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Members of the “We are half; we want parity without harassment!” campaign stand outside Congress in Peru in 2018, in a demonstration advocating laws such as the one passed in 2020 on parity in political participation or the 2021 law that combats harassment and violence against women politicians. Spokesperson Elizabeth Herrera holds one side of the poster on the far right in the top row. CREDIT: Courtesy of the campaign

By Mariela Jara
LIMA, Apr 25 2022 (IPS)

Women entering the political arena in Peru face multiple obstacles due to gender discrimination that hinders their equal participation, which can even reach the extreme of political harassment and bullying, in an attempt to force them out of the public sphere.

“Women elected officials at the regional or municipal level only last one four-year term,” Elizabeth Herrera, spokeswoman for the “We are half, we want parity without harassment!“ campaign, told IPS in an interview. “After that, they’re not interested anymore, they feel that the system has expelled them.”

The campaign is a civil society initiative promoted by feminist organizations such as the Manuela Ramos Movement and the Flora Tristán Center in alliance with the National Network of Women Authorities (Renama), which has been a driving force for important advances for women’s political participation without discrimination, such as the Parity and Alternation Law, in force since July 2020.

Herrera, a 36-year-old political scientist, said women in politics face a number of hurdles. “They don’t give you the floor, they slander you, they attack you on social networks, there is physical and even sexual violence, which leads you to say, I don’t want to be here anymore, what’s the point,” she said.

A report by the National Jury of Elections – the country’s electoral authority – found that 47 percent of women experienced political harassment in Peru’s presidential and legislative elections in 2021, while in the last regional and municipal elections, in 2018, the percentage was 69.6 percent.

The harassment and bullying come from both within the same party and from other parties. “If you are a female authority, the adversaries seek to expel you from the decision-making spaces, they do not want to see us there, as historically we have not been present; they tell us that it is not for us,” Herrera said.

She added that many fellow party members also harass their women colleagues, to prevent them from competing for positions in the organization or for candidacies.

“We have seen cases in which documents are hidden from them, they are insulted, and this comes on top of the online harassment through the social networks, which is brutal,” she said.

She mentioned the case of a woman authority in the Puno region, in Peru’s southern Andes highlands, who feels terrible guilt because she believes that her son took his own life due to the systematic harassment against her.

The pressure suffered by the women is so great that the campaign must request their authorization to make their cases public. “Not all of them want to speak out because of the intimidation and harassment from the members of their own parties,” she said.

Peruvian women make up half of the population and the electorate but are underrepresented politically and in elected office. Meanwhile, those who decide to participate in politics endure a combination of discrimination and harassment aimed at driving them out of politics. The photo shows protesters in Lima holding a national flag, demanding greater female participation. CREDIT: Mariela Jara/IPS

A model for drafting regional legislation

In 2017, the Inter-American Commission of Women (CIM) provided a model draft law on political violence against women in the Latin American and Caribbean region.

It described such violence as “any action, conduct or omission, carried out directly or through third parties that, based on gender, causes harm or suffering to a woman or to various women, which has the effect or purpose of impairing or nullifying the recognition, enjoyment or exercise by women of their political rights.”

It stated that the violence can be physical, sexual, psychological, moral, economic or symbolic.

The proposal raised the urgent need for governments to act on the problem, since eliminating violence against women in political life is a condition for democracy and governance in the region.

Previously, the hemispheric declaration on Violence and Political Harassment against Women, adopted in 2015, had made it clear that achieving political parity required not only electoral quotas but also guaranteeing conditions for women to exercise their right to equal participation.

Strides made in Peru

In Peru, women’s rights organizations helped pushed through the first laws on gender quotas for electoral lists, which were passed in 1997, while progress was made towards the new law on parity and alternation approved in 2020.

The 2020 law contributed to the fact that in the 2021 congressional elections, women gained 35 percent of the seats in the single chamber legislature: 47 out of 130.

In the next municipal and regional elections, on Oct. 9, the law is expected to increase the scant presence of women, who despite making up half of the population and the electorate, are represented in a much smaller proportion.

There are two statistics that graphically reflect the discrimination and inequality suffered by women in politics: in the previous regional and municipal elections, in 2018, only one percent of mayors elected were women, and no female governors were elected in the 24 departments into which this Andean country of 33.5 million inhabitants is divided.

Rocio Pereyra hopes to become mayor of Pueblo Libre, a municipality on the outskirts of Lima. Showing the symbol of female power, she poses in front of the former home of Manuela Saenz, a libertarian woman who contributed to the cause of Peruvian independence and broke down gender stereotypes. “She is an inspiration to me,” says the pre-candidate for mayor in Peru’s October municipal and regional elections. CREDIT: Mariela Jara/IPS

A case in point

Rocio Pereyra, 33, is a pre-candidate for mayor for Pueblo Libre, one of the 43 municipalities that make up the metropolitan area of Lima. She will participate in the internal elections of her party, the center-left coalition Juntos por el Perú (Together for Peru), to try to win the candidacy in the October elections.

“I am leading a team that wants to bring about major changes in the district, that seeks the integral development and welfare of the local residents,” she told IPS.

In an interview in the district’s central square – where historical national independence figures such as Simón Bolívar, José de San Martín and Manuela Sáenz once converged – Pereyra stated that the low participation of women in politics has several causes, but all of them are related to discrimination and gender violence.

“We face a series of limitations that prevent us from considering ourselves one hundred percent autonomous. If you are facing violence at home or abuse from your partner, or if you do not have economic independence, it will be much more difficult for you to access spaces for political participation,” she said.

In the public sphere, Pereyra said, women are not yet recognized as equals, and are told: this is not your place, go home, do the housework, stay in the private sphere.

She said that an attempt is made to drive them out of politics by means of harassment, bullying, discrediting, invalidating their opinion and their professional, labor and political careers. “And these situations are experienced by many women when they exercise their oversight function and denounce acts of corruption,” she added.

“The message they want to send us is clear: That we better not participate in politics, because they can even mess with your family, with your children,” Pereyra said.

“Obviously women will feel even more vulnerable and will feel that they must protect their homes. So that reinforces the gender role that has been socially assigned to us. It is very pernicious,” she said.

Pereyra herself has often experienced discrimination.

“On one occasion a journalist in the district insinuated that I was involved in politics because I had a romantic relationship with a candidate,” she cited as an example.

And recently, she said, “within my own party as a pre-candidate, my interlocutor never looked at me when I spoke, but at a male colleague. Even though I was the leader, he did not speak to me.”

“Gestures can also be violent. I felt so impotent and I wanted to leave, but I said to myself, no! I’m staying and I will demonstrate my political capacity, with my actions,” Pereyra said.

“Closed. This party doesn’t care about women,” reads a banner held by a group of women demonstrators in the Peruvian capital in front of the headquarters of one of the political parties that violates the laws on gender parity in political participation. CREDIT: Mariela Jara/IPS

A new law should help

Law 31155, which prevents and punishes harassment against women in political life, has been in force since April 2021, promoted by the “We Are Half” campaign and which includes the tenets laid out by the CIM.

Herrera, the campaign spokeswoman, said that within this framework, political organizations are required to establish standards for how to address and punish these cases. “It is up to us now to monitor compliance,” she added.

In Pereyra’s view, the country will not change by decree and she argues that laws are not enough, and that what is needed is a cultural change based on education that contributes to generating gender equality and non-discrimination, and eradicates “machismo” and sexism from the political sphere.

As for the performance of women authorities or congresswomen, she raised the need for a feminist agenda.

“We do not go into politics to be an ornament or to echo what men say, but to bring up issues that affect us. The basis of democracy is equality and freedom, and this will not be possible if our rights are restricted. Our presence and feminist agenda will contribute to deepening democracy and to bringing to life the promise of a truly fair and egalitarian country,” she said.

The regional office of the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) highlighted in a publication in March that the unequal distribution of power in politics undermines the effectiveness of governance in Latin America and the Caribbean.

It pointed out that despite the advances in legislation, only 19 of the 46 countries and territories in the region achieved gender parity at some point in the last 20 years, while only five achieved it at the ministerial level, two in national parliaments and one in municipalities.

The worldwide degradation, fragmentation, and destruction of ecosystems are accelerating and generating serious consequences for flora, fauna and human well-being. Credit: Guillermo Flores/IPS

By Joseph Chamie
PORTLAND, USA, Apr 25 2022 (IPS)

Since the first Earth Day observed on 22 April 1970, world conditions have worsened greatly across three critically interrelated global dimensions that portend a disastrous future for life on planet Earth.

First, CLIMATE CHANGE is certainly the most worrisome threat to human security. The scientific evidence clearly demonstrates that climate change is a threat to the well-being of humans and the planet.

Global warming is resulting in unstable life-threatening changes in the planet’s climate and living conditions. Those cataclysmic changes are the consequence of human populations-caused atmospheric carbon pollution primarily due to the burning of fossil fuels.

Unfortunately, the response of world leaders to climate change has largely been the Climate Change Shuffle: deny, delay, and then do little. In brief, the international community of nations is witnessing the abdication of leadership by the major countries of the world.

Some have concluded that the world is in the midst of a human-caused extinction event. Many of the impacts of global warming are undeniable and are now considered as simply irreversible.

The ten warmest years on record have happened since 2005. In addition, 2020 was the second warmest year on record, being just 0.02 degrees Celsius less than the warmest year in 2016.

The 2020 world surface temperature averaged across land and ocean was 0.98 degrees Celsius warmer than the 20th century average of 13.90 Celsius. Also, the 2020 average was 1.19 Celsius warmer the pre-industrial period of 1880-1990 of 13.69 Celsius (Figure 1).

 

Source: Climate.gov.

 

The goal to limit global warming to well below the Paris Agreement rise of 2 degrees Celsius, or preferably to 1.5 degrees Celsius, compared to pre-industrial levels is considered a losing battle.

In addition to the lack of global leadership, cooperation and enforceable objectives with explicit timetables, world leaders continue to sell out to wealthy interests and corporations that push for promised techno-fixes.

Second, WORLD POPULATION, which grew at record high rates during the 20th century, continues to grow and is greatly impacting all living organisms and natural resources on the planet.

Between 1920 and 2020, the population of the world quadrupled, increasing from 1.9 billion to 7.8 billion people. Moreover, since the first Earth Day fifty-two years ago, the human population on the planet has more than doubled, growing from 3.7 billion to nearly 8 billion today and is expected to add another 2 billion people by 2070 (Figure 2).

 

Source: United Nations.

 

Despite planet Earth reaching 8,000,000,000 human beings, countries continue to resist population stabilization and reductions. Many government officials, economic advisors, businesses, mainstream media, and others frequently lament population slowdowns and call for more demographic growth, particularly through increased birth rates.

Environmental degradation coupled with climate change is increasingly fueling mass human migration. Growing numbers of men, women and children are moving domestically and internationally to escape difficult living conditions

In addition, human migration is at record levels and greatly impacting nations worldwide. The global number of immigrants has reached a high of around 281 million, with more than 84 million people displaced from their homes and more than 30 million refugees. In addition, millions of men, women, and children continue to attempt illegal migration.

Today’s enormous human mobility has resulted in the Great Migration Clash. The Clash is a worldwide struggle between those who desperately want out of their countries and those who vehemently want to keep others out of their countries.

More than a billion people, largely in poor and violence ridden countries, would like to move permanently to another country. At the same time, no less than a billion people, mainly in wealthy developed countries, say fewer immigrants should be allowed to enter.

Immigration is a top concern of voters in most migrant-receiving countries, with many concerned about the effects of immigration on their society and culture. Most migrant-destination countries are turning to border walls, barriers and patrols, repatriating those unlawfully resident, resisting accepting refugees and denying most asylum claims.

In addition, as the demand for migrants is a small fraction of the supply of people wishing to migrate, illegal immigration continues to be a major global challenge. The increased migration, particularly illegal migration, is contributing to the rise of right-wing populist and nativist parties.

Anti-immigrant sentiment has also spread to include refugees and asylum seekers. Many country policies to stem illegal immigration are undermining the established international rights and protections granted to refugees and asylum seekers.

Third, ENVIRONMENTAL DEGRADATION is also critically altering conditions for all living organisms across the planet. The worldwide degradation, fragmentation, and destruction of ecosystems are accelerating and generating serious consequences for flora, fauna and human well-being.

The worsening conditions across land, sea, and air have been brought about by the unsustainable numbers of humans and their ongoing damaging behavior. The extraction of oil, gas, coal, and water, the logging, mining, fishing hunting, and the ever-increasing needs and demands of 8,000,000,000 humans have ruined large areas of planet Earth.

The degradation of environment includes reduced biodiversity, deforestation, depletion of natural resources, deteriorating ecosystems, and pollution. Since the first Earth Day in 1970, the planet has experienced a catastrophic decline in global wildlife populations and the natural environment is continuing to be destroyed by humans at an unprecedented rate.

During the past five decades, for example, the world experienced an average 68 percent drop in monitored vertebrate species, i.e., mammals, birds, amphibians, reptiles, and fish. In addition, the decline in monitored vertebrate species over the past half century varied considerably by major region from a low of 24 percent in Europe and Central Asia to a high of 94 percent in Latin America and the Caribbean (Figure 3).

 

Source: World Wildlife Fund, based on 20,811 populations of 4,392 species (mammals, birds, amphibians, reptiles, and fish).

 

Biodiversity loss has largely been the result of habitat destruction due to unsustainable agriculture and logging, the continuing ruin of grasslands, forests, and wetlands, and the overexploitation of fish, mammals and natural resources. In the coming years the biggest driver of further biodiversity loss is expected to be human-induced climate change.

In addition, environmental degradation coupled with climate change is increasingly fueling mass human migration. Growing numbers of men, women and children are moving domestically and internationally to escape difficult living conditions. Those changing conditions include prolonged drought, excessive heat, rising sea levels, large-scale flooding, extreme wildfires, dying coral reefs, violent storms, and weather-produced disasters.

What needs to be done today to address climate change, world population, and environmental degradation, are not secrets, unknowns, or recent discoveries.

Over the past decades, scientists, environmental organizations, international agencies, intergovernmental panels, and many others have repeatedly warned world leaders about climate change, world population and environmental degradation. In addition, they have clearly spelled out the immediate steps required to address those critical issues.

Briefly, among those steps are: (1) adoption of energy efficiency and conservation practices and the replacement of fossil fuels with low-carbon renewables; (2) reduction of emissions of short-lived climate pollutants; (3) protection and restoration of the planet’s ecosystems; (4) shift from consumption of animal products to diets of mostly plant-based foods; (5) transition from emphasis on GDP growth toward sustaining ecosystems; and (6) the stabilization of world population, and ideally a gradual reduction, within a framework ensuring social integrity.

Unfortunately, based on the behavior of countries today and their expected actions in the future with respect to climate change, world population, and environmental degradation, objective observers are increasingly arriving at an unavoidable conclusion. Namely, it will be highly unlikely to avoid a disastrous future for life on planet Earth.

Joseph Chamie is a consulting demographer, a former director of the United Nations Population Division and author of numerous publications on population issues, including his recent book, “Births, Deaths, Migrations and Other Important Population Matters.”

Transgender refugees from Ukraine have met various challenges including access to hormone medicine since fleeing the war torn country. Credit: Ed Holt/IPS

By Ed Holt
BRATISLAVA, Apr 25 2022 (IPS)

Soon after Russia invaded her country, Anastasiia Yeva Domani found herself forced to abandon the regime of vital medicines she was taking.

The transgender activist could no longer get hold of the hormone medicines she needed to regularly take in Ukraine as supply chains were disrupted and the vast majority of pharmacies were closed.

“I, like many others, had to pause hormone treatment for a while. We had no choice,” she told IPS.

Domani spent two weeks off her treatment before she managed to get hold of medicines from Poland.

Now, her home in Kyiv has become the headquarters of a network she and other members of the transgender support organisation that she heads, Cohort, are running that helps find and then distribute hormones to those who need them across Ukraine.

It is not an easy task, though. For transgender people in Ukraine, both among those who have remained in their homes and those who make up part of the estimated 6.5 million internally displaced people in the country, a shortage of hormone medicines remains a major problem.

“There is a big problem getting hormone drugs. Some can be found in some cities in Ukraine, some abroad, and using the internet, and with the help of various LGBT activists and others all over the country, we have managed to get what we can,” she said.

“We have sent some hormones to people in March, but at the end of April, they are going to need more, and we will have to find them somewhere,” she added.

But having to halt hormone therapy is not the only serious problem transgender people are facing because of the conflict.

