Africa

The virus could kill 40,000-45,000 in a country where tough curbs had seemed to work, experts warn.

Among those killed in the fighting is an aid worker from Médecins Sans Frontières.

People wearing face masks at a Bus stop in Macau, China near a public hospital. This week’s 73rd World Health Assembly had member states adopt a resolution to review the global response to the coronavirus pandemic. Photo by Macau Photo Agency on Unsplash

By Samira Sadeque
UNITED NATIONS, May 20 2020 (IPS)

This week’s 73rd World Health Assembly had member states adopt a resolution to review the global response to the coronavirus pandemic. The World Health Organisation (WHO) will also undergo  an evaluation for its response to the outbreak.

At the virtual assembly, Chinese President Xi Jinping outlined China’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic, saying they did their “best to stem cross-border transmission” and to help other countries in need. He said in that China supported the idea of a “comprehensive review” of the world’s response to the pandemic, once it has been contained, in order to measure efficiencies of the responses.

“This work should be based on science and professionalism, led by WHO and conducted in an objective and impartial manner,” Xi said, adding that “solidarity and cooperation” are the strongest way to defeat the virus.

Xi also announced that China  would fund $2 billion over the next three years, with a focus on developing countries, to support their  efforts to combat COVID-19.

China’s response to COVID-19 has also come under heavy scrutiny, especially as reports continue to emerge that China may have a significantly higher number of COVID-19 cases than the country’s data shows.

President of the assembly, Keva Bain from the Bahamas, lauded the WHO and its director Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, calling his leadership through this time “inspiring.”

“This era of COVID-19 ushers in new technology,” she added. “It requires new knowledge, new innovations, flexibility, [and] meaningful, respectful country interactions as well as new and greater global partnerships.”

Harsh criticism from U.S.

The assembly ended on the heels of United States President Donald Trump presenting his letter to Tedros, which defended cutting support  to the organisation in April.

In the letter posted on Twitter, Trump claimed the WHO did not maintain the same level of scrutiny for China as it did for the U.S. and that its failure to hold China accountable for its lack of transparency regarding data of its COVID-19 cases has “been extremely costly for the world”.

However, some experts believe that such harsh criticism of the WHO at this time could be problematic.

Dr. Jennifer Huang Bouey, a senior researcher at the Center for Asia and Pacific Policy, told IPS that the WHO has played a key role in containing a virus that is so global.

“I found it very unfortunate that this happened at this moment because WHO is in a primary position to do the coordination and the technical support for a disease that can cross borders,” she told IPS. “This is exactly the time that countries need to work together and help countries that have weaker systems.”

Bouey’s research has focused on how China’s public health response has been shaped since it first addressed the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) crisis almost two decades ago. SARS is also a viral respiratory disease, caused by the SARS coronavirus or SARS-CoV.

“During SARS there was no data-collection system at all,” she said, “but after SARS the government put in a lot of funding to centralise the surveillance system.”

She attributed China’s failure to respond appropriately in part to the miscommunication between local and central government, belonging to a “very top-down system” where locals don’t want to be held accountable for an emerging disease.

Regardless, she said the disease is “ruthlessly revealing” some of the problems at both country level and international level, and that WHO should not be blamed for its initial response in January, because the scale of the pandemic was not fully realised at that point.

Way forward

Meanwhile, other experts have said what will make a difference is how these current reactions translate to proper action in the future.

“It is one thing to talk about diagnostic tests, medicines and vaccines being universally, timely and equitably available, but if countries and multilateral institutions providing funding to developers do not do so with the necessary strings attached, then these will remain words on paper and will not translate into medicines in health care providers’ and patients’ hands,” Katy Athersuch, a senior policy adviser at Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) Access Campaign, told IPS.

She said that it’s crucial that data and technology being used to test and document the cases are “openly shared to ensure that production can take place on the scale that is needed in order to provide for people everywhere in the world, not just for those in the highest income countries.”

Bouey echoed a similar sentiment, and said there are lessons every country can take from the crisis.

“We’re always in the cycle of either neglect or panic, so whether COVID-19 can help us overcome that — to put into a plan, or regulation, [to see] whether these surveillance systems are still sensitive and whether we are still up to date on the strategies for a pandemic — these are lessons for every state and also for international organisations.”

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Excerpt:

At the World Health Assembly, Chinese President Xi Jinping said they did their “best to stem cross-border transmission” of COVID-19 and help other nations.

The post COVID-19 – China Tells World Health Assembly They Did their Best appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Ugandan and Mamelodi Sundowns goalkeeper Denis Onyango is still working hard to keep fit, despite the uncertainty surrounding the return of football in South Africa.

Sports such as athletics, golf, tennis and motorsport are now permitted in Zimbabwe from 0800-1630.

Voters choose a new president as the current leader moves to a new elevated role of "supreme guide".

Emmanuel Nsabimana, a casual labourer at the National Tree Seed Centre, in Huye, in Rwanda’s Southern Province, has worked planting trees for over 40 years. He believes there has been considerable improvements in the seed quality from the centre since the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) became one of the contributors to its restoration. Credit: Emmanuel Hitimana/IPS

By Emmanuel Hitimana
HUYE, Rwanda, May 20 2020 (IPS)

In 2011, when Rwanda committed to restoring 2 million hectares of land in a global effort to restore 150 million hectares of degraded and deforested areas by 2020 — it seemed like a big ask. 

The densely populated and geographically small African nation had many limitations which could stand in the way of this as well as a commitment to achieving forest cover increase of up to 30 percent of total land area by 2030 as part of the Bonn Challenge.

Aside from limited land availability — Rwanda’s land area only encompasses 2.4 million hectares or 24,000 square kilometres — the country’s terrain did little to support the efforts. The country’s topography includes steep slopes, and it is the country with the highest mean soil erosion rate, according to the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO).

There were other factors too:

• A majority of the population — some 98 percent — were using trees as an energy source and the situation was not expected to change soon;
• 70 percent of the land was used by smallholder farmers, and the diversity of tree species was also low, with limited quality seed available. 

But by 2018, Rwanda, along with South Korea, Costa Rica, Pakistan and China, was considered one of the lead countries in the world with its successful restoration programme.

How did the country manage to restore more than 800,000 hectares — almost half of its original pledge — in less than a decade? 

Part of the answer lies in the restructuring and strengthening of the country’s National Tree Seed Centre, located in Huye, in Rwanda’s Southern Province, some 133 kilometres from the country’s capital.

The centre is tasked with centralising the supply of tree seeds across the country, including establishing new seed sources, improving trees with growth deficiencies, and collecting and certifying seed.

Until 2014, the Rwanda Agriculture and Animal Resources Development Board (RAB) managed the centre. But farmers complained that they were unable to grow plants from almost 90 percent of the seeds from the centre.

Emmanuel Nsabimana, a casual labourer at the National Tree Seed Centre, has worked planting trees around Huye for over 40 years.

He remembers the attitude of local farmers and communities.

“Farmers were always bitter towards the centre because they thought that it was incapable of providing them with adequate seeds,” he recalls.

“Many would return the seeds.”

But in 2014 the centre shifted from RAB to become a unit of the Rwanda Forestry Agency. In 2016, the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) — one of the founders and Secretariat of the Bonn Challenge, along with the German Government — stepped in to become one of the most significant contributors to the restoration of Rwanda’s National Tree Seed Centre.   

IUCN also partnered with the Rwandan Government, the Belgian Development Agency (ENABEL) and the University of Rwanda (UR) to strengthen the centre.

IUCN supported capacity building, including the training of staff, providing equipment to the centre, upgrading and developing infrastructure like greenhouses, maintenance of the seed stands where seeds are collected form, and rehabilitation of seed store where seeds are kept before they are distributed, Jean Pierre Maniriho, Forest Landscape Restoration Officer at IUCN, tells IPS.

