Africa

A woman works on a community vegetable garden in Bulawayo. For a while now, small-scale farmers and other community gardeners scattered across Bulawayo have concentrated on producing on-demand horticultural products such as tomatoes, cabbages and onions. Credit: Ignatius Banda/IPS

By Ignatius Banda
BULAWAYO, Zimbabwe, May 12 2020 (IPS)

Bulawayo, Zimbabwe’ second city of some 700,000 people, has experienced a shortage of vegetables this year, with major producers citing a range of challenges from poor rains to the inability to access to bank loans to finance their operations. But this shortage has created a market gap that Zimbabwe smallholders — some 1.5 million people according to government figures — have an opportunity to fill. 

“Smallholder farmers are the highest producers of diverse food crops, some estimate that they supply over 80 percent of what many of us [in the whole country] are even currently consuming,” Nelson Mudzingwa, the National Coordinator of the Zimbabwe Small Holder Organic Farmers Forum (ZIMSOFF), the local chapter of the Eastern and Southern Africa Small Scale Farmers Forum (ESAFF), told IPS.

• ESAFF is a network of grassroots small scale farmers’ organisations working in 15 countries across the region.

Smallholder farmers have long been feeding this Southern African nation by producing the bulk of the country’s maize staple, according to the Ministry of Agriculture.

Zimbabwe’s controversial land reform programme — where late former President Robert Mugabe’s government urged black Zimbabweans to take ownership of white-owned farms in 2000 — is generally considered a failure that resulted in the country, which was once considered the breadbasket of Africa, becoming a net food importer. 

• Last December, the World Food Programme of the United Nations warned that Zimbabwe was facing its worst hunger crisis in a decade. Some 7.7 million people — half the population — were food insecure.

But for a while now, small-scale farmers and other community gardeners scattered across Bulawayo have concentrated on producing on-demand horticultural products such as tomatoes, cabbages and onions. This shift in the food production matrix has only increased since the country announced the COVID-19 lockdown on Mar. 31, which is meant to end this Sunday. 

According to the Famine Early Warning System (FEWS NET), Zimbabwe’s lockdown has crippled the movement of agro-products, further increasing shortages from larger farms across the country.

“Smallholder farmers have continued to supply the urban markets that are open daily, which is a clear testimony of what smallholder farmers are able to produce despite very limited support,” Mudzingwa told IPS.

From the backyard the supplies Bulawayo vegetable market…

From a small plot at her home in Bulawayo’s medium-density suburb of Kingsdale, Geraldine Mushore grows all sorts of greens: from peas to tomatoes to onions and lettuce. This has become her hustle, she said, at a time many Zimbabweans are seeking ways to escape grinding poverty.

Mushore set up her thriving 900-square-metre green garden less than two years ago but wishes she had started it sooner.

“It started as a small experiment to see what I could grow, if I was up to it. But now it is my full-time occupation,” she told IPS.

Mushore sells her produce in bulk to vendors in Bulawayo’s bustling downtown vegetable market and also to local supermarkets.

“The business just grew itself, I suppose. The borehole has been a boon especially now when larger farms are failing to meet the demand for greens as many rely on rainfall or have boreholes that are no longer pumping any water,” Mushore told IPS. She added that while she had been doing well previoulsy, since the lockdown her business has been thriving.

…to the reclaimed plot that’s thriving

In Ntabazinduna, a hamlet 30 km from Bulawayo, Joseph Ntuli has a thriving vegetable garden on some 2,000 square metres of his 18-acre plot.

While the plot is dominated in large part by thorny bushes, Ntuli has cleared the portion of land to grow cabbages, tomatoes, peas and carrots.

Demand for fresh produce has grown this year on the back of economic hardships that has seen families abandoning preferred protein-rich diets such as meat, fish and chicken in favour of vegetables that cost less.

• In an update covering April to September, FEWS NET said that Zimbabwe’s food needs have escalated this year after farming activities were affected by drought, with 8 million people requiring food assistance. 

“We used to be overshadowed by bigger farms who produced much of the vegetables in this part of the country but we see now they are struggling which has put even more pressure on us to supply vegetable markets and feed our people,” Ntuli told IPS.

He said that while previously he would sometimes have to watch his produce rot because he had no customers, now he sells at least 20 crates of tomatoes a day, and has since had to hire extra help. 

“I am supplying the Bulawayo market and people there say other vegetables are actually coming other parts of the country far away because there is a shortage from our own local producers,” he said.

Demand may soon outstrip supply

As smallholders farmers across the country start growing more produce, there are concerns that demand will outstrip supply as these farmers lack the sophisticated and well-financed production lines of commercial farmers.

“Smallholder farmers have been up to the task to feed the country although they have fallen short in terms of meeting demand.

“The demand, especially for the upper end of the market such as supermarkets, [and before the lockdown] hotels and restaurants, has largely been met by imports of horticultural produce. The smallholder farmers on the other hand, have largely met the demands for the medium to lower end of the market largely through such localised outlets,” said Ali Said, chief of the food and livelihood support programme at the Food And Agriculture Organisation of the U.N. in Zimbabwe.

“Smallholder farmers are also a major supplier of such institutions like boarding schools and hospitals in their localities. If current bottlenecks to horticultural production by smallholder farmers are addressed, they can produce enough to meet demand,” he told IPS.

Mudzingwa agrees.

“Massive food production needs capital resources, which smallholder farmers should have access to without stringent conditions,” Mudzingwa told IPS.

Intervention from government and private investors needed

Last year, Zimbabwe established the Zimbabwe Smallholder Horticulture Empowerment and Promotion project (ZIM-SHEP), with support from the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA).

According to the Ministry of Lands, Agriculture, Water, Climate and Rural resettlement, smallholder farmers are the country’s major horticulture producers and ZIM-SHEP is designed to assist these farmers with specialised skills and also help with access to markets.

Self-taught farmers such as Mushowe have already shown the contribution of smallholders in meeting local needs, despite the lack of access to agri-finance.

“I wouldn’t mind having more space to expand vegetable production but I am also aware that expanding will require more resources which I cannot afford at the moment,” Mushowe said.

Despite the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) supporting Zimbabwe through the Smallholder Irrigation Support Programme, where communities are provided with irrigation systems with particular interest in horticulture, such support is yet to reach Ntabazinduna farmers such as Ntuli.

“We would certainly welcome any form of support. We have already proven to ourselves how much we are contributing towards feeding such a big city like Bulawayo. Obviously we can do more, but for now this is what we can do,” Ntuli told IPS.

FAO’s Said said smallholder horticulture production can grow with proper interventions from both government and private investors as they have already proven their capability to meet localised needs.

“Climate change and the accompanying reduced rainfall and dry spells has dealt a huge blow to horticultural production, most of which rely either on surface and underground water. The water sources have become unreliable and no longer able to sustain crop production throughout the year as in the past. There is thus need to ensure availability of reliable water through drilling of boreholes and well as construction of dams and weirs where feasible,” Said told IPS via email.

For now, smallholder farmers like Ntuli and Mushore are doing what they can with their limited resources to keep their local communities fed.

Related Articles

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• COVID-19 – How Eswatini’s Garden Farmers are Keeping the Vegetable Supply Flowing

The post COVID-19: Zimbabwe’s Smallholder Farmers Step into the Food Supply Gap appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

As small scale farmers step up growing more horticulture produce, there are concerns that demand will outstrip supply as these farmers lack the sophisticated and well-financed production lines of commercial farmers.

