Africa - INTER PRESS SERVICE

Sri Lankan Buddhist monks at the UN General Assembly session commemorating Vesak. Credit: Sri Lanka’s Permanent Mission to the United Nations

By Neville de Silva
LONDON, Feb 3 2022 (IPS)

Driven by unprecedented hardship to pass round the begging bowl, Sri Lanka has become the centre of a tussle between Asia’s two superpowers.

There was a time in Asia’s predominantly Buddhist countries when saffron-robed monks walked from house to house in the mornings, standing outside in silence as lay people served up freshly cooked food into their ‘alms bowls’. The food was then taken to the temples, where it was shared among the monks.

That religious tradition has now largely given to other ways of serving alms to monks.

Today, governments and their aggrandising acolytes have converted this respected and virtuous tradition into one of begging richer nations to rescue them from economic deprivation, brought on largely by failed promises and disjointed and ill-conceived foreign and national policies.

This ‘begging bowl’ mentality in search of ‘alms’ is more likely to succeed if a nation is strategically-located in an area of big power contestation. Sri Lanka is just that, situated in the Indian Ocean and only a few nautical miles from the vital international sea lanes carrying goods from West to East and vice versa.

The country’s economy has been caught in a real bind. Buffeted by the Covid pandemic on the one hand and, on the other, ego-inflating economic and fiscal policies introduced by the new president Gotabaya Rajapaksa shortly before the country was pounded by the pandemic, Sri Lanka now has to beg or borrow to keep its head above water.

By December, Sri Lanka’s parlous foreign reserves situation had dropped to a perilous $1.2 billion – enough for three weeks of imports. The foreign debt obligation of $500 million that needed to be met last month was only the beginning. Another $1 billion is due in July. The total pay-off in 2022 will amount to some $7 billion.

Meanwhile the pandemic has virtually killed tourism, one of the country’s main foreign exchange earners, driving the hospitality industry into free-fall. If this was not bad enough, the Central Bank’s attempts to put a tight squeeze on incoming foreign currency led the country’s migrant labour remittances to drop drastically as overseas workers turned to the black market to earn real value for their money sent to families at home.

But nothing has had such widespread political repercussions as the government’s ill-advised policy of banning overnight chemical fertilisers last May, ahead of the country’s main agricultural season between October and April.

Its over-ambitious agenda of trying to turn Sri Lanka into the world’s first totally ‘green agriculture’ was laudable enough, but was botched when the sudden ban on chemical fertilisers and other agrochemicals – used by farmers for the last 50 years or so – left rice farming and other cultivations in disarray and farmers inevitably confused.

The government’s agenda of trying to turn Sri Lanka into the world’s first totally ‘green agriculture’ was botched.

While agricultural scientists and other experts warned of an impending food scarcity due to failed harvests and sparsely cultivated fields, the government ignored the warnings, sacking heads of the Agriculture Ministry and removing its qualified agricultural experts for spreading doom and gloom.

Against this backdrop of confused governance, probable food shortages due to poor harvests and slashing of imports and even essential medicines for lack of foreign currency, growing public unrest has seen even farmers take to the streets.

Consequently, a once-buoyant government confident of public popularity, especially among the Sinhala-Buddhist voters and the rural community, began to look beyond its faithful ally and ‘all weather’ friend China for ‘alms’ to pull it out of the morass.

China has already planted a large footprint in Sri Lanka, with massive infrastructure projects such as sea and airports in strategic areas, which allowed a monitoring of international sea lanes to make neighbouring India worry.

A major Chinese presence in Sri Lanka could endanger India’s security at a time when China continues to militarily pressurise India in the Himalayas.

From the early 1950s Sri Lanka, then called Ceylon, and China had established close ties. Despite threats of sanctions by the US, Colombo sold natural rubber to China – then involved in the Korean War –in exchange for rice, marking the beginning of the long standing ‘Rubber-Rice Pact’.

As long as China’s immediate concern was the Pacific theatre, where the US and its allies remained dominant, and China faced territorial disputes in the South China sea and elsewhere, India was not overly concerned with China-Sri Lanka bilateral ties.

But as soon as China began to expand into the Indian Ocean, challenging what India considered its sphere of influence, New Delhi’s concerns multiplied considerably, as did its disquiet over China’s growing influence over Colombo.

The 70th anniversary of that Sino-Ceylon agreement, which cemented bilateral relations at a time when the People’s Republic of China was not even a member of the UN, was commemorated last month when China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi visited Colombo in early January during an influence-building visit to Africa, the Maldives and Sri Lanka.

This is the third high level visit by a Chinese official in little over a year, beginning with former foreign minister and Politburo member Yang Jiechi in October 2020, and followed last April by Chinese Defence Minister Gen. Wei Fenghe, a visible signal to India and US-led ‘Quad’ countries the importance that China attaches to its relations with Sri Lanka.

But Sri Lanka’s struggle against dwindling reserves, the need for foreign investment and expansion of trade relations at a time of economic hardship has shown the Rajapaksa regime that reliance on China alone will not suffice.

A more balanced foreign policy and an equidistant relationship between Asia’s two superpowers cannot remain at the level of diplomatic rhetoric. It is an imperative, given Sri Lanka’s geographical location in close proximity to India and the historical, cultural and ethnic ties with it huge neighbour.

Sri Lanka’s ambassador to Beijing, Dr Palitha Kohona, said recently that Colombo should not depend on China forever – a valid piece of advice Colombo should seriously consider.

India also cannot ignore that, security-wise, Sri Lanka lies in India’s underbelly, whose vulnerability was exposed during the Bangladesh Liberation War in 1971. So a major Chinese presence in Sri Lanka could endanger India’s own security at a time when China continues to militarily pressurise India in the Himalayas.

Last December Finance Minister Basil Rajapaksa’s hurried visit to New Delhi, even as his maiden budget was still being debated in parliament, was indicative of Sri Lanka’s anxiety to seek India’s economic and financial assistance, without depending solely on Beijing.

That visit led to the two countries agreeing on ‘four pillars’ of cooperation in the short term, including emergency support of a $1 billion line of credit for importing food and medicines and a currency swap to bolster Colombo’s dwindling foreign reserves.

Other assistance included investment in an oil tank farm for oil storage in northeastern Trincomalee, close to the vital natural harbour that served the British well during the Second World War.

An Indian company, the Adani Group, has already won a stake in the Colombo port, where it will engage in developing the western terminal while the Chinese build the eastern wing.

Meanwhile, Colombo is having talks with China for a new loan besides the $500 million loan and a $1.5 billion currency swap.

While the two major Indian Ocean powers tussle for supremacy in this vital maritime region, Sri Lanka is beginning to understand that it sometimes pays to dip one’s oars in troubled waters.

Source: Asian Affairs, a current affairs magazine.

Neville de Silva is a veteran Sri Lankan journalist who held senior roles in Hong Kong at The Standard and worked in London for Gemini News Service. He has been a correspondent for foreign media including the New York Times and Le Monde. More recently he was Sri Lanka’s deputy high commissioner in London

 

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

A garbage picker walks down Santa Fe Avenue, one of the main avenues in Buenos Aires. Argentina suffered a deep economic and social decline in 2018 and 2019, which was accentuated in 2020 by the pandemic. Although in 2021 there was a rebound, the most vulnerable did not benefit. CREDIT: Daniel Gutman/IPS

By Daniel Gutman
BUENOS AIRES, Feb 2 2022 (IPS)

Accustomed for decades to recurring economic crises, and hit hard in recent years by a steady loss of purchasing power, Argentines were informed on Friday Jan. 28 of a last-minute agreement with the IMF which, in the words of center-left President Alberto Fernández, takes “the noose off their necks”.

The understanding, which will refinance a gigantic 45 billion dollar loan that the IMF (International Monetary Fund) gave Argentina in 2018, was reached within hours of the first installment falling due in 2022. Argentina owed 18 billion dollars in payments this year, which the country could not afford and which have now been postponed until 2026.

After exhausting other sources of financing and resorting to the IMF in 2018, Argentina underwent a pronounced economic and social decline, which led to then center-right President Mauricio Macri’s failure to win re-election in late 2019.

When recovery was expected in 2020, the country was hit by the COVID-19 pandemic and a historic collapse of more than 10 percent of the economy. And although there was a rebound in 2021, it did not benefit the most vulnerable, as inflation exceeded 50 percent and was even higher in the case of staple foods.

This South American country of 45 million inhabitants which is the third largest economy in Latin America has, according to official data, a poverty rate of more than 40 percent, a proportion that climbs to 54 percent among children under 14 – a phenomenon that is partly explained by the higher proportion of large families among the poor.

However, Argentina was heading for an even greater economic and social catastrophe, warned the president, if it did not reach an agreement with the IMF.

“We had an unpayable debt that left us with no present and no future, and now we have a reasonable agreement that will allow us to grow,” said Fernández.

Thus, the IMF is once again lending money to Argentina to pay its debt, thanks to an agreement subject to quarterly reviews of the national accounts that -according to the government- do not imply a structural adjustment, like the many that the country has experienced in the context of its traumatic relationship with the multilateral financial organization.

“The best thing about this agreement with the Fund is what was avoided,” economist Andrés Borenstein, professor of public finance at the public University of Buenos Aires (UBA), told IPS in Buenos Aires.

“Without this understanding, the country would run out of financing and the consequences would be paid by those who have the least, because there would be more inflation, a greater decline in the real value of wages and a sharper devaluation of the currency,” he explained.

The government sought to allay the fears of the public who, based on past experience, associate agreements with the IMF with public spending cuts that lead to a decrease in economic activity and to general impoverishment.

“Compared to previous agreements that Argentina signed, this one does not contemplate restrictions that postpone our development,” said Fernández. “There will be no drop in real spending and there will be an increase in public works investment by the national government.”

Analysts, however, do not take the president’s words at face value. “It is true that the agreement is quite reasonable for the situation Argentina was in, but, as in any IMF program, there will be adjustments,” said Borenstein.

“Sharp increases in utility rates are coming and that will have an indirect impact on inflation and consumption,” he added.

Indeed, in a brief communiqué, the IMF pointed out that it had agreed with the Argentine government to reduce the large state subsidies to energy companies, with the aim of gradually reducing the fiscal deficit – which will increase the burden

Argentine President Alberto Fernández announced on Jan. 28 the agreement with the International Monetary Fund which, he said, took “the noose off the country’s neck”. CREDIT: Casa Rosada

on society.

 

Between realism and skepticism

Although the agreement was described as positive by most economists and even by the opposition, it sparked an internal crisis in the government, with one wing believing that the negotiation was too soft.

The clearest sign of the crisis was the resignation of Máximo Kirchner (son of former president and current vice-president Cristina Fernández Kirchner) as president of the ruling party’s bloc in the Chamber of Deputies, with a letter in which he stated that the IMF has been “the key trigger for every economic crisis since the return of democracy” in Argentina in 1983.

On the street, skepticism prevailed. In response to questions from IPS, the most frequently heard comment was that this news will not change anything for ordinary people, who see inflation as their main daily problem and believe it will continue to be so.

Juan Galíndez, who commutes almost two hours a day from a poor suburb of Buenos Aires to the city center to watch over cars parked outside a club, told IPS: “I don’t care about the IMF agreement because I know it won’t change anything for me. As long as I can get a few pesos to live on, I’m fine.” Galíndez works in the informal economy and depends on tips from customers of the club.

The plight of the poor in Argentina, however, is cushioned by a strong social assistance scheme that benefits almost 45 percent of the population in its various forms.

“Argentina has had a decade of economic stagnation and 30 years of a more structural deterioration,” Agustín Salvia, director of the Social Debt Observatory at the private Argentine Catholic University (UCA), told IPS. “Since 2018, what we have seen is a debt crisis to which the pandemic was added and this had very harsh consequences: it raised poverty levels from 35 to 48 percent at its peak, in 2020.”

The expert said that as of 2021, when the COVID vaccines began to arrive, restrictions on movement were relaxed and a process of economic recovery began, and poverty decreased although it has not returned to pre-pandemic levels.

A clothing and footwear store in downtown Buenos Aires tries to attract customers with big sales, despite constantly rising prices in Argentina. CREDIT: Daniel Gutman/IPS

“It stabilized at around 40 percent, because there is little investment from small or large companies that generate quality employment. What is growing the most is precarious informal work, with low wages that lose against inflation, and self-employment,” said Salvia.

The inflation that hits the poor especially hard is fundamentally driven, according to economists, by a fiscal deficit that in 2021 reached three percentage points of gross domestic product (GDP) and that is difficult to lower without social costs, in a country that spends 40 percent of its budget on pensions and other social security benefits.

In the understanding with the IMF, a path of progressive reduction of government spending was established, which postpones the zero deficit goal until 2025, in the next presidential term, which begins in December 2023.

“The agreement imposes some conditions of course, but this time the IMF is not demanding structural reforms that affect pensions or labor rights, as it has in the past, which means that they are a little more lax,” said economist Martín Kalos.

Kalos told IPS that reducing the fiscal deficit was a path that Argentina was going to have to go down with or without IMF surveillance: “While no country likes to be audited on its sovereign policy decisions, this was an agenda that Argentina was not going to be able to escape.”

Young mangrove plants, Puttalam Lagoon, Sri Lanka. Credit: Amantha Perera/IPS

By Baher Kamal
MADRID, Feb 2 2022 (IPS)

This is about Wetlands, which are considered as a natural solution to the global threat of climate change. They absorb carbon dioxide, help slow global heating and reduce pollution, hence they are often referred to as the “Kidneys of the Earth”.

Specifically, peatlands alone store twice as much carbon as all the world’s forests combined. However, when drained and destroyed, wetlands emit vast amounts of carbon, adds the UN on the occasion of the World Wetlands Day, marked 2 February.

“Wetlands also provide a buffer against the impacts of floods, droughts, hurricanes and tsunamis, and build resilience to climate change.”

And though they cover only around 6% of the Earth’s land surface, 40% of all plant and animal species live or breed in wetlands.

The World Day also reports that:

• Coastal wetlands sequester and store carbon up to 55 times faster than tropical rain forests.
• Rice, grown in wetland paddies, is the staple diet of 3.5 billion people.

 

But… what are wetlands?

Wetlands are ecosystems where water is the primary factor controlling the environment and the associated plant and animal life, explains the UN.

A broad definition includes both freshwater and marine and coastal ecosystems such as all lakes and rivers, underground aquifers, swamps and marshes, wet grasslands, peatlands, oases, estuaries, deltas and tidal flats, mangroves and other coastal areas, coral reefs, and all human-made sites such as fishponds, rice paddies, reservoirs and saltpans.

 

In the Ciénaga de Zapata, Cuba, the biggest wetlands in the Caribbean. Credit: Jorge Luis Baños/IPS

 

Where?

“Although present in all world’s regions, about 30% of the world’s wetlands are located in North America. Some of them developed after the previous glaciation created lakes. Asia and North America combined contain over 60% of the world’s wetland area.”

 

Critical to people and nature

The World Day also explains that these lands are critical to people and nature, given the intrinsic value of these ecosystems, and their benefits and services, including their environmental, climate, ecological, social, economic, scientific, educational, cultural, recreational and aesthetic contributions to sustainable development and human wellbeing.

“Wetland biodiversity matters for our health, our food supply, for tourism and for jobs. Wetlands are vital for humans, for other ecosystems and for our climate, providing essential ecosystem services such as water regulation, including flood control and water purification.”

 

A billion people depend on wetlands

“They are vital habitats for wildlife, as well as important tools for mitigating the effects of climate change. They help to manage extreme weather events like floods and storms, and can store 10-20 times more carbon than temperate or boreal forests on land.”

“Add to all that, more than a billion people across the world depend on them for their livelihoods – that’s about one in eight people on Earth.”

 

Why are they in danger?

Wetlands are among the ecosystems with the highest rates of decline, loss and degradation, explains the World Day.

Indicators of current negative trends in global biodiversity and ecosystem functions are projected to continue in response to direct and indirect drivers such as rapid human population growth, unsustainable production and consumption and associated technological development, as well as the adverse impacts of climate change.

 

The most threatened ecosystem

But not only are they disappearing three times faster than forests–they are the “Earth’s most threatened ecosystem.” In just 50 years — since 1970 — 35% of the world’s wetlands have been lost.

