Africa

Older adults are amongst the first Peruvians to receive COVID-19 vaccines at a vaccination site in Lima, Peru. “The World Health Organisation’s Global Vaccine Access Fund, or Covax, amounts to a clearinghouse for the West’s leftovers,” says the writer. Credit: UNICEF/Jose Vilca

By Valentina Lares
MADRID, May 13 2021 (IPS)

While Western countries were busy with their own vaccination campaigns, Russia has filled the leadership vacuum in developing countries.

Amid the West’s scramble for vaccines, a trickle of news flies under the radar. Argentina becomes the first country in South America to produce Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine. The first shipment of Sputnik V is promised to Peru by May.

Some 11,000 Sputnik V doses reach North Macedonia, while Tunisia begins administering 30,000 doses, and 1.7 million more are promised to Bolivia by May. The African Union confirms it has received an offer of 300 million doses from Russia, which has already signed agreements to produce tens of millions of doses in China, Brazil, Iran and Serbia.

While we weren’t looking, Russia’s Sputnik V became the cornerstone of pandemic response for the developing world.

The race for influence

The vaccine offers a unique chance to launder Russia’s reputation. But the Sputnik V jab is about more than image. It’s a calculated campaign to increase the Kremlin’s power and influence through a global scientific, diplomatic, and media influence operation.

Russian capabilities align elegantly with the world’s pandemic needs. As developing countries tried and failed to secure enough vaccine supplies through Western mechanisms, headlines worldwide hail Russia as the partner that really comes through when it counts.

As developing countries tried and failed to secure enough vaccine supplies through Western mechanisms, headlines worldwide hail Russia as the partner that really comes through when it counts.

Sputnik V is the image of Russia the Kremlin wants to project. Far from the authoritarian, bellicose, annexationist Moscow that poisons its domestic political opponents and interferes in its rivals’ elections, Sputnik V casts Russia in the role of scientific superpower and pandemic saviour.

Flexing the media-muscle

Russia’s official mouthpieces — Russia Today, Sputnik Radio, and the TASS news agency — minutely cover each new country, from Laos to Panama, that approves Sputnik V for use, while the Russian Direct Investment Fund, the Kremlin agency that bankrolled Sputnik V’s development, trumpets Russia’s achievement not just in finding a vaccine first, but also in making it widely available.

Valentina Lares

Sputnik V’s Twitter feed (because of course Sputnik V has its own Twitter feed) pumps out messages once or twice an hour — ‘A planeload of vaccines lands in Armenia!’ — or retweets good news from partner countries, such as this one, from the Mexican Health Ministry, which claims that Sputnik V is the only vaccine with a 0 per cent chance of producing serious adverse side effects.

What Russia can no longer achieve with its declining military strength, Flemming Splidsboel Hansen at the Danish Institute for International Studies writes, it now seeks through cognitive and digital means.

And Russia’s storied bot armies are on the march on the vaccine’s behalf. In December 2020, an investigation in The Daily Beast found that a Russian state-linked content farm known as Caliwax was behind Why Africa should focus on Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine, a viral WhatsApp chain that spread far and wide through Ghana and Nigeria.

Meanwhile, sources that the State Department’s Global Engagement Centre describes as ‘guided’ by Russian state intelligence have been peddling between two and three pieces a day hyping the arrival of Sputnik V in locations around the world.
What Russia can no longer achieve with its declining military strength, Flemming Splidsboel Hansen at the Danish Institute for International Studies writes, it now seeks through cognitive and digital means.

Supporting allies

First in line for the Russian jab have been Moscow’s long-time allies, typically led by autocrats like Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela. ‘The vaccines underline the anti-Western bloc’s scientific prowess,’ says Félix Arellano, a professor of international relations at the Universidad Central de Venezuela in Caracas.

‘Ideology demands it be portrayed as greater than the West’s. Russia’s posture, in offering up highly effective vaccines at a low price for countries like Venezuela, is media-driven. It’s how Russia and its allies seek to show that authoritarian governments can also grow in the scientific realm, that it’s possible to grow without democracy.’

Argentina, under a proto-socialist government, was the first to send a team to Moscow to translate Sputnik V’s technical documentation to Spanish and set up its own production facilities.

Other countries soon followed suit: Mexico, Brazil, Bolivia, and even U.S. allies like Peru, Chile, and Colombia. These last three were the ultimate feather in the Kremlin’s cap, the final seal of approval on an operation that is succeeding largely thanks to the West’s navel-gazing inaction.

‘At this point the discussion, at least in Peru, grants the need to negotiate to secure whatever vaccine is on offer,’ explains Oscar Vidarte, a professor of international relations at the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Perú in Lima.

Western failures are Russia’s success

For Colombia, Washington’s most reliable ally in South America, buying into Sputnik V serves two purposes: immunising a vulnerable population and rebuilding bilateral links with Moscow, which had been icy since Colombia expelled two Russian diplomats accused of spying in Colombian oil and mining regions last December.

‘We’re [Washington’s] key ally in the region,’ says Mauricio Jaramillo, who teaches international relations at the Universidad del Rosario in Bogotá, ‘and the U.S. is not trying to leverage vaccines to project its power or earn prestige.’

Russia makes sure to portray vaccine supply deals not as charity, but as partnerships among equals. Giving the leaders of poor countries the chance to say ‘I’m doing something about this’ is almost as big a prize as the shots themselves, he says.

The West hasn’t so much lost this fight as forfeited it. The World Health Organisation’s Global Vaccine Access Fund, or Covax, amounts to a clearinghouse for the West’s leftovers.

The Biden administration has pledged some $4 billion to Covax, but the WHO’s director-general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, acknowledges that ‘when there are no vaccines to buy, money is irrelevant.’

Arellano has pointed out that it’s not just access to ample supply that’s tilting the field in Moscow’s favour: It’s how the Russians approach supply agreements. Russia makes sure to portray vaccine supply deals not as charity, but as partnerships among equals.

Giving the leaders of poor countries the chance to say ‘I’m doing something about this’ is almost as big a prize as the shots themselves, he says.

Coming through when it really counts

Sputnik V’s successes keep mounting. The European Union’s shambolic vaccine roll-out has brought even some member countries like Slovakia, Hungary, Greece, and the Czech Republic knocking on Moscow’s door. Each has had to negotiate unilaterally for its share.

Italy and Spain are now considering doing the same, and the European Medicines Agency has had no choice but to formally consider certifying the Russian vaccine, softening its line in the wake of Crimea and Navalny.

To be sure, liberal democracy need not fear for its life from the Russian vaccine. But the West has left a huge leadership vacuum at a moment of acute crisis that Russia is determined to exploit.

Western democracies, and particularly the United States, have lost too many opportunities to the pandemic — not least among them the chance to back their allies, firm up their influence and position themselves as the go-to model for how to manage a crisis that, many scientists fear, could be repeated sooner than many realise.

Where will the world turn then?

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

This article was originally published in the community blog Persuasion.

 

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Excerpt:

The writer is a journalist and managing editor of Armando.info, an investigative journalism site.

Italy appeals for EU help as 2,000 arrivals within days fill Lampedusa's migrant camp.

Credit: UNICEF

By Yasmine Sherif
NEW YORK, May 12 2021 (IPS)

The month of May marks mental health awareness month or mental health awareness week in several countries around the world. Many people will be reading posts and blogs about the importance of getting more sunshine and exercise to avoid the blues, about ways to deal with the stress of the pandemic, about dealing with everyday challenges that disrupt our striving for happiness.

But for children and youth caught in emergencies and protracted crises who are living through the extreme stress and adversity of armed conflicts, forced displacement, attacks on schools and climate-induced disasters, the need for mental health and psychosocial support services extends far beyond wellness remedies. It requires a sincere understanding of their suffering and a profound recognition of their resilience.

As we look to care for our own mental health, it is also crucial that we also take action to care for the mental health of the world’s most vulnerable: crisis-affected girls and boys. Their lives torn apart, their dispossession, their fears and soul-shattering experiences can either make or break them.

What has become clear to us at ECW, and the education sector as a whole, is the importance of continuing to invest in and further deepen mental health and psychosocial support – yes there’s a hashtag for that: #MHPSS – across ECW’s broad portfolio of investments.

Yasmine Sherif

Every day, ECW and our partners are investing in new ways to provide crisis-impacted children and youth with the safety, hope and opportunity of a quality education that is truly meaningful. For education to have a lasting impact, mental health must be part and parcel of education responses in crisis and displacement contexts. We aim at empowering these girls and boys to find meaning in their suffering, like the great psychoanalyst, Victor Frankl, wrote in his world best-seller “Man’s Search for a Meaning.” Because, at ECW we believe, that their suffering and pains can – with the right MHPSS approach – also be that tipping point for turning their education into a powerful tool for change and achievement.

Imagine girls like Janat Ara, a Rohingya adolescent girl who fled through the night and hid in the forests before finding at least some hope in the refugee camps of Bangladesh’s Cox’s Bazaar. Janat, and other adolescents like her, are now back to learning but they need even more support before they can fully return to a place of mental and psycho-social safety, and from there be the young change-makers of their community, society and people.

The Sustainable Development Goals and The Agenda for Humanity set the stage for the humanitarian and development ecosystem to chart a new path forward to ensure that education in emergency and protracted crises programming creates safe, protective environments that promote the wellbeing and healthy development of all girls, boys and adolescents – via meaningful, relevant, quality, holistic education.