Activists say many transgender people, especially transgender women, have problems leaving Ukraine.

At the start of the war, all Ukrainian men aged 18-60 were ordered to stay in the country. As refugees began leaving, reports emerged of transgender women being turned back at the border, often because the gender marked on their identification documents did not match their actual gender, but sometimes simply because border guards who gave them physical examinations declared them to be men and told them they could not leave.

LGBT+ organisations which spoke to IPS confirmed they knew of such cases.

“Some transgender people have made it over the border into Poland, but there are many who have not been able to come over,” said Julia Kata of the Polish TransFuzja Foundation, which helps transgender people.

“They have been stopped because of problems with their ID documents where gender markers have not yet been changed, or they do not have the necessary medical confirmation that they have started transition,” she added.

This has led to some taking drastic action to get out of the country, and migration experts have also pointed to other dangers, such as violence and exploitation, which refugees can be exposed to when taking illegal routes out of countries.

“I know some trans women have resorted to leaving the country illegally, but this is not something we would support,” Domani said, adding how dangerous such attempts could be.

However, even when transgender people do make it out of Ukraine, they, and other members of the LGBT+ community, are facing further challenges as they find themselves in countries where LGBT+ communities have in recent years faced increasing prejudice, stigma, and discrimination.

The International Lesbian, Gay, Bi-Sexual, Trans and Intersex Association (ILGA) produces an annual ranking of the laws and policies impacting the human rights of LGBT+ people in individual European countries. In its most recent edition, many states bordering Ukraine scored very poorly.

Wiktoria Magnuszewska, an activist with the Polish Lex Q LGBT+ advocacy organisation, told IPS: “There is a lot of fear among transgender people who come here. This is connected to the general social atmosphere in Poland towards the LGBT+ community.”

Activists in other countries agree. Viktoria Radvanyi of Budapest Pride in Hungary told international media: “They are fleeing from Ukraine where their rights and dignity are not as respected as in other places in free societies. Then they arrive in countries like Hungary, Poland, and Romania where the state doesn’t support LGBTQ equality….”

Some organisations in receiving countries are working to provide help specifically for LGBT+ refugees when they arrive, including finding LGBT+-friendly accommodation, advice, help in dealing with local institutions, psychological support, and helping with access to other healthcare services.

The latter is expected to be of particular importance for transgender people, explained Kata, who said her organisation is co-operating with “trans-inclusive healthcare providers” so that any transgender refugees who need to access Polish healthcare will get appointments with doctors “who view them inclusively”.

She added that one of the main priorities of transgender refugees when they come to Poland, alongside “surviving and finding somewhere to stay”, was how to continue their transition. So far, she said, there had been no reports of any transgender refugees having any problems accessing the hormones they need.

Despite this help, some LGBT+ refugees prefer to move further into Europe rather than stay in countries that do not have a positive attitude toward their community.

“What we are seeing is that some LGBT+ people are leaving because of the situation in society here towards their community,” Justyna Nakielska, an advocacy officer with the Campaign Against Homophobia (KPH) in Poland.

Meanwhile, back in Ukraine, Domani says, attitudes to the LGBT+ community seem, for the moment at least, to have changed markedly in recent weeks.

Before the war, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy had pledged to fight discrimination based on gender identity and sexuality. There had been advances in legal safeguarding of LGBT+ rights, including a ban on workplace discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity.

But general attitudes in society towards the LGBT+ community were ambivalent at best, and in the ILGA’s latest rankings, Ukraine had an even worse score than most of the other countries on its borders.

But since the outbreak of war the situation has changed, said Domani.

“Since the war started, all Ukrainians think about are the Russian occupiers – they forgot their homophobia, their xenophobia, and all the focus now is on Russia,” she said.

She warned, though, that in areas which Russian forces had managed to fully occupy, there was already great concern over the fate of LGBT+ people, particularly in light of the Kremlin’s stance towards the community in Russia and reports that before the invasion, it had drawn up ‘kill lists’ targeting activists.

“There are no problems with LGBT+ people in Ukraine at the moment – with the exception of those in the Russian-occupied territories. We already know of some trans people who left the Kherson region [in southern Ukraine] on the day the war started because collaborators gave Russian occupiers information about human rights and LGBT+ activists,” Domani warned.

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According to the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), some $115.4 million are urgently needed to prevent a further deterioration of the food insecurity situation and worsening of the disruption of food supply chains in Ukraine. There is urgency to support Ukrainian farmers in planting vegetables and potatoes during this spring season, and farmers should be allowed and supported to go to their fields and save the winter wheat harvest, the FAO said April 19. Credit: Anatolii Stepanov / FAO

By Eugenio Dacrema
ROME, Apr 25 2022 (IPS)

The breakout of the conflict in Ukraine and the following imposition of heavy Western sanctions on Russia are causing sharp price increases in food and energy commodities —of which both Ukraine and Russia represent key exporters — as well as disruptions to global supply chains, impacting the post-pandemic economic recovery.

As a result, the IMF’s 2022 projections for global economic growth have been revised and now follow a downward trajectory, while global consumer price inflation is expected to increase by 6.4% in 2022, the highest rate since 1995.

Emerging markets and developing countries are expected to see the highest average inflation increases, at 7.1 and 11.6% respectively.

The ripple effects of the conflict in Ukraine are reverberating across the global economy against the backdrop of two years of steadily growing food prices, which reached a record high in February 2022, exceeding the previous peak set in February 2011.

The index then rose by a further 12% in March. Macroeconomic conditions deteriorated for most countries worldwide, with debt levels growing increasingly unsustainable for numerous low-income economies.

Eugenio Dacrema

After decreasing steadily over the previous two decades, poverty rates have been growing worldwide since 2020 along with the number of people experiencing food insecurity.

The World Bank estimates the pandemic has led to an additional 97 million extremely poor people compared to pre-pandemic projections. Higher food prices could drive many to require food aid.

A seismic hunger crisis is enveloping the world amidst a time of unprecedented needs. Climate shocks, conflict, COVID-19, and the spiraling costs of food and fuel — compounded by the conflict in Ukraine and its knock-on effects for countries dependent on that region’s supply of wheat (as well as other food) — could drive at least 47 million people across 81 countries to the edge of famine, while the number of severely food insecure people has doubled over the past two years, which currently stands at 276 million, according to the World Food Programme.

Risk factors sparked by the conflict in Ukraine

The ongoing war in Ukraine is likely to affect economies around the world through five main channels, and it is likely to generate major repercussions in numerous countries’ food security and domestic socioeconomic stability in both the short- and medium-term:

• The short-term impact on global food prices: This is given by Russia’s and Ukraine’s roles as major producers of food commodities (primarily cereals and vegetable oils). Since the beginning of the Ukraine crisis, shipments from the Black Sea have been dramatically reduced, with an immediate impact on countries importing cereals directly through this route, especially MENA (Middle East & North Africa) countries.

Short- and long-term disruptions to Ukrainian agricultural production caused by military operations and disruptions to Russian exports triggered by Western sanctions are also driving the rapid increase of wheat prices internationally, which have gradually climbed by over 30% since February, as well as the prices of other cereals such as maize. In March, the FAO Food Price Index recorded a 33% year-on-year growth. This is likely to reverberate across most countries’ local prices, especially those importing major shares of their food requirements.

• The long-term impact on global food prices: This is given by the conflict’s impact on fertilizers’ international prices. Russia plays a key role as a producer of both fertilizers and of the main raw materials utilized for their production. Western sanctions combined with export limits imposed by Chinese and Russian authorities are causing fertilizer prices to climb to record levels, with the price of urea, a key N fertilizer, trebling over the last year. If sustained, the current price increase is likely to reduce fertilizer usage in most countries, likely affecting yields of coming harvests and therefore the future availability of agricultural commodities on international markets.

• The significant increase of international energy prices: This is mainly due to Russia’s status as a major global oil and gas exporter and the imposition of Western sanctions, which may impair and/or make energy imports from Russia more expensive. This is likely to affect the economies of countries who are net importers of hydrocarbons. Furthermore, higher energy prices are likely to compound on food prices increases, as fuel represents a key agricultural input. On a positive note, however, increasing energy prices are likely to help the recovery of those economies that are net exporters of oil and gas.

• Macroeconomic destabilization of economies closely linked with Russia: The ruble’s rapid depreciation after the introduction of Western sanctions against Russia and the expected significant contraction of the Russian economy are likely to reverberate gravely on countries in Russia’s economic sphere of influence. In particular, this includes Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, who heavily depend on the remittances generated by migrant workers in Russia.

• Finally, decreasing supplies internationally is already causing some producing countries to limit or ban exports to ensure domestic price stability. This currently represents the biggest risk factor for food markets, as a rapid ban-induced drop on the supply side may exponentially boost the pace of price increases and effectively bar import-dependent economies from ensuring a vital flow of food supplies.

Vulnerability factors for middle- and low-income countries

Who are the likely countries to be most affected? Since the current supply drop is affecting the share of global cereals production exchanged internationally – approximately one fourth of the total global production – the countries most likely to be affected are those whose domestic production is gravely insufficient to cover for domestic demand.

Among import-dependent countries, low-income states and/or those experiencing grave macroeconomic imbalances – likely as a result of pandemic-induced economic shocks – are those that may encounter the greatest difficulties in affording imports at current prices. The extent of countries’ exposure to socioeconomic distress from the war in Ukraine will depend on five main factors:

• Direct dependency over imports from the Black Sea basin: countries directly importing significant quantities of cereals from Ukraine and Russia are prone to experiencing growing local food prices and/or shortages. Among them are mostly (but not only) countries of the MENA region, such as Egypt, Turkey, Lebanon, Syria, Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco, and Sudan. Some of these countries have already started witnessing cereals shortages and price spikes.

• Availability of pre-existing food stocks: Several countries have been stockpiling food reserves over the past months to buffer the continuous increase of food prices. Such countries may be able to significantly delay the reverberation of international food price increases on their local markets. Their ability to smoothen the price transmission depends on the volume of their stocks relative to their consumption. For Muslim countries, the Ramadan festivities are likely to accelerate the exhaustion of amassed reserves, if available.

• Dependency on food imports: Countries who are net importers of food items, especially cereals, are likely to experience rising prices over the next months, even if they do not import directly from Russia or Ukraine. The stiff rise of international food prices is likely to spill over into local prices at different moments. According to recent research on this topic, increasing international food prices lead to increasing local prices more rapidly in low-income countries – with a 1/2-month average time-lag – while the transmission tends to take more time in middle-income economies (approximately 6 months).

Hence, although at different moments, the increase of international food prices is going to affect all countries dependent on food imports. The World Food Programme (WFP)’s research has highlighted the Sub-Saharan region’s particularly high exposure over the next months, due to the presence of several economies characterized by both import reliance and low-income levels.

• The presence of local buffers to food-price volatility: In some countries, the presence of subsidy programmes on food items and/or temporary measures to tame price increases may delay or avoid altogether transmission of international price increases to local prices. However, in some countries, such measures may become unsustainable if the price increases are particularly pronounced and/or prolonged. Subsidy reduction or removal due to macroeconomic difficulties may result in rapid and sudden increases in local prices. Such a scenario is likely in countries which are already economically instable, e.g., due to accumulation of unsustainable debt loads.

• The presence of pre-existing macroeconomic vulnerabilities: Countries facing macroeconomic difficulties due to diverse factors – such as heavy debt loads, deep current-account deficits, low foreign-exchange reserves, etc. – are likely to be more exposed to negative repercussions caused by increasing food prices. This is the case, for example, of lower-middle income countries that are usually less exposed to food insecurity, such as Pakistan and Sri Lanka. They may face difficulties in financing additional costs for food imports and/or agricultural inputs imports, such as fertilizers. Such additional costs may exacerbate existing macroeconomic fragilities, making potential macroeconomic crises more likely.

As the conflict in Ukraine does not seem to abate anytime soon, its ripple effects are already reverberating across the entire world, especially across those countries that have suffered the most during the pandemic. Particularly worrisome is the situation of those MENA countries already facing pre-existing crises, such as Yemen, Syria, and Sudan.

In Yemen, 16 million people were already facing acute food insecurity before the beginning of the war in Ukraine, while the figures were 12 million and 10 million for Syria and Sudan, respectively. As these countries import large shares of their essential cereals supplies from the Black Sea, they are likely to face an even more dramatic situation over the next months.

Despite its localized nature, this war is already causing victims worldwide through increased hunger and poverty. The WFP is seriously concerned about the world’s most vulnerable people as soaring food prices impact those the UN agency serves as well as millions of families on the edge of hunger, whose incomes have already plummeted with the pandemic.

Eugenio Dacrema is an Early Warning Economic Risk Analyst at the World Food Programme. Previously, he served as an Associate Research Fellow at ISPI’s MENA Centre. He holds a PhD from the University of Trento; he completed his bachelor’s degree at the University of Pavia; and his master’s degree at the University of Bologna in International Sciences specializing in development economics.

Source: Italian Institute for International Political Studies (ISPI)

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The UN General Assembly in session. Credit: UN Photo/Manuel Elias

By Christian Wenaweser
Apr 22 2022 (IPS)

 
Q: Liechtenstein has just initiated a resolution at the United Nations that mandates a meeting of the General Assembly whenever a veto is cast in the Security Council. What’s behind this initiative?

A: The veto initiative is a simple idea, but we think it politically very meaningful. It simply says that every time a veto is cast in the Security Council, there is automatically a meeting convened by the General Assembly to discuss the proposed veto in the Security Council. So, it’s an automatic mandate. It’s not subject to any further intervention or decision.
It’s a mandate that is given to whoever is the president of the General Assembly at that time to be convened within the said timeframe. It’s open-ended with regards to the outcome. It’s completely non-prescriptive. The only thing that is mandatory is the meeting and the discussions themselves.

Could you elaborate on the motivation for this initiative? Why is this happening now?

We’re doing it because we believe in strong multilateralism. We have followed with growing concern the inability of the Security Council to take effective action against threats to international peace and security due to the very deep political divisions among the permanent members in the Council.

We are concerned about the negative impact that this has on the effectiveness of the United Nations. So, if you look at our statements in the last five years or so, we have consistently advocated for a strong role of the General Assembly in matters of international peace and security as mandated by the Charter of the United Nations. This initiative is a meaningful step in that direction.

The reason why we’re doing it now is twofold. First of all, we were close to launching this initiative in March of 2020 when we were hit by the lockdown. This is not the type of thing that we can do online. So, we decided that we need support from close sponsors to push this. The lockdown is over while the pandemic is not, so that’s one of the reasons why we’re doing it now.

The other reason is that we sensed that the wider membership of the United Nations is now particularly attuned to this initiative. Now people have a strong sense that the United Nations needs to innovate itself and find different ways of doing business.

Ambassador Christian Wenaweser has served as the Permanent Representative of Liechtenstein to the United Nations in New York since 2002.

Is there a reason why you do not mention the ‘R’ word in this context?

Yes and no. If you look at the numbers, it’s clear who has vetoed the biggest number of resolutions in recent years. That is the Russian Federation – mostly with regards to Syria. But our initiative is not aimed at Russia or directed against Russia. It’s simply about the veto and the institutional balance. It’s about the role that we believe the General Assembly should play in this organisation.

What are the chances for this resolution being adopted? There was some speculation that it is going to be discussed this week and there’s going to be a vote in the coming days.

The vote is not going to be this week. This week we will have a formal presentation with the membership. We will then look to get a date in the General Assembly soon thereafter. We are getting a strong positive response to this. So, we are very confident that our text will be adopted.

Are you concerned that the initiative – if adopted – could be used as a political tool to put other countries who have veto powers on the spot? Or that countries that are put on the spot in the General Assembly because of a veto then go on to use the debate in the Assembly to generate even more attention for their view than they would have gotten only on the Council?

This is not about putting anyone on the spot. Our resolution does provide that the delegations that vetoed in the Security Council are offered the first slot in the speakers list because we would like to hear from them why they vetoed, and why they think it’s in the interest of the organisation, why they think it’s compatible with the principles of the Charter. That’s an invitation extended to them and, as is the case with any invitation, you can accept it or not.

It’s not about putting anyone on the spot, but about accountability. It’s about being given a voice in what we think are issues over which we have ownership. The Charter of the United Nations says clearly that the Security Council does its work on behalf of the membership.

Are you surprised that your initiative is receiving support from Washington at this point?

Well, the obvious thing to say is you should ask the US ambassador. But I am happy to share my thoughts. The US have stated their reasons very clearly. We think what they are saying is very important as it is coming from a permanent member of the Security Council that has had a mixed history with the United Nations over the years.

