Africa

He fled in 2017 while on bail facing treason charges and was detained with the help of Interpol.

A 15-year-old boy working alongside a teenage girl at an artisanal and small-scale mine in Odahu, Amansie West district, Ghana. Credit: Juliane Kippenberg/Human Rights Watch

By Juliane Kippenberg
BERLIN, Jun 29 2021 (IPS)

Many products these days come with the promise that workers and communities all along their supply line  are protected from abuse  under a particular standard or code of conduct. Since the United Nations adopted the Guiding Principles for Business and Human Rights a decade ago, a plethora of such certification systems have emerged, including for  mining  and connected industries ranging from cars to jewelry and electronics.

For mining and mineral sourcing alone, companies can pick from at least 17 standards— some apply to all minerals, and others to certain ones.  The standards seek to promote respect for human rights or the environment, and companies carrying the label are  checked periodically for their performance under the standard by an audit company.

A strong certification standard should give civil society and industry representative equal representation on its decision-making body. They should require adherence to the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights and other relevant human rights law

But some of these systems aren’t worth as much to consumers or workers in the supply chain as one might hope.  A certification standard is voluntary and usually owned and managed by a separate certification body. Many entail only superficial human rights inspections and lack transparency because decision-making bodies for these systems are often dominated by industry representatives.

The standards are often broad and vague. Compliance is not always checked rigorously. For example, audits of companies in the gold supply chain often are done by someone at a desk and don’t  include on-the-ground checks of conditions in the  mines.

For instance, the London Bullion Market Association—the certification body for gold refineries—has certified gold refineries with serious human rights  abuses, including violence against local residents by mine security personnel in Tanzania, and conflict-related abuses in Sudan. The Association responded by saying it is committed to “continuous improvement.”

Certification bodies often don’t share information on why a company received certification including whom they interviewed and  any weaknesses they identified.  For example, the Responsible Jewellery Council (RJC) does not publish detailed findings of their audits, or require member companies to publish how they are putting its standard into practice. Nor does it require member companies to disclose shortcomings they found and the steps they have taken to address them.

In addition, certification bodies rarely require companies to disclose their suppliers and the mines they source from. This makes it much harder for communities affected by mining to report problems to companies that get minerals from their local mines and to push for improvements.

But not all standards have the same problems. The Initiative for Responsible Mining Assurance, a fairly new standard for large-scale mining, stands out for having equal representation of unions, affected communities, nongovernmental organizations, and companies on its decision-making board.

It also has greater transparency requirements, and recently published the first two audit reports, from mines in Mexico and Zimbabwe, with an impressive level of detail about non-compliance it found. With regard to traceability, the Fairmined and Fairtrade Gold standards ensure full traceability of artisanally mined gold back to the mine of origin.

New mandatory rules for all companies and sectors are being developed in the European Union and beyond. This is a good development—voluntary certification standards cannot bring about the industry-wide change that is needed. Laws can level the playing-field and introduce greater corporate accountability.

The debate around mandatory human rights rules raises important questions about the relationship between law and voluntary certification standards. The European Union’s new mandatory minerals regulation already relies heavily on certification bodies for gold, tin, tungsten, and tantalum.

The EU is in the process of assessing which certification bodies will get recognition under the regulation. This is a risky process: a law that relies on a weak certification system for implementation is still weak.

Voluntary certification standards do not substitute for effective grievance redress and remediation, but they have their place and can help foster responsible business conduct—provided they are rigorous, transparent, and inclusive.

A strong certification standard should give civil society and industry representative equal representation on its decision-making body. They should require adherence to the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights and other relevant human rights law.

Risk assessments and audits should be conducted by independent human rights and environmental experts who visit mines of origin and properly consult affected communities, and be complemented by effective grievance mechanisms. To ensure transparency, certification standards should require companies to make audit reports public and describe the steps taken to address risks, as well as publish the names of their suppliers and mines of origin.

These steps could help consumers as well as workers and affected communities throughout the company’s supply chain to be confident that “responsible mineral” standards  are truly helpful when it comes to improving human rights in the sector.

 

Juliane Kippenberg is a Human Rights Watch associate director for child rights who has done extensive research on child labor in gold mining and gold supply chains, including in Mali, Ghana, and the Philippines.

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Several Indian rice-eating states have a diversity of heritage rice varieties rich in nutrition, flavour, taste and texture that have been grown for centuries. Pictured here are farmers with the Jeeraphool variety. Courtesy: Deepak Sharma

By Manipadma Jena
BHUBANESWAR, India, Jun 29 2021 (IPS)

Madhuri Roy left the famous Kamakhya temple in Guwahati, Assam. She had sought the goddess’s blessings for the safe delivery of her youngest daughter’s baby, which was due in a few weeks. Shanty shops lined the temple outside and Roy’s eyes fell on a stack of black rice packets. All through her daughter’s pregnancy she had craved her childhood favourite black rice pudding. But during the country’s COVID-19 lockdown Roy could not procure it even though Meghalaya, her Himalayan home state, grew it.

The temple shopkeeper informed Roy the rice had come from the Jorhat district of Assam, the gateway to India’s north-east. The four heritage rice varieties he stocked, which previously verged on extinction, were being revived by small groups of farmers, he said.

Several Indian rice-eating states have a diversity of local rice varieties rich in nutrition, flavour, taste and texture that have been grown for centuries. Some even come with pest-repelling properties. They were mostly cultivated using grandparents’ traditional know-how that cared foremost for soil health, which the elders knew must sustain future generations.

The Kola Joha or Black Husked Rice rich in nutrients such as protein, minerals that Roy bought for her pregnant daughter also contains the high levels of antioxidant that protects cells, tissues, and vital organs.

With high fibre and low sugar it is an aromatic winter-grown rice native to Assam that has been revived with three other varieties from an almost-lost status to being currently farmed by hundreds of smallholders.