These commitments have led to ECW taking a strong stance: school-based and well thought through MHPSS is a required component in every ECW country investment. The logic behind this is that crisis-affected children and youth all have great potential and their experiences can enable them to not only fully learn, but to achieve and actually become their true potential if MHPSS is of the highest standard.

In the same vein, teachers will not be able to successfully support learners, if the well-being of both the students and the teachers are not tended to and supported at the most profound level of understanding what they have gone through and what they can achieve.

Credit: UNICEF

Accelerating support
To create high-impact public goods that will accelerate MHPSS support for girls, boys and adolescents like Janat Ara, ECW supports a number of key initiatives:

• Just this month, ECW announced new grant funding to support the Norwegian Refugee Council’s “Better Learning Programme (BLP).” The BLP is a best-practice, evidence-informed, school-based, diverse set of MHPSS interventions that is helping children and adolescents across the Middle East and North Africa to heal and cope with displacement, adversity and stress.
• ECW is also announcing a new grant to the Child Protection Area of Responsibility. Led by UNICEF, this focal area fosters localization and coordination to ensure marginalized children and adolescents have access to specialized, focused MHPSS supports in their schools and communities.
• Refugee children and youth have unique needs, and ECW works with the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) to ensure that girls and boys who have endured displacement and protracted crisis have access to mental health supports and services as part of their education. Together, we are changing the way refugee students are protected and served.
• ECW also works with the International Federation of the Red Cross’s Psychosocial Centre, as a co-chair for the Inter-Agency Standing Committee’s MHPSS Reference Group. Throughout the unprecedented time of COVID-19 and associated school closures, ECW supported IASC and IFRC to provide rapid MHPSS guidance, trainings and tools to parents, caregivers and teachers across the globe.
• Teacher well-being has a significant impact on student well-being. ECW and INEE’s PSS/SEL Collaborative have joined forces to ensure that Teachers’ mental health and wellbeing is protected and promoted in emergency and crisis contexts.
• Lastly but certainly not least, ECW is rolling out a new unprecedented approach on MHPSS that draws on Victor Frankl’s Logotherapy by which mental health transforms suffering into meaning and hope for the future.

Meeting the needs of the whole-child and effectively delivery on the Global Goals – especially SDG4 – will require a sea change in partners’ collective way of working: education, child protection and health working collaboratively via joint programming and coordination through existing networks and channels. You can learn more about ECW’s work here in our MHPSS Technical Guidance Note.

Today, more than ever, crisis-affected girls and boys around the world need the mental health and psychosocial support they so desperately need and deserve. With that, “they are the ones we have been waiting for”, as Alice Walker once said. With that they can change the world.

 

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Excerpt:

Yasmine Sherif, Director of Education Cannot Wait
 
To achieve SDG4 on quality inclusive education, we must prioritize mental health

The two, one of whom is trans celebrity Shakiro, were found guilty of "attempting homosexuality".

By Sam Olukoya
LAGOS, Nigeria, May 12 2021 (IPS)

People affected by leprosy, also known as Hansen’s disease, are often stigmatised. In countries like Nigeria, many of them end up as beggars due to the psycho- and socio-economic problems they face. The COVID-19 pandemic has brought fresh challenges for them and life is getting increasingly difficult. Sam Olukoya in Lagos takes a look at how people affected by leprosy in Nigeria are faring in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic.

 

 

SCRIPT

SONG:

NARRATION: In Nigeria, many people affected by leprosy survive as beggars. They usually sing songs like this as they solicit for assistance. One of them, Musa Gambo, says life has changed for the worse for them since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic.

GAMBO: We have been facing problems since the Corona pandemic started. The price of food has gone up, everything is expensive, yet we cannot do any job. The money people give us as alms now is much lower than what they used to give us in the past. Some people will give you nothing and just walk away because they are facing difficult times. Some people are even angry and irritated when you beg them for money because life is tough for them. They will ask why you are disturbing them for money as if you are not aware that there is corona.

SOUND OF BUCKETS

NARRATION: Musa Ibrahim arranges buckets which he uses to store water. Ibrahim who is affected by leprosy says as beggars they often face arrest.

IBRAHIM: The lockdown has been lifted and people can move about freely, but for us if we go out they will arrest us and they will not release us. They came even yesterday. It is difficult for us to go and beg for alms g because they will arrest us. Our crime is that we are begging, they said they don’t want beggars, for us that is the only way we can get money to sustain ourselves. If we cannot beg for money honestly it will be difficult to feed. They did not give us jobs yet they are stopping us from looking for money, that is not good.

NARRATION: Audu Garba says people like him who are affected by leprosy have to survive as beggars due to the discrimination they face.

GARBA: Because we have leprosy, people will not patronise us if we set up a business due to the stigma. Here in Lagos anyone with leprosy who set up a business is deceiving himself because the business will not succeed. If I have money my business idea will be breeding and selling livestocks. If I have the resources for this business I will cease to be a beggar.  But I don’t have the resources. I cannot farm, so if I don’t live as a beggar what else should I do? I cannot get loan from the bank, who will give me loan in the bank, when I don’t have a farm or a house that I can use as collateral to get a loan?

NARRATION: Garba says the pandemic has increased the stigma against people affected by leprosy as many Nigerians believe they are infected by the Corona virus.

GARBA: We have been facing discrimination in the past and it has continued. It is now double discrimination with corona, because now they see us as the people who actually have Corona. I swear. It saddens me when they say we have corona. Till now they go about with that impression that we have Corona. When some people even pity you and want to give you money, they will throw it at you from a distance. Yes, it is because of the stigma that we have Corona that is why they treat us this way. They discriminate against us because they don’t regard us as normal human beings.

NARRATION: Lagos based medical doctor, Kunle Ogunyemi, says once treated, people who had Hansen’s disease are not contagious and can live a fairly normal life. He said misconceptions about the disease make many people think they are still contagious.

OGUNYEMI: Ordinarily when they are fully cured, they are not infectious. Perception of the public or even some health care workers unfortunately does not accommodate them at all because knowledge about it, it is not a common disease at all and because not too many people know, the tendency is still to keep them at arms length.

SONG:

NARRATION: With songs like this, people affected by leprosy often appeal to society to respect the rights of vulnerable people like them. But Garba says so strong is the discrimination against them that he is not optimistic that they will get the COVID-19 vaccine which is supposed to be freely available to Nigerians.

GARBA: We are happy that there is vaccine, but it is not meant for us. If the populace are vaccinated we shall thank God, but for us, it is not a priority. If they look for us we shall take the vaccine since everyone ought to have it, but if they don’t look for us, we shall not force ourselves to get it, it will be difficult for us to get the vaccine. Take the newly introduced national identification card, I don’t have one, because they asked for money, I don’t have money. The situation with the vaccine will be similar, they will ask for money but we don’t have money.

A local cemetery working running on the ground collecting logs for funeral pyres, to perform the last rites for patients who died of Covid, on 29 April at the Ghazipur cremation ground in New Delhi. (Ghazipur Cremation Ground/File-Amit Sharma)

By Shubha Nagesh and Ifeanyi Nsofor
DEHRADUN, India/ABUJA, May 12 2021 (IPS)

The media is awash with the devastating news of deaths and sufferings due to COVID-19 coming out of India. What most media outlets overlook is the way Indian communities are rallying to save lives, reduce sufferings and stop the current wave of the pandemic.

As of May 11, 2021, India’s COVID-19 case total is about 23 million – with above 19 million recoveries, while total deaths are 250,025, according to the health ministry. All levels of hospitals and health facilities are full, after optimising their beds and staff, oxygen is almost not available, medicines are being bought in the black market and crematoriums have been inundated, forcing them to use nearby open spaces and parking lots to deal with the surge. Despite being the world’s largest producer of vaccines, India does not have enough for its own people.

Communities have to be acknowledged as the true heroes in this second wave of COVID-19 outbreak in India. Without support however, even they cannot flatten the COVID-19 curve

Shubha lives in Dehradun, in North India- with a population of one million, Dehradun is no different from anywhere else in India, but for the lack of much media attention. The Kumbh Mela, (a major pilgrimage and festival in Hinduism) did bring some focus to the state of Uttarakhand as a super-spreader event in the last month.

The past week has been consumed with calls all day around beds, medicines, oxygen and plasma. It all got really intense when someone in her own family got really serious and her condition scared the family tremendously. That was when the reality actually hit home – the scarcity, the fear, and the unrelenting nature of the virus.

While institutional care has taken priority in the conversation around COVID, from what is evident on the ground, it is the people who are enabling each other to seek appropriate care. Communities are coming together to maximise the resources they have, to promote preventive care and support post-hospital care. Mahatma Gandhi captured this sense of community aptly;

“a nation’s culture resides in the heart and in the soul of the people”.

This quote by Gandhi describes an important truth – one that still inspires us to believe the tremendous strength and courage that the people of India show in coming to the aid of sick people.

The current situation in India is clearly demonstrating the inequity in access to care, utilisation of care and showcases how institutions are catering to the privileged while the less-privileged suffer. As India attempts to rebuild, one good starting point is strengthening community supports and networks between the community and healthcare facilities.

Communities are the heart and soul of India. They have the potential to make or break the health of its people and impacts the determinants that drive health. It is important for us to understand its might and do all to meet the potential, now.