“Human activities that lead to loss of wetlands include drainage and infilling for agriculture and construction, pollution, overfishing and overexploitation of resources, invasive species and climate change.”

In the specific case of the Mediterranean, for example, the region has lost 50% of its natural wetlands since 1970 – and we continue to destroy them, warns the Union for the Mediterranean (UfM).

 

The vicious circle

This vicious circle of wetland loss, threatened livelihoods, and deepening poverty is the result of mistakenly seeing wetlands as wastelands rather than life-giving sources of jobs, incomes, and essential ecosystem services, the World Day concludes.

 

Logging on Kolombangara Island, Solomon Islands. Credit: CE Wilson.

By Catherine Wilson
CANBERRA, Australia, Feb 2 2022 (IPS)

Corruption continues to have a crippling effect on the lives of many people in southwest Pacific Island countries, exacerbating hardship and inequality and eroding human and national development.

Islanders speak of the mismanagement of public funds and assets by political elites at the national level, but also by organizations and individuals in communities, the loss of resource wealth and revenues as a result of corrupt deals between politicians and extractive companies, and the widespread practice of paying bribes for public services.

“High-level white collar corruption is still a big issue in the country. Kickbacks offered to government officials to facilitate payment is still rampant. Most big civil and building contracts tend to have very strong political connections and ties, which means that the procurement process is still weak,” said Busa Jeremiah Wenogo, a development economist who works for the Centre for Excellence in Financial Inclusion in the capital of Papua New Guinea (PNG), Port Moresby.

“Bribes are offered to secure drivers’ licenses and accident reports. There are also cases of criminals who have been released from jail due to bribes, despite the severity of their criminal offences, without the knowledge of the court and the aggrieved party,” Wenogo told IPS.

Corruption has become so widespread that people have accepted it as part of the way we live in this country. Corruption by politicians and within government is bringing our country down when we are blessed with natural resources to provide for all our citizens

PNG’s corruption ranking, as reported by Transparency International, has improved gradually in recent years. On a scale of 0-100, where 100 is ‘clean’, the Melanesian nation received a score of 25 in 2015, progressing to 27 in 2020 and 31 last year. But there is still a long way to go.

In the Solomon Islands, a rainforest-covered archipelago nation with a dominant logging industry, “the predominant forms of corruption we encounter in our work—that is the misuse and abuse of entrusted power for private gain—are conflict of interest and abuse of discretion, embezzlement, bribery, extortion and fraud,” Ruth Liloqula, Chief Executive of Transparency Solomon Islands, told IPS from the capital, Honiara. She believes that the most corrupt individuals and institutions in the country are members of parliament and companies extracting natural resources.

The latest 2021 Global Corruption Barometer, published by Transparency International, reveals that 96 percent and 97 percent of people in PNG and the Solomon Islands respectively believe corruption is a big problem in government, while 82 percent and 90 percent believe it is also a serious issue in the business world.

“The main impacts of corruption are poor health, medical and education infrastructure and services, lack of socioeconomic development throughout the country, benefits raised from the exploitation of natural resources leave the country to develop other countries and not the Solomon Islands, lack of employment opportunity for Solomon Islands’ rapidly growing population. And the rich get richer and the poor get poorer,” Liloqula continued.

At the centre of many allegations of high-level fraud are the political elite and the extractive industry. PNG is endowed with substantial deposits of gold, copper, silver, nickel and cobalt, as well as oil and natural gas. Prior to the pandemic, the mining sector accounted for 60 percent of the country’s total exports, while in the Solomon Islands, timber is the largest source of export earnings.

‘Corruption risks in this sector are high. Across the region transnational criminal groups use corruption to exploit natural resources, such as forests, fish stocks and gold and manganese deposits. Common tactics include bribery and capture of environmental law enforcement bodies, often involving high level politicians, government officials and private sector leaders and intermediaries, who may act with impunity,’ Transparency International reports.

In 2015 alone, an estimated $1.4 billion was lost from PNG’s government revenues due to fraud. Meanwhile in the Solomon Islands, the Auditor General’s report in 2019 claimed there were massive variances in the country’s national accounts and millions of dollars in unexplained payments and expenses. The cost of corruption is also high in the region’s fisheries industry where, from 2010 to 2015, the total value of illegally harvested or transhipped tuna in the Pacific Islands was more than $616 million, according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime.

‘Corruption is the single greatest obstacle to economic and social development around the world,’ claims the UN crime agency. And its most visible effects in countries such as PNG and the Solomon Islands is low human development, poor governance and national development outcomes, low standards and reach of public services, lack of employment growth and entrenched poverty. PNG is ranked 155 out of 189 countries for human development, while 56.6 percent of its people live in multi-dimensional poverty.

“Corruption has become so widespread that people have accepted it as part of the way we live in this country. Corruption by politicians and within government is bringing our country down when we are blessed with natural resources to provide for all our citizens,” said Dorothy Tekwie, President of PNG’s West Sepik Provincial Council of Women.

She told IPS that if corruption was effectively reduced, “development projects much needed by the people would be completed, so services can reach the people, especially in rural areas. It would mean more economic activities for rural people, more schools for children, thus an educated population, better health and the reduction of maternal and child mortality in rural and remote areas.”

The extent to which citizens and the media demand clean governance and hold their leaders to account will go a long way in progressing anti-corruption efforts. The political will to strengthen laws against corrupt practices and zero tolerance of fraud by the private sector is also crucial.

The initiative of the present PNG Government, under Prime Minister James Marape, to establish an Independent Commission against Corruption (ICAC) is a significant public signal that the government is taking the issue seriously. The agency is expected to be fully operational by 2023. However, Wenogo believes that for it to be a success, the new ICAC must be independent with wide-ranging powers to investigate and prosecute wrongdoers at all levels of power, and its investigations and findings must be transparent and free from political influence.

Success in reducing corruption in PNG is even more urgent as the country continues to grapple with the health and economic impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic. In January, PNG recorded 37,145 cases and 597 deaths. The pandemic could set the goal of eliminating poverty in the region back by a decade and, in some Pacific Island countries, by up to 30 years, warns the regional inter-governmental organization, Pacific Islands Forum.

A young child being given polio drops in Peshawar, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. Pakistan recently reported that it had been a year since the last case of polio was detected. Credit: OC KP

By Zofeen Ebrahim
KARACHI, Feb 2 2022 (IPS)

“It was like a heavy burden had been lifted, and I could breathe easier,” said Irum Khan, a polio worker, recalling the cloudy, gloomy, winter morning of January 28, 2022, when her supervisor announced Pakistan had not reported a single case of a child afflicted with polio since January 27, 2021, when the last time a polio case was reported from the province of Balochistan.

“There were 16 of us, and we all burst in applause. It was the best news we had heard in years,” said the 20-year-old Khan, working with the polio eradication programme since 2018, in Dera Ismail Khan (DI Khan), in the province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, once a hotbed of polio.

Health workers mark a finger with indelible ink to indicate that a child has been vaccinated. The campaign to eradicate polio reached a critical milestone with no cases reported for a year. Credit: Zofeen T. Ebrahim/IPS

The day passed like a breeze as she went about her work, administering polio drops to children under five. On a daily basis, she visits between 30-50 households, and each home may have between three to five families living together.

“I was on some sort of a high; even those who refused and sent me away failed to dampen my mood,” she added.

“Without the unwavering support of the 380,000 polio workers, we would never have been able to reach this milestone,” said Dr Shahzad Baig, national coordinator for the Pakistan Polio Eradication Programme, speaking to IPS over the phone from Islamabad.

The director-general for health at the ministry of national health services, Dr Rana Safdar, Baig’s predecessor, agreed. He gave all the credit to “hundreds of thousands of our frontline workers who demonstrated an unprecedented commitment to battle polio”.

In 2015, there were 54 cases, 20 in 2016 and only 8 in 2017. Pakistan thought it would be possible to eradicate polio, having reached single-digit cases, but then the country saw a surge with 12 cases in 2018. And in 2019, 147 cases were detected.

Safdar, who had left the polio programme in 2019 after working there for six years, returned when the surge began and was tasked with reorganising it so that work on polio eradication could be carried out in tandem with the routine childhood immunisation.

In 2020, like in the rest of the world, Pakistan was in the grip of Covid-19. Both the anti-polio campaigns and routine immunisation had to be suspended to ensure the safety of the workers and communities, explained Safdar. That year, up to 84 cases were reported.

“We enhanced our outreach to vaccinate eligible children against all vaccine-preventable diseases in an organised manner and were able to reach them in the remotest pockets where communities were finding it difficult to access our healthcare facilities, taking full Covid-19 precautions,” said the director-general.

But it is not the time for the government to sit on its laurels. Although the “finish line is visible”, for him “the job is far from over”, and Pakistan cannot let its guard down, Baig said.

The reason for caution, explained Irum Khan, was because the virus is still lurking around in the environment and her district. “The virus was found in some environmental samples,” she said, and therefore the “danger is not over yet”.

Baig said that in the last three months of the environmental samples collected from 64 sites, two were found to have the poliovirus in the towns of Lakki Marwat and Tank, in DI Khan district.

Polio spreads quickly, and chances of an outbreak could become imminent. “We need to kill the virus on its turf before it reaches other bigger cities of, say Quetta, Karachi or Islamabad,” he said.

His apprehension is palpable. DI Khan is the hub from where large swathes of the population move, both from bordering Afghanistan (the only other country where polio is endemic after Pakistan) and the tribal belt of the province and then inward to other provinces.

“Instead of fighting the polio battle across the country, if we can focus the fight in these districts of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP), we can become polio-free in the next three years,” says the polio programme head.

Although the virus does not respect borders, be it Pakistan or Afghanistan, a much stricter border control since the takeover of Kabul by the Taliban on August 15, 2021, has meant the free and frequent movement of Afghan nationals has been contained to some extent.

In addition, the persistent refusals by anti-vaxxers could also lead to the spread of the virus. “I am worried the virus may reach the children who are kept hidden from polio workers,” said Baig.

“They tell us the child is not home, or he or she is sleeping and to come later, or that they are busy and to come later; some will hide their children,” said Bushra Khan, a polio worker from KP’s capital city, Peshawar. She said they have to make as many as “four visits” just to administer two drops because the time is not convenient for the parents, or they don’t want to get their children vaccinated.

This attitude of nonchalance, according to Irum Khan, is because the vaccine is free, and people do not value it because they are not paying for it.

“Put a price tag on this vaccine, and you will see parents bringing their kids to the health centres,” she said.

Polio health worker walking in snow in Quetta, Balochistan province. Credit: EOC Balochistan

According to Baig, the two drops cost the government Rs 130 (74 cents)/per child, and over 40 million under-five children were administered these drops in the last nationwide campaign.

Providing security to the polio workers is another task. As many as 70 polio workers have been killed by militants since 2012, a majority in KP. But those providing them with the security are also on the radar of miscreants. In December 2021, two policemen accompanying polio vaccination teams were killed and two injured in separate incidents in Tank and Lakki Marwat. And last month, in January, one more police officer was killed in KP’s Kohat.

“This saps the morale of the team. The families get scared and are reluctant to send the workers out in the field. This means we have to organise the 2-member team all over again, train the ones who are new, some of whom may be new to the community they are serving,” said Baig. “And it’s not even that we are paying handsomely for it to be worth their life,” he added, referring to Rs 1,000/day (USD 5.67) wage.

Still, according to Dr Safdar, the biggest challenge is the burnout of polio workers and “keeping teams motivated on both sides of the borders (between Pakistan and Afghanistan) till we reach the finish line”.

 

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

• Time Honoured Food Traditions, Pleasing for Palate and Planet
• Time for Public Conversation, Justice after ‘Blasphemy’ killing in Pakistan, say Rights Activists
• Human Trafficking, Rape, Extortion Behind ‘Forced Conversions’, say Experts

US Congress.
In the midst of the current crisis, what about progressives in the US Congress? It’s a dangerous crisis in decades that risks pushing the world into nuclear war, very few are doing anything more than mouth safe platitudes. Credit: Commons Wikipedia.Org

By Norman Solomon
SAN FRANCISCO, USA , Feb 2 2022 (IPS)

Hidden in plain sight, the extreme hypocrisy of the U.S. position on NATO and Ukraine cries out for journalistic coverage and open debate in the USA’s major media outlets. But those outlets, with rare exceptions, have gone into virtually Orwellian mode, only allowing elaboration on the theme of America good, Russia bad.

Aiding and abetting a potentially catastrophic — and I do mean catastrophic — confrontation between the world’s two nuclear superpowers are lawmakers on Capitol Hill. Like the media they echo and vice versa, members of Congress, including highly touted progressives, can scarcely manage more than vague comments that they want diplomacy rather than war.

Imagine if a powerful Russian-led military alliance were asserting the right to be joined by its ally Mexico — and in the meantime was shipping big batches of weapons to that country — can you imagine the response from Washington?

Yet we’re supposed to believe that it’s fine for the U.S.-led NATO alliance to assert that it has the prerogative to grant membership to Ukraine — and in the meantime is now shipping large quantities of weaponry to that country.

Mainstream U.S. news outlets have no use for history or documentation that might interfere with the current frenzy presenting NATO’s expansion to the Russian border as an unalloyed good.

“It is worth recalling how much the alliance has weakened world security since the end of the Cold War, by inflaming relations with Russia,” historian David Gibbs said last week. “It is often forgotten that the cause of the current conflict arose from a 1990 U.S. promise that NATO would never be expanded into the former communist states of Eastern Europe.

Not ‘one inch to the East,’ Russian leaders were promised by the U.S. Secretary of State at the time, James Baker. Despite this promise, NATO soon expanded into Eastern Europe, eventually placing the alliance up against Russia’s borders. The present-day U.S.-Russian conflict is the direct result of this expansion.”

The journalists revved up as bloviating nationalists on the USA’s TV networks and in other media outlets have no use for any such understanding. Why consider how anything in the world might look to Russians?

Why bother to provide anything like a broad range of perspectives about a conflict that could escalate into incinerating the world with thermonuclear weapons? Jingoistic conformity is a much more prudent career course.

Out of step with that kind of conformity is Andrei Tsygankov, professor of international relations at San Francisco State University, whose books include Russia and America: The Asymmetric Rivalry. “Russia views its actions as a purely defensive response to increasingly offensive military preparations by NATO and Ukraine (according to Russia’s foreign ministry, half of Ukraine’s army, or about 125,000 troops, are stationed near the border),” he wrote days ago.

“Instead of pressuring Ukraine to de-escalate and comply with the Minsk Protocol, however, Western nations continue to provide the Ukrainian army with lethal weapons and other supplies.”

Tsygankov points out that Russian President Vladimir Putin “has two decades of experience of trying to persuade Western leaders to take Russia’s interests into consideration. During these years, Russia has unsuccessfully opposed the U.S. decision to withdraw from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and build a new missile defense system in Romania, expand NATO, invade Iraq and Libya, and support Kyiv’s anti-Russian policies — all in vain.”

The professor nails a key reality: “Whatever plans Russia may have with respect to Ukraine and NATO, conflict resolution greatly depends on the West. A major war is avoidable if Western leaders gather confidence and the will to abandon the counter-productive language of threats and engage Russia in reasoned dialogue.

If diplomacy is given a fair chance, the European continent may arrive at a new security system that will reflect, among others, Russia’s interests and participation.”

In the midst of all this, what about progressives in the US Congress? As we face the most dangerous crisis in decades that risks pushing the world into nuclear war, very few are doing anything more than mouth safe platitudes.

Are they bowing to public opinion? Not really. It’s much more like they’re cowering to avoid being attacked by hawkish media and militaristic political forces.

On Friday, the American Prospect reported: “A new Data for Progress poll shared exclusively with the Prospect finds that the majority of Americans favor diplomacy with Russia over sanctions or going to war for Ukrainian sovereignty.

Most Americans are not particularly animated about the escalating conflict in Eastern Europe, the poll shows, despite round-the-clock media coverage. When asked, 71 percent of Democrats and 46 percent of Republicans said they support the U.S. striking a diplomatic deal with Russia. They agreed that in the effort to de-escalate tensions and avoid war, the U.S. should be prepared to make concessions.”

The magazine’s reporting provides a portrait of leading congressional progressives who can’t bring themselves to directly challenge fellow Democrat Joe Biden’s escalation of the current highly dangerous conflict, as he sends still more large shipments of weaponry to Ukraine with a new batch worth $200 million while deploying 8,500 U.S. troops to Eastern Europe.