Marketed since December 2020, traditional rice growers are now targeting the burgeoning health-conscious Indian middle and upper class as their clients.

Kola Joha was just one of 24 heritage rice varieties identified and selected, after nutritional profiling, for revival across Assam under the Native Basket brand by Guwahati-based NGO Foundation for Development Integration (FDI). 

FDI’s initiative was recognised and adopted along with similar projects in seven other Indian States and the Union Territory of Ladakh by a project funded by the Global Environment Facility, which is supported by the UN Environment Programme (UNEP), and implemented by the Alliance of Bioversity International and the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT) and theIndian Council of Agricultural Research though the National Bureau of Plant Genetic Resources. The Alliance is part of CGIAR, a global research partnership for a food-secure future.

The project titled “Mainstreaming agricultural biodiversity conservation and utilisation in the agricultural sector to ensure ecosystem services and reduce vulnerability”, runs from 2017 till November 2022. It aims to address the sustainable development goals to achieve zero hunger, take action to combat climate change and protect, restore and promote sustainable use of land.

In fact, a report titled The UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration 2021-2030 by UNEP and the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the UN (FAO), launched on June 3, highlights croplands ecosystem restoration as a number one priority.

It underscored “restoration must crucially involve the knowledge, experience and capacities of indigenous people and local communities to ensure restoration plans are implemented and sustained.” The UN Decade is building a strong, broad-based global movement to halt the degradation of ecosystems and ramp up restoration and put the world on track for a sustainable future.

The first customer at Native Basket outlet by Guwahati-based NGO Foundation for Development Integration (FDI), which has identified 24 heritage rice varieties for revival. Courtesy: Sonal Dsouza

Local grains regain their rightful place and more

Even before Assam’s ancient rice genes were being tracked and revived, a group of 20 indigenous women farmers in Surguja district of Central-eastern Indian state Chhattisgarh realised the threats to the survival of their traditional rice variety called Jeeraphool, roughly translating to ‘Cumin-Flower’ taking its name from its petite cumin-shape and pleasant aroma.

It had survived — barely.

And only because it was a ritualistic necessity in festivals and temple offerings.

In 2005, the small group of tribal women formed a self-help group to protect and promote their heritage grain. As its popularity gradually increased in local markets, the number of group members grew.

After registering Jeeraphool with Plant Varieties and Farmers’ Rights Authority of India, the women’s collective then applied, with technical support provided by the Alliance, for a Geographical Indication tag (the Jeeraphool variety is primarily grown only in Surguja district).

It was approved in March 2019 for a period of 10 years. The heritage rice has now found its place on India’s food export list.

The women self-help groups are striding ahead with their success, linking up with companies and local-level government offices to produce and market alternate products from the rice. From 120 hectares and 180 tonnes of Jeeraphool grains in 2005 they have more than tripled cultivation to 400 hectares harvesting over 1,000 tonnes in 2020 in Surguja district. The agricultural heritage has traversed a long journey to victorious survival.

Besides promoting agrobiodiversity conservation, food and nutritional security, and climate resilience, the revival of local seeds has empowered Surguja’s women farmers as it reaffirms their position as repositories of traditional knowledge and has set an example for other indigenous women to fight for tenure rights over farmland they have used since their ancestors.

In Assam, under the Native Basket brand, farmers have learnt to not just grow their rice but to independently handle market linkages after the Alliance, ICAR-NBPGR and FDI aided in registering the brand’s intellectual property rights.

The small and marginal farmers have also organised into Farmer Producer Organisation.

Armed with a brand name, their everyday rice variety, which sells higher quantities, fetched 50 percent more at 1,550 rupees ($22) per quintal. Their aromatic rice brought in up to 20 percent higher. Over 2,000 farmer families are benefiting the whole gamut of activity from production to processing and sale. 

In the eight different locations where the Alliance is working, 19 community seed banks currently conserve, maintain and provide farmers ready access to over 2,000 traditional varieties of different crops.

Prior to the1960s Green Revolution, which was initiated to address malnutrition in the Global South, India was home to an estimated more than 100,000 rice varieties. Most were lost when hybrid, high-yield, bio-engineered rice varieties were introduced. However, in some unknown inaccessible rural corners local rice have been conserved, planted year after year in tiny patches by smallholder custodian farmers for cultural and dietary preferences. These are being tracked and amplified.

Indigenous women, custodians of heritage seeds, pose in their village seed bank in Odisha’s Koraput district in India’s Eastern Ghats. Credit: Manipadma Jena/IPS

Sustaining the revival

It’s not a smooth revival path, however.

“Policy is there but there is a conflict between enhancing production (that promote high yielding varieties and heavy use of fertilisers) and producing sustainably (which is what) traditional farming is. It promotes use of native seeds and organic fertilisers and pesticides. There are few institutional program with multi-stakeholders involving public-private and communities including NGOs,” Jai Rana, the India national coordinator of the UNEP- GEF project and a senior scientist at the Alliance of Bioversity International and the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT), told IPS.

On how the farming community can be incentivised to bring much more farmland under traditional crops Rana said, “better pricing of produce and assured marketing or buy back systems would work best. In initial stages a combination of subsidy in addition to marketing linkages would be necessary but thereafter getting a good market price would be key.”

Highlighting the importance of a sturdy financial mechanism for ecosystem restoration Eduardo Mansur, Director of FAO’s Environment, Climate and Biodiversity Office, said 20 percent of 4.5 billion hectares of agricultural land on the planet is severely degraded and could reduce food productivity by 12 percent. This, he said, was not because we do not know how to restore it, but because incentives had to motivate farmers to engage with sustainable soil practices.

Mansur was speaking at the virtual press briefing at the report launch of Becoming #GenerationRestoration: Ecosystem Restoration for People, Nature and Climate.

