Africa

Rebel forces claim to have seized several towns, which the army has dismissed as "fake news".

Workers during the pandemic, both frontline and those who worked from home reported high levels of stress. Credit: John Alvin Merin / Unsplash

By Fairuz Ahmed
NEW YORK, Jun 22 2021 (IPS)

For Dr Farzana Khan, a frontline worker and a second-generation immigrant from Pakistan living in California, social media helped her connect and realign herself during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Khan has not seen her family for more than six months, she said in an exclusive interview with Inter Press Service (IPS).

“I was working extra hours and saw death up close. It was nerve-wracking to see my patients at this stage. It has been over six months that I have not seen my family,” she says, recalling the impact of the disease on herself and the community she serves. “The only solace I had was to talk with my mother, who is 67, and with my nieces over Facetime.”

The COVID-19 pandemic altered the way we work, engage, and communicate. The crisis put communication at the front of all priorities and has made it imperative to have real-time information available. For most organisations – online or offline – efforts to keep people informed and engaged became the new “must-haves”.

Shraddha Varma, the co-founder of online platform Fuzia and a resident of Maharashtra, India, where the COVID-19 pandemic hit hardest, says the impact on frontline workers was the worst.

“The situation was already bad as we were recovering from the first wave of the coronavirus, but (then) it went out of control during the second wave. It had catastrophic effects on the world, especially with frontline workers,” Varma said. “They had to act as shields to keep us safe. Moreover, they faced isolation, stress and had to cope up with all the chaos surrounding them.”

Discussing how Fuzia, a global platform aimed at connecting humans in a non-judgmental space, supported frontline workers, Shraddha says the platform made a point of standing beside those who risked their lives each day.

“Fuzia was able to assist women frontline workers all over the world with creating events, information sessions, live connections, and we served them with a space to speak, learn and even vent. We wanted to have their backs and be there as a platform where they can engage and have some comfort.”

Khan says the isolation from family and community was devastating but being connected helped.

“I also used to speak with other doctors and learn about the latest updates on a few social media platform groups. Seeing people all around the world sharing their stories during the pandemic, I could connect and realign myself.”

A recent study by the International Labour Organisation (ILO) dealt with both frontline worker stress and the additional burden employees often felt working from home and splitting their roles between work and family.

Sarita Das found some solace in creativity on the Fuzia platform (handout Fuzia)

Frontline workers were most concerned about “increased workloads, longer working hours, and reduced rest periods”.

In addition, the study found “they may be worried about getting infected at work and passing the virus to family, friends, and others at work, in particular, if appropriate protective measures are not in place.”

For those working from home, there was a desperate need for support. The ILO study found that 41 percent of people who worked from home “considered themselves highly stressed, compared to 25 percent of those who worked on-site.”

Fuzia wasn’t alone in recognising the needs of workers, and big tech companies like Amazon and Facebook prioritised assisting and informing the frontline workers with updated news, data, safety protocols, vaccination information, and more.

For non-profit charitable organisations, Facebook launched Workplace for Good, helping organisations like Save the Children, It Gets Better, War Child and others. It also helped small to large organisations stay connected with their employees.

Amazon invested in supporting employees, customers, and communities during the pandemic, from enhancing safety measures to increasing paid time-off and helped to ensure that their employees and their communities have access to COVID-19 vaccinations and testing.

Amazon provided more than $2.5 billion in bonuses and incentives for teams globally in 2020 and established a $25 million relief fund for partners such as delivery drivers and seasonal associates facing financial hardship or quarantine.

Fuzia also recognised that many had lost jobs and collaborated with Wishes and Blessings, an NGO raising funds for their COVID relief project operating in seven states in India. The initiative was aimed at serving three meals a day to thousands of homeless and daily wage earners and providing nutritional aid to about 4000 at-risk families affected by the lockdown. The project was active in Assam, Delhi, Jharkhand, Tamil Nadu, West Bengal, Uttar Pradesh, and Uttarakhand.

The shift to the virtual world or work resulted in burnout among employees. An article published last year in Microsoft Stories Asia documented the increased burnout as workers struggled to find a work-life balance.

The decrease in work and personal life boundaries added stress. On average, close to one-third of workers in the Asia Pacific cited increased rates of burnout. Surveying over 6,000 information and frontline workers across eight countries globally, including Australia, Japan, India, and Singapore, the study found that Singapore and India were the top two countries where workers complained of burnout.

Sarita Das, a Fuzia user, says the site helped her during the pandemic.

“Communicating with other Fuziaites really helped me get out of my head. There was so much bad news circulating online that it increased my anxiety levels,” she said, finding the creative element in the site most soothing.

“I found a way to relieve my stress and joined the Fuzia Talent events. I found painting a much better distraction than browsing online. It requires focus, stops you from obsessively checking the news and gives you a sense of accomplishment as you paint your own creation.”

This article is a sponsored feature.

 

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Trabzonspor's Nigerian footballer Anthony Nwakaeme says he smiles at racists fans in order to silence them.

It is the first African country to get money for reducing carbon emissions through forest protection.

Haneen Hossam appealed for clemency after being sentenced to 10 years in jail for human trafficking.

The al-Shaymeh Education Complex for Girls after it was struck by missiles fired by the Saudi Arabia-led coalition, Hodeidah, 9 November 2015. Credit: Amnesty International

By Matthew Wells
WASHINGTON DC, Jun 22 2021 (IPS)

Frontline workers who document and respond to violations against children have faced a particularly challenging last year, from the impact of Covid-19 on operations and child protection to the record levels of displacement worldwide to the ever-worsening threats from militaries and non-state armed groups.