This US administration has supported a big step for the Security Council to invoke the Uniting for Peace procedure in connection with the Russian aggression against Ukraine. I think they have just come to realise that for UN to remain relevant, the General Assembly has to move into the centre. For us, that’s an important and hopeful sign. For us, this is a vote on multilateralism. This is not just to vote on a procedural mechanism that gives the General Assembly more power.

Also, if we understand you correctly, it’s not a vote on Russia.

Not for us. Some observers obviously think we are doing this because of what’s going on in Ukraine. That’s not true. But of course, what is going on in Ukraine and the lack of response by the Security Council makes it abundantly clear that what we are doing is the right thing to do. But in fact we’ve been working on this for the last two-and-a-half years.

Unfortunately, sometimes UN initiatives come in with some momentum but then unfortunately nothing is really coming out of it once they are adopted. The Mexican-French initiative to voluntarily restrain the use of the veto in the Council after the blockage of the Council in 2013, for instance, comes to mind. Are you concerned that this could happen once again?

I am not sure I would agree with that assessment. After all, the French-Mexican initiative was never adopted. It was just something that was put on the table.

This will be a General Assembly resolution. This is going to be an intergovernmental mandate that the General Assembly creates for itself. It is going to be there in perpetuity, and it will be implemented automatically. And it is going to make a difference.

This interview was conducted by Michael Bröning and Volker Lehmann.

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

IPS UN Bureau

 

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Excerpt:

The author is Liechtenstein’s UN Ambassador, in an interview on how his country’s veto initiative could help restore the United Nations’ effectiveness.

Groundnut farm in Torit, South Sudan. Credit: Isaiah Esipisu/IPS.

By Esther Ngumbi
URBANA, Illinois, USA, Apr 22 2022 (IPS)

Around the world, Earth Day 2022 is being celebrated.  The theme this year is “Invest in Our Planet”. To mark the day, activities such as planting trees, protests, marches, cleaning up litter, and conferences will be held to highlight the importance of investing and taking care of our planet.

This is sorely needed as our planet is in its worst shape ever, according to the 2022 and 2021 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports, and its citizens are facing daunting challenges including food insecurity and  COVID-19.

Other evidence to highlight our unhealth planet included increase in the occurrence of billion dollar weather and climate disasters with dire impacts to humans and other species that live in our planet, land and soil degradation,  and accelerating loss of biodiversity and species including insects.

It is imperative to invest in ensuring that farmers have the tools and knowledge base to mitigate the climate change impacts on agriculture. Such tools include access to financing, and agricultural inputs as well as extension services and capacity building and technology transfer schemes to ensure that farmers can implement science-proven climate smart agricultural practices

Since there is nothing significant to celebrate, just work to do, it is only fair we reflect on what it means to invest in our planet.

And so, I took time to reflect on what this theme means to me, as a person who grew up on a farm in the Kenyan Coast, as a food security advocate and as a female African scientist.

My research aims to find sustainable ways to feed our growing population and uncover novel ways to combat the impacts climate change extremes such flooding, droughts and crop devouring insects have on agricultural crop plants.

First, investing in our planet, means investing in the people living in it and making sure everyone around the world has access to nutritious food. At the moment, over 800 million of people living in our planet are hungry. According to the United Nations World Food Programme, 44 million people in 38 countries are facing famines all because of climate shocks, conflict, and the global pandemic.

Solving hunger for the millions that are impacted, many of whom live in developing countries, means investing in agriculture. Most of the world’s poor, including women, are rural people earning livings from agriculture.

To accelerate progress, it is imperative to invest in ensuring that farmers have the tools and knowledge base to mitigate the climate change impacts on agriculture. Such tools include access to financing, and agricultural inputs as well as extension services and capacity building and technology transfer schemes to ensure that farmers can implement science-proven climate smart agricultural practices.

Climate smart agricultural practices aim to tackle three objectives: sustainably increase agricultural productivity, adapt, and build resilience to climate change and reduce or remove greenhouse gas emissions.

These initiatives employ and encourage several strategies including timely planting of improved crop varieties, diversifying crop base, using integrated pest and weed management, and delivering timely seasonal and current weather information to farmers and sharing agricultural innovations.

Second, investing in the planet means investing in empowering women and girls, particularly, women from marginalized communities. Women continue to play multiple roles in our planet including serving in the agricultural workforce as food producers of food.

In many African countries including Cameroon, Gabon, Kenya, according to the World Bank, women make up over 40 percent of the agricultural workforce.

Thirdly, investing in our planet means investing in science. Science will continue to bring forth novel solutions to address these challenges and it is imperative that developed and developing countries alike invest and increase the national budgets allocated to science funding, particularly, science that is understanding the changing climate and strategies for increasing climate resilience.

Fourth, investing in our planet means highlighting and nurturing all voices – Black, white, lesbians, gay and queer.

Despite the issue affecting us all, surprisingly, the voices that continue to be heard are consistently white and straight. This must change. We must reiterate the fact that the impacts of our changing climate affect everyone and have no respect for boundaries humanity has created.

We must encourage and highlight activists from all continents and backgrounds. Doing so will reinforce the message that we are in this planet together and collectively, we can act.

Clearly, Our Earth and planet and the people living in it will continue to experience new and harsh realities in part due to the changed climate. We all must strive to reflect and proactively do something. Time is of essence.

Dr. Esther Ngumbi is an Assistant Professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign, and a Senior Food Security Fellow with the Aspen Institute, New Voices.

Refugees on the move. Credit: UNHCR/Ivor Pricket

By Baher Kamal
MADRID, Apr 22 2022 (IPS)

Part I of this two-part series focused on the cases of the United Kingdom and Greece. This article will deal with how Hungary has been criminalising organisations that provide humanitarian assistance to migrants, and how Poland ‘arbitrarily’ detains thousands of asylum seekers.

In fact, Hungary, a European Union full member country, has a long record of ‘demonising’ migrants, refugees and asylum seekers.

Asylum-seekers who crossed the Belarus border into Poland, including many forced to do so by Belarusian Border Guards, are now detained in “filthy, overcrowded detention centres where guards subject them to abusive treatment and deny them contact with the outside world,”

Jelena Sesar, Regional Researcher at Amnesty International.

Already back in 2018, another major human rights organisation –Human Rights Watch, reported that, since 2015, the Viktor Orban government has engaged in a virulent campaign against migrants and asylum seekers, including efforts to demonise organisations that provide legal and humanitarian assistance to these groups.

In the case of another European Union’s full member country –Poland, another major human rights organisation Amnesty International, on 11 April 2022 reported that the Polish authorities have arbitrarily detained nearly two thousand asylum-seekers who crossed into the country from Belarus in 2021 [that’s prior to the Ukrainian war].

Also that many of those asylum seekers have been subjected to abuse, including strip searches in unsanitary, overcrowded facilities, and in some cases even forcible sedation and tasering.

 

Degrading treatment

Amnesty International reported about the Polish Authorities violating the rights of asylum-seekers, including strip searches and other degrading treatment, in overcrowded detention centres. Some people were forcibly sedated during their return.

“At the Polish border, they face razor wire fences and repeated pushbacks by border guards sometimes up to 20-30 times.”

Asylum-seekers who crossed the Belarus border into Poland, including many forced to do so by Belarusian Border Guards, are now detained in “filthy, overcrowded detention centres where guards subject them to abusive treatment and deny them contact with the outside world,” said Jelena Sesar, Regional Researcher at Amnesty International.

 

Arbitrary detention, abysmal detention conditions

Polish border guards have systematically rounded up and violently pushed back people crossing from Belarus, sometimes threatening them with guns, according to Amnesty International’s report.

“The vast majority of those who have been fortunate enough to avoid being pushed back to Belarus and to apply for asylum in Poland are forced into automatic detention, without a proper assessment of their individual situation and the impact detention would have on their physical and mental health.”

 

Suicidal thoughts

“They are often held for prolonged and indefinite periods of time in overcrowded centres that offer little privacy and only limited access to sanitary facilities, doctors, psychologists, or legal assistance.”

Almost all of the people Amnesty International interviewed said they were traumatised after fleeing areas of conflict and being trapped for months on the Belarusian-Polish border.

They also suffered from serious psychological problems, including anxiety, insomnia, depression and frequent suicidal thoughts, undoubtedly exacerbated by their unnecessary metres. For most, psychological support was unavailable.

 

Retraumatised inside a military base

Many of the people who Amnesty spoke to had been in Wędrzyn detention centre, which holds up to 600 people. Overcrowding is particularly acute in this facility, where up to 24 men are detained in rooms measuring just eight square metres, Amnesty International reported.

“In 2021, the Polish authorities decreased the minimum required space for foreign detainees from three square metres per person to just two. The Council of Europe minimum standard for personal living space in prisons and detention centres is four square metres per person.”

 

European Guantánamo

People held in Wędrzyn recounted how guards greeted new detainees by saying “welcome to Guantánamo”, reports Amnesty International, adding that many of them were victims of torture in their home countries before enduring harrowing experiences both in Belarus and on the border of Poland.

The detention centre in Wędrzyn is part of an active military base. The facility’s barbed-wire walls — and the persistent sound of armoured vehicles, helicopters and gunfire from military exercises in the area — only serve to re-traumatise them.

 

Deshumanised

“Most days we were woken up by the sounds of tanks and helicopters, followed by gunshots and explosions. This would go on all day, sometimes. When you have nowhere to go, no activities [to] take your mind off it or a space for even a brief respite, this is intolerable,” Khafiz, a Syrian refugee, told Amnesty International.

“After all the torture in prison in Syria, threats to my family, and then months on the road, I think I was finally broken in Wędrzyn.”

The human rights defender organisation also reported that, in Lesznowola Detention Centre, detainees said that guards’ treatment left them feeling dehumanised.

Nearly all those interviewed reported consistently disrespectful and verbally abusive behaviour, racist remarks and other practices that indicated psychological ill-treatment.

Men who Amnesty International interviewed uniformly complained about the manner in which body searches were conducted. When people were transferred from one detention centre to another, they were forced to undergo a strip search at each facility, even though they were in state custody at all times.

 

Violent forcible returns

Amnesty International interviewed several people who were forcibly returned as well as some who avoided return and remain in detention in Poland.

Many said the Polish border guards who conducted the returns coerced them into signing documents in Polish that they suspected included incriminating information in order to justify their returns.

They also said that, in some cases, border guards used excessive force, such as tasers, restrained people with handcuffs, and even sedated those being returned.

Authorities attempted to forcibly return Yezda, a 30-year old Kurdish woman, with her husband and three small children, says Amnesty International. “After being told that the family would be returned to Iraq, Yezda panicked and screamed and pleaded with the guards not to take them.”

 

“I was ready to die in Poland”

She threatened to take her life and became extremely agitated. “I knew I could not go back to Iraq and I was ready to die in Poland. While I was crying like that, two guards restrained me and my husband, tied our hands behind our backs, and a doctor gave us an injection that made us very weak and sleepy.”

Yezda said that she broke her foot as she fought the guards who tried to put her on the plane. Yezda and her family were returned to Warsaw after the airline refused to take them to Iraq. They remain in a camp in Poland for now.

Volunteers and activists have been barred from accessing the border of Poland and Belarus, and some have even faced prosecution for trying to help people cross the border, added Amnesty International.

 

Stranded

“Hundreds of people fleeing conflict in the Middle East and other parts of the world remain stranded on the border between Belarus and Poland. The Polish government must immediately stop push backs. They are illegal no matter how the government tries to justify them.”

 

Cruelty at Europe’s other borders

In its report: Poland: Cruelty not compassion, at Europe’s other borders, Amnesty International explained that the rapid relief effort at the border, exceptional generosity of civil society and willingness of Polish authorities to receive people fleeing from Ukraine contrast starkly with the Polish government’s hostility toward refugees and migrants who have arrived in the country via Belarus since July 2021.

“Hundreds of people who crossed from Belarus have been arbitrarily detained in Poland in appalling conditions and without access to a fair asylum proceeding. Many have been forcibly returned to their countries of origin, some under sedation. In addition, hundreds of people remain stranded inside Belarus and face increasingly desperate conditions.”

By Vani S. Kulkarni
PHILADELPHIA, Apr 22 2022 (IPS)

The Karnataka court’s verdict to uphold the hijab ban has intensified the protest in the state. The row has been typically perceived by many as manufactured by the politicians pointing to the culture of politics in the state. While the jury is still out there on this, evidence on how state’s local culture constructs and deconstructs religious identity allows drawing conclusions with some definitiveness. The culture of state’s politics is one side of the coin. Considering its flip side – politics of culture, particularly of the religious cultural identity, is just as relevant.

Vani S. Kulkarni

Few years ago (between 2014-early 2020), as I travelled for many months across various villages and towns of Karnataka observing and interviewing rural and semi-urban community dwellers about their experiences with RSBY health insurance scheme, two stories, both related to value of health insurance, surfaced repeatedly. One was a story of public valuing health insurance for reasons beyond the visible economic and infrastructural ones. The other was a story of fairly uneven degree of value and use of health insurance provision among the public. It is the latter story that provides evidence of the politics of religious culture, and thus provides some context to better understand the Hijab row in the state. A striking pattern of the unevenness, among other forms, was the difference among households in the value and eventual use of health insurance along religious lines, especially between Hindus and Muslims. Both Hindus and Muslim households agreed that the latter, more than the former households, fervently sought the possession of and use the health insurance provision. Such proclivity by Muslim households, however, was not perceived kindly. While the resentment often was not articulated candidly for the fear of backlash in the community, there was certainly an underlying tension. As one Hindu household indicated: “we all know that Muslim households are overusers of any government provisions, including health services, but we rather not talk about it because they are all neighbours and it will cause chaos in the neighborhood.” However, not everyone exercised restraint in expressing their resentment. In fact, the antipathy toward Muslims was very loud in some quarters that simultaneously expressed disapproval for the Hindus’ lukewarm interest as well as sympathy for their fellow Hindu households for not getting a fair share of the government provisions. The remark of one Hindu household summed up such a sentiment: “Hindus means hinda (Kannada word for behind). Muslims means munda (Kannada word for ahead). Muslims are always ahead in the queue to avail the free resources and Hindus have to wait their turn. We get fed-up waiting, and eventually do not use the resources.”

Interestingly, Muslims used the same description of munda and hinda except from a different perspective: “we muslims are munda to make use of government provided resources”, a Muslim household member remarked, “but we are forced to be ahead because Hindus have pushed us hinda (behind) in accessing the higher quality resources.”

While such dissonance with sharing of valued-resources with a group that was religiously distinct was telling, it was around the dress code – wearing of the hijab, burqa and niqab wearing that the binary distinction – hinda and munda, sharpened.

The remark of a Hindu woman summed up such an ethos: “how can we access health insurance when large number of Muslim women in their long hijabs and long burqas are always in the queue ahead of us? The burqas certainly help them to hide their faces but the dress also makes them hypervisible to the hospital staff and that is how they end up being ahead of us using up all the time and space at the hospital. The burqas may hide their faces but they also make us invisible to the doctors and nurses because we get hidden behind their large burqas, and thus get left behind.”

Burqa ban isn’t unique to Karnataka. Many countries in the west have banned these articles of clothing and the justification for the ban globally ranges from concern about national security, integration into the mainstream society and feminist arguments such as, promoting women’s liberation. However, the cultural contexts in which bans operate are certainly unique and need to be explored. In Karnataka, the ban has surfaced in the colleges and in the education sphere at large but, as the evidence on reaction to the availing of health services indicates, the dissonance is much more deep-seated and widespread. While officially the ban is justified on grounds of need for uniformity and wearing of hijab is not seen as necessary to religious practice, such top-down rationale needs to be understood within the context of everyday local, cultural perception that Muslims are a threat to fair share of valued resources, including education and health of the country. Burqa and hijab are identity markers serving as reminders of presence of minorities, and even as the presence of the “other” who are being out of their place if they are spotted accessing valued resources. There exists a cognitive dissonance with the idea, practice and sight of burqa population in spaces where valued resources are available. It is politics of cultural identity of Muslims – the scepticism and sometimes intolerance for them as beneficiaries. The need for uniformity, social integration and women’s liberation as the top-down narrative (culture of politics) while serving as some explanation for the hijab ban, is at best a partial one. It is an intricate interaction on the ground between development and cultural perception of inclusion (or exclusion) of certain populations in the developkment process (politics of culture) that provides important clues to Karnataka’s hijab row. The latter narrative is made significant by its absence. I fear an unintended consequence of the hijab ban maybe deepening the schism between Hindus and Muslims.