We give five examples of communities taking leadership to stem this second wave of COVID-19 in India:

First, religion unites. Religious communities have come forward to do their bit for patients and their families. The Sikh community in India and abroad has come forward to support families by distributing food, creating helplines, distributing oxygen, converting gurudwara premises into makeshift health facilities, and so much more.

Second, the power of celebrity. In India’s Covid-19 response, while most of the celebrities chose to stay quiet, one celebrity has been helping all along, including transportation for the migrant workers to return home, arrangement for hospital beds and oxygen cylinders, etc- Sonu Sood has been phenomenal in his relief efforts, and as he admits, “This was sheer teamwork and the will to help our fellow countrymen”.

Third, the Indian community knows no boundaries. Within the country and the Indian diaspora communities, the people are providing support. Nothing is too small to give. It all eventually adds up. For instance, the India COVID SOS is less than two weeks old.

However, it now has more than 500 members donating funds, equipment and expertise to stem the outbreak. In Dehradun, the number of people who have connected to share information about beds, oxygen, medicines and tests is unbelievable. It will take all of us, each of us, to get through this difficult time.

Fourth, heroic efforts of good samaritans, men, women and many others have ensured food for families through the pandemic. Pushkar Sinha of South Delhi collected details of all the elderly living in his building, collaborated with a nearby hospital and registered them for getting Covid-19 vaccination through the government’s Co-WIN app.

When some of the people said they were unable to get to the hospital, he arranged cars to ferry them. Deshna Krupa and her mom Ahalya from Chennai have been cooking free meals for Covid-19 patients who are quarantined at home.

Two sisters from Patna, Bihar, Anupama Singh and Neelima Singh along with their mother, Kundan Devi prepare and deliver food to homes.

Within days, groups all over India emerged to help support those in need.

Finally, the power of youths. Young people becoming volunteers to create resources for those in need of services. When Arushi Chaddha asked for help on Instagram, Suhail Shetty came forward to arrange for an oxygen concentrator. Nupur and Rahul Agarwal started “Mission Oxygen” to track oxygen concentrators and supplies, when they found a shortage of 3000.

With the help of social media, youth developed digital covid helplines to support affected families with testing, treatment, hospitalisation, oxygen support facilities, mental health, counselling and food services. Youth volunteers have created mobile apps to track bed situations in hospitals across the country.

India is really struggling with Covid-19 and needs global support. Importantly, communities have to be acknowledged as the true heroes in this second wave of COVID-19 outbreak in India. Without support however, even they cannot flatten the COVID-19 curve. The government must show responsibility to ensure that these community efforts are amplified.

The General Assembly held a “dialogue” on May 7, 2021, with the UN’s member countries and António Guterres, the only officially recognized candidate for UN secretary-general and an incumbent. Only two civil society groups were able to ask questions across the three-hour session. Credit: ESKINDER DEBEBE/UN PHOTO

By Barbara Crossette
NEW YORK, May 12 2021 (IPS)

It was all over in one crucial week. Barring an unforeseen hitch, António Guterres is the clear winner of a second, five-year term as secretary-general of the United Nations, beginning on Jan.1, 2022. This was not a surprise: he had no major competition and the process moved faster than expected.

A three-hour question-and-answer session with UN diplomats from around the world in the General Assembly on May 7 appeared to support a growing sense internationally that the Security Council may decide by late June or July, three months before the normal deadline for a candidacy to go to the General Assembly for final affirmation.

Guterres spoke mostly in generalities at the session, but he sometimes used statistics and technical points about his vision for the UN in the ensuing years.

The center of his campaign in 2016, on preventing conflicts, has not been borne out under his current leadership, some diplomats contend.

The Armenian ambassador, Mher Margaryan, asked Guterres, for example, how he would “strengthen” the UN’s response to early-warning signs of atrocity crimes occurring. (United States President Joe Biden recently recognized the Armenian genocide in the Ottoman Empire.) Guterres answered, in brief, that the problem was not missing early-warning signs but “the problem is in early action.”

In July, the rotating presidency of the Council will be held by France, which may announce the decision to back the 72-year-old Guterres, a diplomat from Latin America, told PassBlue. The European Union has been the strongest supporter of the incumbent secretary-general, as Guterres is from Portugal, so a fellow European. He was the only candidate proposed by a government, Portugal.

The Biden administration has not formally and publicly endorsed Guterres. In remarks to a Security Council debate on multilateralism, also on May 7, however, Secretary of State Antony Blinken spoke of a renewed American commitment to the UN Charter and international cooperation after the destructive Trump years.

“Nationalism is resurgent, repression is rising. Rivalries among countries are deepening — and attacks against the rules-based order are intensifying,” he said to his fellow Council members and the public. “Now, some question whether multilateral cooperation is still possible.”

“Multilateralism is still our best tool for tackling big global challenges, like the one that’s forcing us to gather on a screen today rather than today rather than around a table,” Blinken added, describing the Council’s virtually staged session because of the pandemic.

On May 4, the General Assembly president, Volkan Bozkir, explained in a news conference why he had ruled out candidates other than Guterres for the May 7 event. Seven people have submitted applications to him in the last few months, and civil society organizations were also calling for a wider slate. Bozkir, a Turk, passed all applications to the Council, he said at the news conference.

“It looks like the Security Council has a view that only candidates or applicants supported by a country will be considered by the Security Council,” he said to numerous questions on the process. None of the applicants has been recognized by Bozkir or any of the monthly rotating Council presidents, who both lead the procedure.

Further confusing reporters, Bozkir added, “And again, this doesn’t necessarily mean that a person who is supported by a country will get the guarantee of becoming a candidate.”

Armenia’s ambassador to the UN asked how the organization could better react to early-warning signs of atrocities, May 7, 2021.

None of the Council’s permanent members with veto power — Britain, China, France, Russia and the US — has so far publicly questioned a second term for Guterres. And Guterres has certainly not ruffled those countries’ feathers too much, to the consternation of certain civil society advocates, like Human Rights Watch.

In 2001, the US vetoed a second term for Boutros Boutros-Ghali of Egypt and persuaded other Council members to back Kofi Annan, a Ghanaian, who then served two terms unopposed.

How and why did Guterres win the approval of the Security Council members so easily? With Western support locked in, he spoke last week by phone with Xi Jinping, the Chinese president, without revealing whether the subject of the secretary-generalship came up. China has welcomed his bid for a second term.

Guterres is planning a trip to Moscow from May 12 to 13. The speech by Sergey Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, at the Security Council session on May 7 was the most bitter during the discussion of multilateralism. His remarks were directed at Western democracies.

Guterres, who was UN high commissioner for refugees for a decade, has been what could be described as an acceptable head of the UN for many of its 193 member governments.

He is, however, not a popular or well-known figure outside the UN, nor is he much liked among many employees of the organization, according to civil society groups, advocates and some UN staff themselves.

He is criticized for being a secretive minimalist who has not dealt well with internal crises, such as the continuing, documented sexual abuse in and around UN peacekeeping and the scant help available for survivors of rape and other assaults.

Women are often the most vulnerable people not only where UN peacekeeping operations are based or in active conflict zones but also in refugee camps or ad hoc congregations of displaced people. Men and children also suffer.

When babies are born of rape, they often grow up in extreme poverty, hungry and stigmatized for life, and the UN defers the resolution of these hardships to the national governments of the peacekeepers instead of getting involved directly.

Guterres said on May 7 in the General Assembly in response to critiques and questions from civil society participants (only two were given the opportunity to be heard) that the UN was, for example, meeting resistance from governments over problems like conducting paternity tests of peacekeepers when complaints were lodged.

In his introductory remarks to diplomats taking part in the live session, in which he appeared flustered at times, he acknowledged that much of civil society had not been offered seats “at the world’s main diplomatic table.” He added that cities, the corporate world and young people are “essential voices that must he heard.”

He also said, agreeing with some envoys who raised the issue at the dialogue, that the UN system needed better coordination of all its parts — agencies, programs and semiautonomous bodies like the World Health Organization. Yet that bureaucratic challenge has never been solved by any secretary-general, despite attempts at reform.

The most insistent opposition to the renewal of Guterres’s appointment came from advocates for the election of a woman and diverse groups that generally backed a more transparent process for selecting the chief official of the UN, such as the 1 for 7 Billion campaign.

The UN, at 76 years old, has never been led by a woman. The demands of advocates included adding women to the list of candidates and not requiring applicants to have official endorsement of governments. But both requests have been overlooked by Bozkir and the monthly Security Council presidents.

The important involvement of advocates for a woman as secretary-general is a sign of changing times. More women are emerging in top political positions in many countries, corporations and other high-profile organizations.

Some, like Angela Merkel, the retiring German chancellor, made it clear that she did not want the job of UN secretary-general, despite persistent questions about her interests. Other women elected as prime ministers or presidents of their countries think they would be more useful in geopolitics as national leaders.

And some of the women who could have challenged Guterres this year saw the light early on: as a white, male incumbent who knew how to navigate around the self-interests of the permanent Council members, he was a shoo-in.

In 2016, under a more open campaign process, there was no incumbent. Ban Ki-moon, a South Korean who had completed two terms, was also a widely criticized secretary-general for an administration that was often cloaked in secrecy and shielded by fellow South Korean aides.

Well-qualified women competed to be elected his successor in 2016, a position that ultimately went to Guterres, a former prime minister.

