now ground to a halt as the UNDP, who are supposed to be coordinating the operation, are creating serious and more expensive delays through their internal bureaucratic processes”.

Greenpeace said it has been campaigning for over two years to get the UN to deal with the FSO Safer and avoid a devastating oil spill in the area.

“We understand the UN FINALLY has the money, but UNDP (who are supposed to be coordinating the multi-donor effort but have no expertise in the oil/shipping issue) are going through internal bureaucratic processes which are creating serious delays and more expense due to daily inflating costs,” Greenpeace said.

According to the UN, fears have grown that unless the vessel is secured, it could break apart causing a devastating oil spill and other environmental damage, which the UN estimates would cost at least $20 billion just to clear up, as well as devastate the fragile economy of war-torn Yemen – triggering a humanitarian catastrophe.

Geekie said donors have generously deposited $73.4 million for the project, with another $10 million pledged. While preparatory work has begun, additional funds are still needed to fully implement the operation, which has the support of both the Government of Yemen in Aden and the Sana’a authorities.

Ensuring that the right team of experts is in place is critical to the operation’s success.

He said UNDP has already procured all the services of relevant experts and operational partners including a top-rated marine management consultancy company, a salvage operation company, a shipbroker, a maritime legal firm, an insurance broker company and oil spill experts for contingency planning to support this crucial mission.

Other UN agencies are also providing technical support to the operation.

Given the high potential environmental and humanitarian risks, the United Nations, including UNDP, is sparing no effort to address the challenges faced off the coast of Yemen and is dealing with this situation with the utmost urgency, he declared.

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

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To achieve a strong partnership with Africa, the U.S. administration will need to demonstrate that it is interested in Africa because the continent itself matters, not merely to address other U.S. international objectives. Djibouti Port. Credit: James Jeffrey/IPS

By Philippe Benoit and Bayo Oyewole
WASHINGTON DC, Jan 10 2023 (IPS)

 President Biden and leaders of 49 invited African countries and the African Union met in Washington last month for the U.S.-Africa Leaders Summit — a meeting that all parties hope will launch a strengthened partnership to deliver benefits for the peoples of both the U.S. and Africa.  

A strong Africa working in partnership with the U.S. is an important and all too often overlooked element of a robust U.S. geopolitical strategy. But to achieve this strong partnership, the U.S. administration will need to demonstrate that it is interested in Africa because the continent itself matters, not merely to address other U.S. international objectives.

What might Africa look like 20 years from now? A real possibility is a 2.4 billion-person continent with significantly diminished poverty and a large and growing middle class that can provide a vibrant economic partner for the U.S.

Unfortunately, there is skepticism within Africa, founded in historical precedent, as to U.S. intentions. For many years, as European powers withdrew from Africa following the decolonization of the continent, the U.S. and Soviet Union stepped in seeking to install “friendly” regimes.

Africa was an area of interest more because of its importance to the U.S./Soviet Union Cold War than on its own merits. The result was often misguided policies focused on political alignment rather than promoting improvements on the continent. As the Cold War waned, arguably so did some of the U.S. interest in Africa.

2008 saw the election of an American president of African descent, Barack Obama, generating excitement across the continent. In 2014, President Obama convened the inaugural U.S.-Africa Leaders Summit, the largest gathering at that time of U.S. and African leaders.

Unfortunately, there followed a general sense of disappointment as the summit failed to translate into strong action. Interestingly, the U.S. president at times most often praised for his support to Africa is President George W. Bush, who launched PEPFAR, the large-scale effort to fight AIDS focused on Africa that is also considered by some historians to be his greatest achievement.   

Last month’s summit took place on a complex international and geopolitical backdrop for the U.S., marked by the growing competition with an emerging China and, more recently, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. For some American commentators, the summit provided an opportunity to draw Africa closer to the U.S. in countering these challenges following a period of inactivity.

But Africa’s leaders have signaled that they don’t want to be viewed as mere tools for other geopolitical dynamics — including tensions with China and Russia — they want their concerns addressed on their merits. And the Biden administration was careful to not present last month’s summit as China/Russia-oriented. As explained by a CNN commentator: “In previewing this … [U.S./Africa] summit, American officials have been careful to avoid framing Africa as a pawn in a larger geopolitical strategy.”

This represents a wise strategy, especially as Africa has grown substantially both economically and politically over the last several decades and is poised for further growth. The GDP of Sub-Saharan Africa has grown five-fold from $400 billion 20 years ago to nearly $2 trillion today, and Africa’s total GDP now reaches nearly $3 trillion when North Africa is included. Similarly, a Brookings report estimates that the middle class of Sub-Saharan Africa will grow from 114 million in 2015 to 212 million in 2030. It is also the region where the largest growth in population is expected going forward: by 2050, an estimated quarter of the world’s people will be African.

African leaders themselves are not oblivious to the growing strategic importance of their own countries. Rich in agriculture, mineral and energy resources, and with a growing diaspora that funneled over $83 billion in remittances back to Africa in 2020 (far more than the $65 billion the continent received in official development assistance that same year), Africa has become an attractive destination for the astute investor. 

Newly empowered by the growth potential of their countries, many African leaders are demanding a stronger voice and greater respect internationally — and they’re getting it from China whose presence in Africa is ubiquitous. Similarly, Japan is re-asserting its engagement with Africa.

Last month’s U.S.-Africa Leaders Summit is a welcome effort in this context and there is much room for strengthening ties. For example, Africa accounts for only 1 percent of U.S. foreign trade, most of which is in petroleum imports from two countries. But African governments, for their part, will need to demonstrate their openness to advancing inclusive growth and political rights domestically.

Just as Asia has dominated the growth story of the last 50 years, will Africa be the emerging engine of growth for the next 50? This is something that analysts are contemplating. The recent analysis of the continent by the International Energy Agency posits a possible high growth “Africa Case” scenario in which the continent is able to exploit effectively its potential. 

Arguably, the U.S. and other advanced economies were caught off-guard by the rapid economic growth that took place in Asia. They were slow to anticipate it, recognize it and integrate its implications into their strategies. This is not to predict when it comes to Africa that it will inevitably replicate what Asia has done; however, the reality is: “maybe, who knows?” That’s a potential outcome that the U.S. should prepare for, and even nurture. 

What might Africa look like 20 years from now? A real possibility is a 2.4 billion-person continent with significantly diminished poverty and a large and growing middle class that can provide a vibrant economic partner for the U.S. To achieve this, a strong partnership between the U.S. and Africa is key and in the interest of both their peoples.

 

Philippe Benoit has over 25 years of experience working on international development, including previous positions at the World Bank where he focused on Africa.  He is currently research director for Global Infrastructure Analytics and Sustainability 2050. 

Bayo Oyewole, CEO of BayZx Global Strategic Solutions, currently provides independent advisory services to the African Development Bank. He previously held senior positions at the World Bank and the International Finance Corporation, including in the office of the Executive Director representing several African countries on the World Bank Board.

A flooded village in Matiari, in the Sindh province of Pakistan. Credit: UNICEF/Asad Zaidi

By Antonio Guterres
GENEVA, Jan 10 2023 (IPS)

For decades, I have been privileged to witness the boundless generosity and resilience of the Pakistani people amidst grave threats and upheaval.

From earthquakes and floods. To years of relentless terrorist attacks. To geopolitical nightmares like the wars in Afghanistan that have sent millions fleeing across the Pakistani border in search of safety over the decades — a trend that continues today.

But even through the darkest moments, the giving spirit of the Pakistani people has shone brightly. I have seen neighbours helping neighbours with food, water and shelter.

And I have seen Pakistani communities welcome Afghan refugees with open arms despite their scarce resources So my heart broke when I saw first hand the utter devastation of last summer’s floods.

No country deserves to endure what happened to Pakistan. But it was especially bitter to watch that country’s generous spirit being repaid with a climate disaster of monumental scale.

As the video we just watched showed, the epic floods were nothing short of a “monsoon on steroids” – as I mentioned in my visit – submerging one-third of the country, three times the area of my own country, Portugal.

A terrifying “wall of water” killed more than 1,700 people, injured thousands more, and affected a total of more than 33 million, displacing 8 million people.

It swept over roads, ruined millions of acres of agricultural land, and damaged or destroyed 2 million homes. And it pushed back 9 million people to the brink of poverty.

These are not numbers on a page. They are individual women, children and men. They are families and communities.

And under the leadership of the Government of Pakistan, the United Nations, donors and friends rallied to assist.

Tents, food, water, medicine and cash transfers were distributed. And a humanitarian response plan of $816 million was launched.

But all of that is just a trickle of support in the face of the growing flood of need.

At the same time, the people of Pakistan met this epic tragedy with heroic humanity.

From the first responders rushing to affected communities. To the doctors and nurses I met, fighting against time to save lives in overcrowded hospitals.

And I will never forget hearing the personal testimonies of women and men I met in September in the wake of the ruins.

They left their own homes and all their worldly possessions to help their neighbours escape the rising waters. They sacrificed all they had to help others and bring them to safety.

We must match the heroic response of the people of Pakistan with our own efforts and massive investments to strengthen their communities for the future.

Rebuilding Pakistan in a resilient way will run in excess of $16 billion — and far more will be needed in the longer term.

This includes not only flood recovery and rehabilitation efforts. But also initiatives to address daunting social, environmental and economic challenges.

Reconstructing homes and buildings. Re-designing public infrastructure — including roads, bridges, schools and hospitals.

Jump-starting jobs and agriculture. Ensuring that technology and knowledge are shared with Pakistan to support its efforts to build a climate-resilient future.

And throughout, supporting women and children, who are up to 14 times more likely than men to die during disasters, and face the brunt of upheaval and loss in humanitarian crises.

Women are consistently on the front lines of support during times of crisis — including in Pakistan. Their efforts are essential to a strong, equal, inclusive recovery.

It is crucial that women play their full part, as leaders and participants at every level, contributing their insights and solutions.

We also need to right a fundamental wrong. Pakistan is doubly victimized by climate chaos and a morally bankrupt global financial system.

That system routinely denies middle-income countries the debt relief and concessional funding needed to invest in resilience against natural disasters.

