Africa

An increasing number of civilians are becoming victims of the conflict in Ethiopia's Oromia region.

We speak to reporters in six global regions about hopes and expectations for the new US administration.

Joyce, 17, explores progress towards the goal of clean water for all in her country, Rwanda.

A Chinese backed solar plant in Cafayate, northern Argentina. Such projects would be given the green light by regulators under new proposals for Chinese overseas investment Credit: Alamy/ChineseDialogue

By Ma Tianjie
BEIJING, Jan 15 2021 (IPS)

A government-backed coalition of international advisors to the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) has recommended that China apply more stringent environmental controls over its overseas investments. If adopted, this would be a major departure from China’s usual approach of deferring to host country rules, many of them inadequate, for regulating its overseas investments.

High-level advisors, including former UNEP chief Erik Solheim and green finance heavyweight Ma Jun, propose a system to categorise Chinese overseas investments based on their polluting, climate and biodiversity impacts.

The classification methodology was published on 1 December at a press conference organised by the BRI International Green Development Coalition (BRIGC) in Beijing. It would see coal-fired power plants given a firm red light, while other types of Chinese overseas investments, such as hydropower and railways would need to implement internationally recognised mitigation measures to earn “green” status. On the other hand, solar and wind power are considered green projects that advance the climate goals of the Paris Agreement.

 

Higher standards in China’s overseas investments

Christoph Nedopil Wang, founding director of the Green BRI Center at the Central University of Finance and Economics and one of the lead authors of the classification methodology, told China Dialogue that the system combines multiple international approaches to green finance.

The categorisation system and an ensuing taxonomy of green, yellow and red projects take inspiration from international standards such as the EU Sustainable Finance Taxonomy, the Equator Principles and performance standards issued by the International Finance Corporation (IFC) of the World Bank Group. It also uses China’s own guidelines for green credit and green bond issuance as references.

For years Chinese companies and financial institutions working abroad have primarily adhered to the “host country principle” which emphasises compliance with host countries’ environmental and social regulations. The inadequacy of the safeguards in many Global South countries, which make up the majority of BRI participant countries, means that the principle is often used as an excuse to lower standards for China’s overseas investments.

This creates a stark contrast between China’s domestic green transition and its footprints across the rest of the world. While clean energy is growing at a breathtaking speed inside China, a large portion of the energy infrastructure Chinese companies are building overseas is coal-based. Many such projects are of the low-efficiency type that China itself has gradually phased out.

Biodiversity threats are also a main concern of many of the BRI’s linear infrastructure projects such as railways and roads that intersect with key protection areas. Domestically, China has implemented an ecological redlining system hailed as a model for reconciling development with the conservation of nature.

There are calls on Chinese actors to follow higher standards in their overseas investments, but so far the response has been limited. None of the major Chinese financial institutions involved in overseas lending, for example, has signed on to the Equator Principles, which requires international standards (such as the IFC’s performance standards) to be applied in low-income countries with underdeveloped safeguards.

In 2019, major Chinese banks such as China Development Bank and ICBC signed on to the Green Investment Principles (GIP) which call for “acute awareness of potential impacts of investments and operations on climate, environment and society in the Belt and Road region”. But mechanisms to translate such awareness into action are yet to be developed.

“The GIP is more market driven”, comments Nedopil Wang, “while our [proposed system] is much more targeted at the regulators.”

How the ratings system works

Red projects require stricter supervision and regulation.These are regarded as creating “significant and irreversible environmental harm” in at least one of the areas of climate change, pollution and biodiversity, or the risk of such harm.

Yellow projects are environmental neutral with moderate impacts. These cause no significant harm, and remaining harms can be mitigated by affordable and practical measures, on a reasonable scale, within the project itself.

Green projects are encouraged. These have no significant negative impact on pollution, climate change or biodiversity, and contribute positively to at least one of these, particularly if they benefit the aims of international environmental treaties and conventions.The system considers three dimensions of a project’s potential environmental footprint: pollution, climate change and biodiversity. Projects that are contrary to the Paris Agreement objectives, such as those which increase emissions or undermine climate mitigation measures, are considered to cause “significant harm”. Similarly, projects that encroach on key biodiversity areas are given a red rating.

The system has some flexibility built in to allow contextual considerations of a project’s environmental merits. Some projects types, such as railways, may initially raise a red flag for their potential high risks to biodiversity.

But if developers can credibly demonstrate that mitigation measures are taken to prevent or reduce environmental harms, following international standards, they may get a green classification. However, the original red rating will remain as a reminder of the project’s intrinsic high risk.

The creators believe the two-step classification will better equip the system to respond to complex situations on the ground in most countries along the Belt and Road. “The idea is to make the system adaptive,” says Nedopil Wang, who believes that a black-and-white taxonomy may be too rigid in some circumstances. Therefore, “process standards” which detail how a risk should be managed, are also included.

 

Risky projects

According to the system, the construction and operation of coal-fired power plants will be given a red rating with no mitigation or compensation measures available to upgrade it. The same applies to the retrofit of coal-fired power plants designed to extend their operating life.

On the other hand, a hydropower station will be given an initial red rating but could earn a green rating if it applies “internationally relevant” hydropower standards for mitigating environmental damage, such as the IFC’s 2015 Hydroelectric Power Standard.

The research team provided an initial classification of 38 project types under 20 sectors, ranging from renewable energy to passenger transport and livestock farming. The grouping of the project types into positive (green), neutral (yellow) and negative (red) lists for the first time creates a simple taxonomy for BRI projects based on their environmental impacts.

“I can see the value of a taxonomy [for BRI projects] which raises environmental awareness for investors,” a Chinese expert familiar with international green finance safeguards, who is not authorised to take interviews, told China Dialogue. “At the very early stage of a project, when you have a project concept note in front of you, a taxonomy may help you make a snap judgment about whether a sector is in line with your strategy or should be excluded in the first place.”

But she cautioned that Chinese overseas projects are often large-scale and such a taxonomy may be too simplistic to capture their complex impacts, particularly social impacts.