Vani S. Kulkarni, Department of Sociology, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, USA

IPS UN Bureau

 

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Russia, which held the rotating presidency of the UN Security Council last month, cast its veto on a resolution condemning the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Credit: United Nations

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Apr 22 2022 (IPS)

The five permanent members (P5) of the UN Security Council (UNSC) – UK, US, France, China and Russia – have exercised their veto powers primarily to protect their own national interests or the interests of their close political and military allies.

But a proposed new resolution before the General Assembly (GA)– entitled “Standing mandate for a General Assembly debate when a veto is cast in the Security Council”—is an attempt to undermine the veto in a move likely to be supported by a majority of the 193 member states.

As of last week, the resolution had 57 co-sponsors—and counting.

US Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield told reporters the United States was one of the co-sponsors of the resolution, spearheaded by a core group of Member States led by Liechtenstein.

“This innovative measure would automatically convene a meeting of the General Assembly after a veto has been cast in the Security Council,” she said.

As negotiated in 1945, she pointed out, the UN Charter entrusts in the five Permanent Members of the Security Council the ability to prevent the adoption of a resolution through a veto – a mechanism long the subject of institutional debate.

“The United States takes seriously its privilege of veto power; it is a sober and solemn responsibility that must be respected by those Permanent Members to whom it has been entrusted,” she declared.

US Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield at a Security Council meeting. Credit: United Nations

When a Permanent Member casts a veto, that member should be prepared to explain why the resolution at issue would not have furthered the maintenance of international peace and security, said Ambassador Thomas-Greenfield.

“Unfortunately, not all members of the Security Council share this sentiment. We are particularly concerned by Russia’s shameful pattern of abusing its veto privilege over the past two decades, including its vetoes to kill a UN observer mission in Georgia, block accountability measures and chemical weapons investigations in Syria, prevent the establishment of a criminal tribunal on the downing of flight MH-17 over Ukraine, and protect President Putin from condemnation over his unprovoked and unjust war of choice against Ukraine.”

The General Assembly resolution on the veto, she declared, will be a significant step toward the accountability, transparency, and responsibility of all of the Permanent Members of the Security Council members who wield its power.

https://research.un.org/en/docs/sc/quick

Stephen Zunes, Professor of Politics and International Studies at the University of San Francisco, who has written extensively on the politics of the Security Council, told IPS the General Assembly Resolution 377, adopted back in 1950, gives the GA the authority to make recommendations for collective action in the event that the Security Council fails to act as required to maintain international security and peace.

He pointed out that the General Assembly has invoked this resolution on four occasions when a widely supported resolution was blocked by a veto: in 1950, in regard to the Korean War; in 1981, regarding Namibia; and in 1980 and 1997, involving resolutions concerning Palestine.

“There is some irony in the United States pushing for a more active role for the General Assembly, given that three of those four cases were in response to a U.S. veto. Indeed, over the past fifty years, Washington has been responsible for far more vetoes than any other Security Council member”.

Of the 72 U.S. vetoes of Security Council resolutions, the United States was the sole negative vote in 63 of them, he said.

Asked about a proposal from an Asian country, back in the late 1970s, calling for a double-veto as more effective, instead of a single veto, Zunes said it “certainly has merit”. “But since it would require amending the UN Charter, it is not only likely that Russia would block it, but probably the United States as well”.

The proposed resolution “decides,” among other things, “that the President of the General Assembly shall convene a formal meeting of the Assembly within ten working days of the casting of a veto by one or more permanent members of the Security Council, to hold a debate on the situation as to which the veto was cast, provided that the General Assembly does not meet in an Emergency Special Session on the same situation.”

James Paul, who authored “Of Foxes and Chickens: Oligarchy and Global Power in the UN Security Council,” told IPS that ever since the founding of the UN in 1945, the great majority of UN member states have insisted that vetoes in the Security Council hobble action to preserve the peace.

Experts have often pointed out that the veto keeps many important matters outside of Council action entirely.

“Though the five veto-wielding Permanent Members have never agreed to an alteration of their veto powers, smaller countries in the UN General Assembly have sought to weaken the veto, through procedures and actions that delegitimize veto-use and protest against veto-protected aggression and other breaches of the peace by the most powerful governments,” he argued.

A group of like-minded countries, keen on strengthening international peace and legality (and protecting themselves from larger aggressors), has launched the current initiative, building on opposition to the Russian veto of a Council resolution condemning its invasion of Ukraine.

This initiative, he said, would automatically trigger a General Assembly debate anytime the veto is used in the Security Council. In theory, an Assembly debate (even though non-binding) might be a disincentive to veto-use by a Permanent Member. Even if the embarrassment of a debate would not always act as a brake on the arrogance of powerful states, it would be worth implementing

Andreas Bummel, executive director of the Berlin-based Democracy Without Borders, told IPS: “We strongly support Liechtenstein’s initiative that the General Assembly is to meet automatically each time a veto is cast in the Security Council.

This, he said, will force the permanent members of the council to justify their vote to the world community. The political cost of misusing the veto will be raised.

Further the General Assembly routinely will be able to consider its own measures. It’s an important step in the right direction, said Bummel.

“It is highly welcome and noteworthy that the United States is one of the co-sponsors of the proposed resolution. Obviously, they are prepared to explain any future use of the veto in front of the General Assembly and accept its subsidiary responsibility”.

In a next step, he argued, there should be an understanding that permanent members can cast no votes that are not treated as vetoes against resolutions that otherwise have a majority to pass.

“The UN’s whole setup needs to be reviewed though. Everybody knows that it’s anachronistic. Eventually, the permanent members need to be prepared to let go of their veto privilege altogether”.

In an interview with IPS, Paul warned: “We have to remember that Permanent Members have many cards to play. The United States, by far the most powerful actor on the world stage, has tremendous influence over a majority of Council members. It often can block or greatly alter Council action without having to cast a veto”.

That is why its invasion and occupation of Iraq in 2003, though initially rejected by the Council, was eventually tolerated by the same Council for many years. In the case of repeated US vetoes of Council resolutions on Israel, the US has never paid a heavy political price.

He said many observers point out that great powers like Russia and the United States constantly act in contempt of multilateralism and with scant regard for the UN and international law.

“So. we can well ask how the United Nations can succeed in a world exposed to such cynical use of violence and raw national aggrandizement. There is certainly no easy answer, but it is clear that those who seek to undermine the veto and expand the potential of international law are on the right course”.

“One day, we can hope, we will prevail,” he said..

Meanwhile, a proposal to reform the Security Council has dragged on for more than two decades, with four strong contenders for permanent seats, namely Germany, India, Japan and Brazil.

But if they do eventually succeed in their attempts, they have to put up with what is best described as “second-class citizenship”, because the P5 have given no indications that any new comers to their ranks will be offered veto powers.

Still, African leaders have long insisted they will not accept any permanent memberships in the UNSC, without veto powers.

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

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Elizabeth Cuenca, Jesusa Flores, Flora Huamán and Ángela Oviedo (from left to right) stand in the agroecological garden they tend with 10 other women in Rodrigo Bueno, a poor neighborhood in Buenos Aires. In the background loom the high-rises of Puerto Madero, the most modern and sought-after neighborhood in the Argentine capital. CREDIT: Daniel Gutman/IPS

By Daniel Gutman
BUENOS AIRES, Apr 21 2022 (IPS)

The space consists of just 300 square meters full of green where there is an agro-ecological vegetable garden and nursery, which are the work and dream of 14 women. Behind it can be seen the imposing silhouettes of the high rises that are a symbol of the most modern and sought-after part of Argentina’s capital city.

But the Vivera Orgánica (Organic Nursery) forms part of another reality: it is located in a low-income neighborhood which has been transformed in recent years thanks to the work of local residents and to government support.

“We started with the idea of growing some fresh vegetables for our families. And today we are a cooperative that opens its doors to the neighborhood and also sells to people who come from all over the city, and to companies,” Peruvian immigrant Elizabeth Cuenca, who came to Buenos Aires from her country in 2010 and settled in this neighborhood on the banks of the La Plata River, tells IPS.

The Barrio Rodrigo Bueno emerged as a shantytown in the 1980s on flood-prone land in the south of Buenos Aires.

It is just a few blocks from Puerto Madero, an area occupied for decades by abandoned port warehouses, which since the 1990s has been renovated and gentrified, experiencing a real estate boom that has made it the most sought-after by the wealthy in Buenos Aires.

The contrast between the exposed brick houses of Rodrigo Bueno, separated by narrow, often muddy corridors, and the slick glassy 40- or 50-story skyscrapers built between the wide streets of Puerto Madero became a powerful image of inequality in Greater Buenos Aires, a megacity of nearly 15 million inhabitants.

However, today things are completely different in Rodrigo Bueno, named after a popular singer who suffered a tragic death in 2000.

It is one of the four shantytowns in the city (out of a total of about 40, according to official figures) that are in the process of urbanization – or “socio-urban integration”, as the Buenos Aires city government describes the process.

Since 2017, streets have been widened and paved, infrastructure for public service delivery was brought in, and 46 buildings with 612 new apartments were built, which now house nearly half of the neighborhood’s roughly 1,500 families.

Many of the old precarious houses were demolished while others still stand alongside the brand-new apartments, awarded to their new owners with 30-year loans.

“When the urbanization process began to be discussed, we started having skills and trades workshops and there was one on gardening, which was attended by many women who, although we lived in the same neighborhood, did not know each other,” says Cuenca.

“That’s how we learned, we organized ourselves and were able to get a space for the Vivera, which we inaugurated in December 2019. Today we sell vegetables and especially seedlings for people who want to start their own vegetable gardens at home. We don’t earn wages, but we generate an income,” she adds.

The paving of streets is progressing in the Rodrigo Bueno neighborhood, which first emerged as a shantytown on the banks of the La Plata River, where previously almost all the houses were accessed through narrow corridors, most of them made of exposed bricks and many of them built by the families themselves. CREDIT: Daniel Gutman/IPS

Bringing home gardens to life – and more

In just over two years, the women of the Vivera Orgánica have achieved some milestones, such as the sale of 7,000 seedlings of different vegetables to the Toyota automobile company, which gave them as gifts to its employees.

They have also sold agroecological vegetables to the swank Hilton Hotel in Buenos Aires, which is located in Puerto Madero, and have set up vegetable gardens on land owned by Enel, one of the largest electricity distributors.

But they have also earned respect from the public. “The incredible thing is that the pandemic was a great help for us, because many people who couldn’t leave their homes started to become interested in eating healthier or growing their own food. We received a lot of orders,” says Jesusa Flores, a Bolivian immigrant who is one of the founders of the Vivera.

She was working as a cleaner and caring for the elderly in family homes, when she lost her jobs due to the restrictions on movement aimed at curbing the COVID pandemic.

“La Vivera has been very important for me, because it is near our homes and we can always come here,” says Flores.

The nursery receives no government subsidies and the 14 women earn little money from it, so almost all of them have other jobs. But they are all confident that they have the potential to grow and that the nursery will become their only job in the future.

“During the worst period of the pandemic, we put together 15 boxes a day with 12 seedlings to sell, but we received 60 orders a day. We couldn’t keep up with demand,” says Angela Oviedo from Peru, who is also a member of the group.

Several women prepare the products of the Vivera Orgánica, next to part of a mural painted on the door of the container that serves as the office of their small business in a low-income neighborhood in the Argentine capital. CREDIT: Ministry of Human Development and Habitat of the City of Buenos Aires

The hurdles thrown up by informal employment

The Buenos Aires city government provides technical support for the Vivera Orgánica as part of the neighborhood’s socio-urban integration process.

Low-income sectors in Argentina have been hard-hit since the process of devaluation of the peso began four years ago, accompanied by high inflation, leading to a steep plunge in purchasing power, especially for workers in the informal economy.

In 2020 the crisis was exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, which caused the economy to shrink by 10 percent. And while almost all of the losses were recovered in 2021, the alarming fact is that most of the jobs that have been created since then are informal.

According to data from the Argentine Ministry of Labor, Employment and Social Security, in January this year there were 6,034,637 registered workers in the private sector, down from 6,273,972 in January 2018, before the start of the recession.

The Buenos Aires city government’s Ministry of Human Development and Habitat estimates that there are some 500,000 workers in the informal economy in the capital, who have been the hardest hit by inflation, which reached 6.7 percent last March, the highest rate for a single month in Argentina in the last 20 years.

Many analysts warn that poverty, which in the second half of last year fell from 40.6 percent to 37.3 percent according to the National Institute of Statistics and Census, will grow again in 2022.

A picture of some of the buildings constructed by the Buenos Aires city government in the Rodrigo Bueno neighborhood. A total of 612 new apartments have already been delivered, through 30-year loans, to the families that lived closest to the river and were most exposed to pollution in this poor neighborhood in the Argentine capital. CREDIT: Daniel Gutman/IPS

Assistance in joining the formal sector

“In poor neighborhoods there are many businesses, but the problem is that because of the situation in the informal economy, they face enormous hurdles in order to grow and to be able to connect with the formal market,” explains Belén Barreto, undersecretary for the Development of Human Potential in the government of Buenos Aires.

“One issue has to do with productivity: in general, the entrepreneurs work in their own homes and are not able to scale up significantly. That is why we support the Vivera with technical assistance, so the project can reach production levels enabling it to sell in the city’s formal value chains,” she adds in an interview with IPS.

Barreto says that another obstacle has to do with marketing: entrepreneurs find it difficult to sell their products outside the environment in which they live, despite the growth of on-line sales.

“That is why our focus is on linking these small businesses with companies so that they can become their suppliers in order to earn a more sustainable income and scale up their production through a new market. Last Christmas we held business roundtables and managed to get more companies to buy gifts from the social and popular economy, for a total of 17 million pesos (about 150,000 dollars),” she adds.

Finally, to address the problem of access to credit for informal workers, in 2021 the Buenos Aires city government created the Social Development Fund (Fondes), a public-private fund for the social and popular economy.

The steady growth of the informal economy also prompted the local government to create last year the Registry of Productive Units of the Popular and Social Economy, which allows access to tax benefits and has so far registered some 3,000 self-managed units.

The transformation of the neighborhood has also brought greater opportunities for local residents, who are often victims of discrimination and prejudice.

Cuenca, for example, explains that “we didn’t used to have an address to give when we were looking for a job, and it was very unlikely that we would get called back.”

She sees the Vivera Orgánica as another tool for a more dignified life: “This project is part of the neighborhood and part of us; we now feel that we have different prospects.”

“At a time when the people of the UK have opened their hearts and homes to Ukrainians, the government is choosing to act with cruelty and rip up their obligations to others fleeing war and persecution” says HRW report. Credit: UNOHCR

By Baher Kamal
MADRID, Apr 21 2022 (IPS)

In what looks pretty much like an ‘operation clean sweep’ aiming at getting rid of more and more migrants, refugees and asylum seekers by shipping them far away, the process of ‘externalisation’ of millions of victims of wars, poverty, climate crisis and political persecution, is now growing fast

In fact, in a short period of time, reports by major human rights organisations have revealed how the US and Europe, in addition to Australia, are increasingly sending migrants, refugees and asylum seekers to other countries, regardless of their human rights records.

“They then turn the migrants over to masked men, who force them onto small boats, take them to the middle of the Evros River, and force them into the frigid water, making them wade to the riverbank on the Turkish side. None are apparently being properly registered in Greece or allowed to lodge asylum claims.”

Take the case, for example, of the United Kingdom, which plans to ship asylum seekers to Rwanda, a proceeding that Human Rights Watch (HRW) has classified as a “cruelty itself.”

In a report by Yasmine Ahmed and Emilie McDonnell, the two human rights defenders said that shirking its obligations to persons seeking asylum at its shores, the UK government has on 14 April 2022 signed an agreement with Rwanda to send asylum seekers crossing the English Channel there.

“Under the new Asylum Partnership Arrangement, people arriving in the UK irregularly or who arrived irregularly since January 1, 2022 may be sent to Rwanda on a one-way ticket to have their asylum claim processed and, if recognized as refugees, to be granted refugee status there.”

 

Victims of ‘their’ wars

It should be noted that many of the shipped migrants, refugees and asylum seekers are victims of long wars launched by US-led coalitions with the intensive participation of the United Kingdom’s military forces.

Such is the case, for example, of the war in Afghanistan (which lasted 20 years); in Iraq and in Libya, let alone Syria (now entering its tewlveth year), and the huge Western weapons sales to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates to fuel their continued bombing on Yemen (so far for over seven years).