And so, we need creative ways for developing countries to access debt relief and concessional financing when they need it the most Above all, we need to be honest about the brutal injustice of loss and damage suffered by developing countries because of climate change.

If there is any doubt about loss and damage — go to Pakistan.

There is loss. There is damage.

The devastation of climate change is real. From floods and droughts, to cyclones and torrential rains.

And as always, those developing countries least responsible are the first to suffer.

Pakistan — which represents less than one per cent of global emissions — did not cause the climate crisis.

But it is living with its worst impacts.

South Asia is one of the world’s global climate crisis hotspots — in which people are 15 times more likely to die from climate impacts than elsewhere.

At the recent UN Climate Conference in Egypt, the world made some important breakthroughs.This includes progress on addressing loss and damage, speeding the shift to renewables, and an unprecedented call to reform the global financial architecture, particularly Multilateral Development Banks.

It also includes accelerating efforts to cover every person in the world with early warning systems against climate disasters within five years.

But we need to go much further. Countries on the frontlines of the climate crisis need massive support.

Developed countries must deliver on their commitment to double adaptation finance, and meet the $100 billion goal urgently, without delay.

And we need to reverse the outrageous trend of emissions going up, when they must go down to prevent further climate catastrophe.

Today’s conference is the first step on a much longer journey towards recovery and reconstruction in Pakistan.

The United Nations will be there for the long haul. The world must be, too.

And at every step, we will be inspired by the endurance and generosity of the people of Pakistan in this critical and colossal mission.

IPS UN Bureau

 

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Excerpt:

Antonio Guterres, the UN Secretary-General in an address to the International Conference on a Climate-Resilient Pakistan

Mariyeti Mpala (56) runs a thriving vegetable garden on a former dumpsite and its proceeds assist the community in creating incomes of their own. Credit: Ignatius Banda/IPS

By Ignatius Banda
Jan 10 2023 (IPS)

It’s a typical story in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe’s second-largest city. With the failure to provide services such as refuse collection by the local municipality, township residents dump garbage wherever they fancy, and with time, dumpsites become “official.”

For 56-year-old Mariyeti Mpala, however, a community dumpsite on land that belonged to the local municipality a stone’s throw away from her residence presented an opportunity to turn what had become an accepted eyesore into a thriving greening project.

She purchased the land in 2006, and it is here on a section of the former dumpsite where she has grown indigenous wild fruit trees at the one-hectare piece of land and runs a thriving vegetable garden.

She rotates planting tomatoes, peas, cabbages, onions and lettuce, with aquaculture being the latest addition to her project.

“I have put up three thousand bream fishlings,” Mpala said as she explained her long-term ambitions for the local community.

“I decided to apply for this piece of land as it was clear no one imagined the land was of any use as it was being used as a dump site,” Mpala told IPS.

While she may not be aware of it, Mpala’s project fits snugly into the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation’s Green Cities initiative, which among other things, “focuses on improving the urban environment, ensuring access to a healthy environment and healthy diets from sustainable agri-food systems, increasing availability of green spaces through urban and peri-urban forestry.”

“Urban agriculture is, therefore, an important part of the urban economy contributing significantly to urban food and nutrition security as the produce is less subject to market fluctuations,” said Kevin Mazorodze, FAO spokesperson.

And now, as more and more people in the country require food assistance, Mpala’s project comes as a relief for members of her community.

“I especially cater for the elderly who have no source of income and cannot fend for themselves,” Mpala told IPS.

“I sell some of the produce at low cost to those elderly women who buy in bulk so they can sell at a markup, so they raise funds for their own private needs,” she said.

FAO’s Green Cities Initiative seeks to promote more such activities, said Mazorodze.

“Urban and peri-urban agriculture is one of the key pillars of the initiative through which FAO intends to foster sustainable and climate-resilient practices and technologies to improve local food production,” Mazorodze told IPS.

Mpala sunk a borehole powered by solar energy in a country where abundant sunlight has been touted to promote clean energy.

Her work has not gone unappreciated by locals.

“She is a hard worker and has always looked out for us old people,” said Agnes Nyoni, a 70-something-year-old granny who lives not far from Mpala’s green project.

“I first knew her a few years ago when she collected our names to register for food parcels that included mealie meal, cooking oil and beans,” Nyoni told IPS.

Mpala’s work has also reached city offices, with the local councillor lauding her contribution towards uplifting the lives of the poor and food insecure.

“We actually need more of such initiatives being done by Mrs. Mpala as she is uplifting the lives of our people,” said Tinevimbo Maphosa, the local councilman.

“I understand she has also set up a fisheries project which I see as a sign of her community-building commitments. People need to be productive and stop complaining all the time about the situation in the country, and Mrs. Mpala’s work is part of what we need to see happening in our communities,” Maphosa told IPS.

The city already has numerous community gardens dotted across the city, with Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) supporting the municipality through the Green Cities Network.

The food she grows is organic, Mpala says, and local nutritionists believe at a time, food is becoming more expensive, and where people now eat whatever is available, consumers need healthier diets.

“Food grown in such nutrition gardens as that run by Mrs. Mpala is encouraged because it is fresh straight from the garden, and the elderly people she caters for certainly need healthier diets,” said Mavis Bhebhe, a government hospital nutritionist.

“What is required is to encourage such initiatives to spread the variety of the food they grow so that consumers get the most out of locally grown foods,” Bhebhe told IPS.

These sentiments come at a time when humanitarian agencies have raised concerns about levels of malnutrition across Africa as some parts of the continent battle acute food shortages.

In a country such as Zimbabwe, where formal jobs come far in between, homegrown initiatives such as the Dingindawo Gardens offer hope for young people seeking opportunities to take idle time off their hands, Maphosa believes.

“There is too much crime and drug abuse here, and with more projects from individuals like Mrs. Mpala, we could solve the community’s many problems,” Maphosa told IPS.
IPS UN Bureau Report

 

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Oscar Sosa cooks roast chicken and pork on an artisanal grill set up outside his small restaurant, Comedor Espresso, in the eastern Salvadoran city of San Francisco Gotera. Like many of the returnees, especially from the United States, he set up his own business, given the unemployment he found on his return to El Salvador. More than 10,000 people were deported to this Central American country between January and August 2022. CREDIT: Edgardo Ayala/IPS

By Edgardo Ayala
SAN FRANCISCO GOTERA, El Salvador, Jan 10 2023 (IPS)

While grilling several portions of chicken and pork, Salvadoran cook Oscar Sosa said he was proud that through his own efforts he had managed to set up a small food business after he was deported back to El Salvador from the United States.

This has allowed him to generate an income in a country where unemployment affects 6.3 percent of the economically active population.

“Little by little we grew and now we also have catering services for events,” Sosa told IPS, as he turned the chicken and pork over with tongs on a small circular grill.

The grill is located outside the premises, so that the smoke won’t bother the customers eating inside.

It’s not easy, he said, to return home and to not be able to find a job. That is why he decided to start his own business, Comedor Espresso, in the center of San Francisco Gotera, a city in the department of Morazán in eastern El Salvador.“You come back wanting to work and there aren’t any opportunities. The first thing they see in you is your age; when you’re over 35, they don’t hire you.” -- Patricia López

In this Central American country of 6.7 million people, “comedores” are small, generally precarious, neighborhood restaurants where inexpensive, homemade meals are prepared.

Sosa’s, although very small, was clean and tidy, and even had air conditioning, when IPS visited it on Dec. 19.

 

Skills and capacity abound, but opportunities are scarce

Sosa, 35, is one of thousands of people deported from the United States every year.

He left in 2005 and was sent back in 2014. He worked for eight years as a cook at a Mexican restaurant in the city of Pensacola, in the southeastern state of Florida.

A total of 10,399 people were deported to this country between January and August 2022, which represents an increase of 221 percent compared to the same period in 2021, according to figures from the International Organization for Migration.

The flow of undocumented Salvadoran migrants, especially to the United States, intensified in the 1980s, due to the 1980-1992 civil war in El Salvador that left some 75,000 dead and around 8,000 forcibly disappeared.

At the end of the war, people continued to leave, for economic reasons and also because of the high levels of violent crime in the country.

An estimated 3.1 million Salvadorans live outside the country, 88 percent of them in the United States. And 50 percent of the Salvadorans in the U.S. are undocumented.

Despite the problem of unemployment, Sosa was not discouraged when he returned to his country.

“I feel that we are already growing, we have five employees, the business is registered in the Ministry of Finance, in the Ministry of Health, and I’m paying taxes,” he said.

Obviously, not all deportees have the support, especially financial, needed to set up their own business.

The stigma of deportation weighs heavily on them: there is a widespread perception that if they were deported it is because they were involved in some type of crime in the United States.

A government survey, conducted between November 2020 and June 2021, found that 50 percent of the deportees manage to open a business, 18 percent live off their savings, their partner’s income or support from their family, and 16 percent have part-time or full-time jobs.

In addition, seven percent live on remittances sent home to them, two percent receive income from property rentals, dividends or bank interests, and seven percent checked “other” or did not answer.

Apart from some government initiatives and non-governmental organizations that provide training and funds for start-ups, returnees have faced the specter of unemployment for decades.

Many return empty-handed and owe debts to the people smugglers who they hired to get into the United States as undocumented migrants.

In the case of Sosa, his brothers supported him to set up Comedor Espresso.

He also received a small grant of 700 dollars to purchase kitchen equipment.

The money came from a program financed with 87,000 dollars by the Salvadoran community abroad, through the Salvadoran Foreign Ministry.

The initiative, launched in 2019, aims to generate opportunities for returnees in four municipalities in eastern El Salvador, including San Francisco Gotera.

This region was chosen because most of the deportees reside here, according to Carlos Díaz, coordinator of the program on behalf of the San Francisco Gotera mayor’s office.

But the demand for support and resources exceeds supply.

“There was a database of approximately 350 returnees in Gotera, but there was only money for 55,” Díaz told IPS.

More than 200 people benefited in the four municipalities.