The post COVID-19: Zimbabwe’s Smallholder Farmers Step into the Food Supply Gap appeared first on Inter Press Service.

By Ian Goldin
Oxford University, May 12 2020 (IPS)

Covid-19 is the most significant event since the Second World War. It changes everything.

It brings great sadness to many of us as we lose loved ones, as we see people losing their jobs, and as we see people around the world suffering immensely.

But it also provides an opportunity for a reset and new start for humanity. It teaches us how closely we are all interwoven together, how a problem in one part of the world is a problem for all of us.

It gives us time to pause and reflect about our individual lives, allowing us to reset and reprioritise. And it provides an opportunity for businesses and politicians to reset too. Even isolationist politicians must now understand that we can only thrive as humanity if everyone thrives.

We can only prosper if the world is prospering. And we can only be healthy if people everywhere are healthy.

Covid-19 provides a call for action. Not only to address the medical and associated economic emergency, but to ensure that we will never see a pandemic which could be even more dreadful than this one.

If we can learn to stop pandemics, we would have learnt to cooperate to stop the other great threats that we face, like climate change, antibiotic resistance, cascading financial crises, and cyber and other systemic risks.

We need to learn from history.

The First World War was followed by austerity and nationalist attacks on those who were blamed for the conflict. What followed was the Great Depression, rise of fascism and an even worse world war.

@ian_goldin

However, at the height of the Second World War visionary leaders created the framework for a harmonious world. The Bretton Woods Institutions for reconstruction and economic development, the Marshall Plan, the rise of the United Nations with its manifesto to unite ‘we the people’. The 1942 Beveridge Commission in the UK which called for the creation of the social welfare state.

The aim was to honour the youth that had died in the trenches and to overcome the suffering to provide a vision of a better future.

No wall high enough

The pandemic has risen from what I’ve called in my book of this title, The Butterfly Defect of globalization.

The interconnectedness of complex systems means that what happens elsewhere, increasingly shapes our lives. In the 2014 book I predicted that a pandemic would lead to the next financial crisis, even worse than the one of 2008.

The fact that we are now interconnected makes it imperative that we manage systemic risks, and that we care more about what happens elsewhere.

There is no wall high enough to keep out the great threats that face us in our future, and not least pandemics and climate change.

But what high walls do keep out is the ideas of how to change things, is the sharing of experiences of common humanity, the technologies, the people, the investment, the potential for tourism and exports, and the ability to cooperate.

This is essential because these threats require that we work together. If we bunker down we will see escalating threats.

Pandemics are unusual in that they are the only threat that faces us that can come from any country. This one happened to come from China. But it could equally have come from any country in the Americas, Africa, Europe or elsewhere in Asia.

As technology is evolving, with new capabilities to sequence pandemics and spray viruses from drones, the risk is rising rapidly in richer countries, so both rich and poor countries are a potential source.

As pandemics can come from anywhere stopping pandemics requires global cooperation. For most of the other global threats that we face like climate change, cascading financial crises or antibiotic resistance, a very smaller set of actors account for a very big share of the problem.

Radical ideas become reality

Covid-19 has highlighted the urgency of managing global risks. It also has shown us that these spill over to every aspect of our lives, and are devastating for economies.

Radical economic remedies are being implemented that were previously unacceptable. Being guaranteed an income was regarded as a radical idea six weeks ago and is now adopted many European governments.

The idea that governments would bail out any company and give them a lifeline was unacceptable six weeks ago, and now has been enacted. The levels of debt and deficits that governments are taking on, were regarded as heresy six weeks ago.

We know from the mortality statistics, that young people are far less likely to die from COVID-19 than elderly people. And yet young people are sacrificing their social lives, their jobs, their education, their prospects to protect the lives of older people.

We owe the youth a brighter future. We owe them the promise that this will be the last pandemic of this nature. We owe them the promise that we will address climate change, that we will create jobs, employment and better prospects for them. For this, we are likely to see not only a bigger role for government, but higher levels of taxes.

The pandemic has revealed the extent of health inequality.

The data shows stark differences based on income levels. These are being exacerbated as poorer people are less able to work from home and more likely to be made unemployed. They also have less savings.

The pandemic is increasing inequality within countries, and it is widening the gulf between them. Richer countries have more resources, they have more ventilators, they have more doctors, they have more capacity to create a safety net that is strong, to guarantee everyone a basic income and to ensure the survival of firms. This is not an option for African, Latin American and South Asian countries.

Physical distancing is an impossibility when you’re sharing a small home with six other family members, or when you have to go in crowded transport to work to put food on your table.

The medical emergency in being compounded by an economic emergency, putting hundreds of millions of lives at risk of starvation and creating the biggest shock to development in the post war period.

Covid-19 demonstrates the butterfly defect of globalisation is a dire threat to us all. It poses a test for leaders everywhere. It challenges governments, businesses and individuals to behave differently. How we respond to this test will determine not only our individual prospects, but that of humanity.

The post COVID-19: Why We Must Reset Our Thinking appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Thinking the Unthinkable first published this article by Ian Goldin, Professor of Globalisation and Development at Oxford University.
His books The Butterfly Defect and Age of Discovery predicted that pandemics would cause the next economic crisis.

The post COVID-19: Why We Must Reset Our Thinking appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Madagascar's President Rajoelina calls critics of his untested coronavirus herbal tonic condescending.

Secretary-General António Guterres holds a virtual press conference to promote a report on his call for a global cease-fire during the Covid-19 outbreak, April 3, 2020. A Security Council draft resolution supporting his call was knocked down by the US on May 8, facing a low chance for revival. Credit: LOEY FELIPE/UN PHOTO

By Dali ten Hove, PassBlue*
UNITED NATIONS, May 12 2020 (IPS)

After six weeks of negotiations, the United States shot down hopes for a resolution to be approved in the United Nations Security Council on May 8, refusing to back worldwide cease-fires as the US continues to castigate China and the World Health Organization for the Covid-19 pandemic. Meanwhile, momentum behind tenuous cease-fires is vanishing, experts say.

The long-awaited moment for the Council to approve a resolution supporting the UN secretary-general’s March 23 call to pause fighting in war zones during the coronavirus crisis may be gone for now.

The resolution had come close to getting through, it seemed, by Thursday night, May 7, according to some diplomats. France and Tunisia had circulated a redraft of the resolution, obtained by PassBlue, with compromise language about the WHO.

The new formulation expressed support for “all relevant entities of the United Nations system, including specialized health agencies,” in obvious reference to the WHO without naming it. The organization is the UN’s only specialized health agency.

France brandished its diplomatic skills as a permanent Council member to get the draft put under silence procedure — a span of time allowing parties to object — until 2 P.M. Friday, Eastern Daylight Time.

Hopes were high among most Council members that the resolution would see the light of day by the deadline, especially because on Friday the Council was holding an enormous meeting, albeit online, with an array of high-level government officials to commemorate the end of World War II in Europe.

The latest draft resolution — it has gone through numerous iterations — had overcome many obstacles laid by the US and China. Estonia was the first Council member to submit a draft resolution on the pandemic in early March but was swatted down mainly by China for including human-rights references, one diplomat said.

Then, a French-led draft was circulated, focusing on the global cease-fire; it was eventually merged with one led by Tunisia. That version, with more changes, was the one put under silence procedure late last week.

