Africa

By Timothy A. Wise and Jomo Kwame Sundaram
BOSTON and KUALA LUMPUR, Apr 20 2021 (IPS)

Since the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) was launched in 2006, yields have barely risen, while rural poverty remains endemic, and would have increased more if not for out-migration.

AGRA was started, with funding from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation, to double yields and incomes for 30 million smallholder farm households while halving food insecurity by 2020.

Timothy A. Wise

There are no signs of significant productivity and income boosts from promoted commercial seeds and agrochemicals in AGRA’s 13 focus countries. Meanwhile, the number of undernourished in these nations increased by 30%!

When will we ever learn?
What went wrong? The continuing Indian farmer protests, despite the COVID-19 resurgence, highlight the problematic legacy of its Green Revolution (GR) in frustrating progress to sustainable food security.

Many studies have already punctured some myths of India’s GR. Looking back, its flaws and their dire consequences should have warned policymakers of the likely disappointing results of the GR in Africa.

Hagiographic accounts of the GR cite ‘high‐yielding’ and ‘fast-growing’ dwarf wheat and rice spreading through Asia, particularly India, saving lives, modernising agriculture, and ‘freeing’ labour for better off-farm employment.

Many recent historical studies challenge key claims of this supposed success, including allegedly widespread yield improvements and even the number of lives actually saved by increased food production.

Environmental degradation and other public health threats due to the toxic chemicals used are now widely recognized. Meanwhile, water management has become increasingly challenging and unreliable due to global warming and other factors.

Ersatz GR2.0 for Africa
Half a century later, the technology fetishizing, even deifying AGRA initiative seemed oblivious of Asian lessons as if there is nothing to learn from actual experiences, research and analyses.

Worse, AGRA has ignored many crucial features of India’s GR. Importantly, the post-colonial Indian government had quickly developed capacities to promote economic development.

Jomo Kwame Sundaram

Few African countries have such ‘developmental’ capacities, let alone comparable capabilities. Their already modest government capacities were decimated from the 1980s by structural adjustment programmes demanded by international financial institutions and bilateral ‘donors’.

Ignoring lessons of history
India’s ten-point Intensive Agricultural Development Programme was more than just about seed, fertilizer and pesticide inputs. Its GR also provided credit, assured prices, improved marketing, extension services, village-level planning, analysis and evaluation.

These and other crucial elements are missing or not developed appropriately in recent AGRA initiatives. Sponsors of the ersatz GR in Africa have largely ignored such requirements.

Instead, the technophile AGRA initiative has been enamoured with novel technical innovations while not sufficiently appreciating indigenous and other ‘old’ knowledge, science and technology, or even basic infrastructure.

The Asian GR relied crucially on improving cultivation conditions, including better water management. There has been little such investment by AGRA or others, even when the crop promoted requires such improvements.

From tragedy to farce
Unsurprisingly, Africa’s GR has reproduced many of India’s problems:

• • As in India, overall staple crop productivity has not grown significantly faster despite costly investments in GR technologies. These poor productivity growth rates have remained well below population growth rates.

 

• • Moderate success in one priority crop (e.g., wheat in Punjab, India, or maize in Africa) has typically been at the expense of sustained productivity growth for other crops.

 

• • Crop and dietary diversity has been reduced, adversely affecting cultivation sustainability, nutrition, health and wellbeing.

 

• • Subsidies and other incentives have meant more land devoted to priority crops, not just intensification, with adverse land use and nutrition impacts.

 

• • Soil health and fertility have suffered from ‘nutrient-mining’ due to priority crop monocropping, requiring more inorganic fertilizer purchases.

 

• Higher input costs often exceed additional earnings from modest yield increases using new seeds and agrochemicals, increasing farmer debt.

Paths not taken
AGRA and other African GR proponents have had 14 years, plus billions of dollars, to show that input-intensive agriculture can raise productivity, net incomes and food security. They have clearly failed.

Africans — farmers, consumers and governments — have many good reasons to be wary, especially considering AGRA’s track record after a decade and a half. India’s experience and the ongoing farmer protests there should make them more so.

Selling Africa’s GR as innovation requiring unavoidable ‘creative destruction’ is grossly misleading. Alternatively, many agroecology initiatives, which technophiles decry as backward, are bringing cutting-edge science and technology to farmers, with impressive results.