David Aguilar and Patricia López (right) set up their own business, El Tuco King Carwash, after they decided to return to El Salvador. Their business is located in the eastern part of the country, a region where more than 50 percent of returnees live. CREDIT: Edgardo Ayala/IPS

 

Hope despite a tough situation

Out of necessity, David Aguilar and Patricia López, 52 and 42, respectively, also set up their own business, in their case a car wash, after deciding to return to El Salvador. It’s called Tuco King Carwash.

Like Sosa, they are from San Francisco Gotera. Aguilar left the country in November 2005 and López three months later, in February 2006.

They made the risky journey to try to give their young daughter – six months old at the time, and today 17 years old – a better future.

One leg of the trip was by sea, on the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Mexico.

“I spent 12 hours at sea, in a boat carrying about 20 people, who were all undocumented like me,” Aguilar said.

He added: “The only thing they gave us as lifesavers were a few plastic containers, in case the boat capsized.”

It was in Houston, in the state of Texas, that Aguilar found work in a car paint shop. The experience has been useful to him back in El Salvador, because in addition to washing cars, he offers paint jobs and other related services.

Aguilar and López were not deported; they decided to return because her father died in 2011. They came back in 2012, without having seen many of their dreams come true.

“You come back wanting to work and there aren’t any opportunities. The first thing they see in you is your age; when you’re over 35, they don’t hire you,” López said.

Before embarking on the trip to the United States, she had finished her degree as a primary school teacher, in 2005. But she never worked as a teacher because she left the following year.

“When I returned I applied to various teaching positions, but no one ever hired me,” she said.

Today, their carwash business, set up in 2014, is doing well, albeit with difficulties, because the couple have found that there is too much competition.

But they do not lose hope that they will succeed.

Former Salvadoran guerrilla David Henríquez, deported from the United States in 2019, shows the quality of the disinfectant he has just produced in his small artisanal workshop in San Salvador. With no chance of finding formal employment after deportation, he worked hard to set up his disinfectant business to generate an income. CREDIT: Edgardo Ayala/IPS

 

An ex-guerrilla chemist

David Henríquez, a 62-year-old former guerrilla fighter, was deported in 2019.

During the civil war, Henríquez was a combatant of the then insurgent Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN), but when peace came he decided to emigrate to the United States in 2003 as an undocumented immigrant.

With no hope of finding a formal sector job here, he began to make cleaning products, a skill he learned in the United States.

In the 12 years that he lived there, he worked for two years at the Sherwin Williams plant, a global manufacturer of paints and other chemicals.

“It was there that I began to discover the world of chemical compositions and aromas,” Henríquez told IPS during a visit to his small workshop in the Belén neighborhood of San Salvador, the capital.

Henríquez was producing a 14-gallon (53-liter) batch of blue disinfectant with the scent of baby powder. He also makes disinfectant smelling like cinnamon and lavender, among others. His business is called El Dave de los aromas.

His production process is still artisanal, although he would know how to produce disinfectant with high-tech machinery, if he had it, he said, “as I did at Sherwin Williams.”

He used a baby bottle to measure out the 3.5 ounces (104 milliliters) of nonylphenol, the main chemical component, used to produce 14 gallons.

Henríquez dissolved other chemicals in powder, to get the color and the aroma, and the product was ready.

He produces about 400 gallons a month, 1,514 liters, at a price of 3.50 dollars each.

“The important thing is to have discipline, work hard, to shine with your own effort,” he said.

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US President Joseph R. Biden Jr.addresses the general debate of the UN General Assembly’s 76th session. September 2021. Credit: UN Photo/Cia Pak

By Norman Solomon
SAN FRANCISCO, USA, Jan 9 2023 (IPS)

With 2023 underway, Democrats in office are still dodging the key fact that most of their party’s voters don’t want President Biden to run for re-election. Among prominent Democratic politicians, deference is routine while genuine enthusiasm is sparse.

Many of the endorsements sound rote. Late last month, retiring senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont came up with this gem: “I want him to do whatever he wants. If he does, I’ll support him.”

Joe Biden keeps saying he intends to be the Democratic nominee in 2024. Whether he will be is an open question — and progressives should strive to answer it with a firm No.

The next presidential election will be exceedingly grim if all the Democratic Party can offer as an alternative to the neofascist Republican Party is an incumbent who has so often served corporate power and consistently serves the military-industrial complex.

The Biden administration has taken some significant antitrust steps to limit rampant monopolization. But overall realities are continuing to widen vast economic inequalities that are grist for the spinning mill of pseudo-populist GOP demagogues.

Meanwhile, President Biden rarely conveys a sense of urgency or fervent discontent with present-day social conditions. Instead, he routinely comes off as “status-quo Joe.”

For the future well-being of so many millions of people, and for the electoral prospects of the Democratic Party in 2024, representing the status quo invites cascading disasters. A few months ago, Bernie Sanders summed up this way:

“The most important economic and political issues facing this country are the extraordinary levels of income and wealth inequality, the rapidly growing concentration of ownership, the long-term decline of the American middle class and the evolution of this country into oligarchy.”

Interviewed days ago, Sanders said: “It pains me very, very much that we’re seeing more and more working-class people voting Republican. Politically, that is a disaster, and Democrats have to recognize that serious problem and address it.”

But President Biden doesn’t seem to recognize the serious problem, and he fails to address it.

During the last two years, domestic policy possibilities have been curbed by Biden’s frequent and notable refusals to use the power of the presidency for progress. He did not issue many of the potential executive orders that could have moved the country forward despite Senate logjams.

At the same time, “bully pulpit” advocacy for workers’ rights, voter rights, economic justice, climate action and much more has been muted or nonexistent.

Biden seems unable or unwilling to articulate a social-justice approach to such issues. As for the continuing upward spike in Pentagon largesse while giving human needs short shrift, Biden was full of praise for the record-breaking, beyond-bloated $858 billion military spending bill that he signed in late December.

While corporate media’s reporters and pundits are much more inclined to critique his age than his policies, what makes Biden most problematic for so many voters is his antiquated political approach.

Running for a second term would inevitably cast Biden as a defender of current conditions — in an era when personifying current conditions is a heavy albatross that weighs against electoral success.

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

As the preeminent symbol of the way things are, Biden is all set to be a vulnerable standard-bearer in a country where nearly three-quarters of the electorate say they don’t like the nation’s current path.

But for now’ anyway, no progressive Democrat in Congress is willing to get into major trouble with the Biden White House by saying he shouldn’t run, let alone by indicating a willingness to challenge him in the early 2024 primaries.

Meanwhile, one recent poll after another showed that nearly 60 percent of Democrats don’t want Biden to run again. A New York Times poll last summer found that a stunning 94 percent of Democrats under 30 years old would prefer a different nominee.

Although leaning favorably toward Biden overall, mass-media coverage has occasionally supplied the kind of candor that Democratic officeholders have refused to provide on the record. “The party’s relief over holding the Senate and minimizing House losses in the midterms has gradually given way to collective angst about what it means if Biden runs again,” NBC News reported days before Christmas.

Conformist support from elected Democrats for another Biden campaign reflects a shortage of authentic representation on Capitol Hill. The gap is gaping, for instance, between leaders of the Congressional Progressive Caucus and the constituency — the progressive base — they claim to represent. In late November, CPC chair Pramila Jayapal highlighted the gap when she went out of her way to proclaim that “I believe he should run for another term and finish this agenda we laid out.”

Is such leadership representing progressives to the establishment or the other way around?

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 Spring 2023 by The New Press.

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Headquarters in Caracas of the state-owned National Telecommunications Commission, which has closed more than 100 radio stations this year for not complying with the requirements it has established, which NGOs criticize for eliminating windows of expression and information for communities. CREDIT: Conatel

By Humberto Márquez
CARACAS, Jan 9 2023 (IPS)

More than 100 radio stations were shut down by the Venezuelan government this year, accentuating the collapse of the media and further undermining the already meager capacity of citizens to stay informed.

In Venezuela’s provinces, “radio stations had become the last or only window for citizens to stay informed, and now they are being rapidly lost,” journalism professor Mariela Torrealba, co-founder of the media observatory Medianálisis, told IPS."We have a populatce that is not only impoverished, but deeply uninformed, with access mainly to the official media line, fertile ground for hoaxes or disinformation campaigns, and without the capacity to build public opinion references with other people.” -- Marianela Torrealba

The wave of closures carried out by the state-owned National Telecommunications Commission (Conatel) comes at the end of what the journalists’ unions call an “information desert” – a long decade of measures that have reduced the space for the rights of expression and information, in a country governed since 1999 by a self-styled leftist government with a gradual authoritarian drift.

Most of the stations closed this year are small private or community enterprises that did not meet all the requirements set by Conatel to maintain their permits, and they were often stations with programming segments that were critical of the national or local authorities.

Venezuela, a country of 28.5 million people, most of whom live in the north near the Caribbean Sea, had more than 100 printed newspapers a decade ago. But over 70 closed down because during years of exchange controls and state monopoly of foreign currency, it became more and more difficult to import printing paper.

Several of the main national newspapers, as well as the private television news station, were sold to firms that changed their editorial line. Radio stations critical of the government, such as the pioneer Radio Caracas Radio, founded in 1930, were unable to renew their operating licenses.

A number of media outlets moved to the internet, without achieving the audiences or readership of the past, and hundreds of journalists and other media workers who lost their jobs in the cascade of downsizing of media outlets other than state-owned ones also migrated to other countries or occupations.

Venezuela has lived through a decade of crisis marked by a recession that reduced its gross domestic product by up to 75 percent, several years of hyperinflation and sharp depreciation of its currency, harsh political clashes and social crisis, which pushed more than seven million Venezuelans to leave the country.

Journalists and other press workers take part in a protest in the plains area of Venezuela over the closure of radio stations. Most of the stations forced off the air operated in western and central states of the country. CREDIT: Sntp

 

Poor and uninformed

Torrealba said her organization holds small events with the public in the interior of the country who are asked how they stay informed, and “very few say through the media. Most of them say they use the social networks, but in a patchy manner because of weak internet access or lack of electricity.”

For example, in Yaritagua, a city in the center-west of the country, with a population of about 100,000 and an agricultural environment, 40 people, mostly older adults, were surveyed by activists in a soup kitchen in December.