Around noon on Friday, May 8, silence was broken, even though several diplomats told PassBlue that senior US officials had shown signs the night before that the US was on board. But on Friday, Russia also said it needed more time to consider the draft; as one diplomat put it, Russia woke up and had to insert itself into the process.

In rejecting the draft, the US State Department said that the Security Council should either proceed with a resolution limited to support for a cease-fire or a broadened resolution “that fully addresses the need for renewed member state commitment to transparency and accountability in the context of Covid-19.”

Back on March 23, as the world came to grips with the gravity of the spreading coronavirus, UN Secretary-General António Guterres appealed to warring parties to observe cease-fires to help fight the coronavirus by ensuring that humanitarian aid supplies could get through conflict zones. “The virus does not care about nationality or ethnicity, faction or faith. It attacks all, relentlessly,” he said. “That is why today, I am calling for an immediate global ceasefire.”

Widely viewed at first as noble but impractical, the appeal nonetheless received the backing of governments, civil society and armed groups globally. “I was surprised by the initial success of the call,” said Richard Gowan, the UN director for the International Crisis Group, a think tank in New York.

He said he “was inclined to view it a little skeptically in late March, but a significant number of armed groups did respond positively. I think Guterres may have had a greater impact than he first expected.”

The UN says 16 conflict parties in Latin America, Africa, the Middle East and East Asia have declared unilateral pauses in fighting since Guterres’s appeal. This has notably included a cease-fire by Saudi Arabia in its war with the Houthi insurgents in Yemen.

Nevertheless, the Houthis have not agreed to a pause, and the Saudis have been bombing Yemen during an extended cease-fire they agreed to weeks ago.

According to the Yemen Data Project, the Saudi-led coalition has carried out at least 83 air raids with up to 356 individual strikes from April 9 to April 30, the most recent information available.

Despite the early success of Guterres’s appeal, the Security Council has so far not endorsed it and remains virtually silent on Covid-19, except for issuing “press elements” — the weakest formal response the Council can offer publicly — when it met in a closed virtual session on April 9.

The statement that emerged from that meeting said that the Council members “expressed their support for all efforts of the Secretary-General concerning the potential impact of COVID-19 pandemic to conflict-affected countries and recalled the need for unity and solidarity with all those affected.”

“I’m afraid that momentum is now dissipating,” Gowan said about Guterres’s appeal, as several other cease-fires declared in its wake have since broken down, including one announced in Colombia by the ELN militia, or, in English, the National Liberation Army.

“I think that a Security Council resolution supporting the call in late March or early April would have been very positive,” Gowan added. “Sadly, the Council has waited too long.”

The US, a veto-wielding member, has strongly objected to any expression of support for the WHO in all versions of the Council draft resolution.

The draft by France and Tunisia backing the cease-fire appeal, circulated on April 21, said in notes, “compromise related to the language on WHO to be decided at the end of the negotiation.”

China had insisted on a clause commending the organization for its efforts against the pandemic, while the US, which has suspended its funding of it, refused to agree to a reference to the agency.

The Trump administration also pressed for addressing the origins of the new coronavirus to embarrass China, demanding that it be named the “Wuhan virus” in reference to the Chinese province where Covid-19 is believed to have originated.

The call for countries’ obligations to be transparent was also a demand by the US, directly challenging China. Other requirements — including lifting sanctions, by Russia and others, and exemptions of combat pertaining to counterterrorism, by the US and Russia — were also overcome, according to diplomats.

The Trump administration’s denunciations of China and the WHO are widely viewed as distractions from its own sluggish response to Covid-19, as recent polling in the US finds that more Americans disapprove of Trump’s handling of the pandemic.

China’s posturing in favor of the WHO may in turn be meant to embarrass the US, Gowan said, and compensate for China’s mishandling of the coronavirus when it emerged.

“The relationship between Washington and Beijing has grown worse and worse recently,” said Jeremy Greenstock, a former British ambassador to the UN, who spoke with PassBlue from Oxfordshire, England. “It’s pathetic, really, that they are scrapping like this when they need to be cooperating.”

At a press conference on April 30, Guterres expressed disappointment about Security Council infighting in the middle of a deadly pandemic. “The relation between the major powers in the world today is very dysfunctional,” he said. “It is obvious that there is a lack of leadership.”

As Gowan said: “What’s depressing about this is that basically everyone would sign onto the cease-fire. It’s being held hostage by this WHO issue, which is sort of pathetic.”

*PassBlue is an independent, women-led journalism site that is considered the most influential media source covering the US-UN relationship, women’s issues, human rights, peacekeeping and other urgent global matters playing out in the UN. As a nonprofit news site, PassBlue is a project of the New School’s Graduate Program in International Affairs, supported by the Carnegie Corporation of New York and 100+ individuals and a member of the Institute for Nonprofit News.

The post US Pulls the Plug on a UN Global Cease-Fire Resolution appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Dali ten Hove is the researcher on the memoirs of former UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, "Resolved: Uniting Nations in a Divided World," to be published in 2021. He is a general director of the United Nations Association of the Netherlands and a former trustee of the UNA-UK. He has a master's in international relations from Oxford University.

The post US Pulls the Plug on a UN Global Cease-Fire Resolution appeared first on Inter Press Service.

A health worker in Kasubi Food Market, measuring the temperature of people accessing the market. After washing their hands with water and soap, everyone is screened to check the temperature, and an isolation tent is set aside to manage suspected coronavirus cases, Kasubi Food Market, Kampala City, Uganda. Covid-19 response. April 2020. Credit: WaterAid / James Kiyimba

By John Garrett, Kathryn Tobin and Chilufya Chileshe
LONDON, May 12 2020 (IPS)

The coronavirus pandemic underscores the profound fragility and unsustainability of today’s world. It exposes the chronic underinvestment in human health and well-being and the consequences of a relentless exploitation of biodiversity and the natural environment.

Despite the pledge by 193 governments in adopting the historic Agenda 2030 for Sustainable Development, COVID-19 and the accelerating climate crisis threaten to undermine the progress made and to increase global poverty levels for the first time in decades. Global leadership—governmental and corporate—has been found seriously wanting.

At least half of the world’s population do not have access to essential health services. Three billion people lack basic handwashing facilities, over a billion people live in dense, slum conditions and are therefore unable to practise physical distancing, and 40% of health care facilities globally lack hand hygiene at points of care (WHO/UNICEF JMP 2019).

The virus and resulting lockdowns threaten the livelihoods of 1.6 billion workers, and a few months ago 11,000 scientists declared clearly and unequivocally that planet Earth faces a climate emergency. These combined social, economic and environmental crises show the need to make real progress on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and inspire new, collective action towards a more just, equitable and sustainable global order.

Central to this agenda is finance. Yet even before widely-instituted lockdowns and the resulting economic recession, financing to achieve the SDGs was woefully insufficient.

WaterAid’s research on financing universal access to safe water, sanitation and hygiene in Nigeria, Ethiopia and Pakistan (SDG 6 targets 1 and 2) indicates shortfalls multiple times that of current levels of financing.

Other studies show that this is common across other SDGs, with the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network identifying a US$400 billion annual funding gap to deliver the SDGs in Low Income Developing Countries (LIDCs).

No single country or individual can resolve these issues in isolation. National efforts by LIDCs to mobilise increased domestic resources to tackle the pandemic and invest in the SDGs must be backed by a global, coordinated and comprehensive response far exceeding the support provided to date.