Architects of the new system respond that the taxonomy is for demonstration purposes at this stage, created to illustrate how the classification system can be run. They are planning to refine the list with more technical details and application guidelines as a next step. One key recommendation from the advisors is to link the system with more comprehensive environmental impact assessments for red and yellow projects.

 

Adoption is key

The international team proposing the system also recommends it be embedded into China’s decision-making processes on Belt and Road projects. According to their analysis, China’s central government agencies such as the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) and Ministry of Commerce (MOFCOM) all have power to regulate overseas investment, but currently environmental considerations are not reflected in their approval processes.

“The positive and negative list will provide a foundation for governmental bodies to make sure overseas investment is in line with climate and environmental goals,” says Wang Ye, a green finance analyst with the World Resources Institute (WRI), who co-created the system. One key recommendation from the team is to develop an “exclusion list” of projects irreversibly harming the environment.

Yuan Feng, deputy director general of the NDRC’s Department for Regional Openness, which oversees the development of the BRI, offered his blessing at the press conference where the system was presented.

But Nedopil Wang admits that the appetite of regulators to adopt such a system is hard to gauge. It is noteworthy that the Ministry of Ecology and Environment (MEE) which hosts the BRIGC, does not have formal regulatory power over project development outside China’s borders.

Experts have also opined that green catalogues, which encourage certain types of investments, are easier for regulators to consider than exclusion lists, which often go beyond their legal authority. China’s own environmental laws have yet to regulate greenhouse gas emissions with binding force, they noted. Positive lists such as the green bond catalogue have so far been the mainstay of domestic actions to steer finance toward greener projects.

There are signs that some regulators might be more receptive of the recommendations. On 25 October, five central government agencies, including the central bank, the MEE and the banking regulator, issued a joint guidance for the country’s financing system to better serve China’s 2060 carbon neutrality goal. It specifically encourages financial institutions to support low-carbon development along the Belt and Road.

There is hope that China’s financial sector may adopt the classification system and apply differential treatment to overseas projects: favourable financing conditions for “good practice” projects and stringent conditions for risky ones.

“The China Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission (CBIRC) has been involved in designing the system, so that’s a good sign,” Nedopil Wang told China Dialogue. “The de facto application [of the system] really depends on the specific champions within the different regulators.”

“Incorporating environmental risks into policy and finance practices requires these champions to push it relentlessly inside the system, like woodpeckers that always hit the same spot without getting a headache,” he said. “[Adopting the classification system] makes reputational sense and environmental sense for China today. But it requires a really different approach to some of the decision making.”

This article was originally published by ChinaDialogue

The post Advisors Propose New System To Regulate China’s Overseas Investments appeared first on Inter Press Service.

The conflict threatens the stability of the entire region, the EU's top diplomat says.

The family of Abdelbaset al-Megrahi had launched the posthumous bid to overturn his conviction.

The @realDonaldTrump account on Twitter, the outgoing president of the United States' preferred platform for communication, and which was permanently suspended by the company on January 8, as was the official account as president, @POTUS. Image: Twitter

By Andrés Cañizález
CARACAS, Jan 15 2021 (IPS)

Over the last four years, United States President Donald Trump has had in Twitter his main political communication tool. On this technological platform, he spread messages that were not entirely true, insulted and disqualified people, fired, or mocked his collaborators. Twitter was a stage for his sort of presidential reality show.

Twitter’s business decisions, initially to temporarily suspend Trump’s account, and then permanently, have ignited a heated debate, which like all those involving the United States (US), in these days of January, seems to be wrapped around extreme positions. It would be a good idea for another piece to look into how Trump precisely fueled polarization, the fruits of which are now for all to see, and how Twitter was his tool in such a strategy.

Trump and Twitter already had a love-hate relationship before the events of January 6, with the assault on the Capitol in Washington. With almost 89 million followers, Trump is the most influential head of state or government in office on this social media worldwide. Barack Obama, US president for two terms (2009-2016), is the person with the greatest number of followers worldwide, over 127 million.

Remarkably, Trump favored to communicate through Twitter. With succinct publications and by smartly using the impact of his messages among his many followers, the outgoing president not only skipped over engaging with mainstream media, but he himself had a far greater impact on Twitter than any press or TV company could have. From Twitter, he denigrated American journalism.

Andrés Cañizález

For Twitter, it was also a good business to be used intensively for four years by the most powerful man in the world, who sent out tweets at any time of the day or night, messages that were not filtered by the White House communications team. His Twitter account was a way of finding out what Trump was concerned about or up to, and thousands of news stories ended up being written based on the president’s tweets, not from the official president’s office account but from his personal account.

It should not be overlooked that this corporate decision, unprecedented in the case of a political figure with such a large following, was preceded by “misleading content” labels that Twitter decided to place on some of Trump’s messages in November 2020, in the heat of the election and counting of votes.

On claims that Trump was generating false content, which was subsequently proven to be the case, Twitter not only labeled but also even removed some tweets from the president. In my view, that seemed to be a mistake.

Then I argued that 1) a company should not restrict a discussion that was purely political; 2) politicians in the midst of a debate are not under the obligation to tell only truths; 3) without being media outlets themselves, social media are today a substantial part of the public forum; and 4) if Trump or any politician told lies, journalism was obliged to fact-check or prove it.

After the disgraceful and unfortunate events that took place in Washington on January 6, Twitter decided to suppress Trump’s account because with his messages the president would have “incited violence”.

 

Donald Trump’s last two tweets before his Twitter account was permanently suspended, after more than 57,000 tweets generated by the outgoing US president, who had about 89 million followers. Photo: Twitter

 

It is quite accepted that limits can be placed on freedom of expression when messages go from being, for example, a mere insult, to proposing actions that end up unleashing violence. It was only when the crisis became a major scandal and the possibility of an impeachment on grounds of these events began to be floated that Trump finally condemned violence.

