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Adolescents Left Behind Global AIDS Response – Experts

Tue, 01/18/2022 - 16:14

Elisha Arunga Odoyo, a clinical officer within the PMTCT program at the Homabay County Referral Hospital. There is increasing fear that adolescents will be left behind in the efforts to reduce HIV infections. Credit: Joyce Chimbi/IPS

By Joyce Chimbi
Nairobi, Kenya, Jan 18 2022 (IPS)

The ominous warning came in 2019 through an anonymous message on her mobile phone to stay away from a man she met on social media.

At 18 years and freshly out of high school, *Nicole Kisi was in a relationship with a 45-year-old businessman.

“The message was clear. It said to be careful because of a rumour that the man’s wife died of HIV/Aids. I was shocked. I forwarded the message to my boyfriend, and he told me the person was jealous of him because he is successful,” she tells IPS.

“He looked healthy to me, and I believed that the message came from one of those jealous people.”

One year into the relationship, Kisi was in and out of hospitals. At first, she was treated for severe malaria, but her condition only worsened. Eventually, her HIV positive status was discovered.

As with other sub-Saharan Africa countries, government data shows AIDS is the leading cause of death and morbidity among adolescents and young people in Kenya.

Over the past decade, Africa’s fight to combat HIV has seen new HIV infections reduced by 43 percent and nearly halving AIDS-related deaths.

However, the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) shows the continent is not on track to end AIDS by 2030 because key elimination milestones have not been met.

“There are 18,004 new infections and 2,797 deaths among adolescents 10-19 years annually in Kenya. Overall, 40 percent of new HIV infections in the country are among adolescents and young people 15 to 24 years,” says Damaris Owuor, an HIV activist based in Nairobi.

“The Prevention of Mother to Child Transmission (PMTCT) of HIV is extremely successful, and so we are greatly concerned about the HIV risk that our young people now face from cross-generational sex.”

More than 90 percent of HIV infections in children result from mother-to-child-transmission, says Elisha Arunga Odoyo, a clinical offer within the PMTCT program at the Homabay County Referral Hospital.

UNAIDS data shows that East and Southern Africa has significantly reduced this risk. Between 2010 and 2018, new HIV infections among children 0 to 14 years declined from 1.1 million to 84,000 across the region.

Odoyo points to Kenya’s Homabay County. Despite having the highest HIV prevalence in Kenya at 20.7 percent, over four times the national prevalence of 4.8 percent, mother-to-child transmission of HIV reduced from 16.8 percent in 2015 to 9.1 percent in 2019.

Owuor says poor sex and reproductive health education and, lack of access to adolescent-friendly reproductive health services is primarily to blame.

Further, UNICEF research shows transactional and age-disparate sex, peer pressure, stigma and discrimination, harmful social and gender norms, and unequal power dynamics contribute significantly to the bulging number of adolescents living with HIV.

The most recent Kenya Demographic and Health Survey shows three out of 10 girls have sex before age 15 and that one in every five girls, 15 and 19 years is either pregnant or already a mother.

Still, Owuor tells IPS that significant strides are needed to address the adolescents’ risk of acquiring HIV. Girls account for six in every seven new HIV infections among adolescents in sub-Saharan Africa.

“My friends and I worried more about getting pregnant than HIV. When you are young, you think about HIV as something that happens to older people. None of my friends has ever bought a condom, but we have bought P2 (morning after pill) so many times for fear of getting pregnant,” she tells IPS.

UNAIDS research shows adolescents and mothers are still disproportionately affected by HIV and left behind the global AIDS response.

Within this context, Owuor cautions that the youth bulge could significantly increase new HIV infections without a targeted approach to increase access to HIV prevention, HIV testing, care and treatment among adolescents and young people.

To achieve the 2030 global target to end AIDS, an analysis by the World Health Organization (WHO) indicates that by 2025, 95 percent of all people living with HIV know their status, 95 percent of those who know their status are on treatment, and 95 percent of those on treatment have a suppressed viral load.

In Africa, 87 percent of people living with HIV knew their status. Of those, 77 percent were on treatment, and 68 percent had a low viral load, according to statistics released in December 2021.

Only nine countries, including Kenya, Botswana, Cabo Verde, Lesotho, Malawi, Nigeria, Rwanda, Uganda, and Zimbabwe, were on track to reach the 95-95-95 fast track target to end AIDS.

Nonetheless, Owuor says while progress has been commendable, the ambitious target will not be achieved if crucial HIV/AIDS elimination milestones among adolescents are missed.

According to Kenya’s ministry of health, access to and uptake of HIV testing and counselling by adolescents is significantly low, as is antiretroviral therapy coverage compared to any other age group of persons living with HIV.

UNICEF research finds while there is increased awareness of HIV in general, adolescents still lack comprehensive knowledge of HIV and condom use remains low in the age group.

“Young people are among the least tested, and without targeted intervention, they also do not adhere to treatment and are often virally unsuppressed. A high viral load, or the amount of HIV in the blood, increases the risk of an adolescent transmitting the virus, so we have to break this cycle,” Owuor says.

Kisi agrees, adding that an adolescent’s journey to accepting a positive HIV result is a long road marred with denial, anger, and bitterness.

“Seeing your friends living a carefree life as you die inside is very painful. The biggest problem is that you lose hope and start to believe that there is no future,” she says.

“Even today, I struggle with accepting my status. I recently joined a peer support group, and I am smiling again. I feel more hopeful than I have ever before.”

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Categories: Africa

Asia-Pacific: Just 5% of the Region’s Population Owns 70% of Its Total Wealth

Tue, 01/18/2022 - 13:54

Credit: Amantha Perera/IPS

By Baher Kamal
MADRID, Jan 18 2022 (IPS)

The Asia-Pacific region is experiencing growing inequality even while registering impressive economic growth and poverty reduction. Such sharp inequalities continue to be persistent in the region, with nearly 2 in 4 people still unable to afford a healthy diet.

“The gains from socioeconomic development have favoured the wealthiest, with the wealthiest 5% of the population controlling close to 70% of total wealth in the region,” reports the Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP).

The Asia-Pacific region, comprising 58 countries and territories, has over the past few decades registered the fastest rate of economic growth globally and achieved gains in human and social development, informs the Commission.

"In the Asia and Pacific region, 1.9 billion people are unable to afford a healthy diet, driven by high prices of fruits, vegetables and dairy products, making it impossible for the poor to achieve healthy diets”

And it provides some examples: life expectancy has increased significantly. While poverty eradication efforts have released approximately a billion people from poverty, both income poverty and multidimensional poverty continue to exist alongside affluence within and between countries.

Despite these gains, “inequalities persist, with income, consumption and wealth concentrated among the top deciles of the population. Non-monetary inequalities exist between regions, gender, race, ethnicity, geography and age, as well as in access to services, including sexual and reproductive health services.”

The Asia-Pacific region is home to approximately 4.5 billion people, and its demographic landscape is diverse in terms of population growth and size, composition by age and sex, and spatial distribution, ESCAP explains in report about this region.

The largest world’s region’s multidimensional poverty is made up of several factors that constitute poor people’s experience of deprivation, such as poor health, lack of education, inadequate living standards, lack of income, disempowerment, poor quality of work and threat from violence.

Perpetuating inequality

“These circumstances often shape, accentuate and perpetuate inequalities in income and wealth.” For example, the outcome can be influenced by efforts made in education or the labour market.

The last category, inequality of impact, relates to the differential impact of certain events or phenomena, such as a natural disaster, on different groups.