Asked about the issue of prospective Ukraine membership in NATO sometime in the future, Rep. Ro Khanna treated the situation as a test of superpower wills or game of chicken, saying: “I would not be blackmailed by Putin in this situation.”

Overall, the American Prospect ferreted out routine refusal of progressive icons in Congress to impede the spiraling crisis:

** “The 41 co-sponsors of a sanctions package moving through the Senate include progressive heavyweights like Ed Markey of Massachusetts and Jeff Merkley of Oregon. In a press release on the bill, Markey said the legislation was designed to ‘work in concert with the actions the Biden administration has already taken to demonstrate that we will continue to support Ukraine and its sovereignty.’”

** “Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-WA), chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, put out a statement on Wednesday with Rep. Barbara Lee (D-CA). ‘Russia’s strategy is to inflame tensions; the United States and NATO must not play into this strategy,’ the representatives said. The statement raises concerns over ‘sweeping and indiscriminate sanctions.’ But pressed on what, exactly, the United States should be prepared to offer in diplomatic talks, a spokesperson for Lee did not respond.”

** “Reached by the Prospect, spokespeople for leading progressives, including Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), declined to comment on questions including whether the U.S. should commit not to bring Ukraine into NATO and whether it should provide direct military aid to Ukraine. Sanders declined to weigh in. In a statement, Warren said, ‘The United States must use appropriate economic, diplomatic, and political tools to de-escalate this situation.’”

** “Spokespeople for Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Ayanna Pressley, and Rashida Tlaib, who have previously criticized American interventionism in the Middle East, did not respond to questions from the Prospect, including ones on sanctions policy and NATO commitments.”

Progressives in Congress have yet to say that Biden should stop escalating the Ukraine conflict between the two nuclear superpowers. Instead, we hear easy pleas for diplomacy and, at best, mildly worded “significant concerns” about the president’s new batch of arms shipments and troop deployments to the region.

The evasive rhetoric amounts to pretending that the president isn’t doing what he’s actually doing as he ratchets up the tensions and the horrendous risks.

All this can be summed up in five words: Extremely. Irresponsible. And. Extremely. Dangerous.

Norman Solomon is the national director of RootsAction.org and the author of a dozen books including Made Love, Got War: Close Encounters with America’s Warfare State, published in a new edition as a free e-book in January 2022. His other books include War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death. He was a Bernie Sanders delegate from California to the 2016 and 2020 Democratic National Conventions. Solomon is the founder and executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy.

 

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

In Raposos, a Brazilian city of 16,500 inhabitants, two-thirds of the homes were flooded by the rising waters of the Das Velhas River. The city grew on both banks of the river, between hills, which led to recurrent flooding. CREDIT: Das Velas River CBH

By Mario Osava
RIO DE JANEIRO, Feb 2 2022 (IPS)

People living in Jardim Pantanal, a low-income neighborhood on the east side of the Brazilian megalopolis of São Paulo, suffer floods every southern hemisphere summer. Many residents remember the three months their streets and homes were under water in late 2009 and early 2010.

The community is an extreme case of irregular occupation of land on a low bank of the Tietê River, which crosses the southern city. But it is a “structured neighborhood, with brick houses, some of which are two stories tall” to enable residents to avoid the water, said Igor Pantoja, mobilization advisor of Rede Nossa São Paulo, a social organization working for “a just and sustainable city”.

Flooding also occurs in other poor and not-so-poor neighborhoods in São Paulo and other Brazilian metropolises.

In January torrential rains hit the outskirts of Belo Horizonte, capital of the southern state of Minas Gerais, where multiple floods especially affected the cities in the upper reaches of the basin of the Das Velhas River, the source of the region’s water.

In one of the most affected cities, Raposos, two-thirds of the 16,500 inhabitants had to leave their homes when the river rose more than 2.5 meters in the second week of January. At least 12 people died as a result of the rains in outlying neighborhoods.

“When the cities expanded the rivers and streams were ignored, and were only used as a place to dump waste and sewage. Flood-prone areas were occupied, settled by the poor, pressured by economic necessity, and the rich, (fleeing the city) because of their fears,” said Ronald Guerra, a member of the Das Velhas River Basin Committee (CBH).

Guerra, a rural tourism entrepreneur in the town of São Bartolomeu, in the historic municipality of Ouro Preto, listed deforestation, unregulated urbanization and mining as the major factors in the degradation of the watershed and sedimentation of the rivers, which especially threaten the downstream population.

Mining tailings dams pose a particularly serious risk for the basin that supplies water to 60 percent of the six million inhabitants of neighborhoods on the outskirts of São Paulo.

Three years ago one of the dams burst in a neighboring municipality, Brumadinho, leaving 264 dead and six missing, as well as silting and poisoning another river, the Paraopebas.

“Floods and landslides are not the fault of the river itself. There was human action that resulted in the elimination of vegetation and the occupation of slopes,” Guerra told IPS by telephone from São Bartolomeu.

The streets were transformed into veritable rivers during days of heavy rains in the Brazilian city of Raposos, in the upper part of the Das Velhas River basin, 30 kilometers upstream from Belo Horizonte, capital of the state of Minas Gerais, with a population of 2.5 million. CREDIT: Das Velhas River CBH

Putting pressure on the government

“The State failed to play its role as regulator of land occupation, it let people occupy the banks of the rivers, without implementing a serious housing policy,” said Marcus Vinicius Polignano, secretary of the Das Velhas River CBH. “Today we have a chaotic situation that is entrenched. The great challenge is how to rebuild the cities.”

“We have to seek 21st century solutions that take the climate crisis into consideration, and we have to avoid repeating the mistakes of the past as we are doing,” he said in a telephone interview with IPS from Belo Horizonte.

The Das Velhas River CBH and other social movements successfully pushed for inclusion in the new Belo Horizonte Master Plan, in force since February 2020, of the directive that watercourses will no longer be channeled and that the valley bottoms will be cared for, to avoid new “scheduled floods,” the activist celebrated.

“Respecting natural infrastructure, seeking harmony with nature, allowing rivers to flow, not committing the stupidity of boxing them in could be a good route to take,” he said.

The Basin Committee mobilizes the local population, seeks to “change mentalities” and pressures decision-makers to adopt more adequate water policies. “We also propose better alternatives” to avoid new disasters, said Polignano, a physician with a master’s degree in epidemiology and a doctorate in social pediatrics.

It did not rain an exceptional amount in January, according to the expert, who said the problem was that the rainfall of an entire month fell in just 10 days. However, the damage caused by repeated urban floods can be mitigated by “open-minded” management, he argued.

In Belo Horizonte, capital of the southern Brazilian state of Minas Gerais, home to 2.5 million people, torrential rains in January 2022 destroyed streets and flooded some neighborhoods, in a repeat of disasters that are becoming more frequent every year. CREDIT: Das Velhas River CBH

Rescuing nature

“Multifunctional nature-based solutions” are proposed by urban landscaper Cecilia Polacow Herzog, a graduate professor at the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro.

Creating a “rain garden” with diversified plants in a limited area to retain and infiltrate water is one aspect of her proposal that has recently drawn attention.

However, “it’s not only that, but everything that absorbs rain and promotes biodiversity, without which there is no soil to infiltrate and replenish the water table,” Herzog said in an interview with IPS by telephone from Lisbon, where she is currently based.

“Renaturalize,” or bring nature back to the cities, is her slogan. Parks of all sizes, small or large gardens; we must “turn gray infrastructure into green,” she said.

This requires “a systemic view,” understanding the city as a large complex system in which things have multiple effects and functions.

Diversified tree planting, for example, “makes the soil more alive, sequesters carbon and reduces pollution and noise, improves habitat for other species, produces fruit, attracts bees that pollinate, birds and fish that eat the fruit, and with more fish aquatic life expands,” she explained.

“A park represents more water, less heat, more recreation and social cohesion, it encourages urban agriculture,” Herzog added.

But she does not ignore the hurdles: “real estate interests, politicians keen on getting votes, the automobile industry that wants asphalt and waterproofing, together with the oil industry.”

Cities are not prepared for torrential rains and will require time to adapt to the climate crisis, she said.

Building the city by destroying nature results in chaotic floods when it rains with any intensity, as happens almost every year in the Metropolitan Region of Belo Horizonte, warned Marcus Vinicius Polignano, secretary of the Das Velhas River Basin Committee, which supplies water to most of the local inhabitants. CREDIT: Das Velhas River CBH

Millions at risk

Brazil had 8.26 million people at risk of landslides and floods in 825 municipalities, according to a study by the National Center for Natural Disaster Monitoring and Alerts (Cemaden), of the Ministry of Science and Technology, based on data from the 2010 census conducted by the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics.

Cemaden was created in February 2011 after landslides caused by heavy rains in towns in the hills near Rio de Janeiro left 947 people dead and nearly 300 missing, according to the Center.

In fact, the data indicate that 4.3 percent of the Brazilian population at that time faced a threat of flooding. If this proportion remains steady, 9.2 million people out of a current population of 214 million are now at risk, although there may have been an increase, given that there are now more extreme events.

The two metropolitan regions whose undulating topography tends to increase the danger, those of São Paulo and Belo Horizonte, show a higher proportion of people at risk in the study: 7.3 percent and 16.4 percent, respectively.

The Territorial Risk Areas Base (Bater) methodology is “robust and makes it possible to update the data” when a new census is carried out in Brazil, which should occur in the second half of 2022, after it was postponed in 2020 and 2021, said Regina Alvalá, deputy director of Cemaden and coordinator of the study.

“Torrential rains do not have repercussions if they fall in uninhabited areas, but rather because of their social impact,” which is why the risks are growing, given global warming, more frequent extreme events and the concentration of the population in large cities, the cartographic engineer with a doctorate in meteorology told IPS by telephone from the southern city of São José dos Campos, where Cemaden is based.

Related Articles

• Climate Crisis Exacerbates Urban Inequality in Latin America

Restrictive immigration policies such as Title 42 have serious consequences on migrants. Credit: Esteban Montaño/MSF

By Peter Costantini
SEATTLE, USA, Feb 1 2022 (IPS)

The specters of slave patrols and Ku Klux Klan night riders haunted the viral videos. They showed cowboy-hatted Border Patrol agents on horseback insulting and threatening Haitian families with children as they crossed the Rio Grande into Texas. The outrage reverberated around the world and inside the Beltway. But the story soon disappeared from the news cycle.

Immigrant justice groups at the border said it was the latest in a long parade of abuses inflicted by immigration enforcement. And they called for broad and deep changes.

The theatrical brutality against mainly Black immigrants, and the government’s contradictory responses to the large encampment where it took place, shone a harsh light on the exclusionary immigration policies of the Donald Trump administration, some of which have been continued by the Joe Biden administration.

The Del Rio episode laid bare internecine conflicts over how to roll back Trump’s restrictions and move towards Biden’s stated goal of a more “humane” immigration system.

The theatrical brutality against mainly Black immigrants, and the government’s contradictory responses to the large encampment where it took place, shone a harsh light on the exclusionary immigration policies of the Donald Trump administration, some of which have been continued by the Joe Biden administration

Ultimately, the encampment should be understood as a massive campaign of civil disobedience asserting the right to seek asylum. It ended with starkly contrasting outcomes. Many thousands of refugees were flown back to Haiti without a chance to make their case, but a number half again larger was taken into the United States immigration system and allowed to pursue asylum.

 

Border Patrol follies

The drama began in early September, when thousands of migrants began arriving at the Mexican border town of Ciudad Acuña, Coahuila. Fording the river’s shallows carrying children and possessions, they improvised a tent camp under the International Bridge in Del Rio, Texas.

Most sought to ask the United States for asylum, which U.S. and international law allow them to do anywhere on U.S. territory. The majority were Haitians and many others were Central or South Americans. Two-thirds traveled in family groups.

Few Haitians, however, came to the U.S. border directly from Haiti: most had left their home country years ago after a devastating 2010 earthquake and settled in South America, mainly in Chile and Brazil. The pandemic and the ensuing economic crash reportedly left many without jobs and visas there.

The incoming Biden administration flatly told migrants that the U.S. border would remain closed to them during the pandemic. Yet many displaced Haitians heard rumors to the contrary, and apparently decided the trip north was worth the risks and costs.

Previous efforts of large groups of immigrants to reach the U.S. border together often took the form of “caravans” on foot. By contrast, many of the Haitians traveled in smaller groups, coordinating by cell phone. Some reportedly took public transportation, while others boarded a large number of buses and other vehicles arranged by organizers and possibly smugglers. Some observers said they must have had the acquiescence of Mexican officials.

Del Rio hosts a small border crossing about halfway between more crowded ports of entry downriver in the lower Rio Grande valley and upriver around El Paso. These migrants may have chosen it because of reputedly smaller presences of organized crime on the Mexican side and of border-enforcement authorities on the U.S. side. By converging together on one crossing, they sought safety in numbers.

U.S. officials were caught off guard, and thousands of migrants were able to enter the U.S. to ask for asylum. They needed to buy food and necessities, but were blocked from going to stores in Del Rio. So they had to cross the river to Ciudad Acuña to buy supplies, and then cross back to bring them to the camp. Although the border was officially closed to most migrants, U.S. authorities initially accepted this informal arrangement.

The Border Patrol officers who assaulted the migrants September 19 were apparently breaking this tacit agreement. Their performative thuggishness seemed stage managed to incite Trump’s rabidly anti-immigrant base. But it served no enforcement purpose. The migrants were not trying to escape into the U.S. interior. They had strong incentives to wait there for a chance to ask for asylum.

President Biden and Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas condemned the Border Patrol actions and vowed to quickly investigate the events and punish those responsible. The Department of Homeland Security opened an investigation that Mayorkas said would be concluded in “days, not weeks”. Nearly two months later, however, DHS issued a statement that the investigation was ongoing.

“These investigation and discipline systems at the border agencies are really broken and need a complete overhaul,” Clara Long of Human Rights Watch warned. Civil-society organizations say there has long been systemic anti-migrant prejudice undergirding a culture of impunity in CBP, making it very difficult to hold officers accountable for abuses.

“Suddenly the nation realized that we have a Border Patrol that beats up Black immigrants or people of color”, Fernando García of the Border Network for Human Rights told me. “We’ve been telling that story for years. … Yesterday, they were the Haitian refugees. But in the past, we talked about Guatemalan children dying in detention centers.” These and other abuses show that “the Border Patrol acts with impunity. … So we responded by denouncing the aggression, but also by calling for systemic change.”

 

Breaking camp

By the time of the Border Patrol aggression in mid-September, the encampment had grown to an estimated 15,000 people. Conditions there were called “deplorable” by United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi. Republican politicians loudly accused Biden of creating a crisis at the border.

Border authorities, some said, failed to heed reports of large groups of migrants heading north. “The arrival of vulnerable asylum-seekers is not a crisis,” Wade McMullen, an attorney at RFK Human Rights, told Michelle García of The Intercept. “The militarized response and lack of preparation — that’s the crisis.”

As the situation in Del Rio degraded, the Biden administration abruptly shifted into high gear. It deployed federal personnel from several agencies to process all the immigrants.

On September 24, DHS Secretary Mayorkas announced that the camp had been completely emptied. However, the conflicting methods employed revealed clashing policy approaches among Biden’s advisors.

The number of migrants summarily expelled to Haiti without a chance to ask for asylum rose from Mayorkas’s estimate of 2,000 to 8,700 by mid-November. A larger number – 13,000 was later reported – were allowed to request asylum in immigration courts. Of these, 10,000 were released to sponsors around the U.S., while 3,000 were held in immigration detention as their cases proceeded. Another 8,000 “voluntarily” returned to Mexico, Mayorkas said, and roughly 4,000 were still being processed by DHS.

The U.S., Mayorkas announced, had established a $5.5 million program to assist the repatriated Haitians, to be distributed through the United Nations. The cost of flying the migrants to Haiti, however, amounted to $15 million paid to a private prison company.

The mass expulsions to Haiti represented a dereliction of U.S. obligations under international and U.S. asylum law. Yet a number of migrants half again larger than those expelled was allowed to enter the immigration system and request asylum. The Biden administration said little about how it triaged people to their divergent fates.