It was not the messages of just a random agitated person with a few tens or hundreds of followers. We are dealing with messages from someone who has held the main office in the world’s leading power – and will continue to do so for a few more days, with millions of followers on Twitter. This left the door open for his followers to sabotage the legislative ratification act on Democrat candidate Joe Biden’s victory, scheduled for January 6.

While some of Trump’s messages – or even silence at crucial moments – could be considered an implicit incitement or blessing of violence, the next question is whether a company alone can establish this.

I wonder if it should be Twitter, with a decision based on its corporate policies, that effectively closed Trump’s account or was this a decision that, as it was regarding freedom of expression, had to be settled in the US justice system.

I am afraid that we are facing a case in which we have irresponsible positions both from Trump, with his virulent or deceitful messages, and from Twitter by taking for itself the role of arbiter of what US and global society should read or not.

It is possible that this case will end up spurring a debate that should be urgent, but which has unfortunately been postponed given the immense economic power and political influence that such social media as Twitter and Facebook have gained.

The public defense of these platforms, in order to avoid any public debate or possibility of legislation, was precisely to hide behind the premise that their role was technological. They defined themselves as providers of technological applications to connect people, with no intervention on content. The case of Twitter and Trump proves the opposite.

The post Twitter, Donald Trump, and Incitement to Violence appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Andrés Cañizález is a Venezuelan journalist and Ph.D. in Political Science

The post Twitter, Donald Trump, and Incitement to Violence appeared first on Inter Press Service.

International Year of Volunteers: A volunteer ombudsman in Peru helps a local woman with her problem, 2001. Credit: UN Photo

By Carmen Arroyo
UNITED NATIONS, Jan 15 2021 (IPS)

While the world is grappling with the third wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, Peru is still dealing with an epidemic that it has not been able to control—the mosquito-borne viral disease known as dengue.

With almost 56,400 confirmed cases as of December, Peru is suffering the worst dengue epidemic since 2017, when the virus infected over 68,000 people. The illness, coupled with the novel coronavirus crisis, has left thousands of people exposed to malnutrition and water-borne diseases.

Although mortality rates are low for dengue cases, nutritious diets and immediate sanitary responses are needed to battle the condition. And, above all, prevention is key to handling future epidemics, given that the mosquito responsible for dengue, Aedes aegypti, is expanding to new territories in Peru. As informal settlements and urbanization increase, so do Aedes larvae, which grow in stagnant water accumulated in cans or pots.

“Dengue has become endemic to many regions in Peru whereas before it was mostly found in the tropical ecosystem areas,” says a researcher for the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) in Washington DC, pointing at the regions of Madre de Dios, Loreto, Ucayali, and San Martin, among others. “It’s normal to find dengue near the Amazon, but now we can find it in desert-type areas. It should be easier to control dengue, but it’s difficult to control urbanization.”

The epidemic

The Peru dengue crisis began in October of 2019 when the cases increased in the Madre de Dios region in the country’s southeast. The government soon sent the armed forces to fumigate people’s houses and kill the larvae while issuing recommendations to avoid the virus.

As a result, the spread of the virus slowed down in November, with the Minister of Health Elizabeth Hinostroza saying that dengue cases in Madre de Dios had decreased by 30%, as reported by local outlets.

But the respite was short-lived. In February, the government declared dengue a health emergency, ramping up the resources dedicated to fighting off the virus. By the time the coronavirus pandemic hit Peru, dengue had spread to 17 regions, including Junin and Ica.

Still, the country lacked the resources to face a pandemic and an epidemic simultaneously.

Protests broke out in early March in the region of Loreto, northeast Peru, due to a lack of medical attention to those infected. With air-borne COVID-19 assailing the country and mandatory lockdowns in place, fumigations became difficult if not impossible to conduct. Besides, some of the coronavirus symptoms, like headaches, were similar to those generated by dengue.

In October of 2020, Peru raised the alarm again by “reinforcing the sanitary response to dengue’s control and prevention […].” By the end of the year, the COVID-19 pandemic had left almost 38,400 casualties, high unemployment levels, and a growing informal economy. (The underground economy may have increased from 70% to 80% or 90% since the pandemic hit Peru, say local outlets.)

In the background, dengue kept spreading.

On December 9, The National Center of Epidemiology, Prevention, and Disease Control, tied to the Ministry of Health, sent out an alert, warning that Peru was the third country in the Americas region with the highest mortality rate due to dengue. The Dominican Republic and Venezuela came in first.

But what does dengue do?

Dengue is a mosquito-borne viral disease, widespread through the tropics as it is “influenced by rainfall, temperature, relative humidity, and unplanned rapid urbanization,” explains the World Health Organization (WHO). The species Aedes aegypti is also the vector for other viruses such as chikungunya, yellow fever, and Zika.

As climate changes and urbanization increases, the mosquito is finding new places to hatch. “If new areas get warmer, the vector Aedes will expand,” explains the PAHO researcher to IPS. “We can now find it in higher altitudes than before.”

The consequences of the disease vary, notes the WHO in a note on June 23, 2020. The symptoms may range from those similar to the flu to “severe bleedings, organ impairment and/or plasma leakage.” In either case, the virus can also affect women and anemics disproportionately.

“Dengue impacts on an individual’s iron levels, which can be especially crucial for pregnant women,” says Angel Muñoz, climate variability researcher at the International Research Institute, which is part of the Earth Institute at Columbia University. “Anemics are more likely to get the disease.”

Malnutrition

Dengue patients usually experience high levels of dehydration and lack of nutrients, so the intake of water and nutrients is essential.

Recommended diets are rich in vegetables with vitamin A, C, and K, such as spinach and beetroot, fruits with the latter two vitamins, such as citrus, and nuts with proteins.

However, in Peru access to clean water can be tricky in certain regions and marginal areas, where stagnant water abounds. For instance, in the region of Loreto, only 45.4% of the population consumed drinking water through the public infrastructure in 2019, notes the country’s National Institute of Statistics and Informatics (INEI) in a 2020 report.