Among the women competing in 2016 were Irina Bokova, a Bulgarian and former director-general of Unesco; Helen Clark, a former prime minister of New Zealand and administrator of the UN Development Program; Kristalina Georgieva, also Bulgarian, a former European Commissioner for International Cooperation and now managing director of the International Monetary Fund; and Susana Malcorra, who had been Ban’s chief of staff before becoming Argentina’s foreign minister when she ran.

This year, there were no equally qualified women interested in seeking the job against considerable odds; the few campaigns that surfaced — including “protest candidates” against UN “corruption” — quickly became sideshows.

Even one potentially serious candidate who emerged recently, Rosalía Arteaga, a short-lived president of Ecuador, said she had the support of President Lenín Moreno but then asked him to drop it, as she preferred to be a “civil society” candidate, she told PassBlue in an email. (A new Ecuadorean president, Guillermo Lasso, is to be inaugurated this month.)

Many feminist organizations, realizing the futility of launching campaigns for candidates this year, opted to wait it out until the 2027 term. With the world in crisis on many fronts and a seasoned politician in charge at the UN, it was believed that being a woman was not enough this year. Moreover, no woman wanted to compete, keenly aware of the negative optics of losing.

A list of six Latin American women — some former heads of state, like Michelle Bachelet of Chile (now the UN high commissioner for human rights) — circulated this spring among high-level political circles in the region to test who might be the most successful candidate to run for secretary-general next time.

But Eastern Europe, which tried to win the current term because it was that region’s unofficial turn to claim the job, is ready to contest Latin America on that front.

Last month, Maritza Chan, a diplomat from Costa Rica, pointed out in a meeting at the UN about the overall secretary-general selection process that her country “strongly believes that the time has come to select a female secretary-general. . . . We believe that should qualifications among candidates be equal, we should choose a woman.”

By doing this, she added, “we uphold the principle of equality and empower the women of today and tomorrow.”

Lyric Thompson is the senior director of policy and advocacy at the International Center for Research on Women, which grades the work of Guterres with annual report card on gender issues. He got a B for 2020, up from a C- in 2017 and a B- in both 2018 and 2019.

Thompson, who was a member of the Biden administration’s delegation to the UN’s annual Commission on the Status of Women this year, pointed to tough speeches by Guterres warning of pushbacks on women’s rights and his frequent condemnations of worsening violence against women and girls. He also attempted, with limited success, to persuade governments to donate more financially to UN initiatives on women.

Indeed, Guterres calls entrenched patriarchy “stupid,” and told an audience in New York City early in 2020: “Just as slavery and colonialism were a stain on previous centuries, women’s inequality should shame us all in the twenty-first.”

In an interview with PassBlue early this year, Thompson said that feminists were focusing on the next election for a secretary-general.

“I think we will see an unprecedented drive for a female SG after his second term,” she said, adding that “this is a long way off . . . which means the UN will not have had a woman leader across its 81-year-history.”

The post The UN’s Guterres, an Incumbent With Strong Backing by Europe, Is Bound to Win Another Term appeared first on PassBlue.

Barbara Crossette is United Nations correspondent for The Nation, a senior fellow of the Ralph Bunche Institute at the City University of New York, contributing editor at PassBlue.com, and a freelance writer on foreign policy and international affairs. Most recently she was a co-author with George Perkovich of a section on India in the 2009 book Powers and Principles: International Leadership in a Shrinking World.

 

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Excerpt:

Barbara Crossette, PassBlue

Activists fear the proposed measure could limit the freedom to criticise the government.

A relative wearing personal protective equipment (PPE) attends the funeral of his family member who died from Covid, at one of the biggest cremation grounds in New Delhi on 26 April. (Seemapuri Cremation Ground/File-Amit Sharma)

By Sania Farooqui
NEW DELHI, India, May 11 2021 (IPS)

The Coronavirus infections and deaths in India recorded a daily high on Monday, 10 May, with 366,161 new infections and 3,754 deaths as reported by the Indian health ministry, taking India’s total tally to 22.66 million with 246,116 deaths. Experts have raised a flag stating India’s actual figures could be far higher than what is currently being reported.

The rise in case numbers have been exponential in the second wave, and has been widely attributed to the B.1.1.7 variant, which was first identified in the U.K. and also a homegrown variant, called B.1.617, with double mutations. The World Health Organization has classified the B.1.617 variant as a variant of global concern, with some preliminary studies showing it spreads more easily.

Reopening of public places, crowded election rallies and big religious gatherings are being blamed for the uptick. The national vice-president of the Indian Medical Association (IMA) Dr Navjot Dahiya called Prime Minister Narendra Modi a ‘super spreader’ and blamed him for the second wave of COVID-19. In his interview given to an English Daily, Dr Dahiya said, “while the medical fraternity is trying hard to make people understand mandatory covid norms, PM Modi did not hesitate to address the big political rallies tossing all Covid norms in the air.” While the rallies were later converted to ‘virtual rallies’, people were still being called to watch and attend those virtual rallies in large gatherings.

People refill medical oxygen cylinders for Covid patients at an advanced gas refilling station in an upside industrial area in Agra, Uttar Pradesh on 3 May. (Oxygen Refilling Centre, Agra-File-Amit Sharma)

India, which is one of the largest economies in the world, spends only 1 % of its GDP on its healthcare, making it even more difficult for public health systems to survive the burden of this pandemic. What’s worse is at a time when the government should have focused all its time, energy and effort in managing and organising a pandemic response, Prime Minister Modi chose to prioritise elections. The government turned away, ignoring all the helpless citizens who died on the streets, outside hospitals, in makeshift ambulances and homes, gasping for oxygen, medicine or any form of medical help. Right from the time when one is infected with Covid-19, till the time of death and cremation, there is no dignity. Bodies of suspected Covid patients are now found floating and washed up on the banks of Ganga in Bihar and Uttar Pradesh. This report by NDTV states that “in the absence of any Covid protocols at rural crematoriums, locals fearful of further spread of the infection, families have been forced to consign the bodies in the river.”

These are not just reports and visuals, but lived experiences of hundreds and thousands of Indian citizens who have suffered, and have seen their family members and loved ones suffer from this ignorance, which could have easily been prevented, if this pandemic could only be a priority for the top brass who run the country.

A local cemetery working running on the ground collecting logs for funeral pyres, to perform the last rites for patients who died of Covid, on 29 April at the Ghazipur cremation ground in New Delhi. (Ghazipur Cremation Ground/File-Amit Sharma)

At a time when most Indian cities have run out of hospital beds, oxygen supplies and medicines, with crematoriums running day and night in several cities across the country, with people having to wait for hours to get the deceased cremated or buried, the government should pause and introspect what this outbreak is doing to the country. There has been an outpour of global support, with several countries sending oxygen cylinders, concentrators, ventilators and other medical gear for Indians. However spending $1.8B on rebuilding the capital’s historic center in the middle of a pandemic, also highlights the priorities of the current government.

The second wave in India stripped all Indians from the dignity and respect a state should have given its citizens, at a time of global crisis, even more for being democratically elected not once, but twice. It would have been easier to call out the failures of this government if they had atleast tried in preventing the second wave, but the top leaders were busy with election rallies and encouraging mass religious gatherings, the repurcursion of which we are yet to bear. BBC reports “Kumbh Mela pilgrims turn into super spreaders, stating “its disastrous”. West Bengal, a state where recent elections were held, continues to see sharp increase in Covid cases.

A local priest and relative of a family member who died from Covid watching a pyre burn at the Garh Ganga Ghat in Mukteshwar, in Uttar Pradesh on 4 May. (Mukteshwar, Hapur/ File-Amit Sharma)

Meanwhile it is the volunteers who have stepped up to save lives, and social media has become a life saving tool, for finding oxygen supplies and medical supplies. Strangers are going out of the way to help each other and do whatever to keep a person they perhaps don’t even know… alive. This should not have been the case. Amid such reports, there are also reports from the state of Uttar Pradesh, where the Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath has asked officials to take action under the National Security Act and seize the property of individuals who spread “rumours” and propaganda on social media and try to “spoil the atmosphere”, as reported by The Hindu.

All adults in India are now eligible to be vaccinated, however the over-18 vaccination drive has been hit by vaccine shortage and technical issues with multiple users not being able to register on the website or get an appointment. Several states say they don’t have the doses to carry out the exercise.

A health worker wearing personal protective equipment (PPE) is seen collecting a swab sample of a person on the ground, along with his relatives at a district hospital in Agra, Uttar Pradesh on 3 May. (Covid Testing in Agra/ File-Amit Sharma)

Earlier in January, Prime Minister Modi had declared India as one of the countries that had successfully controlled the coronavirus. While addressing the World Economic Forum’s Davos Dialogue virtually on 28 Janury 2021, PM Modi said, “ India took a proactive public participation approach and developed a COVID-specific health infrastructure and trained its resources to fight Covid.” The exaggeration and early declaration of the government’s success was a self fulfilling prophecy, only to be proved catostrophic just a few weeks later. After all, “pyres tell the truth”, and India’s complaint media can only do so much to pin the blame on “the opposition, liberals, Muslims, activists, leftists, protestors, NGOs and other assorted “anti-nationals.”

‘Power of Positivity’ is that during a pandemic, when the country is battling a ‘variant of global concern’, in absence of robust healthcare system and pandemic management, the “positivity” from the Covid-19 virus infection, which unlike mere mortals, sees no religion, no caste, not even votes or vote banks, it only takes a virus particle, a spherical shell that protects a single long string of genetic material, inserts it into a human cell – to eventually just kill the body it ends up infecting.