The impact has often been greater on poor people, women, older persons, persons with disabilities and other marginalised groups.

High fertility

The report also explains that poverty, inequality and high fertility are closely associated. Poor households tend to have many children owing mainly to lack of access to and knowledge of contraceptives, low autonomy among women, and the demand for children for economic or household support.

Contraception is less accessible to women who are poor, less educated and living in rural areas. These fertility differentials perpetuate intergenerational poverty and inequalities.

No decent jobs for the young

In countries where the number of youths seeking jobs is high relative to employment opportunities, and where their skills do not match market requirements, young people often cannot find decent jobs, ESCAP adds.

“The share of workers in unpaid jobs in Asia is twice as high for young people aged 15–24 as for adults aged 25–29 years.

For example, youth unemployment rates in 2016 were as high as 39% in Armenia, 30% in the Islamic Republic of Iran and 18.8% in Fiji.

Human trafficking

“Workers’ fundamental rights, especially those of women and marginalised populations, have also been challenged by the rise in vulnerable employment, especially concentrated in agriculture, and affects women more than men.”

In South Asia and East Asia, approximately 40% and 30%, respectively, of identified victims of human trafficking and forced labour are children, the report alerts. Vulnerable employment covers jobs involving inadequate pay, low productivity and adverse working conditions.

Migration, an escape from inequalities

“Migration often occurs as an escape from inequalities of opportunity, including decent work in home countries, or a flight from persecution, climate change, conflict or poverty. There is migration for marriage and domestic work too.”

Many migrants, however, face other forms of inequalities such as precarious working conditions, human rights abuses and irregular employment in their countries of destination. A considerable proportion of international migration within and from the Asia-Pacific region is irregular.

Discriminated, Exploited…

“Migrants are also vulnerable to coercion, discrimination, exploitation and substandard labour conditions and benefits.”

Female migrants are often victimised on the grounds of both being female and being migrants. They face labour exploitation, including confinement, lack of pay and lack of rest days. Undocumented female migrants also have no access to sexual and reproductive health services, explains ESCAP.

Internal migration

Another defining megatrend is internal migration, which has increased in volume in the past few decades.

Increased internal migration has been due to fewer work opportunities in traditional agriculture and better employment opportunities in urban areas, manufacturing in urban areas and high-production agriculture.

Unprecedented urbanisation

According to the report, there has been unprecedented urbanisation as a result of a combination of natural population increase, rural-urban migration and reclassification.

“By 2050, two out of three people are expected to live in urban areas, with about 10% of the urban population living in megacities, and the rest living in medium-sized and small cities.”

Meanwhile, “approximately half of all urban dwellers in South Asia live in slums. In large countries such as Bangladesh, China, India, Indonesia, Pakistan, the Philippines, Thailand and Viet Nam, 30 to 60% of the urban population lives in slums.”

People in slums face such challenges as poor health conditions, lack of sanitation and risk of exposure to pollution, including high carbon emissions.

The COVID factor

The Asian Development Bank reports that according to its Outlook 2020 report, tourism-driven economies—including the Cook Islands, Fiji, Palau, Samoa, and Vanuatu—were the hardest hit by the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Asia and Pacific region, alone, was expected to lose almost 70 million jobs and 1.1 trillion US dollars in GDP—more than any other region in the world.

Gender inequalities persistent

Meanwhile, gender inequalities continue to be persistent in Asia and the Pacific. In particular in the Pacific, women and girls face fewer opportunities for development.

Gender inequalities also intersect and overlap with age, ethnicity, wealth status, and residence, inter alia. Many of these inequalities have been discussed earlier, such as the differential access to maternal health services by less educated, rural and poorer women.

Hunger, malnutrition

For its part, the 2020 report: Asia and the Pacific – Regional Overview of Food Security and Nutrition provides an update on progress towards the 2030 targets at the regional and country level.

While the region continues to work towards ending all forms of malnutrition and achieving Zero Hunger, progress on food security and nutrition has slowed, and the Asia and Pacific region is not on track to achieving 2030 targets, warns the report, elaborated by the UN Food and agriculture Organisation (FAO), the World Food Programme (WFP), and the World Health Organisation (WHO).

About 350.6 million people in the Asia and Pacific region are estimated to have been undernourished in 2019, about 51% of the world’s total of undernourished people.

Children stunted, wasted

“An estimated 74.5 million children under five years of age were stunted and a total of 31.5 million were wasted in the Asia and Pacific region. The majority of these children in the region live in Southern Asia with 55.9 million stunted and 25.2 million wasted children.”

Estimates predict a 14.3% increase in the prevalence of moderate or severe wasting among children under 5 years of age, equal to an additional 6.7 million children, due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Two billion people unable to afford healthy diet

With basic food prices and disposable incomes influencing household decisions on food and dietary intake, they are critical to improve food security and nutrition in the region, the joint report adds.

“However, in the Asia and Pacific region, 1.9 billion people are unable to afford a healthy diet, driven by high prices of fruits, vegetables and dairy products, making it impossible for the poor to achieve healthy diets.”

Categories: Africa

More Progressive Taxation Needed for Social Progress

Tue, 01/18/2022 - 08:12

By Jomo Kwame Sundaram
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia, Jan 18 2022 (IPS)

Governments must innovatively develop progressive means to finance the large-scale social spending needed to improve lives and livelihoods, especially following the COVID-19 pandemic. More egalitarian tax reforms should enable governments to equitably mobilize desperately needed revenue to advance sustainable development for all.

Jomo Kwame Sundaram

Fiscal policy challenges
To respond to the pandemic and its economic fallout, massive resource mobilization has been necessary to protect people’s health and livelihoods, stem economic decline and stagnation, and ensure sustainable progress.

Fiscal policy involves governments harnessing and deploying resources. But modes of state financing and spending impact economic inequalities. Monetary policy measures can be supportive, but they cannot replace fiscal efforts.

However, the economic slowdown requires much more state spending, largely financed by sovereign debt, i.e., government borrowing. This has undoubtedly been necessary to deal with the pandemic, but fiscal policy should be consistently countercyclical: expansionary to counter downturns, and conservative in good times.

Rich countries have generally been fiscally bolder by running deficits to spend since the global financial crisis, but especially in response to the pandemic. Massive economic relief and recovery packages have tried to protect incomes and failing businesses, albeit unevenly.

Taxation regressive
Regressive colonial taxes were levied on subject populations, but tax incidence became more progressive after independence in most, though not all post-colonial societies. In the last four decades, most governments have reformed tax policies for the worse, reducing tax revenue shares and shifting the tax burden from the better off to the public at large.

Policy advice from international financial institutions and political pressure from powerful elites and foreign investors have reduced taxation’s progressive aspects. With Trump, laughable arguments such as Arthur Laffer’s curve – without any sound theoretical or empirical bases – are still being invoked to justify regressive tax reforms.

Rich corporations and individuals paid less and less in direct taxes, as the public paid more and more in indirect taxation, typically on consumption. Most countries still tax income, but tax rates on corporate income, high income individuals, property and inheritance have declined in most countries in recent decades.

The wealthy’s assets are mainly held as stocks, shares and real property. Their incomes are mainly from such assets, rather than earned as wages. Taxing excess profits and wealth can raise considerable revenue to finance development policies and measures, besides narrowing gaps between the beneficiaries and others.

Instead, wealth is typically taxed at low rates, while huge loopholes allow such assets to be hidden, typically abroad. Many trillions are hoarded in often secret accounts in tax havens, both off- and on-shore. All this has accelerated wealth concentration and economic inequality.