“Disincentives too need to be included in the mechanism for degradation that will penalise systems that are, maybe, lucrative but not in equilibrium with required sustainable use of natural resources,” Mansur said. 

A rich source of protein, iron, fibre and antioxidants black rice works against cancer, diabetes and heart disease. In ancient China, black rice was considered so unique and nutritious that it was forbidden for all but royalty. Credit: Manipadma Jena/IPS

 

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In 2015, scientists at the Khaled bin Sultan Living Oceans Foundation (KSLOF) came to the Chagos Archipelago to assess the status of the reefs. Over the course of two months at sea, they conducted thousands of surveys of the benthic and reef fish communities at over 100 locations across the archipelago. Credit: KSLOF/Ken Marks

By Liz Thompson
MARYLAND, USA, Jun 29 2021 (IPS)

On the Global Reef Expedition—the largest coral reef survey and mapping expedition in history—scientists from the Khaled bin Sultan Living Oceans Foundation traveled to the Chagos Archipelago to study some of the most remote coral reefs on Earth.

What we found were reefs teeming with life, but also worrying signs of the unfolding coral reef crisis.

The Khaled bin Sultan Living Oceans Foundation embarked on the Global Reef Expedition to assess the status of coral reefs around the world. Over the course of ten years, the Expedition circumnavigated the globe, visiting over 1,000 reefs in 15 countries in the Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian Oceans and their associated seas, to assess coral reef status and resiliency.

The Expedition surveyed the coral and fish communities on some of the most remote coral reefs on Earth, and there was no better place to do that than in the Chagos Archipelago.

In 2015, the Foundation assembled an international team of scientists to study the coral reefs of the Chagos Archipelago for the final Expedition research mission. Over the course of two months at sea, the scientists conducted thousands of surveys of the benthic and reef fish communities at over 100 locations across the archipelago.

Because of its remote location and protected status, Chagos was the perfect place to study global issues such as climate change and overfishing that threaten the long-term survival of coral reefs.

Reefs are declining due to a variety of human impacts, including coastal development, fishing pressure, and pollution, but these local pressures are absent in Chagos since the archipelago is uninhabited, save for the military base on Diego Garcia.

Prior to the Expedition, estimates indicated Chagos could contain more than half of the healthy reefs remaining in the Indian Ocean.

What we found in the Chagos Archipelago was a stark reminder that the coral reef crisis is affecting reefs everywhere, even in the last great coral reef wilderness area on Earth.

While surveying reefs in the Chagos Archipelago, scientists witnessed the beginning of a mass coral bleaching event, when corals turned neon-colored shades of pink, blue, and yellow. Credit: KSLOF/Derek Manzello

When the research mission began, we found reefs teeming with life, a diverse assemblage of corals, and an abundance of fish. The reefs of the Chagos Archipelago were truly exceptional; they had some of the highest density of coral and fish recorded on the entire Global Reef Expedition.

Reefs were surrounded by schools of jacks and snappers, swarms of small fish clung to the reefs, and large fish such as groupers, sharks, and rays were found throughout the area. Chagos had an astounding abundance and diversity of life in the water and on the seafloor.

However, towards the end of the research mission, we witnessed the beginning of what would become a catastrophic and global coral bleaching event.

In the clear and unusually calm waters of the Indian Ocean, we watched the reefs bleach before their eyes. During the first signs of bleaching, corals turned vibrant, almost neon-colored shades of pink, blue, and yellow before turning white, as the corals tried to protect themselves from the sun’s harmful rays after losing their symbiotic algae.

As the warm waters persisted, the extent of the bleaching was readily apparent and impacted the vast majority of the shallow-water corals.

There was hope that corals in Chagos would bounce back to health relatively quickly. But a study shortly after the bleaching event found live coral fell dramatically from the relatively healthy 31-52% observed on the Expedition, to only 5-15%.

Since then, there have been promising signs the reefs are recovering, but it is unlikely that the reefs will regain their high coral cover for at least a decade after this latest bleaching event.

Because the Expedition was the last research mission to survey the reefs prior to the bleaching, the findings from this research mission will be extremely useful to marine managers as they assess the impact of the bleaching event and monitor how the reefs are recovering over time.

The scientific findings from the research mission were recently published in The Global Reef Expedition: Chagos Archipelago Final Report. This report contains detailed information on the diversity and abundance of corals and reef fish species, along with valuable baseline data on the state of the reefs at a point in time.

This report can help government agencies, conservation organizations, and scientists manage and conserve reefs in the archipelago.

The world has already lost 50% of its coral reefs in the past 30 years. The rest could be gone by the end of the century if nothing is done to save them. With the increased frequency of coral bleaching due to a changing climate, combined with growing human impacts such as overfishing and pollution, coral reefs face an uphill battle to survive.

In the face of the coral reef crisis, the reefs of the Chagos Archipelago face some of the best odds, despite recently bleaching. They are protected, relatively free from human influence, and still contain large and healthy fish populations and a stunning diversity of life.

This diversity may be helping the reefs in Chagos recover from bleaching, but it may also be one of the key factors that could help these reefs survive well into the future.

The Expedition mission to the Chagos Archipelago gave scientists the chance to study some of the most pristine coral reefs in the Indian Ocean. Our findings illustrate what remarkable places coral reefs can be when given the opportunity to thrive, but they also highlight the perils all reefs face in a changing world.

Liz Thompson is Director of Communications for the Khaled bin Sultan Living Oceans Foundation in Annapolis, Maryland, USA. She has more 15 years of experience in marine conservation, policy and communications and writes about the need to protect our marine environment for the use and enjoyment of future generations.