Only three had email, and 14 said they had cell phones, but almost all of those devices actually belonged to a child, grandchild or neighbor.

“We have a populatce that is not only impoverished, but deeply uninformed, with access mainly to the official media line, fertile ground for hoaxes or disinformation campaigns, and without the capacity to build public opinion references with other people,” Torrealba said.

Radio Caracas Radio, a pioneer station with an editorial line critical of the government, had to go off the air in 2019 because the authorities refused to renew the frequency concession that it had used uninterruptedly since 1930. Every year dozens of radio stations in Venezuela are shut down. CREDIT: RCR

 

Goodbye information, hello music

Ricardo Tarazona, head of the National Union of Press Workers in Yaracuy, a small central-western state with some 700,000 inhabitants, told IPS that in his state “the closure of radio stations continues, with at least five this year, after 14 stations were shut down in 2014.”

“Seven of the 14 recuperated their signals and reopened, but without the news, opinion and community reporting spaces that they had before, and they dedicate themselves now to playing music and to advertising,” said Tarazona.

The remaining stations “are constantly called upon to chain themselves to the signal of VTV,” the government television station, “and no longer give space to producers and communicators dedicated to reflecting the voices of the communities,” he added.

Carlos Correa, director of the NGO Espacio Público, a defender of freedom of expression and the right to information, told IPS that many private radio stations “without needing to be told to do so by an official body, stick to the information provided by government TV.”

This is one of the explanations why the mandatory radio and television broadcasts that President Nicolás Maduro gave intensively, up to several times a week, during the first few years after he took office in 2013, have diminished. In practice, they are hardly necessary anymore.

View of the city of Maracaibo and the 8.7 km bridge that crosses the lake that bears its name. It is the capital of the western oil-producing state of Zulia, the most populated in the country, where 33 radio stations were closed this year. CREDIT: Megaconstrucciones

 

Dollars and ratings

Correa described this year’s shutdown of radio stations as part of a broader movement of groups aspiring to open radio stations and even networks of stations, and also blamed the influence of regional or municipal political leaders who wish to have their own media outlets or stations that are favorable to them.

Radio advertising, which plummeted in the second decade of this century along with the Venezuelan economy as a whole, has revived along with commercial activity, mainly in the context of a rebound in the Venezuelan economy of up to 12 percent this year, according to the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC).

The Venezuelan Chamber of the Broadcasting Industry issued a statement saying that “practically all of the radio stations closed by Conatel are clandestine,” and harm legally registered stations because they interfere with their signal.

One difficulty that dozens of radio stations have not been able to overcome, two radio broadcasters told IPS anonymously, is that Conatel sets numerous requirements and delays the evaluation of the documents presented by those requesting to regularize the use of their radio frequency.

They said that owners of closed radio stations often refrain from publicly voicing their criticism and complaints, waiting for Conatel to lift the punishment.

Correa pointed out that the technical study that radio stations are required to produce is estimated to cost between 5,000 and 10,000 dollars, a figure that is easy to cover for a station with resources but too costly for a small provincial one.

Espacio Público and other NGOs, as well as the National Journalists Association and the Press Workers Union, have criticized the fact that administrative procedures outweigh the need to guarantee the right to pluralistic information in the official evaluation of radio stations.

With the closure of radio stations, several thousands of workers have been left unemployed. For example, when Sonora 107.7 FM, which had been broadcasting for 20 years in the city of Araure, in the west-central plains of the country, went off the air on Dec. 12, 25 people lost their jobs.

Estimating the size of lost audiences is more difficult, but for example in the oil-producing state of Zulia (in the northwest bordering Colombia), home to nearly five million inhabitants and with a regional governor who is in the opposition, 33 radio stations were closed this year.

Marianela Balbi, of the Press and Society Institute, warned in a recent university forum that “total and partial news deserts have formed in regions where nearly 14 million Venezuelans live.”

The United Nations and the Organization of American States’ rapporteurs for freedom of expression also issued a joint statement on Aug. 30 warning about the situation of the media and journalists in Venezuela.

“The government-ordered closure of media outlets and/or seizure of their equipment increasingly limit citizens’ access to reliable information from independent sources, while accentuating a general atmosphere of self-censorship among the media,” they said in their statement.

Cholera ward in a health centre in Blantyre. Malawi has experienced a massive rise in cholera in the past year. Credit: Charles Mpaka/IPS

By Charles Mpaka
BLANTYRE, Jan 9 2023 (IPS)

On March 3, 2022, Malawi declared a cholera outbreak after a district hospital in the southern region reported a case. This was the first case in the 2021 to 2022 cholera season.

That single case was a warning for what would become Malawi’s worst cholera outbreak in decades.

For nearly a year now, cholera has gripped the country, with cases reported in all 29 districts and rising.

In an unprecedented occurrence, the cases rose sharply even through the summer months when cholera is least expected and the country least prepared for it.

As of January 4, 2023, up to 704 people were killed, and 21,000 cases were registered, government data shows. The case fatality rate stands at 3.4 percent, higher than the recommended rate of less than one percent.

Maziko Matemba, Executive Director for Health and Rights Education Programme (HREP), a local civil society organisation, says the situation is alarming and keeps the country in a “spiral of health crisis”.

“We started the year 2022 hoping to recover from the devastation of Covid-19. Then Tropical Storm Ana knocked us back in January. In March, cholera hit, and it hasn’t left for ten months, worsening as time passes. We have not had this kind of cholera outbreak for a long time,” Matemba tells IPS.

And there are growing fears that the disease could spread further now that the rainy season when it usually breaks out in Malawi, has begun.

Tropical Storm Ana has played a significant part in this outbreak, experts say. The rainstorm affected 16 districts, including Machinga, where the first cholera case was reported in March, and Nsanje, a flood-prone district and one of the first areas to report cholera cases in this outbreak.

A final situation report on the impact of the storm by the Department of Disaster Management Affairs found that over 53,000 latrines collapsed, while 337 boreholes, 206 water taps and eight gravity-fed water schemes were damaged in those 16 districts.

The department said this resulted in low sanitation coverage, limited access to safe water and poor hygienic practices, with some sites and communities reporting open defecation and contamination of the few available water sources.

The report said the situation increased the risk of cholera and other communicable diseases.

“As such, safe water supply, sanitation and hygiene services are immediately needed to address water, sanitation and hygiene issues. Furthermore, there is a need for rehabilitation of toilets to avoid infectious and waterborne diseases,” it said.

But Malawi has not fully recovered from this disaster since, Matemba says.

“So lack of recovery on water and sanitation infrastructure destroyed during that time have created good conditions for cholera to thrive. That comes into an existing frame of a weak prevention system. We usually take prevention rather casually,” he says.

Save Kumwenda, an environmental health expert, says alongside the water, sanitation and hygiene issues, there is also evidence of temperature and precipitation being influential in cholera outbreaks – with temperature driving epidemics and rainfall acting as a dispersal mechanism.

“Then there are also socio-economic conditions which are key drivers for outbreaks, as these increase pathogen exposure,” says Kumwenda, an associate professor at the Malawi University of Business and Applied Sciences (MUBAS).

He says the situation could worsen as the rainy season spreads the bacteria through contamination of water bodies and food.

The outbreak has hit the hardest Malawi’s two major cities of Lilongwe, the capital city, and Blantyre, the commercial city.

For instance, in the 7 days between December 29, 2022, and January 4, 2023, the country recorded 2,773 cases and 137 deaths. Out of these, Blantyre and Lilongwe contributed 47 percent of the new cases and 53 percent of the new deaths.

Kumwenda says this is the case because the two cities, struggling with solid waste management and aged sewer systems, have large peri-urban areas where residents depend on wells, boreholes and river water which is highly contaminated by faecal matter from toilets, broken septic tanks, broken sewer pipes and open defaecation.

He says most houses in these areas do not have adequate toilets, and many depend on sharing.

In addition, most of these households cannot afford to pay for water from waterboards for both drinking and domestic use. They, therefore, prioritise safe water for drinking only and unsafe water for other uses, which leads to contamination of foods and utensils and also contamination of the available safe water.

“The other reason for the high numbers of cholera cases in these cities is the high number of people who rely on piece works, and these rely on foods sold in markets where hygiene and sanitation conditions are compromised,” he says.

In response, the government has delayed by two weeks the opening of schools in the two cities and surrounding areas. Malawi opened the 2022 academic year on January 3.

Minister of Health Khumbize Kandodo Chiponda says in a statement that opening schools in the two cities would affect containment efforts for the outbreak, considering that cholera is passed from one person to another through contaminated food, water and inadequate sanitation facilities, a feature that exists in school settings.

“The converging of learners, especially in the nursery, primary and secondary schools, increases the chances of uncontrolled spread of the vibrio bacteria that causes cholera disease,” she says.

During the two weeks delay, the government will be conducting a thorough assessment and improving the water and sanitation situation in the schools in both cities.

For a national response, among other measures, the government says it will be opening more treatment centres in the cholera hotspots, employing more staff in the treatment centres, intensifying hygiene promotion and undertaking water quality assessments in targeted areas.

In November last year, Malawi rolled out the oral cholera vaccination reactive campaign targeting 2.9 million people aged one year and above.

Kumwenda says Malawi needed to act quickly to stop the outbreak before the onset of the rainy season as there was clear evidence of the impending emergency due to the rising of the cases through the hot months.

But for long-term control of the disease, Malawi needs to invest in research in order to come up with interventions based on evidence.

“This will ensure that we always invest in interventions which yield maximum benefits. We need to understand the main drivers of the epidemic and also identify reservoirs of the bacteria causing cholera. The knowledge of the reservoirs will help us to easily prevent the re-occurrence of the outbreak,” says Kumwenda, president of the Malawi Environmental Health Association, a group of environmental health experts.

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Conflicts and drought in the Sahel are impacting the development of Africa's ambitious Great Green Wall. Credit: UN Chad

By Busani Bafana
BULAWAYO, Jan 6 2023 (IPS)

Escalating conflict and climate change threaten the implementation of the Great Green Wall Initiative (GGWI), an ambitious land restoration project across Africa.