Making taxation more progressive
Governments mainly get fiscal resources from tax revenue or by borrowing. Taxation is undoubtedly the most sustainable, effective and accountable means for states to raise funds. Progressive taxation and government expenditure can both reduce inequalities, albeit in different ways.

Windfall profit taxes
A few individuals and businesses are reaping huge rewards from the pandemic while most have been hurting. Many billionaires have reportedly become much more affluent, with the ten richest more than doubling their wealth from US$700 billion to US$1500 billion since March 2020!

Windfall taxes at high rates are easily justified. After all, most who have gained much owe their newfound wealth to circumstances largely not of their own making. Windfall incomes or profits during the pandemic can be ascertained by comparing recent with previous profits. Such gains should be heavily taxed for the same reason.

Wealth taxes
Wealth taxation has diminished significantly in recent decades due to successful lobbying by the rich. The introduction or reintroduction and extension of progressive wealth taxation will raise considerable revenue if loopholes can be closed, not only domestically, but also internationally.

Perhaps even more than income taxation, wealth taxes are a progressive means to raise revenue. They also have greater potential to address other inherited privileges and inequalities, including those associated with culture, lineage, ethnicity and gender.

Conditional support
Government spending – including subsidies and relief measures – should not benefit businesses paying taxes abroad or not paying them at all. Many companies resort to tax havens and other loopholes to pay less tax where they operate and profit from.

More progressive systems
Tax systems should get much more from those most liable and able to pay. Concretely, this should include:

Such systemic reforms are essential for progressive fiscal redistribution, e.g., by financing sustainable development in the medium and long-term. Of course, an immediate priority in the near term is financing a forward-looking recovery from the pandemic and its aftermath.

Coordinating fiscal policy
Governments are expected to raise enough revenue to finance the services, goods, facilities and infrastructure they are supposed to provide, i.e., to fulfil public expectations of citizens’ entitlements. The popular presumption is that tax incidence is not only progressive, but has also become increasingly so, although the converse is more likely to be true.

Taxation is widely expected to reduce, if not remedy inequalities. If well-designed for effective implementation and enforcement, the international record suggests this is achievable. In line with the public’s progressive redistribution expectations, the government is expected to be Robin Hood-like, i.e., to take from the rich to give to the poor.

Of course, whether taxation is progressive depends on how it is collected and spent. Hence, tax and spending policies should be considered together. But it is now clear that some pandemic relief packages have mainly benefited influential businesses, with crumbs going to the most needy.

International cooperation is needed to for appropriate tax reforms in this age of financial globalization, and to prevent increasing capital outflows from developing countries. For the time being, minimizing tax evasion depends on equitable and effective international cooperation on terms fair to all, rather than conditions imposed by the rich countries, as has been the case.

Categories: Africa

Somalia on the Path to Recovery, but Real Challenges Remain

Tue, 01/18/2022 - 07:54

A Somali woman goat-seller in Hargeisa livestock market. Photo: Credit: UNDP / Said Fadhaye

By Adam Abdelmoula
MOGADISHU, Somalia, Jan 18 2022 (IPS)

I arrived in Somalia in September 2019, two decades after having worked here previously. I knew that I was taking up a challenging assignment, but I was also looking forward to seeing Somalia’s progress.

Afflicted by decades of conflict, recurrent climatic shocks, disease outbreaks and poverty, Somalia was often called a ‘failed state.’ The narrative is now changing, and although fragile, Somalia is on a path to stability and the resilience of the Somali people is second to none.

That said, we are not under any illusion: significant challenges remain, and we must work even harder to preserve the gains made to date.

Somalia’s upward trajectory is evident in the construction boom, as one analyst noted — the sound of the hammer is replacing the sound of gunfire in Somalia’s capital.

The UN has been closely supporting the Somali people since the birth of the Republic in 1960. Currently, the UN’s various mandates are implemented through 26  Agencies, Funds and Programmes (both resident and non-resident), one political mission (UNSOM) and one logistical support mission (UNSOS). 

The UN’s commitment towards the Somali cause is articulated in detail in the UN Sustainable Development Cooperation Framework (UNSDCF 2021-2025), mirroring the priorities of Somalia’s Ninth National Development Plan (NDP-9).

At the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, the UN marshalled support to help the Somali government respond to the virus outbreak. We continue to support the Somali authorities in seeking to defeat this pandemic and encouraging people to get vaccinated.

Elections are also on-going in Somalia. The UN is supporting the process to ensure that elections are held in a peaceful and transparent manner, while at the same time advocating for 30 per cent women’s quota in the Somali legislature.

While these are encouraging signs of progress, we must not forget Somalia’s long-standing challenges. According to UN’s projections for next year, an estimated 7.7 million Somalis (nearly half of the country’s population) will require humanitarian assistance and protection.

Women and children continue to bear the brunt of Somalia’s complex humanitarian crises, especially among the internally displaced communities. In light of the current serious droughts, the Somali government declared a humanitarian state of emergency on 23 November.

Yet, neither the government nor the humanitarian community has adequate resources to respond. With a few days remaining in the year, the 2021 Humanitarian Response Plan which seeks US$1.09 billion remains only 70 per cent funded. Additional resources are urgently needed to prevent the dire humanitarian situation from becoming a catastrophe, so we continue to engage partners on this subject.

In this regard, I undertook missions to Europe in October and to the Gulf in September. Throughout my interactions with partners, I stressed the need for additional funding to address Somalia’s escalating humanitarian crisis and elaborated on how inaction not only risks a reversal of the gains but puts the lives of millions of Somalis in jeopardy.

Through my field visits in Somalia, I have also seen first-hand the grim realities of adverse climate conditions. Somalia is no doubt on the frontline of climate change. The recurrent droughts and floods are driving widespread displacement, rapid urbanization, hunger, malnutrition and poverty.

Climate change is also increasingly seen as the driver of conflict and a threat to the country’s security as the struggle over meagre resources deepens divisions. In addition, the loss of traditional livelihoods makes people vulnerable to recruitment by armed groups such as Al-Shabaab.

Somalia is currently experiencing a third consecutive season of below-average rainfall, with nearly 80 per cent of the country experiencing drought conditions, water shortages and livestock deaths. One in five Somalis does not have enough water to cover his/her basic needs.

On a positive note, as part of the efforts to mitigate the climate emergency, the government, with the support of the United Nations, has recently adopted an ambitious Nationally Determined Contribution to achieve global climate targets, in which Somalia committed to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by 30 per cent by 2030.

Somalia’s crises are multifaceted, and they require comprehensive solutions from all stakeholders. It is our collective responsibility to support the efforts of the Somali people to cope with these crises and find lasting solutions that build resilience against future shocks. We must not fail the people we pledged to serve.

Adam Abdelmoula is Deputy Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General, Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator for Somalia. He told a press conference in December that the UN and its partners have launched a nearly $1.5 billion Humanitarian Response Plan (HRP). Roughly 7.7 million people in the country will need assistance and protection in 2022, a 30 per cent rise in just one year.

Categories: Africa

A Call to Action on Living Lands

Mon, 01/17/2022 - 18:50

By Patricia Scotland
GEORGETOWN, Guyana, Jan 17 2022 (IPS)

If the ocean is the lifeblood of the Commonwealth, then forests are the lungs that breathe life into its whole system. From the vast boreal woodlands of Canada to the rich primary forests of Papua New Guinea, the Commonwealth covers nearly a quarter of all forest land in the world – an estimated 900 million hectares. These biodiversity havens not only house about half of all animal species on earth, they also give us clean air, water and food, supporting the livelihoods of millions of people while tackling climate change.