The Khaled bin Sultan Living Oceans Foundation is a nonprofit environmental organization that works to protect and restore the world’s oceans through scientific research, outreach, and education. As part of its commitment to Science Without Borders®, the Foundation provides information to governments, scientists, and local communities so that they can use the latest science to work toward sustainable ocean protection.
www.livingoceansfoundation.org

 

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By Anis Chowdhury and Jomo Kwame Sundaram
SYDNEY and KUALA LUMPUR, Jun 29 2021 (IPS)

Too many have swallowed the myth that lowering corporate income tax (CIT) is necessary to attract foreign direct investment (FDI) for growth. Although contradicted by their own research, this lie has long been promoted by influential international economic institutions.

‘Beggar-thy-neighbour’ policies
The early 1980s’ economics ‘counter-revolution’ impacted the ‘Washington Consensus’ of the US federal government and the two Washington-based Bretton Woods institutions (BWIs) – the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank.

Anis Chowdhury

Thus, the rise of ‘supply side’ economics in the US – advocating lower direct taxes on income and wealth – influenced the world. Without evidence, IMF researchers justified its policy advice thus: “The complete abolition of CIT would be the most direct application of the theoretical result that small open economies should not tax capital income.”

Noting that capital is highly mobile, and can more easily evade taxes than labour, IMF economists even recommended that “small countries should not levy source-based taxes on capital income”. Meanwhile, the Bank’s highly influential, but dubious Doing Business Report has recommended tax incentives without evidence.

To get BWI approval, developing country governments have undertaken tax reforms, reducing progressive direct taxation. Instead, they have favoured more regressive indirect taxes, such as the value-added tax (VAT), sometimes dubbed the goods and services tax.

Consequently, IMF tax policy recommendations to Sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries during 1998-2008 reduced corporate and personal income tax rates while promoting VAT. And following Bank advice, Tanzania – Africa’s third largest gold producer – ended up subsidising, not taxing foreign mining companies!

Evidence contradicts advice
World Bank research and surveys have long found that tax incentives do not really attract FDI inflows. A Bank report found no strong evidence that tax incentives attracted non-resource ‘greenfield’ or additional new FDI.

Jomo Kwame Sundaram

It also found “tax incentives impose significant costs on the countries using them”, including fiscal losses, rent-seeking, tax evasion, administrative costs, economic distortions and “retaliation against new or more generous incentives” by competitors.

An earlier Bank brief noted “tax incentives are not the most influential factor for multinationals in selecting investment locations. More important are factors such as basic infrastructure, political stability, and the cost and availability of labor”.

It also argued that tax incentives do not compensate well “for negative factors in a country’s investment climate”. Meanwhile, the “race to the bottom…may end up in a bidding war, favoring multinational firms at the expense of the state and the welfare of its citizens”.

Researchers have unearthed no strong evidence that tax incentives are beneficial. While some incentives may attract FDI, they crowd out other investments; hence, overall investment and growth do not improve.

An IMF report noted, “Tax incentives generally rank low in investment climate surveys in low-income countries, …investment would have been undertaken even without them. And their fiscal cost can be high, reducing opportunities for much-needed public spending…, or requiring higher taxes on other activities.”

Even Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) research confirmed BWI findings that tax incentives hardly attracted FDI. The Economist also found a weak relationship between tax rates and business investment as well as growth rates.

A UK government report cast more doubt: “effectively attracting FDI needs public spending, so narrowing the tax base works with tax incentives for low-income countries could be contra-productive”.

Race to bottom hurts all
IMF findings confirm that ‘beggar-thy-neighbour’ tax competition worsened avoidable revenue losses. Such ill-advised efforts to attract investment inevitably accelerated CIT rates’ ‘race to the bottom’.

BWI advice to governments has undoubtedly lowered CIT rates. But despite lower CIT rates, transnational corporations (TNCs) still minimise paying tax, e.g., by shifting profits to tax havens and exploiting loopholes.

CIT rate averages for high-income countries (HICs) have dropped twenty percentage points since 1980, falling from 38% in 1990 to 23% in 2018. Meanwhile, they fell from 40% to 25% in middle-income countries, and from over 45% to 30% in low-income countries (LICs).

Cut-throat competition has especially hurt developing countries, which rely much more on CIT than developed economies. IMF research found a one-point average CIT rate cut in other countries reduces a developing country’s CIT revenue by two-thirds of a point.

Such tax cuts induce other concessions, further eroding the base for corporate taxation. Thus, tax revenue is doubly lost by both rate and base cuts. Fund staff estimated revenue loss at 1.3% of GDP in developing countries, due to base erosion and rate reductions – much worse than in developed countries.

The UK government estimated global revenue loss due to TNC tax minimisation at US$500-650bn annually. Such adverse effects were two to three times higher in LICs than in HICs. SSA countries lost the most revenue relative to GDP, followed by Latin America and the Caribbean, and South Asia.

A third of global revenue loss – US$167-200bn – is from low and middle-income countries (LMICs), costing them 1.0-1.5% of national income. With better tax administrations and larger formal sectors, HICs can replace such losses more easily than LMICs with generally weaker tax systems and larger informal sectors.

Tax breakthrough
The IMF and others now agree that an international minimum CIT rate can stop this race to the bottom and TNC profit shifting. The group of seven largest rich countries (G7) recently agreed to a minimum 15% rate, rejecting US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen’s proposed 21%. Even The Economist agrees the G7 proposal favours rich countries.

Earlier, the Independent Commission for the Reform of International Corporate Taxation (ICRICT) had recommended a 25% minimum and fairer revenue distribution to developing countries.

Finance ministers from Indonesia, Mexico, South Africa and Germany joined Yellen in welcoming the recent G7 agreement for a minimum global CIT rate, while expressing confidence “that the rate can ultimately be pushed higher than 15 percent”.

An influential piece has claimed ‘A Global Minimum Corporate Tax Is a Bad Idea’, again citing the myth that low taxes will attract FDI. Invoking new Cold War fears, it claimed China and Russia would also gain an unfair advantage in luring “even more” FDI.