“Before partners came in, many things were not going well. For example, we did not have a cold room, which was bad for seeds. We were only two staff, and the stock was also old. But we have steadily improved until now,” Floribert Manayabagabo, the production officer at the National Tree Seed Centre, says. His job is to make sure the seeds harvested at the centre are ready for market.

Manayabagabo thinks that the centre’s success story is thanks to a combination of great partnerships that ensured the centre now has good infrastructure that includes nurseries, a laboratory, a modern cold room and five full-time staff.

Maniriho says seed quality and quantity are essential to ensure sustainability and to meet demand.

Currently, 30 percent of the seeds come from the nearby 90-year-old, 200-hectare Arboretum of Ruhande, which surrounds the University of Rwanda.

The seeds from the arboretum include 207 exotic and indigenous species, explains Emmanuel Niyigena, a field officer at the centre. 

The remaining 70 percent come from the outside of the centre, with a significant amount of seeds sourced from nine agro forestry-related cooperatives within Rwanda, and the remaining seed being imported from Kenya.

One of many nurseries at Rwanda’s National Tree Seed Centre. The centre is tasked with centralising the supply of tree seeds across the country, including establishing new seed sources, improving trees with growth deficiencies, and collecting and certifying seed. Credit: Emmanuel Hitimana/IPS

It’s Eric Kazubwenge’s job to make sure that the seeds from the centre never disappoint. He is in charge of seed inspection and regulation at the centre.

“We normally do a physical inspection to make sure that they are not damaged. Then we proceed with laboratory testing before we conduct other testing in the nursery where seeds are conserved to make sure they will not resist soil plantation.”

He adds that multiple tests are continually carried out to ascertain how long a seed can grow in a nursery or how much moisture they need to survive.

Kazubwenge learnt many of these skills in Kenya, where he was trained through an IUCN partnership.

While Kazubwenge’s training was highly technical, members of cooperatives involved in seed supply chain also received training.

Kazubwenge tells IPS that previously it was very difficult for the cooperatives to supply to the centre the good seeds as they couldn’t distinguish good from bad quality seeds. The Tree Seed Centre was also unable to test and prove the quality of seeds due to lack of equipment (seed laboratory was not well equipped). This combination of limitations meant only a handful of seeds provided to the forest growers before 2014 had been fruitful.

“Our stock is (now) full of good seeds in terms of quality and quantity, thanks to cooperatives that were trained in seed collection and selection through IUCN partnership,” Janviere Muhayimana, who is in charge of the seed stock, tells IPS.

The centre also ensures farmers and the community are given the necessary information about the planting of the improved seeds.

Nsabimana concurs: “There are no more complaints (from farmers) as the seeds respond well to the soil.”

The researchers are optimistic about the future.

Kazubwenge’s vision for the centre’s future involves advanced technologies that will allow him to “carry out genetic assessment and analysis because it gives us deep knowledge about the compatibility of seeds according to their origins”.

Maniriho sees Rwanda on a good path to become a regional seed hub.

“Deforestation is a global challenge. What we have in Rwanda is what exactly is happening in Burundi or Malawi. We are importing seeds from Kenya today, but tomorrow others may be importing from us. We can make those connections that can encourage and strengthen the reciprocal partnership in seed supply and keep us from sending money overseas to only import seeds that we are sometimes capable of producing.”

Rwanda’s successful steps towards meeting its reforestation pledge proves a powerful example of how nature conservation can support livelihoods ahead of the IUCN World Conservation Congress, which will be held in France in January 2021. Held every four years, the Congress is a meeting of conservation experts and custodians, government and business representatives, indigenous peoples, scientists, as well as other professional stakeholders, who have an interest in nature and the sustainable and just use of natural resources. One of the major issues addressed will be the managing of landscapes for nature and people.

** Writing with Nalisha Adams in Bonn.

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The post To Restore Forests, First Start With a Seed appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

How did Rwanda manage to restore more than 800,000 hectares — almost half of its original pledge — in less than a decade? 

The post To Restore Forests, First Start With a Seed appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Handover ceremony at UN compound in Beijing for donation of critical medical supplies to the Chinese government. Credit: UNDP China

By Simi Mehta
NEW DELHI, May 20 2020 (IPS)

Coronavirus outbreaks in China and later across the globe have been unprecedented in both its scale and impacts. In the era of changing world order, this pandemic has drawn the global attention towards the threats posed by the non-traditional security challenges.

All military prowess and records of economic progress have been rendered impotent vis-à-vis the coronavirus disease. With a total of around 5 million cases worldwide (and only about 83,000 in China), the wheels of power display of major powers like the US, China, Russia, Spain, France, Germany, Italy have come to a grinding halt.

The objectives of national health policy, health security of the countries, including the concept of collective health security of the World Health Organization (WHO), and the United Nations have raised questions on their seriousness, claimed efficacy and efficiency.

Regarding the origins of the virus, there have been different narratives. This article analyses the discourse claiming that research and development programmes for medicine, vaccines, and treatment for health risks and planning and investment for intensive research on bioweapons by major powers led to the creation of the dangerous strand of contagion called the novel coronavirus.

Allegations on China

There is no denying that the place where it all originated was in Wuhan, China. Thousands of people began to suffer with a respiratory illness that could not be cured. The WHO has described coronavirus as part of the family of viruses, which ranges from the common cold to Middle East Respiratory Syndromes (MERS) and SARS.

It has the capability to transmit between animals and humans. Very soon, a school of thought contrary to the claims of the Chinese government that it was in the wet market selling exotic and wild animals- including bats, that was the cause of this pandemic, began to emerge.

However, counter-claims posit that The Wuhan Institute of Virology National Biosafety Laboratory in the vicinity of the wet market had deliberately created this virus. What raises arguments in favour of the counter-claims include: China did not raise an alarm globally about the existence, leave aside spread of the virus until major outbreaks were reported from late January 2020 onwards.

Various conspiracy theories have been circulating that this virus was made to escape the laboratory as bio-weapons either by accident or design. Some reports have also claimed that this virus was originally stolen by Chinese agents from Canadian laboratory in July 2019, which has level 4 of biosafety- dealing with the most dangerous pathogens for which there are few available vaccines or treatments, similar to that possessed by the Wuhan laboratory.

Further, it has rejected international fact-finding mission into its country. Newspapers like the Wall Street Journal and The New York Times and the Washington Post have suffered collateral damage and some of their employees have been asked to wind up their operations in the country.

Even academic research papers on coronavirus has borne the brunt by the gag-order of the Chinese authorities to intervene in the independence of the scientific process. Those research articles focusing on the COVID-19 have to now undergo extra vetting before they are submitted for publication.

As a result, the initial global empathy for the Chinese suffering from the wrath of this virus steadily turned into suspicion and panic. This culminated into pent up anger seeking reparations from China for being culpable for the origin and spread of COVID-19.

Unfazed by Chinese criticism, US President Donald Trump eloquently named the coronavirus as the Chinese virus. He has also accused the WHO of siding with China in hiding the facts and suspended its contribution to the multi-lateral body and said that the WHO “should be ashamed of themselves because they are like the public-relations agency for China.”.

Calls for an international investigation to know the ‘truth’ behind the origin and spread of the virus have become intense. With its one-party authoritarian system, China was initially on the defensive and flagrantly refused all such calls; which, in effect added to the case in point that there is ‘something’ that it wanted to hide from the rest of the world.

However, with growing international pressures and the most recent draft resolution led by Australia and the EU and supported by 122 countries at the World Health Assembly of WHO, China finally relented and agreed to the call for a “comprehensive review” of COVID-19 pandemic in an “objective and impartial manner”.

