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Venezuelan migrants stranded in Guatemala after their journey to Mexico was cut short by new restrictions issued by the United States. Most of them, unable to afford to return to their home country, await possible humanitarian return flights. CREDIT: IMG

By Humberto Márquez
CARACAS, Oct 28 2022 (IPS)

Thousands of Venezuelans who have crossed the treacherous Darien jungle between Colombia and Panama, or who have made the perilous journey through Central America and Mexico to reach the United States, have found themselves stranded in countries that do not want them, unable to continue their journey or to afford to return to their country.

Unexpectedly, on Oct. 12, the U.S. government announced that it would no longer accept undocumented Venezuelans who crossed its southern border, would deport them to Mexico and, in exchange, would offer up to 24,000 annual quotas, for two years, for Venezuelan immigrants to enter the country by air and under a new set of requirements.

“We were already in the United States when President Joe Biden gave the order, but they put us in a van and sent us back to Mexico. It’s not fair, on the 12th we had already crossed into the country,” a young man who identified himself as Antonio, among the first to be sent back to the border city of Tijuana, told reporters in tears.

He was one of approximately 150,000 Venezuelans who crossed the U.S.-Mexico border this year to join the 545,000 already in the U.S. by the end of 2021, according to U.S. authorities.

Raul was in a group that took a week to cross the jungle and rivers in the Darien Gap, bushwhacking in the rain and through the mud, suffering from hunger, thirst, and the threat of vermin and assailants. When he arrived at the indigenous village of Lajas Blancas in eastern Panama, he heard about the new U.S. regulation that rendered his dangerous journey useless.

There he told Venezuelan opposition politician Tomás Guanipa, who visited the village in October, that “the journey is too hard, I saw people die, someone I could not save because a river swept him away, and it was not worth it. Now what I have to do is return, alive, to my country.”

In Panama, as in Costa Rica, Honduras, Guatemala and of course Mexico, there are now thousands of Venezuelans stranded, some still trying to reach and cross the U.S. border, others trying to get the funds they need to return home.

They fill the shelters that are already overburdened and with few resources to care for them. Sometimes they sleep on the streets, or are seen walking and begging for food or a little money, abruptly cut off from the dream of going to live and work legally in the United States.

That aim was fueled by the fact that the United States made the possibility of granting asylum to Venezuelans more flexible, as part of its opposition to the government of President Nicolás Maduro, which U.S. authorities consider illegitimate.

In addition, it established a protection status that temporarily allowed Venezuelans who reached the U.S. to stay and work.

Venezuela has been in the grip of an economic and political crisis over the last decade which, together with the impoverishment of the population, has produced the largest exodus in the history of the hemisphere: according to United Nations agencies, 7.1 million people have left the country – a quarter of the population.

Venezuelan migrants walk in Mexico’s Ciudad Juarez between the Rio Grande and the wall that separates them from the United States, a border that they will no longer be able to cross on foot but only by air and with express permission from Washington. CREDIT: Rey R. Jáuregui/Pie de Página

Caught up in the elections

The flood of Venezuelan immigrants pouring across the southern border coincided with the tough campaign for the mid-term elections for the U.S. Congress in November, which could result in the control of both chambers by the Republican Party, strongly opposed to Democratic President Biden.

Republican governors and candidates from the south, strongly opposed to the government’s immigration policy and flexibility towards Venezuelans, decided to send busloads and even a plane full of Venezuelan asylum seekers to northern localities governed by Democratic authorities.

Thus, through misleading promises, hundreds of Venezuelans were bussed or flown and abandoned out in the open in New York, Washington, D.C. or Martha’s Vineyard, an island where millionaires spend their summers in the northeastern state of Massachusetts.

Human rights groups such as Amnesty International denounced the use of migrants as political spoils or as a weapon in the election campaign.

Against this backdrop, the Biden administration changed its policy towards Venezuelans, closing the country’s doors to them at the southern border, reactivating Title 42, a pandemic public health order that allows for the immediate expulsion of people for health reasons, and reached an agreement with Mexico to return migrants to that country.

The 24,000 annual quotas provided as a consolation, for migrants who have sponsors responsible for their support in the United States, plus requirements such as not attempting illegal border crossings or not having refugee status in another country, is almost equivalent to the monthly volume of Venezuelans who tried to enter the U.S. this year.

A family of migrants reaches the end of their journey through the dangerous Darien jungle, between Colombia and Panama, on their long journey to reach the border between Mexico and the United States. But a new U.S. immigration measure prohibits access to the U.S. for Venezuelans. CREDIT: Nicola Rosso/UNHCR

What happens now?

In the immediate future, those who were on their way will be left in limbo and will now have to return to their country, where many sold everything – from their clothes to their homes – to pay for their perilous journey.

Hundreds of Venezuelans have begun to arrive in Caracas on flights that they themselves have paid for from Panama, while in Mexico and other countries they await the possibility of free air travel, of a humanitarian nature, because thousands of migrants have been left destitute.

There are entire families who were already living as immigrants in other countries, such as Chile, Ecuador or Peru – where there are one million Venezuelans in Lima for example – but decided to leave due to a hostile environment or the difficulties in keeping jobs or finding decent housing, in a generalized climate of inflation in the region.

This is the case told to journalists by Héctor, who with his wife, mother-in-law and three children invested almost 10,000 dollars in tickets from Chile to the Colombian island of San Andrés, in the Caribbean, from there by boat to Nicaragua, and by land until they were taken by surprise by the U.S. government’s announcement, when they reached Guatemala.

Now, in contact with relatives in the United States, he is considering the possibility of returning to the country he left three years ago for Chile, or trying to continue on, while waiting for another option to enter the U.S.

The United States has reported that crossings or attempts to cross its border by undocumented migrants have decreased significantly since Oct. 12.

Among the justifications for its action at the time, Washington said it sought to combat human trafficking and other crimes associated with irregular migration, and to discourage dangerous border crossings in the Darien Gap.

According to Panamanian government data, between January and Oct. 15 of this year, 184,433 undocumented migrants reached Panama from the Darien jungle, 133,597 of whom were Venezuelans.

After his return to the country on Oct. 25, Guanipa the politician told IPS that at least 70 percent of the migrants who crossed the Darien Gap in the last 12 months were Venezuelans, along with other Latin Americans and people from the Caribbean or African nations.

And, after collecting personal accounts of the death-defying crossing, he urged his fellow Venezuelans to “for no reason risk their lives” on this inhospitable stretch that is the gateway from South America to Central America.

At every Latin American border, migration rules are becoming more restrictive and Venezuelans wait patiently to be allowed access, often to try to reach the farthest destinations in the hemisphere, such as Chile or the United States. CREDIT: Gema Cortés/IOM

The Venezuelan government blames the massive exodus and the dangers faced in the Darien Gap on its political and media confrontation with the United States, while claiming that the numbers of reported migrants are wildly inflated and that, on the contrary, more than 360,000 Venezuelans have returned to the country since 2018.

Heads of United Nations agencies and international humanitarian organizations believe that given the ongoing crisis in Venezuela, the flow of migrants will continue, and they therefore call on host countries to establish rules and mechanisms to facilitate the integration of the migrants into their communities.

While the United States has slammed the door shut on Venezuelan migrants, in countries such as Chile, Ecuador, Peru, Colombia, Mexico and some Central American nations, new rules are also being prepared to modify the policy of extending a helping hand to Venezuelans.

For example, Ecuador overhauled the Human Mobility Law to increase the grounds for deportation, such as “representing a threat to security”, and Colombia – which has received the largest number of Venezuelans – eliminated the office for the attention and socioeconomic integration of the migrant population.

Panama will require visas for those deported from Central America or Mexico, Peru is working to change regulations for the migrant population, and the government of Chile, which in the past has expelled hundreds of migrants on flights, announced that it will take measures to prevent unwanted immigration.

Of the 7.1 million Venezuelans registered as of September as migrants by U.N. agencies, the vast majority of them having left the country since 2013, almost six million were in neighboring Latin American and Caribbean countries.

Entire families have not only sought to reach the United States or Europe, but have traveled thousands of kilometers, in journeys they could never have dreamed of, with stretches by bus but often on foot, through clandestine jungle passes or cold mountains, to reach Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Argentina or Chile.

Others tried their luck in hostile neighboring Caribbean islands and dozens lost their lives when the overcrowded boats in which they were trying to reach safe shores were shipwrecked.

Faced with the explosive phenomenon, the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) and the International Organization for Migration (IOM) established a platform for programs to help migrants in the region and host communities, which is coordinated by a former Guatemalan vice-president, Eduardo Stein.

Of their budget for 2022, based on pledges from donor countries and institutions, for 1.7 billion dollars, they have only received 300 million dollars, in another sign that Venezuelan migrants have ceased to play a leading role on the international stage.

Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen. Credit: UN Photo/Kim Haughton.

By Kris Janssens
PHNOM PENH, Oct 28 2022 (IPS)

Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen walks into a diplomatic minefield these days. He supports UN resolutions against Putin but does not want to jeopardize the long-standing friendship with Russia. At the same time, he tries to be less dependent on the West, both economically and politically.

“Right now, Russia has a good understanding with most countries in Southeast Asia. For example, the new Philippine president wants a better relationship with Moscow, we have excellent contacts with Myanmar, Vietnam, and Laos, but less with Cambodia.”

Last month, Cambodia backed the United Nations (UN) resolution condemning Russia’s annexation of Ukrainian territories. Earlier this year, Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen also signed a resolution against the invasion of Ukraine. As a result, the Russian ambassador to Cambodia Anatoly Borovik posted a rather vicious message on Twitter. “It was Moscow that assisted Phnom Penh in the most difficult period in its history”, Borovik wrote to refresh Cambodia’s memory. It is a reference to the long-standing friendship between the two countries.

 

Turbulent 80s

This friendship goes back to the mid-1950s when Cambodia just gained independence from France and the Soviet Union supported the then king Norodom Sihanouk, who didn’t want to choose sides between the West and the Eastern Bloc during the Cold War.

But Borovik’s tweet refers to the 1980s when the Vietnamese army took control of Cambodia after having ousted Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot from power.

 

Boycott

The United States had not yet digested the Vietnam War and wanted this Vietnamese occupier to leave. Various Western countries supported this demand. Cambodia urgently needed emergency aid, after the devastation of the Khmer Rouge, but was boycotted. Only a limited number of countries, with the Soviet Union in the lead, tried to get food and medicines to the affected population.

“When I came to Cambodia in 1984, as a reporter for the state news agency TASS, there were also many Russian doctors, technicians, and engineers”, says Russian professor Dmitry Mosyakov about that period. Today he is head of the center for Southeast Asia at the Institute of Oriental Studies in the Cambodian capital Phnom Penh. “The Soviets were very close to the Cambodians, almost like a family”, Mosyakov recalls.

 

Prime Minister Hun Sen

One year after Mosyakov’s arrival, in 1985, Cambodia gets a new prime minister: Hun Sen. He is a former Khmer Rouge soldier who later defected and was brought to power by the Vietnamese. Today, 37 years later, he is still in office. He rules the country with an iron fist, has opposition leaders thrown in jail, and manipulates the elections. The United States and the European Union are watching disapprovingly.

That’s why it is striking that the European lobby has been able to convince Hun Sen to support a pro-Western resolution against Russia. “This is because Cambodia is still economically dependent on the American and European markets for export. The prime minister wants to change this in due course, for example, he is currently looking at the Eurasian Economic Union, led by Russia,” says Cambodian journalist Chhengpor Aun. He writes about his country’s foreign policy for ‘Voice of America’ and ‘The Diplomat’, among others.

 

Ambiguous

To keep the line with Moscow open, Cambodia has only signed UN resolutions with a humanitarian undertone. “For example, Cambodia supported a declaration on the protection of civilians, but abstained when the vote to suspend the rights of Russia in the UN Rights Council was taken”, explains Chhengpor Aun.

Professor Dmitry Mosyakov deplores Cambodia’s ambiguous attitude. “It was good that our ambassador referred to the 1980s and the support Cambodia received back then,” he responds. “Right now, Russia has a good understanding with most countries in Southeast Asia. For example, the new Philippine president wants a better relationship with Moscow, we have excellent contacts with Myanmar, Vietnam, and Laos, but less with Cambodia.”

 

Communism

When ideological ties to communism were severed in the early 1990s, the relations between the two countries cooled down. Russian aid was reduced in a very short time and the West regained influence.

Because of this historical link, some veterans of Hun Sen’s party would rather not support UN resolutions against Putin. “This is nothing more than a sentiment from the past,” says journalist Chhengpor Aun. “In any case, the Prime Minister’s foreign policy is much more pragmatic than his authoritarian domestic policy.”

 

Coup de theatre

Chhengpor Aun thus refers to a major coup de theatre that awaits Cambodian politics. Hun Sen has announced that he will make his son Hun Manet prime minister next summer, albeit after the national elections. “This will be the last and most important game in Hun Sen’s long career,” Mosyakov says. “I think a lot will change with the son in power, including international relations.”

Evidently, the West disapproves of this undemocratic shift in power, but Hun Sen does not want the EU or the US to interfere in his political plans. Nevertheless, the western countries are at the table during the ASEAN summit, which traditionally takes place in November and which Cambodia is chairing this time.

 

Between East and West

ASEAN is the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, but several major world leaders are also invited to the annual meeting. An American, a European, but also a Chinese, and a Russian delegation is expected in Phnom Penh.

“As the Khmer proverb goes, ‘merl gee, merl aing’, the Prime Minister will have to look closely at the others and at himself, to make sure he doesn’t say anything wrong,” Chhengpor Aun summarises the situation. Hun Sen will need everyone around the table to make his economic and political plans work.

In any case, history seems to be repeating itself. Just like during the Cold War, a small country like Cambodia is suddenly right in the middle between East and West.

In 2010-2011, a devastating drought led to more than 260,000 deaths beyond normal levels of expected mortality in Somalia. Yet almost no one died in Ethiopia after a severe drought in 2015. Credit: Abdurrahman Warsameh/IPS

By External Source
Oct 28 2022 (IPS)

The Horn of Africa is facing its worst drought in 40 years. Scientists suspect that a multi-year La Niña cycle has been amplified by climate change to prolong dry and hot conditions.