Beyond the public eye, there’s another challenge that devastates morale and undermines the protection of children in armed conflict: the politicization of a key UN process for holding accountable those responsible for grave violations.

In 2005, the UN Security Council established a Monitoring and Reporting Mechanism (MRM) to document grave violations against children in situations of armed conflict. It was a landmark achievement.

The documentation feeds into an annual report from the UN Secretary-General with an annexed list of perpetrators; it is meant to form the backbone of UN-led accountability efforts for militaries and armed groups alike, and to help prevent further violations against children.

The Security Council will discuss this year’s report on 28 June.

The report comes as conflict’s devastating impact on children – and the repercussions of inaction – has yet again been made apparent. At least 65 children were killed and a further 540 injured during the Israeli military’s bombardments in Gaza in May, according to UNICEF.

The Israeli military has never been among the report’s listed parties, despite years in which its incidents of killing and maiming were among the highest verified.

Meanwhile in Myanmar, the security forces have killed at least 58 children since the 1 February coup, according to the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners of Burma (AAPPB).

Last year, despite the MRM’s verification of more than 200 instances of the Myanmar military’s recruitment or use of children, the Secretary-General de-listed them for that violation, while continuing to list them for other violations, including killing and maiming.

This year saw the military re-listed for recruitment and use – the right result, as they never should have been removed in the first place, but more a reflection of the changed geopolitics post-coup than of a major surge in such abusive practices.

To be effective, the criteria for listing and de-listing perpetrators must be applied consistently. Instead, politics and power dynamics in the Security Council and Secretary-General’s office have at times replaced objectivity.

Earlier this year, a group of eminent experts published an independent review of listing decisions between 2010 and 2020. It found at least eight parties who were not listed despite verified responsibility for killing and maiming more than 100 children in a year.

Militaries are less likely to be listed than non-state armed groups even for similar numbers of verified violations, as the experts and civil society groups have noted, with discrepancies even in the same country situation. And de-listing decisions have flouted criteria established in 2010, which require a party to end such violations before removal from the list.

For example, in 2016, the Saudi Arabia-led coalition forces were initially listed for grave violations against children during the war in Yemen but were quickly removed by then-Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. He publicly called out Saudi Arabia and others for effectively blackmailing the UN by threatening to pull funding from UN programmes.

The coalition forces were then listed for grave violations from 2017 to 2019, before UN Secretary-General António Guterres again de-listed them in 2020. They remain off the list this year, despite the MRM verifying their responsibility for 194 incidents of killing or maiming children.

Two children walk home from school in the neighbourhood of Dara’iya, Raqqa. January 21, 2019. Credit: Andrea DiCenzo/Panos via Amnesty International

A former UNICEF staffer put it succinctly in an interview with Amnesty International: “No-one wants to be the [Secretary-General] who lost a massive amount of money.”

Amnesty International recently carried out interviews with over 110 experts, including frontline actors reporting into the MRM in eight different conflict-affected countries. Their experiences further reveal the politicization’s sobering impact, with implications for which incidents even make it into the Secretary-General’s report.

When individuals and organizations feel their reports are ignored or that militaries and armed groups remain unlisted despite ample documentation, it understandably reduces their continued willingness to report to the MRM. In Myanmar, for example, several people said they felt defeated when the military was de-listed last year and wondered what their difficult documentation efforts had been for.

In Iraq, a humanitarian worker said they, as a group, resigned because of the politics around the process, noting that survivors, witnesses, and those involved in the documentation would put themselves at risk to provide information, only to see a politicized outcome.

Such concerns, recurrent among those we interviewed, are particularly damning as they come from people working at great risk to respond to violations. The MRM has achieved much in 15 years – documenting conflicts’ impact on children and putting pressure on perpetrators – precisely because of these frontline workers’ efforts.

The growing pressure from influential leaders and states undermines their work and the credibility of accountability efforts meant to respond to and prevent grave violations against children.

Among the frontline workers we spoke with across eight conflict situations, roughly half were national staff and more than two-thirds were women. This raises further questions about the power dynamics behind ignoring the findings of their reports.

Secretary-General Guterres has just been given another five-year term; he must become bolder and more courageous in prioritizing human rights and calling out perpetrators, including on children and armed conflict.

Together with the Special Representative for Children and Armed Conflict, he should commit publicly to applying the same standard irrespective of perpetrator or context – producing a complete list based on evidence and objective criteria, something he has failed to do again this year.

Next year, he must follow the criteria laid out in 2010; the Saudi Arabia-led coalition and Israeli military, among others, will again prove a key test.

For their part, UN member states must demand a credible list. Why have teams on the ground put themselves in danger to document violations that get ignored?

Frontline workers need confidence that their work is part of a credible accountability process. To fulfill its potential, the Secretary-General’s report must follow the evidence, not a politics of power that shields certain perpetrators from scrutiny. Anything else makes a mockery of the system and undermines the protection of children.

 

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Excerpt:

The writer is Amnesty International's Crisis Response Deputy Director – Thematic Issues

Gloria Tumushabe is the founder of Afro Fem Coders which aims to teach Ugandan women how to code.