It is even pointing to the proactive help it is providing to several countries, in terms of sending protective gears, face masks, gloves, etc. However, complaints have been raised as several of these have malfunctioned and/or were defective.

Conclusion

In 1919 George A. Soper1 wrote that the deadly Spanish Flu pandemic that swept around the earth was without any precedents, and that there had been no such catastrophe ‘so sudden, so devastating and so universal’. He remarked that, “The most astonishing thing about the pandemic was the complete mystery which surrounded it. Nobody seemed to know what the disease was, where it came from or how to stop it. Anxious minds are inquiring today whether another wave of it will come again”.

With close to 3 million positive cases and around 0.2 million deaths worldwide, the coronavirus has compelled people to draw parallels with the history of lethal viruses like the 1918 Spanish flu.

This great human tragedy created by COVID-19 is compounded because of the absence of a definitive cure and/or a vaccine. Experts opine that it would be possible only by the first quarter of 2021. The prevailing obscurity in China with respect to the causes of origin and global spread of the virus has led to conspiracy theories to emanate from various parts of the international community. Demands have begun to be made to hold China accountable for the health crisis and that it should pay the countries of the world for their health and economic hardships.

Trump has indicated that the US has begun its investigations to claim ‘substantial’ damages from China as the ‘whole situation could have been stopped at the source’. The champion of having China included in the world system- Henry Kissinger warned that COVID-19 was a danger to the liberal international order.

Even a veteran Cabinet Minister of Government of India, Nitin Gadkari stated in an interview to a private news channel that the coronavirus is ‘not a natural virus, rather it emerged from a lab’.

This, perhaps explains India’s cautious next steps of charging its northern neighbour China as the country responsible for the manufacture of the virus that has brought incredible and unprecedented mayhem in the lives, livelihoods and economies around the world.

Therefore, it would be in the best interests of China to ensure transparency and allow international investigations into the disease, as it is totally unbecoming of permanent member of the UN Security Council wielding veto powers.

The worldwide panic created by the prevailing health insecurity would redefine the meaning, definition and practical implications for programmes and policy of all countries of the world. Putting it into perspective, the global health management body- the WHO needs to be reformed, and so should the UN Security Council.

It remains to be seen how the world navigates through the crisis and whether comprehensive public health would figure in their national security agendas in the post-COVID-19 world order. Nonetheless, it is time that the multilateral agencies take suo moto cognizance of the havoc created by China and act as per the norms of international law for ensuring collective security.

1 Major George A. Soper was Sanitation Engineer with Department of Health, USA. His area of specialty included study of typhoid fever epidemics. He was also the managing director of American Cancer Society from 1923 to 1928.

 

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The post Checkmate! China’s Coronavirus Connection appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Dr Simi Mehta is the CEO and Editorial Director of Impact and Policy Research Institute (IMPRI), New Delhi. She can be reached at simi@impriindia.org.

The post Checkmate! China’s Coronavirus Connection appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Secretary-General Antonio Guterres walking across the empty corridors in the locked-down UN Secretariat building in New York. Credit: United Nations

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, May 20 2020 (IPS)

As a spiraling financial crisis threatens to undermine the UN’s day-to-day operations worldwide, a proposal being kicked around, outside the empty corridors of the UN, has triggered the question: will senior officials, including the Secretary-General, the Deputy Secretary-General (DSG), Under-Secretaries-Generals (USGs), including 60 heads of UN agencies, Funds and Programs, and Assistant Secretaries-Generals (ASGs), volunteer to take salary cuts— even as a symbolic gesture?

Kul Gautam, a former UN Assistant Secretary-General and Deputy Executive Director of the UN children ‘s agency UNICEF, told IPS: “I think it would be an excellent gesture of solidarity for the UN’s senior most officials, including heads of agencies, to agree to and announce a voluntary pay cut for themselves in response to the financial crisis resulting from COVID-19 that is impacting the UN system itself and the peoples of the world it serves.”

Dr Leila Fourie, Group CEO of the Johannesburg Stock Exchange, and Fani Titi, CEO of Investec, who are members of the UN Secretary-General’s Global Investors for Sustainable Development Alliance, said: “ We are proud of the leadership shown by South Africa’s President in responding to the pandemic. This is why we have both chosen to join the President in donating 30% of our salaries for three months to COVID-19 relief efforts.”

Asked about a gesture by UN staff in Cabo Verde to donate their salaries, UN Spokesperson Stephane Dujarric told reporters May 19: “We have staff in New York who have donated goods and services to the pandemic, whether it’s to deliver food. So, I think it’s not uncommon for UN staff to either volunteer or to give back to the communities where they work”.

He also said that in Cabo Verde, half of the UN country-team members, around 50 staff from UN entities and the Resident Coordinator’s office, made donations to the Government’s COVID-19 efforts.

This totaled slightly less than $5,000 and directly helped 46 families in need. The Prime Minister was very moved by the gesture and thanked the UN publicly, said Dujarric.

In an opinion piece published by IPS in April, Ambassador Anwarul K. Chowdhury, a former Under-Secretary-General and High Representative of the UN (2002-2007) and Permanent Representative of Bangladesh to the UN (1996-2001), underscored the point that “If the liquidity crisis keeps on affecting the work of the UN and its mandate delivery, the UN staff as a privileged part of the humanity, should join in making creative efforts placing interests of the world body ahead of their sacrifice.”

“One such measure could be for UN staff to allow the UN to withhold 20% of their monthly salaries to offset the impact of the current liquidity crisis in the coming months”.

“When the liquidity situation gets better, say in six month’s time, that 20% would be paid back”.

UN Secretary-General (S-G) and his Senior Management Team, he said, should lead by example announcing they would do so voluntarily.

Elaborating further, Ambassador Chowdhury told IPS: “To that I would now add that for the S-G and his Senior Management team, there should be a self-announced 20% pay cut for the next six months.”

“That would be welcomed by the international community wholeheartedly and would show the commitment of UN leadership to the broader mission of the UN for humanity”, he noted.

As a support, staff for day-to-day work and positioned at bottom most levels, this proposal should exclude all the General Services (GS) staff of the UN., said Ambassador Chowdhury, a former Chairman of the UN General Assembly’s Administrative and Budgetary Committee during the 52nd session of the UN General Assembly (1997-1998).

The United Nations, which remains closed till the end of June – and perhaps extended through August or September – due to the coronavirus pandemic is facing a growing cash crisis, due in large measure, to late or non-payment of dues by an overwhelming majority of the 193 member states.

The numbers are staggering: $1.63 billion is owed to the UN’s regular budget and $2.14 billion to the peacekeeping budget.

The United States apparently owes about $486.7 million in unpaid arrears but has promised to deliver by the end of the year—depending largely on the fluctuating political mood swings of a volatile American President.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres says “unpredictable cash inflows” have been exacerbated by the deadly COVID-19 pandemic while seriously threatening the U.N.’s ability to do its work—even as nearly 36,000 staffers worldwide are working from home.

As of January 2019, the gross salary of an Under-Secretary-General, the third high ranking job in the UN hierarchy, was $198,315 and an Assistant Secretary-General pulled in about $179,948, excluding post adjustments, hospitality expenses and travel per diem.

The proposed program budget for 2020 (a/74/6 sect. 1) does not provide a breakdown of the actual salaries of the SG and DSG but the “post costs” for the SGs salary and benefits were increased from $457,500 in 2018 to $585,200 both in 2019 and 2020, excluding hospitality expenses, a residence and a car.

The proposal for voluntary pay cuts come at a time when some of the world’s political leaders, including Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern of New Zealand and three Presidents– Halimah Yacob of Singapore, Cyril Ramphosa of South Africa and Uhuru Kenyatta of Kenya– have all taken voluntary salary cuts, along with some of their deputies and senior staffers.