Last week, the UN Secretary-General launched a framework focused on mitigating the socioeconomic consequences of the pandemic through a “human-centred, innovative and coordinated stimulus package reaching double-digit percentage points of the world’s gross domestic product”.

This is very welcome, but crucially it must be built on equitable, affordable and sustainable foundations—rather than a mountain of new debt and subsequent austerity which followed the 2008 financial crisis.

Financing this unprecedented global stimulus requires a comprehensive package of fundamental reform—long advocated by civil society and movements for economic justice—comprising debt relief, taxation, international aid, reserves, and subsidies.

This structural transformation should be urgently instituted both as part of immediate response to COVID-19 and as permanent redirections and safeguards on international economic and financial systems.

Debt relief from the IMF and World Bank and G20 is a positive start, providing temporary fiscal space, including for public spending deprioritised in the face of crushing debt service commitments.

But as the Jubilee Debt Campaign, Oxfam, Christian Aid and others have advocated, widespread unconditional cancellation of public and private debt is what is really needed, overseen by an independent sovereign debt workout mechanism under the aegis of the United Nations.

Zambia’s US$1.5 billion external debt servicing requirement in 2020—now only partially alleviated—compares with budgets for health of US$215 million and for water, sanitation and hygiene of US$91 million (2019).

Debt cancellation is just one example of the transformation required in financial relationships between high-income countries and LIDCs to enable governments to address COVID-19, effectively target public goods and services, realise human rights (including the right to development) for all, especially the poorest and most vulnerable, and achieve the SDGs.

Global structures of taxation also require a wide-ranging overhaul. Church leaders in the UK recently highlighted how US$8 trillion sits in off-shore tax havens, with developing countries deprived of up to US$400 billion every year in tax avoidance and evasion.

In similar vein, the IMF has previously revealed that almost 40% of Foreign Direct Investment is completely artificial: it consists of financial investment passing through empty corporate shells with no real activity. Ending these practices, and ensuring democratic oversight of corporate profit, is crucial to ensure that governments – and their people – benefit from revenues earned in their countries.

Further, phasing out fossil fuel subsidies and implementing carbon taxes can both end incentives that deepen the climate emergency and release new funds for sustainable development. As the IMF has recently recognised, this is especially crucial in stemming the immediate tide of COVID-19 and greening the economic recovery. The organisation would do well to make reporting on these issues a core and mandatory part of its Article IV surveillance.

While the IMF has taken some steps to free up liquidity for health and stimulus spending to address COVID-19, the UN Secretary-General, UNCTAD and others have called for a new allocation of Special Drawing Rights to bolster developing countries’ foreign exchange reserves, stimulate economies and release funds for spending on health and public services.

Mobilising the full financial power of the IMF in support of its member countries—in an initiative which is affordable for LIDCs—would be a welcome repeat of action taken in 2009. This would also represent a return to the initial post-war vision of the Bretton Woods institutions as instruments of multilateral response to crisis and underdevelopment.

In tandem, a widescale fulfilment of Official Development Assistance (ODA) commitments – meeting and exceeding the longstanding target of 0.7% of GNI – is required. A handful of countries have fulfilled this commitment: now is the time for other high-income countries to join them—going above 0.7% in a “Race for the Top”.

COVID-19 has exposed the fragility of even the most powerful countries and companies: as former UK PM Gordon Brown points out, in today’s interconnected world they are only as strong as the weakest link in the chain.

But the hit to donor countries’ economies should not be used as an excuse to shirk global responsibility or turn away from multilateralism: like the climate crisis, COVID-19 illustrates that even when immediate effects are localised, the implications are global. The EU and others have launched an important initiative in pledging support for the WHO’s COVID response.

It can only be a first step, however: €7.4 billion, like the US$2 billion sought by the World Food Programme to address acute hunger impacts, is in stark contrast to the trillions being found for national rescue plans by OECD economies.

Only a major influx of funding–overseen through principles of transparency and accountability and the participation of civil society–can enable the concerted political action and system strengthening required to end the pandemic, deliver the Paris Climate Agreement and achieve the universal promise of the SDGs.

Private finance has a key role to play, but currently investment and lending decisions are not sufficiently aligned with environmental, social and governance (ESG) standards, and affordability for LIDCs remains a major concern. Over a year ago, we called for a new public finance target for high-income countries, to ensure their climate finance commitments were genuinely additional to the fifty-year-old promises on aid.

This global plan for renewal and sustainability is now more pressing than ever, to enable governments to finance their development priorities and achieve their sustainable development agreements, including universal access to water, sanitation and hygiene and the transition to a zero-carbon global economy.

Scientists estimate we have ten years to restore the world to a sustainable pathway and avoid the compounded and catastrophic effects of climate change. Addressing the health and economic impacts of COVID-19 while turning towards climate justice will require no less than a complete transformation of the current financial system and global economy.

Almost eighty years ago during World War II the British economist William Beveridge provided the intellectual foundation for the UK’s National Health Service, which now forms the backbone to the country’s response to the pandemic. In launching his seminal report, he said that “a revolutionary time in the world’s history is a time for revolutions, not for patching”. We would do well to heed his words today.

The post Finding Money for Public Health, Green Economic Recovery & SDGs appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

John Garrett, Kathryn Tobin and Chilufya Chileshe are members of WaterAid’s policy team from UK, US and Southern Africa offices.

The post Finding Money for Public Health, Green Economic Recovery & SDGs appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Street checkpoint in Wuhan, China. Credit: UNV

By Anis Chowdhury and Jomo Kwame Sundaram
SYDNEY and KUALA LUMPUR, May 12 2020 (IPS)

Although Wuhan local authorities undoubtedly ostracized local medical whistle-blowers, notably Dr Li Wenliang, who suspected a new virus was responsible for flu-like infections in Wuhan in late 2019, official responses were apparently not delayed, and possibly even expedited, as the novel character of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, responsible for Covid-19 infections, was not immediately self-evident.

On 12 January this year, China publicly shared the genetic sequence for Covid-19 with the world. On 11 February, the International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses named the newly discovered virus causing Covid-19 the “severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2)”.

From praise to conspiracy
US President Donald Trump went from praising China for its transparent handling of the Covid-19 outbreak in January, after securing a deal ending escalating trade tensions, to accusing China of lack of transparency in March.

Anis Chowdhury

As he ratcheted up his criticisms of China’s handling of the virus outbreak, POTUS threatened China on 18 April with consequences if it was “knowingly responsible” for the pandemic.

Trump has also accused the World Health Organization (WHO) of being ‘China-centric’, suspending its funding at a time of exceptional need. Even the mainstream media has joined such attacks on ‘soft targets’, such as UN multilateral or inter-governmental organizations, constrained by their governance from robustly defending themselves.

Initially, President Trump had downplayed the pandemic threat, promising “it will all work out well” and insisting “it was totally under control”. Then, after grossly mismanaging the US epidemic, the Trump administration switched to a blame game, becoming ever shriller in his rhetoric as his approval ratings continued to slip from an initial all-time high.

Trump has insisted on terming Covid-19 a “Chinese virus”, and has tried to persuade allies to join him in blaming China for the pandemic. He has since ‘upped the ante’, by insisting the outbreak — which China could have stopped, but refused to, according to him — as worse than the Pearl Harbor or 9/11 attacks.