Instead of asking the citizens to be positive, which most already are with Covid-19, the focus from the government should only be in restoring whatever little dignity is left for its citizens in India, and it will take a lot of effort to fight this “positivity” in the air. Health experts have already warned that a Covid third wave is inevitable in India. With an already collapsed and exhausted health care system and an aggressive variant spreading fast across the country, the government has very little time to fix these cracks, if it all it values the lives of its citizens.

 

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Excerpt:

Sania Farooqui is a journalist and filmmaker based out of New Delhi.

The biodigester of the Monje Agricultural and Livestock Cooperative, which brings together 550 small farmers in this town in northeastern Argentina on the banks of the Paraná River, produces biogas that feeds electricity to its oil plant and biofertilisers used on the crops. CREDIT: Courtesy of CopMonje

By Daniel Gutman
BUENOS AIRES, May 11 2021 (IPS)

“Until five years ago, we didn’t know about the circular economy, but today our waste generates environmentally neutral products that also offer a return,” says José Luis Barrinat, manager of a cooperative that brings together some 550 small farmers in Monje, Argentina.

Their story reflects a reality that has begun to spread in recent years in the rural areas of this South American country, a traditional powerhouse in food production. Today both small farmers and large agribusiness companies generate energy and other products from what was once considered waste and was solely an environmental problem.

The Monje Agricultural and Livestock Cooperative is located 370 km north of Buenos Aires, in the northeastern province of Santa Fe, and has a pig farm of some 200 sows which sells some 90 animals each week, Barrinat told IPS by telephone from his home town.“Farmers are beginning to realise that livestock production effluent is not a waste product but a raw material that can generate value, and that an environmental problem can become a profitable solution." -- Diego Barreiro

Until recently, the manure was collected in large open ponds, which were a major emitter of methane, one of the main greenhouse gases (GHG) contributing to global warming, into the atmosphere.

Everything changed, however, with the 2018 inauguration of a biodigester, where effluent from the pig farm are now treated together with other organic waste, such as decomposing grains.

The biodigester replicates nature by converting organic matter into energy using bacteria that carry out an anaerobic degradation process.

The biodigester in Monje is made up of a large tank with waterproofed walls covered by a canvas reinforced with rubber that seals it hermetically, into which the effluent from agricultural activities runs through channels.

Barrinat explained that the resulting biogas has two uses: “We use it as fuel for an electric generator, which covers part of the consumption of our oil plant, and also for a grain dryer that we use when the harvest is wet. We also extract biofertilisers, which we use on our 35-hectare field.”

Building the biodigester cost nearly 100,000 dollars and was made possible thanks to a grant from the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) and advice from Argentina’s governmental National Institute of Agricultural Technology (INTA).

“The use of biogas has grown enormously since 2015 in this country, alongside research and the creation of knowledge,” said Jorge Hilbert, an international advisor at INTA. “Unfortunately, this came to a halt in the last two years, due to the financing difficulties that Argentina is experiencing,” he added, speaking to IPS in the capital.

In Cristophersen, a town in northeastern Argentina, biodigesters were built by Adecoagro, an agroindustrial company that invested six million dollars to produce biogas from the manure of 12,000 cows. Adecoagro has been selling renewable energy to the national electricity grid for more than three years. CREDIT: Courtesy of Adecoagro

Hilbert coordinates the Global Digital Biogas Cooperation project in the country, which last year investigated market conditions in Argentina, Ethiopia, Ghana, Indonesia and South Africa. The initiative was financed by the European Union, which is interested in exporting its biogas technology to emerging countries.

In the case of Argentina, the study noted that there are 100 biogas plants in operation and that the main potential for this renewable energy lies in the effluent from pork and beef production and the dairy industry.

Biogas generation received a boost in 2015, when the Law for the Promotion of Renewable Energies was passed. The following year the government launched the RenovAr Programme, by which the State guarantees the purchase of electricity generated with non-fossil fuel sources.

Environmental engineer Mariano Butti, an INTA researcher in the city of Pergamino, told IPS that thanks to RenovAr, 36 large-scale biogas plants have been built or are under construction, which inject energy into the national power grid.

However, Butti said by telephone from that city, located some 220 km from the capital, that there is still a long way to go, especially for medium and small farmers.

“The benefit of biodigesters is twofold, because they generate biofertilisers that replace chemical, fossil-based fertilisers, and because they cut GHG emissions from untreated effluent,” he said.

“Today in Argentina we are wasting a resource,” added Butti, who cited concrete examples, such as Navarro, an agricultural municipality located 120 km from Buenos Aires.

The expert explained that “Navarro has 20,000 inhabitants and 180 cattle farms, with a total of 38,000 cows. Today, they generate local electricity with two diesel engines and dump the effluent from livestock into a river, instead of making use of it.”

However, developing the potential of agricultural waste in Argentina is not an easy task.

In 2018, INTA developed a project for Chañar Ladeado, a town of 6,000 people, also in the northeastern province of Santa Fe, where the main activity is pig farming. Thanks to the effluent, biogas would have been supplied to the whole community, which currently uses bottled gas, but the plan collapsed because the financing fell through.

Faced with the failure of the initiative, a local pig farmer, Gabriel Nicolino, installed a biodigester on his own farm, which has 200 sows. “I did it with the help of INTA, a bit by trial and error, because in this country it is very difficult to get credit,” Nicolino told IPS by telephone from that town.

“I am starting to use the biogas as a fuel to generate electricity for the breeding barn, which includes heating the pigs in their first few weeks of life. I hope to recoup the investment in the long term,” he added.

José Luis Barrinat, manager of the Monje Agricultural and Livestock Cooperative, stands by the biodigester, next to the gas filter and the facilities where the gas is cooled before being sent to the electricity generator. The biodigester works with effluent from the pig farm and other organic waste. CREDIT: Courtesy of CopMonje

Who pays the environmental costs?

Ignacio Huerga, an INTA specialist from the city of Venado Tuerto, notes that the outlook for the generation of biogas from agricultural waste is very different depending on the scale of the farms.

“Large farmers have to think about investments of millions of dollars with technology imported from countries like Germany and Italy. Smaller producers are left with developments from universities or national companies that provide technology,” he told IPS from that city.

He added that “the problem of economic viability has to do with the fact that in Argentina nobody pays the cost of the environmental impact of their activity. If they had to pay it, things would be different. In any case, biogas is sure to grow over the next few years in this country.”

One of the large Argentine agribusiness companies that chose biogas is Adecoagro, which produces milk, grains, rice, sugar and ethanol in Argentina and also does businesses in Brazil and Uruguay. Adecoagro describes itself as a “producer of food and renewable energy under a sustainable model.”

The company has four dairy farms in the town of Cristophersen, Santa Fe, with 12,000 dairy cows.

“In 2004 we began to investigate how we could take advantage of cow manure. Back then we applied it on our fields as fertiliser, because our first natural biodigester is the cows’ stomachs, but we saw that there was more potential,” Lisandro Ferrer, head of Industrial Projects at Adecoagro, told IPS.

Thanks to the RenovAr plan, and using Italian technology, Adecoagro invested six million dollars in a biodigester and has been injecting electricity into the national grid since November 2017. “We have 1.4 MW in installed power. We could cover the energy needs of a town of between 500 and 1,000 residents,” Ferrer said by phone from Cristophersen.

“The biodigester is fed with 200 tons of cow manure per day, which is sent to three 5,000-cubic-metre concrete tanks. The way we see it is the cows transform the corn they eat into milk, and what is left over we transform into biogas to generate electricity,” he explained.

However, promoters of biogas still have to work to spark the interest of agricultural producers. Fourteen years ago Diego Barreiro founded the Argentine company Biomax, dedicated to the manufacture and commercialisation of biodigesters, and since then he has been touring the country explaining the benefits of the system.

“We are working hard to lower costs. Today we have 54 biodigesters installed and interest is growing. We have a farmer who, thanks to the biofertiliser made from pig manure, managed to increase the yield of his soybean field so much that in one year he recovered the investment,” Barreiro told IPS in Buenos Aires.

He said “Farmers are beginning to realise that livestock production effluent is not a waste product but a raw material that can generate value, and that an environmental problem can become a profitable solution.”

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Leicester and Nigeria's Kelechi Iheanacho says he never lost faith in his own ability and nor did compatriot and club-mate Wilfred Ndidi.

COVID-19 has shown that we need to act fast as changes at the interface of humans, livestock and wildlife are driving increased risk of emerging disease threats across the globe. Credit: Marc-André Boisvert/IPS

By Olanike Adeyemo
IBADAN, Nigeria, May 11 2021 (IPS)

The COVID-19 pandemic has shown us that global health challenges cannot be solved only by health sector interventions.

Many of the recent epidemics — Ebola, Zika and even Covid-19 — are emerging infectious diseases transmissible from wildlife species. In addition, other global health challenges greatly impact people, livestock, wildlife and agriculture which results in adverse effects on local, national, and global economies.

To truly tackle prospective pandemics, Africa’s higher education institutions need to promote a more integrated approach to healthcare training that breaks down the silos between doctors, veterinarians, laboratory scientists and other aligned professions to embrace a “one health” approach. In short, every discipline is affected and all must be taken into consideration when applying solutions.