 

Expulsions to Haiti

Dissension has reportedly surfaced within the administration between advisors favoring “aggressive enforcement” to deter immigrants, and others favoring more welcoming policies towards asylum seekers.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, a close Biden ally, publicly broke with Biden’s policies. He called for an end to the expulsions back to Haiti, which he said “defy common sense”, and termination of Trump’s “hateful and xenophobic” policies. Asylum seekers, he said, should be offered due process at U.S. ports of entry.

Haiti, a small Caribbean nation, is in the throes of cascading disasters: an earthquake that killed more than 2,000, followed by a hurricane; the assassination of the president; and the dissolution of the legislature and much of the police force. Major swathes of the capital are controlled by gangs that rob and kidnap with impunity, bringing much of the already struggling economy to a halt. Haiti clearly has no capacity to receive returning emigrants.

Two veteran U.S. diplomats assigned to Haiti resigned in protest against what one called “inhumane, counterproductive decision” to expel thousands of Haitians back to a “collapsed state … unable to provide security or basic services”. The other warned that returning individuals to places where they “fear persecution, death, or torture” violates asylum law, and asserted: “Lawful, more humane alternatives plainly exist.”

International human rights authorities condemned both the summary methods used to expel the migrants and their forced return to Haiti.

Four human rights organizations of the U.N. issued a joint statement calling on governments “to refrain from expelling Haitians without proper assessment of their individual protection needs”, to uphold their human rights in mobility, and to offer better access to “regular migration pathways.”

“International law prohibits collective expulsions and requires that each case be examined individually”, they explained. “Discriminatory public discourse portraying human mobility as a problem risks contributing to racism and xenophobia and should be avoided and condemned.”

 

Public-health measure or asylum ban?

The mass expulsions began in March 2020, when the Trump administration invoked an obscure federal law to rapidly expel nearly all migrants at the border without any chance to request asylum. U.S. Code Title 42 enables the government to suspend normal immigration procedures in a public-health emergency. U.S. Code Title 8 codifies pre-pandemic due process allowing immigrants to petition for asylum and other relief before immigration officials.

Trump used Title 42 to expedite removal of migrants of all ages. The incoming Biden administration decided not to expel unaccompanied children, and one Mexican state has refused to accept families with small children. Yet Biden has continued Title 42 expulsions of most families and adults in the face of a crescendo of criticism. A court blocked use of Title 42, but the ruling was stayed on appeal. Meanwhile, some migrant families have sent their youngsters to request asylum alone, getting them out of the dangerous borderlands, but separating yet more families.

Numerous authorities have discredited the law’s public-health rationale, highlighted the damage it has done, and advocated for its termination.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, President Biden’s top medical advisor, told CNN: “Let’s face reality here. The problem is within our own country. Focusing on immigrants, expelling them … is not the solution to an outbreak.” Were immigrants were a major reason why COVID-19 was spreading here? “Absolutely not.”

A letter to the Biden administration from leading scientists condemned Title 42 as “scientifically baseless and politically motivated” and urged the administration to rescind the order. Signatories recommended implementing public-health measures that “process asylum seekers at the border and parole them to live in safety in their communities.” In a commentary, two public-health experts wrote that forcing migrants back to Mexico put them again “at the mercy of the violent Mexican cartels they were so desperate to escape.”

Internationally, a United Nations Refugee Agency official asserted that “protecting public health and protecting access to asylum … are fully compatible.” During the emergency, many countries deployed “health screening, testing and quarantine measures, to simultaneously protect both public health and the right to seek asylum.”

Filippo Grandi, U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, criticized the expulsions of hundreds of thousands of people without screening, and called for the government “immediately and fully to lift its Title 42 restrictions.” Denying access to asylum procedures, he said, “may constitute refoulement” (forced return to the location of previous persecution). “Guaranteed access to safe territory and the prohibition of pushbacks of asylum-seekers are core precepts of the 1951 Refugee Convention and refugee law,” he explained.

Before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, advocates submitted an emergency request for protection of 31 asylum seekers excluded from the U.S. under Title 42. The commission adopted a resolution providing guidance for governments “to protect the rights of Haitians” who are migrants or otherwise displaced.

While the Biden administration has ended many of Trump’s injustices, it has persisted in defending some of his most widely condemned measures, including Title 42. “It’s like [former Trump adviser] Stephen Miller’s ghost is still pulling the strings of Biden’s immigration policies”, commented Nicole Phillips of the Haitian Bridge Alliance. The administration “needs to do more to root out Stephen Miller’s ghost.”

 

A door opened for some

As it summarily expelled some of the Del Rio migrants, the U.S. also accepted many more to pursue asylum in the pre-pandemic Title 8 system.

DHS Secretary Mayorkas said that 13,000 of the migrants would be allowed to “have their asylum claims heard by an immigration judge in the United States”, nearly 50 percent more than the 8,700 sent back to Haiti. Of those accepted, 10,000 were released into the U.S. to family or sponsors, while the other 3,000 were detained by ICE while their cases proceed. “The numbers placed in immigration court proceedings are a function of operational capacity and also what we consider to be appropriate,” was Mayorkas’s non-committal explanation.

The 10,000 immigrants released from Del Rio were sent initially to a network of non-governmental shelters, where they could arrange transportation to locations around the country.

The arrival of the refugees at Annunciation House in El Paso elicited an outpouring of solidarity from the local community, Hannah Hollandbyrd of Hope Border Institute told me. Volunteers took people to the airport, and tested them for COVID-19. According to shelter director Ruben Garcia, nearly all of the 2,000 refugees released there were able to move on to their final destinations after spending only a few days there.

The proportion of migrants at Del Rio released to pursue asylum followed the trend for all border encounters during the past year.

With little publicity, Biden’s immigration enforcement began to gradually reduce its reliance on Title 42. Border Patrol enforcement actions under the measure were 88.3 percent of encounters during October-December 2020, Trump’s last full quarter, denying any possibility of asylum in nearly all cases. They dropped sharply to 49.4 percent during July-September 2021 under Biden, so that half of the cases were handled under Title 8’s due process allowing for asylum claims.

 

“Voluntary” returnees to Mexico

Of the migrants in the Del Rio camp, Mayorkas said that some 8,000 returned to Mexico “voluntarily”, a number nearly equal to those flown back to Haiti. Many of these migrants will likely try again to enter or re-enter the U.S. at some point

Most of these migrants have relocated downriver to Mexican border cities in the lower Rio Grande valley, according to Camilo Cruz of the International Organization for Migration. Many Haitians, he said, have been applying to Mexico to regularize their migration status there. Mexican government data showed that more than 26,000 Haitians asked for asylum in Mexico in the first three quarters of 2021, up from under 6,000 in both 2019 and 2020.

In an interview in Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua, over 400 miles upriver from Del Rio, Cruz told me that few Haitians had appeared there, but that the shelters were still beyond capacity with other migrants excluded from the U.S.

In Haiti, where the IOM gives returning Haitians financial aid after their arrival, IOM Chief of Mission Giuseppe Loprete told EFE that thousands of migrants are leaving because of the earthquake and other crises. But he noted that many who had been living in Chile or Brazil are going directly to those embassies in Haiti and asking for permission to return there.

According to an IOM report, from January through October 2021 an estimated 100,000 migrants, 62 percent of them originally from Haiti, crossed the Darien Gap between South and Central America.

However, despite some reports that more large groups of Haitian migrants might be heading north, CBP reported that border encounters with Haitians fell by 93 percent from September to October, and remained very low in November.

 

Welcoming the stranger

Despite the white sado-nationalism that surfaced at Del Rio, the outcome could be seen by future migrants as a partially successful campaign of non-violent civil disobedience to thwart unjust laws, such as Title 42, and brutal enforcement.

The migrants in the camp were able to request asylum relatively more frequently than asylum seekers nationally during the same period. About 60 percent of those processed by the U.S. were accepted into the asylum process under Title 8, while 40 percent were expelled to Haiti under Title 42. For all immigrants reaching the border in September, the ratio was roughly 47 percent accepted versus 53 percent expelled.

These ambiguous outcomes aside, the Biden administration’s removal of Haitian migrants to Haiti remained a gratuitously cruel operation that threw the victims into a life-threatening situation. Title 42 should have been terminated at the beginning of Biden’s term, and none of the Haitians should have been expelled to Haiti.

The global backlash against the expulsions has been politically costly. Yet ironically, the Del Rio incident did foster a consensus across a surprisingly wide political spectrum on ways to avoid future recurrences of those kinds of injustices.

The mayor of Del Rio, Bruno Lozano, and the Val Verde County executive, Lewis Owens, had criticized the Biden administration’s handling of the border. Yet both agreed that the process has to be reformed to allow migrants to ask for asylum at ports of entry.

Hollandbyrd of Hope Border Institute also emphasized the urgent need to open ports of entry to asylum seekers and end Title 42. Longer-term solutions, she said, will require restoring and expanding the asylum system, diversifying other legal pathways for immigration, and addressing the root causes of migration.

U.S. Representative Veronica Escobar, Democrat from El Paso, has introduced a bill into Congress that would establish “a humane and equitable asylum process designed for America’s immigration realities in the 21st century.”

U.N. High Commissioner Grandi voiced an international consensus: “I encourage the US administration to continue its work to strengthen its asylum system and diversify safe pathways so asylum-seekers are not forced to resort to dangerous crossings facilitated by smugglers.”

On issues of border-enforcement reform, the Border Network for Human Rights has been meeting with the local Border Patrol for many years, Executive Director García said, and has negotiated accountability mechanisms with them including standards for use of force and training in de-escalation techniques.

BNHR is part of a coalition, the New Ellis Island Border Policy Working Group, which is partnering with congressional representatives to codify transparency and accountability of border security operations in legislation.

In its foreign policy, the Biden administration has emphasized the need for a “rules-based” international order. Among the most fundamental international rules are human rights, and of these, asylum and refuge are existential. Yet human rights defenders from the United Nations to local NGOs are spotlighting grave U.S. failures to protect human beings in motion. A truly “rules-based” immigration policy would uphold these rules and welcome the stranger.

* * *

Peter Costantini is an independent analyst based in Seattle. For nearly four decades he has written about migration and Latin America, and has volunteered with immigrant justice groups.

The full referenced analysis on which this piece is based can be downloaded as a PDF file from:
https://tinyurl.com/costantini-delrio

 

Zimbabwe’s smallholder farmers are reliant on rain, which impacts the country’s food security efforts. Credit: Ignatius Banda/IPS

By Ignatius Banda
Bulawayo, ZIMBABWE , Feb 1 2022 (IPS)

On January 10, the Zimbabwe Republic Police (ZRP) arrested three men found with fertilizer worth about 130,000 US dollars.

The “loot” was identified as part of inputs provided by the government to smallholder farmers in the country’s efforts to boost food security.

The case was one of many that exposed the dilemma of the country’s food security efforts. The multi-million dollar government-financed scheme that provides seeds and fertilizer to smallholder farmers has fallen short in aiding food production.

The abuse of farming inputs has been a thorn on the government’s side, with officials seeing it as deliberate sabotage of the country’s ambitions to feed itself. At the same time, analysts contend that such government schemes are open to abuse by well-connected individuals.

In recent years, Zimbabwe has redoubled its efforts to boost the production of the staple maize, with the government last year aiming to provide 1,8 million rural households with maize seed and fertilizer.

The bulk of the southern African country’s maize production – up to 70 percent – comes from rural smallholder farmers, according to the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), but it is also here where widespread poverty is rife, with the World Bank noting that almost 8 million people in Zimbabwe earn under USD1 per day.

Such conditions, analysts note, have led to the diversion of farming inputs for reselling, effectively slowing the country’s efforts to feed itself.

During the 2020-21 season, Zimbabwe produced 2.7 million tonnes of maize, triple the previous year thanks to above-normal rains, yet concerns remain about maintaining production levels.

“As the painful experience of the past 20 years since the land reform has shown so clearly, such gains are not necessarily sustained,” said Ian Scoones, an academic and researcher at the University of Sussex’s Institute of Development Studies. He has written widely about agriculture in Zimbabwe.

This 2021-22 season, climate uncertainty has seen many farmers delaying planting as they keep waiting for the rain. The agriculture ministry reported early January that the country had missed its target of 2 million hectares of maize.

According to the ministry, only about 1 million hectares had been planted at the beginning of the year. Under the Agriculture and Food System Transformation Strategy, Zimbabwe targets 8 billion US dollars for agriculture production by 2025.

Grain production has fluctuated in the past two decades. For example, during the 2001 cropping season, about 1.5 million hectares were planted, which represented a 15 percent drop from the previous season according to FAO figures.

The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) noted that Zimbabwe’s 2021-22 maize harvest, which stood at 2.7 million tonnes, was the highest since the 1984-5 season.

These fluctuations highlight the country’s struggle to feed itself.

The USDA says the bumper harvest was due to “favourable weather conditions,” exposing the limits of government maize and seed subsidies in the largely rain-fed sector.

Analysts say it will take more for the country to realize its goals beyond providing inputs to farmers amid other challenges such as climate uncertainty.

“Government will need to provide incentives, such as food crop production quotas, to large scale farmers who tend to specialize on non-food cash crops, which worsens the food security situation,” said Stanley Mbuka, an analyst at the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU).

“An unstable currency also makes it hard for smallholder farmers to cushion themselves as they sell to the grain marketing board in the local currency, which loses value very quickly,” Mbuka told IPS.

Researchers have also noted that other innovations to encourage farmers to adopt new methods to boost food production, despite showing promise, have been abandoned for, among other reasons, being too labour intensive.

Much of rural agriculture in Zimbabwe is not mechanized and relies on rainwater.

Added to this is a combination of longer-term underlying factors, including macroeconomic challenges, increased occurrence of climatic shocks, COVID-19 pandemic, and the cumulative effects of two consecutive years of drought, says the World Food Programme (WFP).

“To break the cycle of relapses into food crises, stakeholders are increasingly aware that more investments are needed in resilience-building and early warning,” said Maria Gallar, WFP-Zimbabwe spokesperson.

“The chances that smallholder farmers fall into food insecurity repeatedly decrease if they have access to productive assets such as dams,” Gallar told IPS by email.

Despite last year’s above-average maize harvest, the WFP says the latest figures show that more than 5 million people are estimated to be food insecure. This includes 42 percent of the urban population – about 2.4 million people – where the government has promoted urban farming.

“Sustainable change, after so many years of setbacks, will require continued efforts and time,” Gallar said.

 

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

• Ecstasy as Zimbabwe’s Smallholder Farmers Secure European Pineapple Market
• High Yield Seeds Could Address Food Shortages and Place Africa on Track to Zero Hunger – Experts
• https://www.ipsnews.net/2021/12/cool-scheme-reduce-food-waste-nigeria/

Protesters attend a march against the military coup in Myanmar. Credit: Unsplash/Pyae Sone Htun via UN News

By Shawn W. Crispin
BANGKOK, Thailand, Feb 1 2022 (IPS)

One year since a democracy-suspending coup, press freedom is dying in Myanmar. A military campaign of intimidation, censorship, arrests, and detentions of journalists has more recently graduated to outright killing, an escalation of repression that aims ultimately to stop independent media reporting on the junta’s crimes and abuses.

In January, military authorities abducted local news reporter Pu Tuidim shortly after he interviewed members of the anti-coup Chinland Defense Force armed group in the restive Chin State. Soldiers confiscated his laptop computer, used him as a captive human shield in a live-fire combat zone, and then summarily executed him, dumping his bound corpse in the muddy outskirts of a local village, his editor at the Khonumthung Media Group told CPJ.

Pu Tuidim’s murder followed the killing of two other Myanmar journalists in December, including one independent photographer who was picked up for photographing an anti-coup silent protest in the commercial capital of Yangon, held at a military interrogation center, and then pronounced by a military hospital as dead without explanation to his family.

A third reporter, Sai Win Aung, was killed on Christmas Day in a military artillery attack in Kayin State while reporting on the plight of internally displaced people in border areas that have become full-blown war zones since the coup. His editor told CPJ it is unclear if he was targeted in the shelling attack, but the reporter had weeks earlier fled Yangon for the insurgent-controlled frontier region after coming under military surveillance for his news reporting.

Myanmar’s generals, already the target of Western sanctions for their rights abuses, have a cynical incentive to suppress reporting that exposes their daily assault on Myanmar’s people. The Assistance Association of Political Prisoners, an independent rights monitoring group based in Thailand, reported on January 28 that the junta has killed 1,499 and detained 8,798 since last year’s February 1 coup.