After multiple failed harvests and amid high global food prices, the Horn is confronted with a severe food security crisis. Some 37 million people face acute hunger in the region, which includes Djibouti, Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan and Uganda.

The biggest differences were that, compared with Somalia, Ethiopia enjoyed a state with more capacity and more political inclusion, and made good use of foreign aid. These are factors that I identify in the book as contributing to how climate change is affecting the security of states. I include famine as a form of insecurity

In Somalia alone, 40% of the population is facing food insecurity: about 6.7 million people. In neighbouring Ethiopia, the proportion is lower – 20% – but the absolute numbers are higher at 20.4 million.

It was not too long ago that drought led to highly divergent impacts between Somalia and Ethiopia. In 2010-2011, a devastating drought led to more than 260,000 deaths beyond normal levels of expected mortality in Somalia. Yet almost no one died in Ethiopia after a severe drought in 2015.

Why did so many people die in Somalia but so few in Ethiopia? I explore these and related questions in my recent book, States and Nature: The Effects of Climate Change on Security.

Using the cases of the two countries, among others, the book shows why Somalia had a famine in the early 2010s while Ethiopia did not, despite both being exposed to severe droughts.

The biggest differences were that, compared with Somalia, Ethiopia enjoyed a state with more capacity and more political inclusion, and made good use of foreign aid. These are factors that I identify in the book as contributing to how climate change is affecting the security of states. I include famine as a form of insecurity.

Better outcomes are expected in states with high capacity to deliver services, high political inclusion where all social groups are represented in government, and where international assistance is welcomed and shared broadly.

 

Two sets of conditions, two different outcomes

So how did Somalia and Ethiopia stack up on the three factors that contribute to a bad situation being made worse?

In the lead-up to Somalia’s famine in 2011, the country faced persistent problems of a weak national government that was being challenged by Al-Shabaab, a violent Islamist militia that controlled significant territory in the south of the country. The Somali government had limited ability to deliver services in the areas it controlled, let alone areas under Al-Shabaab.

For its part, the Ethiopian government invested in social safety net programmes to feed people in the midst of the drought through cash transfers, employment programmes and food assistance.

The issue of sections of the society being excluded was also in greater evidence in Somalia than in Ethiopia. A number of marginalised groups, notably the Bantu Somalis and the Rahanweyn clan, were among the most affected by the drought. Better connected groups diverted aid that otherwise would have benefited these communities.

Finally, Somalia was in much worse shape when it came to aid. Al-Shabaab militants were blocking aid into the country, which led to a number of humanitarian groups withdrawing from Somalia. In addition, the US, through the Patriot Act, discouraged NGOs from providing aid for fear it would end up in Al-Shabaab’s hands. Together, this meant that little humanitarian assistance came into Somalia precisely at the time when the country needed it most. Hundreds of thousands died.

Ethiopia was a favourite of the international community for foreign assistance. It received funds that supported its social safety net programmes, which helped it prepare for the drought and administer emergency aid supplies.

The current food security crisis in the Horn of Africa, however, reveals persistent vulnerability in both countries.

As Ethiopia’s case shows, progress can be undone. Rising political exclusion is leading to huge food security risks, particularly in the Tigray region where aid is currently largely blocked amid the ongoing violent conflict.

Equally worrisome is Somalia’s situation, where both local and external actors have struggled to build state capacity or inclusion in the face of a long-running violent insurgency.

 

What can work

My book provides some hopeful insights, as well as caution. It shows that for countries like Ethiopia and Bangladesh, international assistance can help address weak state capacity. Donors worked with local officials to address specific climate hazards, like drought and cyclones.

Such international assistance helped compensate for weak state capacity through discrete investments in early warning systems, targeted social services, such as food assistance or cash transfers, and hazard-specific protective infrastructure, such as cyclone shelters.

Those examples suggest that climate adaptation can save lives and contribute to economic prosperity.

However, as the unfolding dynamic in Ethiopia shows, progress can be reversed. Moreover, it’s far more challenging for external actors to build inclusive political institutions if local actors are not so inclined.

With climate change intensifying extreme weather events around the world, it is incumbent upon policymakers to enhance the practice of environmental peacebuilding, both to resolve ongoing conflicts through better natural resource management and to prevent future emergencies.

Joshua Busby, Professor, University of Texas at Austin

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

“The Quilt in the Making”. Credit: Claudia Steinau

By Mumtaz Mia and Juliane Drews
GENEVA, Oct 28 2022 (IPS)

The organisational is personal. Every day since the two of us were asked back in 2020 to co-lead the process of culture transformation at UNAIDS, the United Nations organisation which drives global efforts to end AIDS, we have both felt at our very core how crucial it has been to get it right.

The mission of UNAIDS is vital to ensuring the health and human rights of every person. Staff and partners need to be confident of a supportive and empowering culture that will enable their work.

A 2018 Report by an Independent Expert Panel had shone a light on what were important organisational shortcomings, leading to a comprehensive set of changes in leadership, systems and crucially, culture.

As the Culture Transformation process has got underway, the COVID-19 pandemic has brought unprecedented shifts in work, and a resurgence of global protests, including from the Black Lives Matter movement and for women’s rights, have a generated an inspirational momentum for action to tackle intersectional injustice.

Reflecting almost three years of UNAIDS culture transformation work, what stands out in particular for the two of us is how the “outer work” has required so much “inner work”. We have needed to be, and to help others be, our full selves, and to acknowledge what we don’t yet know of each other’s experiences.

The process has deepened our appreciation of how our differences, both personally and professionally, are a key strength, enabling each situation, each process, to be seen from a combination of unique angles, and how equality is crucial in enabling all these to be brought forth.

Creating safe spaces for our colleagues to speak about their lived experiences was transformative. We asked ourselves and those around us tough and tender questions. We had colleagues tell us they felt heard for the first time. Brave conversations helped colleagues to connect and to advance the tangible changes that matter most to them.

We understood the need for a common reference framework for all of us at UNAIDS. This has led to a first set of feminist principles that guide our way forward.

Through the process, it became ever more clear to both of us that culture transformation begins at the personal level. As a Malawian woman of African-Asian heritage, living and working in Latin America at this time, intersecting identities and multiple cultural heritage became for Mumtaz the centre of personal reflections.

In leading conversations on decolonizing the HIV Response, Mumtaz’s own colonization was calling for attention. For Juliane, too, this has been powerful journey: as someone who has experienced sexual assault in the workplace, this work is deeply personal, driven by a determination to build safe workplaces for everyone, including by addressing inequalities and unhealthy power balances. Our intersectional feminist approach has brought our experiences to our work.

But this work has also highlighted that whilst the organisational is personal, so too the personal is often dependent on the organisational. Engaging with intersectional feminist principles at the personal level was not enough.

That is why we were proud to help UNAIDS become the UN entity to put intersectional feminist principles at the core of its being. It is why vital work continues to integrate those principles into policies and practices to advance a workplace culture in which every individual can flourish.

As we have helped build a movement for change across six regions, engaged in conversation with more than 500 colleagues, and supported some 25 diverse teams in their own journey, we have recognised the centrality of the institutional level.

Cultural transformation is a long and challenging process that requires the tenacity and creativity of many. To weave the stories and aspirations of so many of the champions for change together while preserving their uniqueness, we have borrowed the quilt symbol that is iconic in the AIDS response.

As the change process evolves, new tiles will be added, others might fade or need repairing. But the work is not done. It is a ‘quilt in the making’ – individual and collective work, one tile at a time.

Mumtaz Mia and Juliane Drews have led UNAIDS Culture Transformation since May 2020.

Mumtaz is a Public Health expert with two decades of experience working to end AIDS. Juliane is a change management expert with 15 years of experience in developing inclusive and just organizations in which staff in all their diversity thrive.

The link to UNAIDS Culture Transformation here.

IPS UN Bureau

 

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By External Source
Democratic Republic of the Congo, Oct 27 2022 (IPS-Partners)

The Director of Education Cannot Wait (ECW), Yasmine Sherif, and the UNICEF Representative, Grant Leaity, called on donors worldwide to provide US$45 million in urgent, additional funding to support ECW’s Multi-Year Resilience Programme in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), a country facing one of the world’s most overlooked crises.

There are currently about 5 million internally displaced persons in DRC (of whom 700,000 were displaced in 2022 alone) – the largest in Africa. Years of conflict, climate change, COVID-19 and other epidemics including Ebola have taken a heavy toll on the country’s young generation. Nationwide, as many as 3.2 million children (aged 6 to 11) are out of school.

Ms. Sherif, Mr. Leaity and Ms. Laura Mazal, Development Director at the British Embassy in DRC, met government officials and education partners in Kinshasa and visited Tanganyika province in south-eastern DRC on a joint mission. Tanganyika province has recently become more peaceful after years of inter-ethnic conflict impacted the lives of children and teenagers.

The delegation visited an ECW-funded programme implemented by UNICEF, in collaboration with the Government of the Democratic Republic of the Congo and provincial education authorities, and other key implementing partners, including: World Food Programme (WFP), CENEAS, Armée du Salut, and other local partners.

The joint programme aims to improve schooling and vocational training, with a focus on girls and young women. It targets 67,000 children and adolescents in the province; 32,000 girls and boys have already been reached with quality education. It is estimated that nearly two-thirds of schoolaged children (aged 6 to 17) – are out of school in the province.

“I am deeply moved by the strength and resilience of the girls, boys and teachers I met whose lives have been transformed by education and local partner support, the UN, civil society and communities working together,” Ms. Sherif said. “Most come from displaced families and have never been to school before. Education is their only hope. Their courage and the efforts by the community and local partners to ensure all children go to school inspire us all to do more. We call on public and private donors to urgently step up their support for all crisis-affected girls and boys in DRC and worldwide to have the opportunity to enjoy their right to a safe, protective, inclusive quality education.”

The UK is one of ECW’s founding strategic partners and is the Fund’s second largest donor globally. “Access to quality education in times of humanitarian crisis is life-saving for children,” said Ms. Mazal. “It offers protection, a sense of normality and hope. That is why ECW’s work is crucial in providing support to the most marginalized children. We have seen first-hand the work being delivered on the ground in Tanganyika, from meeting girl survivors of sexual violence to children formerly associated with armed groups. These children are now receiving a quality education, with huge thanks to ECW.”

However, the large number of internally displaced people (nearly 350,000) in Tanganyika province represents a key challenge that hampers access to education. There are just 4,300 primary and secondary schools to educate more than 1.8 million school-aged children. According to recent estimates, at least 1,700 more schools need to be built to ensure children and adolescents access safe and protective quality learning environments.

The joint delegation inaugurated the newly built Lubile 1 Primary School in Mpungwe Village, located near the provincial capital Kalemie, and visited a tented temporary learning space supported by the ECW investment. The overall aim is to support the government’s drive to implement free education throughout the DRC.

The Lubile 1 Primary School is the first to be constructed in Mpungwe Village. Mpungwe Village originally comprised 500 families, but in recent years, due to violence and insecurity in the region, an additional 1,500 families have now settled in the village. A model of social cohesion, both host community and displaced children all go to school together, benefiting from a holistic education approach, including daily schools supported through the WFP school canteen.

“Thanks to ECW support, we can provide and enhance access to quality education and alternative learning opportunities for all children, especially girls who have suffered so much,” said UNICEF DRC Representative Grant Leaity. “It is heart-warming that we have been able to respond to their specific needs.” Leaity added that although the challenges are significant (see Notes for Editors below), important progress in relation to the provision of education in Tanganyika is being made.

Tanganyika is a tough place for girls to grow up, with young women all too often exposed to various forms of violence and exploitation including sexual assault and child labor. More than 430 girls and boys in Tanganyika have also received UNICEF-supported gender-based violence response services, while another 464 children have received reintegration support and protection after escaping from armed groups.

Schools play an important part in reducing tensions between different community groups, which often spills over into armed conflicts. “We must step up to help the next generation to heal from the wounds of violence,” Ms. Sherif said. “It is crucial to jointly expand holistic education programmes that integrate psychosocial support, gender transformative approaches and a focus on safety and the well-being of children and adolescents. At the same time, more must be done to stop this cycle of unspeakable violence and systematic violations of human rights and of the international humanitarian law. The pervasive impunity must end, perpetrators must be brought to justice.”

One third of all plastic waste ends up in soils or freshwater. Most of this plastic disintegrates into particles smaller than five millimetres, known as microplastics, and these break down further into nanoparticles. Credit: UN Environment

By Baher Kamal
MADRID, Oct 27 2022 (IPS)

No. No lettuce, no matter how British it may be, could outlast such a steady depletion of the very foundation of life.

Now, new facts about such depletion come to add to the already reported ones regarding the unstopped, man-made dangers threatening the present and future of indispensable natural resources.

These are some of the biggest reasons explaining how the web of life is unrelentlessly agonising:

 

1.- Poison

A recent scientific study by the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) reveals the following:

– The millions of tons of plastic swirling around the world’s oceans have garnered a lot of media attention recently. But plastic pollution poses a bigger threat to the plants and animals – including humans – who are based on land.

Nano-sized particles may cause inflammation, traverse cellular barriers, and even cross highly selective membranes such as the blood-brain barrier or the placenta. Within the cell, they can trigger changes in gene expression and biochemical reactions, among other things

— Very little of the plastic we discard every day is recycled or incinerated in waste-to-energy facilities. Much of it ends up in landfills, where it may take up to 1,000 years to decompose, leaching potentially toxic substances into the soil and water.

– Researchers in Germany are warning that the impact of microplastics in soils, sediments and freshwater could have a long-term negative effect on such ecosystems. They say terrestrial microplastic pollution is much higher than marine microplastic pollution – estimated at four to 23 times higher, depending on the environment.

– Fragments of plastic are present practically all over the world and can trigger many kinds of adverse effects.

– One third of all plastic waste ends up in soils or freshwater. Most of this plastic disintegrates into particles smaller than five millimetres, known as microplastics, and these break down further into nanoparticles (less than 0.1 micrometre in size). The problem is that these particles are entering the food chain.