A 2006 University of Essex survey, of nearly 300 large ecological agriculture projects in more than fifty poor countries, documented an average 79% productivity increase, with declining costs and rising incomes.

Published when AGRA was launched, these results far surpass those of GRs thus far. Sadly, they remind us of the high opportunity costs of paths not taken due to well-financed technophile dogma.

Timothy A. Wise is senior advisor at the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy and author of Eating Tomorrow: Agribusiness, Family Farmers, and the Battle for the Future of Food.

 

Follow @IPSNewsUNBureau
!function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0],p=/^http:/.test(d.location)?'http':'https';if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src=p+'://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js';fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document, 'script', 'twitter-wjs');   Related Articles

• Transforming Global Food Systems Jose Graziano da Silva on the Path to Zero Hunger
• Africa at the Crossroads: Time to Abandon Failing Green Revolution
• Failing Africa’s Farmers, Starving the Continent
• Green Counter-Revolution in Africa?
• Hunger in Africa, Land of Plenty

The post Another False Start in Africa Sold with Green Revolution Myths appeared first on Inter Press Service.

A support group in Uganda is helping parents come to terms with their children's sexuality.

"You realise what a bicycle can do. It's a catalyst for unlocking so much potential."

African footballers, pundits and fans react to news of the proposed breakaway tournament.

Joseph Lowasa Baraka at his vegetable and fruit kiosk in Nairobi. During Kenya’s coronavirus lockdowns traders opted to stay away from congested market places and prioritised more secure digital platforms. Credit: Isaiah Esipisu/IPS

By Isaiah Esipisu
NAIROBI, Apr 19 2021 (IPS)

After Joseph Mandu lost his job because of the country’s coronavirus lockdown, he would still wake every morning and leave his home in the City Carton slum in Kenya’s capital, Nairobi. But instead of heading to the restaurant he worked at as a pool-table attendant, he would walk around City Carton searching for odd jobs to earn an income so he could pay for the food his family needed to survive.

“I tried to find something to do because my wife could not understand a fact that I was totally not able to provide for the family.

“With schools closed, all our five children were there in our single room and they needed food, water – which can only be bought – and soap, among other things, that were beyond my affordability,” Mandu told IPS, noting that he also owed his landlord Sh2000 ($18) in monthly rent.

Mandu is not alone in the need to provide for his family.

Blanket containment measures imposed by Kenya’s government to control the coronavirus pandemic have denied poor slum dwellers access to sufficient nutritious food and livelihoods, according to early findings from an ongoing evidence-based study to assess the impact of COVID-19 on dietary patterns among households in Nairobi’s informal settlements.

The study noted that urban slum and non-slum households are impacted differently by the COVID-19 pandemic, and therefore differentiated policies and solutions are needed to address food security, nutrition and the livelihoods of these two consumer groups.

The researchers, led by scientists from the Alliance of Biodiversity International and the International Centre for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT), are now calling on the Kenyan government to consider the unique challenges that people living in urban slums face before imposing blanket measures to curb the spread of the disease. 

“Through this study, we have seen that about 90 percent of households in the slums reported dire food insecurity situations, and are not able to eat the kinds of foods they prefer such as indigenous vegetables and animal sourced foods like milk and eggs, which had been more affordable and accessible before the pandemic,” Dr. Christine Chege, the lead researcher on the project, told IPS. The Alliance provides research-based solutions to harness agricultural biodiversity and sustainably transform food systems to improve people’s lives in a climate crisis.

The study found that more than 40 percent of slum households lack employment and their average monthly household income is $78.

• Scientists collected primary data from 2,465 households in the Kibera and Mathare slums, as well as from middle-income residents within Nairobi city.
• Household dietary diversity scores were calculated based on 7-day food consumption recalls.

The City Carton slum in Nairobi, Kenya. An ongoing study by scientists from the Alliance of Biodiversity International and the International Centre for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT) has found that more than 40 percent of slum households lack employment and their average monthly household income is $78. Credit: Isaiah Esipisu/IPS

So far, the government has turned to policies such as curfews, social distancing and closure of eateries, bars, churches to contain the spread of the virus. As of today, Apr. 19, Kenya has reported over 151,000 COVID-19 cases.  

But the current measures to restrict spread of the virus has had a direct negative impact on livelihoods of tens of thousands of urban slum dwellers across the country.