Trump-appointed Bank President David Malpass opposes the agreement, claiming it would undermine poor countries’ ability to attract investment despite Bank research showing otherwise. Pro-Trump governments in Hungary and Poland also object to the G7 deal. Developing countries cannot allow such tax-cutters to speak for them.

Developing country members of the G20 must insist on a higher minimum and fairer revenue distribution at its forthcoming finance ministers meeting. If the G7 refuses to start with anything more than 15%, an agreed rate increase schedule of an additional one percent annually would get to 25% in a decade.

International tax rules are currently set by rich countries through the OECD. Developing countries participate at a disadvantage. Instead of allowing it to control the process, they must urgently insist on an inclusive, balanced and fair multilateral process for international tax cooperation.

 

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Katja Iversen with French President Emmanuel Macron at the G7 2019 Gender Equality Council

By Nayema Nusrat
NEW YORK, Jun 28 2021 (IPS)

As the global gathering for gender equality, the Generation Equality Forum, kicks off in Paris on June 30, 2020, IPS conducted an exclusive interview with Katja Iversen.

Iversen is a leading global influencer on leadership, sustainability, and gender equality, an executive advisor to Goal 17 Partners, UNILEVER, Women Political Leaders, and others. She was also on President Macron’s G7 Gender Equality Advisory Council in 2019.

The Generation Equality Forum, convened by UN Women and co-chaired by the Presidents of France and Mexico, comes when the COVID-19 pandemic threatens to reverse global progress on gender equality.

The forum is expected to affirm bold “gender equality investments, programs, and policies and start a 5-year action journey, based on a Global Acceleration Plan for Gender Equality which will be launched at the Forum,” according to a media statement.

Iversen spoke extensively about the need for women to be included in decision-making, the role of the private sector, and how the world is on a tipping point.

“If we want to see positive development for both people and planet, we – in short – need more women in power and more power to women, in the economy and politics,” Iversen said. “The upcoming Generation Equality Forum, hosted by UN Women in collaboration with the governments of France and Mexico, comes at a pivotal moment and provides a great opportunity to catalyze progress. I want to see the whole world reacting to the clarion call coming out of Paris this week”.

She stressed that now was the time to act because “we see a destabilizing and widening inequality gap in the world. We also see a growing conservatism and pushback on women’s rights, including sexual and reproductive health rights (SRHR). And very concretely, we see skyrocketing increases in gender-based violence, enhanced misogyny, women carrying even more of the unpaid care work, as well as alarming rates of girls dropping out of school, and women leaving the labor force”.

She spoke about the need to involve the private sector in creating a more gender-equal world.

“The private sector is a lead employer of women, women are consumers, and we will not see gender equality, nor a sustainable world at large if the private sector does not commit to change. Luckily more and more companies are stepping up to the plate and investing in sustainability and gender equality,” she told IPS.

She and Goal 17 Partners, a network of executives and entrepreneurs integrating the UN’s Sustainable Development goals into business practices, are working with new companies who are getting engaged in the SDGs, including SDG 5 on gender equality and women’s empowerment. Together, including UN Foundation, UN Forum on Business and Human Rights (BSR), UN Women, they have been shepherding commitments to Generation Equality.

“There is a tremendous need AND potential, not least for small- and medium-sized enterprises, whether we are talking women’s leadership, equal pay, parental leave, financial inclusion, diverse, inclusive and harassment-free workplaces, or health and education. Investing in the various aspects of gender equality is both the right and economically the smart thing to do, research shows”.

Regarding research, Katja Iversen spoke to IPS about the need for better and more data and research: “Decision-makers, whether in governments, funding institutions or private sector, need to invest in and get more and disaggregated data. If we don’t know the details of how many or where girls and women live and die, work and want to go to school, give birth or care for the sick, whether they are rich or poor, we won’t get the right policies, programs, or investments that can drive the needed solutions.”

She pointed out that according to UN Women, less than 25 percent of national COVID decision-making bodies have women included.

“It is too easy to cut resources from people who are not at the decision-making tables. We urgently need to get many women into leadership, including the COVID response and recovery efforts. All evidence shows that when more women are included in decision making, there is a more holistic approach and both societies and people fare better.”

In that regard, she highlighted some transformational, political commitments that will be put forward at the Generation Equality Forum, including from the vast network of Women Political Leaders, which count thousands and thousands of women ministers, mayors, parliamentarians, heads of states, and leaders from the private sector.

“I believe we will see some real game-changers,” she said.

Iversen expressed concern about the strong need for further funding, not least for women’s organizations on the frontline. It is linked to the recent and severe cuts to gender equality and sexual and reproductive health that could badly affect women and their health, especially in vulnerable communities.

“Adding to what happened during former US President Donald Trump era, the cuts we see right now from several countries, including the UK, will have devastating effects for girls, women, and gender equality, including for the most marginalized in emergency and humanitarian situations,” she told IPS. “The United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), for example, estimates that with the 130 million GBP (180 million USD) the UK wants to withdraw from the Supplies Partnership, UNFPA could have helped prevent around 250,000 maternal and child deaths, 14.6 million unintended pregnancies and 4.3 million unsafe abortions.”

IPS: UNFPA and its partners estimate the significant health service disruptions by COVID 17 could result in 47 million women in low- and middle-income countries going without contraceptives. How do we deal with this loss of access to the most basic SRH services, especially now that the second wave of Covid-19 is disrupting health services again in many parts of the world?