 

2. Sewage is an important factor in the distribution of microplastics. In fact, between 80% and 90% of the plastic particles contained in sewage, such as from garment fibres, persist in the sludge, says the study.

– Sewage sludge is often applied to fields as fertiliser, meaning that several thousand tons of microplastics end up in our soils each year. Microplastics can even be found in tap water.

– Moreover, the surfaces of tiny fragments of plastic may carry disease-causing organisms and act as a vector for diseases in the environment.

— Microplastics can also interact with soil fauna, affecting their health and soil functions. “Earthworms, for example, make their burrows differently when microplastics are present in the soil, affecting the earthworm’s fitness and the soil condition,” says an article in Science Daily about the research.

 

3.- Toxic

In 2020, the first-ever field study to explore how the presence of microplastics can affect soil fauna was published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society. The paper notes that terrestrial microplastic pollution has led to the decrease of species that live below the surface, such as mites, larvae and other tiny creatures that maintain the fertility of the land.

– Chlorinated plastic can release harmful chemicals into the surrounding soil, which can then seep into groundwater or other surrounding water sources, and also the ecosystem. This can cause a range of potentially harmful effects on the species that drink the water.

– When plastic particles break down, they gain new physical and chemical properties, increasing the risk that they will have a toxic effect on organisms. And the larger the number of potentially affected species and ecological functions, the more likely it is that toxic effects will occur.

– Chemical effects are especially problematic at the decomposition stage. Additives such as phthalates and Bisphenol leach out of plastic particles. These additives are known for their hormonal effects and can disrupt the hormone system of vertebrates and invertebrates alike.

– In addition, nano-sized particles may cause inflammation, traverse cellular barriers, and even cross highly selective membranes such as the blood-brain barrier or the placenta. Within the cell, they can trigger changes in gene expression and biochemical reactions, among other things.

 

4.- Pests

Should all this not be enough, please be reminded that:

– Up to 40% of food crops are lost due to plant pests and diseases every single year, according to the world’s top food and agriculture organisation.

This is affecting both food security and agriculture, the main source of income for vulnerable rural communities, FAO warned on the occasion of the International Day of Plant Health on 12 May 2022.

– Two main factors, among several others, appear behind the increasing expansion of plant pests and diseases. One is that climate change and human activities are altering ecosystems and damaging biodiversity while creating new niches for pests to thrive.

– The other one is that international travel and trade, which has tripled in volume in the last decade, is also spreading pests and diseases.

– Such pests and diseases cause massive crop losses and leave millions without enough food.

– Desert locust, fall armyworm, fruit flies, banana disease TR4, cassava diseases and wheat rusts are among the most destructive transboundary plant pests and diseases.

 

5.- The Market lords

All the above shocking facts should pose several tough questions.

For instance: if food production –and food health– are so endangered, why discard as much as 20% of all of it just because they are not “nice” enough for selling them in the supermarket?

Why are all these special deals offering two or even three products while paying the price of just one? Aren’t such marketing techniques the major cause why up to one third of all food is lost and wasted?

By the way: all grown-in-soil food should by nature be taken as biological and ecological. In addition to sunshine, all food needs soil, water, and air to grow, right?

But being the soil, the water, and the air so highly contaminated, why sell them at double price just because the market lords brand them as biological and ecological?

COP 27’s official Youth Envoy, Dr Omnia El Omrani, believes solid evidence will convince wealthy countries to honour their climate change financial commitments. Credit: Hisham Allam/IPS

By Hisham Allam
Cairo, Oct 27 2022 (IPS)

COP 27’s official Youth Envoy, Dr Omnia El Omrani, realised the impact of climate change in 2017, and Hurricane Irma slammed Miami.

As a doctor, she witnessed the influx of emergency patients into the hospital as a result of the hurricane, which piqued her interest in environmental and climate issues. She described it as a significant milestone in her life.

“As a result, I decided to become an activist in the areas of public health and climate change over the ensuing years. I did this by attending events as a representative of a global organisation of medical students and young doctors, starting with the COP24 Climate Change Summit in Poland in 2018 and continuing through the Glasgow Conference in Britain in 2021,” Omnia said in an interview with IPS.

El Omrani is an Egyptian plastic and reconstruction surgery resident, community leader and climate change activist. She was appointed by the President-designate of the 27th Session of the Conference of the Parties (COP27), Sameh Shoukry.

Host country Egypt has committed to empowering youth. It sees the role of the youth envoy as a way to encourage and promote youth perspectives before COP27 and throughout the negotiations and conference itself.

El Omrani sees herself as central to involving the world’s young people at COP27 to promote climate action and implementation with the critical interventions necessary for the conference’s implementation-focused strategy.

The Youth Climate Summit COY17’s most significant outcome is to develop a statement that reflects the youth’s perception of the problem – and to suggest solutions.

The youth statement’s coordination began ahead of the COY17 youth summit, and YOUNGO with working groups will review and edit a draught version in Sharm El-Sheikh from November 2–4, after which it will be sent to the COP27 president, she explained.

“The unique thing that we will do this year On the Young and Future Generations Day (November 10), we will have a roundtable discussion instead of a panel discussion at COP27. Here we will bring together high-ranking officials, negotiators, and ministers and YOUNGO to discuss the statement and (debate) how to get it implemented,” El Omrani said.

YOUNGO is the UNFCCC’s official youth constituency.

El Omrani said, “It’s exceedingly challenging to convince wealthy nations to convert pledges into actual funding, but certain approaches could help”.

These approaches include providing solid evidence on the impact of climate change. For example, Pakistan floods this year caused massive damage to the country’s economy. Small island countries share similar issues. Likewise, severe heat waves swept through Europe.

El Omrani, who is 27, has represented over 1.3 million medical students, leading their global advocacy and policy work on climate change with the UNFCCC, UNEP, and WHO, while also being engaged in climate action projects across Egypt and the world.

El Omrani was the International Federation of Medical Students’ Association’s National Public Officer, MENA Focal Point, and Liaison Officer for Public Health Issues.

She has participated in climate discussions at COP24, COP25, and COP26, environmental projects, and international climate conferences, such as the WHO Civil Society Group to Advance Climate and Health.

“I believe it is my responsibility to inform people about the significance of climate change in my community and at the institution where I work as a doctor. I also believe I must deliver these messages to decision-makers and urge them to act on this issue,” she added.

“I am now developing a curriculum to be taught at universities to increase awareness of climate change issues, not just in Egypt but also throughout Africa, in collaboration with Ain Shams University in Egypt.”

Aside from that, she participates in a wide range of charitable activities and projects coordinated by the World Health Organization, UNICEF, the European Union, the Lancet Scientific Journal, and other international groups focused on health, women’s issues, and climate change.

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

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Dusk approaches in Yangon, Myanmar. Credit: Unsplash/Alexander Schimmeck

By Noeleen Heyzer
UNITED NATIONS, Oct 27 2022 (IPS)

The political, human rights and humanitarian crisis in Myanmar continues to take a catastrophic toll on the people, with serious regional implications.

More than 13.2 million people are food insecure, about 40 percent of the population is living below the poverty line and 1.3 million are internally displaced. Military operations continue with disproportionate use of force including aerial bombings, burning of civilian structures, and the killing of civilians including children.

I condemn the indiscriminate airstrikes on a celebration in Kachin State that killed large numbers of civilians days ago. The People’s Defence Forces are also accused of targeting civilians.

The plight of the Rohingya people, along with other forcefully displaced communities, remains desperate, with many seeking refuge through dangerous land and sea journeys. The price of impunity is a grave reminder that accountability remains essential.

Since the release of the Report of the Secretary-General on the situation in Myanmar, violence between the Arakan Army and the military in Rakhine has escalated to levels not seen since late 2020, with significant cross-border incursions, endangering all communities, harming conditions for durable return, and prolonging the burden on Bangladesh as host of about 1 million Rohingya refugees.

As the Myanmar crisis deepens, I continue to promote a coordinated international strategy, in line with my mandate, engaging all stakeholders for an inclusive Myanmar-led process to return to the democratic transition.

A child looks after his younger sibling in Myanmar. Credit: World Bank/Tom Cheatham

My first visit to Myanmar as Special Envoy in August to meet the military’s Commander-in-Chief was part of broader efforts by the UN to urgently support a return to civilian rule based on the will and needs of the people.

I made six requests during the visit: ending aerial bombing and burning of civilian infrastructure; delivery of humanitarian assistance without discrimination; the release of all children and political prisoners; a moratorium on executions; the well-being of and engagement with State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi.

I also highlighted Myanmar’s responsibility for creating conducive conditions for the voluntary, safe, dignified and sustainable return of Rohingya refugees. Soon after, I visited Dhaka and Cox’s Bazar on the five-year anniversary of the Rohingya’s mass displacement, where I expressed the United Nations’ appreciation for Bangladesh’s generosity and heeded Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s statements that the current situation is unsustainable.

A highlight of the visit was my discussions with women and youth in the refugee camps. They made it clear that they need to be engaged directly in discussions and decisions about their future.

Their rights and protection, in particular their citizenship, freedom of movement and security, must be guaranteed, guided by the recommendations of the Advisory Commission on Rakhine State. Going forward, I will continue to strengthen co-operation with ASEAN and engagement with all stakeholders.

While there is little room for the de-escalation of violence or for “talks about talks” in the present zero-sum situation, there are some concrete ways to reducing the suffering of the people. Recognizing that many more people will be forced to flee the violence,

I will continue to urge ASEAN to develop a regional protection framework for refugees and forcefully displaced persons. The recent forced return of Myanmar nationals, some of whom were detained on arrival, underlines the urgency of a coordinated ASEAN response to address shared regional challenges caused by the conflict.

Education and skills development are powerful tools to prepare Rohingya refugees for their return to Myanmar, which I continue to advocate, working closely with leaders of ASEAN and neighbouring countries as well as the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC).

Key Ethnic Armed Organizations and the National Unity Government have together appealed for me to convene an Inclusive Forum for engagement to facilitate protection and humanitarian assistance to ALL people in need, in observance of International Humanitarian Law.

I have also initiated a women, peace and security (WPS) platform on Myanmar with the Foreign Minister of Indonesia to amplify the needs of women affected by the conflict, and their leadership as agents of change.

To conclude, there is a new political reality in Myanmar: a people demanding change, no longer willing to accept military rule. I will continue to appeal to all governments and other key stakeholders to listen to the people and be guided by their will to prevent deeper catastrophe in the heart of Asia.

Noeleen Heyzer, Special Envoy of the Secretary-General on Myanmar, in her address to the United Nations General Assembly’s Third Committee 25 October 2022

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Achieving the temperature goals of the Paris Agreement requires not only slowing new construction, but also retiring existing coal power plants early, worldwide. Credit: Wikimedia Commons

By Philippe Benoit
PARIS, Oct 26 2022 (IPS)

With COP 27 approaching, pressure is mounting on wealthy countries to increase their support to poorer ones in the face of climate change. The recent floods in Pakistan have amplified this issue.  China, as the world’s second largest economy, will similarly face increasing pressure to help other developing countries on climate. 

At last year’s COP, the Asian Development Bank (ADB) unveiled an innovative program to fund the early retirement of coal power plants by mobilizing capital to buy-out the investors in these plants. This approach has an interesting, and potentially even easier, application to the coal plants financed by China in Pakistan and elsewhere overseas under its Belt and Road Initiative (“BRI”).  The key to unlocking this, somewhat surprisingly, lies in the dominance of China’s state-owned companies in BRI transactions.

At last year’s COP, the Asian Development Bank (ADB) unveiled an innovative program to fund the early retirement of coal power plants by mobilizing capital to buy-out the investors in these plants. This approach has an interesting, and potentially even easier, application to the coal plants financed by China in Pakistan and elsewhere overseas under its Belt and Road Initiative

In 2015, Beijing and Islamabad launched a program under the BRI to build a series of new power plants in Pakistan.  Over the next five years, five coal plants were commissioned and there are currently an additional four plants under construction. These plants are largely being developed by Chinese energy firms with loans from Chinese banks and financiers … companies that are all mostly owned by the Chinese Government.

Beijing has repeatedly been criticized for the BRI’s funding of new coal power plants considered to exacerbate the climate vulnerabilities of the countries where these projects are being built, like Pakistan.  Even as President Xi pledged last year to stop building new coal-fired power plants abroad, there has been an increasing understanding that achieving the temperature goals of the Paris Agreement — and reducing the type of climate devastation experienced by Pakistan – requires not only slowing new construction, but also retiring existing coal power plants early, worldwide.

In response to this challenge, the ADB announced the Energy Transition Mechanism which includes an initiative to buy out existing coal investors to shutter their plants early and thereby avoid the attendant future emissions. Typically, this would involve mobilizing international financing from multilateral development banks, climate funds, etc. to compensate the private sector investors in these plants.

Interestingly, the dominance in the BRI’s overseas projects of China’s state-owned companies creates the opportunity for the Chinese Government to apply the ADB mechanism in a streamlined manner — under what could be called the “BRI Clean Energy Transition Mechanism”. How might this work?  Some initial ideas follow.

As noted above, Chinese state-owned financial institutions are the major lenders to the BRI coal power projects in Pakistan. Similarly, Chinese government-owned energy firms are the dominant coal plant owners.  It is the financial interests of these various Chinese state-owned lenders and other enterprises (SOEs) that would be affected adversely by any early retirement.

Consequently, under the proposed mechanism, China would be compensating its own SOEs for the revenues they would lose in the future from the early plant retirements in Pakistan. In essence, China would pay itself.  This is a unique feature of this BRI coal retirement program that flows from China’s reliance on its own SOEs … and it presents several operational and financial advantages.