Promoters of the Great Green Wall have called for strong political will in engendering peace and increasing investment in environmental preservation, which the project launched 16 years ago seeks to enhance.

Competition over natural resources that are affected by climate change is fueling interstate conflicts, especially in West Africa, a region in the path of the Great Green Wall. The Wall is an Africa-led project to stop the march of desertification across Africa through the restoration of more than 100 million hectares of degraded land.

These trees will grow money

The project was initially aimed at planting trees in the Sahel region from Senegal in the west to Djibouti in the east, but its scope has been expanded to cover the restoration of degraded land in more than 20 countries with a view to sequestering 250 million tonnes of carbon and creating 10 million green jobs by 2030, the promoters of the project say.

To date, the project has covered more than 4 percent of the target 100 million hectares, but it is making good progress to make the deadline, says Paul Elvis Tangem, coordinator for the Great Green Wall Initiative at the African Union Commission.

According to a United Nations status report, the Great Green Wall needs to cover 8 million hectares of land a year at a cost of up to $4.3 billion if it is to meet the implementation deadline.

Tangem says the project, which has received multiple funding from governments, donors, and multilateral development banks, would need more than 50 billion US Dollars to be realized by 2030. Currently, about 27 billion US dollars has been pledged, a seemingly huge amount which Tangem says is not much if the return on investment at 1:7 US dollars in nature-based solutions is considered.

Tangem notes that the escalating impacts of climate change across Africa justify the speedy implementation of the project, which is now more than just planting millions of trees across Africa but a holistic approach to unlocking economic and ecological benefits for many countries.

Launched in 2007, the Great Green Wall is envisaged that the land restoration initiative will boost economic prosperity in the participating countries, create employment, reduce hunger and reduce conflict, which has been linked to a fight over access to and use of natural resources across the width of Africa.

“The various COPs from UNFCCC COP 15, the UNFCCC-COP27, and the CBDCOP15 have recognized the Great Green wall as an important project giving more impetus to mainstream it in all development plans and giving more visibility to it,” Tangem said, noting that the current climate change impacts and conflicts arising from natural resource use were challenges that the project was seeking to solve.

Restoring land, restoring peace

Conflicts and climate are the greatest threats to the full realization of the Great Green Wall currently, Tangem explained, adding that the impact of drought across Africa has justified the importance of the GGWI, which has garnered global attention as a solution to land degradation, drought, and desertification.

“The main challenges we have now, especially for farmers, is the issue of grazelands which is the biggest push of conflict in the drylands of Africa,” Tangem told IPS in an interview, highlighting that there was high competition for rangelands between countries and within countries, especially in West Africa where part of the Great Green Wall runs. He cited the conflict in the Tigray region as less political and more environmental.

“It is the competition for land, the politics of it is what we see, but the underlying causes are natural resources,” said Tangem. “People do not want to speak the truth, but many conflicts in Africa are basically in the drylands, which are the areas most vulnerable to climate change and where the GGWI is focusing on. So we have a challenge.”

Remarking that it was now impossible to work in Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger Republic, Chad, Nigeria, Ethiopia, and Eritrea as a result of conflict, Tangem underscored the need to restore peace by restoring the environment.

The biggest challenge we are having today is security,” Tangem observed. “Conflicts are a big, big challenge. Most of the challenges that are happening now are because of competition for natural resources, the use of benefit sharing of the scarce resources from water, fertile land, fishing, and pastoral lands.”

When the Great Green Wall Initiative started, there was skepticism that it was a ‘white elephant’, Tangem said, but now it was the project to support.

Droughts are a growing threat to global food production, particularly in Africa. Credit: Busani Bafana/IPS

In November 2022, global leaders launched the International Drought Resilience Alliance to give political impetus to making land’s resilience to drought and climate change a reality by 2030. The Alliance is a boost to the Great Green Wall Initiative.

Droughts are hitting more often and harder than before, up nearly by a third since 2000. Climate change is expected to cause more severe droughts in the future. Recent droughts in Australia, Europe, the western United States, Chile, the Horn, and Southern Africa show that no country or region is immune to their impacts, which run into billions of dollars each year, not to mention human suffering, says Ibrahim Thiaw, Executive Secretary, United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD).

The United Nations has recognized the Great Green Wall Initiative as one of 10 pioneering efforts to revive the natural world, designating it as one of its inaugural World Restoration Flagships.

Tangem said this recognition of the Great Green Wall Initiative as a key programme for land restoration had elevated it beyond being an African project.

“When people were still talking about the reality of climate change, Africa saw the need to respond to this challenge through this programme. The project has taken desertification and drought to the global agenda,” Tangem said.

Inger Andersen, Executive Director of the United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP), warns that the world cannot turn a blind eye to the impacts and effects of degraded lands in places like the Sahel, where millions face multiple vulnerabilities, including climate shocks and conflict. Action to tackle the drought is of utmost urgency, Andersen stressed.

Noting that desertification was becoming a massive crisis, Ursula Gertrud von der Leyen, President of the European Commission, which is part of the International Drought Resilience Alliance, said the alliance is focusing on finding nature-based solutions and the right technology and societal approaches to prevent further land degradation.

Presidents Pedro Sánchez Pérez-Castejón of Spain and Macky Sall of Senegal rallied world leaders to create the Alliance as “a specific solution for the United Nations” to the impacts of climate change. In a joint communication, they declared that building resilience to drought disasters was the way to secure the gains made on sustainable development goals, particularly for the most vulnerable people.
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UNDEF was created by UN Secretary-General Kofi A. Annan in 2005 as a United Nations General Trust Fund to support democratization efforts around the world. It was welcomed by the General Assembly in the Outcome Document of the 2005 World Summit (A/RES/60/1, paragraphs 136-137)PDF. UNDEF funds projects that empower civil society, promote human rights, and encourage the participation of all groups in democratic processes.
 
The large majority of UNDEF funds go to local civil society organizations. In this way, UNDEF plays a novel and unique role in complementing the UN's other, more traditional work -- the work with Governments -- to strengthen democratic governance around the world. UNDEF subsists entirely on voluntary contributions from Governments; in 2021, it reached almost 220 million dollars in contributions and counts more than 45 countries as donors, including many middle- and low-income States in Africa, Asia and Latin America. In 15 Rounds of Funding so far, UNDEF has supported over 880 two-year projects in more than 130 countries Credit: United Nations

By Simone Galimberti
KATHMANDU, Nepal, Jan 6 2023 (IPS)

The UN Democracy Fund, also known as UNDEF, is an interesting tool but it is too small and lacking resources to mark a difference.

How can the UN do a better job at promoting democracy? This is a key question that high-ranking policy makers at the UN should ask themselves.

It is a subject that makes many uncomfortable because democracy still remains a contested topic within the UN due to the resistance by some of its member states which have not adopted standard democratic practices in their way of governing.

Yet, it is worthy for the UN to try to play a bigger role in its promotion as democracy itself is too important an issue to be neglected despite the high sensitiveness around it.

If you think well, it is almost a miracle that the UN is celebrating International Day of Democracy that falls every year on the 15 of September.

It is, without questions, one of the most undeterred and less prominent celebrations endorsed by the UN and the lack of visibility of the day might not be a mere coincidence. Finding ways and tools to elevate democracy at the UN is a conundrum that is hard to untangle.

For example, how can the UN Democracy Fund also known as UNDEF be more effective and more inclusive?

https://www.un.org/democracyfund/news

Credit: United Nations

UNDEF is one of the most flexible programs promoted by the UN and probably one of the best, if not the most suitable to reach out members of the civil society that often are working in dire conditions under dire legislative and regulatory environments and, consequentially, are starving for funding.

From gender empowerment in politics to press freedom to dialogues about democracy and fights against corruption, we have a program that could do wonders if expanded and enhanced.

UNDEF recently closed its annual round of applications (its 17th since its foundation) and once again as every year, it gained some spotlights before returning to the shadows of international development.

While its application process is relative straightforward for being a UN program, its review process is overly complicated and based on multiple vetting layers that, at least apparently, seem to be overlapping each other and unnecessary.

Yet, even when a project is selected, the most difficult part comes when, as the web site of UNDAF explains, “shortlisted applicants are now required to complete the final stage of the selection process: negotiating a formal project document with UNDEF. Only upon successful conclusion of this process will the project be approved for funding”.

This last procedure is simply unhelpful and certainly does not make life easier for any organization that gets selected.

Perhaps such a complex governance structure exemplifies the exceptionality of the UNDAF that, it is important to note, is not embedded in any official programs nor is led by any UN agency but it is rather something on its own standing.

It’s autonomy is not itself a negative factor, actually it can even bring more effectiveness by leveraging its nimbleness but only if this approach comes with intention and an overall purpose to allow it to be more agile and independent.

Instead, I am afraid the way UNDAF is run just the result of a difficult environment, a sort of expedient that allows to “manage” something strategically meaningful but that, at the same time, is also something that is seen critically by those members of the UN that have not embraced democracy as their system of government.

The fact that the fund and the money it manages is just a drop in the ocean might confirm the latter option. According to its web site, UNDEF “receives an average of about 2,000-3,000 proposals a year and only some 50 are selected”.

It is not surprising that only 7 full staff are managing the entire fund with the precious support of an equal number of interns.

Moreover, the UN should also not shy away from supporting innovative practices in the field of democracy. For example, it should embrace deliberative democracy or any other forms of bottom- up policing aimed at giving a voice and, importantly, an agency to the citizens.

It is certainly something less controversial than liberal democracy that is put in question by countries like China.

Indeed, even a country like China with its one-party system of governance has in the past (especially in the pre-President Xi’s era) embraced, at least partially, bottom-up participation through deliberation.

One way for the UN to play a bigger role in supporting democratic practices is to champion them from the angle of good governance and deliberative practices can be very useful on this regard. This was the main task assumed in the past by the UNDP.

What is this program, one of the biggest and most resourceful, doing at the moment to advance democracy? What are its plans for the future?

In its attempt to enable transformative changes across all the SDGs, something that as the UNDP also points out, requires structural transformations, there is the risk to lose the focus on good governance, once a strength of the program.