 

Cruel, ineffective and likely unlawful

The Human Rights Watch report said that the UK is arguing that offshoring asylum seekers to Rwanda complies with its international legal obligations.

“However, offshore processing is not only cruel and ineffective, but also very likely to be unlawful,” add Yasmine Ahmed and Emilie McDonnell.

“It creates a two-tiered refugee system that discriminates against one group based on their mode of arrival, despite refugee status being grounded solely on the threat of persecution or serious harm and international standards recognizing that asylum seekers are often compelled to cross borders irregularly to seek protection.”

 

UN “firmly” opposed

The deal reportedly made by the United Kingdom to send some migrants for processing and relocation to the Central African nation of Rwanda, are at odds with States’ responsibility to take care of those in need of protection, the UN refugee agency, UNHCR, said on 14 April 2022.

In an initial response, UNHCR spelled out that it was not a party to negotiations that have taken place between London and Kigali, which it is understood were part of an economic development partnership.

According to news reports, UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson, has said the scheme costing around $160 million, would “save countless lives” from human trafficking, and the often treacherous water crossing between southern England and the French coast, known as the English Channel, UNHCR explained.

“UNHCR remains firmly opposed to arrangements that seek to transfer refugees and asylum seekers to third countries in the absence of sufficient safeguards and standards,” said UNHCR’s Assistant High Commissioner for Protection, Gillian Triggs.

Triggs described the arrangements as shifting asylum responsibilities and evading international obligations that are “contrary to the letter and spirit of the Refugee Convention.”

 

Rwanda’s “appalling human rights record”

Furthermore, Rwanda’s appalling human rights record is well documented, the two human rights activists went on. In 2018, Rwandan security forces shot dead at least 12 refugees from the Democratic Republic of Congo when they protested a cut to food rations.


Extrajudicial killings

According to the Human Rights Watch’s report ”Rwanda has a known track record of extrajudicial killings, suspicious deaths in custody, unlawful or arbitrary detention, torture, and abusive prosecutions, particularly targeting critics and dissidents.”

In fact, the UK directly raised its concerns about respect for human rights with Rwanda, and grants asylum to Rwandans who have fled the country, including four just last year.

“At a time when the people of the UK have opened their hearts and homes to Ukrainians, the government is choosing to act with cruelty and rip up their obligations to others fleeing war and persecution.”

 

Greece: Migrants stripped, robbed, and forced to Turkey

Just one week earlier, Human Rights Watch on 7 April 2022 reported from Athens that Greek security forces are employing third country nationals, men who appear to be of Middle Eastern or South Asian origin, to push asylum seekers back at the Greece-Turkey land border.

The 29-page report “Their Faces Were Covered’: Greece’s Use of Migrants as Police Auxiliaries in Pushbacks,” found that Greek police are detaining asylum seekers at the Greece-Turkey land border at the Evros River, in many cases stripping them of most of their clothing and stealing their money, phones, and other possessions.

“They then turn the migrants over to masked men, who force them onto small boats, take them to the middle of the Evros River, and force them into the frigid water, making them wade to the riverbank on the Turkish side. None are apparently being properly registered in Greece or allowed to lodge asylum claims.”

There can be no denying that the Greek government is responsible for the illegal pushbacks at its borders, and using proxies to carry out these illegal acts does not relieve it of any liability, said Bill Frelick, refugee and migrant rights director at Human Rights Watch.

“The European Commission should urgently open legal proceedings and hold the Greek government accountable for violating EU laws prohibiting collective expulsions.”

Human Rights Watch interviewed 26 Afghan migrants and asylum seekers, 23 of whom were pushed back from Greece to Turkey across the Evros River between September 2021 and February 2022.

The 23 men, 2 women, and a boy said they were detained by men they believed to be Greek authorities, usually for no more than 24 hours with little to no food or drinking water, and pushed back to Turkey.

“The men and boy provided first hand victim or witness accounts of Greek police or men they believed to be Greek police beating or otherwise abusing them.”

 

Greece uses of migrants as police auxiliaries in pushbacks

Sixteen of those interviewed by Human Rights Watch said the boats taking them back to Turkey were piloted by men who spoke Arabic or the South Asian languages common among migrants.

“They said most of these men wore black or commando-like uniforms and used balaclavas to cover their faces. Three people interviewed were able to talk with the men ferrying the boats. The boat pilots told them they were also migrants who were employed by the Greek police with promises of being provided with documents enabling them to travel onward.”

Pushbacks violate multiple human rights norms, including the prohibition of collective expulsion under the European Convention on Human Rights, the right to due process in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the right to seek asylum under EU asylum law and the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights, and the principle of non refoulement under the 1951 Refugee Convention, Human Rights Watch noted.

 

Some are more “real refugees” than others

On March 1, Greece’s migration minister, Notis Mitarachi, declared before the Hellenic Parliament that Ukrainians were the “real refugees,” implying that those on Greece’s border with Turkey are not.

Reacting to this, Bill Frelick, refugee and migrant rights director at Human Rights Watch, said that at a time when Greece welcomes Ukrainians as ‘real refugees,’ it conducts cruel pushbacks on Afghans and others fleeing similar war and violence.

“The double standard makes a mockery of the purported shared European values of equality, rule of law, and human dignity.” (To be continued).

Mit Al Korama’s youth (left) spent five months at the warehouse waiting for the trip to Italy (Ahmed Emad is in the middle and Ibrahim Abdullah is on the left). The group (right) during their kidnapping ordeal by Libyan militias. The group were waiting for the ransom to be paid. Credit: Supplied

By Hisham Allam
Cairo, Egypt, Apr 21 2022 (IPS)

Last June, Mit Al Korama’s youth gathered in front of one of their homes on a summer evening to tell stories of citizens from the village and neighboring villages who had successfully crossed the Mediterranean to Europe.

Some, they heard, returned with a large sum of money and built European-style homes for their families. Others chose to stay in the European Union and encouraged their brothers to do so.

A young man in his thirties from Talkha named “Mohamed Fakih” was among the group, and he said he assisted many people illegally migrating to the Italian coasts.

Despite the Egyptian government’s warnings against illegal immigration and not visiting Libya, some young people continue to attempt to migrate illegally to Italy via Libya. Egyptian and Libyan smugglers put them at risk of drowning or kidnapping by gangs and armed militias demanding ransoms.

Fakih informed the Mit Al Korama youth that spots on a boat leaving for Italy in ten days were available. That spot could be theirs if they paid him 5000 US dollars.

Ahmed Emad, a 27-year-old with a diploma in tourism and hotels but no job, was one of five young people from the village keen on seeking a better life in Europe. To fund this trip to Italy, his family sold everything they owned and borrowed the rest.

Ahmed Emad’s story of a dream for riches in Europe is one experienced by many desperate youths seeking a better life. Credit: Supplied

“The mediator directed us to the Egyptian-Libyan border city of Salloum, where we met a group of smugglers who assisted us in crossing the border through mountain roads and out of sight of border guards. We arrived in Al-Masad, Libya,” Emad told IPS. “The smugglers began to treat us differently there.”

“As soon as we arrived, they pushed us into a huge building full of smuggled goods, fuel, sheep and cows, and people like us waiting for their turn to emigrate,” Emad added.

The smugglers never stopped abusing and insulting the immigrants in the warehouse. When they complained to Fakih, the mediator who had taken their money, he advised them to wait patiently until the boat arrived to take the group to their final destination.

“We were held captive in the warehouse for five and a half months, sleeping in the cow barn, drinking from empty gasoline containers, and eating only one meal per day,” Emad added.

Emad Eldanaf, his father, said they had no contact with the smugglers in Libya and were initially unable to reach the young men, making them highly anxious. Finally, contact was made.

“There were 28 men from our village on the boat. The most recent group returned in the last two weeks, and we’re still negotiating with the militia about the remaining three,” Eldanaf told IPS.

Emad’s experiences were mirrored by Ibrahim Abdullah and his younger brother Kamal.

“We moved between several warehouses between Sabratha and Zuwara – 120 km west of Tripoli. On the eve of November 9, they told us we would sail from the Ajilat coast to Italy in hours,” Abdullah told IPS.

“Eventually, we all moved to the boat, about 50 of us.”

The boat set sail at 11 pm.

“By dawn, water was seeping into the boat. We tried to drain the water until we became frustrated,” Abdullah explained. “Death was only a few feet away.”

According to Abdullah, the immigrants requested assistance from the Italian authorities, who said they would wait until the boat was closer to the Italian coast before intervening.

Tunisian authorities also ignored them. It was evident that they would sink with the boat and perish.

“We knew calling the Libyans would get us arrested, but we went ahead and did it anyway,” Abdullah said, explaining their desperation.

“At noon, Libyan militia troops captured us and transported us to Tripoli port, splitting us into two groups, one sent to Prison 55 and the other in Bir Al Ghanam prison.

Bir al-Ghanam is a town in western Libya, located south of Zawiya. It was the site of several battles during the Libyan Civil War. Anti-Gaddafi forces took control of it on August 7, 2011, just weeks before taking Tripoli.

“We were referred to as ‘the goods’ by Libyan militias. They made us wish for death to be free of this agony. My father agreed to pay the ransom for our release after I pleaded with him,” Abdullah recalls. “When the militias suspected that some families would not pay the ransom, they killed the detainees and threw their bodies in the desert. Two members of my group died and were thrown into the desert without being buried.”

Emad, Kamal, and Abdullah remained with their militia for another four months. Lice and scabies were their lieutenants the entire time. Finally, their family reached an agreement with the kidnappers, agreeing to pay US dollars 6000 for Kamal and Abdullah, while Emad’s family had to pay US dollars 5000 to free him.

Haj Riad, a Libyan smuggler, acted as the middleman in the ransom payment. The money was transferred to several Libyan bank accounts, where he distributed it to militias and transported the three young men back to the Egyptian border.

Umm Ayman, a 60-year-old mother, sold a few of her land carats to raise 150,000 Egyptian Pounds (10,000 US dollars) to assist her two sons with their travels. Two of her three sons were then kidnapped with Emad and Abdullah.

A few months later, she had to sell her house, sheep, a cow, and the rest of her belongings, to pay US dollars 13,000 to have them back.

“We sold everything we owned to allow our children to travel, and we borrowed to bring them back. Even my mother’s gold earrings had to be sold to pay the ransom,” Ayman told IPS.

“When my children returned by the end of January, they sought out Fakih, the mediator, and found he had fled with his family.”

The family believes he continues to entrap victims into the vicious circle as young people try to seek a better life in Europe.

A Son’s Desperate Plea to his Father

“I beg you, father, get us out of here; my friend Muhammad Misbah is in good health, and I was on the verge of death yesterday. Do whatever it takes to get us out of here; pay the ransom, whatever it takes. You and Ibrahim’s mother try to do anything. We are so insulted here; our bodies are weak and sick. – An audio message from Ahmed Emad to his father.

 

 
This article is part of a series of features from across the globe on human trafficking. IPS coverage is supported by the Airways Aviation Group.
The Global Sustainability Network ( GSN ) is pursuing the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal number 8 with a special emphasis on Goal 8.7, which “takes immediate and effective measures to eradicate forced labour, end modern slavery and human trafficking and secure the prohibition and elimination of the worst forms of child labour, including recruitment and use of child soldiers, and by 2025 end child labour in all its forms”.
The origins of the GSN come from the endeavours of the Joint Declaration of Religious Leaders signed on 2 December 2014. Religious leaders of various faiths gathered to work together “to defend the dignity and freedom of the human being against the extreme forms of the globalization of indifference, such as exploitation, forced labour, prostitution, human trafficking”.

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

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The planet is losing 4.7 million hectares of forests every year – an area larger than Denmark, according to a new UN report. Credit: UNDP

By Baher Kamal
MADRID, Apr 20 2022 (IPS)

The gloomy picture is drawn from indisputable scientific conclusions and should be already known by everybody, in particular by decision-makers, whether they are politicians… or rather not.

Oceans filling with plastic and turning more acidic. Extreme heat, wildfires and floods, as well as a record-breaking Atlantic hurricane season, have affected millions of people. Even these days, we are still facing COVID-19, a worldwide health pandemic linked to the health of our ecosystem.

Climate change, man-made changes to nature as well as crimes that disrupt biodiversity, such as deforestation, land-use change, intensified agriculture and livestock production or the growing illegal wildlife trade, can accelerate the speed of destruction of the planet.

“Humanity is waging war on nature. This is senseless and suicidal. The consequences of our recklessness are already apparent in human suffering, towering economic losses and the accelerating erosion of life on Earth,”
António Guterres, United Nations Secretary-General

The message is clear. And it is now once more launched on the occasion of the International Mother Earth Day, marked 22 April 2022, coinciding with the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration.

“Ecosystems support all life on Earth. The healthier our ecosystems are, the healthier the planet – and its people. Restoring our damaged ecosystems will help to end poverty, combat climate change and prevent mass extinction…”

 

Making peace with nature

The UN Environment Programme (UNEP) report “Making Peace with Nature: A scientific blueprint to tackle the climate, biodiversity and pollution emergencies” translates the current state of scientific knowledge into crisp, clear and digestible facts-based messages that the world can relate to and follow up on.

“Humanity is waging war on nature. This is senseless and suicidal. The consequences of our recklessness are already apparent in human suffering, towering economic losses and the accelerating erosion of life on Earth,” said António Guterres, the United Nations Secretary General, in his forward to the report.

 

Major facts

Many staggering facts have been repeated on the occasion of Mother Earth Day. Here are just some of them:

• None of the agreed global goals for the protection of life on Earth and for halting the degradation of land and oceans have been fully met.
• Three quarters of the land and two thirds of the oceans are now impacted by humans. One million of the world’s estimated 8 million species of plants and animals are threatened with extinction, and many of the ecosystem services essential for human well- being are eroding.
• It is estimated that around one million animal and plant species are now threatened with extinction.
• The planet is losing 4.7 million hectares of forests every year – an area larger than Denmark.
• A healthy ecosystem helps to protect humans from these diseases. Biological diversity makes it difficult for pathogens to spread rapidly.
• Environmental changes are impeding progress towards ending poverty and hunger, reducing inequalities and promoting sustainable economic growth, work for all and peaceful and inclusive societies.
• The well-being of today’s youth and future generations depends on an urgent and clear break with current trends of environmental decline.
• The coming decade is crucial. Society needs to reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 45 per cent by 2030 compared to 2010 levels and reach net-zero emissions by 2050 to achieve the 1.5°C Paris Agreement target, while at the same time conserving and restoring biodiversity and minimising pollution and waste.
• Over the last 50 years, the global economy has grown nearly fivefold, due largely to a tripling in extraction of natural resources and energy that has fuelled growth in production and consumption.
• The world population has increased by a factor of two, to 7.8 billion people, and though on average prosperity has also doubled, about 1.3 billion people remain poor and some 700 million are hungry.
• The increasingly unequal and resource-intensive model of development drives environmental decline through climate change, biodiversity loss and other forms of pollution and resource degradation.

 

Over-production, over-consumption

Two more scientific worrying findings are the fact that every year, 570 million tons of food is wasted at the household level, according to the United Nations Environment Programme’s (UNEP) Food Waste Index Report 2021.

And that meanwhile over 800 million people are still hungry, and global food waste accounts for 8–10 percent of greenhouse gas emissions. Food waste accelerates the triple planetary crisis of climate change, nature and biodiversity loss, and pollution and waste.

There is plenty of information alerting against the ongoing devastating human war on Mother Nature.

Should you need to know more about what exactly is climate change and what does the Paris Agreement say? Also about what actions are being taken and who is carrying them out? What are the latest scientific reports on the subject? Are we in time to save Mother Earth? Discover it here.

 

It’s now or never

In its worth reading report Climate Change 2022: Mitigation of Climate Change, released on 4 April 2022, the Working Group III to the Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), world scientists warn that “without immediate and deep emissions reductions across all sectors, limiting global warming to 1.5°C is beyond reach.”

 

A group of domestic workers gather at their union headquarters in Rio de Janeiro for a class on the law that sets out the rights and obligations of domestic work in Brazil. Learning about the law helps these women defend their rights and combat the vulnerability many of them of them face in the solitude of their employers’ homes. CREDIT: Courtesy of STDRJ

By Mario Osava
RIO DE JANEIRO, Apr 20 2022 (IPS)

The Theater of the Oppressed helped her become aware of the triple discrimination suffered by black women in Brazil and the means to confront it, such as the Rio de Janeiro Domestic Workers Union, which she has chaired since 2018.