Generally, slum dwellers live in crowded single-roomed, shanties where a number of households share bathrooms, sinks, and water points. There is little or no space for children to play and social distancing is impossible. 

They also do not have personal means of transport and so many have to use crowded public transport, which includes the use of motor bikes that sometimes carry up to three passengers on a single bike.

For these communities sanitisers remain a luxury. And some people use one disposable mask for more than a week — not for protection against COVID-19 infection, but to avoid the wrath of law enforcers who are reportedly using it as an excuse to distort money, particularly from the poor.

One respondent from Kibera slum told researchers that she was on antiretroviral therapy for HIV but she was not able to eat a balanced diet, as advised by her medic.

These are just some of the reasons why slum dwellers, according to the study, need differentiated containment measures that will not completely deny them access to food and livelihoods.

While the findings note that non-slum households may benefit from a decrease or cap on rising food prices to improve their food security and nutrition, for slum dwellers the solution is different and perhaps more complicated.

Researchers instead recommend strategies and interventions to assist slum dwellers in earning an income as a solution, first giving them economic empowerment in order to access nutritious foods.

“Once they are empowered economically, a second intervention would be towards lowering food prices,” said Chege.

According to Joram Kabach of Twiga Foods, a company that currently supplies fresh fruits and vegetables from over 20,800 farmers across this East African nation straight to more than 30,000 small-scale vendors via mobile technology, there is need for the government to partner with the private sector to bridge the gap between food and nutrition security for slum dwellers, and containment measures for the COVID-19 pandemic.

“During the pandemic period, we observed a sharp increase in our daily turnover from Sh13 million ($18,200) to Sh35 million ($318,200),” said Kabach.

“This means that in line with the government guidelines for social distancing, traders opted to stay away from congested market places and prioritised more secure digital platforms, where orders are made via mobile phones and products delivered at doorsteps with much reduced human interactions,” he told IPS.

In that regard, he observed that the government could cushion slum dwellers by offering them food vouchers, which can be redeemed from structured vendors who belong to structured platforms such as Twiga Foods. The company is also participating in the ongoing study.

Chege said she hoped that the research would influence policy design and implementation to include vulnerable poor consumers in the slums.

   Related Articles

• New Report Calls for Improved Eating Habits in a World of Extremes
• Fixing the Food System to Produce Healthy Diets

The post Kenya’s Poor Need Different Lockdown Restrictions to Survive, Scientists Urge appeared first on Inter Press Service.

A "forgotten" coffee plant that grows in warmer conditions could help ensure the drink's future.

Phillip Lühl was told he must take a paternity test before returning home with his new-born twins.

A new proposed new European Super League could see Ivory Coast lose five players from its international squad.

University buildings and a historic windmill have been destroyed in the blaze.

Skilling programmes already face issues with the delivery of training and achieving the desired learning outcomes. Moving them online may in fact worsen learning outcomes. | Picture courtesy: Flickr

By External Source
HYDERABAD, Telangana, India, Apr 19 2021 (IPS)

India’s evolving Technical and Vocational Education and Training ecosystem (TVET) faced many challenges during the COVID-19 pandemic. Because of the national lockdown, organisations had to remain shut for 7-8 months, until September 2020.

This ecosystem is made up of a range of players, including vocational education providers such as schools and higher education institutions; short-term skill development programmes supported by corporate philanthropy and National Skill Development Corporation (NSDC); public and private Industrial Training Institutes (ITI), among many others.

Though internet accessibility has increased from 27 percent to 50 percent in the past five years in India, a majority of the youth who attend skill development programmes have very limited access to smartphones and data connectivity

All of these have faced an uphill task in reaching their customers, ensuring quality delivery of training, and connecting trained youth with jobs. And there have also been many lessons along the way, with different entities experimenting and adapting to the constraints posed by the pandemic.

 

How the pandemic impacted the skill development ecosystem

Delivery of training went online, widening the digital divide

Most skill development programmes in the country follow a classroom-led delivery model. Because of this, many faced huge infrastructure and human resource-related challenges while moving their operating models online overnight.

On the one hand, participants from low-income families didn’t have access to digital infrastructure. On the other, trainers were not equipped enough to deliver virtual training, particularly while doing so from home.