Those imprisoned include dozens of journalists, CPJ research shows, making Myanmar the world’s second-worst jailer of journalists in 2021, trailing only China, after having none in jail in 2020. The majority are being held on bogus charges under the penal code’s vague and broad Article 505(a), which effectively criminalizes critical news reporting as causing instability or purveying misinformation. Most were detained after reporting on anti-military street protests.

The generals are reaching next for an online kill switch. New proposed cybersecurity legislation aims to make virtual private networks (VPNs) illegal, a bid to stop Myanmar citizens from accessing banned websites and social media including Facebook, which many news organizations, including small local language outfits in ethnic areas, use as their sole platform for posting news. The legislation also gives junta authorities arbitrary powers to access user data, ban content, and imprison regime critics.

If passed, a near certainty without an elected legislature in place, the law will give the junta the legal tool it needs to roll back the press freedom gains achieved between 2012 and the coup, a period where hundreds of independent media outlets bloomed from the darkness of an earlier era of military dictatorship, when all broadcast media was soldier-controlled and all newspapers were forced to publish as weeklies to give censors time to cut their content.

Nothing more belies the junta’s claim that it is only holding power for an interregnum period to prepare for a return to democratic elections, originally in 2022, now supposedly in 2023, than its ongoing and intensifying assault on the free press – a crucial pillar in any functioning democracy that holds its leaders to account.

The effect of the military’s repression is seen clearly in the rising tide of journalists who are fleeing for their lives to face uncertain futures across the country’s borders with India and Thailand, in the growing number of once-vibrant news publications that have gone dark through shuttered bureaus, halted printing presses, and abandoned web sites and Facebook-hosted news pages.

That’s, of course, not to say the flame of press freedom has been completely extinguished in today’s benighted, military-run Myanmar. Tech-savvy reporters have launched upstart news publications that continue to defy bans, threats, and even the murder of their reporters to publish the news and keep the world informed of abuses and atrocities that may be driving their nation towards full-scale civil war.

Myanmar’s journalists and independent news outlets have a long and storied history of evading military censorship to get out the news. The next chapter in the history is now being written as a new generation of undercover journalists risk their lives for exile-run and other unauthorized publications to report the news the junta is desperately trying to suppress. And therein lies the hope for a one-day revitalized democratic Myanmar.

Shawn W. Crispin, is Senior Southeast Asia Representative at Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). He is based in Bangkok, Thailand, where he has worked as a journalist and editor for more than two decades. He has led CPJ missions throughout the region and is the author of several CPJ special reports.

 

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

By Anis Chowdhury and Jomo Kwame Sundaram
SYDNEY and KUALA LUMPUR, Feb 1 2022 (IPS)

Inflation hawks are winning the day. The latest ‘beggar thyself’ race to raise interest rates has begun. This ostensibly responds to the spectre of runaway inflation, supposedly retarding economic growth and progress, and thus threatening central bank ‘credibility’.

Anis Chowdhury

Inflation fetish
The ‘one size fits all’ policy of raising interest rates to contain inflation is being touted again, the world over. This will surely kill national efforts to revive economies reeling from COVID-19 pandemic slowdowns.

Central banks in many emerging market and developing economies (EMDEs) – such as Brazil, Russia and Mexico – began raising policy interest rates right after inflation warning bells were set off after mid-2021. Indonesia and South Africa have since joined the bandwagon.

International Monetary Fund (IMF) Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva has warned that US interest rate rises would “throw cold water” on global recovery, especially hurting struggling emerging markets.

An earlier IMF blog had urged EMDEs to prepare for earlier than expected US interest rate hikes. The Fund has lowered its growth projections as the inflation bogey induces monetary and fiscal tightening.

Inflation paranoia
Inflation hawks denounce price increases, claiming – without evidence – that it impedes growth. Former World Bank chief economist Michael Bruno and William Easterly refuted these popular, but false prejudices.

Using 1962-1992 data for 127 countries, they found, “The ratio of fervent beliefs to tangible evidence seems unusually high”. They also found extremely high inflation – over 40% yearly – mainly due to very exceptional circumstances, e.g., Nicaragua after the Sandinista takeover.

Jomo Kwame Sundaram

Bruno and Easterly concluded that inflation under 40% did not tend to accelerate or worsen. They concluded, “countries can manage to live with moderate – around 15–30 percent – inflation for long periods”.

Bank economists Ross Levine, Sara Zervos and David Renelt confirmed a negative inflation-growth relationship to be exceptional, and due to a few extreme cases.

Rudiger Dornbusch and former IMF Deputy Managing Director Stanley Fischer came to similar conclusions. They too found moderate inflation of 15–30% did not harm growth, emphasizing “such inflations can be reduced only at a substantial short-term cost to growth”.

Citing IMF research, Harry Johnson also argued that while very high inflation could be harmful, there was no conclusive empirical evidence of the alleged inflation-stagnation causal nexus.

Even monetarist guru Milton Friedman acknowledged, “Historically, all possible combinations have occurred: inflation with and without development, no inflation with and without development”.

Thus, the Fund and the Bank have no sound bases for promoting draconian policies to eliminate inflation above, say 5%, by citing a few exceptional cases of very high, runaway inflation and low growth.

Inflation misdiagnosed
Friedman’s sweeping generalization that “inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon” ignored other factors possibly contributing to inflation.

Without careful consideration of inflation’s causes, the same old policy prescriptions are likely to fail, but not without causing much harm. Prices tend to rise as demand outstrips supply. This can also happen when demand rises faster than supply, or if demand does not decline when supply falls.

The IMF attributes the current inflationary surge to supply chain woes, higher energy prices and local wage pressures. While demand has been boosted by pandemic relief and recovery measures, where existent, supply shortages remain vulnerable to disruptions.

Rising food costs are also pushing up consumer prices. Extreme weather events – droughts, fires, floods, etc. – have affected food output. More commodity price speculation – e.g., via indexed futures – has also raised food prices.

Although wages have risen in some sectors in some countries, economy-wide wage-price spirals are unlikely. Employment suffered during the pandemic while unionization is at historically low levels.

Labour’s collective bargaining powers have declined for decades, especially with technological change, casualization and globalization lowering the labour income share of GDP.

As the profit share of income continues to rise, rising mark-ups and executive remuneration also push up prices. With more market monopoly powers, price gouging has become more widespread with the pandemic.

Understanding what causes particular prices to rise is critical for planning appropriate policy responses. Although devoid of actual diagnoses, inflation hawks have no hesitation prescribing their standard inflation elixir – raising interest rates.

Raising interest rates may help if inflation is mainly due to easier credit fuelling demand. But tighter credit is unlikely to effectively address ‘supply-side’ inflation, which typically requires targeted measures to overcome bottlenecks.

Interest rates harm
Higher interest rates increase borrowing costs, squeezing investment and household spending. This hits businesses, hurting employment, incomes and spending, and can result in a vicious downward spiral.

Higher interest rates also increase governments’ debt burdens, forcing them to cut spending on public services including healthcare and education. Incredibly, elevated interest rates – harming investments, jobs, earnings and social protection – supposedly benefits the public!

The adverse spill-over impacts of rising interest rates are also considerable. Raising rates in major advanced economies weaken EMDE capital inflows, currencies, fiscal positions and financial stability, especially as sovereign debt has ballooned over the last two years.

Indeed, the interest rate is a blunt weapon against inflation. How can raising interest rates curb food or oil price increases? While supply blockages persist, essential consumer prices will rise, even with high interest rates.

Higher interest rates may even aggravate inflation as businesses cut investment spending. Thus, supply bottlenecks, especially of essential goods, are likely to be more severe, pushing up their prices.

Most people are indebted, with the poor often borrowing to smoothen consumption. Thus, the poor are hurt in many ways: losing jobs and earnings, coping with less social protection, and having to borrow at higher interest rates.

Hence, the standard medicine of higher interest rates has massive social costs. Meanwhile, the principal beneficiaries of using higher interest rates to lower inflation are rich net creditors and financial asset owners.

Toxic prescription
Premature reversal of expansionary fiscal policy has been largely due to debt hawks’ successful fear mongering. Thus, debt paranoia nipped in the bud the ‘green shoots’ of robust recovery following the 2008-2009 global financial crisis.

In the early 1980s, inflation paranoia led to interest rate spikes, triggering debt crises, stagnation and lost decades in much of the world, especially developing countries. Now, inflation hawks are poised to derail global recovery, stop adequate climate action and otherwise undermine sustainable development.

Policymakers the world over, but especially in developing countries, must reject the inflation hawks’ paranoid screeches. Instead, they must identify and address the sources, causes and nature of the inflation actually faced. And then, take appropriate measures to prevent inflation accelerating to harmful levels.

There are a host of alternative policy measures available to policymakers. They must reject the lie that they have no choice but to raise interest rates – widely recognized as a blunt weapon, with deadly ‘externalities’.

While all available policy options may involve trade-offs, policymakers must seek and achieve socially optimal results. This requires robust, resilient, green and inclusive recoveries – not fighting quixotic windmills of the paranoid mind.

 

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

• Inflation Bogey Blocking Recovery
• Central Banks Must Address Pandemic Challenges
• Debt Hawks Detract from Urgently Needed Fiscal Recovery Efforts
• Fight Pandemic, Not Windmills of the Mind
• Opinion: Robust Global Economic Recovery Needs Coordinated Policy Response
• OPED – Austerity Bad for Recovery

The larger the population size, the greater are the consequences on climate, environment, biodiversity and pollution. Credit: Isaiah Esipisu/IPS

By Joseph Chamie
PORTLAND, USA, Jan 31 2022 (IPS)

Demographic denialism is increasingly appearing in countries across the globe. Various government officials, politicians, business leaders, media commentators and others are blatantly denying demographic realities and likely future trends and advancing falsehoods.

The apparent reasons behind the denials and falsehoods include politics, profits, power, discrimination, notoriety, hopes, beliefs, contrariness, trepidation and escapism. Some of the more frequently promoted denials are considered below with information on demographic realities and likely future trends.

First, world population is NOT collapsing any time soon. World population has quadrupled over the past 100 years, from 2 to 8 billion and is expected to reach 10 billion around midcentury (Figure 1).

 

Source: United Nations.

 

While the rapid growth of world population in the 20th century has passed, the world’s population is expected to continue growing over the coming decades. World population is now increasing by about 80 million annually and 2 billion additional people are expected by 2056.

Second, the distribution of the world’s population across the planet will NOT remain as it has been throughout much of the past. In 1950, for example, six of the ten largest populations were developed countries. By the close of the 20th century, however, three developed countries were among the ten largest populations and by 2050 one developed country is expected to be among them.

Today some populations, largely in developed regions, are declining mainly due to more deaths than births and will likely be considerably smaller over the coming years. Other populations, mainly in developing regions, are increasing rapidly with substantially more births than deaths.

For example, of the projected 1.8 billion increase in world population by 2050, 1.1 billion, or about 60 percent, is expected to occur in Africa and about a 0.6 billion, or 32 percent, in Asia. In contrast, the populations of Northern America and Europe, are projected to increase by 52 million, a 3 percent increase, and decrease by 37 million, a 2 percent decline, respectively (Figure 2).

 

Source: United Nations.

 

Third, international migration is NOT being resolved by high walls, long fences, sea patrols, immigrant visas or calls for people not to come. Immigration is a 21st century crisis with the numbers wishing to migrate far exceeding the levels acceptable to destination countries.

Governments, international agencies and regional organizations have not come up with workable solutions to address immigration. Authorities appear at a loss at what to do about the waves of migrants desiring employment, claiming asylum, seeking refuge, escaping climate change and risking their lives for decent living conditions.

International migration is NOT being resolved by high walls, long fences, sea patrols, immigrant visas or calls for people not to come. Immigration is a 21st century crisis with the numbers wishing to migrate far exceeding the levels acceptable to destination countries

Also, most unauthorized migrants are not being repatriated. Once unauthorized migrants are in the country, governments encounter difficulties sending them back to their home countries. After a lapse of time, an amnesty or a path to citizenship may be offered to those who are established. However, such actions can also serve as an incentive for others to migrate illegally.

Fourth, population size is NOT inconsequential for climate change, environmental degradation, biodiversity loss and pollution. The larger the population size, the greater are the consequences on climate, environment, biodiversity and pollution through increased demands for energy, water, food, housing, land, resources, material goods, machinery, transportation, etc.

Government leaders as well as many of their economic advisors are not prepared to acknowledge that population stabilization and degrowth are essential for addressing climate change. As witnessed at the UN Climate Change Conference in Glasgow, limiting population growth was not part of climate change negotiations.

In contrast to most country leaders who favor the continued growth of their respective populations, thousands of scientists worldwide are urging governments to stabilize or reduce the size of their populations along with other critical actions related to energy, short-lived pollutants, nature, food and the economy. Such actions would contribute significantly to efforts to address climate change and environmental degradation.

Fifth, the ageing of human populations is NOT a temporary phenomenon, and most governments are ill-prepared to deal with its wide-ranging consequences. For most countries and much of the world, youthful populations are the past and significantly older populations are the inescapable future.

Population ageing is the result of lower birth rates and increased longevity. The world’s fertility rate is half the level of the 1950s, 5 versus 2.5 births per woman, and life expectancy at birth has increased by more than 50 percent since then, from 47 to 73 years.

Population ageing is increasingly affecting fundamental aspects of human societies, including economics, taxes, employment, housing, pensions, healthcare and disabilities. Rather than hoping for a return to youthful age structures, government officials, business leaders and others need to prepare for population ageing.

Sixth, the vaccinated and unvaccinated for the coronavirus do NOT have similar mortality and morbidity rates. Being vaccinated substantially decreases the chances of death and illness from the virus.

Remaining unvaccinated unequivocally results in higher rates of mortality and morbidity. Unfortunately, those higher levels have contributed to declines in life expectancies at birth and heavily burdened communities where large numbers remain unvaccinated.

In brief, being unvaccinated increases the chances of death and illness from the coronavirus. In contrast, the coronavirus vaccines, like past vaccines for major diseases, such as smallpox, tetanus, hepatitis, rubella, pertussis, pneumonia, measles, and polio, are effective in reducing mortality rates, illness, the virus’ spread and societal costs.

Seventh, women do NOT want to remain in the home. During the 20th century, significant social, economic, and political progress was achieved in women’s equality. That progress has been greatly facilitated by improvements in women’s health, education, employment, urbanization, delayed marriage and childbearing, and declines in family size.

The traditional stay-at-home mom is increasingly being replaced by the working mom. Growing numbers of women are seeking higher education, careers, economic independence and personal social identity.

Also, many women do not want to return to matrimonial inequalities where husbands were household heads, made major decisions and controlled finances and property. However, some conservative groups are resisting attempts to achieve gender equality and seek to maintain traditional roles and lifestyles. Simply stated, those groups want women to remain in the home and love, honor and obey their husbands.

Eighth, couples do NOT want to have many children. Despite public hissy fits, policies and incentives by officials, business leaders and others aimed at raising fertility, birth rates are not likely to return to the comparatively high levels of the past.

In country after country, most couples who decide to have children are having one or two. As fewer women are giving birth to four or more children, fertility rates have fallen in every major region. Except for sub-Saharan Africa, the fertility rates of most countries will likely be below replacement in the coming decades (Figure 3).

 

Source: United Nations.

 

Ninth, most nations are NOT against induced abortion. Countries vary in their policies concerning abortions depending on the specific grounds. Abortions are permitted in 98 percent of countries to save the life of the woman, 72 percent for a woman’s physical health, 60 percent for rape, incest or fetal impairment, and 34 percent at the woman’s request (Figure 4).

 

Source: United Nations.

 

Over the past five decades, an unmistakable trend has taken place in the liberalization of abortion laws. The trend has coincided with a decline in abortion rates worldwide.

Making abortions illegal, however, does not prevent abortions from occurring. Even when abortions are severely restricted, illegal abortions take place in relatively large numbers. Approximately 8 percent of maternal deaths globally are the result of complications from unsafe abortions, with nearly all taking placing in developing countries.

Tenth, the traditional family is NOT the overwhelming societal norm worldwide. A working father, stay-at-home mom, several children, and a marriage “until death do us part” are increasingly characteristics of families in the past.