Last weekend, I had the privilege of trekking the stunning Amazonian rainforests of Guyana. It was my second time to do so since visiting the Iwokrama Reserve in 2016, but I was still left awestruck by the sight of rolling jungle-shrouded mountains that stretched far as the eye could see, home to jaguars, anacondas and hundreds of exotic bird species. Listening to the thunderous vibrations of the Potaro River plunging 250 metres in the world’s largest single drop waterfall, Kaieteur Falls, I wondered how so much of humankind had become distanced from these wonders of nature.

Globally, forests such as the Amazon are being destroyed at alarming rates, placing increasing pressure on the wildlife and driving many species into extinction. The UN estimates that 420 million hectares of forest – roughly the land area of the entire European Union – have been lost since 1990, despite the rate of deforestation dropping in recent years. The main driver is no surprise: rapid agricultural expansion is needed to feed the demands of an ever-growing global population, whether through large scale commercial farming or local subsistence agriculture.

Fortunately, in Guyana, where more than 80 percent of the total land area is forest, deforestation rates are extremely low – less than one percent – thanks to strong government policies and international support. However, the lucrative mining of bauxite and gold as well as the recent discovery of oil, which has propelled the country to become one of the fastest growing economies on the planet, still presents a common dilemma for developing nations. This is the balancing act of delivering a healthy economy, social cohesion and equality, while protecting the environment and fighting climate change fuelled by the burning of fossil fuels.

Just a few months ago, I was in Glasgow for the UN Climate Change Conference known as COP26, meeting with countless negotiators, experts and world leaders about how the international community should respond to the climate crisis. In a world where we are already grappling with the frightening effects of a heating planet, I observed a growing awareness amongst decisionmakers of the need to shift to sustainability in order for human civilisation to survive. At the same time, it was clear that almost all countries were also motivated by the drive for economic growth, job creation and enhancing their so-called standard of living.

In this regard, it was a statement by Guyana’s President Irfaan Ali during a high level event held at the Commonwealth Pavilion at COP26 that resonated with me: “Whatever plan we come up with at the national, regional and international levels must be comprehensive in its outlook. We cannot only look at climate change in isolation of food security, or debt security, or national prosperity. We have to find an integrated way which leads to an integrated solution.”

It is precisely this line of thinking that has spurred an increasing number of Commonwealth member countries to support the ‘Call to Action on Living Lands’, which I announced more than a year ago. This call to action lays the groundwork for a Commonwealth Living Lands Charter to be proposed for adoption at the forthcoming meeting of Commonwealth Heads of Government scheduled for later this year in Kigali, Rwanda. The proposed Charter recognises those valuable links between different and sometimes conflicting interests of member countries. It will seek to catalyse the global political momentum to address climate action and resilience, biodiversity loss and land degradation, in a coordinated and cohesive approach. Commonwealth countries will be able to share learning and cooperate in developing and implementing solutions. When implemented successfully, this will transform the climate, biodiversity and development agendas.

But what does that mean for ordinary Commonwealth citizens? In a word, hope. The Call for Action on Living Lands enables governments to cooperate and pave the way to learn about and access more sustainable, inclusive, innovative and efficient ways of growing food, making a living off the land and adapting to climate change. Focus areas to be explored within the Charter include climate resilient agriculture, soil and water conservation and management, sustainable green cover and biodiversity, and the active engagement of indigenous people. These are standing topics of discussion when I meet with Commonwealth leaders, including Guyana’s top decision makers with whom I convened this week.

My visit to Guyana was both rewarding and deeply moving. However, it was when I called on the Santa Aratak community, a village of around 3,000 indigenous Arawak located 25 miles from the capital city of Georgetown, that the significance of the trip came full circle. Like most indigenous groups, Amerindians make the best land stewards because of their traditional values and principles around living sustainably, understanding natural ecosystems and maintaining the pristine state of the environment. Their world view is similar to indigenous cultures elsewhere in the Commonwealth, including parts of Africa and the Pacific Islands. Perhaps as we embark on this new year, we should take their vision as an inspiration – we should all see ourselves as stewards of our living lands.

The Right Honourable Patricia Scotland is the sixth Secretary-General of the Commonwealth and the first woman to hold the post. She leads an organisation of 54 countries working together to promote democracy, peace and sustainable development. Born in Dominica and raised in the United Kingdom, she was also the first woman to be named Attorney General for England and Wales and served in various ministerial roles.

This piece was first published on Stabroek Sunday.

Categories: Africa

The Most Likely to Be in the Jailhouse Now

Mon, 01/17/2022 - 10:52

Credit: Bigstock

By Joseph Chamie
PORTLAND, USA, Jan 17 2022 (IPS)

Yes, it’s unequivocally true: Americans are the most likely to be in the jailhouse now. The United States is the world’s leader in incarceration both in terms of the total number of people in prisons and jails and the rate of prisoners per capita.

The U.S. national incarceration rate, prisoners per 100,000 population, plainly stands out as the world’s highest at approximately 630. The countries with incarceration rates closest to the U.S. are Rwanda, Turkmenistan and El Salvador at around 575. The incarceration rate for the world at 140 as well as the rates for nearly all developed countries, in contrast, are a fraction of the United States rate (Figure 1).

Source: Institute for Crime and Justice Policy Research.

Moreover, the incarceration rates for the U.S. states are greater than those of most developed democracies. For example, the lowest state incarceration rate of 109 in Massachusetts is significantly greater than the rates for Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Netherlands, Norway, Sweden and Switzerland, which are below 90 prison inmates per 100,000 population.

Despite having slightly less than one-twentieth of the world’s population, the United States has approximately 20 percent of the world’s prison population

The high incarceration rate is a relatively recent phenomenon for the United States. Between 1925 to 1975, for example, the U.S. incarceration rate was relatively stable at around 110 prisoners per 100,000 population. In the late 1970s the rate increased significantly, more than quadrupling since then, following the get tough on crime movement that swept across the country

Despite having slightly less than one-twentieth of the world’s population, the United States has approximately 20 percent of the world’s prison population. At the end of 2019 the number of prisoners held in the U.S. was the world’s largest at about 2.2 million.

That number of U.S. prisoners is about 10 percent lower than the peak level of inmates in prisons and jails of about 2.3 million in 2008. However, the current number of prisoners is substantially higher than it was in the mid 20th century. Fifty years ago, for example, the number of U.S. prisoners was 200,000, or close to 2 million less than it is today.

Following the United States in a distant second place is China with 1.7 million prisoners, or about 16 percent of the world total. It is followed by Brazil, India and Russia with approximately 0.8 million, 0.5 million and 0.5 million, respectively (Figure 2).

Source: Institute for Crime and Justice Policy Research.

It is important to recognize that while the estimated total global prison population is over 11 million, that number is likely to be an underestimate of the world total. For example, if the numbers of underreported and political prisoners as well as those held in detention centers in various countries around the world, such as China, Eritrea, Indonesia, Myanmar, North Korea and Somalia, are included, the total worldwide prison population is believed to be more than 12 million.

In many parts of the world, prison populations are continuing to rise. For example, since the start of the 21st century, the prison populations have tripled in South America, more than doubled in south-eastern Asia and has nearly doubled in Oceania.