By the time he is finished, Dr. Satyanarayana Parvataneni expects he will be responsible for planting over 200,000 tree seedlings in Jamaica. It is an effort driven by a desire to preserve the planet for the next generation, as well as the one of the largest contributions to date to a national effort to plant […]

By Anis Chowdhury and Jomo Kwame Sundaram
SYDNEY and KUALA LUMPUR, Jun 22 2021 (IPS)

COVID-19 has become a “developing country pandemic”, retreating from the North’s mass vaccination. With developing countries heavily handicapped, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) warns of a “dangerous [new] divergence”.

Anis Chowdhury

Renewed North-South divide
The Economist believes death rates in developing countries are much higher than officially reported – 12 times more in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), and 35 times greater in low-income countries (LICs)!

Rich countries’ ‘vaccine nationalism’ and protection of patent monopolies have only made things worse. After “passing round the begging bowl”, recent G7 promises by the world’s largest rich countries – including a billion vaccine doses – are “too little, too late”, as emerging details confirm.

Rich countries’ aid cuts during the pandemic have only rubbed salt into an open wound. Without meaningful debt relief by lenders, developing countries are falling further behind once again.

Borrow domestically
Now, developing countries must mobilise funds domestically for relief and recovery as foreign exchange is only needed to finance imports. Central bank governors have long agreed that “the scope for relying more on domestic markets, and less on international markets, is considerable”.

Government bonds issued for domestic borrowing are widely considered safe savings instruments. They thus also support and develop domestic capital markets, although limited incomes and savings ensured thin markets in most developing countries.

Hence, governments have to borrow from central banks to meet their financing needs. As government debt is denominated in the domestic currency, repayment is manageable. With borrowing from central banks contributing to a country’s money supply, governments can borrow as needed.

Jomo Kwame Sundaram

Central banks lend
Central bank financing of government borrowing for development expenditure is nothing new. It was widespread until restrained in recent decades by pressure from donors, financial markets and institutions, including the IMF and World Bank.

Instead, the new policy advice has promoted ‘central bank independence’, ‘inflation targeting’, ‘debt limits’, ‘balanced budgets’ and prohibiting direct borrowing from central banks.

After the 2008-2009 global financial crisis, rich countries pursued ‘unconventional’ monetary policies, with central banks buying government and corporate bonds. But few developing country governments have resorted to borrowing from central banks.

Even talk of such policies evokes fears of ‘runaway inflation’, unsustainable ‘debt build-up’, balance of payments crises and ‘crowding out’ the private sector. These concerns have limited such borrowing, unnecessarily constraining government spending.

Inflation bogeyman
Undoubtedly, ‘hyper-inflation’ – exceeding 35% to 40%, usually due to rare events such as war or state collapse – has adversely affected growth historically. But Indonesia and South Korea both grew at 7-8% annually for over two decades with double-digit inflation rates exceeding 10%.

Government spending is not the only alleged cause of inflation. Inflation may also be attributed to shortages, e.g., the pandemic has disrupted much production and supply.

Inflation is typically unavoidable in fast-growing economies experiencing rapid structural change as some sectors expand faster than others, with some even contracting.

Such inflation is likely to decline as economic imbalances, frictions and disruptions ease. Inflation, it should be remembered, is double-edged, also reducing debt burdens while encouraging spending, rather than saving.

Crowding-out or in?
Government spending is needed to keep economies ticking, especially as contemporary recessions are partly due to government policies to contain the pandemic. State inaction would only worsen mass unemployment, bankruptcies, etc.

When a government spends, the central bank credits the commercial bank accounts of recipients. Thus, expansionary fiscal policy augments private banks’ cash reserves.

This, in turn, increases market liquidity unless the authorities offset or ‘sterilise’ such effects, e.g., by selling government or central bank or short-term securities, or associated derivatives such as ‘re-purchase’ agreements.

Then, instead of pushing up interest rates, the central bank discount rate declines, exerting downward pressure on retail interest rates. Hence, claims that government spending ‘crowds out’ private investments tend to exaggerate.

And if a government borrows for infrastructure investment or skill development, overall productivity increases, and business costs decline. Hence, debt-financed infrastructure and public social investment would crowd-in, rather than crowd-out private investment.

Public expenditure can thus break the vicious circle of reduced spending and greater uncertainty. Also, government spending on healthcare, education, housing, infrastructure and the environment enhances sustainable development.

Balance of payments fears
Expansionary fiscal measures, thus financed by domestic borrowing, are said to worsen balance of payments problems in several ways. First, higher interest rates attract more capital inflows, causing the exchange rate to appreciate, making the country less export competitive.

Second, higher domestic demand implies more imports for both consumption and production. Third, rising inflationary pressures make domestic products more expensive and imports more attractive.

But such arguments against domestic debt-financed fiscal expansion contradict crowding-out claims. If such government expenditure reduces private spending, then excess demand will shrink, reducing inflation and balance of payments problems.

Governments can also use countervailing measures, such as restricting luxury imports and managing capital flows, to maintain a competitive exchange rate and promote exports.

Fighting windmills of the mind
Debt-GDP thresholds recommended by ‘international finance’ are not based on optimality or financial stability criteria. An IMF study emphasised that the so-called ‘debt limit’ “is not an absolute and immutable barrier … Nor should the limit be interpreted as being the optimal level of public debt”.

The 60% limit for developed countries was arbitrarily set. Presented as the upper bound for European Community countries, it was actually only the average debt-ratio for some powerful members, but not Italy and others!

The IMF’s 40% debt-GDP ratio limit for developing and emerging market economies is only for external, not domestic debt, and certainly not for total government debt, as often implied.