At a press conference in late March, Ardern announced she, and other lawmakers, will be taking a 20% pay cut for the next six months, in solidarity with those affected by the coronavirus.

Which begs the question: Why aren’t other Western leaders following in her footsteps?

Ian Williams, author of UNtold, President of the New York Foreign Press Association and a former President of the UN Correspondents Association (UNCA), told IPS comparisons are odious, as Shakespeare correctly said.

He pointed out that years of anti-UN propaganda by US conservatives has left the impression that UN staff in general, let alone senior management, are paid massive amounts.

But over the decades, emoluments for public servants have been held down while those for corporate management have ballooned, he noted.

And while the UN staff are paid salaries, the private sector are “compensated” with stock grants and options and bonuses. There is no doubt that by their own self-proclaimed standards, as business tanks, so should the CEO salaries but whether that should apply to international civil servants is moot, he added.

However, said Williams, while UN managers might be poor relatives to their private counterparts, odious comparison still apply.

They are much better paid than junior staff, and immeasurably better off than most of “us, the peoples of the world.”

“So while on one level they should not take a payout to reflect the crisis in the world economy and the effects on the UN budget, they should indeed “volunteer” to take a hefty drop in pay, for the sake of their collective reputation as public servants and for the image of the international organization as whole. Few will starve as a result,” declared Williams.

Martin S. Edwards, Associate Professor and Chair, School of Diplomacy and International Relations at Seton Hall University, told IPS: “I’d say there are two reasons this is not likely to catch on”.

The first is a simple collective action problem. It’s not easy to get people to agree to cut their pay voluntarily.

“These things normally take top-down leadership in firms, so Guterres would have to be the one to lead (and the one to ask his colleagues to also pony up)”.

The second is political. While it’s a nice rhetorical move, it plays into the hands of the penny-pinching Trump White House and confirms their suspicions that UN officials make too much money, he said.

“I don’t think that would be enough of a move to unlock the US contribution. The bigger issue is that this is a drop in the bucket. The fiscal crisis facing the UN is in the billions, and no amount of voluntary staff reductions can make up this difference”, Edwards declared.

Ambassador Chowdhury said UN management mentioned in its April 1 advisory that “although the immediate impact of the move to alternate working conditions in response to the COVID-19 outbreak will lead to reductions in travel, contractual services and general operating expenses across all budgets, we also anticipate new demands upon our operations and services as we respond to the global health crisis.”

It needs to be remembered that in facing the past financial and liquidity crises as the one is being faced now, the regular staff salary has never been cut or affected negatively, he pointed out.

The word “layoff” has no relevance in terms of the service conditions of UN staff and does not appear in any decisions by the United Nations. That is not an option to tackle the current liquidity crisis, he noted.

“I also pointed out earlier that in view of its mission and mandate, unlike the private sector, UN staff has not lost any part of their salary and other benefits, like medical insurance and pension contributions”.

That means whether the program of work and mandate delivery is negatively affected by the current liquidity crisis, the staff salary and other entitlements would continue unaffected, he added.

“Only an internal management decision could make the withholding of 20% of the salary for the six-month-period possible. It is important that the S-G takes the lead in this regard.”

“In my opinion piece, I emphasized that the UN Secretariat should brace itself to perform its global responsibilities in a high-spirited way and in an effective and efficient manner. No more business as usual.”

Meanwhile, in the corporate sector, the voluntary pay cuts have been on the rise.

At Best Buy, CEO Corie Barry has taken s 50 percent cut in her base salary while senior executives in the company have taken a reduction of 20 percent; John Lansing, chief executive of National Public Radio (NPR) has taken a 25 percent cut while other executives will have their salaries reduced by 10 to 15 percent.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York city has announced pay cuts upward of 20 percent system-wide.

According to Business Insider, leaders from some of the companies affected by the pandemic, particularly airlines, “are forfeiting their paychecks as the pandemic worsens”.

These leaders include the co-founders of Lyft, executives at Airbnb, and the CEO of Marriott. And in the media and entertainment sector, Disney’s Executive Chairman Bob Iger is forgoing his salary for 2020, while the top five Comcast executives are donating theirs to charity. At Delta Air Lines CEO Ed Bastian said he would be giving up 100% of his salary for the next six months.

Gautam said more importantly, as many governments are announcing financial relief packages for their citizens who lose their jobs and to rescue private companies and employers whose businesses are suffering, there must be a concerted effort to require a drastic reduction in the grotesquely huge pay and perks packages enjoyed by CEOs and senior executives of large corporations in many countries.

“In fact, legislation offering bailouts for large corporations – e.g. airlines, cruise liners, banks, hedge funds, large hotel chains, etc. must require drastic cuts in their executive salaries and allowances to be eligible to receive any publicly subsidized financial assistance, including loans.”

That would generate real resources, said Gautam, to compensate their workers at the risk of losing jobs and would be a welcome move towards a fairer and more just world economic order.

The writer can be contacted at thalifdeen@ips.org

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The continent has had less than 100,000 cases so far, but could be in for a prolonged outbreak.

Employees work on the solar panels of the El Romero plant, in the desert region of Atacama in northern Chile. CREDIT: Acciona

By Inga Vesper
May 19 2020 (IPS)

With widespread calls for green transitions in the wake of the COVID-19 crisis, developing countries are predicted to remain at the bottom of the global economic ladder, a study claims.

Oil prices have fallen to record lows and climate change is prompting global economic shifts, but low- and middle-income countries risk missing out on green opportunities due to their lack of industrial production expertise.

An analysis in Research Policy measures the green growth potential of all countries, based on traded products.

Policy makers in developing countries should strengthen green production capabilities based on their renewable resources and existing expertise

It found that non-industrialised countries are at a disadvantage, as they have a smaller knowledge base from which to produce green products.

The researchers created a new index—the Green Complexity Index—which calculates a country’s ability to competitively export green, technologically-advanced products, based on a list of 293 products chosen from trade bodies such as the World Trade Organization, the OECD and the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation.

They examined which green products economies might be able to transition to, based on current technological expertise.

Lead author Penny Mealy calls this the “ladder of technology development”.

“In sectors where countries have developed technological know-how, they can move on and progress to more advanced products,” says Mealy, an economics researcher at the University of Oxford. “In many ways, the set of green products mirrors that.”

This factor could leave developing countries in the lurch, the study found, as they have fewer areas of green expertise. A ranking of the Green Complexity Index, demonstrating how countries fared in terms of green product development between 1995 and 2014, showed that most developing countries remained near the bottom of the list.

There are, however, a few promising exceptions, Mealy says. Uganda, for example, significantly improved its position in the index due to its expertise in green materials.

The researchers projected that Uganda’s knowledge of plaiting plant-based materials gives it an advantage in producing environmentally-friendly mats and screens, which can be upscaled into brooms and brushes and, eventually, polypropylene sheeting.

Paul Steele, chief economist at the International Institute for Environment and Development, an independent research organisation, says that developing countries whose economies are less dependent on fossil fuels and monocrops might find it generally easier to transition to the green economy.

“This can be seen with ecotourism in Bhutan and Nepal, organic agriculture in Uganda and other parts of Africa, and solar, wind and hydropower in Laos and Morocco,” he tells SciDev.Net.

Policy makers in developing countries should strengthen green production capabilities based on their renewable resources and existing expertise, the researchers urge.

The sooner a country gains green production capabilities, the more able it is to branch out in the future, the researchers add.

Benjamin Sovacool, who teaches energy policy at the University of Sussex, says that a lot of the barriers developing countries face in branching out has to do with property. “A lot of their infrastructure is owned by foreign actors,” he says.

South Africa, for example, is seeing large investment from international actors primarily concerned with their shareholders, not sustainability. This raises conflicts, Sovacool says, as the country’s efforts to develop further rely on providing affordable energy to all, which is easier with fossil fuels.