Though internet accessibility has increased from 27 percent to 50 percent in the past five years in India, a majority of the youth who attend skill development programmes have very limited access to smartphones and data connectivity. At Dr. Reddy’s Foundation (DRF), our skilling programmes are primarily designed for unemployed youth from low-income families, with schooling until the 10th or 12th grade.

We have found that prior to the national lockdown being announced last year, 25-30 percent of our students did not own smartphones. The pandemic has widened the digital divide between these students, and those who have access to resources. Reaching them through any kind of online programme was difficult.

 

Few jobs, and the challenges of commuting

Job placements—a key indicator of success for all short-term training programmes—were adversely impacted when the lockdown began to be eased across the country. This was mainly due to a few things.

First, there was a negative impact on the demand-supply chain, which meant there were few job openings.

Sectors such as retail, hospitality, and tourism, for instance, were severely affected and had fewer job openings compared to healthcare, banking and financial services, information technology-enabled services, e-commerce, and logistics.

Second, the fear of getting infected with COVID-19 forced some students and their parents to defer placements.

Third, a lack of transport facilities, especially public transport, which is the preferred mode for a majority of Indians, made commuting to workplaces difficult for even those students who had received a job offer.

When cities started opening up, the local transportation cost (such as shared auto fare) tripled, creating further difficulties for students, especially in entry-level jobs which pay between INR 10,000-15,000. In our programmes, many youth who were in dire need of employment, preferred to join hyperlocal jobs, rather than travelling long distances in the absence of affordable transportation.

 

Funding ran dry

The funding sources for all government-sponsored programmes were largely unavailable during September-October 2020, when the lockdown was extended. This created a lot of stress on small skill development organisations and as a result, they were forced to downsize their project staff.

Many of the Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) foundations I know of have provided a lot of flexibility to their nonprofit partners to try new approaches, including virtual delivery and extending digital infrastructure support during this time.

This is so they can ensure that the impact of the lockdown on their skilling programmes is minimised.

As we are still in the midst of the pandemic, it seems that re-building the government funding pipeline may take some more time.

The phase one launch of Pradhan Mantri Kaushal Vikas Yojana 3.0 in January 2021 is a welcome change as it will revitalise government-sponsored skilling programmes to some extent. But the pandemic has also created an opportunity for CSR and private foundations, for industry (through apprenticeship programmes), and for employers to play a bigger role in creating a skilled workforce for the country.

 

What’s next? Virtual, blended, or self-learning?

The COVID-19 pandemic saw a surge in self-learning apps and virtually delivered programmes. But maintaining the same quality of training with a digital delivery model is a challenge. There are logistical issues, then there are issues with the trainers’ approach to engaging students digitally, and of course the commitment of participants to learn online.

Skilling programmes already face issues with the delivery of training and achieving the desired learning outcomes. Moving those same solutions online may in fact worsen learning outcomes. Additionally, we saw that during the lockdown, the impact of the training course varied based on the nature of the course that was delivered online.

It is easy to delivery theoretical concepts online, but practical sessions still require classroom support. So, ‘foundational’ courses might see better outcomes than those that teach ‘technical’ skills online. Based on our virtual programme learning, we think there is a huge opportunity to create quality digital training solutions for this segment of youth, with a trainer-assisted programme that can be delivered in a local language.

 

What we did, and what we learnt

Agility, using digital technology more, diversifying our funding portfolio, and investing in a Training of Trainers (ToT) course, helped us survive the crisis as well as create something new.

At DRF, we were able to quickly transition to and manage all key processes of our ‘core employability skills’ training programme online. However, in case of our healthcare skilling programmes it was difficult for trainers to deliver classes online due to the ‘technical’ nature of the courses and the practical elements involved.

We changed our outreach strategy while on-boarding students for virtual classes by clearly explaining to them how a virtual class will be delivered, through videos. We also encouraged students and their parents to arrange for smartphones at least on a temporary basis. We made training available at a discounted fee, which enabled them to buy required data packs to avail of the virtual training.

Investing in a ToT course was very helpful. We trained our trainers to deliver virtual training effectively; we developed short videos on core modules in vernacular languages; we delivered training virtually through Zoom in the first half of the day, and utilised the second half to keep students engaged through WhatsApp.

We also used our learning management system to administer assessments and share videos of core modules that students used for self-learning. Additionally, we held online meetings with parents and conducted extra sessions every Friday, which also contributed to achieving good learning outcomes.