This lack of access to drinking water heightens the impact of dengue and results in other malnutrition problems. The Food Sustainability Index, developed by the Barilla Center for Food & Nutrition and the Economist Intelligence Unit, notes “poor sanitation and a lack of clean water contribute to malnutrition resulting from diarrhea.” In contrast, the index says that “improved sanitation and better water services also help tackle world hunger.”

On top of these infrastructural problems, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) warns in its latest report that malnutrition increased in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, deepening the pervasiveness of dengue. “During the last five years, the situation has worsened with an increase of 13.2 million people with undernutrition,” says the FAO.

How to prevent dengue

Prevention is essential to control dengue, both through forecasts and awareness campaigns conducted by public institutions.

Research has shown a relationship between climate patterns and the mosquito’s life cycle, as explained in the paper AeDES: a next-generation monitoring and forecasting system for environmental suitability of Aedes-borne disease transmission, authored by Muñoz and other researchers.

“There’s a relationship between environmental conditions such as temperature, rainfall and humidity, and the mosquito’s life cycle,” he explains to IPS. “It is possible to do reliable climate forecasts and predict the likelihood of the disease spreading.”

As a result of the paper, the team at IRI has designed a tool to monitor and forecast Aedes-borne environmental suitability, which could be used by policymakers to predict the potential impact of dengue.

However, predicting dengue’s probability is not enough, as the information must reach the population. Muñoz notes that awareness campaigns are essential to ensuring the public knows how the disease spreads. “Recipients with stagnant water or large landfills create the perfect habitat for the mosquito.”

Through the Ministry of Health, the Peruvian government has launched awareness campaigns in the past, its latest being “Dengue kills. Kill the mosquito!”

This campaign emphasized getting rid of breeding grounds for the species, both through preventive measures and fumigation. Some of its recommendations include:

● “If you have flowerpots or aquatic plants, clean the recipients every two days […].” every day you water the plants.”
● “Tightly close the recipients where you store water […].”

But fumigations and awareness campaigns require vast amounts of resources. While the regions have exclusive budgets to fight mosquito-borne diseases, in the past months a portion of that money has been used to face the pandemic, report Jorge Carrillo and Alicia Tovar for Peru’s investigative outlet Ojo Público.

As a result, populations with less access to information, healthcare, and lower socioeconomic conditions remain more at risk because they are more likely to preserve cans or planters to conserve water.

“We need tools to understand the impact of environmental factors on dengue’s seasonality. If we have a detailed system of who could be more at risk and where and when dengue could spread, we could reinforce prevention strategies,” concludes Muñoz.

 

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President Museveni's rival alleges the internet shutdown allows for rigging in the election count.

A TB patient at the Srinagar-based Chest Diseases Hospital in the Indian state of Kashmir. Credit: Athar Parvaiz/IPS

By External Source
Jan 15 2021 (IPS)

In July 1921, a French infant became the first person to receive an experimental vaccine against tuberculosis (TB), after the mother had died from the disease. The vaccine, known as Bacille Calmette-Guérin (BCG), is the same one still used today.

This first dose of BCG was the culmination of 13 years of research and development.

BCG remains the only licensed vaccine against TB and 2021 marks its 100th anniversary.

Today, all eyes are on the rollout of the COVID-19 vaccine. But while the number of people who died from COVID-19 in the last year is shocking, TB kills about the same number of people — about 1.5-2 million — each year, and has done so for many decades.

In fact, it’s estimated that over the last 200 years, more than 1 billion people have died from TB, far more than from any other infectious disease.

 

If we have a vaccine, why do so many people still die from TB?

Tuberculosis is caused by the bacterium Mycobacterium tuberculosis. It’s transmitted when a person with active TB coughs up aerosol droplets, which are then inhaled by someone else.

There are about 10 million cases of active TB annually, and it’s estimated up to 2 billion people are what’s known as “latently infected”. That means they are not sick and do not transmit the disease, but in about 10% of these people the disease reactivates.

In most TB endemic regions of the world, BCG is given to infants shortly after birth. The vaccination prevents childhood versions of TB and saves thousands of children’s lives annually.

However, the efficacy of BCG wanes over time. In other words, it stops working. Protection against TB is often lost by adolescence or early adulthood.

Importantly, BCG doesn’t prevent active lung TB in adults, the most important driver of ongoing transmission and cause of death.

The World Health Organization has a goal of TB elimination. To do that, we need to find a TB vaccine that also works in adults.

 

Why hasn’t BCG been replaced with a more effective TB vaccine?

Over the last decades only about 15 new TB vaccine candidates have entered clinical trials (versus 63 for COVID-19 in one year).

Worryingly, many of the most advanced TB vaccine candidates work no better than BCG.

Because the current TB vaccine candidate pipeline is relatively small, these setbacks and trial “failures” mean BCG may remain the gold standard for many years to come.

Despite being 100 years old, exactly how BCG vaccine works is largely unknown. It’s unclear why BCG usually only confers protection against childhood versions of TB or why protection wanes in adolescence.

Given those uncertainties, we can count ourselves lucky the bureaucratic hurdles for vaccine development were significantly lower in the 1920s.

If BCG were developed today, it would probably never be used; the current complex regulatory framework for vaccine development and licensing would likely not allow the use of a vaccine for which nothing or little is known about how it works.

The reasons BCG hasn’t been replaced with a more effective TB vaccine include:

• the decline of TB in many Western countries in the 20th century
• limited interest from pharmaceutical companies to invest in TB vaccine development
• the fact TB research and pre-clinical vaccine development is logistically challenging and requires special biological containment facilities
• the short-term and fiercely competitive environment for government and philanthropic research funding makes it difficult for academics to commit to TB vaccine research as a career path.

 

Where there’s a will, there’s a way

The pace of COVID-19 vaccine development shows what’s possible when the political will, pharmaceutical interest and funding is there.

While TB is no longer widespread in Australia, it is an issue in remote Indigenous communities.

Papua New Guinea, Australia’s closest neighbour, has high rates of multi-drug resistant TB and low BCG coverage rates. TB has been introduced into Australia via the Torres Strait, with a high proportion of cross-border diagnoses in North Queensland and over-representation of Indigenous children.