“You can’t just have renewables for the sake of it, they have to be cheaper than coal,” Sovacool says.

But Mealy argues that developing countries have one advantage: They are not locked into complex industrial production systems and may be able to skip steps in traditional development, such as fossil fuel reliance for energy production or heavy industry.

“If anyone could leapfrog it’s developing countries because they don’t have the incumbency effect that developed countries do,” Mealy says.

Steele agrees: “Overall, developing countries have the sorts of resources that make it possible to transition to a green economy, and in some cases, they have more access to the sources that can power renewables.

“Their economic and policy structures are less locked into the brown or dirty economies, making green development more possible.”

 

This story was originally published by SciDev.Net

The post Where Will Global South Rank in New Green Economic Order? appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Opposition activists, including an MP, say they were beaten and forced to drink urine by state agents.

Teranga provides a safe space for migrants to dance and overcome their journey to Europe.

The US Supreme Court rules in favour of damages over the 1998 bombings in Kenya and Tanzania.

Riek Machar, who was part of a taskforce to fight the pandemic, has tested positive for coronavirus.

By Aurelia Bruce
May 19 2020 (IPS-Partners)

 

What is happening now

In the early months of 2020, much of the globe was put on pause as governments fought to contain the COVID-19 outbreak. For many, work came to a grinding halt as factories and shops were forced to close their doors, transforming a global health catastrophe into a labour market and economic crisis.

The shock to almost all economic sectors, particularly micro, small and medium-sized enterprises, was instant and severe – essential lockdown measures and restrictions on movement resulted in a surge in insolvencies and lay-offs. Without the financial buffers of investments and savings, many are at risk of:

• poverty
• poor housing conditions
• malnutrition
• limited access to healthcare

There is particular concern for vulnerable workers such as young people, who are disproportionately affected by poor working conditions, and unstable and informal working arrangements.

What we expect

The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) predicts that some countries could be dealing with the economic fallout of the COVID-19 pandemic for years to come. Preliminary analysis of the economic impact of the outbreak by the International Labour Organisation (ILO), suggests that global unemployment could rise between 5.3 million and 24.7 million.

Although these forecasts are not certain, one might argue they are conservative considering the 22 million jobs that were lost following the 2008 global financial crisis. In the UK, a University of Essex study predicts that the lockdown could cost the country 6.5 million jobs. Restrictions imposed to combat the outbreak are also causing some employers to lower their wages and working hours. In the long-term, this is likely to lead to a rise in underemployment.

During an economic downturn, we would expect an increase of informal self-employment, covering unregulated, unregistered or untaxed activities. However, in the case of this pandemic, incomes from these sources are amongst the hardest-hit.

Globally, workers in this sector are expected to see a 60 per cent decline in earnings, with those in Africa and Latin America losing as much as 81 per cent of their income.

What was happening before

While the forecasts may seem gloomy, the pre-COVID-19 numbers were not exactly encouraging either. For 2019, data from the ILO shows that only 3.3 billion, 57 per cent of the world’s working-age population, were employed. While 2.3 billion people were out of the labour force, another 188 million were unemployed; 165 million were employed but willing and available to work more hours; and 119 million were part of the potential labour force, which includes those who can work but are not seeking employment.

Furthermore, regardless of geographic location, young people in the labour force were facing higher rates of unemployment than adults, as seen in the chart below. Of the 1.3 billion people between ages 15 and 24, one-fifth of them were Not in Education, Employment or Training (NEET), and 75 per cent of them were in informal employment.

Although the potential impact of the pandemic on young people has not been quantified in specific numbers, it is obvious that youth, particularly those in entry-level jobs, non-standard work and those easily replaced by automated processes would be disproportionately affected.

Young workers are also heavily concentrated in sectors most disrupted by restrictions, such as tourism, hospitality and retail. So, the pre-COVID-19 trends tell a story of a tremendously underutilised labour force, particularly amongst our youth who were often left with little to no social protection, paid leave, unemployment benefits or remote working options.

Source: Own creation using ILO data

What needs to happen

In summary, whilst unemployment rates have held relatively steady overall, youth unemployment rates remain twice as high in many regions. Decent work deficits persist and labour underutilisation rates are largely ignored. The socio-economic effects of the pandemic will continue to gravely affect the unemployed globally, with up to an additional 24.7 million people facing job loss.

But along with the challenges, there are opportunities. The current economic recovery plans and COVID-19 response measures offer a chance for countries to address existing and emerging labour market issues.

Across the Commonwealth, there is a strong commitment to working towards a robust and coordinated strategy to tackle underemployment and high youth unemployment, as well as the additional threats posed by the pandemic. That is why the Commonwealth is bringing together governments and experts for a virtual series on the ‘Economics of COVID-19’.

Covid-19 seminar series

Critically, this will provide a space for policymakers to consider forward-thinking and targeted measures to support enterprises and entrepreneurs; and to strike at the core of joblessness, effectively utilising workers’ skills and preparing them for the labour market of the new digital economy

For more information or questions about registration please contact: economicevents@commonwealth.int

The author is Assistant Programme Officer Social Policy Division at the Commonwealth Secretariat

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The Russian capital, Moscow. The country has one of the world’s worst HIV/AIDS epidemics with new infections rising at a rate of 10-15 percent per year and at least 1.2 million people infected. Credit: Ed Holt/IPS

By Ed Holt
BRATISLAVA, May 19 2020 (IPS)

In Russia, which has one of the world’s worst HIV/AIDS epidemics, an already fragile healthcare system is buckling under the pressure of dealing with COVID-19.

The country has the second-highest number of reported coronavirus infections (as of May 19), hundreds of hospitals have reported outbreaks and death rates among doctors and other frontline health workers have been far above that in other countries.

It also has one of the world’s worst HIV/AIDS epidemics with new infections rising at a rate of 10-15 percent per year and at least 1.2 million people infected.

According to a statement from Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS), more than 100 of the country’s AIDS prevention and control centres have been “mobilised to support the country’s fight against COVID-19“.

While health officials assured that quality care for those with HIV continues, as resources are stretched to keep the COVID-19 in check, those working with people living with HIV (PLWHIV) say they have experienced problems.

Speaking on condition of anonymity, one source told IPS: “There are people trapped in one part of Russia but not registered as living there because of the lockdowns. This means they cannot get their medication.

“Then there are migrant workers who normally bring their meds with them, then go back home after a few months to get their refill. They cannot get them now. Or there is a single mother who cannot leave their kids at home to get their medicine. So, volunteers deliver them to these people’s doors.”

Sources told IPS that local community groups and volunteers have also resorted to making illicit arrangements with doctors to deliver ARVs to people who need them.

“This is not something that is openly talked about because the people involved in this should not be doing this, but doctors realise they have no other choice or people could die,” one source said.

Disruptions to treatment for PLWHIV can be fatal. If a person adheres to treatment, their HIV viral load drops to an undetectable level. But if ARV treatment is not regular, a person’s viral load rises, affecting their health and potentially eventually leading to death. Even minor interruptions can affect the health of PLWHIV.

Although the World Health Organisation has said there is no evidence that the risk of infection or complications of COVID-19 is any different among PLWHIV who are clinically and immunologically stable on antiretroviral treatment compared with the general population, it is thought that people who have compromised immune systems are at greater risk of suffering severe illness from COVID-19.

Lockdowns across the country have also made it difficult for people in at-risk groups, such as drug users and sex workers, among others, to access harm reduction services.

Some facilities which provided treatments for drug users have been repurposed to deal with COVID-19 and it has also been decreed that drug users can only get treatment for drug dependency if they are in an acute condition.

There are concerns that these limits on the availability of treatment for drug users could push them into more risky drug-taking behaviour and put them in more danger of contracting HIV.