The Fund has acknowledged, “it bears emphasizing that a debt ratio above 40 percent of GDP by no means necessarily implies a crisis – indeed … there is an 80 percent probability of not having a crisis (even when the debt ratio exceeds 40 percent of GDP)”.

In fact, debt is deemed sustainable as long as national economic growth is greater than the interest rate. For international finance, debt sustainability concerns focus on external debt, typically denominated in foreign currencies.

Governments can more easily ‘roll over’ domestic currency debt, although interest costs may be higher. But borrowing in domestic currency should not enable fiscal irresponsibility.

Hence, the key challenge is to ensure the most effective and productive use of such borrowed funds. Pragmatism requires considering capacities, capabilities and checks against abuse and wastage.

Build forward better
Instead of ‘building back’ the unsustainable and unfair status quo ante before the pandemic, developing country governments should now selectively target government expenditure to ‘build forward better’, emphasising measures to achieve sustainable development.

Borrowing to finance recovery and reform should incorporate desirable changes, e.g., working in new ways, creating new activities, accelerating digitalisation, revitalising neglected sectors and enhancing sustainability.

Developing country governments must use appropriate measures to finance recovery programmes to fully realise the transformative potential of pandemic-induced recessions to build more resilient and inclusive economies.

All this requires policy and fiscal space. To progress, governments must reject the received policy wisdom that has kept them enthralled for decades.

 

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Water sowing includes the construction of low ditches and dikes that slow down the speed at which rainfall runs off the land, stimulate its infiltration into the soil and channel it into ponds for later recovery. The technique gives farmer José Antonio Casimiro, at his Finca del Medio farm in Siguaney, Taguasco municipality in central Cuba abundant water all year round. CREDIT Courtesy of Finca del Medio/IPS

By Luis Brizuela
HAVANA, Jun 21 2021 (IPS)

Cuban farmer José Antonio Casimiro found in the ageold technique of sowing water an opportunity to meet his farm’s water needs and mitigate the increasingly visible effects of climate change.

For 28 years, Casimiro and his family have been applying sustainable management methods on their 10-hectare farm called Finca del Medio, located in the center of the long narrow island of Cuba, which is just over 1,200 km long from west to east.

In 1993, when Casimiro and his wife, Mileidy Rodríguez, decided to settle permanently with their children on their grandparents’ family farm, the place was rundown, with severely eroded soils on rough terrain and without fences."We have adapted the technique to our situation and possibilities. We place as many barriers as possible to retain the water and make it run as little as possible on the surface, so that it seeps into the ground where we want it to.” -- José Antonio Casimiro

With the aid of tools born of popular inventiveness, and sheer determination, the family is now self-sufficient in rice, beans, different types of tubers, vegetables, milk, eggs, honey, meat, fish and more than 30 kinds of fruit.

The new generations of the Casimiro-Rodriguez family have also become involved in food production and have managed to turn the farm into a model for agroecology and permaculture, as well as for education and the teaching of good agricultural and environmental practices.

Prior to the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, the family farm was visited by tourists taking guided tours where they could interact with the crops and animals, swim in the reservoir, sample organic foods and learn about how a local farm is run.

One of the techniques applied has been water sowing, used for hundreds of years in communities in southern Spain and South America’s Andes mountains, in order to reduce rainfall runoff into rivers and seas and preserve part of it for human, agricultural and livestock activities.

“We have adapted the technique to our situation and possibilities. We place as many barriers as possible to retain the water and make it run as little as possible on the surface, so that it seeps into the ground where we want it to,” Casimiro explained to IPS via WhatsApp from the Finca del Medio near the town of Siguaney, Taguasco municipality, province of Sancti Spíritus, some 350 km east of Havana.
The strategy includes the construction of low ditches and dikes that slow the rate at which water drains into the ground, stimulate its infiltration into the subsoil and channel it into ponds for later recovery.

According to Casimiro, in recent weeks “some 200 mm of rain fell and the water has still not left the farm. We have a small reservoir with a capacity of 54,000 cubic meters of water and containment barriers that accumulate thousands of cubic meters more that infiltrate slowly into the ground. “

He said the infiltrated water does not only benefit his farm.

“A farmer on a neighbouring farm has not had to haul water from distant sources since we started using this technique. His well now has water all year round,” Casimiro said.

A woman operates a hand pump to draw water for household chores in the Martha Abreu Basic Production Unit community in the central province of Cienfuegos. Projected increased dry periods in Cuba, due to the climate crisis, calls for stimulating initiatives for greater harvesting of rainfall, as well as encouraging the saving and reuse of water. CREDIT: Jorge Luis Baños/IPS

At Finca del Medio, part of the rainwater is collected mainly for domestic use, such as washing and cleaning. Using pumping systems powered by solar panels, wind systems and hydraulic rams, the liquid is pumped from the pond to higher elevations.

“We have more than 100,000 litres of water in tanks, ponds and other places, which is channeled using gravity,” the farmer said.

Casimiro believes it would be feasible to stimulate initiatives for harvesting more rainwater, as well as to encourage water saving and reuse.

Living with the climate crisis

Climate change is not a minor issue for this country located on the largest island in the Caribbean, whose elongated, narrow shape gives rise to short, low-flow rivers dependent on rainfall, which is more abundant in the May to October wet season, and during the passage of tropical cyclones.

From 2014 to 2017, the country faced the worst drought in 115 years, affecting 70 percent of the national territory.

With average annual rainfall of 1,330 mm, several studies predict that Cuba’s climate will tend towards less precipitation, higher temperatures and more intense droughts, and that by 2100 water availability could be reduced by more than 35 percent.