Resistance to current TB treatments increases steadily. Treatment of multi drug-resistant TB is hugely expensive and can take up to two years, requiring multiple antibiotics and close monitoring.

Now is the time to put financial and political will into finding a more effective TB vaccine.

2020 taught us pathogens can cause enormous harm to societies and economies. Investment into infectious disease research and vaccine development represents a fraction of the economic cost of a pandemic.

Tuberculosis is a global threat and a public health concern on a scale similar to COVID-19. The development of a new and effective TB vaccine is crucial if TB is to be significantly reduced, let alone eradicated.

Although the anniversary of BCG is cause for celebration, it should also serve as a reminder more needs to be done to combat this deadly disease.

Andreas Kupz, Senior Research Fellow, James Cook University

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

The post Tuberculosis Kills As Many People Each Year As COVID-19. It’s Time We Found a Better Vaccine appeared first on Inter Press Service.

There are concerns that the Covid-19 pandemic has created the environment for a rise in FGM cases in Kenya.

Can mobile money be categorized as digital money? IOM helped Mohammed Ahmed to set up a shop in Omduram market, near Khartoum, Sudan. The initiative involves the use of mobile money to buy goods. Credit: International Organization for Migration / Yasir Elbakri

By Catalina Margulis and Arthur Rossi
WASHINGTON DC, Jan 15 2021 (IPS)

Countries are moving fast toward creating digital currencies. Or, so we hear from various surveys showing an increasing number of central banks making substantial progress towards having an official digital currency.

But, in fact, close to 80 percent of the world’s central banks are either not allowed to issue a digital currency under their existing laws, or the legal framework is not clear.

To help countries make this assessment, we reviewed the central bank laws of 174 IMF members in a new IMF staff paper, and found out that only about 40 are legally allowed to issue digital currencies.

Not just a legal technicality

Any money issuance is a form of debt for the central bank, so it must have a solid basis to avoid legal, financial and reputational risks for the institutions. Ultimately, it is about ensuring that a significant and potentially contentious innovation is in line with a central bank’s mandate. Otherwise, the door is opened to potential political and legal challenges.

Now, readers may be asking themselves: if issuing money is the most basic function for any central bank, why then is a digital form of money so different? The answer requires a detailed analysis of the functions and powers of each central bank, as well as the implications of different designs of digital instruments.

Building a case for digital currencies

To legally qualify as currency, a means of payment must be considered as such by the country’s laws and be denominated in its official monetary unit. A currency typically enjoys legal tender status, meaning debtors can pay their obligations by transferring it to creditors.

Therefore, legal tender status is usually only given to means of payment that can be easily received and used by the majority of the population. That is why banknotes and coins are the most common form of currency.

To use digital currencies, digital infrastructure—laptops, smartphones, connectivity—must first be in place. But governments cannot impose on their citizens to have it, so granting legal tender status to a central bank digital instrument might be challenging. Without the legal tender designation, achieving full currency status could be equally challenging. Still, many means of payments widely used in advanced economies are neither legal tender nor currency (e.g. commercial book money).

Uncharted waters?

Digital currencies can take different forms. Our analysis focuses on the legal implications of the main concepts being considered by various central banks. For instance, where it would be “account-based” or “token-based”. The first means digitalizing the balances currently held on accounts in a central banks’ books; while the second refers to designing a new digital token not connected to the existing accounts that commercial banks hold with a central bank.

From a legal perspective, the difference is between centuries-old traditions and uncharted waters. The first model is as old as central banking itself, having been developed in the early 17th century by the Exchange Bank of Amsterdam, considered the precursor of modern central banks. Its legal status under public and private law in most countries is well developed and understood.

Digital tokens, in contrast, have a very short history and unclear legal status. Some central banks are allowed to issue any type of currency (which could include digital forms), while most (61 percent) are limited to only banknotes and coins.

Another important design feature is whether the digital currency is to be used only at the “wholesale” level, by financial institutions, or could be accessible to the general public (“retail”). Commercial banks hold accounts with their central bank, being therefore their traditional “clients.”

Allowing private citizens’ accounts, as in retail banking, would be a tectonic shift to how central banks are organized and would require significant legal changes. Only 10 central banks in our sample would currently be allowed to do so.

A challenging endeavor

The overlapping of these and other design features can create very complex legal challenges—and could well influence the decisions made by each monetary authority.

The creation of central bank digital currencies will also raise legal issues in many other areas, including tax, property, contracts, and insolvency laws; payments systems; privacy and data protection; most fundamentally, preventing money laundering and terrorism financing.

If they are to be “the next milestone in the evolution of money,” central bank digital currencies need robust legal foundations that ensure smooth integration to the financial system, credibility and broad acceptance by countries’ citizens and economic agents.

 

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The post Legally Speaking, Is Digital Money Really Money? appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Catalina Margulis is a Consulting Counsel in the IMF Legal Department’s Financial and Fiscal Law unit, seconded from the Central Bank of Chile.
 
Arthur Rossi is a Research Officer in the IMF Legal Department’s Financial and Fiscal Law unit.

The post Legally Speaking, Is Digital Money Really Money? appeared first on Inter Press Service.

There will be increasing tension between the platforms and African governments, analysts say.

A selection of the week's best photos from across the continent and beyond.

On the eve of Caf making Issa Hayatou its 'honorary president', a former official says it has taken too long to recognise African football's longest ruler.

The rescheduled Confederation Cup tie between Nigeria's Rivers United and South Africa's Bloemfontein Celtic will be played in Benin.

Cape Verde make their debut at a global team tournament as they take part in the Men's World Handball Championships in Egypt.

The BBC's Catherine Byaruhanga speaks to voters as they wait to cast their ballots.

Social distancing in a Macau Hospital waiting room. Human Rights Watch has expressed concern about human rights abuses being carried out under the guise of COVID-19 public health lockdowns in China. Photo by Macau Photo Agency on Unsplash

By Alison Kentish
UNITED NATIONS, Jan 14 2021 (IPS)

China must end its campaign against individuals seeking redress for COVID-19 linked abuses and the human rights lawyers and activists who help them, Human Rights Watch (HRW) has said as reports ranging from allegedly trapping them inside their homes, to chaining alleged lock-down violators to metal posts emerge.