Anya Sarang, President of the Moscow-based Andrey Rylkov Foundation (ARF), a grass-roots organisation with a mission to promote and develop humane drug policy, told IPS: “But what is defined as an acute condition? These [drug users] are among the most vulnerable people in society at the moment and they cannot get help.”

Job losses during the crisis have also had an impact, driving some into poverty.

Sex workers are among some of those who have suffered most financially during the pandemic.

“They are having a very hard time. Many have lost all their work, and then lost their homes, and are now struggling to even eat, let alone get HIV medicines,” a senior worker at one NGO working with PLWHIV told IPS.

Meanwhile, Enji Shagieva, secretary of the Russian Forum of Sex Workers (RFSW), wrote for the AFEW health rights organisation earlier this month outlining the risk that many face.

“Organisations working with sex workers have cancelled outreach visits to places where sex workers still continue their activities, at their own risk. HIV testing and the distribution of condoms have been stopped. Sex workers still need condoms…,” she said.

Amid these problems, though, networks of local organisations and activists are working to ensure vital services are still being provided for PLWHIV and at-risk groups.

Russian NGOs explained to IPS how they had adapted to lockdown restrictions to find ways to continue providing harm reduction services, including providing clean needles and syringes for drug users to lessen the risk of contracting HIV.

Sarang said: “We normally went out for three or four hours every night and set up a mobile point where people could come and get needles etc. but we had to stop that during lockdown.”

“But we have managed to carry on using existing community networks in our city for needles/ HIV test distribution, increasing digital outreach, and case management, for example taking people to pick up their medicine,” she added.

Shannon Hader, Deputy Executive Director, Programme, UNAIDS, told IPS: “COVID-19 raises more challenges for HIV treatment and service provision, but the issue is how countries and partners meet these challenges.”

Hader said HIV treatment and prevention delivery systems already in place in many developing nations could be altered to meet current challenges: “There are opportunities for innovation and flexibility in service models for HIV which mean that those services need not be interrupted. We can put services into the hands of the people that need them themselves.”

“I am optimistic that if there is the political will, then developing countries will be able to come up with solutions and that there will not be a competition [for healthcare resources] between HIV and COVID-19,” said Hader.

Meanwhile, ARF is also running support groups through social media and regularly collecting feedback from at-risk communities to talk to people and help them where possible.

“All we are doing is trying to help people that need it wherever we can,” Sarang said.

Related Articles

• Ensuring Russia’s Sex Workers’ Rights Essential for Wider Gender Equality
• **Correction**How the COVID-19 Pandemic is Affecting Women’s Sexual and Reproductive Health

The post HIV Services Take a Backseat to COVID-19 in Russia appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

In Russia, which has one of the world’s worst HIV/AIDS epidemics with the rate of new infections rising by 10-15 percent per year and at least 1.2 million people infected, an already fragile healthcare system is buckling under the pressure of dealing with COVID-19.

The post HIV Services Take a Backseat to COVID-19 in Russia appeared first on Inter Press Service.

By David Nabarro and Joe Colombano
GENEVA, May 19 2020 (IPS)

When the COVID-19 virus travelled from Wuhan, China halfway across the world through Europe, the Americas and beyond in the space of a few weeks, it gave us proof, if one was ever needed, of how tightly interconnected we all are. Not only are our globalized economies interdepended, but also we ourselves are one with the environment around us, and with one another. We are one humankind sharing one planet. And yet, all too often we seem to forget it, as we carelessly revert to misguiding differences between “us” and “them.” Take, for example, the distinction between rich and poor countries, or as economists put it, between advanced economies and least developed countries. In the face of COVID-19, the only difference that matters is if we are sick or healthy. Other than that, we are all the same, regardless of economic status or geographic location.

Or are we really? Clearly we do not mean to say that differences do not exist. Indeed, the virus has shown us that, far from being the great leveler and equalizer that it was initially purported to be, it matters who you are and where you are. It matters if you are an African American in Chicago, a member of the First Nations in Northern Canada, a Rohingya refugee in Myanmar, a Dharavidweller in Mumbai, an informal worker in Nigeria, an older person in a residential home in the UK, an inmate in a South American prison, a meat processor in America, an immigrant labourer in a dormitory in Singapore, a female healthcare professional in any hospital around the world, or someone on a low income just about anywhere. It matters a lot. It makes the difference between being infected or not; between having access to testing or not; between health and illness, life and death. COVID-19 may be a challenge we all face, but it is our ability to respond to it that differswhether within or between countries.

David Nabarro

People in the developing world are most at risk. Take, for example, the first line of defense against the virus, as recommended by the WHO: frequent hand-washing. While this is part of daily life for all of us in the North, the latest UN SDGs Progress Report reminds us that 2 out of 5 people worldwide do not have a basic hand-washing facility with soap and water at home. In the least developed countries, it is less than one out of three people (28 per cent). This means that, globally, an estimated 3 billion people are still unable to properly wash their hands at home, and are therefore deprived of the most basic and effective prevention measure against COVID-19.

Or look at extreme poverty, a scourge that burdens the developing world most. According to the World Bank, COVID-19 has the potential of pushing an additional 40-60 million people back into extreme poverty. This would be an unfortunate reverse in decades of progress against global poverty. To make things worse, developing countries risk being hit by COVID-19 at the time when their economies are already weakened by the effects of low commodity prices, fleeing foreign capital and weakening currencies. In some instances, this volatility impacts the prices of food, with potential deleterious effects on the nutrition of the most vulnerable.

In the face of COVID-19, the advanced economies cannot afford to leave the developing world to fend for itself. After all, developing nations now suffer the impact of the pandemic through no faults of their own, the virus having reached their shores from the North, in the form of international travel. There is a real possibility, even likelihood, of major fiscal and financial crises in several large emerging economies and perhaps dozens of smaller ones. This would hamper our efforts to bring the pandemic under control. It would trigger social instability that is hard to reverse, and compound existing humanitarian crises. Even without invoking the moral imperatives dictated by our common humanity, it is in the political and economic interest of every country that the developing world is protected and spared the worst of this crisis.

Joe Colombano

The good news is that we know how to do this. Our multilateral system is designed to face multidimensional challenges and has decades of experience: the WHO to help keep the pandemics under control, the FAO to help identify the food import needs and food supply bottlenecks, the IMF to promptly fund what is needed, the World Bank to help rebuild, etc. What is now needed is adequate urgent international financing coupled with unequivocal political support. We need a “pandemic Marshall plan” for the developing countries, possibly in the form of a massive open spigot from the IMF, to do what the Fed did in the U.S., or the ECB in Europe, to inject liquidity, help orchestrate a rollover of sovereign debts and avoid the risk of a financial crisis.

It is true that COVID-19 knows no borders and makes no distinctions when it strikes. In that sense it is the ultimate global challenge. But countries are not equally equipped to deal with it, and it would be bad for the world if differences between nations blunt the collective response. The world needs the multilateral system like never before: budgets should be increased and not cut, and political support should be undivided. Our world is tightly interconnected: we are only as strong as the weakest amongst us.

David Nabarro, WHO Special Envoy on COVID-19, and Joe Colombano, economist

Read COVID-19 narratives of David Nabarro : https://www.4sd.info/covid-19-narratives/
and join his Open Online Briefings : https://www.4sd.info/covid-19-open-online-briefings/

 

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The post EXCLUSIVE: In the Face of the COVID-19 Pandemic We Are Only as Strong as the Weakest of Us appeared first on Inter Press Service.