We must begin to coordinate and optimise resources across human, veterinary and environmental sectors for prevention, detection and control of infectious disease outbreaks

The One Health approach refers to the collaboration of multiple disciplines working locally, nationally, and globally towards optimal health for people, animals, plants, and the environment. It brings together different disciplines to tackle issues holistically and is critical for Africa since most of the emerging and re-emerging diseases have been linked to wildlife.

The concept has been already been endorsed by several national and international organisations and is beginning to be implemented in several medical schools in North America.

But not in Africa.

Take, for example, Nigeria where the education model encourages competition and territoriality among professions instead of collaboration in practice.

Currently, only 2% of clinical trials conducted globally occur in Africa, according to Tom Kariuki, director of programmes at the African Academy of Sciences. This could hinder the efficacy of COVID-19 vaccine in terms of gaining an understanding of immune response and safety in African populations.

There are historical challenges that have limited vaccine trials in Africa. In Nigeria, these challenges are exacerbated by professional tussles. Whereas drug and vaccine approval is under the purview of the National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC), the oversight of conduct of clinical trials involving human subjects lie with National Health Research Ethics Committee, Nigeria (NHREC). This at times portends bureaucratic difficulties.

Some African countries do have networks involved in One Health training, research, and outreach. However, most of these are not integrated in approach and practice. For example, the Nigerian Field Epidemiology and Laboratory Training Program (NFELTP) is a service-oriented training program with three different options or tracks: applied epidemiology, public health laboratory practice, or veterinary epidemiology means the different tracks still maintain their traditional professional territory.

Recently, while working at the frontlines during the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic as the leader of the Decontamination and Containment arm of the Covid-19 Taskforce for Oyo State, Nigeria, it became clear that healthcare workers still lacked an understanding of what a One Health approach means in practice. Most requests to decontaminate facilities where Covid-19 patients had been evacuated were either not communicated, were delayed or relayed through wrong channels.

The lack of synergy in information communication has significant implications for the overall efforts to curtail the spread of the virus. A global One Health approach requires individuals who have technical competencies to work across sectors, disciplines, and borders to successfully manage complex health issues and disease outbreaks.

We have already seen examples of this in action on the continent. Through curriculum development workshops the University of Rwanda’s School of Veterinary Medicine, in association with Tufts University, revised its curriculum to incorporate collaborative skills across disciplines in order to better prepare graduates for the reality on the ground.

The approach has been endorsed by WHO Director-General Dr Tedros Ghebreyesus who said “we can only prevent future pandemics with an integrated #OneHealth approach to public health, animal health and the environment we share”.

While it is not possible to immediately refashion all medical, veterinary and environmental health practitioners transformed into One Health workforce, we can start by organising ongoing in-service professional development in One Health keep practitioners abreast of best practice cross-sectoral responses.

Higher Education institutions must incorporate One Health concepts, skills, and competencies to create enhanced curricula and programmes. Finally, we must strengthen communication among medical, veterinary, and environmental Health practitioners on the field.

COVID-19 has shown that we need to act fast as changes at the interface of humans, livestock and wildlife are driving increased risk of emerging disease threats across the globe. We must begin to coordinate and optimise resources across human, veterinary and environmental sectors for prevention, detection and control of infectious disease outbreaks.

By doing so, we will be better prepared for the next pandemic.

Olanike Adeyemo is a Professor in the Department of Veterinary Public Health and Preventive Medicine, University of Ibadan, Nigeria and a 2021 Aspen New Voices Fellow. She advocates for an integrated one health workforce to support a cohesive approach for a healthier world. Follow her on Twitter @OlanikeAdeyemo1.

US rapper J Cole is set to sign for a Rwandan club ahead of the inaugural Basketball Africa League.

Daud Khan, Ahmed Raza and Mahnoor Malik speak to a young immigrant in Italy about his journey to Europe

By Daud Khan
ROME, May 11 2021 (IPS)

We met 22-year old Ali B. in a park in Rome’s city center on a rather cold and windy April evening. We could not share a meal, or even a coffee, as all restaurants were shut due to continuing COVID-19 restrictions. He had travelled down from Cerveteri (a small town about 50km north of Rome) where he works for an old couple. They provide boarding and lodging as well as a decent salary and social security benefits. In return, he has to cook for them and look after the kitchen.

Ali B.

Ali’s calm demeanor belies the arduous life he has lived. From losing a parent early in life to migrating to Italy at the tender age of sixteen, he has experienced serious hardships. Admirably, he has not let these experiences deter his ambition. When not at work, Ali spends time studying – he is keen to complete a high school diploma. He also contributes part of his time to writing a book about his experiences.

We decided to tell Ali’s story not only because it is moving but also inspirational. Most importantly, he embodies a spirit of independence and of courage for taking destiny in his own hands – making the most of whatever life has given him. He is also an example for Pakistani migrants in Italy. In the few years he has been here, he has shown what one can achieve by opening up to a new culture.

Given that Ali arrived in Italy at an impressionable age, he easily assimilated to the Italian way of life. Unlike many of his compatriots from Pakistan, his language skills and comfort with the Italian norms and customs has helped in integrating with locals and their culture. Talk of Pakistan, his life there or its culture does not invoke any strong nostalgia in him. Rather it reminds him of economic hardships and the life-threatening journey he embarked on a few years ago.

We asked him what the journey to Europe was like.

He told us that the journey started on a bus from his hometown close to Sheikhupura to Lahore, and then by train to Karachi. There, he met up with others and a group of 40 young men and boys was put on a small launch which took them to Iran. From there they travelled on foot, or by car and bus, to Turkey and eventually to Greece. At each leg, the group got larger or smaller as others joined or left – depending on the logistics of the next stage.

The journey to Greece took about three to four weeks and over this period he had about 10 handlers. Luckily for Ali, the handlers, many of whom were Iranians, were a generally humane lot. The travelers were usually provided food, a clean place to sleep and reasonable facilities. Most important, they were not mistreated in any significant way, as happens often on the human trafficking routes through North Africa where depravation, as well as physical and sexual violence are common.

We asked him why he chose Italy once he entered the European Union.

He said that upon arriving in Greece, he stayed in a camp managed by the United Nations High Commission for Refugees for over a month. At that time Angela Merkel’s government was making arrangements to allow groups of Syrian refugees to enter Germany. Ali and four other Pakistanis decided to mingle with the Syrians and found themselves on a bus headed to Austria. In Vienna, they were given train tickets to Germany.

The Pakistani boys realized that sooner or later the German authorities would find out that they were not Syrians and they would face an uncertain future. One of them managed to contact a cousin who was an agricultural laborer near Rome. Based on this short call, Ali and his small group decided that they were better off separating from the Syrians. Not having any money, they had to travel without tickets. Quite predictably they got caught by the railway staff and thrown off the train several times before they eventually ended up in Rome.

The “cousin” picked up the four of them and took them to Latina, an important hub for the production of fruits and vegetables for the Rome market. Many Pakistanis, often without any papers, work in the fields there. But Ali was only 16, a “minor” and generally even unscrupulous employers are hesitant to take them on. The next morning, Ali was put on a bus and advised to contact the police, inform them that he was a minor and ask for help.

So here was this 16 year old boy, cold, hungry, reduced to below 50 kilos, with long unkempt hair at Rome’s central railway station. No money, nor a word of Italian – and no documents except a birth certificate (janam pathrii).

We asked him what was the most frightening thing about this journey.

“In Iran we travelled for one night and a day in the boot of a car. I was with another rather big person. It was not only very uncomfortable but also frightening being in the dark for so many hours. Another time, Iranian police chased us and our handlers dumped us in an apple orchard and told us to hide among the trees. The Iranian apples are very nice, and we stuffed our stomachs and pockets.”

“But the really hair-raising part of the journey was when we had to cross a high mountain pass from Iran into Turkey. We joined a number of other small groups and were 40 people, including women, children and old people. The crossing was at night. It was very cold and the paths were icy and treacherous. I recall that a few people fell off the path and given the conditions, it was unlikely that they were rescued. I was terrified of falling off and being left behind.”

His recount is overwhelming and makes us wonder why a teenager from a relatively sound socio-economic background would dare to take such a plunge. So, we ask him what led him to leave home?

He revealed that hostile environments within the household coupled with limited economic prospects in his hometown drove him towards Europe.

“My mother passed away when I was thirteen. My father was preoccupied with managing his small plot of land and five buffaloes and had little time for me and my siblings. He remarried and I was sent to live with my paternal uncle. It was a hard and lonely time.”

“I did not get much schooling and never had time or energy to play with other children, or even to watch TV or listen to the radio. Next came a job in a local factory that manufactured parts for tractors. In addition to the factory work, I had to continue to look after my uncle’s small dairy enterprise. It was an unexciting and dull life and I was always tired.” He does not delve into more details. It is clear that this was a challenging period in his life.

Now in 2021, there is nothing dull or unexciting about Ali. He has friends from all over the globe, some of whom he met in learning centers funded by the government and international NGOs. He owns a smartphone, maintains a healthy social media presence and even runs a small business online selling silk-screened T-shirts.

We asked him when he did make the decision to leave.

“Working all the time, I knew nothing of a wider world. The decision to leave was made for me. One of my uncles, not the one I was staying with, but another one who often traveled and moved around with city folk, suggested we sell my late mother’s jewelry to finance my trip to Europe – I recall hearing we paid about Rs3-4 lakhs (about US$3-4,000 at the time). And so I was given a little case with a few clothes and some cash (I think it was about Rs5-10,000), and was sent off to Karachi. It was the last time I saw my home, my neighborhood or my relatives.”