This comes as the World Health Organisation team has arrived in Wuhan to investigate the origins of the outbreak and just as China announced today, Jan. 14, its first COVID-19-related death in 8 months.

In a statement last week, the New York based rights group said that “under the pretext of COVID-19 lockdowns”, Chinese authorities unleashed cruel measures against its citizens. HRW said the government is attempting to silence its critics, through surveillance, intimidation and lengthy prison terms.

HRW China Researcher Yaqui Wang told IPS that governments and the international community should apply pressure on the Chinese government to end the abuses.  

Yaqiu Wang is a China researcher at Human Rights Watch. Courtesy: Human Rights Watch

Inter Press Service (IPS): You cited international human rights law, which dictates that state restrictions due to public health needs must be lawful, necessary and proportionate. Based on reports on the ground, are restrictions in China flouting those conditions?

Yaqiu Wang (YW): Right. There were measurements undertaken by the Chinese government that seemed to be unnecessarily harsh and failed to respect human dignity. For example, officials were seen sealing apartment doors to prevent people from leaving their homes.

Some residents were chained to metal posts for purportedly violating stay-at-home orders. Videos circulated online showed residents yelling from their homes in despair. In Xinjiang, authorities forced some residents to drink traditional Chinese medicines.

According to international human rights law, when quarantines or lockdowns are imposed, the authorities are obligated to ensure access to food, water, health care, and care-giving support.  Yet, during the Wuhan lockdown, you saw on the Chinese internet many chilling stories: A boy with cerebral palsy died because no one took care of him after his father was taken to be quarantined. A woman with leukemia died after being turned away by several hospitals because of concerns about cross-infection. A mother desperately pleaded to the police to let her leukemia-stricken daughter through a checkpoint at a bridge to get chemotherapy. A man with kidney disease jumped to his death from his apartment balcony after he couldn’t get access to health facilities for dialysis. 

Bear in mind, these stories are just the tip of the iceberg given the stringent censorship people in China are living under. Information critical of the government is swiftly removed. More often than not, people don’t even bother to voice their criticism or tell their stories knowing they could be punished.

IPS: You expressed concern about human rights abuses being carried out under the guise of public health lockdowns. What are some of the ways citizens say they are being intimidated?

YW: For example, in the name of cracking down on false information about the pandemic, the authorities have detained hundreds, if not thousands, of people for “rumour-mongering,” censored online discussions of the epidemic, curbed media reporting, and imprisoned citizen journalists.

IPS: How concerned are you about surveillance tactics that intercept citizens’ communications platforms? Are you worried that citizens will be afraid to come forward and voice any concerns?

YW: That is now the digital reality of people living in China. Whatever you say publicly on Chinese social media or privately through Chinese messaging apps is open for the Chinese government to see. If you criticise the government, even privately, you can be harassed, or worse, imprisoned. The perhaps more pernicious effect is that knowing the risks, many choose to self-censor. 

The fear permeates the Chinese society, long existed before the pandemic.

IPS: You stated that residents also fear detainment and harsh punishments, including lengthy prison sentences if they speak out. Are those fears founded on hearings taking place during the pandemic?

YW: Since the outbreak in Wuhan, authorities detained several citizen journalists who reported from Wuhan. A court in Shanghai sentenced Zhang Zhan to four years in prison after convicting her of picking quarrels and provoking trouble. The situation and whereabouts of Fang Bin, a businessman in Wuhan who has been detained for posting videos of city hospital, remain unknown. Beijing-based activists Chen Mei and Cai Wei, whom the police detained in April for archiving censored COVID-19-related information, remain in a detention center awaiting trial.

IPS: Are there measures in place to assist citizens who do come forward, but would require some level of anonymity in reporting grievances?

YW: It has actually become very difficult. One the one hand, many securer communication tools, such as WhatsApp and Telegram, are banned in China. It is increasingly difficult to circumvent censorship and obtain secure communication because unauthorised VPNs are increasingly banned in China. So, people are left to use domestic apps, and these apps are heavily surveilled and censored. For example, all WeChat accounts are attached to a phone number which is attached to your national ID card. The Chinese government has pretty much eliminated anonymity in the Chinese digital space. 

IPS: You are calling for an end to intimidation and surveillance of those critical of the government’s COVID response. Bearing in mind the realities on the ground in China, are you hoping that, at the very least, you can shed light on what is going on?

YW: Yes, so people outside of China are aware of the abuses going on inside China. We hope governments and the international community can put pressure on the Chinese government to cease the abuses.

 

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President Donald Trump addressing the UN General Assembly. Credit: UN Photo/Cia Pak

By H.L.D. Mahindapala
COLOMBO, Sri Lanka, Jan 14 2021 (IPS)

Democracy is fragile. It is more fragile that the window panes of the Congress that were smashed by the mob unleashed by President Donald Trump. It is the ultimate symbol of the desecration of American democracy.

The world watched in horror as the misinformed, misguided, politically driven mob went berserk destroying not so much the material that stood in their way but the fundamental values of the holiest shrine of democracy that came crumbling down with not a single guardian of the law in sight to stop it.

It was a sad spectacle. A delusional Trump, who refused to accept the grim realities facing him, tried every trick in the book to retain power which he had lost. The voters told him to go. The courts told him to go – 62 times, sometimes by judges appointed by him.

The states which he tried to bully told him to go. Some of his best friends and advisers told him to go. He didn’t budge. He believed fanatically in his narrative that his victory was stolen by Biden. His perennial penchant to wallow in his own lies was pathological.

When all his legal and political tactics failed, he tried violence. He instigated the mob and told them to walk down Pennsylvania Avenue because “we can never get back our country with weakness”. His legal side-kick, Rudy Giuliani, told the crowd that there should be a “trial by combat”.