KI: The shift of staff and funds away from maternal and reproductive health services due to the COVID response is devastating, and it will have ramifications for years, if not decades. We know from Ebola that maternal mortality went up, that access to family planning went down, and that girls and women paid the price in both lives and livelihood. Unfortunately, the evidence is mainly anecdotal as women’s health is not documented and measured the same way as other health services, just as there, in general, is a tremendous lack of sex-disaggregated data, including on key Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) indicators and in COVID infections and deaths. This time – under the COVID pandemic – the gaps in SRHR services, shifts in resources, and cutbacks on services must be documented – in data and stories.

IPS: In many countries, the removal of the tampon tax (or period tax) has been at the forefront of equality of access to SRHR. What other key issues do you think we must focus on to ensure equity of access to SRHR and greater bodily autonomy?

KI: I am thrilled to see SRHR and bodily autonomy being a priority of Generation Equality and to see countries like Denmark, France, Burkina Faso, and UNFPA, etc., lead on this.

A woman’s right to decide on her own life and body is a fundamental human right. Bodily autonomy for girls and women – in all their rich diversity – is political, social, economically, and health-related. It is about having the power and agency to make choices over our own body, fertility, and future, living a life free of violence and coercion in both the private and public sphere, deciding who to have sex with and how to love. It’s about the right to decide whether to get children – or not – about having a health system that supports this with the full range of SRHR services readily available, affordable, and accessible. Bodily autonomy ties into norms, structure, systems – and if we want equity and health for all, we need to address all of it. I am glad to see this included in the progressive Generation Equality roadmap, with strong suggestions on how to counter gender-based violence, climate change, promote economic justice and feminist movements and leadership, etc.

The world is at a pivotal moment and a tipping point. With enough people and institutions reacting to the Clarion Call from the Generation Equality Forum in Paris, I believe we can make it tip the right way.

 

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Robby Nena's small house, made of concrete and tin roof, is built on reclaimed land at the edge of the Finkol river, about 200 meters from the Pacific Ocean within the Utwe Biosphere Reserve Transition Zone in the Federated States of Micronesia (FSM). Climate change impact means that his home is frequently inundated with saltwater during high tide. Courtesy: Kosrae Conservation & Safety Organisation (KCSO)

By Neena Bhandari
SYDNEY, Australia, Jun 28 2021 (IPS)

Robby Nena is one of the many farmers and fishermen on the frontline of climate change in the Federated States of Micronesia (FSM), where coastal flooding and erosion, variable and heavy rainfall, increased temperature, droughts and other extreme weather events are becoming all too common.

FSM is one of the 22 Pacific Island Countries and Territories (PICTs). These nations contribute less than 0.03 percent of the world’s total CO2 and other greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Yet, they are amongst the most vulnerable to the impacts of global warming, climate change and sea level rise. A quarter of Pacific people live within 1 km of the coast.

“Every time it rains, our home and farm get flooded, destroying our crops, damaging infrastructure and posing a major health hazard. Our tapioca and taro crops were completely destroyed in the major flooding event last month,” Nena tells IPS from Utwe village in FSM’s Kosrae state via a choppy Messenger call.

His small house, made of concrete and tin roof, is built on reclaimed land at the edge of the Finkol river, about 200 meters from the Pacific Ocean within the Utwe Biosphere Reserve Transition Zone.

“The river and ocean meet here so we also get frequently inundated with saltwater during high tide,” says Nena, who lives with his mother, teacher wife and two children.

The already evident and worsening impacts of climate change on food security and livelihoods in PICTs are being exacerbated by lack of timely access to climate finance for mitigation and adaptation, say climate advocates.

The Green Climate Fund (GCF), part of the financial mechanism of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), is currently the world’s largest dedicated multilateral climate fund and the main multilateral financing mechanism to support developing countries in achieving a reduction of their GHG emissions and boost their ability to respond to climate change.

Belinda Hadley, Team Leader of FSM’s National Designated Authority (NDA) for the GCF, says that currently FSM doesn’t have the technical, financial and human capacity to access climate finance for mitigation, adaptation and resilience projects, which are much needed for the growing climate change challenges.

“It is difficult to make our proposals bankable because of all the requirements. English is the language for climate finance applications, and to most people in FSM, articulating needs, challenges and activities into proposals is no easy feat as various islands have their own distinct indigenous languages,” Hadley tells IPS.

GCF proposals, in order to be successful, need a strong and robust explanation of the climate impacts and risks to be addressed. The climate rationale description, as requested in the GCF proposal template, requires access to sound climate science and data.

Consequently, not having climate data disaggregated from development data thus makes it difficult to demonstrate climate change impacts separately from other sustainable development issues.

“This requirement of separate data for climate change makes it difficult for us. We have climate change and development data consolidated and integrated into one because of our small population and dispersed geography,” says Hadley.

FSM comprises of more than 600 islands spread across the four states of Kosrae, Yap, Chuuk and Pohnpei. This geographical spread makes disaster preparedness and response a challenge and financially costly.

The pandemic has added another layer to the hard realities of climate change for the people of FSM. 

“We were working on accessing climate financing to begin our adaptation efforts and move forward with our national adaptation plan, but we have not been able to conduct state consultations and meet stakeholders. All attention and resources have been focused on COVID-19 preparedness measures. Everything else has been pushed to the backburner,” Hadley tells IPS.

GCF operates through a network of accredited Direct Access Entities (DAE) and delivery partners, who work directly with developing countries for project design and implementation.

Robby Nena (centre) farms and fishes for subsistence. Fish are a mainstay of food security in most Pacific Island Countries and Territories and subsistence fishing still provides the majority of dietary animal protein in the region. Courtesy: Kosrae Conservation & Safety Organisation (KCSO)

The Pacific Community (SPC), which supports PICTs with overall coordination and capacity building for their engagement with climate finance mechanisms such as the GCF, is the delivery partner for FSM’s NDA. It supported the Micronesia Conservation Trust (MCT) to become an accredited DAE and to develop FSM’s first full-sized GCF project on food security, which was approved for funding in March 2021.