“Drought is one of the climatic extremes we face today and it creates a complex situation that requires science, monitoring, innovation and evaluation,” said Science, Technology and Environment Minister Elba Rosa Pérez during a televised appearance in April 2020.

Several of Cuba’s 15 provinces show insufficient rainfall levels, despite being in the middle of the rainy season.

From December to April the rainfall level was only 54 percent of the normal average, which qualifies as a “severely dry” period, explained Antonio Rodríguez, president of the National Institute of Hydraulic Resources, on television on May 13.

Filled to around 25 percent of capacity, the dams in the most critical situation are located in the capital, where 2.2 million of the country’s 11.2 million inhabitants live, said the official.

View of a turbine used to pump drinking water in the town of Cauto Cristo, in the eastern province of Granma. In recent years, Cuba has promoted investments to expand and modernise its water infrastructure, with emphasis on more than a dozen water transfers, engineering works considered strategic to divert water over long distances and support agricultural development plans. CREDIT: Jorge Luis Baños/IPS

“We should take better advantage of rainwater. It is very good water for washing, scrubbing and cleaning. I remember that in my childhood many houses had gutters on the roofs to collect rainwater, store it in tanks and use it later. That has been lost,” Asunción Batista, an older resident of the city of Holguín, 685 km east of Havana, told IPS.

The challenge of making better use of water

The island has a storage capacity of more than nine billion cubic meters, distributed in more than 240 reservoirs that together with a network of treatment plants guarantee access to drinking water for more than 95 percent of the population, and supply industries and agriculture.

In recent years, with the support of international cooperation funds, the government has sought to expand and modernise the country’s water infrastructure.

There are more than a dozen water transfers, strategic engineering works to control possible floods and divert water over long distances to support agricultural production, in addition to supplying water to communities and tourist resorts.

However, 42 percent of piped water is still lost due to leaks in the aging pipelines, official data shows.

“An agrarian policy that stimulates and incentivises the sowing of water by farmers could be positive for the country and for families in rural and semi-rural areas,” Casimiro said.

He stressed that “farmers are aware of the effects of climate change, but the cost of what needs to be done to prepare for it is often beyond their reach. The educational level is also low,” the farmer added.

A strategy that provides some inputs and encourages a culture of rainwater harvesting, as well as more rational use, could increase water availability in areas where access to water could be affected in the not so distant future.

The Cuban government has focused on the local level as one of the fundamental aspects of its Development Plan until 2030, while it considers food production a matter of national security.

Since 2017, Law No.124 on Terrestrial Waters has been guiding the integrated, sustainable management of water.

In addition, the country has also committed to meeting the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) adopted by the United Nations in 2015, the sixth of which involves access to clean water and sanitation for the entire population by 2030.

Related Articles

• Cuba Prioritises Sustainable Water Management in the Face of Climate Challenges
• Between Drought and Floods, Cuba Seeks to Improve Water Management

There are chronic shortages in some nations where Covid infections are surging, a key official says.

By Sania Farooqui
NEW DELHI, India, Jun 21 2021 (IPS)

The June 5th attack on the Muslim family in London, Ontaria, has left many in Canada in a state of shock. A driver intentionally struck the Afzaal family while they were out for a stroll, killing four, because of their Islamic faith. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau called the killing, “a terrorist attack and a brazen act of violence.”

Amira Elghawaby

Police in London, Ontario said the suspect, 20-year-old Nathaneil Veltman, a resident of London, has been arrested after the incident, and has been charged with four counts of first-degree murder, one count of attempted murder, and terrorism charges as well. ”There is evidence that this was a planned, premeditated act, motivated by hate,” Detective Superintendent Paul Waight of the London police department said.

A GoFundMe account has been set up on behalf of the Afzaal family which has raised almost $950,644, where the donations, according to the page, will be used as “sadaqa-jariya” – “an important concept within Islam, it is a gift that not only benefits others in this life but also benefits us and our loved ones in the next.”

A petition by a high school student in London is calling on the federal government to take action on Islamophobia and to create a ‘National Day Against Islamophobia’, and more than 19,000 people have signed the petition on change.org. “The multitudes of contributions that have been made by Canadian Muslims to better the lives of Canadians every day. This is why I believe that June 6th should serve as both a day to remember, as well as a day to celebrate and learn about Canadian Muslim contributions and culture,” the petition stated.

The attack on the Afzaal family has now revived conversations about hate crime in Canada, as the country’s criminal code doesn’t explicitly define hate crime, instead there are a few sections that touch on hate. Advocates across the country are also renewing calls for the federal government to review Quebec’s controversial Bill 21 – which prohibits certain public service workers from wearing religious symbols at work, and has disproportionately affected Muslim women those who wear religious headgears.

“When we found out that the police had evidence that this was hate motivated, it was a huge shock. Obviously the initial shock of losing this beautiful family in this way, but to know that it was because someone hated Muslims, it was anti-Muslim hate was also deeply shocking,” Amira Elghawaby, human rights advocate and founding board member of the Anti-hate Network told me in an interview.

“There is this rise of hate groups, white supremacist groups that are against immigration, that are against diversity and against communities of colour, and they have been organizing and pushing their narrative online. While we don’t know what evidence police have in this latest tragedy, what we know is that it was motivated by hate, and we know there is a climate in which some people are able to find in which these types of dehumanisation is occurring,” Amira said.