1. The financial arrangements for early retirement should be easier to negotiate and execute since the parties are all affiliated — i.e., the Chinese government, its state-owned banks and other SOEs. This should also reduce transaction costs.
2. In the ADB’s early retirement context, private sector investors would typically insist on some compensation being paid today for the loss of projected future revenues. In contrast, because the BRI context would involve compensation from the Chinese Government to its own SOEs, the Government could reasonably delay payments till the point at which the SOEs would actually be foregoing revenues. So, for example, if we assume early retirement in 2030 — an interval that would give Pakistan the time to replace the retired coal electricity generation with renewables in an orderly manner (see discussion below) – then the payments by the Chinese Government to its SOE lenders and energy firms could similarly be deferred till that time.
3. The Government would also, as a practical matter, enjoy significant discretion regarding the level of compensation to be paid to its SOE lenders and energy firms in 2030 and beyond. Notably, the Government could impose a discount on these future payments — especially if it has implemented by that time financial disincentives targeting coal generation (e.g., a carbon price) to support its own carbon peaking and neutrality goals.
4. The proposed BRI mechanism would resemble in various ways a debt-for-nature swap, notably from the perspective of China as a creditor/donor country.  In this BRI “debt-for-coal” swap, China would forego the payments due its SOEs in the future from the operation of these Pakistan coal plants in exchange for the reduced emissions generated by their early retirement. Significantly, this mechanism would produce emissions avoidance benefits without China providing any new overseas funding.

 

What are some possible motivations for Beijing to launch this type of initiative?

First, it provides a mechanism for China to respond to the increasing pressure it is facing as the world’s second largest economy to help poorer developing countries meet their climate and sustainability challenges. China’s status as the world’s largest emitter of greenhouse gases amplifies this pressure.

Second, the ability to launch an international climate program that does not require China to disburse funds for the next several years — and, when it does so, to pay its own SOEs — may appeal to the Government, particularly given the current domestic economic stress.  This is consistent with other debt-for-nature swap programs advanced by other donor countries where the financial cost to the donor is from foregone revenues, not new funding.

Moreover, the loss in revenues for China and its SOEs from the early BRI coal plant retirements would only take place in 2030 when China’s economy should be markedly larger and more capable of absorbing the expense.

Finally, there is an argument that to the extent the ADB and BRI approaches retire the same type of coal capacity with the same climate benefits, China’s inducements to its SOEs to retire BRI coal assets early should be counted as international climate financial support (e.g., a type of “synthetic carbon credit”) just as actual monetary transfers to private sector investors would be recognized with respect to an ADB coal retirement transaction.

Importantly, Pakistan and other BRI developing countries will need even more electricity to power their economic development. Consequently, the BRI Clean Energy Transition Mechanism needs to include additional funding for new renewables power generation capacity (as is the case under the ADB’s approach).

Helping BRI-recipient countries to transition from coal to renewables would also support international efforts to reduce emissions — efforts whose importance for Pakistan and various other developing countries has been made abundantly evident by the devastating weather they have been experiencing.

The extreme climate events of 2022 have increased awareness regarding the vulnerability of poorer countries to climate change and the consequent importance of reducing future emissions.  This article sets out a proposal for how China could retire BRI coal plants early in Pakistan and elsewhere that capitalizes on its use of state-owned companies, while supporting more renewables in these countries to reduce the climate change threat and promote sustainable economic growth.

 

Philippe Benoit has over 20 years working on international energy, climate and development issues, including management positions at the World Bank and the International Energy Agency. He is currently research director at Global Infrastructure Analytics and Sustainability 2050.

By Jan Lundius
STOCKHOLM, Oct 26 2022 (IPS)

In his treatise On War, the Prussian general Carl von Clausewitz (1780–1831) stated that war is “merely a continuation of policy with other means”. With his experience from the Napoleonic Wars von Clausewitz knew that totalitarian regimes could end up conducting huge and ruthless military campaigns. Furthermore, he assumed that to win a war it is necessary to mobilize and indoctrinate the inhabitants of an entire nation. Such an endeavour is called total war, a term that actually can be applied to Putin’s war in Ukraine.

Putin came to power during the turbulent times following the collapse of the Soviet Empire. His image as a forceful personality convinced many that Putin could make Russia “safe for democracy and business”. In June 2000, Bill Clinton proclaimed that Putin was “fully capable of building a prosperous, strong Russia, while preserving freedom and pluralism and the rule of law.”

Soon business flourished, satisfying foreign investors eager to enjoy Russia’s vast deposits of natural riches. At the same time, fear of terrorism was boosted by explosions in heavily populated residential areas. Putin’s answer to these assumed terrorist threats was in accordance with von Clausewitz´s advice to use “force unsparingly, without reference to the quantity of bloodshed.” The pursuing escalation of the war in Chechnya, pinpointed as the origin of terrorism in Russia, made Putin a nationalist hero, while his characteristics as teetotaler, capable administrator, quick learner and talented actor made him assume the role of a Hollywood-inspired saviour/hero. He single-highhandedly flew planes and rode bare-chested through the wilderness surrounding Siberian rivers. Media lionised him as a rough and strong judo/black-belt champion capable of leading an entire, long suffering nation onto a straight path to prosperity.

Some worrisome signs were nevertheless written on the wall. In 2004, Putin declared the collapse of the Soviet Union as” the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the twentieth century.” Meanwhile, his acolytes were amassing the spoils from the collapsed Soviet Empire. Putin supported and protected those oligarchs who backed him, while bankrolling his inner circle.

In Munich 2007, Putin bared his teeth and claws in a speech given at an international Security Conference. He declared that the US was a predatory nation prone to apply an ”almost unconstrained hyper-use of force – military force – in international relations [.-..] plunging the world into an abyss of conflicts.” This revelation was in 2008 followed by Russia´s military assault on neighbouring Georgia.

General elections were rigged, while some political opponents ended up dead, like Boris Nemtsov, who in 2015 was killed on a bridge close to the Kremlin. Alex Navalny, Putin’s most prominent and fearless opponent, was arrested and imprisoned for thirteen years. Out of jail, he was in 2020 poisoned on a flight to Siberia. Close to dying, he was brought to Germany for expert treatment. After recovering, Navalny went back to Russia, where he was immediately put on trial and imprisoned.

Non-compliant oligarchs were and are routinely harassed. First to be rounded up were those who controlled independent media, like Vladimir Gusinsky and Boris Berezovsky. Both fled the country. In 2013, Berezovsky died ”in suspicious circumstances”. Another oligarch, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, who had funded independent media, was already in October 2003 arrested on board his private jet and imprisoned for ten years.

Putin can now unopposed claim that the belligerent attack on Ukraine was necessary for protecting the Motherland. Subdued Russian media affirm that ruthless Ukrainian leaders have transformed their nation into a pawn in the cynical game of a Superpower intending to subjugate, or even annihilate, the Russian Federation.

It appears as if Putin is not only dedicated to make “Russia great again”. Another goal of his seems to be to enrich himself and his cronies. As a means to cover up his greed, Putin poses as upholder of “strict” morals, based on “pro-life” and traditional “family” values, as well as heroic patriotism and religious fundamentalism. Twenty years after coming to power Putin could declare: “The liberal idea has become obsolete. Liberals cannot simply dictate anything to anyone just like they have been attempting to do over recent decades.”

In spite of the Ukrainian war and his disrespect for human rights, Putin remains an icon for right-wing nationalists. A symbol of defiance to Western Liberal Establishment’s alleged encouragement of mass immigration and affinity to ”multiculturalism”, conceived as attempts to undermine morals and national identities.

As a counterweight to such assumed measures, backward looking politicians around the world pay homage to nostalgic notions, like a lost Great Chinese Tradition, a Russian Empire, Hindu pride before the arrival of Islam, a Global Britain, the Ottoman Empire, etc. This trend is occasionally joined with a global system where ruling elites consider themselves to be unrestrained by international norms, traditional modes of state governance, and democratic decision processes. Some world leaders try to pull the wool over the eyes of their followers by packaging their intents within populist opinions, like despise for political correctness, globalism, investigative journalism, LBTQ rights, feminism and environmental NGOs. A dangerous trend that, if unchecked, might as in the case of Putin´s Russia lead to socioeconomic conflicts degenerating into total war.

In the US, a strengthened adherence to illiberalism was fostered by Donald Trump. Under his watch US politics began to shift from rule-based order to one where might and wealth make right, a message boosted by media like Fox – and Breitbart News. Trump behaved like a wannabe despot, trying to apply authoritarian tactics at home, while paying homage to thugs and dictators abroad. Before him, US presidents had pledged their adherence to human rights, democracy, and freedom of speech. Nevertheless, their governments occasionally supported despots and dictators, not linking concerns for human rights to security, economy and financial affairs. A Realpolitik, which to “friendly” despots indicated that the US did not care so much about repression and corruption within the fiefdoms of their friends. Such behaviour was based on strategic reasons, while Donald Trump appeared to embrace authoritarians because he actually admired them – Dutete, Xi Jinping, Orbán, Erdoğan, Kim Jung-un, and not the least, Putin.

The former US president´s homage to ideas similar to those of Putin and his pose as a nationalistic superman might be connected with his obvious narcissism and appeal to nationalistic extremists. However, his senseless bragging is also combined with greed. A wealth of investigating reporting has demonstrated links between organized crime and corrupt rulers/oligarchs with the Trump Organization’s overseas business connections.

Money is also part of Russian foreign relations. Populist, chauvinistic parties like Italian Lega Nord (currently known as the Lega) and the French Front National (currently Rassemblement National) have received intellectual and economic support from Russia. This support to European political parties may be considered as a Russian effort to secure support for Putin’s policies abroad, as well as locally.

Germany’s former chancellor, Angela Merkel, a fluent Russian speaker far from being a friend of Putin, dismissed him as a leader using nineteenth-century means to solve twenty-first century problems. For sure, Putin’s attack on Ukraine mirrors age-old use of devastating warfare as a radical solution to complicated sociopolitical problems. It seems to be a stalwart application of the two-hundred-years-old advice provided by von Clausewitz:

Philanthropists may easily imagine there is a skillful method of disarming and overcoming an enemy without causing great bloodshed, and that this is the proper tendency of the Art of War. However plausible this may appear, still it is an error which must be extirpated; for in such dangerous things as war, the errors which proceed from a spirit of benevolence are just the worst. As the use of physical power to the utmost extent by no means excludes the co-operation of the intelligence, it follows that he who uses force unsparingly, without reference to the quantity of bloodshed, must obtain a superiority if his adversary does not act likewise. By such means the former dictates the law to the latter, and both proceed to extremities, to which the only limitations are those imposed by the amount of counteracting force on each side.

Putin´s Ukrainian war neglects human suffering and has now disintegrated into a bloody power struggle, where Russia “to the utmost extent” makes use of its military strength, while being supported by “the co-operation” of a propaganda striving to engage the entire Russian population in the war effort.

The Ukrainian war not only concerns the protection of Mother Russia from a “predatory West”, its ultimate goal is to control a hitherto sovereign nation’s politics and natural resources. Putin’s declared support to an allegedly discriminated Russian minority in Luhansk and Donetsk seems to be a subterfuge for grabbing an essential part of Ukraine’s economic resources.

During early 2000s, privatization of state industries yielded a so called Donbas Clan control of the economic and political power in the Donbas region. These oligarchs were supported by Kremlin and a rampant corruption soon took hold of an area dominated by heavy industry, such as coal mining (60 billion tonnes of coal are waiting to be extracted) and metallurgy.

Before Russia in 2014 backed separatist forces in a ferocious civil war, this particular area produced about 30 percent of Ukraine’s exports and a huge amount of gas reserves in the Dnieper-Donets basin was beginning to be extracted. In those days, the most prominent oligarchs in the Luhansk and Donetsk regions were Putin proteges – Rinat Akhmetov and Viktor Yanukovych, the latter had become Ukraine’s President, though his attachment to Russia and conspicuous corruption led to his fall through the Maidan Uprising in 2013, starting point for Ukraine’s transformation into a prosperous nation.

The Maidan Revolution caused a wave of insecurity sweeping through the former Soviet Empire, shaking up corrupt “counterfeit” democracies/dictatorships like Belarus, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan. Small wonder that the authoritarian leaders of these nations are stout supporters of Putin’s war in Ukraine.

While reading von Clausewitz’s On War it is quite easy to relate it to Putin’s politics that undeniably have resulted in war as a “continuation of policy with other means.” It is not the first time in history that authoritarian regimes have plunged entire nations into a blood-drained pit of war. All of us have to be be aware that support of authoritarian regimes might lead us all down into Hell.

Main Sources: Klaas, Brian (2018) The Despot´s Accomplice: How the West is Aiding and Abetting the Decline of Democracy. London. Hurst & Company. von Clausewitz, Carl (1982) On War. London: Penguin Classics.

IPS UN Bureau

 

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Women living in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’s idyllic Swat valley are determined that Taliban militants will not take root in their community again. Credit: Zofeen T. Ebrahim/IPS

By Zofeen Ebrahim
Karachi, Oct 26 2022 (IPS)

The rise in militancy in Swat still haunts many locals with flashbacks of what they went through 15 years ago.

Dr Jamila Khan can recall every last detail of the day she and her family were forced to leave their hometown of Matta, in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’s (KP) idyllic Swat valley, along with thousands, days before the Pakistan army launched an offensive, Operation Rah-e-Rast, against the militants of Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) after the failed peace agreement with the latter, in 2009.

It was not just the “excruciating” pain running with her braces (Khan is a polio survivor) but the mayhem that afternoon that she recalls.

“We ran with nothing but the clothes on our back,” and went to Madyan, a town an hour’s drive from Matta, and stayed for three months with their uncle. She was among the nearly three million people, many of whom fled Swat for several years.

She can still recall the indignity faced by “the women, the children and the elderly – some of whom were being carried on the shoulders of their sons” after they ran for their lives amidst the sound of deafening “bombing”.

“The militants forced the burqa (an enveloping outer garment worn by women which fully covers the body and the face) upon us, but that afternoon I saw women running for their lives without covering themselves with the chadar (traditional Pashtun cloth that envelops the body from head to foot),” Khan said.

“I never want to go through that again,” she said resolutely. “We will not let anyone bring us to the brink, and this time, we will not be deceived.”

The images of dead bodies on streets are as fresh as the hushed tones that echo in her ears of elders talking of young girls from her family being kidnapped, raped, and even forced into marriage to militant commanders and of defiant men who were punished in the most barbaric manner including being beheaded and slaughtered. The victims were then put on public display. “I was old enough to remember many things,” she said.