Maria Izabel Monteiro, 55, came to work in Rio de Janeiro when she was still a teenager, from Campos dos Goitacazes, a city of half a million inhabitants located 280 kilometers away. She has had jobs in commerce and industry, but for most of her life she has worked in other people’s homes.

She began by taking care of a sick elderly woman in Ipanema, an affluent neighborhood next to the beach of the same name. She replaced a white nurse who ate breakfast with the family. But she, the new black caregiver, did not have a place at her employers’ table.

Monteiro believes that all the prejudices of Brazilian society are concentrated in their most acute form against domestic workers, especially if they are black women. They suffer triple discrimination, for being poor black women.

This reality is often addressed by the group Marias do Brasil, created by domestic workers, which adopted the techniques of the Theater of the Oppressed, a method created by Brazilian playwright Augusto Boal (1931-2009), which turns spectators into actors to act out everyday situations and raise awareness.

“It’s pedagogical theater, not therapeutic,” said the trade unionist and actress, who works miracles to juggle her weekly shift at the union, the theater and her work as a domestic.

Monteiro lives in Duque de Caxias, a town of 930,000 near Rio de Janeiro, from where she spoke to IPS. It takes her about an hour by train and subway to get to the house where she works and to the union headquarters, near the city center, and transportation costs her about 10 dollars a day.

Sometimes she and the union directors sleep in the organization’s office to save time and the cost of transportation.

The union has 2,000 registered members, although a smaller number are active. Even though the members are women, the name of the union still uses the masculine form of the word “domesticos” rather than the feminine “domesticas” because it was founded in 1989 before gender-inclusive language came into use in Portuguese. However, the women are thinking of changing the name, as similar unions have done in other parts of the country.

Roseli Gomes do Nascimento suffers frequent acts of discrimination for being a black woman who lives in a poor neighborhood, the Rocinha favela, which sits on a hill between two of Rio de Janeiro’s wealthiest neighborhoods. CREDIT: Courtesy of RG Nascimento

Racist and anti-poor violence

Roseli Gomes do Nascimento, 60, frequently suffers acts of racism and anti-poor discrimination living in Rocinha, the largest favela or shantytown in Rio de Janeiro, which sits on a hill between two wealthy neighborhoods: São Conrado and Gávea.

A taxi driver, for example, once refused to take her from São Conrado to Copacabana, a middle-class neighborhood known for its famous beach. “He said he didn’t drive that route, but he clearly expressed his prejudice that the poor can’t afford to use cabs,” Gomes told IPS, to illustrate the aporophobia – rejection of the poor – with which she lives on a daily basis.

Being followed around by security guards in shops or being denied entry to the buildings where her employers live, until someone talks to the doormen, are other forms of hostility and prejudice faced by Gomes, who currently works as a nanny taking care of a child three days a week.

Her neighbors in Rocinha, whose population is estimated at 70,000 to 150,000, are victims of constant racist violence, “but few complain to the police,” lamented Gomes, who is now determined to speak out against the discrimination she suffers.

Racism has been a crime under Brazilian law for more than 70 years, but the law is almost never enforced.

However, several scandals involving black people tortured and killed apparently because of their skin color, and anti-racist campaigns, have made more people question the impunity surrounding racism.

The Theater of the Oppressed, a method that turns ordinary people into actors to dramatize and comprehend their own situations, helped Maria Izabel Monteiro become a social activist and president of the Domestic Workers Union of Rio de Janeiro. CREDIT: Courtesy of MI Monteiro

Unfair labor relations

Monteiro says labor relations are the greatest reflection of the oppression of black women, a lingering legacy of slavery, which was not abolished in Brazil until 1888.

The Consolidation of Labor Laws, approved in 1942 and containing many of the rights still in force today in Brazil, excluded domestic and rural workers, the very sectors where female labor is abundant.

Women account for 92 percent of domestic workers in Brazil, and black women account for two thirds. A total of 6.3 million people were employed in domestic work in 2019, prior to the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, according to official data from the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics.

More than two thirds of female domestic workers are informally employed, which facilitated massive layoffs during the pandemic. They lost 1.5 million jobs, according to Hildete Pereira de Melo, a specialist in gender and economics and professor at the Fluminense Federal University, located in a city near Rio.

As a result, the overall unemployment rate in late 2021 stood at 11.1 percent, compared to 16.8 percent for women and 19.8 percent for black women, according to the Inter-Union Department of Statistics and Socioeconomic Studies.

In 1972, a new law recognized some labor rights for women, which were consolidated and expanded by the constitution adopted in 1988. But the real breakthrough only occurred in 2013, with the approval of a constitutional amendment that established rights for domestic workers such as minimum wage, Christmas bonus, vacation days, maximum working day of eight hours and maternity leave.

In other words, they were granted almost the entire list of rights in effect under the labor legislation at the time.

But part of these conquests were lost in 2017, when Congress made labor laws more flexible, for example making it possible to pay domestic workers strictly according to the hours worked, under a new “intermittent work” contract treating them as casual workers, effectively cutting their pay, although it did maintain their rights, Monteiro said.

The Domestic Workers’ Union of Rio de Janeiro organizes talks with specialists and debates on labor rights issues with interested women. On this occasion, they were given orientation on the specific regulations for domestic work. CREDIT: Courtesy of STDRJ

Harassment and violence

Her union assists many women workers, most frequently helping them report rights violations. “But the first part of the complaint is emotional, not labor-related. We offer psychological support, and that’s where my experience in the theater has helped me out,” she said.

Harassment is the most frequent problem reported. Employers pressure domestics to get them to resign, instead of firing them, to avoid paying greater social benefits.

“Things disappear and suspicion is raised about the domestic worker, money is left lying around in visible places, as a trap to accuse them of theft, doubts are cast on what the employees say, with insistent questions such as ‘are you sure?’” Monteiro described.

The domestics feel unprotected, “they are on their own, facing their employers,” generally the husband and wife, and sometimes other family members, she said. For this reason, the union provides a lawyer and seeks a direct dialogue with the employers.

Black women occupy the last rung in terms of remuneration for work, in a ranking in which white men are first, followed by white women and black men. Black men earn more than black women, even though the latter have more schooling on average in Brazil, said researcher Pereira de Melo.

In other words, “the reward for education is higher for men than for women – inequity that rests on policies that Brazilian society should discuss,” she said.

In addition, black women account for 65.9 percent of the victims of obstetric violence and 68.8 percent of all women murdered by men, according to the Patricia Galvão Institute, dedicated to feminist-oriented communication.

This is much higher than the black proportion of the Brazilian population, which is 56 percent of the 214 million inhabitants of this South American country.

Black women comprised 66 percent of the 3,737 women murdered in 2019, according to the Atlas of Violence drawn up by the Brazilian Forum for Public Safety, a non-governmental organization of researchers, police and representatives of the justice system.

The Ethiad Towers

By Jan Lundius
STOCKHOLM, Apr 20 2022 (IPS)

I recently visited Abu Dhabi and my impressions became intermingled with worries about the war in Ukraine. I also happened to read Livy’s The Early History of Rome, written around the beginning of CE, coming across these lines:

The study of history is the best medicine for a sick mind; for in history you have a record of the infinite variety of human experience plainly set out for all to see; and in that record you can find for yourself and your country both examples and warnings; fine things to take as models, base things, rotten through and through, to avoid.

This statement and the fact that Livy highlighted decisions made by specific persons, made me think of Vladimir Putin and his recurrent references to history, while claiming that Ukraine is part of Russia and using this argument for wreaking havoc on an entire nation.

The current situation in Ukraine can be traced back to the aftermath of World War I – the splitting up of eastern Europe along ethnic demarcations, the Soviet Union’s struggle for hegemony over Ukraine, expressed through violent suppression of nationalism, struggle against other nations’ interests in the area, forced collectivization, Stalin’s political repression and several other measures with lingering effects.

Abu Dhabi´s current state of affairs is also a result of World War I, the actions of foreign nations and initiatives of a singular individual. The power exercised by Great Britain over the area that would become Abu Dhabi was however far more peaceful than Soviet Union’s and Germany’s assaults on Ukrainian wellbeing, though nevertheless largely blind and deaf to the needs and wishes of the local population. Abu Dhabi’s history was not influenced by the twisted minds of despots, like Stalin, Hitler and Putin, but impacted by a more enlightened leader – Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan.

In the early 1800s the British Empire made agreements with rulers of the seven emirates that eventually became the United Arab Emirates (UAE). The main purpose was to protect British-Indian trade routes from pirates. After piracy had been suppressed, other considerations came into play, such as a strategic need to exclude other powers from the region. Following their withdrawal from India in 1947, the British maintained their influence in Abu Dhabi, while their thirst for oil increased.

After World War I, France and Britain divided the vanquished Ottoman Empire along a straight line across the Middle East. Iraq, Iran, Palestine, Jordan and the Arabian Peninsula ended up within the British” sphere of interest”. After the Suez crisis in 1957 and the Khartoum meeting in 1967, when Arab leaders declared they would never accept the State of Israel, the British announced their intention to withdraw from all territories east of Suez. British dominance had become too expensive and precarious, though Britain still hoped to maintain control of Abu Dhabi’s so far quite unexploited oil, particularly since the Emirate’s ruler, Sheikh Shakhbut bin Sultan Al Nahyan, was considered to be opposed to all change, affected as he was” by a noble but untimely nostalgia for the traditional Arab way […] and a reluctance to part with his money.”

Competitors from Japan, France, Germany, Italy and the US swooped in on the British monopoly and consumers moved away from British goods, something that eventually spelled the end of the British/French Iraq Petroleum Company (IPC), which until the beginning of the 1960s controlled almost all oil production around the Persian Gulf.

In the early 1960’s, Abu Dhabi had no roads, no hospital, no school (except a few boys attending a Quranic school, 98 percent of the population was illiterate). It was an even worse backwater than before since cultivated pearls had put an end to revenues from pearl fishing. The emirate’s capital consisted of a stone building occasionally housing representatives of the British Government and some huts clustered around Qasr Al Hosn, the fort of the emirs of the House of Nahyan.

Abu Dhabi by the end of the 1950s

Before 1971, the Abu-dhabians were not dealing with government bureaucracy, or large organiza-tions. If they had concerns they were aired to their tribal chief when he” sat” in the majlis, commu-nity gathering. The British adventurer Wilfred Thesiger recalled a majlis when a barefooted Sheikh Zayed sat amidst “his men”. Zayed had a “a strong, intelligent face, with steady observant eyes, and his manner was quiet, but masterful […] he wore a dagger and cartridge-belt; his rifle lay on the sand beside him.” The Sheikh was respected for the “force of his character, his shrewdness, and his physical strength”. Thesiger described a world of bandits and emirs with armed retinues, several wives and slaves and a passion for falconry. His first meeting with Sheikh Zayed took place in 1948.

I thought about this while I stood by the panoramic windows of our friends’ apartment at the fifty-second floor of one of the impressive Ethiad Towers, taking in a view of the azure blue waters of the Gulf, and the luxurious Qasr al Watan, the recently constructed royal palace and centre for UAE’s government, which actually is one of the most stunning buildings I have seen. It was hard to believe that this opulent, well organized, extremely clean and very secure nation in just a few years had risen from the sands of a dirt-poor Bedouin realm.

In his five-volume epic Cities of Salt Abdelrahman Munif told how rapid modernization affected poor people in a coastal area of the Arabian peninsula. Munif’s novels are saturated in symbolism, have no heroes, while thousands of names and persons pass by, creating an intricate web of voices and stories. Most stories are concentrated to an imaginary town/state called Harran, which reminds of almost any town in the Arab oil rich peninsula – a world of myths, tales and songs, which gradually turns into a vision of a modern society with all its complications and differences between rich and poor, the powerful and the powerless, folk religion and secularism.

Munif’s stories provide depth and understanding to the transformation of Abu Dhabi; how oil, sud-denly erupted from the barren ground and changed everything. How difficult it was for people to adapt to and benefit from this change, while old ideas linger under the surface.

In the case of Munif, whose books are forbidden in Saudi Arabia, though allowed in the UAE, it is evident that he considered the present rulers of oil rich Arabian countries to be blinded by greed and power. However, my short visit to Abu Dhabi made me assume that this nation’s development differed from Munif´s bleak view and one reason for this might have been the personality of Sheikh Zayed.

In 1966, Thesiger’s friend Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan ousted his brother Sheikh Shakhbut and become the authoritative ruler of Abu Dhabi. He had realized the importance of public backing in return for improvements in living standard, including jobs, homes, health care and education. After the British withdrawal in 1967 Sheikh Zayed opened his country to a massive immigration of skilled workers, though a clause stated that an expatriate could apply for citizenship only after residing in the country for no less than 30 years. Nevertheless, similar rights and obligations were to be applied to all inhabitants of the country.

Obligatory schooling for boys and girls was introduced, universities were founded, freedom of religion established, though state censorship of all media maintained. Roads were constructed and common access to drinkable water and health care secured. Above all, Sheikh Zayed renegotiated oil concession agreements, securing that Abu Dhabi obtained the majority of the shares in all oil production, ending a British monopoly on oil extraction.

Apart from consolidating the wealth and power of Abu Dhabi, Sheikh Zayed was also the driving force for uniting the Gulf emirates and on 2 December 1971 the UAE was proclaimed. Currently, the Federation has a yearly GDP of approximately 400 billion USD, with a third emanating from oil revenues, of which Abu Dhabi accounts for nearly 94 percent. Efforts to limit oil dependency are impressive; far-reaching innovations are made to introduce non-fossil fuelled energy, water desalination, and recycling.

Of the 9.9 million people currently living in the UAE, approximately 12 percent are UAE citizens, while the remaining 88 percent are expatriate workers. UAE’s rulers answered to their citizens needs and demands by providing general well-being and security and it appears as if they in a similar manner currently are limiting expats’ political participation, appeasing them by offering a steady income, and security.

However, concerns are voiced that an economy which currently moves from oil dependency to-wards becoming dependent on commerce, financial services, real estate and tourism is attracting money laundering, trafficking and other illegal activities. A situation that might be worsened by the unchecked power of a few wealthy individuals.

The emirs of UAE’s member states continue to be supreme rulers and no political parties are al-lowed. Admittedly, a Majlis functions as legislative body – 40 members are chosen by the Federa-tion’s rulers, while 20 are elected by a hand-picked group constituted by 12 percent of UAE citi-zens. However, the Majlis has only advisory powers.

Abu Dhabi is governed by the Nahyan family, which 200 male members share a wealth of 150 bil-lion USD. Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed has for 18 years been the emir of Abu Dhabi and president of the UAE. He is also one of London’s wealthiest landlords, where his property empire is worth £5.5 billion and furthermore owner of Azzam, the world’s largest and most luxurious yacht.

After Sheikh Khalifa in 2014 allegedly suffered a stroke, his thirteen years younger half-brother Crown Prince Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Deputy Supreme Commander of the UAE’s Armed Forces, became de facto ruler of Abu Dhabi. Among other tasks the prince is in charge UAE’s for-eign relations. UAE is currently an essential member of a Saudi-led coalition that wages war in Yemen.

Putin has called Zayed Al Nahyan, colloquially known as MBZ, an “old friend” and regularly talks with him on the phone. MBZ brokered talks between Russia and the Trump Administration and appears to be an integrated member of a secretive, global world, where big money and friendship are intermingled in a manner that is almost impossible to entangle.

In the greater scheme of things, the UAE is actually operating outside a conventional “liberal, Western-based system” and is increasingly becoming more aligned towards the east. The UAE is China’s largest Arab trade partner and accounts for 28 percent of China’s total non-oil trade with the region, serving as focal point for the re-export of Chinese goods to the wider Middle East and Africa. Furthermore, in recent years the UAE has sided more often with Russia than with the US, including rapprochement with Syria’s Bashar al-Assad and Libya’s Khalifa Haftar, both backed by Russia. One reason for seeking Russian support is that the UAE, together with Saudi Arabia and Israel, fears Iran and Shia-backed militia like Hezbollah and Yemen’s Houthis. The UAE is currently buying arms from Russia and Vladimir Putin and MBZ did less than a month ago discuss ways to ensure stability to the energy market, at the same time as UAE continues to perform its political balancing act between East and West and has for example sent 100 tonnes of humanitarian aid and ambulances to Ukraine.

From being a poor, Bedouin nation Abu Dhabi is now a wealthy and influential player on the global scene. It remains to be seen if its leaders from its unique history, in Livy’s words, have learned to recognize “fine things to take as models, and base things, rotten through and through, to avoid.”