In its new Strategic Plan 2022-2025, governance is one of the six so called “Signature Solutions” and it is at the center of holistic, whole of the government “systems approach” that is supposed to ensure structural changes.

Still. if you read the definition of governance in the plan, you might wonder how important democracy and human rights are.

“Helping countries address emerging complexities by “future-proofing” governance systems through anticipatory approaches and better management of risk”.

This is a definition that might come from the blueprint of a top global consultancies that has to do business with autocratic regimes rather than the “formula” to promote true democratic change.

It is not, therefore surprising that in the entire document, the word “democracy” does not appear even one. Unsurprisingly UNDP almost never runs civil society or democracy enhancing funding directly benefiting local grassroots organizations.

Perhaps only the UNDP Governance Centre in Oslo, currently in search of a new strategic direction, could help its “parent” organization to re-discover an interest on democracy.

Another key agent within the UN system for the promotion of democracy via the strengthening of human rights is, obviously, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner on Human Rights.

The new High Commissioner, Volker Türk, a veteran of the UN and a national of Austria, initially was thought to be the unassuming candidate that would not make much noise in the international community.

Instead from his initial statements, Türk is taking head on some of the most controversial and sensitive and yet very important files.

Perhaps, OHCHR as the organization is known, could take a very important role in working more directly with the civil society to advance human rights and with them, democracy.

UNDAF’s role and mandate could be boosted and supported through a strategic partnership with OHCHR or even through multi-funding arrangements from other agencies and programs within the UN system.

Let’s not forget that it was then UN Secretary-General Kofi A. Annan that back in 2005 came up with the idea of a special thematic fund promoting democracy.

The fund remains within the mandate of the current Secretary General, Antonio Guterres who leads the Advisory Board of the UNDAF.

Guterres should explore all the options to strengthen UNDAF as currently it is structured, a United Nations General Trust Fund but with much broader resources or as a standing alone entity something that hardly can materialize.

Paragraphs 135 and 136 of UNGA Resolution 60/1. 2005 “World Summit Outcome” welcoming the creation of UNDAF, reinforce its rationale:

“Democracy is a universal value based on the freely expressed will of people to determine their own political, economic, social and cultural systems and their full participation in all aspects of their lives”.

Surely, UNDAF should complement and reinforce the work of UNDP and OHCHR as it explained in its TOR.

What at the end can make the difference can be the willpower and commitment of Guterres to include democracy in his ambitious reform agenda of the United Nations.

The writer is the co-Founder of ENGAGE, a not-for-profit NGO in Nepal. He writes on volunteerism, social inclusion, youth development and regional integration as an engine to improve people’s lives.

IPS UN Bureau

 

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APDA organizes regular conferences bringing together various parliamentarians from Asia, Africa, the Americas, and Europe to address critical issues on population and development – including youth employment and other issues arising from ICPD25 take center stage. Here Bridget Bedu takes a test in computational electronics as her daughter Giovana plays under the desk at the National Vocational Technical Institute training center. Credit: IMF Photo/Andrew Caballero-Reynolds

By Cecilia Russell
JOHANNESBURG, Jan 6 2023 (IPS)

Many Ghanian Members of Parliament (MPs) champion adolescent reproductive health rights to stop the practice of child marriage, which is prevalent in some areas of the country even though the country’s Constitution and Children’s Act outlaw it, Dr Rashid Pelpuo (MP) told IPS in an exclusive interview.

Pelpuo, who is President of the African Parliamentarians Forum on Population and Development, also said it had become “normal practice” for MPs to work to support youth and “lead discussions on issues of family planning and adolescent reproductive health at youth sensitization programmes.”

He told IPS the Presidents of the Pan African Parliament (PAP) and the African Parliamentarians Forum on Population and Development recognize: “Our shared interest in, commitment to, and existing cooperation on population and development issues such as sexual and reproductive health and rights, including family planning and HIV/AIDS…” This commitment is expected to be signed in a memorandum of understanding in 2023.

President of the African Parliamentarians Forum on Population and Development and Member of Parliament Dr Rashid Pelpuo.

Here are excerpts from the interview:

IPS: While Ghana’s Constitution and its Children’s Act both outlaw child marriage, according to a study, 1 in 5 girls get married before age 18 and 1 in 20 before they are 20. These marriages are more common in the northern regions.

How are parliamentarians dealing with these issues?

RP: The issue of child marriage in Ghana is traceable to an age-old tradition of marrying women early ‘before they are spoiled’ – a woman who has ‘known a man’ before marriage was a disgrace to the family that has brought her up. Though this situation no longer exists, the practice of early marriage of women continues, especially in rural Ghana.

Parliamentarians of the Population and Development Caucus and others are strong advocates against this practice both in and outside Parliament.

According to the Ghanaian 1992 Constitution and the Children’s Act, it is unlawful to marry a girl before she’s 18 years of age. In a few cases when such laws are violated by a man who marries before the minimum age or even before the girl has finished her basic education, MPs will normally work with law enforcers to free the girl and help prosecute the culprit.

A good number of MPs have signed on as champions of adolescent reproductive health and rights and are key supporters of family life education. This year alone, MPs have worked with the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) in key locations to interact with young people and address their health and education challenges by referrals.

IPS: West Africa’s population accounts for about 30% of Africa’s population. From roughly 367 million people today, it is expected to increase to almost 570 m by 2035. However, the region is yet to benefit from the ‘demographic dividend.’ Many say that a high population of youth is a challenge for the government; there is a high cost of health care, education, and other services and high levels of unemployment. How are parliamentarians working towards policies that may reduce fertility rates, improve education, family planning, etc.?

RP: The fertility rate in Ghana is 3.696 births per woman (Ghana Statistical Service, 2022), as against the fertility rate of Africa at 4.212 births per woman. Ghana’s fertility rate has been consistently declining since 1985 and is expected to be 2.9 births per woman in 2025. As part of efforts to sensitize the public about unplanned birth and avoidance of teenage pregnancy, Parliamentarians often interact with youth leaders along with experts on the issue of reproductive health.

For example, in November last year, MPs interacted with young people about issues with their reproductive health. Also, at the beginning of December 2022, on the occasion of the birth of the world’s 8 billionth child, MPs held a workshop, with the UNFPA sponsorship, to view the implications of having a global population of 8 billion on Ghana.

After that programme, the MPs pledged to revise their annual advocacy on Ghana’s population growth and concerns to quarterly advocacy through statements on the floor of Parliament. The thrust of MPs’ work in supporting the education and awareness of the youth is in policy advocacy and direct interaction with the youth. It has become normal practice for MPs to lead discussions on family planning and adolescent reproductive health issues at youth sensitization programmes.

A chunk of the programme of the African Parliamentarians Forum, often sponsored by the Asian Population and Development Association (APDA) and the UNFPA, centers on issues of family planning, reproductive health, and universal health. This appears to be a direct response to the high fertility rate of sub-Saharan Africa at 4.6 births per woman (World Bank Report, 2021). Knowing the frequent occurrence of teenage pregnancy and unplanned births throughout the continent, it has become a necessary effort to sink home the need for policy advocacy in these areas for all African countries.

In a memorandum, yet to be signed by the Presidents of the Pan African Parliament and the African Parliamentarians Forum on Population and Development, Parliamentarians recognized “our shared interest in, commitment to, and existing cooperation on population and development issues such as sexual and reproductive health and rights including family planning and HIV/AIDS…”

IPS: In Ghana, the maternal mortality rate is shrinking. Figures quoted online are that it is 308 per 100,000. It is much higher in other countries in the region; in Ghana’s neighbor Nigeria, the rate stands at 917/100,000. While both seem to be going down (which is good), they are a long way from the 70/100,000 in the SDG 3 targets. What are parliamentarians working toward to improve this in Ghana? Is there regional cooperation to address this?

RP: Parliamentarians often make policy statements on maternal health directed at the ruling government to address the concern about the unacceptable situation of high maternal deaths in Ghana. Issues on maternal death are paramount in our health policies. Ghana has introduced a Free Maternal Health Care Policy (FMHCP) on which pregnant women register for free health insurance and receive free medical care. Parliamentarians have played an advocacy role in developing this policy and have been reaching out to women who may not be aware of it to help them take advantage of it. The impact has been very positive (and shows) in annual improvements in maternity health.

There has been regional cooperation in discussing and sharing information on Universal Health Care and reproductive health and rights. The African Parliamentarians forum has had a number of meetings and conferences with their counterparts from other regions, especially with the Asian and European Parliamentarians forums that touch on issues on reproductive health and policy sharing. Major cooperation in areas of maternal health is recorded in various international conferences that tackle the problems of high maternal mortality. Such conferences include Partnership for Maternal, Newborn and Child Health (PMNCH), New Delhi, India, in December 2018, and Women Deliver (Africa Parliamentarians), Vancouver, Canada, in June 2019. Such arenas of cooperation give a good comparative understanding of how various countries across regions tackle reproductive health challenges.

IPS: Could you elaborate on APDA’s role in facilitating regional cooperation on the ICPD25 programme of action?

The Asian Population and Development Association (APDA) was established in Japan as a Non-Governmental Organization directed at addressing the challenges posed by issues on population and development. It serves as the Secretariat of the Japan Parliamentarians Federation for Population (JPFP) and directs its focus on the role of the Japanese MPs and their counterparts in Asia, Africa, Arab and other regions. APDA’s research focuses on three main areas, which are gender, health, and social policy issues. Since the establishment of the ICPD 25 as a focus area of intervention, APDA has organized various programmes.

APDA often organizes conferences in Asia, Africa, and the Middle East under ICPD 25 thematic areas. These conferences often bring together various parliamentarians from Asia, Africa, the Americas, and Europe to address critical issues on population and development. Issues such as youth unemployment and other goals of ICPD25 are center stage at the conferences.

Indeed each year, APDA, in collaboration with the UNFPA, organizes annual conferences on ICPD25. In recent times APDA has organized webinars and conferences for regional participation both in June, July and September 2022.

In September 2022, the conference with the theme “The Role of Parliamentarians in Realizing the ICPD25 Commitments” was patronized by Asian and African Parliamentarians.