We asked him what were the most important factors behind integration in Italy.

“The most important factor is language – we must learn Italian,” he said. “I was given the chance to learn in a center called Civico Zero in Rome. It is funded by Save the Children. They also helped me register for the various courses which helped me get a job. With language and a job, I have a chance to build a life for myself.”

We asked him if there was anyone who was instrumental in making him who he was today.

“Many people were kind to me. There were many people from NGOs working in various shelters – their dedication to helping me was incredible. There was a family in Rome who used to come by and take me out on weekends and buy me ice-cream. There were several Pakistanis, some were second generation and others who were here for a long time, who helped me realize how lucky I was to be in Italy and the importance of integration. All these people showed me more love and kindness than I got from my family. Now I have friends from all over the world, many of whom I met in shelters and while doing various courses. I am lucky.”

We asked him what were the activities and things he enjoyed the most.

“When I was at CivicoZero, I discovered theatre. I wrote and performed a 45-minute solo piece on my trip from Pakistan. I had no idea what theatre was or that anyone would be interested in what I had to say. I was wonderful. That was what made me start on my book – I want people to know my story.”

“Also it is nice in the countryside where I live, but I want to move back to Rome or another big city. There is so much to do in a city and so easy to meet people which I really enjoy.”

The writers are Pakistanis who work and live in Rome. This is the second in a series of articles on Pakistanis in Italy

Source: The Friday Times, Pakistan

 

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Excerpt:

Daud Khan, Ahmed Raza and Mahnoor Malik speak to a young immigrant in Italy about his journey to Europe

Justus Kimeu on his farm in Kithiani village, Makueni County, Kenya. By using the regenerative agriculture (RA) technique this farmer produced a bumper maize harvest during a very dry season. Almost 900 farmers in Kenya's two dryland counties of Embu and Makueni are participating in a pilot project to see how regenerative agriculture can be used to improve food productivity. Credit: Isaiah Esipisu/IPS

By Isaiah Esipisu
MAKUENI, Kenya, May 11 2021 (IPS)

It is an uncommon occurrence to see farms with flourishing healthy crops in Kenya’s semi-arid Makueni County. But in Kithiani village, Justus Kimeu’s two-acre piece of land stands out from the rest. After embracing the regenerative agriculture (RA) technique, the 52-year-old farmer is looking forward to a bumper harvest of maize as all his neighbours count their losses following this year’s failed season.

“I have been a farmer for many years, but I have never seen such a healthy crop during such a dry season,” Kimeu told IPS. “All the road users who pass by this farm can hardly go away without stopping to have a second look at a crop that has defied the prevailing tough climatic conditions.”

Kimeu is one of 900 farmers in Kenya’s two dryland counties of Embu and Makueni who are participating in a pilot project to see how RA can be used to improve food productivity.

The technique, which is being piloted by the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA), is a dynamic and holistic way of farming that involves all the principals of permaculture and organic farming, such as minimum tillage, use of cover crops, crop rotation, terracing to reduce soil erosion, heavy mulching to keep the soils moist, use of basins to preserve soil moisture and the use of composted manure to give the topsoil the texture of a virgin fertile arable land.

“The main theory of this technique is actually to return the topsoil back to its original state,” Michael Mutua, an associate program officer in charge of RA at AGRA, told IPS. “Instead of feeding the crop, we concentrate on feeding the soil,” he said.

According the Food Sustainability Index created by Barilla Centre for Food and Nutrition (BCFN) and the Economist Intelligence Unit, increased adoption of regenerative farm practices reduces carbon emissions during cultivation and sequesters carbon into the soil.

In a proposal of 10 interdisciplinary actions to finding ways to nourish both people and the planet post-COVID-19, one of the suggestions by BCFN was that the world develop internationally agreed-upon standards for RA practices and agroecology, as well as common definitions for healthy and sustainable food systems and food.

BCFN experts further acknowledged that regenerative and agroecological agricultural practices have the potential to boost soil health, preserve water resources and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

To popularise the new farming technique in Kenya, AGRA collaborated with the two county governments of Makueni and Embu, and with the Cereal Growers Association (CGA) to identify lead farmers.

The farmers were then trained on RA practices and were supported to create plots known as ‘mother demos’.

“A mother demo is actually a place for farmers’ practical lessons,” said Mutua. “It consists of four plots, where one plot is done using all the recommended RA practices, the second one using farming methods commonly used in the area, the third one is by using part of the regenerative agriculture principles, and the fourth one is the control plot, where the same crop is planted without any agronomic practice,” he explained.

Each farmer then recruited up to 100 smallholder farmers from the neighbourhood to teach them from the mother demo. Once the farmers felt confident, they returned to their own farms to set up a baby demo, which is a single plot using all the principles of AR.

“Nearly all our farmers are at the baby demo stage,” said Mutua. “But a few bold ones like Kimeu went straight to implementation without doing a small demo for the learning purpose,” he said.

According to Kimeu, the lessons at the mother demo stage were sufficient, “and doing a baby demo for him, would amount to a wasted season,” he told IPS.

“When I decided to implement this technique, my farm was bare without much vegetation. So I started by making terraces and after it rained, different weeds sprouted. Together with my household members we manually uprooted all the weeds and left them on the farm to dry and decompose before making small basins in which we were going to plant the crop,” explained the farmer.

The basins were then filled with organic manure and some topsoil. And when it rained for the second time, hybrid drought tolerant maize variety seeds were planted inside the moist basins and any weed that sprouted was manually uprooted and left to dry and rot on the farm.

“We try as much as possible to avoid tillage or any form of disturbing the soil for it to regenerate naturally to its original form,” Kimeu said, noting that he also avoided use of conventional fertilisers.

With regenerative agriculture, weeds are used to form part of the soil. Farmer Justus Kimeu produced a bumper maize harvest during a very dry season using this farming technique. Credit: Isaiah Esipisu/IPS

Almost 900 farmers from the two counties are expected to graduate from the baby demo stage and implement RA during the 2021/2022 season. “If well implemented, it will more than double food security among the participating households,” said Mutua.

Bob Kisyula, the Makueni County Minister of Agriculture Livestock and Fisheries, told IPS: “If our smallholder farmers could embrace these techniques and produce such healthy crops, then we will never need alms and food aid even in the toughest seasons.” 

Kisyula said that the County Government also invested in rippers, which are used to ensure that there is minimum disturbance of the soil as part of the RA approach.

Today, Kimeu has become a role model and a village hero.

“In this short period, I have been approached by hundreds of farmers from my village and other places who are seeking to understand how the technique works,” he said.

 

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Credit: UNICEF/Nahom Tesfaye

By Jomo Kwame Sundaram
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia, May 11 2021 (IPS)

Thanks to President Biden, the US now supports a suspension of intellectual property (IP) rights to increase vaccine supplies. However, without vaccine developers sharing tacit technical knowledge for safe vaccine mass production, it will be difficult to rapidly scale up vaccine output.

Waiver delayed is waiver denied
The CEOs of Pfizer and Astra Zeneca had recently asked the US President to reject the waiver request. Nevertheless, on 5 May, US Trade Representative (USTR) Katherine Tai announced US support for a vaccine waiver. The hope is that many, mainly rich countries will now stop opposing the developing country waiver proposal.

The World Trade Organization (WTO) Trade-Related Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) waiver request by South Africa and India also includes COVID-19 tests, treatments and personal protective equipment (PPE), albeit only for the duration of the pandemic.

Meanwhile, the WHO Access to COVID-19 Tools Accelerator (ACT-A) remains grossly underfunded, and thus unable to achieve most of its objectives. Many developing countries are still not even able to effectively do mass testing to ascertain those infected and follow up measures.

The developing world also faces huge supply gaps, and hence, long delays in treatment. Many ‘frontline workers’ in poor countries remain poorly protected. All this, of course, adversely compromises the world’s ability to contain the pandemic.

Jomo Kwame Sundaram

Foot dragging for profit
The waiver request is clearly very specific, modest and limited. Affordably producing the other non-vaccine needs is still desperately needed. Involving patents, they are immediately actionable. Hence, it is crucial for the US to support the full waiver request.

As the WTO waiver requires unanimous approval by its members, there is likely to be much foot dragging. Furthermore, even if WTO member states eventually reach a consensus on approving the waiver in principle, there is probably going to be further procrastination in negotiating details.

The WTO Director-General hopes to get a decision by December despite the likely difficulties of achieving consensus. Already, the European Union has registered doubts. Hence, many fear the new US position is unlikely to boost supply quickly.

Vaccine monopolies not yet IP dependent
Getting vaccine developers to actually share the technical information required to rapidly scale up vaccine production can be challenging. After all, no successful vaccine developer has joined the WHO COVID-19 Technology Access Pool (C-TAP) initiative to share such knowledge.

There are likely to be many changes to experimental vaccines in response to new knowledge, mutations and problems. Hence, IP per se may not be the most urgent obstacle to improving access to vaccines, even without developers ‘evergreening’ patents.

Patent details must be filed within 18 months, effectively an eternity in trying to contain the COVID-19 pandemic. But patent disclosures do not contain ‘trade secrets’ and other ‘tacit’ technical knowledge essential for quickly increasing vaccine output.