UN Special Rapporteur on human rights in Myanmar Yanghee Lee, pictured in Kuala Lumpur on 18 July, 2019. Photo: AFP

By C R Abrar
May 19 2020 (IPS-Partners)

“We all knew that [Aung San Suu Kyi] was put on a pedestal or portrayed as the icon of democracy and human rights, but ever since [her party] has taken office [after the 2015 election] and ever since she took the office of the State Councillor, all of her actions and her words, statements point otherwise”, noted Professor Yanghee Lee, in one of her last conversations with Al Jazeera as the Special Rapporteur on the Human Rights Situation in Burma. “Perhaps the world didn’t really know who she was”, she said.

At a time when the world, including neighbouring Malaysia and Thailand, have shunned the Rohingya (acknowledged as the most persecuted minority in the world), at a time when the Burmese state audaciously tramples the whole corpus of international human rights instruments being aided and abetted by major powers; at a time when those who stand for reason, rule of law and justice feel betrayed by the high and mighty of the world, Yanghee Lee stood firm as a beacon of hope.

A developmental psychologist and professor with decades of involvement in the UN’s rights bodies, Lee held the mandate of the Special Rapporteur from 2014 until end of April this year. Over the years, she made extensive visits to the region, including Burma. Her objective reporting on the human rights situation in Rakhine and the rest of Burma did not augur well and during their last one-to-one meeting, the de facto head of Burmese government Suu Kyi threatened visa denial if the UN Special Rapporteur kept pushing the “UN line”. Lee refused to be cowed by the former human rights icon’s interference and Suu Kyi delivered on her threat—she has been denied entry to the country since 2017. Lee viewed the Burmese decision “as a strong indication that there must be something terribly awful happening in Rakhine, as well as in the rest of the country”. While holding office, she was one of the very few global public figures who unwaveringly championed the Rohingyas’ quest for dignity, justice and protected return to their homeland.

Yanghee Lee’s tenure came to be largely dominated by the Burmese state’s attempt to complete the “unfinished business” of Rohingyas’ physical and historical existence, the Burmese equivalent of the Final Solution, in the early fall of 2017. The genocidal terror that was unleashed resulted in the exodus of at least 750,000 people into neighbouring Bangladesh. It was presented as a clearance operation of “ARSA terrorists”, a pretext enthusiastically accepted by Islamophobic western governments, world media and “security experts”. Choosing to ignore the genocidal nature of these “security clearance operations”, the emerging chorus of policy and media discourses faulted the Burmese military for “disproportionate and excessive use of force”, despite Lee calling out the “the hallmarks of a genocide” by Burma. As a matter of fact, on August 10, 2017, at least two weeks prior to the alleged ARSA attack on Burmese police outposts, Lee warned of the buildup and ominous movement of security forces in northern Arakan and appealed for restraint and respecting human rights.

In her parting statement to the Human Rights Council, Lee noted, “(w)hen I took up my mandate in 2014, I had thought that by 2020 a rights-respecting democracy would have been firmly established in Myanmar… Rather than a nation that protects human rights, I observe rights violations that continue to routinely occur and a country that stands accused of the most serious crimes under international law.”

Lee proposed ways to move towards an equal, tolerant and pluralistic society, including through victim-centered transitional justice mechanisms. Among other things, the UN expert underscored the need to bring the entire government and security forces under civilian control and initiate extensive legal reforms—including of the Constitution, land laws, the Citizenship Law and laws that violate fundamental rights such as freedom of expression, assembly and religion. “An end to impunity is the lynchpin for Myanmar to succeed in its transition to democracy. Perpetrators of human rights violations and international crimes must be held accountable,” she argued.

Yanghee Lee was appalled at the world’s reaction to the Rohingya plight—particularly that of the Security Council, which could not manage to agree on a single unified stance on an unfolding genocide in real time. She made her feelings loud and clear. Lee felt it was “shameful” that China and Russia, being UN security council members, have not taken any action against Burma. “China cannot be a global leader if it ignores such atrocities,” she noted. The Special Rapporteur also said the US decision to impose sanctions against senior military leaders in Burma did not go “far enough” and recommended these be tougher and applied to more generals.

She was disappointed at the response of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) to the developments in northern Arakan. The situation posed an increasing risk to the peace and security of countries of the region, she warned, urging them to prioritise human rights in its dealings with Burma. She expressed regret at the lack of response from the Government of India on her request to visit the country to meet refugees there. She reminded them that it is incumbent on member states to respect mandates established by the Human Rights Council and provide timely and reasonable answers to such requests.

The UN’s role in addressing the Rohingya plight has been palpable. Lee personally appealed to Secretary General Antonio Guterres for an international investigation, to no avail. In October 2017, when The Guardian reported the scandalous news of Renata Lok-Dessalien, UN Resident Coordinator in Burma, compromising UN Human Rights Up Front policy by prioritising a cozy relationship with Burma’s rulers, Guterres relented and commissioned former Guatemalan foreign minister Gert Rosenthal to do an internal assessment of the UN’s performance in Burma. The Rosenthal Report condemned the organisation’s “obviously dysfunctional performance” over the past decade and noted “the overall responsibility was of a collective nature; in other words it can truly be characterised as a systemic failure of the United Nations.” Accordingly, no UN official was held accountable, and Lok-Dessallien was even rewarded with a larger portfolio when she was appointed head of the UN in India!

Yanghee Lee was unequivocal in expressing her disappointment of the UN system in dealing with the Rohingya issue, particularly the UN’s technical agencies in the New York headquarters and in Burma. She was brutally honest about how she felt about the Memorandum of Understanding that was signed by the Burmese government, UNHCR and UNDP in early June 2018 purportedly “to assist the process of repatriation from Bangladesh”. The document was not made publicly available, nor was there any transparency about its terms. UN’s failure to defend the self-identity of the Rohingya and their refugee status appalled her. “I am dismayed about the fact that the parties to the MoU, including the United Nations agencies involved in this process, have apparently failed to recognise Rohingya living in Bangladesh as refugees and as Rohingya”.

The tendency of concerned states, including Burma and Bangladesh, to deny any role to Rohingya refugees was of grave concern for her. “Most frightful … is the fact that the Rohingya refugees have not been included in any of the discussions … around this MoU nor consulted in relation to the repatriation process as a whole”, she noted, posing the uncomfortable but pointed question to the Council—”how can the process of repatriation be voluntary with the people who the process is for excluded from it? How can you be sure that any return is based on individual informed consent?”

Conveying the common view among Rohingya refugees to the Council, Lee said “it is futile to speak about their safe, voluntary, dignified and sustainable return unless the root causes of their exodus are properly addressed”. She argued that to ensure such repatriation, the international community must ensure that Burma dismantles the system of discrimination against the Rohingya by law, policy and practices that continue to exist, and guarantee fundamental human rights to them, including by restoring their citizenship rights and property.

Helping lay the foundation for global justice for both Rohingyas and other victims within the UN’s system of accountability has been the single most important contribution of Professor Lee to Burma’s oppressed communities (not just the Rohingya), especially given that the country does not have national or domestic justice and accountability mechanisms that recognise and are capable of processing the gravest crimes in international law, such as crimes against humanity and genocide. Her persistent demand for an independent investigation into Burma’s state crimes against the Rohingya led to setting up of the Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on Myanmar (FFMM) by the UN that was succeeded by the creation of the Independent Investigative Mechanism for Myanmar (IIMM) by the Human Rights Council in September 2018. The IIMM became operational on August 30, 2019—it is mandated to collect evidence of the most serious international crimes and violations of international law and prepare files for criminal prosecution.

Despite widespread skepticism, it was the relentless effort of Lee that led to the huge success in setting up of an accountability mechanism. She even wrote the TOR of the personnel of IIMM and prepared its budget. All these were achieved with the meagre support of a desk officer and a research assistant. Acknowledging her significant role, Rohingya genocide scholar Maung Zarni succinctly noted “No Yanghee Lee, no Fact Finding Mission and The Gambia-vs-Myanmar case at the International Court of Justice”.