Main sources: Al Fahim, Mohammed A. J. (2013) From Rags to Riches: A Story of Abu Dhabi. Abu Dhabi: Makarem. Maitra, Jyanti and Afra Al-Hajji (2016) Qasr Al Hosn: The History of the Rulers of Abu Dhabi 1793-1966. Abu Dhabi: National Archives. Munif, Abdelrahman (1987) Cities of Salt. New York: Vintage. Thesiger, Wilfred (1991) Arabian Sands. London: Penguin.

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A woman uses a three-stone fire. The method consumes a lot of mangrove wood, which is impacting the livelihoods of the local community. By growing fast-growing trees, the pressure on the mangrove is lessened. Credit: Joyce Chimbi/IPS

By Joyce Chimbi
Nairobi, Kenya, Apr 20 2022 (IPS)

Despite an abundance of fisheries reserves along Kwale County’s lush coastline located on the south coast of Kenya, fishers can no longer cast a net just past the coral reef and expect an abundant crab or prawn harvest.

Fishing is the community bedrock accounting for at least 80 percent of the economy, and Mwanamvua Kassim Zara, a local fish trader, tells IPS fish stock has declined significantly.

Fish prices are at an all-time high, especially for Dagaa, a tiny silverfish and a household staple food in Vanga Bay Village. Vanga bay is one of 40 boat landing sites in the coastal Kwale County.

“I buy a bucket of fish from the fishermen at 40 to 45 dollars, up from 20 to 25 dollars. The high prices are then transferred to our customers who buy one kilogram of boiled, dried, and salted fish at 3 dollars up from 2 (dollars),” she says.

Experts say these are effects of climate change driven and accelerated by human activity, and the community is feeling the heat.

“The community’s attempts to diversify into maize and rice farming have been unsuccessful because of very high tides from the Indian Ocean and consequent flooding of adjacent paths and rice farms. Another effect of climate change,” says Richard Mwangi from Kenya Forest Services.

More than twenty years ago, this was not the case. The community’s first line of defence against Indian Ocean related catastrophes was intact due to an expansive Vanga Forest spanning over 4,428 hectares, approximately 10,900 acres.

Since then, approximately 18 hectares of mangroves have been lost every year for over 25 years due to over-harvesting of mangroves for fuel and cheap building material, according to the Kenya Forest Service.

“Despite a decline in fish population and scarcity in certain fish species, Vanga is still reliant on fishing, and small-scale fish traders solely use wood fuel to boil dagaa for sale. At least 87 percent of households in this community rely on mangrove wood for energy,” Mwangi tells IPS.

Destruction of the forest has significantly compromised Vanga Bay’s Ocean ecosystems, says Professor Jacinta Kimiti of South Eastern Kenya University’s School of Environment, Water & Natural Resources.

“Coastal ecosystems are extremely important in capturing carbon emissions and supporting livelihoods such as fishing and tourism. Importantly, mangrove forests are a breeding area for fish,” she says.

Left vulnerable and exposed to a myriad of climate change-related challenges, the community is taking the pressure off the mangrove forest by planting at least two hectares of fast-growing tree species to meet the community’s domestic energy needs. These five acres of woodlots will be used by three adjacent villages, Vanga, Jimbo and Kiwegu.

Zara says the community is open to more effective fish preparation technologies to protect mangroves because current methods rely on open three-stone fires that consume a lot of mangrove wood. She indicates that a well-wisher recently donated a large energy-saving stove for communal use.

Mwangi says wood fuel is similarly central to domestic life in Africa, especially in sub-Saharan Africa. He stresses that, as the Vanga community has discovered, current wood energy systems are not sustainable and are a major threat to livelihoods.

According to the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR), more than 63 percent of people in Africa have no alternative to wood, relying on wood fuel as their primary energy source. Approximately 90 percent of wood extraction in Africa is used for fuel.

The International Energy Agency’s regional energy outlook warns that wood fuel will remain central to Africa’s future as the primary energy source because cleaner alternatives or sustainable fuels remain out of reach.

Dr Julius Ecuru, Manager at BioInnovate Africa at the International Centre of Insect Physiology and Ecology (ICIPE), tells IPS that sustainable fuel is fuel obtained from biologically based feedstock such as wood, crops like sorghum and sugar cane, or algae, as well as other agricultural waste.

“We can use this feedstock also to produce fuel that has the same chemical composition and quality as the fossil fuel used in jet engines or aeroplanes. If used in this way for jet engines, we refer to it as sustainable aviation fuel. With respect to cooking fuel for household use, sustainable fuels can be prepared or blended in specific ways, but this is yet to gain traction,” he explains.

“Meanwhile, regarding natural wood or wood fuel, households and communities can be encouraged to plant fast-growing or maturing trees, like the Grevilia tree, which has multiple uses. Its regularly pruned branches can, for example, be used as firewood. It also has good soil conserving properties.”

Research by the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) finds that, like the Vanga Forest, Miombo Woodland, an African dryland forest ecosystem, is similarly at risk of over-harvesting and destruction of livelihoods.

The forest covers an estimated 2.7 million square kilometres in the south-central part of the continent. It is Africa’s most extensive tropical woodland, forming a broad ecoregion belt across countries such as Angola, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Malawi, Mozambique, Tanzania, Zambia, and Zimbabwe.

FAO says the magnificent ecoregion belt provides an important source of resilience for an estimated 100 million rural poor and 50 million urban community.

Experts such as Mwangi warn the woodlands are under threat from conversion into smallholder agriculture, livestock keeping, charcoal production and logging.

He stresses that urbanization will only increase the threat due to an over-reliance on charcoal as the primary energy source for urban households.

The Agency finds that cleaner alternatives such as solar or wind energy are not yet viable because most households and governments “cannot afford the price per kilowatt-hour or the hefty cost of the required infrastructure.”

Mwangi urges communities to work with the government to protect and conserve forests and notes that the Vanga community is, for instance, partnering with the Kenya Forest Services through Kenya’s Forest Conservation and Management Act of 2016.

The Act promotes community participation and aims to halt further degradation and consequent destruction of livelihoods.

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By Vani S. Kulkarni and Raghav Gaiha
NEW DELHI, India, Apr 20 2022 (IPS)

A trend of declining trust in governments and politicians can turn into a threat beyond some point.

John Adams, an astute political philosopher and second president of the US, was emphatic: “Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts and murders itself.” This has been a subject of intense debate, with recent but mixed evidence. Is this an overly pessimistic view?

The debate, based on big international surveys (such as the World Gallup Poll and Economic Values Surveys) or specific ones, yields conflicting inferences. The key issue is whether loss of political trust (in governments and politicians) is a threat to democracy. A pessimistic view is based on how tax compliance varies with the level of political trust. When citizens believe government is acting for the common good, they see its decisions as legitimate and will be more willing to comply with them. They will pay taxes and obey laws, as this is the ‘right’ thing to do. Conversely, when citizens distrust the government, their willingness to obey its decisions is limited and they are less willing to pay taxes. Given the importance of taxes, a general lack of trust would destabilize the system.

Vani S. Kulkarni

Another and perhaps a more nuanced view (Marien and Hooghe, 2011) is based on an interesting measure of legal permissiveness: whether respondents condone illegal actions. Here too, the key explanatory variable is political trust. Respondents with higher levels of such trust are less likely to have permissive attitudes than those with lower levels. Contrariwise, those who do not express trust in political institutions have a more permissive attitude toward law-breaking behaviour than those with higher trust.

Political trust also impacts the ability of government systems to fulfil their basic tasks for people. Low levels of political trust pose a challenge for the governability of contemporary liberal societies. Indeed, in the worst-case scenario, a vicious cycle emerges for governments and political trust. However, whether this would destabilize democracy is neither stated nor implied.

In India’s context, Vaishnav (2017) develops a model of the electoral market place. He analyses data on politicians, including members of state legislative assemblies (MLAs) and Parliament (MPs), winners and losers in elections, their criminal background, assets, ethnicity, re-election prospects and implications for the sustenance of democracy. In an electoral market, there are buyers (voters) and sellers (parties and politicians). Supply and demand factors are at work. This model is then used to explain the share of politicians with a criminal and wealthy background, their chances of winning an election and re-election and huge financial gains.

Across three recent general elections (2004, 2009 and 2014), a randomly picked candidate had a 6% chance of coming out on top. Compare this with a candidate with at least one criminal case: s/he had a nearly 18% chance of winning. The differences in state elections are slightly smaller but still stark: ‘clean’ candidates (eg, those with no pending criminal cases) have a 9.5% probability of winning, whereas candidates with criminal cases have a roughly 22% chance.

Raghav Gaiha

Vaishnav claims that the market is in a state of equilibrium with a large share of criminal politicians. Even if we accept this characterization (in fact, we don’t), two questions arise: Why is the share of criminal politicians not higher?; Are there forces that tend to limit this share? He believes that there are limits to this share. A large share of respondents (in another survey conducted by the author) were for various reasons not in favour of supporting criminal or tainted politicians, since they cared more about the integrity of politicians than their self- interest. Another is that political parties are averse to nominating more than a certain share of such politicians for fear of reputation and credibility losses.

Our more recent analysis (Kulkarni, et al, 2022) raises a few concerns. Over the period 2004 to 2019, the share of criminal politicians in Lok Sabha elections has sharply risen, especially after 2014; 24% of the winners in the 2004 polls had a criminal background; this share rose to 30% in the 2009 general elections, 34% in 2014 and 43% in 2019. The share of criminal politicians is thus expected to rise further. Another related issue is that India’s two major parties continue to have considerably high shares of criminal politicians. Between the two main national parties, of 303 winners from the Bharatiya Janata Party in 2019, 116 (39%) had a criminal record, as against 29 (56%) of the 52 winners from the Congress party. This contradicts Vaishnav’s view that non-dominant but competitive parties worry more about winning a seat in a closely contested election than dominant parties for which the marginal benefit of winning a seat is relatively small. As both national and state elections have become more competitive, with a rise in the number of political parties in the fray, it is difficult to rule out the possibility that tainted politicians with huge resources will continue to be attractive to dominant parties as well. A more serious concern is that, with rising shares of politicians with criminal records, public trust in politicians first rises and then decreases after a turning point where about 40% of MPs have criminal records and only about a tenth of respondents trust politicians.

In sum, while the erosion of political trust is slow, it is consistent and may turn into distrust at some point, with a real risk of the demise of democracy.

Vani S. Kulkarni & Raghav Gaiha are respectively, lecturer of sociology and research affiliate, Population Aging Centre, University of Pennsylvania, USA.

This opinion editorial was first published in Mint, India.

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Credit: United Nations

By Jacqui Stevenson and Sagri Singh
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia, Apr 20 2022 (IPS)

As a global pandemic, COVID-19 and its continued impacts are unprecedented. Yet many of the challenges that emerged in public health responses to COVID-19 not only had precedence, but were predictable.

As the international community observes World Immunization Week (April 24-30), it is a critical moment to reflect on what lessons have, and have not, been learned, and how we can accelerate progress towards vaccine equity.

The theme of the 2022 World Immunization Week is “Long Life for All”, a framing which underscores the benefits for every individual of access to and uptake of vaccinations. However, this obscures the significant and persistent barriers that ensure that the reality of vaccination is access and uptake for some, not all.

The development of effective and safe vaccines to protect against severe COVID-19 disease is a huge scientific achievement, which placed a spotlight on vaccine development and deployment and highlighted both successes and challenges. Inequity in vaccine access has been evident between high income versus low and middle-income countries, as well as within regions and nations.

As of 14th April 2022, 65% of the total world population has received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine, yet only 15.2% of people in low-income countries have received at least one dose. Even where vaccines are available, access and uptake is impeded by gender-related barriers and inequities, in communities and in health services and settings.

Data on COVID-19 vaccine disaggregated by sex is limited, with the Sex, Gender and COVID-19 Project reporting in its COVID-19 Sex-disaggregated Data Tracker that only 89 countries have ever reported sex-disaggregated data for vaccinations (at least one dose) and 67 countries for fully vaccinated. Only two countries, India and Austria, report on vaccinations for non-binary people.

Senior citizens receive their second dose of the COVID-19 vaccine in Kathmandu in Nepal. Credit: UNICEF/Rabik Upadhayay

Overall, the Data Tracker reports that global data indicates equal numbers of men and women being vaccinated, but that at the country level, there are some significant differences, including Yemen, where 93% of people with one dose are male, and Thailand where 36% are male. In terms of vaccine population coverage, in five countries reporting this data coverage is more than 5% higher in males than females, and in seven countries the reverse is true.

This indicates a critical point in discussions of gender-related barriers – the negative impact of these varies by setting and context, and affect men as well as women and gender diverse people.

As well as vaccination coverage, there are also differences in hesitancy and intention to take up the vaccine when offered or available. A systematic review of gender differences in intention to take up vaccination found that men were “on average 41% more likely to report that they intended to receive a vaccine (rather than being unwilling or undecided) compared with women”.

Gender-related barriers to vaccination exacerbated by COVID-19 have been identified by GAVI as including: limited access to health services, increasing unpaid care responsibilities disproportionately borne by women, increases in gender-based violence, and inequitable access to health information including digital platforms.

Limited ability to travel to attend health facilities, discrimination and harassment in health services, and limited decision-making power, are also significant barriers. Vaccine hesitancy among healthcare workers has also been identified as a challenge, requiring targeted messaging and efforts to work with and learn from their experiences.

Recognising the substantial gender barriers to equitable vaccine access and uptake, the SDG3 Global Action Plan for Healthy Lives and Well-Being for All: Gender Equality Working Group and the Gender and Health Hub, United Nations University International Institute for Global Health have developed a Guidance Note and Checklist for Tackling Gender-Related Barriers to Equitable Covid-19 Vaccine Deployment.

The aim of the checklist is to support efforts to ensure that as many people as possible, regardless of their gender identity and the gender norms that prevail in their communities, have equitable access to COVID-19 vaccines. Drawing on evidence of gender-related barriers and what works to address them, it offers practical actions for countries to implement to ensure that COVID-19 vaccine deployment upholds gender equality and equity, contributing to the aim of ‘long life for all’ through leaving no one behind in vaccine access.

If action is not taken to address gender barriers in COVID-19 vaccine access and uptake, we risk significant gaps in vaccination coverage, undermining the achievement of population-level immunity which is essential in curbing the pandemic.

At the individual level, many more people will become sick and die if we fail to realise the full potential of COVID-19 vaccination programmes by failing to ensure equitable access. In turn, these outcomes will lead to delayed economic recovery, exacerbating existing inequities and further marginalising those already marginalised.

The spotlight shone by the COVID-19 pandemic has also created opportunities to do things differently. Progress has been made in some key areas, which can and should now be implemented and accelerated more widely. The importance of sex and gender disaggregated data at all stages of research and development through to delivery has been more widely recognised and must now be adopted across the board.

While some countries are collecting and reporting such data, significant gaps remain, as well as the opportunity for COVID-19 to be a catalyst to act to fill these gaps. Progress has also been made in developing and delivering interventions that engage women and girls and/or marginalised people as co-designers of solutions, rather than simply recipients of interventions.

The checklist provides practical steps for actors involved in vaccine deployment to integrate attention to sex and gender in their core business and approach, to mitigate barriers at each step in COVID-19 National Deployment and Vaccination Plans (NDVPs), ensuring that gender-related barriers are prioritised not an afterthought.

The costs of failure are immeasurably high, yet the gender-related barriers that have emerged in COVID-19 vaccine deployment were anticipated and can be mitigated. The checklist outlines clear, actionable steps to effectively tackle gender-related barriers at each step of vaccine deployment, from making sex and age disaggregated data on pre- and post-market vaccine trials an essential requirement for expedited approval and emergency regulatory approval procedures, to using differentiated vaccine delivery strategies to effectively reach women, men and gender-diverse people.

By implementing the actions in this checklist, identifying and acting on known and context-specific gender-related barriers, prioritizing targeted outreach to vulnerable and disadvantaged groups and partnering with women’s organizations and other community-based groups, it is possible to address and mitigate these barriers.

It further supports integration of gender as part of the core business of governments and partnerships engaged in COVID-19 vaccine deployment and delivery, rather than an add-on or afterthought, which is often the case yet seriously undermines potential impact.

The gender-related barriers to equitable vaccine deployment are persistent but not immutable, predictable but not inevitable. We have the vaccines, we have the knowledge to deploy them equitably, what is needed now is the will to get it right.

Dr Jacqui Stevenson is a Research Consultant at the United Nations University International Institute for Global Health (UNU-IIGH). Dr Sagri Singh is the Chief of Gender and Health at UNU-IIGH. They lead the work to generate new evidence on the intersections of gender and health, including COVID-19.