In many countries being married has become less of a necessity for financial survival, social interaction and personal fulfillment. More people are cohabiting, increasing proportions of couples are having births outside marriage, and many governments help single-parent families. In addition, same-sex marriages are now performed and recognized in 31 countries.

In conclusion, it is worrisome that demographic denialism is spreading in countries worldwide. Some are not only denying demographic realities but also advancing falsehoods. Presenting demographic realities and likely future trends openly, accurately and objectively can contribute to debunking demographic denialism.

* 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.”

Trafficking survivor turned activist, and consultant Shamere McKenzie trains authorities and mentors survivors. The use of technology and awareness of how to spot and avoid traps used by human traffickers. Credit: Zadie Neufville/IPS

By Zadie Neufville
Kingston, Jan 31 2022 (IPS)

A single line at the end of the United States State Department 2021 Trafficking in Persons Report made headlines in Jamaica and had many perturbed. “Some police allegedly facilitated or participated in sex trafficking,” it read.

While the report cited no incidents, investigations, or police officers’ convictions for sex trafficking, Jamaicans on social media called for investigations. People cited the increasing levels of sexual abuse reported during the COVID-19 pandemic as justification.

US authorities have categorised Jamaica as “a source, transit, and destination country for adults and children trafficked for sexual exploitation and forced labour”.

Manager of the Trafficking in Persons (TiP) Secretariat Chenee Russell Robinson told journalists recently that more than 110 victims of sex trafficking were rescued in the last ten years. At an average of ten per year, she believes the number is far too high “because this number represents only the tip of the iceberg”.

Some matters are before the court, and investigations into other activities were ongoing, noting that while girls make up the majority of sex trafficking victims, there are a growing number of boys, too, she said.

Between 2015 and 2019, the number of teens reported missing on the island averaged approximately 1,400 a year, data from the Child Protection and Family Services Agency shows. With numbers increasing annually and the figures for those returning home or recovered declining, the spectre of a rising sex trafficking trade is becoming one of the biggest worries for local authorities.

Child protection activists believe that most missing children who do not return home are victims of sex trafficking. Here, it is not uncommon for families, including mothers, to traffic their girl children in exchange for monetary or material payment, police say. This form of child sex trafficking may be more widespread in some communities.

Experts say that children who are sent by their parents to live with their more affluent relatives in urban areas regularly become victims. And according to the State Department report: “Sex trafficking of Jamaican women and children, including boys, occurs on streets and in nightclubs, bars, massage parlours, hotels and private homes, and resort towns”.

So, while the report commends Jamaica for its strides and multi-agency approach to combatting human trafficking, it scolds the government for reduced spending, a fall-off in apprehension and training. It also criticised the absence of “long-term services to support victims’ reintegration, prevent re-exploitation, or sustain protection throughout lengthy court cases”.

The report noted that Jamaica “does not fully meet the minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking but is making significant efforts to do so.” These efforts included a trafficking conviction with significant prison terms and restitution paid to the victim, a national referral mechanism that aims to standardise procedures for victim identification, referral to cross-government entities services and an annual report.

Significantly, authorities hold up several improvements The Trafficking in Persons (Prevention, Suppression and Punishment) Act, first enacted in 2007. Amendments speed up the prosecution of cases by introducing bench trials and increasing the penalties.

On July 9, 2013, the government amended the Act to increase incarceration periods to 20 years. The 2021 amendments removed the alternate and often controversial fine in place of imprisonment.

“Now a person convicted of trafficking can only be imprisoned or imprisoned and fined, so you cannot be fined only,” Russell explained.

Trafficking survivor turned activist, and consultant Shamere McKenzie told IPS in an interview that community awareness, involvement, and the use of technology to enhance the safety of possible victims could be the tools that tip Jamaica into Tier 1.

“There’s a lot we can do as a community to help our young people shape their morals and values and build their sense of awareness,” she said, noting that traffickers can recognise people with low self-esteem.

Since 2016 authorities have funded the development of two apps – Stay Alert and Travel Plan – to make it safer for especially young girls and women who use public transport. McKenzie believes communities and parents must learn to use technologies to keep their children safe.

“We should be teaching people how to protect themselves, how to memorise numbers, develop code words, develop safety methods and use text messages to protect themselves,” said McKenzie, who mentors survivors and educates others on how to spot and avoid the traps.

A former student-athlete, she was lured by someone she thought was a caring friend into 18-months of living hell. Sidelined by a serious hamstring injury, the young Jamaican’s athletics scholarship to a top United States university was suspended. She was forced to work for the extra money she needed for school fees and rent when she accepted a friend’s help.

The short-term offer of a rent-free basement apartment and ‘extra work’ at the trafficker’s nightclub turned into forced sex work after being beaten into submission by a man she believed to be her friend.

While this episode took place in the US, it is not uncommon for Jamaicans and foreigners to be lured young women into prostitution by offering them jobs or simply ’a better life’.

In 2016, a court sentenced Rohan Ebanks to 40 years and imprisoned and fined his common-law wife Voneisha Reeves after trafficking a 14-year-old Haitian girl. The judge convicted Ebanks for rape, trafficking, and facilitating trafficking in person while his co-accused had pleaded guilty to facilitating trafficking.

The fisherman had met the girl’s father on one of his many trips to Haiti and had convinced him to send her to Jamaica for a better life. Three years after the ordeal began, police rescued the teen from Ebanks and Reeve’s home, where she had been looking after the couple’s children.

As the pandemic progresses, Robinson and other members of the Traffic in Persons (TiP) task force warn parents that traffickers have gone online, making it more difficult to track them. They’ve also warned teens and their parents that families are also trafficking their relatives.

The 110 rescued by the TiP task force are among the .04 per cent of the estimated human trafficking survivors worldwide identified. The number is an indicator that most go undetected.

Experts conclude that assessing the scope of human trafficking is difficult because many cases go undetected. However, estimates are between 20 million and 40 million people n modern slavery today earn the perpetrators roughly 150 billion US dollars annually. Some 99 billion US dollars comes from commercial sexual exploitation.

“We must begin to teach our youth to use the technology we have to protect themselves,” McKenzie said.

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”.

 

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

• Human Trafficking, Rape, Extortion Behind ‘Forced Conversions’, say Experts
• Boys Sold by Trusted Villager Turned Human Trafficker
• Trafficked and Trapped in Libya: A Nigerian Woman’s Story

By Alon Ben-Meir
NEW YORK, Jan 31 2022 (IPS)

Regardless of a success or failure to reach a new agreement with Iran, Israel must not attack Iran’s nuclear facilities and must work closely with the US to develop a joint strategy to curb Iran’s ambition to acquire nuclear weapons and potentially end the conflict with Iran on a more permanent basis

Righting the Wrong

Israel’s repeated threats to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities irrespective of any outcome in the negotiations in Vienna between the P5+1 (France, the United Kingdom, Russia, China, the US, and Germany) and Iran is a recipe for disaster.

Prime Minister Bennett’s argument that Israel will not abide by any agreement, not only because Israel is not a party in the negotiations but because Israel alone will determine what’s best to safeguard its national security, is a fallacy.

Given the complexity and the far-reaching implications of a potential Israeli attack, the only proper path to address Iran’s nuclear program is by fully coordinating and developing a joint strategy with the US to deal with Iran’s nuclear ambition to acquire nuclear weapons while seeking an end to the conflict.

It is critical that the Bennett-Lapid government not repeat Netanyahu’s disastrous mistake of opposing the JCPOA, which subsequently Netanyahu persuaded Trump to withdraw from altogether. As a result of the US’ withdrawal from the deal, Iran has only advanced its nuclear weapons program—enriching a significant amount of uranium to 60 percent, which is only a short leap to enriching it to weapons-grade 90 percent, and in enough quantity to produce one nuclear weapon in short order.

White House National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan said recently, “The reason we’re in the situation we’re in right now is because the previous administration pulled out of the Iran deal and we are paying the wages of that catastrophic mistake.”

Bennett’s repeated threats to attack Iran could lead to miscalculation and dire unintended consequences that Israel cannot possibly cope with on its own. Israel must work hand-in-hand with the US to address Iran’s nuclear program now and in the future, and must not resort to a military option without the full support of the US.

The Bennett government must carefully consider the ominous outcome such an attack could precipitate, from which Israel as well as the entire region will suffer unimaginably.

The ominous repercussions of an Israeli attack

Israel’s repeated threats are unwise and do nothing but provide Iran ample time to prepare for any contingency. Mossad director David Barnea recently stated that “Iran will not have nuclear weapons—not in the coming years, not ever. This is my personal commitment: This is the Mossad’s commitment.”

Knowing the Iranian mindset, such a statement is counterproductive and does nothing but stiffen Iran’s position. Even if Israel is planning such an attack, advertising it repeatedly in advance drastically undermines its effectiveness.

Iran is already fortifying its air defenses, especially around its nuclear facilities, and putting in place offensive capabilities that can exact a heavy price from Israel should such an attack materialize. Indeed, Israel can inflict a devastating blow on Iran’s nuclear facilities, but it cannot destroy all of them nor the Iranian knowhow. Such an attack, however overwhelming, would only set back Iran’s nuclear program for two to three years.

It is a given that an Israeli attack would force Tehran to retaliate directly against Israel by firing ballistic missiles that can reach major Israeli cities, potentially causing widespread destruction and thousands of casualties. Iran will also ensure that Hezbollah, which is in possession of 150,000 rockets, will enter the fray and fire thousands of rockets that can reach every corner of the country.

Regardless of how effective Israel’s air defense may be, its Iron Dome and Arrow interceptors cannot possibly intercept tens of thousands of short, medium, and long-range rockets. Moreover, Hamas too may well join the fight, in addition to a third front with Syria, from where Iranian proxies will attack Israel. Israel’s economy will be shattered, and past conflagrations with Hamas alone attest to this fact.

Many Israeli military experts believe that Israel does not have the aerial capability to attack Iran more than once, nor can it destroy all of Iran’s nuclear facilities, as they are scattered around the country and several are built a hundred or more feet underground. It will require several days and multiple attacks, which Israel does not have the capability to conduct.

Although all the Arab Gulf states would like to see Iran’s nuclear facilities eliminated, they want to avoid a war because even a limited Israeli attack could engulf the entire region and beyond. In many conversations I had with officials from the Gulf, nearly all of them prefer containment of Iran’s nuclear program and deterrence spearheaded by the US to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons and to ensure that Iran will be unable to threaten or intimidate its neighbors.

Finally, whereas Israeli attacks on Iraq’s and Syria’s nuclear facilities (in 1981 and 2007, respectively) did not spread radioactive material into the atmosphere because no uranium was present, Iran has a stockpile of uranium purified to various degrees. Thus, an attack on Iranian nuclear facilities would have disastrous environmental consequences.

From the Iranian perspective, acquiring nuclear weapons would deter any aggressor, including the US, from attacking it. Iran wants to stand on equal footing with Sunni Pakistan to its east and Jewish Israel to its west, both of whom are nuclear powers.

This partly explains why Iran does not bend easily and why it is assuming such a hard position at the negotiations in Vienna, even though it wants badly to have the sanctions lifted to salvage its ailing economy.

The need for a full US-Israeli collaboration

Attacking Iran without the US’ acquiescence, if not outright support, will seriously undermine Israel-US relations which Jerusalem cannot afford. Collaboration and coordination between the two countries is and will remain central in dealing effectively with Iran.

This is particularly important because the Iranian clergy wants to avoid any military confrontation with the US, fearing a disastrous outcome. Indeed, a US military assault on Iran could precipitate regime change, which the Iranian leadership fears the most and wants to prevent at any cost.

For this reason, to deter Iran, it is critical for the Bennett-Lapid government to work closely with the Biden administration and support any new agreement that may be reached between Iran and the P5+1. The Biden administration is committed to preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons and Israel must trust the US to do whatever necessary to that end, especially because Israel cannot and must not act alone.

The failure or the success to reach a new agreement

Should the P5+1 fail to reach a new agreement, the US and Israel must develop a joint strategy to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons based on containment and deterrence. This includes the imposition of additional crippling sanctions, cyber-attacks on vital Iranian installations, and sabotaging its nuclear facilities, among other disabling measures.

In addition, the US should make it clear that all options are on the table, including military force, which could pose a significant risk of regime change, which terrifies Iran. In addition, the US should seriously consider a strategic game-changer move by providing a nuclear umbrella to cover Israel and the Gulf states.

Should a new agreement be reached, which seems increasingly likely, it will be expected to include rolling back the number of operational centrifuges and reducing the quantity and the enrichment quality of uranium, while extending the sunset clauses beyond the original dates to prevent Iran from resuming its nuclear weapons program within a few years. In addition, a new deal will obviously restore the most stringent and infallible monitoring system to thwart Iran from cheating.

Beyond these measures, however, the US must strive to end the conflict with Iran on a more permanent basis. The Biden administration ought to initiate back-channel talks to address Iran’s nefarious regional activity, its arming and financially aiding of extremist groups such as Hezbollah and Hamas, its ballistic missile program, and its hegemonic ambitions.

In addition, due to Israel’s profound and legitimate concerns about its national security, the Biden administration must make it unequivocally clear to Iran that it must end its repeated existential threats against Israel. Iran’s clergy must understand that such threats could precipitate a disastrous conflagration—intentional or unintentional—that could engulf the entire region from which Iran will suffer greatly.

In return, if Iran embraces such a moderate path, the US should promise publicly that it will not seek now or at any time in the future regime change, which for the clergy is a do-or-die proposition. Moreover, the US would embark on a gradual normalization of relations on all fronts.

To be sure, when there is a breakdown in any conflict there is often an opportunity for a breakthrough. Iran does not want to remain a pariah state and always be on the defensive, and the US and Israel will be much better off if Iran joins the community of nations as a constructive player on the international stage.

Dr. Alon Ben-Meir is a retired professor of international relations at the Center for Global Affairs at New York University (NYU). He taught courses on international negotiation and Middle Eastern studies for over 20 years.
alon@alonben-meir.com
www.alonben-meir.com

 

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

WHO Goodwill Ambassador for Leprosy Elimination, Yohei Sasakawa, would like to create a society where there is social inclusion. It is this philosophy that motivates his life-long campaign to end discrimination against people affected by leprosy. Credit: Sasakawa Leprosy Initiative

By Cecilia Russell
Johannesburg, Jan 30 2022 (IPS)

For the WHO Goodwill Ambassador for Leprosy Elimination, Yohei Sasakawa, ensuring affected peoples’ human rights is fundamental to the campaign to eradicate the disease.

In an exclusive interview with IPS on the eve of World Leprosy Day, he recalled his first encounter with people affected by leprosy, saying they were “without dreams or hopes and there was no light in their eyes.”

Sasakawa’s father, Ryoichi, hugged the patients in the newly opened hospital in Korea. He then realized that returning hope to people affected by leprosy could be his life’s work.

This work has continued for more than 40 years, but it is not over yet.

“People who should be part of society remain isolated in colonies facing hardships,” Sasakawa, who is also the chairman of the Nippon Foundation, says.

“Isn’t it strange that someone cured of a disease can’t take their place in society? I belatedly realized that if the human rights aspect wasn’t addressed, then elimination of leprosy in a true sense would not be possible,” explaining the rationale for approaching the United Nations in 2003.

As a result, a resolution on the elimination of discrimination against persons affected by leprosy and their family members was unanimously adopted by 192 countries voting in the UN General Assembly.

While Covid-19 has temporarily ended his travels, his work is far from complete. Once the pandemic is over, Sasakawa intends to continue his travels worldwide to bring onboard top officials and politicians – presidents and prime ministers – while spreading hope to affected people.

In the interim, the global ‘Don’t Forget Leprosy’ campaign by the Sasakawa Leprosy Initiative continues. The initiative strategically links the WHO Goodwill Ambassador for Leprosy Elimination, Sasakawa Health Foundation, and the Nippon Foundation towards achieving a leprosy-free world.

Sasakawa says his message is clear:  1) Leprosy is curable. 2) Medication is free. 3) Discrimination has no place.

“When people are still being discriminated against even after being cured, society has a disease. If we can cure society of this disease—discrimination—it would be truly epoch-making.”