Earlier this year, a Canadian court largely upheld Quebec law barring civil servants in positions of “authority” from wearing religious symbols at work. Quebec Superior Court Justice Marc-Andre Blanchard said that under “Canada’s constitution, Quebec had the right to restrict the religious symbols donned by government employees.” But it was ruled that this same ban could not be applied to English schools because of protections offered to minority language education rights under Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

Quebec, which is a predominantly French-speaking province in Canada, passed the Quebec Laicity Act, a law which was passed in 2019 that bans public teachers, police officers and government lawyers, among other civil servants, from wearing religious symbols at work. This law commonly referred to as Bill 21, was put in place to bolster state secularism, while it doesnt mention any one religion, it particularly affects Muslim women who wear the Hijab and has been referred to “among a paoply of state-backed measures that stigmatise Muslims.”

“There is no direct link to Bill 21 in Quebec to this young 20-year-old man in London, Ontario who made the decision to drive into this family and kill them, but what we can say is that hate is on a continuum and in the middle of that continuum, you have biased state policies, you have discriminations in workplaces, there are other ways in which Islamophobia, racism, anti-semitism and anti-asian racism, the list is long, manifests in the society.

“When you start to say that certain people don’t have the same rights as other people to participate in the society, then that is on that continuum of hate, because it is essentially dehumanizing and delegitimizing citizens from the society,” Amira said.

With hate crime on the rise in Canada, authorities need to be more rigorous in ensuring such laws which send out discriminatory signals – what behaviours are considered acceptable and what aren’t should be thought through with caution.

“Secularism should never have been about what the state can legislate what people can or cannot wear, secularism is about the state which itself is neutral, in its laws and the ways in which it applies and services to its population, but people would be free in a democracy to express their religious expression as they want or don’t want, that’s their freedom and that’s what democracy is all about.

“So when we say that Bill 21 is harmful, it creates the idea that something is wrong with someone who wears a hijab, kippah or a turban, there is something wrong with them, that they are not fit to hold positions of authority, that’s problematic and sends a very negative signal,” Amira said.

Canada needs to take concrete action against anti-Muslim hatred, and tackle the growing Islamophobia which has already seen a 9 percent increase in hate crimes against Muslims in 2019. The recent attack was the worst against Canadian Muslims since a man gunned down six members of a Quebec City mosque in 2017. Muslim women in Quebec have also reported an uptick in harassment and violence, which they have linked to the “passage of and heated discourse around Bill 21”. It is high time Canada acknowledges this problematic law which continues to send dangerous messages across the country.

The author is a journalist and filmmaker based out of New Delhi. She hosts a weekly online show called The Sania Farooqui Show where Muslim women from around the world are invited to share their views.

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By Shuprova Tasneem
Jun 21 2021 (IPS-Partners)

I first met six-year-old Amina in the Kutupalong refugee camp in 2019. I couldn’t help noticing the forlorn image of life in the camps she depicted—a child alone in a corner, playing with a pair of matchboxes instead of a toy. Later, Amina’s mother told me that she was hiding under the bed when the Myanmar military surrounded their household in Rakhine. She watched them kill her father and grandfather, and lay hidden while they gang-raped her mother. She hadn’t said a word to anyone outside of her family since then.

Amina’s mother also spoke of how lost she felt now that her parents and husband were dead. She lamented, “What will happen to my child?” During visits to the refugee camps, I have heard this refrain over and over again from Rohingya parents—”what will happen to my child?”

I started with this story because right after the 2017 refugee exodus from Myanmar—the result of military operations termed as a “textbook example of ethnic cleansing” by the then UN human rights chief—there was a lot more interest in Bangladesh regarding the human faces of the Rohingya who fled here. The stories of brutal murders, rapes and villages being burned en masse stirred something in the hearts of a nation prone to feel empathy towards persecuted populations. However, after four years of hosting close to a million refugees and feeling the strain on our local resources, that empathy has fast changed into refugee fatigue, and often downright aggression.

If mainstream and social media is anything to go by, we are no longer interested in hearing the stories of religious and racial persecution of this minority. Instead, we have fallen into the habit of speaking in sweeping generalisations only. In such a huge and diverse population, the stories of courage and agency—the Rohingya social workers teaching women about birth control, the elders passing on their language to the young, the youth volunteers engaging in community service—these stories are of no interest either. The words of the day, when it comes to refugees, are “crime”, “drugs” and, of course, “repatriation”.

The final buzzword is one thing that we can all agree on at least—despite what many may think, most Rohingya refugees have no desire to spend their whole lives confined in camps, however improved their conditions may be. A common accusation that you often hear against refugees in Bangladesh is that they are living a life of “comfort” and they would much rather live here for “free” than go back home. These voices have become even louder in the wake of Bhashan Char, where the resettled refugees have better accommodation and facilities (although the recent deaths of three Rohingya children amidst an outbreak of diarrhoea on the island shows that all is not as well as it seems).

While there are definitely marginalised pockets of our own citizens who would consider a daily ration of rice and lentils and a plastic tarpaulin over their heads a luxury, I can guarantee that the people who are repeating these xenophobic tropes are not one of them. And this perception of refugees as free-loaders completely erases their identities and personal histories. Do we really believe the Rohingya people would choose to live out the rest of their lives fenced in with barbed wire, without livelihoods, education and freedom of movement, a stone’s throw from their homeland, simply for the sake of “free” shelter and rations?