On the funding side, having a diversified funding portfolio helped us to survive. Our long-term CSR partners supported us to manage our ‘core employability skills’ programme online, however, our healthcare skilling programme, which is supported by the government, was completely shut until the end of September.

In a recent study we conducted with the participants who were attending our virtually-delivered training, we found that 40 percent were comfortable attending the programme online (despite being given the option of in-person training).

This insight helped us design a digital delivery model, which has now been tested at scale with more than 10,000 participants. We have been able to do this without deprioritising our classroom-led model, which is still very relevant for a sizeable portion of the youth we work with.

Pranav Kumar Choudhary is the director of operations at Dr. Reddy’s Foundation. 

This story was originally published by India Development Review (IDR)

 

The post Challenges with Skill Development Programmes During the Pandemic appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Uganda and Tanzania have signed a $3.5bn oil pipeline deal which is to create up 10,000 jobs.

Everyone views each other as a person they can get something from, Tsitsi Dangarembga says.

Samah Ghalloussi, one of the entrepreneurs interviewed for the article with a worker of the French Red Cross. Credit: French Red Cross

By Angel Mendoza
PARIS, Apr 19 2021 (IPS)

This year’s World Health Day on 7 April was an opportunity for three entrepreneurs to share their insights and reflections on a rather complex year due to the health crisis and comment on their experiences developing impactful products and services in this sector.

Emeric Lemaire, co-founder of Arkhn, Samah Ghallousi, CEO of AALIA.tech and Antoine Noel, co-founder and director of Japet, are all either associates of Liberté Living-Lab, (a tech for good innovation space hosting a multi-actor collective) or members of Tekhné, a start-up acceleration programme.

The annual World Health Days help to raise public awareness of a wide range of topics, and thus provide an opportunity to highlight three health issues, whether they concern professionals or the general public: medical data management, inclusion in the health sector, or the challenges of back health.

The health crisis has highlighted the problems of accessing and managing data in the health system. Some of the most striking examples of these problems include the poor management of the number of patients attending emergency rooms, limited access to medical history and therefore the risk factors linked to patients, as well as the recent administration of vaccines.

Emeric Lemaire, co-founder of Arkhn, whose mission is to enable more efficient and ethical access to hospital data, shares some lessons learned during this pandemic.

“Even if the past year has been very hard for our society because of the health crisis, there are some positive realizations for the future of the health system. In particular, some governments have taken measures to increase the resilience of hospitals, including investment in research and in their information systems: this is one of the main missions of the Segur (consultation of French healthcare system stakeholders), ” said Emeric.

According to Emeric, proper data management would help to better control the Covid-19 pandemic. Firstly, because access to medical information is vital for understanding the Covid-19 virus and the development of treatments/vaccines.

Secondly, this would greatly benefit research, which requires rapid data access in order to recruit patients for clinical trials.

Finally, from an organisational point of view, efficient and accessible data management allows for better monitoring of bed distribution and the construction of efficient propagation models.

Credit: French Red Cross & Aalia tech

Despite the pandemic, Arkhn has grown and is now supporting around ten hospitals. The teams are developing a digital platform that facilitates access to all the data collected in health care institutions.

They are deploying a standard data warehouse in each health care institution which is accessible through a universal interface (an API – Application Programming Interface – using the FHIR standard, an international reference for medical IT). This centralises data from existing software, which is difficult to access at present.

Enabling data access in this way has a number of advantages namely for research purposes (setting up cohorts, conducting clinical research), for improving the capacity of care teams and maximising their efficiency (monitoring patients’ progress, rapidly searching for medical information) and also for promoting the shared access of the data by the hospital’s partners (software publishers, pharmaceutical companies, etc.).

This year’s challenges? “To learn the lessons of this health crisis in order to build a health system more efficient for everyone and better able to respond to such pandemics.”

For Samah Ghallousi, Managing Director of AALIA.tech, there remains a major challenge in health care: inclusion. A real public health problem exists, on which AALIA.tech is working, which involves accessibility through language.

During the pandemic in France, an issue transpired whereby a whole population that did not speak French well enough struggled to understand prevention messages and even access health care.

“There are already often basic communication problems between doctors and patients, which means that some patients do not always understand their treatments and how to take them correctly. When a patient does not speak French or does not speak it well, the problem is even more complex.”