“I don’t think I have healed and come out of the horror of all that I witnessed,” said Khan. “Neither has anyone else; we just don’t talk about it and have bottled it all up.”

In 2002 a firebrand cleric from Swat, Mullah Fazlullah, set up his headquarters at his village in Imam Dehri.

Between 2004 and 2007, he started wooing the locals, especially the women, through several dozen illegal FM radio stations promising the Nizam-e-Adal (Islamic justice system), not just in Swat but the entire Malakand division, of the KP province, comprising the districts of Bajaur, Buner, Chitral, Dir and Shangla. By 2007, the TTP had established its writ in the valley, just 160 km from the country’s capital, Islamabad, while the 20,000 army troops deployed looked on helplessly. The Taliban spokesperson Muslim Khan had told IPS in a 2009 interview: “We want to give women their rightful place in Islam”.

“People say it was the women of Swat who supported Fazlullah by giving large donations, even their jewellery, but no one asks why,” said Musarrat Ahmad Zeb, a Pakistani politician from Swat, who had been a member of the National Assembly of Pakistan, from June 2013 to May 2018.

Talking to IPS from Swat, she said the TTP promised quick justice to the locals, which they had enjoyed when the wali ruled Swat and had eroded after the princely state acceded to Pakistan in 1969. Zeb is the widowed wife of Miangul Ahmed Zeb, son of the wali of Swat, Miangul Jahan Zeb.

But instead of giving the women what the TTP promised, they took away their right to life altogether. They were forced to give up jobs where there was interaction with men, they were forbidden from walking to the market unescorted and adolescent girls were not allowed to go to school.

Twenty-one-year-old Gulalai Noor is worried she may have to close down her beauty parlour in Mingora, the capital city of Swat.

“We had a fairly good clientele, but since the last two months, it’s a trickle. If this continues, how will we be able to pay the rent and utility bills of the place?” she told IPS over the phone. She not only supports her parents but also pays for her tuition. Noor is enrolled in the two-year diploma course for a lady health visitor programme.

Senator Mushahid Hussain Sayed, the chairperson of the Senate Committee on Defence and National Security, told IPS the “resurgence of terrorism” in KP was of “serious concern”, recalling the sacrifices made by Pakistan’s armed forces and the people to combat and contain the “scourge”.

But the arrival of the Taliban is not new and not in Swat alone. “They have been there for many years and are everywhere in KP. I have been bringing it to the notice of colleagues in the assembly since 2018,” Mohsin Dawar, a legislator, from North Waziristan, and chairperson of the National Democratic Movement, a nationalist party.

He told IPS the militants got energized after the Taliban took over Kabul last year.

According to a recent research paper produced by the Islamabad-based think tank, Pak Institute of Peace Studies, as many as 433 people were killed and 719 injured in 250 attacks in Pakistan between August 15, 2021.

Terming them “isolated incidents of terrorism”, the officials claimed all did not take place in KP. However, the TTP has claimed responsibility for a majority of these attacks.

Last month eight six persons, including a former peace committee head Idrees Khan, were killed by a remote-controlled bomb attack. Khan was at the forefront of mobilizing resistance against the Taliban in 2007. Earlier this month, a minister of Gilgit Baltistan was taken hostage; in return, they demanded the release of their comrades involved in the deadly 2013 terrorist attack on the Nanga Parbat base camp, in which foreign climbers were targeted. They also wanted an end to women’s sports activities in GB. “These high-profile cases create fear among the general public and are very demoralizing for them,” Dawar had said in the assembly recently.

While it was the “people’s resistance” that had “contained” the situation, he warned it can get out of hand and become “even more dangerous than last time” if not taken notice of now.

Fazal Maula Zahid, a member of the Swat Qaumi Jirga (a platform of elders and notables working for peace in the region), has high hopes for the youth and women of the valley. “If they come out as a collective force and are organized,” he said, no harm can come to the valley.

“Today’s youth are energetic and have seen or heard the troubles of their elders; they will not allow history to repeat itself,” Zahid said, adding the people had no faith in government functionaries who have done little to protect the hapless people.

For a few weeks now, residents from different towns and cities of KP, like Khawazakhela, Kabal, Matta, Mingora, Charbagh and Madyan, have been coming out to protest against the surge in terrorist attacks.

“At Mingora, there were more than 80,000 at Nishtar Chowk; it was huge,” said Zahid, who attended the event. “I am told the one at Charbagh was even bigger!”

“It is heartening that people have risen against this resurgence and showed their resolve to never again allow this phenomenon to pollute their society,” said Sayed and the “gains of the recent past are not frittered away”.

He informed that at a committee meeting held earlier this month, it was resolved to “revitalise the counterterrorism apparatus”, especially the National Counter Terrorism Authority, (responsible for making counter-terrorism and counter-extremism policies and strategies). He hoped, there “won’t be a yawning chasm between words and deeds” and the interests of the people and the state will remain paramount, not “political expediency”.

But these were only men, as the custom of segregation in public spaces is still prevalent.

However, said Zahid, in an unprecedented move, on October 21, a handful of women also protested in Madyan.

Both Noor and Khan said they, too, want to come out.

“I think if there are enough women, my family will give permission,” said Khan.

Note: Names of the women interviewed have been changed to protect their safety.

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

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Credit: IMF

By Bhumika Muchhala
NEW YORK, Oct 26 2022 (IPS)

Held in-person for the first time in three years, the annual meetings of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank last week in Washington, D.C. failed to offer solutions to the dozens of developing countries in debt distress or on the forewarned global recession instigated by monetary tightening.

Meanwhile, austerity measures are reinforced through a repeated emphasis on fiscal tightening, underpinned by a monetarism upheld by the IMF and rich country central banks.

The scenario of a dual tightening in both monetary and fiscal policy is only exacerbated by the absence of political will among creditors to cooperate in debt restructuring, bolstered by narratives of losing market access to financial flows.

New loan programs are created by the IMF to boost concessional financing for food price shocks, climate transitions and liquidity shortfalls. However, these very loans create new debt and reinscribe the very austerity measures that worsen the challenges of inflation and climate.

Within these asymmetries of power and access in the world economy, and the foreclosing of developmental policy tools for developing countries, what then is the fate of the vast majority of people and nations in the world?

The IMF’s World Economic Outlook warned of an imminent recession amidst a shift of financial regime from cheap and easy money to an aggressive synchronization of global monetary tightening.

“In short, the worst is yet to come, and for many people 2023 will feel like a recession,” said IMF Chief Economist Pierre-Olivier Gourinchas. Convening the world’s finance ministers, central bank governors, and financial market leaders, the IMF announced a slowdown in global growth by 2.7%, down from the 3.2% growth projected for this year.

On the heels of a global pandemic followed by the war in Ukraine, the US Federal Reserve’s interest rate hikes, aimed toward domestic price stability, is creating a global push toward more expensive money.

A stronger dollar, higher international and domestic interest rates, coupled with depreciating currencies and sell-offs in many developing country assets, is generating protracted economic and social pain across the globe.

The spillover impacts are seen in soaring food and fuel prices, increases in dollar-denominated debt and imports costs, volatile commodity markets and debt distress intensifying into a 50-year record across the developing world.

The UN’s 2022 Trade and Development Report warns that the most vulnerable countries and communities are being hit the hardest. Warnings of another ‘lost decade’ abound, in that the current interest rate hikes resemble those of 1979-82, which triggered debt crises in over 40 developing countries where ‘structural adjustment programs’ through IMF loans contributed to a decade of lost growth and development across the Global South.

Inflation targeting consumes financial rule makers

The tightrope global central banks are walking is acknowledged by IMF Managing Director, Kristalina Georgieva, who says, “Not tightening enough would cause inflation to become de-anchored and entrenched — which would require future interest rates to be much higher and more sustained, causing massive harm on growth and massive harm on people.

On the other hand, tightening monetary policy too much and too fast — and doing so in a synchronized manner across countries — could push many economies into prolonged recession.”

Meanwhile, the topline recommendation of the IMF’s Global Financial and Stability Report is that “central banks must act resolutely to bring inflation back to target.” Doing otherwise would risk credibility and market volatility, or in other words, create difficulties in market access to financial and investment flows and/or worsen borrowing terms.

One of the central tenets of neoclassical economic consensus among global central banks is that of maintaining price stability through a low inflation target of 2%. Financial rulemakers have for decades deemed inflation a threat to economic growth by way of the specter of hyperinflation. However, empirical evidence points to the contrary.

Collating data from 31 countries from 1961-94, World Bank chief economist Michael Bruno and William Easterly concluded that the inflation does not lead to lower growth, even when the significant oil price increase of 1974-75 is included.

The US Federal Reserve’s own historical archives demonstrate that the so-called ‘Great Inflation’ of 1965-82 did not harm growth either. In light of these studies by neoclassical economists and central bank institutions, economists Anis Chowdhury and Jomo Kwame Sundaram argue that “there is no empirical basis for setting a particular threshold, such as the now standard 2% inflation target – long acknowledged as ‘plucked from the air.’”

From press conferences to panel speeches, the IMF leadership repeats that the danger of “entrenched” inflation requires a global commitment to tackle it head on through global to domestic monetary tightening.

This stems in large part from a belief that once inflation begins, it has an inherent tendency to accelerate. Consequently, IMF loans and surveillance recommend central bank independence (from the executive) as a means to ensure unbiased financial policymaking, while critics contend that it has only enhanced the influence and power of big banks and financial actors, largely at the expense of the real economy.

However, history again demonstrates that inflation does not accelerate easily, even when workers have more bargaining power, or wages are indexed to consumer prices – as in some countries.

Lost decade redux?

The IMF’s Fiscal Monitor, published on October 12, called upon all policymakers to “maintain a tight fiscal stance, so that fiscal policy does not work at cross-purposes with monetary policy.” In essence, fiscal policy must serve monetary policy in its “fight against inflation,” by retrenching public spending for the singular objective of sending “a powerful signal that policymakers are aligned in the fight against inflation.”

The rationale is straightforward: “In a time of high inflation, policies to address high food and energy prices should not add to aggregate demand.” Increased demand is anathema, as it “forces central banks to raise interest rates even higher.”

The fiscal tightening is not new. In 2021, 131 governments started scaling back public spending. The geographic and population scale of austerity cuts is expected to intensify up to 2025.

Governments are implementing, or discussing, a range of fiscal adjustment policies, such as targeting social protection, regressive taxation, reducing public expenditure in social sectors, eliminating subsidies, privatizing public services or State-Owned Enterprises, pension reforms, labor flexibilization.

All have long histories of negative social impacts on economic and social rights, such as the right to food, water, health, housing, education, and livelihoods. The human impact will reach over 6 billion people, or 85% of humanity, in 2023.

In a time of poly-crisis, retrenching public spending and imposing regressive taxes that disproportionately hurt the poor, especially women, not only extinguishes the hope of achieving the Sustainable Development Goals by 2030, but more fundamentally, regresses decades of fighting poverty.

Meanwhile, the IMF’s Board has approved the creation of two new loan facilities, the new Food Shock Window, available for a year to countries reeling from the global food price crisis, and the Resilience and Sustainability Trust (RST), through which many rich countries may re-channel their unused Special Drawing Rights if the funds are used to address “external shocks, including climate change and pandemics” by rules set out by the Fund.

While both loans address urgent threats, they also create new debt. The RST is also conditional upon an IMF loan program hinged on fiscal consolidation.

The severity of the food crisis warrants aid in the form of grants not loans. Based on prior research done by the World Bank and Center for Global Development on food price spikes, Oxfam estimates that another 65 million people could be pushed below the $1.90 extreme poverty line as a consequence of food price increases.

Debt crises nearing point of no return

Despite the imminent threat of a debt crises imploding across many developing countries, sovereign debt solutions, the Group of 20, IMF, World Bank as well as the Institute of International Finance, the consortium of private financial actors, have to date failed to create viable solutions.

The G20’s Debt Service Suspension Initiative, which suspended debt payments for 73 low-income countries, was terminated at the end of 2021. And two years after the Common Framework was established in 2020, it’s multiple flaws have led even the World Bank to call it a ‘slow-motion debt tragedy.’

One key dilemma is the lack of political will to enforce a comparability of treatment, where all creditors, including private, participate on equivalent terms or restructuring and in the principle of burden sharing. Another challenge is the glacial pace of restructuring is not only protracted but also riddled with uncertainty.

Middle-income countries, where the vast majority of the world’s poor reside and where serious debt defaults are taking place, are not included. Low-income countries fear that access to commercial financing will be cut off if they apply to the Common Framework, as evidenced by Fitch and S&P slashed Ethiopia’s sovereign rating when the nation applied to the Common Framework in 2021.

Out of the three countries that have so far asked for their debt to be treated – Chad, Ethiopia and Zambia – only Zambia has seen some forward movement.

The narratives coming from within the IMF reiterate a subservience to market access and creditor interests. Across panels and webinars, senior level IMF staff remarked that a large debt restructuring is a serious event, which may result in a decrease of future multilateral and private financing, in amounts that outweigh the financing gained in relief or restructuring.

Some warned that private creditors will not participate in debt restructuring where national fiscal instability reigns. To secure market access, countries have to tighten fiscal belts even more. The logic here is that financial stability imperative for accessing private credit requires fiscal consolidation that generates social devastation.

The lack of official creditor participation and the dilemma of transparency, referring in large part to China, was repeatedly stressed as a key problem. At the same time, an old and wholly condescending trope of the need to increase debtor discipline in light of its financial mismanagement and irresponsibility repeatedly emerged.

Meanwhile, there is no mention of the often-legalized corruption of private actors, such as tax evasion and avoidance, speculative and/or rigged trading. Amidst the talk, actual debt solutions are in omission. While political will is already in short supply, the lack of cooperation toward problem-solving is exacerbated by the finger-pointing between the creditor groups of bilateral, private, and multilateral.

History has repeatedly illustrated the way forward on debt, and the waves of austerity that it generates. For decades, advocates and policymakers alike have called for a transparent and binding debt workout mechanism within a multilateral framework for debt crisis resolution, in a process convening all creditors.