Japan, Taiwan and others seeking to mobilize against China’s ascendance have joined the anti-China, anti-WHO alliance. With US elections less than half a year away, the epidemic’s politicization is undermining the desperately needed multilateral cooperation needed to address the pandemic and its many ramifications.

Conspiracy theories
While some kooks still claim that the Covid-19 pandemic is an elaborate hoax, there are more biological warfare ‘conspiracy theories’, of varying degrees of plausibility, going around, with some actively promoted by politicians, even governments.

Jomo Kwame Sundaram

A coronavirus, referring to the European crown-like physical form or features of a virus, was first found in chickens in 1937, and has featured in various different contexts since, with coronaviruses first identified in humans in 1965.

The internationally very influential right-wing media (e.g., Rupert Murdoch’s media empire, especially Fox TV) and some influential public intellectuals continue to feed various versions of the China conspiracy theory although Western intelligence agencies have found no evidence of China either deliberately or accidentally releasing the deadly virus.

The scientific evidence thus far is that the SARS-CoV-2 virus mutated naturally, resulting in at least three distinct strains, and could not have been ‘manufactured’ in a Chinese, US or other laboratory. Yet, conspiracy theories persist, with those blaming China of the worst getting the most publicity in a US election year.

Meanwhile, the supposedly ‘centrist’ mainstream Western media have also contributed by publishing various more plausible stories invoking ‘circumstantial evidence’ to blame China for causing the global pandemic, and worse, of a deliberate ‘cover-up’.

Imperialist apologist’s conspiracy theory
Celebrated UK imperialist apologist historian Niall Ferguson, now at the Hoover Institution, cites the venerable New York Times (NYT) for the now oft-repeated claim that China unleashed seven million potentially Covid-19 infected, and therefore infectious, Wuhan residents on the rest of the world for most of January before imposing a lockdown.

Long the hub of Chinese industry, Wuhan is a city into which millions from the rest of Hubei and the two neighbouring provinces commute – not unlike the millions travelling daily into and out of New York City (NYC) from NY state, New Jersey and Connecticut.

But despite the heavier international traffic from NYC airports, no credible source would accuse NYC’s daily commuters of all travelling to the rest of the world in any particular month, even before a major holiday comparable to the lunar new year.

Flights of fantasy
Ferguson even claimed that although China cancelled all flights from Wuhan to other Chinese cities on 23 January, regular direct flights from Wuhan to London, Paris, Rome, New York and San Francisco continued through January, and in some cases, into February.

Although such flights were undoubtedly scheduled and advertised, all direct international flights from Wuhan were cancelled, and those from other cities via Wuhan were redirected to bypass China’s Covid-19 epicentre.

Daniel Bell, a Canadian professor, who had strongly criticized China’s authorities for grossly mishandling the epidemic at the start, challenged Ferguson’s implication that China deliberately allowed, if not encouraged, contagion beyond China, particularly to the West.

When asked for the basis for his claim, Ferguson sent Bell a link to a NYT story, which did not corroborate Ferguson’s claim that direct commercial flights from Wuhan to the US continued after 23 January, and well into February.

Similarly, other source links sent by Ferguson to Bell turned out to be ‘economical with the truth’, inaccurate or wrongly interpreted. Simply put, very little of the ostensible evidence Ferguson invoked actually supported his own allegations.

‘Heads, I’m right, tails, you’re wrong’
Ferguson eventually conceded that he had wrongly alleged that regular flights abroad left Wuhan after 23 January, but retaliated by questioning Bell’s other scholarship, including his recent book on China, and insisting that China should have cancelled all international flights in an updated blog.

Ferguson also challenges official data from China, citing the authorities’ revision of its data as new information becomes available – as one hopes others do as well, especially as the world struggles to understand and address new phenomena.

It should be amusing to see Ferguson’s considerable skills deployed for his next analytical contortion as he addresses new evidence, e.g., that a Paris hospital patient was already infected with Covid-19 in December despite no history of travel to China or contact with any known infected person.

Perhaps Ferguson will uncover communist Chinese bats from Wuhan infiltrating Parisian escargot markets.

The post ‘Passing the Buck’ Becomes Reckless ‘Conspiracy Blame Game’ appeared first on Inter Press Service.

South Africa has been praised for halting the spread of coronavirus but unity is wearing thin.

The managers of the two hotels in southern Nigeria's Rivers state deny that they broke the rules.

By C R Abrar
May 11 2020 (IPS-Partners)

A spectre is haunting the conscientious citizens of Bangladesh—the spectre of the Digital Security Act, 2018 (DSA). By now the law has become synonymous with curtailment of freedom of expression and repression. The recent developments of involuntary disappearance, re-appearance and subsequent detention of several commentators and social activists have raised the alarm if indeed we as a nation are shying away from upholding one of the cardinal principles of the Muktijuddher Chetona (the spirit of the Liberation War) to freely express our views.

A few recent cases will corroborate the above statement. On May 6, businessman Mushtaq Ahmed and cartoonist Ahammed Kabir Kishore were sent to jail and Dhaka Stock Exchange director Minhaz Mannan Emon and Rastra Chinta organiser Didarul Islam Bhuiyan were shown arrested a day after they had reportedly been picked up in a case filed under the DSA allegedly for spreading “rumours”. Five persons based in Sweden and Germany and six more unnamed persons have been named for “tarnishing'” the image of the father of the nation, “hurting” the spirit of the Liberation War, and “spreading rumours” about COVID-19, army and other security forces among others, on social media.

Cartoonist Ahmed Kabir Kishore, began profiling “life in the time of corona” while Mushtaq started spreading anti-state propaganda, the complaint noted. It was further claimed that authorities had detected “anti-state chatting” in the WhatsApp and Messenger exchanges of Mushtaq, Minhaz and Didarul. The original complaint was annexed with 60 pages of screenshots and a compact disc as evidence, and a 2-page list of articles seized and details of their Facebook profiles, including the URLs.

The government move came at a time when citizens were reeling from the bizarre developments centring the involuntary disappearance of journalist Shafiqul Islam Kajol (March 10), his re-appearance in the border town of Benapole (after 53 days) and subsequent placement in detention. The authorities’ attempt to present Kajol as an absconder from justice failed to gain traction. The CCTV footage of some people surrounding his motorbike just prior to his disappearance, the initial refusal of two police stations to register the family’s attempt to file a case, the lack of progress in investigation, improperly detaining him under Section 54 of Criminal Procedure Code to secure time to frame other, publicly humiliating him by handcuffing his hands behind his back (a practice reserved for those accused of violent crimes such as rape, murder, terrorism and the like) and “law enforcement agencies’ overdrive to keep him in prison” at a time when courts are dysfunctional, all point to the fact that Kajol has been deprived of due process of law and may perhaps be a victim for freely expressing his views on matters of public interest.

Detaining individuals on charges of “spreading rumours”, “tarnishing image” and “hurting spirit of Liberation War” for an unstipulated period in a situation when they cannot seek protection of higher judiciary amounts to arbitrary action. It may be recalled that initially Kajol had been detained under Section 54, violating the guidelines framed by the High Court and upheld by the Appellate Division. As the hearing of the government’s review petition is still pending those guidelines continue to remain in force. Therefore continued detention of Kajol under Section 54 appears to be in breach of the law.