There is no question that Bangladesh has acted magnanimously when it comes to hosting refugees. And at almost every event hosted in the refugee camps, such as the ones organised on Rohingya Genocide Remembrance Day every year, this gratitude towards the Bangladeshi authorities has been expressed by the Rohingya. Which makes it all the more depressing that when legitimate questions are asked about their current status—such as the right to education of over 450,000 Rohingya children in the camps who are being denied access to basic accredited education—our general reaction has been to shrug our shoulders and say “not our problem”.

Time and again, Bangladesh has said that it cannot solely take responsibility for the Rohingya refugees, and the authorities are justified in saying so. But by failing to uphold their cause and create legitimate platforms where refugee voices can be amplified, we have made an error of judgment—because from the looks of it, the rest of the world, instead of stepping up in our place, have also washed their hands of the “refugee problem”.

At the latest G7 meeting, global leaders met to discuss the pandemic, climate change and security issues—there was hardly a mention of the world’s 26.4 million refugees (UNHCR estimate from mid-2020). Earlier this month, The Guardian reported that British foreign aid cuts of 42 percent will leave around 70,000 people without health services and 100,000 without water in Cox’s Bazar, affecting not only refugees but host communities as well. Aid for Rohingya refugees has been dwindling by the year, with the latest Joint Response Plan receiving only 35 percent of the USD 943 million needed for 2021. Again, these funds are allocated not just to meet the needs of nearly a million refugees, but for almost half a million vulnerable Bangladeshis in Cox’s Bazar as well.

Would things have been different if we had pushed a different narrative—if, say, instead of saying the Rohingya must return and the rest is not our concern, we had spoken up for a comprehensive solution that involved humane camp conditions, and donor investment in refugee training and education for third-country settlement, alongside dignified and safe repatriation to Myanmar? Could we have used our moral authority as the country with the largest Rohingya refugee population to remind other countries of their responsibilities, such as Japan and Saudi Arabia—who, according to the Norwegian Refugee Council, are guilty of taking in the least refugees despite having the best means? Bangladesh’s presence in the region is no longer a minor one, as can be seen from the financial assistance we recently sent to Sri Lanka and the medical aid gifted to Nepal and India. So could we not have demonstrated that same leadership and diplomatic authority in denouncing the military coup in Myanmar and pushing other countries to do the same?

Earlier this month, ASEAN representatives met with the junta chief but failed to come up with a solution to the crisis in Myanmar or even condemn the military’s illegal takeover. At around the same time, Myanmar’s shadow civilian government made a landmark announcement, pledging to amend the country’s constitution and grant citizenship to the Rohingya if it regains power from the military. Which of these parties do our long-run interests coincide with? We need to carefully consider this while mulling our future diplomatic strategy concerning refugees.

The solution to the refugee crisis is not an easy one, but it will become even more difficult if Bangladesh and other refugee-hosting countries fail to play a leading role in engaging the international community and ensuring that donor support for the Rohingya does not continue to dwindle. And in order to play this role, we need to end the demonisation of refugees and see them for who they are—not free-loaders, not criminals, but a vast and diverse population struggling to survive and build a better life for future generations after being driven out of their native land.

To mark this year’s World Refugee Day, Save the Children has released a report revealing that more than 700,000 Rohingya children across Asia are being denied their most basic rights. On this day, let us remember that we as a nation are well-aware of the fact that people can live through the most desperate situations, but what they cannot live without is hope. The Rohingya refugees are not here to snatch the bread out of the mouths of ordinary Bangladeshis, but for the most humane of reasons, as the question that is oft-repeated in the camps show—”what will happen to my child?”

Shuprova Tasneem is a member of the editorial team at The Daily Star. Her Twitter handle is @shuprovatasneem.

This story was originally published by The Daily Star, Bangladesh

Police in Peru used “unnecessary and excessive force” during protests in the capital last November challenging the legitimacy of the interim President, the UN Human Rights Office found, in a January 2021 report.

Meanwhile, supporters of socialist Pedro Castillo and conservative Keiko Fujimori took to the streets on Saturday June 19, as tensions rose over the result of the Jun 6 presidential election. Castillo was leading the official count while Fujimori sought to get votes annulled. Credit: Patricio Lagos Bustamante / LaMula.pe via UN News

By Sara Brombart
LIMA, Peru, Jun 21 2021 (IPS)

Peru’s first round of elections on 11 April saw voters choosing between 18 presidential candidates with no one candidate leading by an impressive margin.

Pedro Castillo, a rural teacher and union leader of the left-wing, socially conservative political party Peru Libre (Free Peru), emerged with a surprise lead of 18.9 per cent. His opponent, Keiko Fujimori, daughter of the imprisoned dictator Alberto Fujimori and third time presidential candidate of the right-wing Fuerza Popular (Popular Force) trailed with 13,4 per cent.

Similarly, the 130 seats in the new congress will be shared amongst 10 political parties, with no one party holding a majority.

Some 30 per cent of the electorate did not vote at all – and this in a country where voting is mandatory. The low participation reflects the general aversion towards the rampant political corruption, scandal and instability of the past decades.

The mood is of a people fed-up with a self-serving political class in which personal economic interests have scarcely become distinguishable from political goals.

Add to this that many stayed away from the polling stations for fear of contracting Covid-19 in highly-infected Peru, with others having more pressing matters to tend to, like queuing for days to fill oxygen tanks for their loved ones.

Sara Brombart

The results of the first round left Peruvians with the disturbing choice between two extremes. Since then, both candidates have had no choice but to moderate their rhetoric. Nevertheless the divisions remain deep-seated.