MCT’s Deputy Executive Director Lisa Ranahan Andon tells IPS, “This very first GCF grant to the FSM is going to the people who most need this intervention – and those are the most vulnerable farmers and fishers.”

“We are confident that our approach, integrating disparate one-off projects into a cohesive national approach, will increase the positive impacts on communities. We are in the process of fulfilling the pre-disbursement requirements and anticipate a first disbursement and project initiation in January 2022,” she adds.

Andon feels that this first award should help pave the way for other PICTs and national DAE in the region to secure GCF financing.

FSM accounts for only 0.003 percent of global CO2 and other GHG emissions, yet it has set an ambitious target of 35 percent emission reduction by 2025.

Besides the GCF, the country has been receiving some climate financing from the Adaptation Fund, European Union, Global Environment Facility, World Bank, Asian Development Bank and others, mainly for food and water security, renewable energy, coastal protection and disaster risk reduction.

Kosrae Conservation & Safety Organisation (KCSO), a small non-profit organisation supports and implements climate adaptation and mitigation projects in the local communities of Kosrae through climate finance from amongst others, the MCT. Under one of its 2018 grants, they controlled and collected Crown of Thorns Starfish (COTS), which is an invasive species that destroys coral in FSM, to experiment the use of COTS as a green fertiliser.

“The farmers we distributed it to all claim that the COTS were a good natural fertiliser. We repeated the COTS collection this year and supplied it to four farmers in different villages. Nena is one of them. Three of the four farmers are seeing very good results,” KCSO’s Executive Director Andy George tells IPS.

“If these farmers planted 50 plants and they can eat off it, then that is a success for us. Apart from helping them become self-sufficient in meeting their subsistence requirements, we also educate them towards climate adaptation and mitigation,” he adds.

A lot of farmers like Nena only do farming and fishing for subsistence. Local produce includes eggplant, sweet potato, taro, banana, sugarcane, coconut and citrus plants. Fish are a mainstay of food security in most PICTs and subsistence fishing still provides the majority of dietary animal protein in the region.

While PICTs have small populations and land mass, SPC’s Deputy Director General in Noumea (New Caledonia), Cameron Diver tells IPS, “They are the custodians of significant resources such as tuna stocks, which countries around the globe rely on for food security. If these nations cannot access the level of climate finance required to address climate change impacts on these resources, then this could threaten food security for global populations well beyond the region.”

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By Armida Salsiah Alisjahbana, Kanni Wignaraja and Omar Abdi
BANGKOK, Thailand, Jun 28 2021 (IPS)

With health systems at a breaking point, hospitals at capacity and desperate family members searching for oxygen for loved ones, the devastating second wave of COVID-19 that has swept across South Asia has felt ¬surreal. Official figures have indicated record-breaking daily coronavirus cases and deaths, not only in South Asia, but across the entire Asia-Pacific region during the latest surge. As devastating as it has been, the truth is we may never know how many people have died during the pandemic.

Armida Salsiah Alisjahbana

Underreporting of deaths is common across the Asia-Pacific region, with an estimated 60 per cent of deaths occurring without a death certificate issued or cause of death recorded. One reason for this is the lack of a coordinated civil registration system to accurately record all vital events. This issue is exacerbated in times of crisis, as many of the poor die as they lived: overlooked or without being officially counted.

Civil registration and vital statistics (CRVS) systems record deaths and other key life events such as births and marriages. A complete approach to civil registration, tracking vital statistics and identity management relies on multiple arms of government and institutions working together to collect, verify and share data and statistics so they are reliable, timely and put to right use. Without such official data and records during catastrophes such as a pandemic, we see how fast people get left out of extended social protection, vaccination drives and emergency cash transfers. Conversely, it significantly limits the ability of the most vulnerable groups to claim this access and their rights.

The need for accurate data and reporting mechanisms is critical at all times and even more crucial during humanitarian situations, whether a natural disaster or health emergency, when urgent decisions are required and hard choices have to be made. Governments, health authorities and development partners need timely and complete data to know the extent of the issue. This data can guide evidence-based decisions on where resources should be deployed and assess which interventions have been most effective. The more complete, accurate and trustworthy the data, the better the decisions. Or at least, the leadership is unable to use the excuse of ”we did not know.”

Kanni Wignaraja

In 2014, the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP) convened the first Ministerial Conference on Civil Registration and Vital Statistics, during which the Asian and Pacific CRVS Decade (2015-2024) was declared. Governments later set a time frame for realizing their shared vision – that all people in the region will benefit from universal and responsive CRVS systems.

These are complex and vast systems that need both technological and human capabilities to do it correctly, and the political commitment to sustain the effort. Development partners, including ESCAP, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), continue to actively work with governments and institutions to support the development of national civil registration systems, vital statistics systems and identity management systems such as national population registers and national ID card schemes.

A challenge facing governments has been transitioning from a standalone paper-based registration system to an integrated and interoperable digital one. UNICEF has worked with countries in the region on the registration of newborns, digitalization of old records and creation of integrated digital birth registration systems. UNICEF is also working with the World Health Organization (WHO) to improve integration of health services and civil registration, allowing governments to provide uninterrupted civil registration services and respond faster to health priorities, especially during crises.

Omar Abdi

UNDP and UNICEF play leading roles in implementing the UN Legal Identity Agenda, which aims to support countries in building holistic, country-owned, sustainable civil registration, vital statistics and identity management systems. Recognizing the importance of protecting privacy and personal data, UNDP advises countries on the appropriate legal and governance framework and has been engaged in supporting civil registration, national ID cards and legal identity in countries.

It is clear from the report by ESCAP, Get Every One in the Picture: A snapshot of progress midway through the Asian and Pacific CRVS Decade, that many countries in our region have seen improvements. However, we need to do more to ensure that all countries are able to produce reliable official statistics. And to use this to also learn and look forward.