It is a matter of the courts to decide whether charges brought against the above accused for “spreading rumour”, “tarnishing image” and “hurting” a sentiment are tenable or not. In most instances of involuntary disappearances, including the ones above, does not the denial of law enforcement agencies of any knowledge of whereabouts of victims amount to making a false statement? Evidence is replete that in a number of cases victims are shown as under arrest if and when they are produced before the court, some weeks and even months after they were reportedly disappeared. Should not the errant members of law enforcement agencies be held accountable for such gross misconduct?

These recent actions of law enforcement agencies have triggered widespread protests. Rights groups documenting the excesses committed by state agencies have noted that following the outbreak of COVID-19, there has been an increase in instances of involuntary disappearance, extra-judicial killing and human rights violations. In most cases the actions were justified on ground of tackling rumours. The feeling is pervasive among rights activists that COVID-19 may have come as a boon to that section in the administration that is disposed to remain unaccountable and non-transparent, and thus quash dissent and public scrutiny.

The country is going through a testing time. It is the need of the hour to face the COVID-19 challenge in unison. The gradual rise in the infection curve with no sign of receding and the worsening conditions of the masses reinforce the fear that we are yet to chart out appropriate course of action. Framing a suitable response necessitates discussion and debate among all stakeholders and that entails tolerance of diverse views and free flow of information. The watchdog role of civil society only ensures transparency and accountability of the public functionaries and also of non-government initiatives engaged in humanitarian assistance. Those in the administration should not only welcome citizens’ engagement but create enabling conditions to facilitate the process. At the very least, it entails state’s unfettered pledge to uphold the fundamental rights of the citizens guaranteed by the constitution. All responses to COVID-19 must therefore be “evidence-based, legal, necessary to protect public health, non-discriminatory, time-bound and proportionate”.

In order to do away with the prevailing dreary and fatalist frame of mind of the people it is incumbent on the authorities to immediately release those detained under the DSA, make every effort to recover those who became victims of involuntary disappearance, and not proceed any further with the frivolous cases of defamation. Scrapping the DSA and instituting a credible commission of enquiry with adequate authority to look into the cases of involuntary disappearance and extra-judicial killings will go a long way to re-establishing citizens’ trust in the state.

As the custodian of the constitution, the Supreme Court may consider taking immediate measures to ensure people can seek its protection without any hindrance and (in the interim, until such a system is put in place) advise the executive branch to strictly uphold fundamental rights of the people guaranteed by the constitution and act in accordance with the law, and only in accordance with the law.

CR Abrar is an academic.

This story was originally published by The Daily Star, Bangladesh

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A video about tennis funding by Algerian player Ines Ibbou gains the endorsement of her country's president.

Africa is grappling with managing diseases like malaria, HIV/AIDS, and tuberculosis as health systems that are unable to cope with both this and the coronavirus pandemic. Sleeping under a net and taking antimalarial pills helps prevent malaria. Credit: Mercedes Sayagues/IPS

By Busani Bafana
BULAWAYO, Zimbabwe, May 11 2020 (IPS)

Experts across Africa are warning that as hospitals and health facilities focus on COVID-19, less attention is being given to the management of other deadly diseases like HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria, which affect millions more people.

“Today if you have malaria symptoms you are in big trouble because they are quite close to COVID-19 symptoms, will you go to the hospital when it is said we should not go there?” Yap Boum II, the regional representative for Epicenter Africa, the research arm of Doctors Without Borders, told IPS.

“Hospitals are struggling because they do not have the good facilities and equipment; it will be hard to take in a patient with malaria because people are scared. As a result the management of malaria is affected by COVID-19,” Boum, who is also a Professor of Microbiology at Mbarara University of Sciences and Technology in Uganda, said, pointing out that HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis were also being ignored.

In fact, the World Health Organisation (WHO) has warned that four times as many people could die from malaria than coronavirus.

“With COVID-19 spreading, we are worried about its impacts on health systems in Africa and that this may impact negatively on the delivery of routine services, which include malaria control. The bans on movement will affect the health workers getting to health facilities and their safety from exposure,” Akpaka Kalu, team leader of the Tropical and Vector-borne Disease Programme at the WHO Regional Office for Africa, told IPS.

The WHO has urged member countries not to forget malaria prevention programmes as they race to contain the COVID-19 spread. Without maintaining prevention programmes, i.e. should all insecticide-treated net campaigns be suspended and if access to effective antimalarial medicines is reduced because of lockdowns, malaria deaths could double to 769,000 in sub-Saharan Africa this year.  At the same time the agency has predicted that some 190,000 people could die of COVID-19.

According to the WHO, as of today, May 11, Africa has recorded over 63,000 confirmed COVID-19 cases with 2,283 deaths in 53 affected countries in the region.

• Though preventable and treatable, Africa is battling to eliminate malaria despite a decline in cases over the last four years.
• The continent has the highest malaria burden in the world, accounting for 93 percent of all cases of the disease.
• Malaria is one of the top ten leading causes of death in Africa, killing more 400 000 people annually.

Poorly equipped and understaffed national health services in many countries in Africa could compromise efforts to eliminate the malaria scourge, noted Kalu.

Africa must cope with COVID-19 without forgetting malaria

Mamadou Coulibaly, head of the Malaria Research and Training Center at the University of Bamako, Mali, concurred that the pandemic was straining health systems in developing countries. He urged malaria-endemic countries not to disrupt prevention and treatment programmes.

“To avoid this catastrophic scenario, countries must tailor their interventions to this challenging time, guaranteeing prompt diagnostic testing, treatment, access and use of insecticide-treated nets,” Coulibaly, who is also the principal investigator of Target Malaria in Mali, told IPS. 

Mali is one of the top 10 African countries with the high incidence of malaria.

Malaria needs more national money

Kalu stressed that domestic financing for malaria was needed. He commended the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria and other private sector partnerships that have provided funds for malaria. But he pointed out that this was neither ideal nor sustainable unless national governments contributed a lion’s share to malaria control.

• There is a $2 billion annual funding gap when it comes to malaria prevention, which should be closed to sufficiently protect people in malaria affected countries, according to the RBM Partnership to End Malaria, a global private sector initiative established in 1998. The partnership has sourced funding and equipment for malaria prone countries, providing mosquito nets, rapid diagnostic tests and antimalarials.

More action, less talk

While pleased with progress made towards eliminating malaria in Africa since 2008 when the Abuja Declaration on Health investment was signed, Kalu said Africa could do better.

• In 2001 African governments drew up the Abuja Declaration to invest 15 percent of the national budgets in improving health care services.

• Nearly 20 years later, a handful of countries such as Swaziland, Lesotho, Ethiopia, Liberia and Burundi have invested in building their health systems, according to 2016 WHO assessment report on public health financing for health in Africa. Many African countries have reduced their spending in health as a percentage of total public expenditure than they did in the early 2000s.

• For every $100 that goes into an African nation’s state coffers, on average $16 was allocated to health. Of this amount  only $10 was spent, with less than $4 going to the right health services.

“For the first time in our lifetime, the human being and the world is realising that the most important thing we have is our health,” said Boum, questioning why African governments have all not prioritised health spending despite the Abuja Declaration.

“With our borders closed we are all being taken care of in the poor health system that we have built,” Boum, told IPS. “There is no more flying to India, London or the United States. We are all in the same boat because we have not invested what we were supposed to invest and I hope beyond the pandemic, we will make health care a just cause and even manage to go beyond the 15 percent health investment agreed upon.”