The UN General Assembly has adopted multiple resolutions calling for such a mechanism over the years. Debt justice movements from across the developing world have urged for the cancellation of all unsustainable and illegitimate debts in a manner that is ambitious, unconditional, and without repercussions for future market access.

Past cases show how reducing debt stock and payments allow for countries to increase their public financing for urgent domestic needs.

The principle of burden-sharing ensures genuine debt relief, as does the commitment to include all creditors in an automatic or orderly way. Recognizing that multilateral institutions account for around one-third of the outstanding debt of low- and lower-middle-income countries, the World Bank and IMF must participate in such efforts.

They should both cancel debt payments owed, and the IMF should eliminate surcharges. Protection needs to be provided to debtor states against holdouts and lawsuits by non-participating creditors, while laws and procedures for responsible borrowing and lending need to be ensured to protect citizens and communities against corrupt, predatory and odious debts.

Last but not least, an automatic mechanism for a debt standstill in the wake of an extreme exogenous shock should be created. As proposed by the G77 group of developing countries in the UN General Assembly in response to the global financial crisis of 2007-8, such a mechanism must “be established for a determined period in response to external catastrophe events, as climate and natural disasters, health pandemic, military conflict and inflation.” The prescience of the G77 group in 2009 offers a salient message.

While the developing world has little recourse but to ‘dance to the tune of the Federal Reserve,’ the devastating toll of the human, social and economic crisis must be addressed through tools and choices that can be generated.

The question is how to muster political will, be it from the moral pressure of global justice movement to analysis of the effects that soaring poverty and intensifying climate change will have on the very survival of our planet and species.

Bhumika Muchhala is development economist and senior advocate on economic governance at Third World Network. She works on research, analysis, advocacy and public education on the international political economy of development, feminist economics and decolonial theory and approaches.

IPS UN Bureau

 

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A group of young women dance and burn their hijabs during a protest in Iran's Bandar Abbas. Credit: social media

By Arina Moradi
COPENHAGEN, Oct 25 2022 (IPS)

It’s been over a month since Bayan, a 30-year-old Persian language teacher, last left her home in the Kurdish city of Piranshahr, 730 northwest of Tehran. Her parents believe they must protect her from what might happen to a protester in Iran.

Thousands of young women and men have been chanting “Women, Life, Freedom” in the Iranian streets since mid-September. However, there are many more Iranian women nobody has seen so far among the protesters. Like Bayan, many yearn for freedom without being able to leave their family homes

“I told them that I am ready to die now in this fight rather than languish to death in this country,” this woman tells IPS over the phone. Like the rest of those interviewed from the Danish capital and who live inside Iran, she doesn’t want to disclose her identity for fear of reprisals. Her family, she adds, are afraid of detention, torture and especially the possibility of being subject to sexual violence by security forces inside detention centres.

After the tragic death of Mahsa Amini -the 22-year-old Iranian Kurd died in police custody after she was detained in Tehran for “inappropriate attire”-, thousands of young women and men have been chanting “Women, Life, Freedom” in the Iranian streets since mid-September. However, there are many more Iranian women nobody has seen so far among the protesters. Like Bayan, many yearn for freedom without being able to leave their family homes.

It’s doubtless easier for the men. Despite the brutal anti-riot forces’ crackdown, Soran, Bayan’s younger brother, says he has joined almost every protest in the city. His parents have been warning him of the possible consequences too, but they can’t stop him from leaving the house.

“I tried to convince my parents to let my sister join me, but they wouldn’t allow it. So we found a safer way to participate,” the 24-year-old Kurd tells IPS. They have worked together on a list of contacts of many journalists outside of the country.

“My brother goes out to join the protests and also gather news. I contact the journalists from the list to let them know what´s going on here: I send them videos, pictures and the name of those we think have been arrested by security forces,” explains Bayan. “I hope what I do helps somehow.”

 

Ammunition used by the Iranian secfurioty forces in Sanandaj, Kurdistan province during anti-regime protests. Credit: courtesy

 

According to the state news agency IRNA, more than 1000 people including journalists have been arrested across Iran, but the actual number is estimated to be much higher.

There has been no official data on the number of detainees in Iran’s recent protests, In its October 18 report, The United Nations warned about “mass arrests of protesters,” including the detention of at least 90 civil rights activists, human rights defenders, lawyers, artists, and journalists.

Iranian journalist Niloofar Hamedi is among those captured. On September 16, Hamedi gained access to Kasra Hospital in Tehran, where Mahsa Amini was being treated following her detention by the morality police. Hamedi would later publish a photo of Amini’s parents hugging and crying in the hospital. The picture quickly spread along with Hamedi’s reporting on Amini’s death, something which eventually spiralled into nationwide protests

In the country’s capital Tehran, Neda, a 38-year-old mother of two also does her bit. Since the very beginning, she has sheltered dozens of protesters who were chased by security forces and needed a place to hide.

“It first happened on the second night of the protests in Tehran. A group of six young women and men were slamming the door asking for help as police were chasing them in the streets. It was before midnight. I opened the door as fast as possible and closed it even faster. The kids woke up and we were all in a panic. I got so emotional that I cried and hugged one of the girls. Some of them cried too. I can’t forget their young innocent faces,” the Iranian woman tells IPS over a phone conversation.

Since that night, Neda is always ready whenever there is a protest in their neighbourhood. She delivers food, water, medicines or whatever is needed by the protesters who hide from the anti-riot forces.

“One night, there was a young boy who was shot in his right leg. I called a friend of mine who is a doctor to treat him at my place. We couldn’t risk taking him to the hospital for security reasons.”

Neda says all she wants is to see the end of the Islamic Republic’s power. “I wish to see my kids growing up in a country where there is respect for women, freedom, and equality. I just want to see the fall of this regime with my own eyes.”

However, she finds it difficult to convince her husband to let her leave the house and join the protesters in the streets.

“Everybody expects a mother of two to stay home with the kids. I feel like I am on fire. I stay at home while these young people risk their lives being in the streets. Sometimes I feel so powerless and guilty,” she admits.

 

Women in Saqqez, Kurdistan province, holding hands amid anti-regime protests in October 12, 2022. Credit: Courtesy

 

Behind the slogan

As of October 15, at least 215 people including 27 children have been killed in the protests in Iran, Norway-based group Iran Human Rights reported.

“The reckless state violence which has even targeted children and prisoners, along with the false narratives presented by Islamic Republic officials, make it more crucial than ever for the international community to establish an independent mechanism under the supervision of the UN to investigate and hold the perpetrators of such gross human rights violations accountable,” the organization’s director, Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam, said in the report.

On October 17, Amnesty International also called on the UN Human Rights Council to hold a special session on Iran “as a matter of urgency” and urged the Council to establish “an independent mechanism with investigative, reporting and accountability functions to address the most serious crimes under international law and other gross human rights violations committed in Iran.”

Iranian authorities have blamed the west for instigating the unrest. “Who would believe that the death of a girl is so important to Westerners?” the country’s foreign minister, Hussein Amir Abdollahian, said on October 15.

Despite the growing crackdown by Iranian security forces, protests keep spreading all across the country thanks to people like 41-year-old Hana. She lives with her husband and their two kids in Bukan, 478 kilometres west of Tehran, in Azerbaijan province. This city of around 200,000 has seen waves of protests and public strikes in the past month. However, she could not join the protesters in the streets.

“I stayed home to take care of the children and my husband went out to protest. He believes that kids need me more than they need him in case of detention, injuries or even death due to the security forces’ brutal crackdown on the protesters,” Hana tells IPS over the phone.

She owns a women’s clothing shop and she has joined all the strikes to show objection to the state. The security forces have broken her shop’s windows and many others in the city as a tactic to force them to end the strike.

“I didn’t give up. It’s the least I could do to contribute to the uprising,” says the Iranian woman. “Women, life, and freedom,” she insists, is much more than a slogan.

“It’s a lifetime goal for most Iranian women who have been suffering all kinds of pressure from their families, from society and, above all, from the state and its anti-women laws.”

Biodiversity is in trouble as the WWF report, 2022 Living Planet Index, indicates that the global wildlife population had decreased by 69 percent since 1970. Credit: Joyce Chimbi/IPS

By Joyce Chimbi
Nairobi, Oct 25 2022 (IPS)

Home to a variety of iconic and rare animal and plant species, freshwater lakes, rivers, waterfalls, and the expansive Indian Ocean coastline, Kenya’s place as a biodiversity hotspot has never been in doubt.

But the first National Wildlife Census report finalized in August 2021 pointed to signs of trouble. For instance, as many as five wildlife species are critically endangered and could disappear in the immediate future. The report noted that there were just 1,650 Tana River Mangabey, 897 black rhinos, 497 Hirolas, 51 Sable antelopes, and 15 Roan antelopes.

Biodiversity expert John Mwangi Gicheha tells IPS the decline in species population abundance has now been validated by the newly-released Living Planet Report 2022.

“The health of planet earth is well and truly on a sharp decline, and we are not only seeing a decrease in the global population of species but a decline in their genetic diversity and a loss of species climatically determined habitats,” Gicheha expounds.

Conducted by the World Wildlife Fund for Nature (WWF), an independent conservation organization, this is the first ever most comprehensive report on the state of global vertebrate wildlife populations, and it makes a startling revelation: the world’s wildlife populations have declined by 69 percent since 1970.

As a measure of the state of the world’s biological diversity among population trends of vertebrate species from terrestrial, freshwater, and marine habitats, the 2022 Living Planet Index analyzed approximately 32,000 populations of 5,230 species across the world.

By tracking trends in the abundance of mammals, fish, reptiles, birds, and amphibians worldwide since 1970, a disturbing image emerged: one million plants and animals are threatened with extinction.

Worse still, 1-2.5 percent of birds, mammals, amphibians, reptiles, and fish have gone extinct.

Key findings include revelations that monitored freshwater populations are hardest hit as there is an alarming decline of 83 percent in the last 50 years, more than any other species groups.

The decline in freshwater population is mainly caused by habitat loss and barriers to migration routes which account for an estimated half the threat to these populations. Further, only 37 percent of rivers over 1,000 kilometres remain free-flowing in their natural state.

Against this backdrop, the report stresses that the global community is living the consequences of double crises and shows how “interlinked emergencies of human-induced climate change and the loss of biodiversity are threatening the well-being of current and future generations.”

The greatest regional decline in wildlife population is in Latin America and the Caribbean region, whose average population abundance decline is 94 percent.

Africa comes second with a 66 percent fall in its wildlife populations over the past 52 years, and across the board, the poor and marginalized remain highly vulnerable and most affected by the decline.

There was an 18 percent decline in Europe and Central Asia and a 55 percent decline in wildlife populations in the Asia Pacific.

More findings show despite mangroves being unique forests of the sea; they remain at great risk as they continue to be lost to aquaculture, agriculture and coastal development at current rates of 0.13 percent per year.

Mangrove loss is not only a loss of habitat for biodiversity, the report emphasizes, but the loss of ecosystem services for coastal communities.

Further, approximately 50 percent of warm water corals have already been lost. Even worse, a warming of 5 degrees Celsius will lead to a loss of 70 to 90 percent of warm water corals.

Overall, the global abundance of 18 of 31 oceanic sharks and rays declined by 71 percent since 1970. By 2020, three-quarters of sharks and rays were threatened with an elevated risk of extinction. Kenya is currently home to 9 whale sharks, two blue whales and 17 tiger sharks, per the National Wildlife Census.

The report stresses that dominating the natural world irresponsibly, taking nature for granted, exploiting of resources wastefully and unsustainably and, distributing these resources unevenly have life-altering consequences.

Judy Ouya, a government official in the Ministry of Environment and Forestry tells IPS that said consequences could no longer be ignored as they are too severe and frequent. They include loss of lives and economic assets from extreme weather conditions, deepening poverty and, severe food and water insecurity from droughts.

For instance, the reports references Amboseli, Kenya, Maasai community who rely on selling livestock and are now greatly affected by the severe prolonged dry spell.

Earlier in June 2022, the World Bank projected that Kenya’s growth will slow down within the year and into 2023-24 due to the ongoing ravaging drought and other external influences, such as the war in Ukraine.

“The ongoing climate and biodiversity crises are significantly induced and sustained by human activity and particularly our land use change and, our interactions with ocean and lake ecosystems. There is significant over-exploitation of nature, and the consequences are coming faster and more severe than expected,” Ouya observes.

WWF finds that while ongoing conservation efforts are helping, urgent action is required if the global community is to reverse nature loss. The broken relationship with nature, experts such as Ouya emphasize, impacts all aspects of human life and will significantly derail economic development and attainment of UN SDGs.

Overall, the index finds too much nature has been lost at a speed that calls for higher ambitions to effectively, efficiently and sustainably address the six key threats to biodiversity loss which include habitat degradation and loss, exploitation, the introduction of invasive species, pollution, climate change and disease.

Higher ambitions include working together towards the complimentary goals of net-zero emissions by 2050 and net-positive biodiversity by 2030 as they represent “the compass to guide us towards a safe future for humanity, to shift to a sustainable development model, to support the delivery of the 2030 SDGs.”

If the global community works together to achieve these goals and because nature can bounce back, the report foretells a promising future, of a decade that will end better than it started with more natural forests, more fish in the ocean and river systems, more pollinators in our farmlands, more biodiversity worldwide.

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

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Children stand in a flood water in Borno State, Nigeria. Credit: UNICEF/Vlad Sokhin

By Alexander Müller, Adam Prakash and Elena Lazutkaite
BERLIN, Oct 25 2022 (IPS)

In temperate zones lie most of the world’s richest countries, which have also been up till now the world’s major breadbaskets, in meeting international grain, oilseed and livestock product needs.

However, climate change is threatening to change the course of history, allowing some native pests to breed more frequently and longer, while invasive insects and pathogens are being spread more widely.

It is no coincidence that agriculture in temperate regions, such as much of Northern Europe and Northern America, is characterised by high productivity.