The human toll of the COVID-19 crisis has been immense with far reaching consequences for the most vulnerable families. To respond effectively to disasters and build back better, it is time we get everyone in the picture.

Armida Salsiah Alisjahbana is the Executive Secretary of the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP)

Kanni Wignaraja is the Director of the UNDP Regional Bureau for Asia and the Pacific, UNDP
Omar Abdi is the Deputy Executive Director of Programmes, UNICEF

 

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Women's Political Network, Credit: UNDP Montenegro

The Women’s Political Network was established in Montenegro in November 2017 to promote equal political and economic rights and to combat gender-based-violence. The initiative was funded by the Delegation of the European Union to Montenegro and implemented by UNDP in partnership with the Ministry of Human and Minority Rights.

Meanwhile the UN will be commemorating International Day of Parliamentarism on June 30.

By Mirjana Spoljaric Egger
NEW YORK, Jun 28 2021 (IPS)

In elections last October in Georgia, women’s share of seats in parliament went up by nearly seven percent, following the enforcement of a 25 percent quota for women candidates.

In North Macedonia, Serbia and Croatia, which apply a 40 percent legislated gender quota, women exceeded 30 percent in parliament. And in Kosovo*, women won more seats in parliament during the 2021 February election than in any previous year, gaining a 40 percent share.

But, as heartening as these results are, they are rare stars for women in the political firmament.

Women worldwide hold just over a quarter of all seats in parliaments and all positions of speakers in 2020, with 53 countries having at least one woman speaker.

At this rate it will take 50 years for parliaments to reach gender parity. Other estimates lead to gloomier forecasts – such as 145.5 years to reach gender parity in legislative and executive branches of the government.

If recent electoral trends are any indication, parliaments in most countries covered by the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) will not reach gender parity by 2030.

Among countries that are likely to reach gender parity, more than half have adopted gender quotas. One of the most widely applied tools to accelerate progress on women’s political representation, legislated quotas allow more women to get elected and have a shot at changing gender social norms.

A 2017 survey conducted among top and middle management of parliamentary political parties in Georgia – complemented with the reports and personal experiences of female politicians and activists – highlighted the obstacles faced by Georgian women striving for a political career. Credit: Daro Sulakauri/UNDP Georgia

Numbers matter. Part of the solution to increasing women’s political participation lies in the ability to track progress and comparing data across countries. For example, legislated quotas – despite being a somewhat contested phenomenon – were applied last year in 81 states globally, including 25 countries and territories represented on UNDP’s recently updated Equalfuture platform.

Launched in 2020 to mark the 25th anniversary of the Beijing Declaration and Platform of Action, this online portal showcases progress in women’s participation in national parliaments in 57 countries and territories in the Europe and Central Asia region over the past 26 years.

Equalfuture now features updated data on women’s presence in electoral politics.

It shows that, despite progress, women in the ECA region have just over a fourth of seats in national legislatures. In only six countries in the region are women speakers of parliament – Azerbaijan elected a woman speaker for the first time in 2020 – while there are women speakers in just 20 of the 57 countries in the UNECE region.

To argue that there have never been so many opportunities open to women as there are today is to ignore the powerful hold of gender bias in society. Nearly half of the population in Europe and Central Asia (ECA) believe men make better political leaders than women. The bias ranges from more than 60 percent in Armenia, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan supporting this view to less than 30 percent in Croatia and Montenegro.

This could be one of many reasons why young women in 2020 made less than one percent of all parliamentarians worldwide.

Gender bias is just one in a constellation of factors in the slow crawl in women’s political representation.

Violence against women in politics is a formidable obstacle to women’s entry to the political sphere. This increasingly recognized phenomenon is alarmingly pervasive: in 45 UNECE countries, most women parliamentarians have suffered psychological violence or been the target of online sexist attacks on social media during their mandate. Almost half received death threats or threats of rape and beating, and a quarter suffered sexual violence.

Women aspiring to politics are also subject to vicious forms of cyberviolence not foreseen in the Beijing Platform for Action which called on parliaments to have no less than 30 percent of women in their ranks. Abusive online comments aimed at women politicians are inversely proportional to the number of women in political office. During the parliamentary elections campaign in Georgia in 2020, women were only 22 percent of candidates but the target of 40 percent of all hate comments. Most comments called on them to stay home and give up their political ambitions.

Given the many gender fault lines laid bare by the COVID-19 pandemic, it is little surprise that women make up only 24 percent of the COVID-19 task force members worldwide. With its profound impacts on women’s paid and unpaid work, the pandemic has set back decades of hard-won gains in gender equality.

More women than men lost their jobs while their care burdens intensified during the pandemic. With fewer resources and less time to spend on the activities outside the household, fewer women are likely to engage in politics.

However, without women’s input, countries risk making poor decisions at a pivotal moment of recovery from crisis.

On the upcoming International Day of Parliamentarism (June 30), let us celebrate not only parliamentarians but gender-equal parliaments as a cornerstone of a well-functioning democracy. And let us redouble our efforts to dismantle the barriers and dislodge the biases that hold women back from an equal future in political decision-making.

Mirjana Spoljaric Egger is Assistant Secretary-General of the United Nations, Assistant Administrator of UNDP, and Director of the UNDP Regional Bureau for Europe and the CIS. She was appointed to this position by the UN Secretary-General in August 2018 and assumed duties in October 2018. She oversees UNDP operations in 18 countries and territories of Europe and Central Asia: https://www.eurasia.undp.org/content/rbec/en/home/about-us/about-the-region.html

Learn more about the progress of women’s participation in politics in 57 countries and territories over the past 26 years through UNDP Eurasia’s online platform Equalfuture.

* References to Kosovo shall be understood to be in the context of Security Council resolution 1244 (1999)

 

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