With the current level of investment in health systems, the WHO fears Africa will not achieve the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), particularly SDG3 on ensuring healthy lives and wellbeing for all and ending malaria by 2030.

“We do not want a situation where we are protecting people from COVID-19 and they die of malaria and other diseases,” Kalu told IPS.

“We are not asking governments to put money in malaria alone but in national health systems. COVID-19 is showing that Africa needs facilities and equipment which it does not currently have to effectively deal with the pandemic.”

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IS and al-Qaeda affiliates have already locked horns in other jihadists hotspots.

Fafa Gilbert demonstrates how to cook this Ghanaian classic with ingredients available in lockdown.

The different types of mask, who should use them and what protection they offer from Covid-19.

Credit: Oxfam America

By Abby Maxman
BOSTON, USA, May 11 2020 (IPS)

NGOs, at the international, national – and most of all local – level are on the frontlines every day.

I just heard from Oxfam staff in Bangladesh, that when asked whether they were scared to continue our response with the Rohingya communities in Cox’s Bazar, they replied: “They are now my relatives. I care about them — and this is the time they need us most.’”

These people – and those that they and others are supporting around the globe – are at the heart of this crisis and response.

As we talk about global figures and strategies, we must remember we are talking about parents who must decide whether they should stay home and practice social distancing or go to work to earn and buy food so their children won’t go hungry; women who constitute 70% of the workers in the health and social sector globally; people with disabilities and their carers; those who are already far from home or caught in conflict; people who don’t know what information to believe and follow, as rumours swirl.

Looking more broadly, we see that the COVID-19 crisis is exposing our broken and unprepared system, and it is also testing our values as a global community. COVID-19 is adding new and exacerbating existing threats of conflict, displacement, gender-based violence, climate change, hunger and inequality, and too many are being forced to respond without the proper resources – simple things like clean water, soap, health care and shelter. We must be creative and nimble to adapt our response in this new reality.

Most vulnerable communities

We know too well that when crisis hits, women, gender diverse persons, people with disabilities and their carers, the elderly, the poor, and the displaced suffer the worst impacts as existing gender, racial, economic and political inequalities are exposed.

Abby Maxman

These communities need to be at the center of our response, and we, as the international community, must listen to their needs, concerns and solutions.

Access

As we continue to ramp up our response, we must have access to the communities most in need. Likewise, COVID-19 cannot be used as an excuse to stop those greatest in need from accessing humanitarian aid.

Border closures are squeezing relief supply and procurement chains; Lockdowns and quarantines are blocking relief operations; And travel restrictions for aid workers have been put in place, disrupting their ability to work in emergency response programs.

Authorities should absolutely take precautions to keep communities safe, but we need to work at all levels to also ensure life-saving aid can still get through and people’s rights are upheld.

Local and national NGOs are on the frontline of the COVID-19 response, and communities’ access to the essential services and lifesaving assistance they provide must be protected. We also know that with effective community engagement, we can gain better and more effective access to communities.

Humanitarian NGOs and partners are adapting our approaches to continue vital humanitarian support while fulfilling our obligation to “do no harm.”

This adaptive approach, and our experience of ‘safe programming,’ shifting to remote management where possible; and scaling back some operations where necessary—will all be crucial as COVID-19 restrictions continue to amplify protection concerns and risk of sexual exploitation and abuse.

Funding

To mount an effective response, we must draw on our collective experience, but this crisis also offers an opportunity to change the way we work, including setting up new funding mechanisms to allow our system to leverage the complementary roles we all play in a humanitarian response.

Overall, NGOs urgently need funding that is flexible, adaptive, and aligned with Grand Bargain commitments. Our work is well underway, but more is needed to get resources to the frontlines.

We need to better resource country based pooled funds, which are crucial for national and local NGOs. Now more than ever, donors must support flexible mechanisms to increase funding flows to NGO partners.

Next Steps

In closing, the international community needs to come together to battle this pandemic in an inclusive and a responsive way that puts communities at the heart of solutions. Even while we respond in our own communities, we must see and act beyond borders if we are ever to fully control this pandemic.

The planning and response to COVID-19 need to be directly inclusive of local and national NGOs, women’s rights organizations, and refugee-led organizations leaders. We must address this new threat, while still responding to other pressing needs for a holistic response.
This means continuing our response to the looming hunger crisis, maintaining access to humanitarian aid, and supporting existing services including sexual and reproductive health and gender-based violence services.

We need to ensure humanitarian access is protected to reach the most vulnerable.

And funding needs to be quickly mobilized through multiple channels to reach NGOs and must be flexible both between needs and countries.

This much is clear: We cannot address this crisis for some and not others. We cannot do it alone. The virus can affect anyone but disproportionately affects the most marginalized. It is our collective responsibility to ensure that our global response includes everyone.

We owe it to those dedicated staff and their honorary “relatives” in Cox’s Bazar, and all those like them around the globe, to get this right.

This article was adapted from Abby Maxman’s comments as the NGO representative at the UN’s Launch of the Updated COVID-19 Global Humanitarian Response Plan on May 7, 2020.

 

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Excerpt:

Abby Maxman is President & CEO of Oxfam America

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UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres calls on President Ashraf Ghani during a visit to Afghanistan’s capital Kabul to show solidarity with the Afghan people. Photo UNAMA / Fardin Waezi/June 2017

By Siddharth Chatterjee
NAIROBI, Kenya, May 11 2020 (IPS)

The world commemorated the 75th Anniversary to mark the end of the 2nd World War also called VE Day on 08 May 2020.

With her nation, and much of the world still in lockdown due to COVID 19, England’s Queen marked 75 years since the allied victory in Europe with a poignant televised address. From Windsor Castle, Queen Elizabeth said, “the wartime generation knew that the best way to honour those who did not come back from the war, was to ensure that it didn’t happen again”.

But the world is still at war. Proxy wars or localised conflicts are wreaking havoc on human development and humanity in virtually every corner of the world. By the end of 2018, wars, violence and persecution have driven record numbers of over 70 million people from their homes worldwide, according to UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency. This is the largest ever displacement of humanity, post the 2nd world war.

Never has the appeal by the UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres been more pertinent: “The world is in pieces; we need world peace.”

The United States signed a historic deal with Afghanistan that outlines a timetable and exit plan for American troops, setting the stage for the potential end to nearly 18 years of war in Afghanistan. The UN Secretary General welcomed the US-Taliban peace agreement. The United States won the unanimous backing of the UN Security Council on March 10, 2020 to this ambitious peace deal.

The implementation of the peace agreement will need leadership, courage and resolve and there will be spoilers who will attempt to upend the peace process. The road to peace will be characterized by violence, set-backs and numerous false starts, but it will need diplomacy, determination and drive to keep the peace process on track.

Hubris must not prolong the agony of this appalling war.

The war has cost over $2 trillion and killed more than 2,400 American soldiers and 38,000 Afghan civilians. As per various reports casualties among Afghan security forces are estimated to have reached around 40,000 between 2007 and 2017.

Wars are appalling. As a combat veteran, I have witnessed first-hand how armed conflicts have transformed some of our finest soldiers into shells of the people I once knew. Combat is savage, it is brutal, it is reckless, it diminishes us as human beings and jeopardizes our humanity.

General William Sherman once said, “It is only those who have neither fired a shot nor heard the shrieks and groans of the wounded who cry aloud for blood, more vengeance, and more desolation. War is hell.”