In the United States, in contrast, the number of prisoners in recent years has declined. The U.S. imprisonment rate in 2019 was at the lowest level since 1995. From 2009 to 2019, for example, the number of prisoners under state or federal jurisdiction dropped by 11 percent and the incarceration rate fell by 17 percent.

In some countries, including the U.S., the COVID-19 pandemic has also contributed to declines in prisoner numbers. Court operations, delays in trials and sentencing of persons led to a 40 percent decrease in admissions to U.S. state and federal prisons from 2019 and spurred a 25 percent drop in inmates held in local jails.

As is the case worldwide, the overwhelming majority of prisoners in the U.S. are males. In 2019, for example, females made up about 10 percent of those held in U.S. prisons and jails, or about 0.2 million, and constituted the highest female incarceration rate worldwide. Also, U.S. male prisoners are mostly under age 40, come from disadvantaged communities, are disproportionately minorities and often have drug and alcohol addictions.

U.S. incarceration rates also vary considerably by region and state. The states with the highest incarceration rates are typically located in the south. The top three states, for example, were Louisiana, Mississippi and Oklahoma, all with rates above 600 in 2019. In contrast, the three states with the lowest rates, all around 150 or less, were Massachusetts, Maine and Rhode Island.

At the end of 2019 slightly less than half, or about 46 percent, of sentenced federal prisoners were serving time for drug trafficking and 8 percent for a violent offense. Similarly among sentenced state prisoners, the most common offense was drug-related and about one out of seven, or 14 percent, were serving time for murder or manslaughter.

America’s high level of incarceration has raised various issues, including the civil rights of poor people and minorities, the crowded facilities with health risks and the financial strains on state budgets. Some contend that incarceration dehumanizes individuals, does little to increase public safety and is damaging to marginalized communities.

Also, many prisoners after being released encounter serious challenges. Among those challenges are reentering the labor force, finding suitable housing, reestablishing familial, social and community relationships, accessing public assistance and avoiding criminal activities.

Spending on prisons and jails also varies considerably across the United States. Those costs typically involve providing security, food, housing, recreation, education, maintenance and healthcare for prisoners.

The annual costs per inmate range from lows of below $20,000 in states such as Alabama, Kentucky and Oklahoma to highs of more than $50,000 in Connecticut, New Jersey and New York. Also, invariably across U.S. states, the annual costs of keeping an inmate imprisoned are significantly greater than government monies spent to educate an elementary/secondary school student in an academic year.

Various explanations or factors have been offered for why the United States has the world’s highest incarceration rate. Prominent among those explanations is the war on drugs, which over the years incarcerated a lot of people. Many experts contend that treatment for drug offenders would be a better option than incarceration.

Other factors and practices believed to contribute to the high U.S. incarceration rates include: harsher sentencing laws; longer prison sentences; greater likelihood of imprisonment; higher rates of violent crime; easily available firearms; a legacy of racial discrimination; the U.S. temperament; the lack of a social safety net; inadequate reentry services; employment discrimination; jail time for misdemeanors or low-level offenses; and the lack the funds to cover bail.

Also, most U.S. state judges and prosecutors are elected and consequently tend to be sensitive to public opinion about appropriate responses to crime. In contrast, criminal justice professionals in other developed countries are civil servants who are less likely to be pressured for lengthy jail time.

In sum, little disagreement exists about who are the most likely to be in the jailhouse now: residents of the United States. The reasons behind this lamentable incarceration achievement, however, are less indisputable. Also, the policies, changes and programs needed to address it remain contentious issues among U.S. elected officials, criminal justice professionals, law enforcement officers and the public.

Consequently, it seems that at least for the foreseeable future, the United States will retain its title as the world’s incarceration leader both in terms of the total number of people in prisons and jail and the rate of prisoners per capita.

* 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.”

Categories: Africa

Ominous History in Real Time: Where We Are Now in the USA

Mon, 01/17/2022 - 10:45

US President Joseph R. Biden Jr. addresses the general debate of the UN General Assembly’s 76th session last year. In his inaugural address to the annual gathering of world leaders at the UN, Biden called for a new era of global unity against the compounding crises of COVID-19, climate change and insecurity. Credit: UN Photo/Cia Pak

By Norman Solomon
SAN FRANCISCO, USA, Jan 17 2022 (IPS)

The final big legislative achievement of 2021 was a bill authorizing $768 billion in military spending for the next fiscal year. President Biden signed it two days after the Christmas holiday glorifying the Prince of Peace.

Dollar figures can look abstract on a screen, but they indicate the extent of the mania. Biden had asked for “only” $12 billion more than President Trump’s bloated military budget of the previous year — but that wasn’t enough for the bipartisan hawkery in the House and Senate, which provided a boost of $37 billion instead.

Overall, military spending accounts for about half of the federal government’s total discretionary spending — while programs for helping instead of killing are on short rations at many local, state, and national government agencies. It’s a nonstop trend of reinforcing the warfare state in sync with warped neoliberal priorities. While outsized profits keep benefiting the upper class and enriching the already obscenely rich, the cascading effects of extreme income inequality are drowning the hopes of the many.

Corporate power constrains just about everything, whether healthcare or education or housing or jobs or measures for responding to the climate emergency. What prevails is the political structure of the economy.

Class war in the United States has established what amounts to oligarchy. A zero-sum economic system, aka corporate capitalism, is constantly exercising its power to reward and deprive. The dominant forces of class warfare — disproportionately afflicting people of color while also steadily harming many millions of whites — continue to undermine basic human rights including equal justice and economic security.

In the real world, financial power is political power. A system that runs on money is adept at running over people without it.

The words “I can’t breathe,” repeated nearly a dozen times by Eric Garner in a deadly police chokehold, resonated for countless people whose names we’ll never know. The intersections of racial injustice and predatory capitalism are especially virulent zones, where many lives gradually or suddenly lose what is essential for life.

Discussions of terms like “racism” and “poverty” too easily become facile, abstracted from human consequences, while unknown lives suffocate at the hands of routine injustice, systematic cruelties, the way things predictably are.

An all-out war on democracy is now underway in the United States. More than ever, the Republican Party is the electoral arm of unabashed white supremacy as well as such toxicities as xenophobia, nativism, anti-gay bigotry, patriarchy, and misogyny.

The party’s rigid climate denial is nothing short of deranged. Its approach to the Covid pandemic has amounted to an embrace of death in the name of rancid individualism. With its Supreme Court justices in place, the “Grand Old Party” has methodically slashed voting rights and abortion rights.

Overall, on domestic matters, the partisan matchup is between neoliberalism and neofascism. While the abhorrent roles of the Democratic leadership are extensive, to put it mildly, the two parties now represent hugely different constituencies and agendas at home. Not so on matters of war and peace.

Both parties continue to champion what Martin Luther King Jr. called “the madness of militarism.” When King described the profligate spending for a distant war as “some demonic, destructive suction tube,” he was condemning dynamics that endure with a vengeance.

Today, the madness and the denial are no less entrenched. A militaristic core serves as a sacred touchstone for faith in America as the world’s one and only indispensable nation. Gargantuan Pentagon budgets are taken for granted, as is the assumed prerogative to bomb other countries at will.

Every budget has continued to include massive outlays for nuclear weapons, including gigantic expenditures for so-called “modernization” of the nuclear arsenal. A fact that this book cited when it was first published — that the United States had ten thousand nuclear warheads and Russia had a comparable number — is no longer true; most estimates say those stockpiles are now about half as large.