“If we are unable to translate messages into their own language, they will be less likely to manage their health correctly, which could lead to their condition becoming more aggravated or even worsened without the proper care and attention.” said Samah

AALIA.tech has therefore launched its product, currently in beta testing, to help emergency services by offering a voice assistant via an application that translates the health professional’s questions into the patient’s native language.

This technology takes into account the medical and cultural context of the patient, and allows for a fine-tuned understanding by not restricting the doctor to a list of questions, and not limiting them to a pre-established artificial language. The assistant has also been developed into an audio version to also help those who cannot read.

Back problems, common among workers, are even more likely to develop among the large number of home-based workers, who are often poorly equipped at home for extended periods of sitting. According to the medical journal The Lancet, an estimated 540 million people worldwide are affected by lower-back pain.

“The annual cost of back pain is more than €1.4 billion each year for the social security system. It is therefore essential to find solutions for people who suffer chronically from back pain as they represent 80% of the expenses. It is also essential to take preventative action to avoid entering this vicious circle,” said Antoine, co-founder and director of Japet.

One of the main themes of the last World Health Day is the “Mobilisation of all public health actors”, especially those who are not necessarily considered. According to Antoine, the mobilisation of companies is essential, as many risk factors are linked to professional activity.

To combat musculoskeletal disorders (MSD), Japet has designed exoskeletons for the labour market. This “Wearable Medicine” is defined as the combination of medical science and modern robotics.

The start-up markets its exoskeletons in France, Germany, South Korea and Hong Kong, and this year Japet intends to multiply its partnerships in Italy, as well as in several Asian and South American countries.

In addition, in the specific context of the epidemic, Japet is one of the many players who have mobilised. In 2020 they joined the French Red Cross accelerator to promote the integration of new occupational health solutions, and in particular to help staff working on the front line against the pandemic.

 

Follow @IPSNewsUNBureau
!function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0],p=/^http:/.test(d.location)?'http':'https';if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src=p+'://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js';fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document, 'script', 'twitter-wjs');  

The post A Growing New Health Crisis Focusing on Emergency Rooms, Medical History & Vaccines appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

The writer is Communication Officer at Liberté Living-Lab, Paris France

The post A Growing New Health Crisis Focusing on Emergency Rooms, Medical History & Vaccines appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Eleven people were killed and 98 injured when four carriages of a train derailed north of Cairo.

Our correspondent on what it's been like to cover the 10 years since Colonel Gaddafi was deposed and killed.

The blaze has so far destroyed part of a cafe at the Rhodes Memorial above the city of Cape Town.

Police block major roads in the capital Nairobi to enforce an overnight ban on movement.

South Africans are mourning Dr Sindi van Zyl who helped thousands through her social media work.

The militants claiming of a recent attack got publicity but they may not have actually been behind it.

Colombia hosts the highest number of migrants and refugees from Venezuela. Credit: Tomer Urwicz.

By External Source
Apr 16 2021 (IPS)

Colombia will grant legal status to all Venezuelan migrants who fled there since 2016 to escape their country’s economic collapse and political crisis.

The bold new policy – which will give nearly 1 million undocumented migrants rights to legal employment, health care, education and Colombian banking services for 10 years – is driven by both empathy and pragmatism, says Colombian president Ivan Duque.

“They’ll likely stay for more than a decade,” Duque told NPR on March 3, 2021. “So it’s better to…open them the opportunity to contribute also to the Colombian economy.”

Documenting and absorbing so many migrants – who often arrive on foot, with only a handful of personal belongings and no valid ID – has been a challenge. Even rich countries like the U.S. struggle to handle mass migration

Venezuelan arrivals to Colombia are not confined to refugee camps, so they live scattered across the country. Documenting and absorbing so many migrants – who often arrive on foot, with only a handful of personal belongings and no valid ID – has been a challenge. Even rich countries like the U.S. struggle to handle mass migration.

But in some ways Colombia – itself no stranger to political strife and displacement – is uniquely prepared for this migration crisis.

 

History of conflict

Colombia has received the brunt of the exodus from neighboring Venezuela since 2015.

When many other South American countries closed their borders with Venezuela, Colombia offered a series of two-year permits giving about 700,000 Venezuelans the right to work and access to health care between 2017 and 2020.