Here are excerpts from the interview:

Yohei Sasakawa, Chairman of The Nippon Foundation, has served as WHO Goodwill Ambassador for Leprosy Elimination since 2001. He plays a leading role in the Sasakawa Leprosy (Hansen’s Disease) Initiative, which has organized the “Don’t Forget Leprosy” campaign.

Cecilia Russell: In your message to the world for World Leprosy Day, you expressed concern that the decrease in the number of cases detected was because the Covid-19 pandemic meant that less testing was done. How can leprosy-affected people get back on track?

Yohei Sasakawa: Many issues have been sidelined because of the Covid-19 pandemic, among them the challenges posed by leprosy, also known as Hansen’s disease. According to the Global Leprosy Update for 2020, there was a 37% year-on-year decrease in new cases due to disruptions to case-finding activities. There are concerns that hidden cases will lead to increased transmission and result in more cases with disabilities. On the other hand, while figures vary from country to country, the overall treatment completion rate remains at the same level as the previous year, indicating that stakeholders are working hard to maintain services, even in the midst of the global pandemic.

Even in normal times, health ministries have jurisdiction over all kinds of diseases. Compared to diseases such as TB, AIDS, or malaria, however, there are few cases of leprosy, so budgets and personnel are limited. Patients, meanwhile, might not visit a hospital because the long history of stigma attached to the disease makes it difficult, or because in its early stages, symptoms are painless. That’s why I feel it is necessary to meet with those at the top of the country and have them issue a call to eliminate leprosy. Once the COVID situation eases, I want to visit countries and encourage presidents and prime ministers to recognize the importance of this issue and seek their cooperation in helping activities against the disease to resume.

At the same time, I believe that the participation of people who have experienced the disease is also very important. There are so many things that people can do, such as active case-finding, mental support for people undergoing treatment, and awareness-raising. In 2011, the WHO issued guidelines on strengthening the participation of persons affected by leprosy in leprosy services in such areas as a way to improve the quality of leprosy services.

CR: You have chosen as a life’s work to raise awareness of both the disease and the impact of the stigma of leprosy. This is an age-old stigma and was considered a sign of impurity in Christian biblical times. How has an awareness of leprosy as a human rights issue changed perceptions about the disease? What more needs to be done?

YS: I started working on leprosy in the 1970s and have been the WHO Goodwill Ambassador for Leprosy Elimination since 2001. People who should be part of society remain isolated in colonies facing hardships. The more you look into it, the more you see the restrictions they live under, including legal restrictions in some cases. Isn’t it strange that someone cured of a disease can’t take their place in society? I belatedly realized that if the human rights aspect wasn’t addressed, then elimination of leprosy in a true sense would not be possible. That’s when I first approached the United Nations about this in 2003.

In 2007, the Japanese government appointed me as its Goodwill Ambassador for the Human Rights of Persons Affected by Leprosy. Collaboration with the Japanese government led in December 2010 to a UN General Assembly resolution on the elimination of discrimination against persons affected by leprosy and their family members to call on states to full consideration of Principles and Guidelines. The resolution was adopted unanimously by 192 countries.

Discrimination toward persons affected by leprosy and their families should never be tolerated. That’s why the Principles and Guidelines were approved.

Although they are not binding, given the reality that even treaties ratified by states, such as the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, the Convention on the Rights of the Child, and the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, are difficult to implement, we need to think of them as a tool to be used by stakeholders, including persons affected by leprosy, when advocating with governments to fix the problems.

When people are still being discriminated against even after they have been cured, then society has a disease. If we can cure society of this disease—discrimination—it would be truly epoch-making.

CR: Could you please tell our readers about your father and his role in influencing you to make this mission a life’s work?

YS: My father Ryoichi also served as a member of Parliament. He was a man who was especially compassionate toward the vulnerable and dedicated his life to them. Concerning leprosy, in particular, there was an incident where a young lady living in the neighborhood suddenly disappeared, and he later found out she had been segregated due to leprosy. He had a very strong sense of justice and took exception to the fact that something so unreasonable was permitted on the basis of a disease.

In 1962, my father established the Japan Shipbuilding Industry Foundation, the forerunner of The Nippon Foundation, and began social contribution activities. In 1967, he started work in earnest on realizing his long-held dream of eradicating leprosy with the construction of some new facilities for a leprosy center in Agra, India. With the establishment of the Sasakawa Memorial Health Foundation (now Sasakawa Health Foundation) in 1974, efforts to tackle the disease stepped up.

My father built leprosy hospitals, mainly in Southeast Asia. I was young and often accompanied him, but I didn’t go inside the hospitals. In the mid-1970s, he responded to a request to build a leprosy hospital in Korea. I went with him to the opening ceremony and entered a leprosy hospital for the first time. Everyone sat on the bed facing us, but they were completely expressionless. Their faces were ashen-colored; they were without dreams or hopes, and there was no light in their eyes.

I was really surprised to see my father go to every bed, hug each person, and encourage them in a very natural way, unconcerned by the pus oozing from their bandages. Discovering a world that I had not encountered before and seeing how naturally my father behaved, I wondered if this would be my life’s work. Since then, I have been active in leprosy.

CR: In some countries, people affected by leprosy are still confined to leprosy colonies. How do you see your role as WHO Goodwill ambassador and the Don’t Forget Leprosy campaign changing these perceptions around a treatable disease? What is needed to change the perception about leprosy and remove the stigma?

YS: Thinking strategically about how to make people aware of the importance of this problem and how to solve it is very important. You have to convince heads of state in each country. If a budget is allocated as a result of meeting with and explaining the situation to the head of state, if the president orders it—then the person in charge at the ministry of health or the leprosy program manager will be greatly encouraged in their work.

On the other hand, it is also very important to reach the many people without knowledge of leprosy and allay their fears explain that it’s not hereditary, it’s not divine punishment, it’s not highly contagious. Wherever I go, I always stress: 1) Leprosy is curable; 2) Medication is free; 3) Discrimination has no place. For that, the help of the media is necessary, so one of my very important tasks is to have a proper media strategy.

Also, as we now live in an era where every individual can publicize leprosy issues via social media, I think it is important that everyone concerned with these issues actively raises them, not as issues affecting someone else, but as personal issues.

CR: You have been involved in numerous other humanitarian endeavors, apart from your 40-year-old association with leprosy and your role as WHO Goodwill Ambassador for Leprosy Elimination. These include the Change for Blue campaign, and you acted as a special envoy of the Japanese government to try to bring peace to Myanmar. Do you have a philosophy about humanitarian work that guides you?

YS: One of my philosophies in life is the ‘on-site principle’: problems and their solutions are found in the field. Another is that social actions require that you keep your enthusiasm bubbling over, regardless of your age, and have the mental fortitude to withstand any difficulties. In addition, you have to keep going until you achieve results. I’ve acted on the basis of these three ideas.

CR: Is there anything else you would like to add?

YS: There are more than 1 billion people in the world living with disabilities, including persons affected by leprosy. We need to create an inclusive society where everyone can have an education, find work and get married if they want to. People have the passion and the motivation; often, all they lack is opportunity.

I would like to create a society where everyone feels fully engaged, able to express their opinions, and appreciated. The coming era must be one of diversity, and for that, we need social inclusion. There is such ability and potential in the world, and to have everyone participate in society will create a truly wonderful future.

That’s why it’s important for persons affected by leprosy to have confidence and speak out. To support them, Sasakawa Health Foundation and The Nippon Foundation are helping them to build up their organizational capacity. I’d like to see a society in which everyone is active, able to express their opinions to the authorities with confidence, and their contribution is valued.

 

Follow @IPSNewsUNBureau

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

Related Articles

• Youth Have the Spirit to Change Trajectory of Leprosy, says Yohei Sasakawa
• Health Workers Lauded for Role in Leprosy Treatment During Pandemic
• Leprosy has a Cure, so has Prejudice, says Miss Universe Brazil

Building the knowledge, self-confidence, voice, and mobility of women can have a positive impact on women’s participation in politics | Credit: Flickr

By Shevika M
Jan 28 2022 (IPS)

For most young girls, a career in politics is not even on the radar. For the few that are interested, building a career in politics in India seems unachievable.

One such example is of a 15-year-old student from Chennai who said she wanted to be the prime minister of New Zealand when she grows up. It’s unfortunate to imagine that there may be others like her who aspire to be the prime minister of another country rather than get involved in politics in their own country.

As a country, we have made significant progress. Both men and women in India now vote in equal numbers, but we have a long way to go when it comes to women’s political participation beyond voting

India has completed 73 years of being a republic, but we are still very far from reaching equal representation and making politics an aspirational career choice for young girls. We currently have 78 (out of 543) women parliamentarians.

At 14.3 percent, this is the highest representation of women we have seen since 1947. This figure is much lower at the state-level—we have an average of nine percent of women in our state assemblies. Six Indian states have no female ministers.

As a country, we have made significant progress. Both men and women in India now vote in equal numbers, but we have a long way to go when it comes to women’s political participation beyond voting. This includes campaigning for candidates, running for office, and holding political office.

When we dig a little deeper, we find that less than 10 percent of the candidates in the 2019 elections were women. At the state level, we see similar data, where between 1980 and 2007, women comprised 5.5 percent of state legislators but only 4.4 percent of the candidates were women.

A study from Uttar Pradesh in 2019 suggests that women lag behind in several determinants of political participation, such as knowledge of how political institutions work and confidence in their own leadership abilities.

Building the knowledge, self-confidence, voice, and mobility of women can have a positive impact on women’s participation in politics. This needs to happen early for young girls so that they can build the ability to think critically and play a role in shaping India’s future.

While setting up Kuviraa, an initiative that works to build political engagement and leadership among young girls, we found that most schools (apart from a few progressive, alternative ones) and parents shy away from speaking to students about politics given how polarised our society has become. This unfortunately leaves young people to get most of their information on politics from unverified sources and social media, which has built cynicism among our youth.

In October 2021, we conducted a workshop with a group of 13 year olds and asked them to draw their perception of India’s politicians. We made two observations:

1. None of the participants drew women political leaders. When asked why, they said it was because they did not know any female politicians.
2. All the participants described politicians as ‘selfish’ or ‘corrupt’ and did not have anything positive to say about our elected representatives.

To further understand how young people, especially young girls, across India perceive politics, we collected data from over 400 children and young adults—between the ages of 11 and 24—across 24 Indian states. We found similar trends with respondents using ‘corrupt’, ‘confusing / complicated’ and ‘dirty’ as the top adjectives to describe India’s politics.

 

There is a difference in political aspirations between girls and boys

We also found that even though both male and female respondents stated in equal numbers that they would vote (when they would be eligible), there was a significant difference when it came to their political aspirations. Thirty-two percent of male respondents said they would be interested in getting involved in politics in the future, compared to only 19.7 percent of female respondents.

Female respondents also reported being less familiar with political processes and their local elected representatives compared to their male counterparts. Additionally, they were less likely to discuss politics with their friends and family.

Interestingly, although the overall faith in our current political leaders was low among young people, boys were nearly twice as likely as girls to think our current politicians are effective (16.4 percent vs 8.9 percent).

Our study further showed that at a younger age (11–17 years), girls are more interested in politics than boys, but when they are eligible to vote, boys’ interest overtakes that of girls (despite the interest of both groups growing with age).

Similar trends are seen in a recent US-based study published in the American Political Science Review which finds that not only do children see politics as a male-dominated space, but also that with age, girls increasingly see political leadership as a ‘man’s world’. The research also states that as a result of this, girls express lower levels of interest and ambition in politics than boys.

 

We need to make politics accessible for young girls

The example of the young girl who aspires to be the prime minister of New Zealand helped us realise the importance of portraying relatable role models for Indian girls. The global media has done a great job praising PM Jacinda Ardern, especially after her initial response to the pandemic.

This contributed to her becoming a role model for girls across the world. Further, research from the US shows that over time, the more that women politicians are covered in the national news, the more likely it is for adolescent girls to indicate their intention to be politically active.

Our survey also found that young people who were more exposed to politics—by participating in democratic processes in school or college and those who knew politicians personally—were more likely to express interest in politics than respondents who weren’t.

To make politics an aspirational career choice we need to break down narratives about young girls and political power. In the West, we see several examples of civil society organisations such as Teach a Girl to Lead and IGNITE National that prepare the next generation of women voters who are interested in becoming political leaders by introducing them to their local political representatives and hosting dialogues around politics.

Kuviraa aims to fill this gap in India by working with schools and nonprofits to deconstruct politics for young girls, building positive narratives for politics by highlighting women politicians as role models, and creating opportunities for them to engage with democratic processes that will ignite political ambition.

As we prepare for five state elections in 2022 and a general election in 2024, educators, civil society, and philanthropy must come together to create an enabling environment for young girls to be engaged in political processes as we cannot have a truly functional democracy without equal representation.

Shevika M is the founder of Kuviraa, a non-partisan initiative that aims to build political engagement and leadership in girls across India This story was originally published by India Development Review (IDR)

Friends Ajay and Durgesh are returned to their families with the help of ActionAid India and the All India Bonded Labour Liberation Front. The boys were tricked into bonded labour by a trusted fellow villager. Credit: ActionAid

By Mehru Jaffer
Lucknow, India, Jan 28 2022 (IPS)

Friends Ajay and Durgesh were lured from the same village in the remote and poverty-stricken countryside of eastern Uttar Pradesh (UP) in January 2021.

Friends Ajay and Durgesh were lured from the same village in the remote and poverty-stricken countryside of eastern Uttar Pradesh (UP) in January 2021.

The boys, aged 16, were whisked away from their homes, transported, and sold as bonded labour to a garment factory in Rajkot in the western state of Gujarat. Rajkot is some 2000 km from Ajay and Durgesh’s village in UP.

Along with two other boys from the same village, Sanjay (15) and Pavan (14), Ajay and Durgesh were befriended by a man, only identified as Gulab, and promised an eight-hour a day job, with a salary of Rs 7500 (about US 100 dollars) per month at a garment factory. The boys accepted the offer immediately because Gulab was from the same village and had known them since childhood.

“At the factory, the boys were thrown in with dozens of other children who were never paid. They were woken at 7 am and forced to work till 11 pm. The factory owner threatened to kill them if they stepped out of the factory,” Dalsinghar told IPS speaking from Lucknow. “The children were abused and kicked when the supervisor felt that they were not working fast enough. None of the children was given enough to eat.”

Dalsinghar, who goes by his surname, is a trade union leader and head of the UP office of the All India Bonded Labour Liberation Front. With ActionAid India, Dalsinghar helped to rescue the four boys in August 2021. The boys are now finishing their studies in their village.

These boys are lucky to have escaped the clutches of traffickers. Ajay found a mobile phone one day and quickly called his family. He told them the exact location of the factory in faraway Gujarat.

The family got in touch with Raju, a volunteer with ActionAid India, who lived near their village. With the help of Dalsinghar, Raju and the district administrations of Kushinagar in UP and Rajkot in Gujarat, the boys were rescued, and their eight-month ordeal at the hands of the garment factory owner ended.

There are numerous incidents of victims being deceived by people they know.

Families celebrate the return of four boys trafficked into bonded labour in a factory far from home. Credit: ActionAid, India

Take Gulab as an example. Gulab came from the same village as the four teenagers he trapped and sold to a garment factory owner.

In the hope of avoiding deprivation and starvation in difficult economic times, the teenagers took up Gulab’s offer. They trusted him and fell for his lies because it did not occur to them that he would betray them.

ActionAid quotes other instances when a loved one has tricked victims. When that happens, the victim often does not fight back.

Sita was sold to traffickers by her alcoholic father in a West Bengal village as a bride. She was taken from place to place until she found shelter in an ashram in a city in UP. The police were informed, and she returned to her village in West Bengal.

Frequently missing children and adults cases include abduction and trafficking. Most of the time, missing people are not reported to the police, and if reported, the reports are not registered.

Children from the poorest of low-income families are most vulnerable. They are the main target of traffickers as poor and illiterate families are most likely not to approach authorities for help. There are instances of children and adults leaving home searching for glamour and fortune in big cities like Mumbai. Once there, touts find them and force them to beg or work as sex slaves without remuneration or concern for their health.

ActionAid India continues to work in villages providing support to survivors of trafficking and violence with medical, psycho-social and legal support.

The COVID-19 pandemic has meant that times are extremely challenging for communities. Schools closures and work opportunities in most villages have shrunk, which means that social activists like Dalsinghar need to be more vigilant today than ever before.