On the one hand, white, wealthy urban voters are eager to maintain their supposed economic stability and opted for the status quo candidate Fujimori. On the other, the mixed-race and indigenous, rural voters are eager to escape their impoverished reality and to finally be seen and heard by ‘one of their own’, Castillo.

These opposing realities are reflected in the narrow results of the second election round on 6 June in which Castillo leads by a mere 0,25 per cent or 44,058 votes at a slightly higher turnout of 75 per cent.

Even though Castillo declared himself the winner on 15 June, as of 17 June, the National Election Board (JNE) has yet to make an official declaration; it will do so only after the requests to annul specific voting records, submitted by both parties, are resolved in the next weeks.

A stress test for Peru’s democracy

In the 11 days since the run-off elections, tensions have been boiling high, solidifying divisions and putting Peru’s democratic system under a stress test that raises concerns about the country’s future stability.

In the frenzy to stoke distrust, undermine the democratic process, and win the elections, Fujimori’s team of lawyers attempted to tip the election balance in her favour by requesting the nullification of some 200,000 votes in Castillo-strong rural areas.

The request was based on unsubstantiated claims of fraud. International election observers have judged the election free and fair.

Regardless of which candidate will preside in the end, they will be faced with a range of complex challenges.

The country remained in limbo until 12 June when the National Election Jury (JNT) finally rejected these requests and, most importantly, did not cave to pressures to extend the 9 June deadline for presenting nullification cases.

Since then, Fujimori supporters have been bashing the JNT for this decision, calling for new elections, with some high-ranking retired military officials even suggesting a coup d’état.

The armed forces were thankfully quick to release a communiqué stating their intention to respect constitutional and democratic order. The reactions of both the JNT and the armed forces are examples signalling that the democratic system is still working and being respected.

Peru’s overlapping crises

Regardless of which candidate will win in the end, they will be faced with a range of complex challenges: Peru is experiencing a loss of trust in its democratic system, its institutions and its politicians.

The mistrust in politicians of whichever political tendency is widespread and, frankly, justified. Excluding the latest two interim presidents, not one of the last six presidents has been spared from corruption scandals, convictions or both.

Moreover, the Covid-19 pandemic has exposed and exacerbated Peru’s pre-existing inequalities. It has left a populace traumatised by sickness with the highest per capita death rate in the world. Decades of underinvestment in the health system, the lowest in Latin America after Venezuela, has made matters worse.

At the same time, monetary poverty has increased from around 20 to 30 per cent during the pandemic, representing approximately 10 million people or nearly a third of the population.

Add another 11 million people believed to be only marginally above the poverty line and you have two-thirds of the population badly hurting and facing severe food insecurity. A life of precarity is the reality of approximately 90 per cent of the rural population and not surprisingly, the source of Castillo’s base.

Faced with these enormous challenges, how do the two presidential candidates intend to heal their nation’s problems?

Fujimori’s lack vision, Castillo’s big challenge

The main risk to a Fujimori presidency is her lack of a clear vision. She has yet to comprehend that the vast majority of the population has passed the tipping point. Her fundamental inability to grasp a deeper understanding of the structural and systemic inequalities permeating Peruvian society is a real problem.

Long-standing social shortcomings in health care, education, and housing cannot be placated by throwing money at the problems. Yet this is exactly what her superficial social policy portends.

She would respect labour rights, financially compensate every Peruvian family that lost someone to Covid-19, grant 2 million land titles, offer loans to small businesses, and deliver free water to communities not on the supply grid.

The challenges facing a Castillo presidency, on the other hand, are far greater than for Fujimori.

Fujimori plans to only tweak the neoliberal economic model installed by her father under his 10-year presidency (1990 to 2000) and pursued by the presidents that followed.

Further, she seeks to maintain a constitution elaborated under her father’s presidency, which leaves little room for the corrective forces of government intervention, but ample room for free-market forces.

The challenges facing a Castillo presidency, on the other hand, are far greater than for Fujimori. The strength and pressure of economic interest groups hold sway over sitting parliamentarians as well as the commercial mainstream media.

During the election campaigns, media conglomerates have had one objective in mind: to demolish Castillo and promote Fujimori. The scare-mongering tactics painting Castillo as a dangerous communist and terrorist threat have progressively reduced his almost 20 per cent lead in the immediate aftermath of the first elections.

Biased attacks will no doubt continue under a Castillo presidency.

Castillo’s economic discourse has moved from one of nationalising key industries, especially in the mining sector, to one of ‘renegotiating contracts’ with large companies, spending 20 per cent of GDP on education and healthcare, reforming the pension system, decentralising public universities, and redrafting the constitution to strengthen the role of the state.

Despite recruiting Pedro Francke, former economic advisor to centre-left Veronica Mendoza of the party Nuevo Perú (New Peru), financial markets are still nervous and wealthy Peruvians are already moving their money out of the country.

The traditional power struggles between the executive and legislative branches of government would also continue under his presidency. A fragmented, largely conservative Congress is unlikely to sign off on his economic plans, especially if they entail nationalising the big revenue mining industries, and costly social programmes.

The omnipresent threat of a parliamentary coup is real and relatively easy through the use of the procedure for ousting a president on the grounds of their ‘moral (in) capacity’.

Against this backdrop of acute national challenges, emotionally-charged societal divisions, and a self-interested political class, further political instability if not turmoil and massive social unrest cannot be ruled out.

The much-awaited official declaration of the next president will not end the current political crises; it is merely the beginning of the next chapter in Peru’s troubled political history.

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

 

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Excerpt:

The writer heads the office of the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung (FES) in Lima, Peru.

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