Together with the new legalization plan covering 1 million additional migrants, nearly all the roughly 1.7 million Venezuelans who have come to Colombia since 2015 will have some form of legal status. New arrivals who are legally processed in the next two years will also be covered.

Colombia is not wealthy. But Colombians understand better than many what it means to be driven from your home.

Over 8 million of Colombia’s 50 million people have been displaced by ongoing civil conflict since the 1990s. At least 1 million moved into neighboring Venezuela, seeking safety and opportunity. A government peace agreement with the FARC guerrilla group in 2016 quelled but did not end violence in Colombia.

Because of this history, international organizations such as the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and World Food Program have worked in Colombia for decades. Today, the U.N.‘s refugee agency and International Organization for Migration are leading a group of 73 international organizations and agencies to align their work with Colombia’s national humanitarian efforts. The group works in 14 states across Colombia, providing assistance that ranges from distributing COVID-19 hygiene kits to enrolling migrant children in school.

 

Humanitarian networks adapt

The Colombian government also has some 50 agencies dedicated to helping Colombians displaced by armed conflict. Now many are adapting that experience to help Venezuelan migrants.

Since 2019 we have interviewed over a dozen government officials, lawyers and civil society representatives in two Colombian “departments,” or states, that have received high numbers of Venezuelan migrants: Atlántico and Norte de Santander. This work was part of a broader study on how countries manage mass migration.

At the religious charity Secretariado de Pastoral Social-Cáritas, part of the Catholic Archdiocese of the city of Barranquilla, in Atlántico, the longtime director said the migrant situation today looks a lot like it did decades ago when Colombia’s civil conflict peaked in the Atlántico region, with people wandering around, not knowing anyone and not sure what to do or where to go. Then as now, they slept in the parks and on the streets.

“We already lived it in the ’90s,” said the director of Pastoral Social.

Back then, the group helped the Colombians displaced by fighting to find food and shelter. Now many of its clients are Venezuelan.

The nonprofit Opción Legal – an umbrella organization that manages refugee programs for the U.N. – has a similar origin story.

At its start 21 years ago, staffers worked in some of the most difficult conflict regions in Colombia, training the nonprofits that help displaced Colombians in accounting and legal processes, among other technical functions.

Now Opción Legal offers Venezuelan migrants free legal advice about getting Colombian health care and education, among other services. Using a nationwide network of 22 Colombian universities developed over many years, it trains students and professors to extend the reach of its legal support programs to Venezuelan migrants.

 

Troubles ahead

In 2019, nearly 80 million people across the globe – mostly Syrians, Venezuelans, Afghans and South Sudanese – were driven from their homes by crime, climate change, chronic poverty, war, political instability and disaster, according to the U.N. – an all-time high. Many will spend years or decades waiting for a permanent solution, whether that be settling locally, returning home or finding a new country to make a life.

Colombia’s new legalization plan reflects an assessment that Venezuela’s collapse is a long-term challenge and that integrating migrants is a better solution, economically and socially, than trying to keep out or expel them.

Colombia is being internationally applauded for its humanitarianism. But equipping hospitals and schools to handle the needs of this rapidly growing and often very needy population will require a lot of money. And most of it will have to come from the international community, because Colombia does not have the money to do it single-handedly. Yet the Venezuelan migrant crisis is a chronically underfunded area of humanitarian work.

The legalization plan also risks inflaming anti-migrant sentiments in Colombia. Particularly in border areas, some blame rising violence on migration – though evidence shows Venezuelan migrants are more likely to be crime victims than perpetrators.

And Colombia still has domestic migration problems of its own. Dissident FARC members, other guerrilla groups, drug cartels and insurgencies continue to battle over territory and resources, displacing 70,865 more Colombians last year alone.

The Colombian government is betting that the U.N. and international agencies will help it fulfill its ambitious goal of welcoming 1.7 million Venezuelan refugees and migrants.

If it works, that money would improve government services for all Colombians, too.

Lia Castillo, Liss Romero and Lydia Sa conducted research, documentation and analysis for this story.

Erika Frydenlund, Research Assistant Professor, Old Dominion University; Jose J. Padilla, Research Associate Professor, Old Dominion University, and Katherine Palacio, Assistant professor and data analyst, Universidad del Norte

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

The post Colombia Gives Nearly 1 Million Venezuelan Migrants Legal Status and Right to Work appeared first on Inter Press Service.