There are no winners in Afghanistan, but let’s consider the consequences on all the women and men who fought in it.

Today, research backs up what soldiers have described for decades, and what was once called shell shock or combat fatigue. We have terms like Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), chronic depression, cognitive impairment, and traumatic brain injury to help explain the symptoms suffered by active and returning soldiers.

U.S. Army soldiers on security duty in Paktīkā province, Afghanistan, 2010. Sgt. Derec Pierson/U.S. Department of Defense

For a long time, many of the grim statistics about war centred on fatalities and did not include the conflicts’ deep mental wounds. Today we have a better understanding of the kind of moral and psychological toll wars take on soldiers, their families, and communities.

The United States is a leader in the understanding of psychological and emotional damage to soldiers and has taken some steps to address their mental health. The conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan have left between 11% and 20% of military personnel suffering from PTSD. As many as 375,000 US veterans have been diagnosed with traumatic brain injuries between 2000 and 2017, mostly caused by explosions.

But suicides in the US armed forces have continued to rise in recent years, reaching record levels in 2018 when there were 25 deaths per 100,000 service members. Former defence secretary Leon Panetta once said that the “epidemic” of military suicide was “one of the most frustrating problems” he had faced.

More than $350 billion has already gone to medical and disability care for veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan combined. Experts say that more than half of that spending belongs to the Afghanistan effort.

Homelessness among veterans is pervasive, and soldiers still struggle to access benefits and healthcare if they suffer from mental health issues rather than from physical wounds. At any given time in the US, more than 40,000 veterans are homeless, constituting around 9% of all homeless adults in the country.

In the United Kingdom, spurred by a dozen suicides among Afghan war veterans in just two months, the government expedited new mental health programs to help deal with former military members’ PTSD and addiction.

What does this now mean for the Afghan security forces? They and their families do not have the same support structures.

All this ‘hell’, but to what end? Afghanistan remains one of the world’s largest sources of refugees and migrants. Since 2004 alone, more than 1.8 million Afghans have become internally displaced. Afghanistan’s human development and progress has been set back by decades. Women and children have suffered the most and countless are emotionally and psychologically scarred for life.

While we like to see soldiers as stoic and heroic, we must open our eyes to the fact that wars scar minds as well as bodies, often in ways medical science cannot yet comprehend.

Just like the world is desperately seeking a cure to end the coronavirus pandemic which has killed over 275,000 people so far and leaving a trail of human, economic and social misery, the world too must find a way to end wars, or else we may be defeated as a civilization.

Siddharth Chatterjee, is the United Nations resident coordinator to Kenya. Follow him on Twitter @sidchat1

This opinion piece was originally published in Forbes Africa.

 

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A Rohingya woman crosses the border from Myanmar into Bangladesh near the village of Anzuman Para in Palong Khali. Credit: UNHCR/Roger Arnold

By Fairuz Ahmed
NEW YORK, May 11 2020 (IPS)

As the COVID-19 mayhem carries on in most countries, the role of mothers, daughters, and female caregivers have been affected the most. Besides looking after the household and home schooling children, they are also working on the front lines, actively or passively caring for their respective communities.

Globally, women make up the majority of workers in the health and social welfare sectors. Nearly one in three women work in agriculture and women do three times as much unpaid care-work at home as men. Two such women shared their stories with the IPS about giving back to their communities in their own adaptive ways.

Ferdousee Hossain, 24, is a retired teacher, mother of two and grandmother of three. She runs a few unnamed charities and two schools for rural villagers. In her late 60s now, she never thought she would face a situation like COVID-19 where she would be constrained and isolated. She feels alone, not being able to see her family and especially the children in schools.

During the month of Ramadan, in most Muslim countries, charity work reaches its peak and donations are gathered that sustain funds for the entire year. For her charity network, where she works hands-on, it has been very challenging to coordinate, but she has adapted to still serve where it has hit the most.

Thanks to Ferdousee, seven families of 45 members and an orphanage of 52 children under the age of 15 are surviving in the district of Barisal in Bangladesh, all whilst practicing social distancing for the last two months.

In her own words to IPS Ferdousee says, “I have put unlimited internet data on our cell phones and I call each family every day, delivering and coordinating relief work so they can survive. Since I am in the capital Dhaka, I use video calls to personally see the situation in the villages and verify with the appointed team member. Yesterday a girl needed $60 (5000 takas) for immediate medicine and treatment for someone who is battling cancer. An 18-month-old child needed powdered milk and emergency care.

“We have kept separate funds for such sudden needs. I have formed a chain of ‘relay-ers’ and our team distributes food and daily supplies after verifying with other members. I have to pay out-of-pocket for the team who are working on the front lines but in the current situation it is the least I can do”, she adds.

According to Ferdousee, It is difficult to send cash because it can be stolen. “We have faced fraud too, where people fake names and collect money sent by phone. So, we make sure that no cash is distributed. These people live under the poverty line, and on a regular day, they may earn less than $7 supporting a household of four.”

With COVID-19 lockdown in effect street sellers, small businesses, hawker stalls, rickshaw pullers and domestic help are all without work. Many chose to go back to their villages to save themselves from starvation. Local aid organizations have stepped up, but many are still going hungry without any work and do not know where aid is available.

Mobina Khatun is a Rohingya woman volunteer with UN Women. 
Credit: UN Women/Pappu Mia

“We ask around and get information from authentic sources and then get supplies delivered at their door,“ says Hossain, adding, “one of the village schools I run had 250 children. Now most have gone to stay at their home. Among them, 52 children are orphans and live in the adjacent orphanage. So, we are making sure they have food and safety and a routine is in place. Only 2 teachers who live on the premises go to get groceries always maintaining social distancing. Donations have been generated from North America and Canada and I am hoping to source more.”

From the Khulna District, Ruksana Akhter, a doctor and mother of three said she has been a healthcare worker for more than 15 years. When the news of COVID-19 broke, they had to make tough decisions as a family.

Ruksana stated to IPS “Every night I come home, I get scared for my own life and for my children. I wait outside and my older daughter sprays me down. We have ten thousand plus cases reported so far in Bangladesh and it might spread more. I work in the maternity ward and serve on the front lines. We have been supplied PPE but measures are still inadequate.”

“I am the only adult in the house and my daughter is just 17. I worry what will happen if I get infected? Their father is working in the Coronavirus cell and is serving patients day and night. He has left the house to keep us protected and is staying at the hospital quarters. It has been more than two months that I have not seen him.”

Rukhsana said “it is a relief to know that people are surviving but every time the phone rings at night a shiver runs down my spine and I take a deep breath before answering the phone. We are health care personnel and the country depends on our services.”

“It is challenging and mentally taxing for us,” she continued. “One of my friends died, and another colleague who is a doctor herself is now battling Coronavirus. As a mother, I have to keep mentally stable and come back to my children, smiling. As a wife, I have to support my husband over the phone to keep him motivated. We talk at times when he gets a chance, but I can feel his desperation.”

Women’s economic empowerment boosts productivity, increases economic diversification and income equality in addition to other positive development outcomes. Empowering women in the economy and closing gender gaps in the world of work is key to achieving the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. By 2030, The United Nations has planned to progressively achieve and sustain income growth of the bottom 40 percent of the population at a rate higher than the national average. It can be concluded that if women, especially in developing countries, are facilitated with better support it will create a ripple effect of growth.

The post Women Taking Charge during COVID-19 appeared first on Inter Press Service.

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