In temperate zones, agricultural sectors are highly capital intensive with new technologies continuously introduced; weather conditions during growing seasons are often predictably favourable; while harsh winters and cold springs prevent many plant pests and pathogens from overwintering, all leading to crop yields that are approaching their physiological ceilings, and at the same time storage losses being kept to a minimum.

In a nutshell

Pests and diseases can undergo rapid evolutionary changes through natural selection within the timescale of climate change. As the climate warms up, agricultural pests and diseases are advancing northwards and becoming more widespread.

Notwithstanding, the science that links climate change with changes to the behaviour of insect pests and pathogens is complex, given the latter’s multitude of biological responses and their interactions with changing environmental stimuli.

Invasive species, by definition, have succeeded in areas outside of their habitual range and therefore have higher adaptive capacity relative to native species. Evolution and adaptation are therefore the inherent mechanisms that explain why pests and diseases pose a consequential threat (both localised and transboundary) under a changing climate.

Natural selection also explains why an increasing number of insect pests have become resistant to pesticides.

Why should richer economies be worried? What science tell us

Drawing from a recent report on the scientific linkages between climate change and pest and disease outbreaks produced by TMG Think Tank for Sustainability and Climate Prediction and Applications Centre of Intergovernmental Authority on Development, temperature rise in temperate zones is likely to attract new pests that have migrated from areas where heat stress is too severe.

However, with warmer winters in northern latitudes there is strong likelihood of migration resulting in an increase in the build-up of insect pest populations to damaging levels owing to early emergence (shorter dormancy due to accelerated metabolic rates attributable to higher temperatures).

While there is uncertainty on whether invasive species can establish themselves in new environments, much will depend on factors such as the degree of temperature rise, food supply and natural enemies and whether they can maintain or adapt to the synchrony with growth cycles of plants on which they feed.

Warming will also have other detrimental effects, such as bringing about an increased number of generations of native and invasive insect pests through greater intra-year breeding, fostering rising population growth.

Ultimately, with a larger temperature window in temperate zones within which insects and pathogens can flourish combined with rising heat stress to crops, these zones could register rapid increases in pest and disease outbreaks, increased use of pesticides, increased costs to farmers and lower yields.

In fact, the transboundary and transoceanic expansion of invasive species is already heading northwards thanks to climate change including extreme events such as cyclones and storms, and further exacerbated by international trade and travel.

A case in point here is the recent spread of the destructive lanternflies to the United States, which have demonstrated great adaptability to new environments and pose imminent threat to vineyard based economies. Researchers further predict that corn earworm that ravages maize, cotton, soyabeans and vegetables is expanding northwards into the United States’ maize belt.

The UN estimates that at least 20 percent of all food crops grown worldwide are lost annually to plant pests and diseases. With the rich temperate countries becoming increasing vulnerable, total losses would increase.

Consequently, while there is a pressing need for scientific theory to provide further precision on pest-climate dynamics, as affirmed in the latest report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), action is needed now.

Harnessing technological leaps in the realm of artificial intelligence, will be critical for enhanced plant pest and disease surveillance, diagnostics and outbreak prediction via early warning systems.

As with all pest and disease outbreaks, prevention is far cheaper than dealing with full-blown crises, and what is more, pests and diseases are often impossible to eradicate once they have established themselves.

Alexander Müller is TMG’s Managing Director. He is a former Assistant Director-General of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN (FAO) and State Secretary for Consumer Protection, Food and Agriculture, Germany.

Adam Prakash is a TMG research associate, whose work explores the quantitative links between climate change and agriculture and how emerging technologies can de-risk food systems.

Elena Lazutkaite is an animal scientist and interdisciplinary researcher focusing on food and agriculture, transboundary pests and resilience, and environmental sustainability.

TMG Research gGmbH is an international not-for-profit think tank headquartered in Berlin, Germany, with an African regional office in Nairobi. Through action-oriented research with local and international partners, TMG triggers new thinking and “social innovations” to tackle entrenched governance challenges in the transition to a more sustainable future for people and planet.

IPS UN Bureau

 

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By Anis Chowdhury and Jomo Kwame Sundaram
SYDNEY and KUALA LUMPUR, Oct 25 2022 (IPS)

Widespread adverse reactions to the UK government’s recent ‘mini-budget’ forced new Prime Minister Liz Truss to resign. The episode highlighted problems of macroeconomic policy coordination and the interests involved.

Macro-policy coordination
But macroeconomic, specifically fiscal-monetary policy coordination almost became “taboo” as central bank independence (CBI) became the new orthodoxy. It has been accused of enabling CBs to finance government deficits. Critics claim inflation, even hyperinflation, becomes inevitable.

Anis Chowdhury

Government finance ministries and CBs are the two main macroeconomic policy protagonists. Poor ‘macro-policy’ coordination has generated problems, including contradictory policy responses. This has meant more macroeconomic and financial instability, worrying markets and investors.

Fiscal policy – notably variations in government tax and spending – mainly aims to influence long-term growth and distribution. CB monetary policy – e.g., variations in short-term interest rates and credit growth – claims to prioritize price and exchange rate stability.

By the early 1990s, the ‘Washington consensus’ implied the two macro-policy actors should work independently due to their different time horizons. After all, governments are subject to short-term political considerations inimical to monetary stability needed for long-term growth.

Claiming to be “technocratic”, CBs have increasingly set their own goals or targets. CBI has involved both ‘goal’ and ‘instrument’ independence, instead of ‘goal dependence’ with ‘instrument independence’.

CBI was ostensibly to avoid ‘fiscal dominance’ of monetary policy. Meanwhile, government fiscal policy became subordinated to CB inflation targets. For former Reserve Bank of Australia Deputy Governor Guy Debelle, monetary policy became “the only game in town for demand management”.

Debelle noted that except for rare and brief coordinated fiscal stimuli in early 2009, after the onset of the global financial crisis, “demand management continued to be the sole purview of central banks. Fiscal policy was not much in the mix”.

Jomo Kwame Sundaram

Sub-optimal outcomes
But more than three decades of “divorce” between independent CBs and fiscal authorities have failed to deliver its promised benefits. Instead, monetary policy dominance has worsened financial instability.

Adam Posen found the costs of disinflation, or keeping inflation low, higher in OECD countries with CBI. Carl Walsh found likewise in the European Community.

For Guy Debelle and Stanley Fischer, CBs have sought to enhance their credibility by being tougher on inflation, even at the expense of output and employment losses.

Committed to arbitrary targets, independent CBs have sought credit for keeping inflation low. They deny other contributory factors, e.g., labour’s diminished bargaining power and globalization, particularly cheaper supplies.

John Taylor, author of the ‘Taylor rule’ CB mantra, concluded CB “performance was not associated with de jure [legislated] central bank independence”. De jure CB independence has not prevented them from “deviating from policies that lead to both price and output stability”.

The de facto independent US Fed has also taken “actions that have led to high unemployment and/or high inflation”. As single-minded independent CBs pursued low inflation, they neglected their responsibility for financial stability.

CBs’ indiscriminate monetary expansion during the 2000s’ Great Moderation enabled asset price bubbles and dangerous speculation, culminating in the global financial crisis (GFC).

Since the GFC, “the financial sector has become [increasingly] dependent on easy liquidity… To compensate for quantitative easing (QE)-induced low return…, [holders of safe long-term government bonds] increased the risk profile of their other assets, taking on more leverage, and hedging interest rate risk with derivatives”.

Independent CBs also never acknowledge the adverse distributional consequences of their policies. This has been true of both conventional policies, involving interest rate adjustments, and unconventional ones, with bond buying, or QE. All have enabled speculation, credit provision and other financial investments.

They have also helped inefficient and uncompetitive ‘zombie’ enterprises survive. Instead of reversing declining long-term productivity growth, the slowdown since the GFC “has been steep and prolonged”.

Workers’ real wages have remained stagnant or even declined, lowering labour’s income share and widening income inequality. As crises hit and monetary policies were tightened, workers lost jobs and incomes. Workers are doubly hit as governments pursue fiscal austerity to keep inflation low.

Dire consequences
The pandemic has seen unprecedented fiscal and monetary responses. But there has been little coordination between fiscal and monetary authorities. Unsurprisingly, greater pandemic-induced fiscal deficits and monetary expansion have raised inflationary pressures, especially with supply disruptions.

This could have been avoided if policymakers had better coordinated fiscal and monetary measures to unlock key supply bottlenecks. War and economic sanctions have made the supply situation even more dire.

Government debt has been rising since the GFC, reaching record levels due to pandemic measures. CBs hiking interest rates to contain inflation have thus worsened public debt burdens, inviting austerity measures.

Thus, countries go through cycles of debt accumulation and output contraction. Supposed to contain inflation, they adversely impact livelihoods. Many more developing countries face debt crises, further setting back progress.

Needed reforms
Sixty years ago, Milton Friedman asserted, “money is too important to be left to the central bankers”. He elaborated, “One economic defect of an independent central bank … is that it almost invariably involves dispersal of responsibility… Another defect … is the extent to which policy is … made highly dependent on personalities… third … defect is that an independent central bank will almost invariably give undue emphasis to the point of view of bankers”.

Thus, government-sceptic Friedman recommended, “either to make the Federal Reserve a bureau in the Treasury under the secretary of the Treasury, or to put the Federal Reserve under direct congressional control.

“Either involves terminating the so-called independence of the system… either would establish a strong incentive for the Fed to produce a stabler monetary environment than we have had”.

Undoubtedly, this is an extreme solution. Friedman also suggested replacing CB discretion with monetary policy rules to resolve the problem of lack of coordination. But, as Alan Blinder has observed, such rules are “unlikely to score highly”.

Effective fiscal-monetary policy coordination requires appropriate supporting institutions and operating arrangements. As IMF research has shown, “neither legal independence of central bank nor a balanced budget clause or a rule-based monetary policy framework … are enough to ensure effective monetary and fiscal policy coordination”.

Although rules-based policies may enhance transparency and strengthen discipline, they cannot create “credibility”, which depends on policy content, not policy frameworks.

For Debelle, a combination of “goal dependence” and “instrument or operational independence” of CBs under strong democratic or parliamentary oversight may be appropriate for developed countries.

There is also a need to broaden membership of CB governing boards to avoid dominance by financial interests and to represent broader national interests.

But macro-policy coordination should involve more than merely an appropriate fiscal-monetary policy mix. A more coherent approach should also incorporate sectoral strategies, e.g., public investment in renewable energy, education & training, healthcare. Such policy coordination should enable sustainable development and reverse declining productivity growth.

As Buiter urges, it is up to governments “to make appropriate use of … fiscal space” created by fiscal-monetary coordination. Democratic checks and balances are needed to prevent “pork-barrelling” and other fiscal abuses and to protect fiscal decision-making from corruption.

IPS UN Bureau

 

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European Union leaders struggle to find solutions for the energy crisis. Credit: Bigstock

By Baher Kamal
MADRID, Oct 24 2022 (IPS)

European politicians continue to run in all directions to find a way out of their energy crisis. One of them – Simonetta Sommaruga, the Swiss Environment Minister, asked people to ‘shower together’. Others are competing to grant the business of transporting energy from the North of Africa to the continent. All this is not new.

The MidCat: In 2010, a project aimed at transporting 7.500 million cubic metres of gas by linking Catalonia (Spain) to Occitania (France) and from there to other European Union countries.

With an initial estimated cost at over three billion Euro, this MidCat project quasi-blocked just one year later, to be finally stopped in 2018 following cost and impact studies.

Following the energy impact of the condemnable proxy war in Ukraine, Spain has recently proposed relaunching the MIDCAT. But France continued to block the project alleging high costs. Maybe also under the heavy pressure of its extended, powerful business of nuclear plants?

The Italian Connexion: Meanwhile, taking advantage of the deteriorated relations between Spain and Algeria due to Madrid’s support to the annexation of Western Sahara by Morocco, Rome rushed to negotiate with Algiers the transportation of the Algerian gas and oil to Europe through Italy.

But this project hasn’t worked out either.

The Turkish Pipe: At that state, Ankara proposed in September 2022 transporting Russian fossil fuels to Europe through a Turkish pipeline crossing the country’s territory. Also this way out was soon discarded.

The BarMar: During their yet another summit in late October, the European Union’s heads of state and governments launched more debates on how to grant their energy supplies.

At the end, the leaders of Spain, Portugal, and France agreed on 20 October 2022 to replace the MidCat project with a new “green energy corridor” that would be able to transport hydrogen. And they called it BarMar.

Where From? So far, no accurate details are known of the major features of such a project. For instance: where will this hydrogen come from?

According to the European Union’s data, hydrogen accounts for less than 2% of Europe’s present energy consumption and is primarily used to produce chemical products, such as plastics and fertilisers. 96% of this hydrogen production is through natural gas, resulting in significant amounts of CO2 emissions. So?

How Green Is the “Green Energy Corridor”?: The BarMar project’s defenders say that hydrogen is the future of energy. Critics insist that hydrogen is most efficient if it is used around its source.

Anyway, if it is so green, why has the West, including Europe, not turned up sooner to this source of energy?

For How Long. How Much? Who Will Pay?: This BarMar project implies great costs and, according to European sources, it would be a sort of a “transitional” plan. To what? How long will it take to implement the project?

Not having released specific final details, the Spanish, Portuguese and French leaders decided to meet in December 2022 to discuss those details.

Where Will the Money Come From? For now, French President Emmanuel Macron rushed to put the bandage before the wound, saying that the BarMar project would “benefit from European funding.”

The European Union’s funds are composed of the proportional contribution of each one of its 27 member countries, with Germany being the major contributor.

However, in view of the big European financial crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic and now exacerbated by Ukraine’s proxy war, a big portion of such reserves have been designated to alleviate the economic and social impacts, let alone the spectacular rise of fossil fuels prices for citizens.

The Military Race: During NATO’s Summit in Madrid, this Western alliance of 30 countries, decided to further militarise Europe by increasing the continent’s spending on weapons and multiplying its troops, in addition to further extending its presence in Africa. Such militarisation process implies high costs to Europe.

In addition, following the United States’ huge weapons supplies to Ukraine, which for now are estimated at more than 17 billion US dollars, European countries have also continued to send weapons to Ukraine.