The veiled messages were quite transparent. Like Hitler, Trump made use of the democratic processes and democratic institutions to undermine the very foundations of democracy. His power was in manipulating the racist slogan of “Making America Great” which meant reinforcing the power of the White Supremacists.

He was aided and abetted by the Right-wing racist media, particularly the media run by “Uncle Rupey” Murdoch – a favoured guest at Mar-a-Lago club owned by Trump. His media lackeys at Fox News – Sean Hannity, Tucker Carlson etc.,– have been blind devotees of Trumpism. They white-washed and justified every move made by Trump, even the violence unleashed at the Congress.

Buoyed by the adulation of his followers (72 million voted for him) he once told a campaign rally : “I could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot somebody and I would not lose voters.” His meteoric rise cast a spell on America. His White nationalism swept across America, from coast to coast, making him a folk hero.

He rose to be the new symbol of America. The grassroot forces were rallying behind him with a fervour not seen before. He resonated with their aspirations and their hates.

So, when the voters turned against him it shattered his own beliefs. He had vested so much of faith in his own powers that he refused to face the reality. He began with a bang.

His idiosyncratic style that mesmerised the base of the Republican Party made him the most formidable force overnight. The message went along with it with his brash style. Together they galvanised the broader base of White America. He created a new political culture with his incessant tweets, political messages, aimed at creating (successfully!) an alternative reality.

The traditional conservatives who ruled the Republican Party lost their grip. He became the Republic Party and the stalwarts fell in line behind him. The power he acquired overnight was intoxicating and also toxic. Trumpism was the ideology worshipped by his Republican and non-Republican loyalists.

He became law unto himself and he believed, quite seriously, that he was “the chosen one”, the messiah sent to save America and the world. He believed in his mystical power to overcome all obstacles, including Corona virus which he did thanks to the specialist services of the military hospital.

His garish theatrics on the international stage too enhanced his stature at the base. He was relying solely on his base. All what he did was mainly to impress and consolidate his base and he believed that he was invincible as long as the base was with him. He became a one-man band. It as the college-educated, sophisticated urban voters that rejected him.

In the end, the big man was brought down by a small bug : Coronovid-19. He lost his glamour with each death. Lost in the myths of his own invincible powers – he referred constantly to whatever he did as the greatest in history — he thought he could ride over the pandemic by dismissing it lightly as another kind of flu.

But the menacing virus caught up with him and made him pay for his idiocy. His anti-science, anti-minorities, anti-climate change, anti-internationalism, pro-authoritarian regimes were a medley of policies that he could sell to his base with applause. But the educated class was running away from him. The rural areas stuck with him in the last election. But the sophisticates revolted.

All told, he found himself drifting away too far from the mainstream. The more he drifted away the more he lost touch with reality. He refused to recognise the new realities sprouting under his feet and destabilising him. He fancied that he had the power and the following to go against the will of the people. Like all authoritarian figures he was hoping to rewrite history in his own fashion. But after going along with him initially, after taking a few steps with him for a short while, history turned against him.

In the end he brought down the great Republican Party of Abraham Lincoln and reduced it to zilch. He did a Ranil Wickremesinghe. He lost the Presidency. He lost the House. And he lost the Senate. He lost even his most loyal aide who stood by him throughout his troubled reign, Mike Pence, the Vice-president.

He was stepping out too far from the traditional, acceptable framework that held America together. Most of all, he divided the formidable Right-wing of America. Brining the Right-wing under his leadership will be the biggest headache for the Republicans.

His success or failure in the opposition will depend on his ability to unite the Right-wing forces under his wing. After the failure of his attempted “coup” it is doubtful whether he could rally the Right around him. He lost his spell in the debacle at the Congress. He can never live it down. It will haunt him for the rest of his days.

He has alienated practically everyone except, perhaps, his family. Today he is a lonely man nursing his emotional wounds. His only escape route is to blame everyone else for his fall, created by his own self-destructive strategies.

But it is too early to write him off. He will not walk out of the White House as a dead man. He still has some clout in his base. In his own way, he has radicalised American politics. He has injected a new strain of hate into the liberal political culture of America. It is just not his version of Munroism trying to make America Great in isolation from within.

His inward-looking view is not mere navel gazing. He has touched and livened the raw nerve of America that was buried deep in its culture. He represents that side of America which is brash, rash, garish, loud, vigorous, inward-looking, narrow-minded and ready to break through all obstacles even if it means doing it the crude way.

In a sense – and without meaning to demean the genius of Walt Whitman – he represents the athletic, energetic, confident power of Whitmanasque America that was ready to break through all obstacles in its predatory explorations of conquering the wild west, destroying civilisations, devastating the pristine glory of untouched nature and polluting every inch of land, lakes and loftiness filled with pure air in its virgin state.

He had no idea of the other side of America : the tender, sensitive, caring, cultured, quiet world of Emily Dickinson, Robert Frost and Thoreau. He was the farthest away from John Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath – the great American classic that idealised the socialist society. Donald Trump stood only for one man: Donald Trump. America has never seen the likes of him ever before. And it is not likely to see another one soon. But he leaves behind a menacing legacy: he has sown the seeds of American fascism to grow in the declining years ahead.

America after Trump will trend towards more violence. It can be a dangerous place as seen by Trump’s behaviour of encouraging the mob to march down Pennsylvanian Avenue. Trumpism is the first manifestation of all the organised crudities of the red-necked White Supremacists which have deep roots in America.

The rise of Trumpism has been the triumph of Right-wing proto-fascists who have been struggling underground to capture power within the liberal framework of the great democratic laboratory of the world. It exploits of the political and social fears of this deep layer of American society.

The promise of making America Great has been a marketable euphemism to enthrone the power of the White Supremacists. The power Trumpism lies in this hidden agenda.

Trump is the personification of all the crudities of this sub-layer of the American political culture. He is the absolute opposite of Barack Obama, the refined, cultured, symbol of finesse that has given a shine to the best in the American political tradition.