Nobel Peace Prize winners Kailash Satyarthi and Malala Yousafzai have rescued thousands of children from the worst form of child labour and trafficking.

Satyarthi has led a Bharat Yatra, a nationwide march in India to demand legislation against child rape, child sexual abuse and trafficking.

The Kailash Satyarthi Children Foundation conducted a study in 2020 that concluded there was a high likelihood of an increase in human trafficking in the post-lockdown period for labour.

About 89 per cent of NGOs surveyed said that trafficking of both adults and children for labour would be one of the biggest threats in the post-lockdown period as household incomes of the most vulnerable deplete.

There is concern that the desperate and vulnerable populations of unorganised workers, who are in no position to negotiate wages or their rights, will be a massive pool for cheap labour. Many of these labourers could be children, forced out of school and forced to earn a living.

The fear is that thousands of children will likely be trafficked across the country to work in manufacturing units where they will be paid meagre to no wages and will most likely face extreme physical, mental and sexual violence.

Thousands of children like Ajay, Durgesh, Sanjay and Pavan are easy targets for an organised crime network of human trafficking. It is feared that many more children will be enslaved during the pandemic by those looking for cheap labour when many economic activities have come to a standstill.

“It is tragic when people betray the trust of children,” concludes Dalsinghar.

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 ) http://gsngoal8.com/ 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”.

 

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

• Human Trafficking, Rape, Extortion Behind ‘Forced Conversions’, say Experts
• Once Tossed and Abused, Human Trafficking Survivor Finds Solace
• Trafficked and Trapped in Libya: A Nigerian Woman’s Story

Yohei Sasakawa, Chairman of The Nippon Foundation, has served as WHO Goodwill Ambassador for Leprosy Elimination since 2001. He is part of Sasakawa Leprosy (Hansen’s Disease) Initiative, which has organized the “Don’t forget leprosy” campaign.

By External Source
Jan 28 2022 (IPS-Partners)

Sasakawa Leprosy (Hansen’s Disease) Initiative is collaborating with 32 organizations from 13 countries to promote the message “Don’t forget leprosy” in the run-up to World Leprosy Day on January 30. The international campaign includes awareness-raising events and outreach to governments and is being publicized via newspapers, television, radio, and social media.

Based in Tokyo, Japan, Sasakawa Leprosy (Hansen’s Disease) Initiative launched the “Don’t forget leprosy” campaign in August 2021 to ensure efforts against leprosy, also known as Hansen’s disease, are not sidelined amid the coronavirus pandemic.

Taking part are NGOs, organizations of persons affected by leprosy, research institutes, and government agencies from Bangladesh, Brazil, India, Indonesia, Nepal, Nigeria, Papua New Guinea, Portugal, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Tanzania, Uganda, and the United Kingdom.

The Initiative’s Yohei Sasakawa, who serves as WHO Goodwill Ambassador for Leprosy Elimination, said: “The impact of the coronavirus pandemic has been particularly hard on persons affected by leprosy and their families who were in a vulnerable situation to begin with. Lockdowns and other measures to prevent the spread of the virus have caused many problems at the field level, making access to medical services difficult, causing loss of livelihoods, and exacerbating the difficulties that persons affected by leprosy already encounter due to stigma and discrimination. They must not be forgotten.”

From India, which accounts for around 60% of all new cases of leprosy diagnosed globally each year, 13 8 organizations are participating. Activities include intensive awareness-raising events aimed at school children and university students to provide young people with correct knowledge about leprosy and help prevent discrimination from taking root.

In Brazil, the country with the second-highest number of annual new cases and which has yet to eliminate leprosy as a public health problem (with elimination defined as a prevalence rate of less than 1 case per 10,000 population), the campaign is being carried out by more than 2,000 persons affected by leprosy and volunteers from MORHAN (the Movement for the Reintegration of Persons Affected by Hansen’s Disease). Activities include a focus on healthcare professionals and involve training local public health nurses, strengthening the functions of leprosy referral centers and case-finding.

Activities for World Leprosy Day by Sasakawa Leprosy (Hansen’s Disease) Initiative
The Initiative has launched a special website (https://gasasakawa.org/) for the Global Appeal to End Stigma and Discrimination against Persons Affected by Leprosy. Inaugurated by Sasakawa in 2006 and released in conjunction with World Leprosy Day, the annual Global Appeal underlines the messages that leprosy is curable, treatment is available free of charge throughout the world, and that social discrimination has no place.

As side events of this year’s Global Appeal, the Initiative is hosting two webinars on raising awareness of leprosy (“The role of health professionals at the grassroots level” and “The role of young people: sharing discussions from three regions”) as well as a photo contest on social media. A selection of the best photos, which depict the daily lives of persons affected by leprosy and relief activities, will be displayed on the Global Appeal website.

In addition, Sasakawa has posted a message for World Leprosy Day on the WHO website.

About Sasakawa Leprosy (Hansen’s Disease) Initiative
The Initiative is a strategic alliance between WHO Goodwill Ambassador for Leprosy Elimination Yohei Sasakawa, The Nippon Foundation and Sasakawa Health Foundation for achieving a world without leprosy and problems related to the disease. Since 1975, The Nippon Foundation and Sasakawa Health Foundation have supported the national leprosy programs of endemic countries through the WHO, with support totaling some US$200 million to date. In cooperation with the Japanese government and other partners, the foundations have played an important role in advocating with the United Nations, helping to secure a 2010 UN General Assembly resolution on the elimination of discrimination against persons affected by leprosy and their family members and the appointment of a UN Special Rapporteur on leprosy by the UN Human Rights Council in 2017.

See the Initiative’s home page for further details.

About leprosy
Leprosy, also known as Hansen’s disease, is an infectious disease that mainly affects the skin and peripheral nerves. Around 200,000 cases are newly reported each year. Leprosy is curable with multidrug therapy, but left untreated can result in permanent disability. An estimated 3 to 4 million people in the world today are thought to be living with some form of disability as a result of leprosy. Although completely curable, many myths and misunderstandings surround the disease. In various parts of the world, patients, those who have been treated and cured, and even their family members continue to be stigmatized. The discrimination they face limits their opportunities for education, employment, and full participation in society.

Chart1: List of participating organizations

View of downtown Nur-Sultan, the capital of Kazakhstan. Credit: World Bank/Shynar Jetpissova
Amid alarming reports of deadly violence in Kazakhstan, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights and the Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Central Asia called for restraint and dialogue. 6 January 2022

By Anit Mukherjee and Alan Gelb
WASHINGTON DC, Jan 28 2022 (IPS)

Consider the situation. Faced with growing fiscal stress, the government of an energy exporting country decides to cut generous subsidies, doubling the fuel price overnight.

Protestors are out on the streets, clashing violently with security forces called in to maintain law and order. They vent their frustration not only with rising fuel prices but also with living costs, lack of social services, crumbling infrastructure, corruption and political repression.

Faced with the prospect of a popular uprising, the government backtracks on reforms and re-institutes subsidies, postponing the hard decisions for a later date.

This is Kazakhstan in 2022. It is also Ecuador in 2019, Nigeria in 2012, Bolivia in 2010, Indonesia in 2005 and several other energy exporters which have tried to end, or at least reduce, fuel subsidies over the last two decades.

The list will grow significantly if we include importers who are more exposed to the vagaries of international energy prices. What is interesting is that the story plays out in almost exactly the same way, and the consequences of both action – and inaction – are very similar as well.

For resource rich countries like Kazakhstan, Ecuador, Bolivia and Nigeria, subsidized energy, especially from fossil fuels, is one of the few tangible ways by which citizens can feel that they have a claim to a national resource.

While the level of subsidies varies, at some $228 dollars per head or 2.6% of GDP in 2020, those of Kazakhstan are high but not the highest among exporters. In a situation where the government is generally perceived to be repressive, incompetent and corrupt, food and fuel subsidies keep a lid on deeper grievances. It is economically damaging but politically expedient, a delicate equilibrium that many countries have sought to manage over the last several decades – with little success.

Our research has shown that there is a better way to do energy subsidy reform. Providing direct cash transfers to compensate for the rise in energy prices can be a “win-win” solution. To put it simply, energy compensatory transfers (ECT) enable households, especially the poor and the vulnerable, to absorb the shock and reallocate resources as per their needs.

By removing the arbitrage between subsidized and market prices, ECTs can also reduce corruption, improve distribution and incentivize efficient use of energy. Countries like Iran, India, Jordan and the Dominican Republic have been relatively successful in this type of reform, and their experience holds lessons for other countries that choose to embark on this path.

Digital technology can help significantly to identify beneficiaries, provide them necessary guidance and information, and transfer payments directly to individuals and households. Three key enablers of ECTs are an identification system with universal coverage of the population, strong communications and wide access to financial accounts.

Multiple databases can be cross-checked to verify eligibility norms and grievance redressal systems can help reduce exclusion of genuine beneficiaries. As shown, for example, by India’s LPG subsidy reform, countries can progressively tighten the eligibility criteria over time to target the poorest sections of the population.

Finally, ECTs can provide the impetus for a more transparent and accountable system of subsidy management, helping improve public confidence and support to the government’s reform agenda over the long run.

So, why don’t more countries follow this approach? For one, most energy subsidy reforms are pushed forward in times of economic crisis. ECTs require political commitment, openness to engage in public dialogue, building consensus among stakeholders and powerful vested interests, setting up implementation systems and working across different government ministries, departments and agencies.

Direct compensation is also more transparent than the frequently opaque systems of price subsidization that favor the rich, with their higher energy consumption, even if justified by the need to protect the poor.

ECTs are not simple solutions and often require time to be put in place. On the surface, it may seem simpler to just raise energy prices overnight through an administrative order. But the payoffs are significant in terms of sustainability, economic outcomes, social cohesion and political stability.

The sooner countries can take a longer term approach, the better will they be able to manage the transition to a more sustainable system that supports those who need it most.

Kazakhstan is the first country in 2022 to see popular unrest due to fuel price hike. It almost certainly would not be the last.

Anit Mukherjee is a policy fellow at the Center for Global Development. Alan Gelb is a senior fellow at the Center for Global Development.

 

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

UN staff in New York. Credit: United Nations

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Jan 27 2022 (IPS)

“Racism and discrimination have no place in our world — least of all at the United Nations”, warns UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, who will soon appoint a Special Adviser to investigate the growing discrimination based on racial, national or ethnic origins in the world body.

“The diversity of our personnel is a source of profound richness. Yet I am fully aware and deeply concerned that colleagues have experienced the indignity, pain and consequences of workplace racism and racial discrimination. This is unacceptable,” says Guterres in a message to UN staffers January 25.

He has also pledged to establish a Steering Group to oversee implementation of the Strategic Action Plan on racial discrimination —and report progress to the Executive and Management Committees.

“These are the first steps in a relentless effort to address issues which tarnish the Organization’s core values and behaviours and demean our shared humanity”.

“With your support, we will build a culture of solidarity and anti-racism where every individual can bring their whole self to work in a safe environment, regardless of racial, national, or ethnic origin. This is the most effective way to transform the lives of the people we serve through enhanced professionalism, equality, dignity, and the promotion of racial diversity”, he implored.

According to his annual report submitted to the UN’s Administrative and Budgetary Committee last month the United Nations currently has more than 36,000 staffers in 463 duty stations world-wide.

“The work of the United Nations Secretariat is underpinned by the effective management of finance, human resources, information and communications technology, supply chains, facilities, conference services and security and safety operations, as well as communicating the work of the Organization to global audiences,” the report said.

A protest by UN staff in Geneva. Credit: United Nations

Asked for his comments, Aitor Arauz, President of the UN Staff Union (UNSU) and General Secretary of the UN International Civil Servants Federation (UNISERV), told IPS the publication of the SG’s Strategic Action Plan (SAP) is the culmination of a process of collective introspection, truth-telling and resolve to change that stemmed from a momentous town hall meeting convened by the New York Staff Union in June 2020, at the height of the global movement for racial justice.

“We praise the bravery of the colleagues who raised their voices to denounce the discrimination they experience in the workplace and to say, “Enough! The UN needs to do better.”

The Secretary-General listened, responded with determination, and “we could not be prouder to see how far the process has come since then”.

The inclusive consultations that fed into the SAP, Arauz said, provide solid guarantees of the UN staff community’s buy-in and support. The staff unions are ready to mobilise volunteers and ideas, but staff’s commitment must be matched with resources and political drive from senior leadership, he noted.

“A plan remains just a plan until it is realised… the work to meet our ambitious commitments starts now,” he declared.

Samir Sanbar, a former UN Assistant Secretary-General and head of the Department of Public Information (now re-christened Department of Global Communications) told IPS obviously racism and discrimination have no place in the United Nations.

“It is an integral requirement—almost an oath of office— and inherent in the spirit of the U.N. Charter”.

Since its establishment, most U.N. staff dedicated their careers and often risked their lives in areas of conflict to uphold human dignity and confront racism and discrimination, he pointed out.

A declaration to appoint “a Special Adviser and establish a Steering group to report to the Executive Management Committee” reflects a need to deal with a disappointing erosion of U.N .principles.

It seems to entail various appointments-including for aspiring diplomats and require some time to meet review, report and implement.

The Secretary-General, he said, must have perceived a certain requirement to declare the decision

“Clearly, in a changing world and shifting times, the UN and its role has changed. Yet its inclusive global framework and human objectives remain” declared Sanbar, who had served under five different secretaries-generals.

Meanwhile, a survey of over 688 UN staffers in Geneva in 2020 came up with some startling revelations re-affirming the fact, which has long remained under wraps, that “racism exists within the United Nations”.

The survey revealed that “more than one in three staff have personally experienced racial discrimination and/or have witnessed others facing racial discrimination in the workplace. And two-thirds of those who experienced racism did so on the basis of nationality”.

A separate survey by the UN Staff Union in New York was equally revealing.

According to the findings, 59% of the respondents said “they don’t feel the UN effectively addresses racial justice in the workplace, while every second respondent noted they don’t feel comfortable talking about racial discrimination at work”.

Meanwhile, the UN Secretariat in New York, faltered ingloriously, as it abruptly withdrew its own online survey on racism, in which it asked staffers to identify themselves either as “black, brown, white., mixed/multi-racial, and any other”.

But the most offensive of the categories listed in the survey was “yellow” – a longstanding Western racist description of Asians, including Japanese, Chinese and Koreans.

A non-apologetic message emailed to staffers read: “The United Nations Survey on Racism has been taken offline and will be revised and reissued, taking into account the legitimate concerns expressed by staff.”

The findings of the Geneva survey also revealed:

1. Among those who experienced or witnessed racism, a majority of staff indicated that racial discrimination affected opportunities for career advancement. A significant number of staff also indicated that racial discrimination manifested itself in the form of verbal abuse and exclusion from work events, such as decision-making, trainings, missions, assignments etc.

2. A large number who experienced or witnessed racial discrimination, harassment or abuse of authority indicated that they did not take any action. Lack of trust in the organization’s recourse mechanisms was cited as the most common reason. Many also stated that that they feared retaliation.

3. Respondents believed racism needed to be addressed in a number of different ways. These include accountability and zero tolerance, training and sensitization, greater transparency in hiring, broader diversity, and a more open dialogue on the issue.

In his message to staffers, Guterres also said: “I am committed to ensuring that our Secretariat benefits from the diverse perspectives, skill sets, and lived experiences of all our personnel. Addressing racism and racial discrimination is central to that effort. This will require robust investigative and accountability measures, coupled with persistence and sustained collective actions to enhance support and build trust.

In that spirit, “we launched an Organization-wide discussion on racism in our workplace in October 2020 under the leadership of the Task Force on Addressing Racism and Promoting Dignity for All. Today, I am pleased to share the Strategic Action Plan developed by the Task Force.”

The Plan outlines concrete actions to tackle racism in the workplace through accountability. It includes immediate actions to:

(a) review past allegations of racism, derive lessons learned, address retaliation and provide context for the consideration of future cases;
(b) institutionalize the Racial Justice Focal Point Volunteer Network at all duty stations, giving the network management backing to support staff;
(c) provide personnel with clear information on how to report complaints; and
(d) continue dialogue and raise awareness to ensure a common understanding of racism and its manifestations at our workplaces around the world.

“I look forward to working with you in ensuring an inclusive and diverse workforce where everyone is respected and feels recognized and valued,” Guterres said.

 

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