Here, some European politicians started talking about the urgent need to replenish the continent’s “empty weapons shelves.”

Furthermore, the European leaders have just decided to transfer to Ukraine up to 1.5 billion US dollars… every single month… as part of the estimated 3 to 3.5 billion… a month… that the West decided to send to Ukraine.

Is the Fossil Fuels Rush Over Soon? Not really. Germany seems to be thinking about reopening their nuclear plants to produce electricity.

Norway is reported as planning to increase oil production from the Northern Sea. The United States, being the world’s largest oil producer, has doubled its liquified gas supplies to Europe.

Venezuela, Saudi Arabia: Washington decided that the heavily sanctioned Nicolas Maduro’s government in Venezuela is not all that bad, therefore the US has approached Caracas to increase its fossil fuels production.

At the time, Western leaders pressured the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), which groups 13 oil-exporting ‘developing nations,’ to pump more oil and gas in the market.

Having OPEC’s top producer: Saudi Arabia shown reluctance, the US-led West has threatened to punish their own “friend and ally” — the Saudis, through sanctions.

Carbon, Fracking: Meanwhile, several European states, mostly the EU Eastern member countries, have been steadily intensifying the extraction and use of another fossil fuel: coal.

And one more European country however is no longer an EU member: the United Kingdom plans to extend the business of “fracking”.

Further to the United Kingdom’s parliamentary debates around the already ousted Liz Truss Conservative government plan to lift the 2019 decision to ban fracking, the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) reminded that hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, is a technique for recovering gas and oil from shale rock.

And that it involves drilling into the earth and directing a high-pressure mixture of water, sand and chemicals at a rock layer in order to release the gas inside.

Environmental organisations and activists worldwide continue to warn about the high dangers to Earth of carrying out such an activity. An activity that, by the way, is still widely extended in the world’s biggest fossil energy producer–the United States.

 

Republicans in general favor less immigration than Democrats. For example, a national Gallup poll in July 2022 found that the proportion saying immigration to America should be decreased was 69 percent among Republicans versus 17 percent among Democrats. Credit: Guillermo Arias / IPS

By Joseph Chamie
PORTLAND, USA, Oct 24 2022 (IPS)

Given the upcoming midterm elections in the United States and the consequences of the outcome for domestic legislation and programs as well as the country’s foreign policy, it’s useful and fitting to review fundamental differences between America’s two major political parties on vital demographic issues.

On virtually every major demographic issue, including reproduction, mortality, immigration, ethnic composition, gender, marriage and population ageing, significant divides exist between the Democrats and Republicans (Figure 1). Those divides have significant consequences and implications for current and future government policies and programs.

 

Source: Various U.S. public opinion surveys.

 

Those divides on vital demographic matters, which have become increasingly politicized by the two major parties, are reinforcing political polarization and partisan antipathy across the country and hindering the economic, social and cultural development of the United States.

With respect to reproduction, while most Democrats are in favor of a woman’s legal access to abortion, most Republicans are not. For example, a March 2022 PEW national survey found that proportion of Democrats saying abortion should be legal in all or most cases was more than twice that of Republicans, i.e., 80 versus 38 percent.

Also, Gallup polls indicate a widening gap since the late 1980s between Democrats and Republicans on the circumstances permitting abortion. By 2022, for example, the proportions of Democrats and Republicans saying abortions should be legal under any circumstances were 57 and 10 percent, respectively (Figure 2).

 

Source: Gallup.

 

A similar difference on abortion is evident among members of Congress and justices of the Supreme Court. While Congressional Democrats are largely in favor codifying access to abortion and safeguards to the right to travel across state lines to undergo the procedure, Congressional Republicans are opposed to such access and safeguards. And the recent Supreme Court abortion decision ending the right to abortion reflects the divides in the views of justices appointed by Republican and Democrat administrations.

Concerning access to birth control methods, the vote on the recently passed bill by the House of Representatives was mostly along party lines. All but eight Republicans opposed the bill that aims to ensure access to contraception. In the Senate, the birth control measure is expected to fail as most Republicans are likely to be against it.

While most Democrats are in favor of a woman’s legal access to abortion, most Republicans are not. For example, a March 2022 PEW national survey found that proportion of Democrats saying abortion should be legal in all or most cases was more than twice that of Republicans, i.e., 80 versus 38 percent
On mortality and morbidity issues, Congressional Democratic and Republican leaders are also divided. A notable example of that divide has been the sustained Republican opposition to the Affordable Care Act enacted by Democrats more than a decade ago.

Recent research has also found that more premature deaths occur in Republican-leaning counties than in Democratic-leaning counties. The policies adopted by Democratic-leaning states compared to those in Republican states are believed to have contributed to the greater divide in mortality outcomes. Those policies include Medicaid expansion, health care access, minimum wage legislation, tobacco control, gun legislation, and drug addiction treatment.

The early responses to the COVID-19 pandemic, which was transformed from a public health concern into a major political issue, also reflect the divide in mortality outcomes between Democrats and Republicans. While mask wearing, social distancing, and related preventive measures were often stressed by most Democratic officials, many Republican leaders resisted such measures and downplayed the risks of the coronavirus.

Those partisan differences concerning the COVID-19 pandemic were reflected in the behavior and attitudes of Republicans and Democrats across the country. As a result of those attitudinal and behavioral differences, Republican-leaning counties have had higher COVID-19 death rates than Democrat-leaning counties.

With respect to immigration, Republicans in general favor less immigration than Democrats. For example, a national Gallup poll in July 2022 found that the proportion saying immigration to America should be decreased was 69 percent among Republicans versus 17 percent among Democrats. The rise for decreased immigration during the past several years is primarily due to Republicans, whose desire for reducing immigration increased by 21 points since June 2020 compared to an increase of 4 points among Democrats (Figure 3).

 

Source: Gallup.

 

To address immigration levels, the former Republican administration advocated building a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border and limiting the granting of asylum claims. In contrast, most Democratic leaders have not been in favor of erecting a border wall. Also, the current Democratic administration has been removing obstacles to granting asylum claims, including ending the former administration’s “Remain in Mexico” policy.

Concerning the more than 11 million illegal immigrants residing in the country, the former Republican administration wanted to ban counting them in the 2020 census. The desired exclusion of undocumented migrants in the census enumeration was aimed at not including them when determining Congressional representation. The current Democratic administration, in contrast, includes undocumented migrants in the census count and determining Congressional representation.

On whether to offer an amnesty to immigrants living unlawfully in the country, a wide divide exists between the two major political parties. While Democrats are largely in favor of offering illegal immigrants a path to U.S. citizenship, many Republicans oppose granting an amnesty to those who are unlawfully resident in the country. A PEW survey in August 2022, for example, found the proportion in favor of a path to U.S. citizenship among Democrats was more than double the level among the Republicans, 80 versus 37 percent, respectively.

Regarding the changing ethnic composition of the U.S. population, Democrats tend to view the changes more favorably than Republicans. For example, one national PEW survey found Democrats three times more likely than Republicans to say a majority nonwhite population will strengthen America’s customs and values, i.e., 42 and 13 percent, respectively.

Similar divides between Democrats and Republicans were found with respect to interracial marriage and same-sex marriage. The growth of interracial marriage is considered to be a good thing for the country by a majority of Democrats and a minority of Republicans, 61 and 33 percent, respectively. Also, Democrats have been consistently more likely than Republicans to say that same-sex marriages should recognized by the law as valid, with the proportions in 2022 at 83 and 55 percent, respectively (Figure 4).

 

Source: Gallup.

 

Democrats and Republicans also differ in their views about gender identity. While a national PEW survey found 80 percent of Republicans saying that whether someone is a man or a woman is determined by the sex assigned at birth, 64 percent of Democrats took the opposite view, believing that a person’s gender can be different from the sex assigned at birth.

Moreover, the majority of Republicans, 57 percent, say that society has gone too far in accepting people who are transgender, compared to 12 percent of Democrats.

On the issue of population ageing, noteworthy policy differences with program implications exist between Democrats and Republicans. In general, Republican leaders have resisted government entitlement programs established by Democrats, such as Social Security and Medicare, preferring reliance on the private sector, freedom of choice and individual responsibility.

Republican leaders have proposed replacing those major programs for older Americans with private investment accounts and a voucher system for health insurance. In addition, some Republicans recommend eliminating Social Security and Medicare as federal entitlement programs and have them become programs approved by Congress annually as discretionary spending.

A similar political divide exists among Americans concerning the provision of long-term care that the elderly may need. One national PEW survey in 2019 reported that while two-thirds of Democrats say the government should be mostly responsible for paying for that care for the elderly, 40 percent of Republicans have that view.

In sum, significant divides currently exist between Democrats and Republicans on nearly every major demographic issue facing the United States. Those divides are being politicized by the two parties, reinforcing political polarization and partisan antipathy across the country, which in turn are affecting domestic legislation and foreign policy as well as hampering America’s progress in the 21st century.

 

Joseph Chamie is a consulting demographer, a former director of the United Nations Population Division and author of numerous publications on population issues, including his recent book, “Births, Deaths, Migrations and Other Important Population Matters.”

 

By External Source
Oct 24 2022 (IPS-Partners)

 
Social media usage has allowed smugglers of wildlife products to expand their network’s reach using Rwanda as a transit route, an investigation by IPS correspondent Aimable Twahirwa shows. Twahirwa reached out to wildlife traffickers using the medium during his investigation of how traders use one of the busiest border crossings, known as “Petite Barrière,” to hide the contraband among other goods.

At Jhargram in India’s West Bengal state, farmers have returned to indigenous and organic farming with promising results. Here women farmers prepare seed beds. Credit: Umar Manzoor Shah/IPS

By Umar Manzoor Shah
Jhargram, India, Oct 24 2022 (IPS)

At Jhargram, a far-flung village in India’s West Bengal state, a group of farmers sit together in one of the open fields. They debate, deliberate, and confabulate about the marketing strategy they should use when selling their harvest on the open market.

Two years ago, the scenario in the village was completely different. The farmers were perturbed by sudden market inflation—a price hike on seeds, fertilisers, and saplings. On top of that, they were worried about climate change and the damage that occurs with the changes in weather patterns—late monsoons, unseasonal rains, and extreme heat waves.

The state of West Bengal is located in the eastern region of India along the Bay of Bengal. It was in this Indian state that Britain’s East India Company started doing business before it went on to rule almost the entire South Asia.

West Bengal is primarily an agricultural state. Despite covering only 2.7% of India’s geographical territory, it is home to approximately 8% of its 1.3 billion population. There are 7,1 million farming families, with 96% being small and marginal farmers in West Bengal. The average land holding is only 0.77 hectares. The state has a broad set of natural resources and agro-climatic conditions that allow for the production of a wide range of crops.

However, over the past few years, farmers here have been reeling in distress.  According to recent research conducted to determine the intensity of the agrarian crisis in the region, agricultural produce returns for farmers were meagre.

The main reasons for low agricultural returns were a flawed marketing system; low agricultural product prices; price fluctuations of farm products; and crop loss due to disease, flooding, and heavy rains.

Jayanta Sahu, a farmer from Jhargram village, recalls how the drastic price rise of seeds and saplings put farmers like him in dire straits.

“We belong to the village, which is far away from the city. It takes hours of bus rides to reach the markets. Hardly a bus drones through this place. This was why we used to rely mostly on the middleman to supply seeds, fertilisers, and related entities required for farming. They used to take their commission from the supplies, and we were left with extremely high-priced material,” Sahu told IPS.

He adds that several issues have afflicted the farming sector in the past, including loss of agricultural land, a shortage of local seeds and seedlings, irrigation, and a lack of agricultural infrastructure, manures, fertiliser, and biocides.

But above all, said Sahu, the plummeting income from farming left them feeling “wretched” in more ways than one.

“We couldn’t even cover the basic expenses of our family through the meagre income from agriculture. Our finances were strained by inflation and climate change. We were really helpless before such a tumultuous situation,” Sahu said.

Another farmer, namely Mongal Dash, recalls how he was about to bid adieu to farming forever and instead do menial jobs like working as a daily wage labourer in the main town. “We were fighting a battle on multiple fronts—the low yields of our crops, the high cost of fertilisers and seeds, and climate change. The middlemen who used to supply us with the seeds raised the basic cost four to five times. We had no option left but to buy from them. The degraded quality of these seeds would result in low yields and, ultimately, low incomes,” Dash told IPS.

Witnessing insurmountable predicaments coming from all sides, the farmers last year sat together to decide a future course of action. It was like either they would perish or prosper. After hours of deliberations, they identified the key issues concerning them and how they should address them as a priority. One of the major hurdles was the involvement of middlemen or commission agents in procuring seeds. Another hurdle was the long distance to the city, which made it difficult to procure seeds and fertilisers for themselves.

At this time, they deliberated over a strategy to produce their own seeds and saplings that they could grow and make profitable yields.

The village, with more than 250 households, identified six veteran and experienced farmers who were tasked with producing their indigenous seeds and saplings. These farmers were trained in seed preservation, seed bed making, organic manure preparation, and pest control.

About an acre of land was identified. Seedbeds for Tamara, cabbage, cauliflower, and chilli, with an estimated 9000 saplings, were prepared there. The farmers resolved that no chemical fertilisers or pesticides would be used on seedlings or seed beds—everything was grown organically.

The saplings were distributed at a low cost to the farmers in the village based on their needs.

Now, when more than a year has passed, the endeavour these otherwise crisis-stricken farmers have made is beginning to yield the desired results.

“We are no longer dependent on the outside market for seed procurement. We do not use chemical fertilisers, nor are we importing any degraded saplings from outside. Our village is becoming self-reliant in this regard, and we are very proud of this,” says a local farmer Shyam Bisui.

The farmers, who otherwise had to invest about one-third of their yearly earnings on purchasing inorganic seeds and chemical fertilisers, now save most of their money because organic manures are used. Seeds are prepared in the village.

“The yields are subtly growing, and so are our hopes of good living. We are sure our earnest efforts will bring us prosperity, and we will never perish,” the farmer said.

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

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