Another follow-up meeting on ICPD25 Commitments was held in June 2022 in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. It was supported by UNFPA ESARO and Japan Trust Fund (JTF) with cooperation from the International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF). More than 100 participants, including parliamentarians, officers of national committees on population and development, and UN experts, attended.

In effect, APDA has always supported the implementation of the ICPD25 in various ways but mostly through international conferences that ensure regional cooperation and participation.

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

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F-16A fighter aircraft. Credit: US Air Force photo

By Natalie Goldring
ARLINGTON, Virginia, Jan 5 2023 (IPS)

More than 10 months since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the United States and its allies continue to seek the most effective military, humanitarian, political, and economic means of assisting Ukraine.

In his December 2022 visit to Washington, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky reportedly reiterated his desire for advanced US weapons; Ukraine’s wish list includes Abrams tanks and F-16 fighter aircraft. Fulfilling President Zelensky’s request for US combat aircraft and tanks would be a significant escalation of the US military commitment to Ukraine and could further increase the risks associated with that commitment.

The situation is fraught, with threats of conventional war beyond Ukraine’s borders and even possible nuclear weapons use, as well as uncertainty about weapons suppliers’ ability to ensure that the weapons transferred reach their intended users and are not retransferred.

Danger of transferring weapons and munitions that could be used to attack Russia

The US weapons that have been transferred to Ukraine so far have been largely defensive in nature; these include anti-aircraft and anti-armor systems. The US has reportedly not provided the munitions with the longest range for systems such as rocket launchers, making it more difficult for Ukrainian forces to strike far beyond the Ukrainian-Russian border.

In contrast, weapons such as battle tanks and fighter aircraft can be used in offensive roles that may increase the likelihood of Russian reprisals against the United States and our European allies. In particular, providing weapons that can reach deep into Russian territory may increase the likelihood of escalation, with Russia potentially responding by attacking countries in Europe that have assisted with Ukraine’s war effort.

Through its actions, the US government implicitly seems to assume that the Russian government will perceive these transfers the way that the US government wants them to — as defensive in nature. There’s no guarantee that this will be the case. And even if the Russian government does not deliberately choose escalation, it may still occur because of accident, mistake, or miscalculation. Focusing US aid on defensive weapons and shorter-range munitions is likely to decrease this risk.

Insufficient accountability for weapons transfers

Far too often, the US government transfers weapons and ammunition without putting sufficient systems in place to ensure accountability for their storage, deployment, and use. Without robust controls, these weapons can be stolen and sold to the highest bidder or transferred to other conflicts.

The capture of US weapons by Russia would present a particular threat — the potential disclosure of US technology through Russian reverse engineering of US weapons systems.

The hurried nature of transfers to Ukraine further increases the likelihood of diversion. Continuing to expand the number and capability of US weapons provided may also exacerbate these risks.

In addition, even if US military forces are not deployed in Ukraine, in the future they could still face US weapons that were diverted to other conflicts.

The risk of diversion can be reduced by verifying that only authorized users receive US weapons and ammunition, that they carefully track the deployment and use of the weapons, and that weapons and their ammunition are securely stored when not deployed. In addition, diversion to other conflicts can be reduced by destroying the weapons and ammunition that remain when the conflict ends.

US even more dominant in assistance to Ukraine than in global conventional weapons transfers

According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), the United States continues to be the world’s largest supplier of conventional weapons, supplying nearly 40 percent of the global value of weapons transferred from 2017-2021. This was virtually identical to the total value of weapons transferred by the next four countries during the same period (Russia, France, China, and Germany). US dominance in aid to Ukraine is even more pronounced.

In conjunction with President Zelensky’s visit to Washington, the US Department of Defense announced the 28th drawdown of US defense stocks to aid Ukraine since August 2021. The press release acknowledging the latest commitments indicated that the US has provided more than $21 billion in security assistance since the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The omnibus spending bill that President Biden signed in late December 2022 contains $47 billion in additional military, economic, and humanitarian assistance.

In contrast, the UK Ministry of Defence (MOD) issued a press release on 30 December 2022 stating that the UK had provided £2.3bn of military aid in 2022, and that this was second only to the United States. The MOD also indicated that they planned to provide the same level of funding in 2023. This commitment is a small fraction of US assistance.

As with other US transfers of conventional weapons, transfers to Ukraine risk diversion to other countries and other conflicts. US dominance of the supply of weapons means that it also holds a disproportionate responsibility for the use and potential misuse of the weapons.

Danger of nuclear weapons use

During the Cold War, one of the most significant concerns was that a conventional war might escalate to the nuclear level. Analysts and political leaders alike recognized while this could take place because of deliberate action, it could also occur because of accident or miscalculation.

This likelihood of nuclear use persists today, and is arguably higher as a result of Russian President Putin’s threat to use all means of military force in the conflict in Ukraine.

If Russia is losing the conventional war, they may decide to turn to nuclear weapons to try to change the war’s outcome. The US providing Ukraine with weapons designed primarily for offensive use may increase this risk.

The continued use of nuclear threats is yet another illustration of the danger of nuclear weapons. As long as nuclear weapons exist, this danger continues. The Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons provides a roadmap for escaping this existential threat.

Danger of ignoring long-term risks in favor of potential short-term gains

Taken together, these risks highlight the danger of giving priority to potential short-term political and military gains over longer-term negative consequences.

Further weapons transfers to Ukraine need to be subjected to rigorous analysis of potential long-term consequences before the transfers occur. Saying yes to Ukraine may be the easier response from a short-term perspective.

For example, saying yes is likely to enhance the political connection between the US and Ukraine, and military contractor’s profit from weapons sales. However, that response may well endanger US security interests in the longer term.

Dr. Natalie Goldring, a Visiting Professor of the Practice in the Sanford School of Public Policy at Duke University, also represents the Acronym Institute at the United Nations on conventional and nuclear disarmament issues.

IPS UN Bureau

 

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Roma community protest in the Serbian city of Nis after dozens of families in a settlement in the city had their electricity cut off. Credit: Opre Roma Srbija

By Ed Holt
BRATISLAVA, Jan 5 2023 (IPS)

As European households brace for energy shortages this winter and leaders draw up support packages to help people heat homes in the coming months, experts fear that the largest minority on the continent, the Roma, will be left behind.

Many of the 12 million Roma in Europe have a low standard of living, and even before the energy crisis, energy poverty was rife among their communities.

Roma leaders and rights organisations say the current crisis has only deepened the problem and are calling for governments to ensure that one of the continent’s most vulnerable groups gets the help they need this winter and beyond.

“EU leaders and policymakers must ensure that energy policies already agreed, or any agreed in future, must be tailored and implemented in such a way that the most vulnerable, including the Roma, can access and benefit from them,” Zeljko Jovanovic, director of the Open Society Roma Initiatives Office at the Open Society Foundations (OSF), told IPS.

Roma living in Europe are among the most discriminated and disadvantaged groups on the continent. In many countries, significant numbers live in segregated settlements where living conditions are often poor, and extreme poverty is widespread.

Energy poverty is also common. It is estimated that at least 10% of the roughly 6 million Roma living in EU countries have no access to electricity at all.

Roma protest after electricity supplies to 24 families in the ‘12 February’ Roma settlement in the southern Serbian city of Nis was cut off over unpaid bills. There are calls for European countries to take into consideration the plight of the Roma during the energy crisis. Credit: Opre Roma Srbija

Meanwhile, where utilities are available, many struggle to afford them.

Rising energy prices this year have exacerbated the problem. But while governments have rolled out help in the form of one-off payments and other support for families and businesses to pay energy bills, this aid is often not filtering through to Roma despite the minority being among those most in need, say rights activists.

Unemployment in Roma communities is often high, with only one in four Roma aged 16 years or older reporting being employed, and many earn money working in the grey or black economies. But because of this, they often struggle with accessing state support schemes. This is especially true for measures approved to provide financial aid during the energy crisis.

“Even before the energy crisis, there was a problem with energy poverty in Europe, and for the Roma, this was even more so because so many were not in the formal system.

“Measures [approved] for the energy crisis are made for those in the formal system. Many Roma are not in that system – they are unemployed, or not formally registered, or earning money and paying into the social welfare system – so they cannot access those measures,” explained Jovanovic.

Roma NGOs working in some countries say they have already seen these problems.

In Romania, which has a Roma population of 1.85 million according to the Council of Europe, a programme to help the vulnerable with energy payments has been launched.

But Alin Banu, Community Organiser at the Aresel civic initiative, told IPS some Roma are unable to access it precisely because “they work in the grey or black economy and don’t have the right documentation of social insurance payments, wages etc.”.

Meanwhile, even those who are eligible for help are often being denied it, he claimed. He said that some municipalities had put conditions on receiving help to pay energy bills – for example, evidence of historical tax debt, or car ownership, makes an individual ineligible for the help.

The group says this is illegal.

“We have solved this problem in some cases, but most Roma will not complain about this because often they simply will not know it is illegal,” Balu said.

There are also concerns that other measures already adopted will actually make things worse for Roma.

Last year European leaders agreed on a non-binding goal for EU countries to reduce overall electricity demand by at least 10% by 31 March 2023, and a mandatory reduction of electricity consumption by 5% for at least 10% of high-demand hours each week.

Jovanovic fears that politicians’ first steps to save on energy consumption could involve simply cutting off power supplies to those not formally connected to the energy grid.

“Countries’ reductions in energy demand might come from cutting energy to those who do not have formal access to it, like the Roma,” said Jovanovic.

Nicu Dumitru, a Community Organiser at Arsesel, agreed – “the Roma would be the first to be cut off in that case,” he told IPS – but said that even if that does not happen, many Roma are already struggling with soaring energy costs.

Information collected by his group suggests that a fifth of all Roma households have had their electricity cut off since the start of the crisis because they cannot afford to pay. They are then connecting informally to the grid – usually through one person in their community who has a connection and who then charges high prices for others for use of that power – often borrowing money to do so, and worsening their already precarious financial situation.

There are an estimated over 400,000 people informally connected to the power grid in Romania, many of them Roma.