But the current situation is actually much more dangerous. In 2007, the Doomsday Clock maintained by The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists pegged the world’s proximity to annihilation at five minutes to apocalyptic Midnight.

As 2022 began, the symbolic hands were at one hundred seconds to Midnight. Such is the momentum of the nuclear arms race, fueled by profit-driven military contractors. Lofty rhetoric about seeking peace is never a real brake on the nationalistic thrust of militarism.

With the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan, the third decade of this century is shaping up to unfold new wrinkles in American hegemonic conceits. Along the way, Joe Biden has echoed a central precept of doublethink in George Orwell’s most famous novel, 1984: “War is Peace.”

Speaking at the United Nations as the autumn of 2021 began, Biden proclaimed: “I stand here today, for the first time in twenty years, with the United States not at war. We’ve turned the page.” But the turned page was bound into a volume of killing with no foreseeable end.

The United States remained at war, bombing in the Middle East and elsewhere, with much information withheld from the public. And increases in U.S. belligerence toward both Russia and China escalated the risks of a military confrontation that could lead to nuclear war.

A rosy view of the USA’s future is only possible when ignoring history in real time. After four years of the poisonous Trump presidency, the Biden strain of corporate liberalism offers a mix of antidotes and ongoing toxins. The Republican Party, now neofascist, is in a strong position to gain control of the U.S. government by mid-decade.

Preventing such a cataclysm seems beyond the grasp of the same Democratic Party elites that paved the way for Donald Trump to become president in the first place. Realism about the current situation — clarity about how we got here and where we are now — is necessary to mitigate impending disasters and help create a better future. Vital truths must be told. And acted upon.

This article is adapted from the new edition of Norman Solomon’s book “Made Love, Got War,” just published as a free e-book.

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.

Categories: Africa

As the Pandemic Devastates the Poor, the World’s 10 Richest Have Multiplied their Wealth into Trillions

Mon, 01/17/2022 - 09:15

In Malawi, some students have been going to school amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Credit: UNICEF/Malumbo Simwaka

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Jan 17 2022 (IPS)

The numbers are unbelievably staggering: the world’s 10 richest men more than doubled their fortunes from $700 billion to $1.5 trillion —at a rate of $15,000 per second or $1.3 billion a day, according to a new study from Oxfam International.

These phenomenal changes in fortunes took place during the first two years of a Covid-19 pandemic that has seen the incomes of 99 percent of humanity fall, and over 160 million more people forced into poverty—60 million more than the figures released by the World Bank in 2020.

“If these ten men were to lose 99.999 percent of their wealth tomorrow, they would still be richer than 99 percent of all the people on this planet,” said Oxfam International’s Executive Director Gabriela Bucher.
“They now have six times more wealth than the poorest 3.1 billion people.”

“It has never been so important to start righting the violent wrongs of this obscene inequality by clawing back elites’ power and extreme wealth including through taxation —getting that money back into the real economy and to save lives,” she said.

According to Forbes magazine, the 10 richest people, as of 30 November 2021, who have seen their fortunes grow, include Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Bernard Arnault & family, Bill Gates, Larry Ellison, Larry Page, Sergey Brin, Mark Zuckerberg, Steve Ballmer and Warren Buffet.

The pandemic has hit the poorest people, women and racialized and marginalized groups the hardest. For example, in the US, 3.4 million Black Americans would be alive today if their life expectancy was the same as White people —this is directly linked to historical racism and colonialism, according to the study titled “Inequality Kills” released January 17, ahead of the World Economic Forum’s (WEF) online Davos Agenda.

The report finds that a new billionaire is created every 26 hours while inequality is contributing to the death of at least 21,000 people each day, or one person every four seconds.

Other findings include:

— During the second wave of the pandemic in England, people of Bangladeshi origin were five times more likely to die of COVID-19 than the White British population. Black people in Brazil are 1.5 times more likely to die from COVID-19 than White people.

— Inequality between countries is expected to rise for the first time in a generation. The proportion of people with COVID-19 who die from the virus in developing countries is roughly double that in rich countries.

Asked for his comments, Ben Phillips, author of How to Fight Inequality, told IPS the new report “confirms four vital truths about inequality are now proven beyond doubt.

Firstly, inequality kills. Inequality is not just inefficient and unfair. As the data shows, it is deadly.

Secondly, inequality is spiralling. The driving cause is neoliberalism, but it has now been supercharged by the pandemic.

Thirdly, inequality is a political choice. The rise in inequality is not inevitable. Governments can reduce inequality if they decide to do so.

Fourthly, policy-makers will only shift if we make them do so. A reversal in inequality depends on us, ordinary citizens, organizing to push our leaders to make them do their job and put in place the policies that will deliver a fairer, safer, world.”

Striking a hopeful note, Phillips said: “Though the crisis has made inequality even worse and even harder to bear,” he said, “the crisis also, paradoxically, has generated an opportunity for transformational shift to tackle inequality, if we seize this moment”.

“We know the policy mix needed – get the vaccine to everyone by sharing the rights and recipes, drop the debt, expand public services like free health and education, raise up ordinary people’s wages and worker’s rights, tackle discrimination, put money in the hands of ordinary people, and properly tax, and restrain the economic and political power, of big corporations and the super-rich.”

Change depends on ordinary people, Phillips said. “The myths of equal opportunity and rising tides have been busted, but the truth alone will not set us free. Left to itself, the rigged economy will continue to worsen inequality. Left to themselves, politicians will allow it, even enable it, to do so.

Only pressure from below can secure a reversal of rising inequality. The good news is that around the world, frustration is increasingly being channelled into a resurgence of organizing that has potential to shift the balance of power.

Unions, community organizations, women’s groups, progressive faith organizations and social movements are standing up and standing together. This is the source of hope. This is our chance – if enough people join in. Inequality defines this moment but need not be our fate,” declared Phillips.

According to the Oxfam report, billionaires’ wealth has risen more since COVID-19 began than it has in the last 14 years. At $5 trillion dollars, this is the biggest surge in billionaire wealth since records began. A one-off 99 percent tax on the ten richest men’s pandemic windfalls, for example, could pay:

“Billionaires have had a terrific pandemic. Central banks pumped trillions of dollars into financial markets to save the economy, yet much of that has ended up lining the pockets of billionaires riding a stock market boom. Vaccines were meant to end this pandemic, yet rich governments allowed pharma billionaires and monopolies to cut off the supply to billions of people. The result is that every kind of inequality imaginable risks rising. The predictability of it is sickening. The consequences of it kill,” said Bucher.

Extreme inequality is a form of economic violence, where policies and political decisions that perpetuate the wealth and power of a privileged few results in direct harm to the vast majority of ordinary people across the world and the planet itself.

Oxfam recommends that governments urgently:

— Invest the trillions that could be raised by these taxes toward progressive spending on universal healthcare and social protection, climate change adaptation, and gender-based violence prevention and programming.

— Tackle sexist and racist laws that discriminate against women and racialized people and create new gender-equal laws to uproot violence and discrimination. All sectors of society must urgently define policies that will ensure women, racialized and other oppressed groups are represented in all decision-making spaces.

— End laws that undermine the rights of workers to unionize and strike, and set up stronger legal standards to protect them.

— And rich governments must immediately waive intellectual property rules over COVID-19 vaccine technologies to allow more countries to produce safe and effective vaccines to usher in the end of the pandemic.