The way he and his family conducted themselves in the White House was comparable to the aristocratic Kennedys who raised a new wave of hope to America and the world. After Obama the fall of America into the hands of Trump is like the fall of Adam into the disastrous temptations of the Snake in the Garden of Eden. Adam also fell when he became a Trump – “a pussy-grabbing” rake.

Is he an aberration? Yes and no. He is an aberration because he is the first of his kind. But America has the potential to produce many more Trumps. He must be considered as a pathfinder for the deep roots of American authoritarianism that has been lying untapped all these years.

He is the maverick who dared to come up from outside and take over the establishment giving respectability and acceptability to the hidden roots of American authoritarianism that was waiting for a leader. He has captured the minds of rural base and psychologically terrorized the American Right, including the elite in the Republican Party leaders.

Mick Romney and the late John Cain are two leading Republican who had the guts to challenge him. But the rest are hedging their bets. They are scared that with his political clout in the Republican base he could tip the scales in their electorates with his approval or disapproval at the next election.

He will still remain as a force — but a divisive force in the Right. Of course, there is a chance that he will be the first president of America to go to jail. The string of charges is so numerous that under the law of averages he is bound to be convicted on at least one of them, according to legal experts.

This will be his biggest nightmare. But the Right-wing of America will not let him die. His legacy that came from the embedded right-wing extremists will go underground and pose a serious threat to Joe Biden. He has the backing of the heavily armed Oath Keepers, Proud Boys who have vowed to fight if Trump loses. He has also dodged condemning the KKK, neo-Nazis, anti-semitic, anti-black, anti-feminist, anti-gay and the minorities who are favoured by the liberal left. They are his backbone.

He will survive in their hearts and minds and will mobilise their forces to bring him back in 2025, if they can. With his political clout in the base, he still could influence the outcome of Congress and Senate electoral results. So, even the Right-wing establishment will be in a dilemma not knowing how to handle him.

But hold on for a minute. I must add the latest news. The 5 a.m. news (Saturday morning) says that Twitter has chopped off Trump’s right hand. For the first time Twitter has permanently – I repeat permanently – suspended his account “due to risk of further incitement of violence.” This could paralyse – at least temporarily – Trump who claims that he has a following of 88 million twitters.

He has relied on it so much that he had dismissed the mainstream media as irrelevant. He called them the “fake news” and ridiculed them because he could dish out his narrative to his loyal followers through Twitter. Now he is faced with a communication problem. His success depended solely on manipulating the news.

Along with Twitter Facebook and Instagram he ran his own news programs. Now all three have cut him off. His lies gained currency mainly through Twitter. Furthermore, twittering has been his main job when he is not watching television, or playing golf. Now he is a loner, well and truly.

On top of this big blow comes the news that the Republicans are breaking ranks to attack him. Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski has openly called for the resignation of the President. Lindsay Graham, one of his loyal followers, stood on the floor of the Senate, after the mob attack, and said : “It’s over. The election is over. It’s over.” If Sen. Graham thought the issue was over he was wrong. Trump’s angry loyalists mobbed him at the airport and shouted: ”Traitor! Traitor!”

The worst is the move from both sides of the House to impeach Trump. He has set another precedent of being the first President to be impeached twice. Evidence of the President inciting the mob to unleash violence too is mounting. Sen. Mike Lee has recorded that at 2.26 p.m. when the mob was running berserk Trump had asked him to object to the certification of the electoral votes.

Even at that critical moment he was obsessed with the overturning of the election result. Legal experts say that, in the middle of the biggest security threat to the Congress, he was not concerned as the Commander-in-Chief about the security and law and order of the nation but his own fortunes.

The task before Joe Biden is monumental. America is a patient dying at the new rate of 20,000 a week now. That is the latest figure for the first week of January. Trump, the Grim Reaper, is the first President who leaves behind a legacy of burying the second highest number of Americans since the Civil War which claimed 600,000 victims. Trump has passed 300,000 mark.

Mercifully, he has agreed to depart peacefully after desecrating the sacred political temple enshrined in the American Constitution – the Holy Bible that guides America.

The last gamble of Trump was to resort to violence. That backfired on him. Even the Republican ranks, who were lukewarm, were shocked by the physical threat that endangered their lives inside the Congress. Hopefully, he will depart without causing any havoc between now and Janaury 20 – the inauguration day.

Joe Biden has his job cut out for him. He has to heal, repair, patch up, bandage, operate, and keep America in a nursing home until she recovers fully. To do that, he may have to go for a New Deal of the Rooseveltian type. Hopefully he may not have the need to sack the Supreme Court which obstructed Roosevelt’s deal to serve the people.

Fortunately, Trump, with his swagger and bluster in the last rally in Georgia, removed the main political obstruction that was in Biden’s path when the Republicans lost the two Senate seats. Biden now has the presidency and both houses of Congress in his hands though the razor thin margin is still dicey.

In the post -Corvid-19 phase, the American mood will be amenable to accept Rooseveltian “socialism”. Lifting the victims of the pandemic and poverty will strike a chord in the heart of America. Law-makers from both sides of the Congress will find it difficult, morally and politically, to say no the urgent needs of victims of Trump.

Trump will continue to make the headlines. Biden will have to look after the breadlines.

Initially there won’t be much of an opposition from the Right-wing which is discredited. Their fear-mongering with cries of “communism” and “socialism” will not have the same impact as that of McCarthy – another lying Goebbels. The post-Corvid-19 phase needs compassion not fear. Biden is expected to walk in the footsteps of Obama, particularly in healthcare.

The pandemic has created the right political climate for restoring the Obama care program. Biden has all the tools necessary to lift America from the depths of Trumpist disasters. He can’t lose because he has no other path to follow other than the compassionate route to recovery.

 

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The post America’s Descent into Depths of Disastrous Trumpism appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

H.L.D. Mahindapala is a Sri Lankan journalist who was Editor, Sunday Observer (1990-1994), President, Sri Lanka Working Journalists’ Association (1991-1993) and Secretary-General, South Asia Media Association (1994).

The post America’s Descent into Depths of Disastrous Trumpism appeared first on Inter Press Service.