“The situation is getting critical for Roma,” Dumitru said.

Meanwhile, Roma activists in other countries are worried that politicians will use the energy crisis as an excuse to ignore long-term problems with energy poverty among the Roma or even as a justification to allow Roma settlements to be cut off from supplies.

In May this year, electricity supplies to 24 families in the ’12 February’ Roma settlement in the southern Serbian city of Nis were cut off over unpaid bills. The families claim this debt pre-dates their time living there, but the local power distributor demanded proof of house ownership from the families before reconnection.

People in many Roma settlements often lack such documents as the process for obtaining them is costly and difficult for many to navigate without expert legal help, and none of these families was able to provide the required proof.

It was only after both local and nationwide protests by members of the community themselves and negotiations between the families, who were represented by the Opre Roma Serbia rights group, local authorities, and the local distributor Elektrodistribucija Nis, that in December, limited supplies of electricity were restored to the families involved.

Jelena Reljic of Opre Roma Serbia said she was pleased those affected could now access electricity again but warned “the situation in this settlement is an example of a much wider systemic problem” which politicians are not doing enough to solve.

“The last cut off in this settlement was because of historic debt, but the problems with electricity [there] have been going on for a decade. Politicians are relying on being able to cut Roma settlements off from electricity during the energy crisis without too much public outrage or resistance. Around 99% of the reaction we have seen to the problem in this settlement has been of the type ‘oh, no one should be getting energy free during this crisis, we pay, so why shouldn’t they?’” she told IPS.

“Politicians are using the energy crisis to cover up the fact that they have never dealt with the problem of energy poverty for years and years,” she added.

The OSF’s Jovanovic wants European policymakers to review their proposed help during the crisis, including not just the approved reductions in energy demand but plans for energy price caps and a solidarity levy on the profits of businesses active in the oil, natural gas, coal, and refinery sectors.

He said the 5% reduction must not lead to electricity cuts for those already in energy poverty and that public revenues from the energy cap and solidarity levy – estimated at €140bn within the EU – should be redistributed along principles that are both morally and macroeconomically justified.

He has been involved in high-level EU committee meetings on energy crisis support policies, but, he told IPS, at those meetings, there seemed to be “little idea of the perspective of Roma and other vulnerable groups and how they would cope in the crisis”.

Now he and other activists are trying to arrange further talks with EU and national policymakers to urge them to address shortcomings in current policies affecting vulnerable groups, including Roma.

“We want to raise these issues,” he said.

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Medical equipment supplied by the World Food Programme (WFP) arrives in Beijing. Meanwhile, as COVID-19 infections surged in China, coronavirus experts gathered at the UN health agency in Geneva on January 3, to discuss next steps. Photo courtesy of Yingshi Zhang

By Jan Servaes
BRUSSELS, Jan 4 2023 (IPS)

Three years after the coronavirus first emerged in the Chinese city of Wuhan, the Chinese government began in December to abruptly scrap its harsh containment policy known as “zero-Covid.”

This zero-Covid policy relied on strict lockdowns, use of a Covid tracking app, domestic travel restrictions, and quarantining those who test positive along with their close contacts. But the strategy isolated the country from the rest of the world and dealt a severe blow to the world’s second-largest economy.

The government announced that from January 8 onwards, mandatory quarantine on arrival for travelers to China will end and Chinese people will be able to travel abroad again after three years.

The switch followed unprecedented protests against the policies championed by President Xi Jinping, marking the strongest display of public defiance in his decade-long presidency and reminiscent of the 1989 Tiananmen tragedy in many minds.

“What matters is that we reach consensus through communication and consultation. When the 1.4 billion Chinese work with one heart and one mind, and stand in unity with a strong will, no task will be impossible and no difficulty insurmountable”, Xi stated in his nationally broadcast New Year’s message.

“We have now entered a new phase of COVID response where tough challenges remain. Everyone is holding on with great fortitude, and the light of hope is right in front of us. Let’s make an extra effort to pull through, as perseverance and solidarity mean victory.”

The question is: how many Chinese are still being taken in by this tough language now that hospitals have been hit by a tidal wave of mainly elderly patients since the lifting of the zero-covid policy, crematoriums are overloaded and many pharmacies no longer have anti-virus and fever medication.

Initially, photos and video fragments of these harrowing conditions were still censored, but recently even the China Daily reported on them. The magnitude of the outbreak remains unclear for now, and the lack of transparency can be attributed to strict censorship and the fact that government officials have stopped reporting asymptomatic cases and introduced a new definition of covid-related deaths.

Only patients with the virus who die due to pneumonia and respiratory failure now meet the criteria, according to China. The National Health Commission (NHC) further announced that it is no longer releasing an official daily Covid death toll.

In addition, the state news agency Xinhua reported that from January 8, China will lower its priority management of Covid-19 cases and treat it as a class B infection rather than a more severe class A infection. Liang Wannian, head of the expert panel for the COVID-19 response under the NHC, said the shift does not mean China is letting go of the virus, but instead is focusing more resources on rural areas to contain the epidemic.

According to Nikola Davis, science correspondent for The Guardian, China is experiencing this surge for a number of reasons. The relaxation of restrictions has allowed the virus to spread more. Plus, the slow vaccination campaign in much of China, coupled with the use of the less effective locally produced Sinovac vaccine, means the population has little protection and many vulnerable people are still at risk from the virus.

In addition, the tight restrictions previously in place mean few people have contracted Covid before. That means there is little natural immunity at play in the current wave.

As a result, many people are now simultaneously getting Covid and requiring hospital care, leading to increasing pressure on the healthcare system. In addition, the inadequate medical infrastructure (there remains a major shortage of intensive care beds and well-trained staff) as well as substandard general hygiene (clean toilets, washing hands, etc.) must also be added.

So the ink of my contribution on ‘China: From A Health Crisis to A Political Crisis?’ was barely dry before my fears came true: China is in the middle of a relentless covid wave. Chinese authorities estimate that about 250 million people, or 18 percent of the population, were infected with the COVID-19 virus in the first 20 days of December.

Despite this increase, the government insists it has the rising infections and circulating variants under control. Yet these ‘official’ figures do not seem to correspond with the reality on the ground.

People will continue to grope in the dark about the correct figures. The Chinese government and the so-called worldometers are still counting only 5250 covid deaths, while the World Health Organization (WHO) recently published the number of 31,585.

Some academic friends and former students, though not epidemiologists, whisper that up to 60% of the Chinese have or have been exposed to covid.

Airfinity, a UK-based company that analyzes health risks worldwide, also comes with worrying figures. They currently estimate 11,000 daily deaths and 1.8 million infections per day in China, while it expects 1.7 million fatalities by the end of April 2023.

The researchers say their model is based on data from China’s regional provinces, before changes in infection reporting, combined with case growth rates from other former zero-Covid countries.

It is feared that the numbers will rise even more in the coming weeks. Especially around the Chinese New Year on January 22, when almost every Chinese goes to visit friends and family.

Is Xi Jinping firmly in the saddle?

Xi Jinping secured a historic third term as leader in October, emerging as China’s most powerful ruler since Mao Zedong. He thus further consolidated his power in a process that began a decade ago, a concentration that has steered China in a more authoritarian direction and which critics warn increases the risk of policy missteps.

The year 2022 ended with unprecedented street protests, followed by the sudden reversal of its zero-Covid policy and coronavirus infections sweeping through the world’s most populous country. This, together with the sluggish economy, has damaged his image considerably.

For decades, China has been the world’s leading economic growth engine and the hub of industrial supply chains. The World Bank and other experts expect the reopening of the Chinese economy to boost growth to 4.3% in 2023, compared to the forecast of 2.7% for 2022.

This is still reasonable by international standards, but remains below the official target of about 5.5%. Choked consumption and disrupted supply chains continue to weigh on the crisis in the huge real estate sector. A prolonged economic slowdown or new logistical concerns, whether due to COVID or geopolitical tensions, could reverberate globally.

Beijing’s relations with the West deteriorated over Xi’s partnership with Moscow just before Russia’s February invasion of Ukraine, as well as rising tensions over US-backed Taiwan, which China considers part of its territory.

Xi traveled abroad for the first time since the pandemic began in September, where he met with Russian President Vladimir Putin. In November, he met US President Joe Biden at the G20 in Indonesia, where both sides sought to cement relations.

According to Chinese diplomacy, a recent phone call between China’s new foreign minister Qin Gang (the outgoing ambassador to Washington and Xi’s confidant) and US secretary of state Antony Blinken has ironed out the folds.

Diplomatically, Xi appears to be trying to ease some of the tension that has made relations with the West increasingly fraught, even as Beijing tries to strengthen its position as a counterweight to the post-World War II US-led order. Xi’s recent visit to Saudi Arabia and meetings with representatives of Gulf states could be viewed in this context.

But things are also rumbling within the government and the almighty Communist Party (CCP). Leaked excerpts of an internal policy brief published in the Sydney Morning Herald, discussed at a recent Politburo, state that “the zero-Covid dynamic was an unqualified success and demonstrated the superiority of the Chinese communist system over the cowardly and immoral West, but that it can now be brushed aside because omicron is ‘just like the flu’”.

“We must resolutely follow the line of the party. We must never deviate from the notes,” Xi told the Politburo during the “self-criticism” session, a Maoist practice that is back in vogue.

Authoritarian regimes with near-absolute control over the media can sometimes facilitate breathtakingly destructive policies. It is difficult to think of a more unhinged policy than suddenly exposing an inadequately vaccinated population to massive infection in the middle of winter, just before the great Chinese New Year inland migration.

Fortitude appears to be one of Xi Jinping’s principles, as his New Year’s letter affirmed: “Everyone stands firm with great fortitude, and the light of hope stands right before us.”

Jan Servaes was UNESCO-Chair in Communication for Sustainable Social Change at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. He taught ‘international communication’ in Australia, Belgium, China, Hong Kong, the US, Netherlands and Thailand, in addition to short-term projects at about 120 universities in 55 countries. He is editor of the 2020 Handbook on Communication for Development and Social Change.
https://link.springer.com/referencework/10.1007/978-981-10-7035-8

IPS UN Bureau

 

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