Antonia Kirkland, global lead for Legal Equality & Access to Justice at Equality Now, told IPS the socio-economic fallout of COVID-19 has disproportionately impacted women, compounding pre-existing inequalities in the home and workplace. Women have been more likely to shoulder an even greater burden of responsibility for unpaid childcare and household chores in comparison to men.

“Women have lost paid work and had to take on more unpaid work, and of particular concern is how mothers have been pushed out of the workforce because of a lack of affordable childcare options. The expectations put on mothers in particular to take on the lion’s share of childcare and manage their children’s remote schooling forced many women to reduce their working hours, be furloughed, or drop out of the labor force altogether. Unequal pay because of gender discrimination means women in heterosexual family households have been more likely to leave employment if their spouse or partner brings in more income.”

She said the unprecedented disruption caused by the COVID19 pandemic should be seized upon as a catalyst for positive change and business recovery planning needs to prioritize attracting and retaining women within the workplace. This includes fostering flexible, inclusive working policies and practices, and supportive hiring and promotion processes that benefit women and families.

“As this startling report – Inequality Kills – shows, income inequality and gender inequality are intimately linked. And to stop COVID related inequality from killing women and other vulnerable people and instead put both gender and income equality first, States must get rid of all discriminatory laws. Sexist laws and gender stereotypes during the pandemic have perpetuated economic violence against women and exacerbated physical domestic violence,” Kirkland declared.

Download the “Inequality Kills” report and summary and the methodology document outlining how Oxfam calculated the statistics in the report.

Oxfam’s calculations are based on the most up-to-date and comprehensive data sources available. Figures on the very richest in society come from Forbes’ 2021 Billionaires List. Figures on the share of wealth come from the Credit Suisse Research Institute’s Global Wealth Databook 2021. Figures on the incomes of the 99 percent are from the World Bank.

Categories: Africa

Kenyan Domestic Workers’ Doomed Voyages to the Gulf

Fri, 01/14/2022 - 11:09

Trafficked, kept prisoner in Saudi Arabia Wanjiku Njoki was lucky to escape unharmed. She has since found work serving tea for a government parastatal. Credit: Joyce Chimbi/IPS

By Joyce Chimbi
Nairobi, Kenya, Jan 14 2022 (IPS)

Distress calls from vulnerable Kenyan women in Saudi Arabia experiencing mistreatment and torture at the hands of their employers went from 88 in 2019/2020 to 1,025 just one year later.

And this fear is all too familiar for 28-year-old Wanjiku Njoki. The young woman’s whose search for greener pastures in the Gulf landed her in the hands of a physically, mentally, and verbally abusive employer.

In 2018, she travelled to Jeddah in Saudi Arabia.

That year, Wanjiku was one of an estimated 57,000 to 100,000 Kenyans who travel to Gulf countries, including Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Bahrain annually, for unskilled and semi-skilled work, according to the Ministry of Labour, Social Security and Services.

“I heard stories of suffering and death, especially from Saudi Arabia, but the recruiting agent told us they only work with employers who have no history of abuse,” she tells IPS.

“They also lied about the salary. I received $180 per month and not the $700 promised. My employer would pay me, make me sign a document confirming the payment and then steal the money back. When I told them about the missing money, the man and his wife would slap me and refuse to feed me.”

Her life as a shagala, which she says is Arabic for house helper or servant, became a year-long nightmare. With her passport and mobile phone confiscated by her employer, cutting her off from the rest of the world, she saw no way out.

“I worked from 5 am to midnight every day. I spoke only when spoken to and was very depressed. With time, I befriended the gardener who allowed me to secretly use his mobile phone,” she says.

Eventually, she connected with Kenyans in Saudi Arabia through social media, who told her how to escape, get arrested and deported. In 2020, Wanjiku returned to her village in Kagongo, Kiambu County, empty-handed but alive.

Saudi Arabia has a modern slavery prevalence rank index of 138 out of 167 countries as per the Global Slavery Index. The index also estimates that 61,000 people live in modern slavery and that 46 out of every 100 people are vulnerable to modern slavery.

Confronted by unemployment rates that are among the highest in the world as per the UN’s International Labour Organization (ILO), hundreds of vulnerable women like Wanjiku continue to take, more often than not, a doomed voyage to the Gulf.

The parliamentary committee on labour and social welfare indicate the number of Kenyans working in Saudi Arabia has risen from 55,000 in 2019 to 97,000. The number of deaths and distress incidences has also increased.

In 2019, three deaths were reported to the Kenya embassy in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, rising to 48 deaths in 2020 and, as of September 2021, 41 deaths.

Thus far in 2021, three deaths have been reported in Qatar, one in the United Arab Emirates, two in Kuwait, nine in Oman and two in Bahrain.

“There are at least a hundred backstreet agencies linking workers to the Middle East. Only 29 agencies are government approved and licensed. Many agencies are very greedy and are least concerned with the safety and security of their recruits,” says Suzanne Karanja, a Nairobi-based recruitment agent.

“There is money to be made because a prospective employer will pay me $1,800 to $2,000 per head to facilitate travel to their country. Most agents do not intervene when trouble comes. Their work is done once they receive the commission.”

Karanja says the slave and master scenario presents itself among female domestic workers and employers in the Middle East mainly because employers incur the entire cost of processing travel documents, training, and travel.

She tells IPS that a potential employer pays at least $2500, split between a recruitment agent in the country of origin and the destination country.

If the recruited domestic worker leaves before the contract is completed, employers insist on a refund.

She says the government must step up and crack down on backstreet agents for violating terms of operation, not registering their businesses at a cost of $5000 or paying the $5000 to $10 000 once-off bond.

The $5,000, she says, is supposed to be used to rescue distressed women who, so far, are rescued by Kenyans of goodwill when their distress stories circulate on social media.

Additionally, Karanja speaks of Kenyans illegally detained in the Middle East for challenging poor working conditions and others stranded and living on the streets hoping to be arrested and deported.

“All the deaths are among young women, and their employers say they died of cardiac arrest. How is this possible? Young, energetic women who went through and passed mandatory medical tests dying within one to four years of being in the Middle East?” Karanja questions.

Wanjiku says that the Kenya Embassy in Saudi Arabia should be scrapped because it is notorious for turning a blind eye.

“Families of women who died in the Middle East have video and text message evidence of their loved ones crying for help, but the embassy and agents did nothing to rescue them. The women record themselves on mobile phones and send these videos to their families and social media but help only comes through ordinary Kenyans.”

Parliament’s Standing Committee on Labour and Social Welfare travelled to the Gulf region in April 2021 to find solutions to the crisis.

Karanja stresses that the situation is dire, prompting the Foreign Affairs Principal Secretary Macharia Kamau to write to the Ministry of Labour in July 2021, strongly recommending a temporary ban on recruitment and export of domestic workers to Saudi Arabia until protection measures are in place.

Thus far, no concrete actions have come from the recommendation or others made by politicians after the Gulf visit. Meanwhile, blinded by poverty and desperation, vulnerable women continue to make their way to the Gulf.

Categories: Africa

Fully Ready to Kill, Shockingly Unprepared to Save Lives

Fri, 01/14/2022 - 10:27

Credit: Albert Gonzalez Farran / UNAMID

By Baher Kamal
MADRID, Jan 14 2022 (IPS)

While absolutely ready to kill, with the biggest military powers spending in 2020 nearly two trillion US dollars on weapons, the world is shockingly unprepared to save the lives of millions of unarmed, innocent civilian victims of wars… and other man-made catastrophes.

The military spending data come from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), which also reports that global nuclear arsenals grow as states continue to modernise, thus sharply increasing the dangers of an unimaginable number of victims of the most devastating death machinery.