IPS UN Bureau

 

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A woman holding a child begs at an intersection in New Delhi. Credit: Ranjit Devraj/IPS.

By Srishty Anand
NEW DELHI, Apr 20 2022 (IPS)

Oxfam’s report ‘Inequality Kills 2022’ and its India supplement (hereafter referred to as the report) revealed some shocking facts about the growing gap between the rich and poor. India, which has the third highest number of billionaires in the world, endured one of the longest-lasting COVID-induced lockdowns in 2020. Yet, the same year, the top 10 percent of India held close to 45 percent of the country’s total national wealth.

Concurrently, the number of billionaires in India rose from 102 to 142, while the bottom 50 percent of the population held a 6 percent share in the nation’s wealth. The unemployment rate (which was at 4.7 percent in 2017–18 and 6.3 percent in 2018–19) became 9.1 and 7.9 percent in December 2020 and 2021 respectively.

 

The myth of development by privatisation

Why does the wealth of a few continue to grow against this backdrop? One reason is privatisation. This article specifically looks at the deteriorating state of basic services and state-owned utilities—including education and healthcare—due to privatisation.  Take for example the Aatmanirbhar Bharat package and the four-year national monetisation pipeline.

While globally the ten richest men doubled their fortunes during the pandemic, the incomes of 99 percent of humanity fell; and the richest 98 Indians own the same wealth as the bottom 552 million Indian citizens. This gap has increased over the last decade, as the bottom 50 percent, that held 8 percent of the wealth in 2012, had a mere 6 percent in 2021

Such policies reduce state ownership and control by selling central public sector enterprises to private sector businesses. This results in the state relinquishing decision-making roles (as it no longer holds majority share), abandoning price control, the social mandate of employing the masses, and operating in areas and sectors in which the private sector is unwilling.

One frequently cited motivation to privatise is efficiency—the quality of services offered and the government’s fiscal resources to expand public expenditure are expected to improve. However, this assumption is flawed on two counts: private services are as much liable to be misapplied as public-funded services, and they’re prone to applying commercial value on social services, leading to exclusion of the ‘have-nots’.

For instance, while globally the ten richest men doubled their fortunes during the pandemic, the incomes of 99 percent of humanity fell; and the richest 98 Indians own the same wealth as the bottom 552 million Indian citizens. This gap has increased over the last decade, as the bottom 50 percent, that held 8 percent of the wealth in 2012, had a mere 6 percent in 2021.

 

Recourse to private healthcare as the ‘last resort’

India has one of the highest levels of out-of-pocket expenditure (OOPE) on health services in the world and the lowest public health spending. OOPE is a major financial burden on Indian households, which spend 43 percent of their total expenditure on pharmacies, 28 percent on private general hospitals, and 7.42 percent on government hospitals. And the private sector dominates healthcare provision, with around 74 percent of outpatient care and 65 percent of hospitalisation care in urban India.

As we saw during the second wave of COVID-19, India’s public health system fell short due to issues of governance and regulatory failure, such as shutdown of elective and outpatient services or indefinite deferring of routine check-ups. In fact, the public hospital systems in many states were overrun during COVID-19.

Those who turned to private hospitals faced problems ranging from non-treatment to swindling. The private health market also carries the risk of overprescription and unchecked selling of drugs, which promotes unnecessary drug use. In response, the government enforced price capping, allotment of beds and so on, but the issues persisted nevertheless. The inaccessibility to public services caused OOPE to increase further, leaving many people untreated because costs and lack of health insurance rendered both private and public healthcare inaccessible.

 

The quandary of education

India has both private and public education providers. In fact, private schools continue to grow as income levels go up. The pandemic saw private schools impose arbitrary fee hikes and grossly overcharge students, with some enrolling in unrecognised institutions.

The report notes that in tertiary education, private institutions are almost twice that of government institutions, and in higher education, public-funded education sees only 32 percent enrolment whereas its private counterparts see 68 percent enrolment.

The National Education Policy (NEP) 2020, which encouraged states to incentivise private/philanthropic activity, proved redundant, as it failed to crowd out the private sector. The report iterates that 35 percent children still couldn’t continue their education over non-payment of fees and 57 percent parents paid additional charges that were not part of the official break-up.

Privatisation also results in the exclusion of marginalised communities, Dalits, Adivasis, and girls because private schools are generally established in places that have good public infrastructure. When society is fractured along different social identities of caste, gender, geography, and religion, marketisation of education widens these gaps.

 

Privatising public goods

India’s expenditure on social security schemes for workers is already low at 0.6 percent of the total union budget. These schemes cover a diverse workforce in the organised and informal sectors. The pandemic affected informal and migrant workers most severely, and the absence of social security for them was more glaring than ever.

By privatising public goods such as education, healthcare, social safety, food, and drinking water, the precarities that certain segments face are deepened.

Even as the extent of public crowdsourcing of financial support and information on oxygen, hospitals, and doctors on social media was exemplary during the pandemic, this temporary social vine was born out of the absence and abandonment of state infrastructure.

A significant population of this country undertook medical debt, suffered from loss of loved ones, reported lower intake of food than before the pandemic, walked the length and breadth of the country to feel ‘at home’, and lost their livelihoods. The private sector functions on a rationalising mechanism that demands value for its services, in contrast to well-being and welfare as outcomes.

 

The way forward

As we’ve already emphasised, public financing cannot be supported by increasing privatisation of state enterprises. Here are some ways to pursue more equitable development.

1. Increase state expenditure

With privatisation, the state eventually loses ownership and control, making the question of public interest non-existent. Taking the example of health, the report, following the Economic Survey 2020-21 argues for an increase in public spend from 1 percent (global average of spending is 10 percent) to 2.5–3 percent of GDP, which can decrease the OOPE from 65 percent to 30 percent of overall healthcare spend. In case of basic rights like education, healthcare, and food security, and given the current disparities, the state needs to strengthen its control and simultaneously recalibrate its relation with the private players to integrate social goals. This can be achieved by introducing more regulations so that these services are not delivered for profits alone.

2. A more balanced private–public role in service provision

Following the recommendation made above, the argument remains that for universal and mass literacy state-funded educational facilities need to continue in India. At the same time, the private players can certainly complement the public school system (as in Bangladesh, Chile, and Colombia) in different ways to not just attain literacy but also an education and skill set that improves employability. The agenda of private education or healthcare can work in tandem with or bolster public services to recast their developmental purpose.

3. Progressive taxation

The government needs to change the tax regime such that the incessantly growing rich of the country pay taxes progressively. Progressive taxation ensures that the tax burden is higher for the wealthy. Through taxes and strong state provisioning, a basic standard of living for lower-income families can be ensured, which will take care of fundamental needs such as shelter, food, health, education, and transportation. The rationale for this system of taxation is rooted in an unequal growth rate of income.1

4. Review and update existing schemes

The case for public provisioning can be strengthened by reviewing the status of schemes where access needs to be improved. For example, the vicious cycle of low income and high OOPE will continue to cause a rift in health inequity if left unchecked and unregulated.

The flagship, Pradhan Mantri Jan Arogya Yojana—dubbed the world’s largest health insurance plan offering financial risk protection against catastrophic health expenditure to approximately 40 percent of the population—hasn’t provided effectively improved access to health care. Similarly, the debate on living wages needs to be revisited to improve human capital rather than support bare sustenance and increase demand-driven growth.

5. Measure inequality

India needs a more rigorous data base to measure incomes and consumptions levels as well as continuous data collection by the income tax department on tax payers and gross and returned income. This transparency will then facilitate a more democratic dialogue on tax structures for the super-rich, such as a wealth tax, instead of burdening the population with indirect taxes such as GST.

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this article are personal.

Srishty Anand is a research and knowledge specialist on responsible finance at Oxfam India

 

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

Viraj from India, in a squat where he has been living for three months near Velika Kladusa, Bosnia. He hopes to join family in Italy. February 2022. Credit: Chiara Luxardo

By Sara Perria
Bihać, Bosnia, Apr 19 2022 (IPS)

Responding to several shouts Viraj emerges from the ruins of his shelter in northwest Bosnia. He is originally from India but is now squatting near Bihać in what remains of a house abandoned since the 1990s Balkans war.

“I was in the bathroom,” says Viraj – although there is no such facility. The building doesn’t even have windows, just gaps exposed to a freezing wind. Collapsing walls are patched with planks. Steps leading up from the road that are not missing shake under the weight of the few people venturing there.

“It’s just us living here now,” adds Sidar, an Iraqi in his late 30s. “We prefer to stay here. People come and go, but we’ll stay until it’s a good moment to cross.”

The two men are among some 2,000 or so migrants waiting for the opportunity to play the so-called ‘game’: the hazardous challenge of evading Croatian police on the nearby border and entering their goal of the European Union, illegally. They often need several attempts to succeed. Many prefer to squat closer to the border for months until spring offers an easier route across mountains.

A long day’s walk away, basic services, health facilities and food are provided in camps for migrants managed by Bosnia and the UN. Yet hundreds like Viraj and Sidar have opted instead for abandoned houses, warehouses and factories fallen into disuse, or skeletons of unfinished buildings surrounded by trash, with open toilets and improvised kitchens. Away from the headlines, they also exist mostly under the radar of humanitarian agencies.

“There are too many migrants in the camps,” says Sidar, citing issues with drug dealers, violence and lack of freedom there. “We can go in and out of this house when we want. In the camps we only have a couple of hours, then we have to go back. There’s more freedom here.”

The kitchen of a squat near Bihać, Bosnia. February 2022. Credit: Chiara Luxardo

Life is a long wait for this migrant population transiting Bosnia. “I get up, eat something and watch a movie,” says Viraj. “Bollywood movies or action movies like Fast and Furious 5.”

According to the International Organization for Migration (IOM), very few request asylum in Bosnia, aiming instead for countries such as Germany, France or Italy. The Balkan route fell under the spotlight in 2015 during the so-called ‘long summer of migration’ when thousands of asylum seekers from Syria stretched Bosnia’s capacity as a ‘buffer zone’ and the IOM was put in charge of the camps, with the Danish Refugee Council (DRC), a humanitarian non-profit organisation, running healthcare.

Seven years later, management is transitioning to Bosnian authorities, against the backdrop of a complex and fragmented local political structure. Numbers of migrants are much lower now, with occupancy in the formal camps around 1,840 against a capacity of over 5,200.

Almost 90% of migrants are single men, mostly from Pakistan and heading to Italy. But there are also growing numbers of Afghans and some Cubans, Iranians and Bangladeshis. They occupy settlements divided along ethnic lines and clashes are not uncommon, with one death registered this month. Threatening scrawls have appeared on the walls of some shelters.

Laura Lungarotti, IOM’s chief of mission in Bosnia, says the situation has evolved “tremendously” over the past year. Numbers are sharply down and camps have more capacity. For this reason, migration in Bosnia now needs “durable solutions, not emergency ones.” Solutions come from the “inclusion of migrants in the health system, with resources dedicated to migrants used for the local population,” she says. But achieving this balance is not easy as long as many stay outside the formal system.

In another abandoned house, empty cans of energy drinks indicates the presence of migrants. Twenty young men — Pakistani and Afghans from the same Pashtun ethnic group — live in this house guarded by a chained dog. It’s a sign that the dog’s owner is a long term inhabitant and might be working as a smuggler for the others, an aid worker explains. Many have scabies after sleeping on bedding infested by the parasite and then returning to the same places after attempting ‘the game’. One also has an infection caused by a bad burn from cooking oil.

In camps such as the newly-rebuilt Lipa or in Sarajevo, they would have access to food, beds and a range of medical services, including a doctor, medicines, mental health facilities and an isolation room for Covid cases.

As migration experts point out, the international community has become effectively complicit in the ‘game’, which also involves human traffickers. Migrants trying to get to the EU treat the formal camps like Lipa as winter ‘pit-stops’, with the average length of stay just 40 days before moving on.

Professor Claudio Minca of the University of Bologna says this is the result of political ambiguities that have left a ‘gray area’ in the governance of these mobile and ephemeral ‘geographies’ based on information about the Balkan route shared through social media. This includes notes on mountains, rivers and fields, as well as smuggling networks, informal and institutional camps, and NGOs offering food and medical care to migrants.

A young Tajik asylum seeker with his 8 month old daughter in a squat near Velika Kladusa, Bosnia. February 2022. Credit: Chiara Luxardo

“It also reflects, to some extent, a sense of pride on the part of the refugees themselves, related to their determination to succeed not only in just crossing, but also in surviving when they are pushed back in preparation for the next attempt,” Minca and Jessica Collins say in their research paper ‘The Making of Migration’.

This grey area is also a source of tension with local Bosnian communities which sometimes perceive migrants as competing for resources, including health care.

Some migrants’ settlements are known and get support from local and international organisations, with food, portable showers and health checks. Only the UN, Red Cross and DRC are allowed by Bosnia to deliver food however. And migrants are banned from using public transport and taxis under a measure justified by ‘Covid restrictions’.

Healthcare: local versus global

Since migrants are extremely mobile, many pass under the radar. Cases of COVID, other airborne respiratory diseases, tuberculosis, scabies, related infections and antibiotic resistance remain difficult to analyse and detect.

The director of Bihać local hospital, Ademir Jusufagic, says that when the wave of migrants arrived in 2015 it was heartbreaking to see how many children were in need of medical assistance. But fast forward several years and a pandemic, the limitations of the local system stand out, despite some investments by the UN and international agencies to provide the hospital with an X-ray machine and ambulances.

The main challenge, he says, is the lack of finances, especially after an earthquake that heavily damaged the hospital. Low wages make it hard to find and retain doctors and nurses. Most of the young staff go abroad.

“Prevention is down to better investments at a state level. You need to provide higher salaries, especially in places like this,” he says.

From a health security perspective, Jusufagic cites cases among migrants of tuberculosis, which was not present locally, and a high percentage of scabies that can get infected. It is difficult to assess the impact of antibiotic resistance in a mobile population hoping to reach better economic and social conditions. Cases of syphilis and HIV are also reported.

“The first challenge was that there was no control of makeshift camps and no place to surely find people, as migrants were constantly on the move,” he said. “The moving is the biggest issue, as many things go uncontrolled, so we didn’t know what would happen in terms of basic epidemiological prevention in an environment that lacked basic hygiene. So the priority was to provide people the means to clean themselves.”

Meeting in a café along the route to the Croatian border, a well known activist explains how the gulf between local and global perspectives illustrates the source of much of the trouble, as well as the solution for managing healthcare.

“International agencies came having no knowledge of what Bosnia is today and its recent history,” says Ines Tanovic, manager of Kompas 071, an organization that supports migrants on their way to the ‘game’. “The humanitarian industry is a machine and it damages us on the ground with a kind of white-saviour syndrome. Here the focus became only on the migrants but not on the local population.”

As she talks, a group of Pakistanis from Peshawar donate the food they have been donated by an international organization and ask to take a shower “before trying the game.” Tanovic gives them the key smiling and continues to chat.

“People were seeing migrants receiving five jackets each, with no coordination. Then you would see these migrants sell the jackets to Bosnian people with an average salary of 400 euros. It was like seeing capitalism turning the poor against the poor.”

The memory of former Yugoslavia, “where everything was provided for”, also plays a role in the competition for health services, with the downsizing of the public sector in favour of the private, just as local poverty increased.

“Even if the international organisations bought ambulances and some machines, much more could have done for the locals,” Tanovic says.

Contradictions

Migrants’ journeys are notoriously long. Just how long can depend on how much money is paid to human smugglers who guide them through war-time minefields, usually in big groups, according to NGOs. It’s rare not to be caught by the police on the first attempt, so migrants return to the shelters they started from. Many are in bad physical condition after long treks.

“But in the end they all manage it, so attempts by the Croatian police to stop them sound like a waste of money that could be spent better,” comments Silvia Maraone, country coordinator of the Italian NGO Ipsia.

In a hill-top ruin occupied mainly by families from Syria and Afghanistan, a young father holds his 18-month-old daughter. An ethnic Tajik, he says he fled Afghanistan because he feared the Taliban would kill him. Caught in the “grey” zone of the “game”, he explains that his wife and other children are already in Germany but it would take nearly two years for his and his baby’s papers to be processed. “I can’t wait that long, I need to go to my family,” he says.

Names of asylum seekers have been changed or omitted to protect their identities. Additional reporting by Asim Beslija.

*Reporting for this article was funded by the European Journalism Centre, through the Global Health Security Call, a programme supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

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Excerpt:

Supported by the European Journalism Centre*