In our meeting during her last visit to Bangladesh, she underscored the need for sustained engagement of civil society against all odds. Brushing aside my shyness, I told her that we celebrate her good fight against a system that stands for the status quo and the powerful, and has repeatedly failed to deliver justice. I added, she was the role model for those who stand for justice for the wretched of the earth. Maintaining her graceful composure, she smiled. Gracias, Professor Yanghee Lee.

C R Abrar is an academic. He is the Coordinator of Refugee and Migratory Movements Research Unit.

This story was originally published by The Daily Star, Bangladesh

The post Yanghee Lee: Champion of justice for Rohingyas appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Credit: UNICEF/Andrew Esiebo

By Danny Bradlow
JOHANNESBURG, South Africa, May 19 2020 (IPS)

Sub-Saharan Africa has a debt problem. According to the most recent World Bank debt statistics, in 2018 the region had about $493 billion in long term external debt.

About one third, $117 billion, was in the form of tradeable bonds. About half of the $17 billion in interest payments Africa made in 2018 was to these bondholders.

To put this debt in perspective: In 2018, the region’s total external debt was equal to 36% of its gross national income. Debt service payments that year contributed to the region’s 3.6% of GDP budget deficit.

A year later, in 2019, many African countries spent more money servicing their debts than they did on health.

Needless to say, Africa’s debt problem is complicating its efforts to deal with the profound social, health, and economic impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The international community has taken some steps to help Africa deal with this issue. The G-20 countries have agreed to a debt payment standstill on all debts owed to official creditors based in their countries.

Some of these countries are also contributing to a fund to help the poorest countries meet their obligations to the IMF. Unfortunately, the international community has not convinced bondholders to contribute to this effort.

There are several reasons for this failure. First, the bondholders are a large and diverse group. They each have their own investment strategies and view of their responsibilities to their clients, which include both individuals and companies.

Second, there is variation in the terms and conditions of the different bonds that need to be reconciled and incorporated into one regional relief package.

Third, different African countries have different views on what they need to deal with the crisis in their country. Some want maximum debt relief. Others, more confident in their ability to service their debts and weather the crisis, want to avoid the “guilt by association” that would attach if they are too closely associated with those countries seeking debt relief.

Finally, there is a risk that speculators will buy these bonds, which trade on an open market, at their current discounted prices and seek to enforce their original terms against the debtor countries.

World Health Organization, Burundi

History teaches that this last risk is very real. In the 1990 many African countries had unsustainable debts. They owed $255 billion to their official creditors and $28 billion (17% of the total) to private creditors.

Bilateral and multilateral creditors launched the HIPC initiative in 1996 to help highly indebted poor countries. Thirty-one African countries benefited from this debt forgiveness. Private creditors did not participate.

Unfortunately, this created an opportunity for speculators, now more accurately called vulture funds. They bought the debts of countries like Zambia, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia and Uganda very cheaply.

They demanded that the countries meet their contractual obligations and pay them in full. They sued any country that refused. This strategy earned them returns of between 300% and 2,000%.

To date, they have used this strategy – or are using it – against approximately 15 African countries.

Any effort to help Africa deal with its bondholder problem must satisfy three objectives. First, it must offer immediate debt relief to those African countries that need it in order to deal with the COVID induced crisis that they are currently experiencing.

This means that Africa cannot wait for the inevitably time-consuming and laborious negotiating process with a reluctant group of bondholders to produce a result.

Second, it should mitigate the risk that the benefits of the debt relief will be captured by the vulture funds.

Third, it needs to ensure that after the crisis abates African states will not either be saddled with undue debt burdens or denied access to the financing they need to restart their economies and promote the sustainable development of their populations.

Fortunately, there is a way for Africa to meet all three objectives. It should create a special purpose vehicle –the DOVE (Debts of Vulnerable Economies) fund — that will demonstrate to the financial markets how a responsible creditor treats African debtors in crisis.

The DOVE fund will do three things.

First, it will buy African bonds on the open market at the prevailing discounted prices. It will then notify all other bondholders that it expects to participate in all future bondholder discussions about the management of African bonds.

Second, it will inform both the debtor country and the financial markets that it commits to hold its bonds and to implement a standstill on any payments due on them until the global health crisis abates. The fund will also pledge that once the global economy begins to grow again it will work with African debtors to ensure that the debt does not become an unreasonable burden on their efforts to rebuild their economies.

It will stipulate that any future debt renegotiations will be consistent with all applicable international standards such as the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, the Principles on Responsible Investment, and the UNCTAD Principles on Promoting Responsible Sovereign Lending and Borrowing.

Third, the DOVE fund will advocate that all private sector creditors should participate in a comparable standstill, both on debt payments and bond trading, and should applying the same principles as the DOVE fund in determining what to do with the debt of the participating countries after the crisis ends.

It can remind them that most of the leading financial institutions in the world are signatories to the Principles on Responsible Investment, and many of them have policies that require them to be socially and environmentally responsible in all their operations. Many of them also have human rights policies that confirm that they respect international human rights.

In addition, many of them have acknowledged that their companies should serve the interests of all their stakeholders and should not prioritize the interests of their shareholders. Their stakeholders include their borrowers and those innocent third parties – such as citizens – affected by their actions and decisions.

The DOVE fund should also have the following characteristics so that it can function effectively.

First, it must be independent of both creditors and debtors. To demonstrate its independence the fund should be managed by an independent board representing all stakeholders. These include the debtor states and their citizens, the creditors and the investors in the DOVE fund.

This board would hire a manager to implement its strategy for assisting the debtor countries and advocating for a new approach to all other bondholders.

Second, the fund can be established in a neutral jurisdiction but it should be based at an African institution such as the African Development Bank.

Third, the fund should only buy the bonds of African countries that choose to participate in its operations. Some countries, given the terms of their bonds and their ability to meet their contractual obligations, might be wary of participating in these operations. They may fear that it will complicate their future access to financing.

Fourth, the fund needs to be large enough to be an influential voice in any discussion among bondholders about the treatment of the participating African countries’ debts. It should raise its resources from a range of sources including governments, international organizations, foundations, financial institutions, companies and individuals.

The purpose of raising funds from foundations, companies and individuals is both political and financial. Their involvement will increase the pressure on other bondholders to comply with the DOVE fund’s objectives.

The DOVE fund could encourage these groups to participate by issuing a social impact bond which would only offer holders a return that is linked to the post-crisis growth rate of sub-Saharan Africa and/or to the level of debt payments actually received by the DOVE fund after the crisis.

Such bonds are likely to appeal to African individuals and companies, members of the African diaspora and Africa’s friends who are interested in contributing to its efforts to deal with the profound COVID-19 induced crisis that the continent is facing.

Financial institutions could contribute “in kind” by making a binding commitment to participate in any debt payment and to comply with the objectives of the DOVE fund.

Clearly, the biggest portion would need to come from governments and international organizations.

One way governments could contribute is by donating a portion of their current holdings of special drawing rights, the International Monetary Fund’s reserve asset, to be used by the DOVE fund.

The IMF could contribute through a sale of a portion of its gold holdings, which are currently valued at about $138 billion at current market prices and at about $4.5 billion at historical cost.

Africa is facing a profound crisis that could set its development back a generation. It needs a solution to its debt problems that makes sure that no future African leader is forced to ask, as did former Tanzanian president Julius Nyerere: Should we really let our people starve so we can pay our debts?

The post Africa Needs a DOVE Fund: Or Should We Starve So We Can Pay our Debts? appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Danny Bradlow is SARCHI Professor of International Development Law and African Economic Relations, Centre for Human Rights, University of Pretoria, South Africa, Email: danny.bradlow@up.ac.za

The post Africa Needs a DOVE Fund: Or Should We Starve So We Can Pay our Debts? appeared first on Inter Press Service.