Vaccine profits kill
Pfizer’s CEO now projects a steady massive revenue stream as COVID-19 becomes endemic, e.g., requiring vaccine boosters. Unless the pandemic is globally contained, it will continue to threaten the world. While reducing the likelihood of severe infection, existing vaccines do not provide full protection against infection.

Vaccine developers — especially the major pharmaceutical transnational corporations — have already been dictating prices and other terms to customers. However, as their monopoly powers are not yet reliant on patents, suspending their IP rights does not ensure urgent access to COVID-19 vaccines.

Monopolies allow companies to almost unilaterally determine prices. ‘Super-profits’ can thus be secured with patents. Despite pioneering anti-trust law over a century ago, the US — the largest producer and market for many patented products — has no laws against ‘price gouging’, implying few checks on pricing practices.

Last week, Pfizer announced that prices of vaccines sold to the European Union will increase by 60% although development of its vaccine was heavily subsidised by the German government. Earlier, it announced an increase in sales revenue of over 70%, pushing up its share price and executive remuneration.

The current vaccination delay has been projected to cause an additional 2.5 million deaths! Delays are likely to allow more virus mutations, further setting back global herd immunity. This will mean many more infections and deaths as well as economic and other losses due to the pandemic and policy responses.

TRIPS discourages knowledge sharing
Until TRIPS, there were many technology transfer agreements with developing country governments, voluntarily negotiated by companies. But since 1995, TRIPS has induced more reluctance to share knowledge, retarding technological progress.

Refusal to share technology is the biggest stumbling block to rapidly ensuring global access to vaccines. Multilateral cooperation is urgently needed, not corporate or national greed.

But not a single major company has signed up to C-TAP, the WHO initiative for knowledge sharing to address the pandemic, ignoring Dr Anthony Fauci’s appeal to them to do so.

Meanwhile, Bill Gates and others misleadingly claim that developing countries do not have the capacity or ability to produce vaccines safely. Presuming developing countries’ lack of competence and capacity, without bothering to verify, provides yet another excuse for further delay.

In fact, many developing countries have previously produced vaccines. Of course, not all will be able to produce particular vaccines due to their specific technical requirements.

Existing COVID-19 vaccines are still experimental, only receiving conditional approval for emergency use. The urgent need to mitigate the severity of pandemic infections with such vaccines, after only Phase Two trials, is also the pretext for indemnity clauses in sales contracts.

Globalisation in recent decades has involved internationalisation of supply chains, with even high-tech corporations establishing sophisticated facilities in poor developing countries. But suddenly, developing countries are all dismissed as wanting.

Accelerate vaccinations for all
Late last month, President Biden reiterated his presidential campaign pledge to share COVID-19 “technology with other countries” and to “ensure there are no patents to stand in the way of other countries and companies mass producing those life-saving vaccines”.

The Biden administration must use its discretionary powers to accelerate needed progress. Besides making clear US WTO TRIPS waiver support for tests, treatments and PPE, the US has to compel vaccine companies to share the knowledge needed to quickly scale up safe vaccine production.

The 1980 Bayh-Dole Act applies to Moderna’s vaccine, publicly funded by Operation Warp Speed. The US government can require Moderna to fully honour President Biden’s original promise to share vaccine technology. After all, Moderna has promised not to profit from the pandemic.

 

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Justice Motlhabani, left, and Letsogile Barupi, followed by Oratile Dikologang, leave the magistrate’s court in Gaborone, Botswana, on April 14, 2020. (Mmegi/Thalefang Charles via Committee to Protect Journalists, New York)

By Jonathan Rozen
NEW YORK, May 11 2021 (IPS)

Oratile Dikologang was naked when police officers pulled black plastic over his head during his detention in April 2020. It was difficult to breathe, but the interrogation continued, he told CPJ in a recent phone interview.

“What are your sources, where do you get information,” he recalled them asking repeatedly. “It was the most painful experience,” he said.

Dikologang, the digital editor and co-founder of the Botswana People’s Daily News website, and two others still face jail time in relation to Facebook posts that police were investigating when they hauled the three in for questioning.

CPJ documented the incidents, and made several attempts to reach representatives of the government and police in Botswana for comment. Dikologang denies responsibility for the Facebook posts at the heart of the case, and said that police questioned him about his own reporting.

Dikologang told CPJ that he refused to reveal his sources – but he did provide the password to his phone. Police then “successfully extracted” and “thoroughly analyzed” thousands of the journalist’s messages, contacts, images, audio files, and videos, as well social media accounts and applications, according to an affidavit that they submitted to court to support the ongoing prosecution.

Other police documents reviewed by CPJ say Orange Botswana provided mobile account information for Dikologang and his co-accused, as well as another newspaper editor who was questioned during the investigation.

To examine the phone, police used a Universal Forensic Extraction Device (UFED) sold by Israel-based Cellebrite and a Forensic Toolkit (FTK) from U.S.-based AccessData, according to the affidavit from the Botswana Police Service Digital Forensics Laboratory, which CPJ reviewed.

Websites run by the two companies advertise their technologies’ utility for extracting information from phones and computers, as well as breaking into locked devices and decrypting information.

The search of a journalist’s phone in detention exemplifies the threat digital forensics technologies pose to privacy and press freedom around the world. CPJ has previously identified the acquisition of UFED and FTK in Nigeria, and of UFED and similar tools in Ghana – both countries where journalists report having their devices seized and being interrogated about their sources. And police in Myanmar used UFED to extract information from jailed Reuters reporters, The Washington Post reported in 2019.

“It’s a huge breach for a journalist,” Outsa Mokone, the editor of Botswana’s Sunday Standard newspaper, whose devices were taken when he was arrested in 2014, told CPJ in a phone interview this month. “We can’t protect our sources if our phones are seized.”

Dikologang was arrested alongside Justice Motlhabani, a spokesperson for an opposition political party at the time – who told CPJ that police tasered him during interrogation – and Letsogile Barupi, a university student who ran the Facebook page identified in the charges.

The police affidavit says that in February 2020, well before the arrests took place, a senior officer had ordered that their devices be searched for information about “offensive” Facebook posts. Barupi and Motlhabani also told CPJ that they gave police the passwords to their devices and accounts during interrogation in April.

Facebook pages they operated were subsequently disabled, they said, and CPJ has not been able to review the posts they were questioned about.

“This thing has sent shivers down the people who take journalism seriously,” the Standard’s deputy editor Spencer Mogapi told CPJ. Mogapi, who is also editor of local newspaper The Telegraph and chairman of the Botswana Editors Forum, said he was also questioned in the case because of messages he had exchanged with Motlhabani, which officers presented to him in a printout. He said he had known Motlhabani for years and was not charged in the case.

Police obtained the identity attached to Mogapi’s phone number in a “subscriber report” from his mobile company Orange Botswana, according to separate police documents submitted to court by the prosecution and reviewed by CPJ.

“It’s shocking,” Mogapi said when CPJ informed him of the report this month. “I don’t know what they have on me, what information they have about my contacts,” he said.

The documents say Orange Botswana also identified accounts owned by the three men facing charges and provided an “activity log” from Dikologang’s; a company representative previously told CPJ by email that they “comply with all court orders” and cannot disclose details to third parties.

In a follow-up email regarding Mogapi’s subscriber report, Orange Botswana said CPJ should direct questions to the police in Botswana.

Reached by phone in April 2021, Morwakwena Tlhobolo, the police officer who conducted the forensic searches and submitted the affidavit, said he was not able to answer questions without senior approval.

When CPJ called back, a person who answered the phone at the police forensics lab said that Tlhobolo was not permitted to respond.

Botswana police spokesperson Dipheko Motube has told CPJ before that he could not comment on the case because it was before the court, something he reiterated in response to a message about Mogapi.

Cellebrite responded to CPJ’s questions by email in April via representatives of Fusion Public Relations company. “We have multiple checks and balances to ensure our technology is used as intended. We require that agencies and governments that use our technology uphold the standards of international human rights law,” the email said.

“When our technology is used in a manner that does not meet international law or does not comply with Cellebrite’s values, we take swift and appropriate action, including terminating agreements,” the email said. Cellebrite declined to comment on “any specifics” involving their customers or the use of their technology.

On April 8, Cellebrite, which is owned by the Japan-based Sun Corporation, announced it would go public via a shell company and be listed on Nasdaq, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported.

In an emailed response to CPJ’s questions, Sun Corporation said, “We are very sorry to hear about what happened, however we are afraid that we are not prepared to provide any comments, where there is no evidence provided.” CPJ asked what kind of evidence would warrant a response, but received no reply.

AccessData and its parent company, Exterro, did not respond to questions CPJ emailed in mid-April to addresses listed on their websites and to two people who identified themselves as Exterro marketing representatives on LinkedIn.

CPJ called AccessData’s offices in the U.S. but was unable to connect to a representative. A voicemail CPJ left on the company’s U.K. phone number in May was not returned before publication. In early May, a person who answered the phone at Exterro’s U.K. office said they would find someone to respond to questions, but did not return CPJ’s call before publication.

“This affects my work,” Dikologang told CPJ of the incident. “Since [my sources] know the phone has been taken by the state, maybe they will be afraid to give information.”

*Jonathan Rozen is CPJ’s senior Africa researcher. Previously, he worked in South Africa, Mozambique, and Canada with the Institute for Security Studies, assessing Mozambican peace-building processes. Rozen was a U.N. correspondent for IPS News and has written for Al-Jazeera English and the International Peace Institute.

 

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