"As fighting continues to displace tens of thousands while disrupting access to nutritious food for millions of people, over half the population – 16.2 million people – are facing acute hunger, with 5.1 million people at risk of famine. Half of all children under 5 – 2.3 million – are at risk of malnutrition this year."

Parallelly, the world’s politicians continue to subsidise fossil fuel with six trillion dollars in just one year, being fully aware that such fuels harvest the lives of millions of humans, while devoting a tiny portion of such huge amounts to public health care systems.

In fact, 27 December 2021 marked the International Day of Epidemic Preparedness.

According to the United Nations, “global health crises threaten to overwhelm already overstretched health systems, disrupt global supply chains and cause disproportionate devastation of the livelihoods of people, including women and children, and the economies of the poorest and most vulnerable countries.”

Otherwise, more epidemics to come

“In the event of the absence of international attention, future epidemics could surpass previous outbreaks in terms of intensity and gravity.”

The UN adds that “we need to recognise the primary role and responsibility of Governments and the indispensable contribution of relevant stakeholders in tackling global health challenges, especially women, who make up the majority of the world’s health workers.”

The poorest, hit hardest

For his part, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director-General of the World Health Organisation (WHO), said “While we have all undoubtedly been impacted by the pandemic, the poorest and most marginalised have been hit hardest – both in terms of lives and livelihoods lost.”

Tedros said scaling up production and equitable distribution remains the major barrier to ending the acute stage of the pandemic. “It is a travesty that in some countries health workers and those at-risk groups remain completely unvaccinated.”

As countries move forward post-COVID-19, it will be vital to avoid cuts in public spending on health and other social sectors. Such cuts are likely to increase hardship among already disadvantaged groups, said the WHO chief.

“Instead, governments should target spending an additional 1% of GDP on primary health care, while also working to address the shortfall of 18 million health workers needed globally to achieve universal health coverage by 2030.”

An appeal to the world’s billionaires

“A perfect storm of conflict, climate crises, the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and rising costs for reaching people in need is causing a seismic hunger crisis,” the Nobel Peace Laureate World Food Programme (WFP) for its part announced.

And launched a one-time appeal for the world’s billionaires: 6.6 billion US dollars would help stave off starvation for 42 million people across 43 countries.”

A breakdown

Of this required funding, 3.5 billion US dollars are needed for food and its delivery, including the cost of shipping and transport to the country, plus warehousing and “last mile” delivery of food using air, land and river transport, contracted truck drivers and required security escorts in conflict-affected zones –fuelled by warlords– to distribute food to those who need it most.

Another 2 billion US dollars are required for cash and food vouchers (including transaction fees) in places where markets can function. This type of assistance enables those most in need to buy the food of their choice and supports local economies.

As well, 700 million US dollars would be devoted to country-specific costs to design, scale up and manage the implementation of efficient and effective programmes for millions of tonnes more food and cash transfers and vouchers – adapted to the in-country conditions and operational risks in 43 countries.

The case of Yemen

For its part, UNICEF’s Humanitarian Action for Children has launched an appeal to help support the agency’s work in war-torn Yemen as it provides conflict and disaster-affected children with “access to water, sanitation, nutrition, education, health and protection services.”

Specifically, UNICEF requires 484.4 million US dollars to reach 8 million children among 11.3 million infants in need.

Meantime, the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) has appealed  for 170 million US dollars in 2021 to meet the increasing needs of displaced, conflict-affected and migrant communities in Yemen.

As of today, only half of these funds have been received. The 3.85 billion US dollars Humanitarian Response Plan for Yemen is also only funded at 50 percent.

Yemen’s grim picture takes place in a moment in which the World Food Programme (WFP) warns that seven years of conflict show no sign of abating, nor does rising hunger.

“As fighting continues to displace tens of thousands while disrupting access to nutritious food for millions of people, over half the population – 16.2 million people – are facing acute hunger, with 5.1 million people at risk of famine. Half of all children under 5 – 2.3 million – are at risk of malnutrition this year.”

Infectious diseases: not only COVID

COVID-19 continues to demonstrate how quickly “an infectious disease can sweep across the world”, pushing health systems to the brink and upending daily life for all of humanity, the UN chief said on Monday, marking the International Day of Epidemic Preparedness.

“It also revealed our failure to learn the lessons of recent health emergencies like SARS, avian influenza, Zika, Ebola and others”, UN Secretary-General António Guterres said in his message on the World Day.

“And it reminded us that the world remains woefully unprepared to stop localised outbreaks from spilling across borders, and spiralling into a global pandemic”.

Halting infectious diseases

Noting that infectious diseases remain “a clear and present danger to every country”, Guterres maintained COVID-19 would not be the last pandemic for humanity.

“Even as the world responds to this health crisis, he spelled out the need to prepare for the next one.”

This means scaling-up investments in better monitoring, early detection and rapid response plans in every country — especially the most vulnerable, he said.

“It means strengthening primary health care at the local level to prevent collapse… ensuring equitable access to lifesaving interventions, like vaccines for all people and…achieving Universal Health Coverage.”

Spreading like wildfire

Meanwhile, as cases of the new Omicron variant continue to spread like wildfire, 70% of COVID vaccines have been distributed to the world’s ten largest economies, while the poorest countries have received just 0.8%, according to the UN, calling it “not only unjust, but also a threat to the entire planet.”

To end this cycle, the United Nations underscored that at least 70% of the population in every country must be inoculated, which the UN vaccine strategy aims to achieve by mid-2022.

Deaf ears… again

Although this will require at least 11 billion vaccine doses, it is doable so long as sufficient resources are put into distribution.

In short, the three above-mentioned funding appeals represent an astonishingly irrelevant fraction of the giant amount of 2,000,000,000,000 US dollars of the world’s spending on killing machines.

In spite of that, such appeals for saving lives fall, once again, on deaf ears.

Categories: Africa

Democracy Under Assault

Fri, 01/14/2022 - 06:27

A woman, accompanied by a child, casts her vote during the general elections in Mozambique. Meanwhile, the United Nations marked the annual International Day of Democracy last September calling on world leaders to build a more equal, inclusive and sustainable world, with full respect for human rights. Credit: UNDP/Rochan Kadariya

By Simone Galimberti
KATHMANDU, Nepal, Jan 14 2022 (IPS)

There is no doubt that the building the magnificent Women’s Pavilion at the Dubai World Expo 2020 deserves unconditional praise and admiration, a bold landmark that projects the concept of gender empowerment and gender equality.

Yet at the same time I am wondering why the organizers of the World Expo didn’t come up with a different kind of pavilion, one focused on democracy and people’s participation in policy affairs.

On many ways, celebrating women but overlooking democracy and with it, one of its prerequisites and at the same time, byproducts, human rights, is a contradiction that, unfortunately should not shock us considering the overall state of democracy and human rights around the world.

In this context the Summit for Democracy organized by President Biden in December was an important undertaking.

It wasn’t because United States of America was behind it, a country that, as we know, it is dealing with some deep fractures in terms of in issues related to voting rights and universal franchise.

It was but because the Summit was a symbolic gesture, a statement about, on the one hand, the relevance and resilience democracy still has for millions of people around the world and, on the other hand, almost paradoxically, about its vulnerability and fragility.

If many people still can exercise their franchise and freely express their opinion, global reports like the Global State of Democracy 2021 Report published by the Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance, IDEA, it is clear that democracy is under assault both in traditional liberal democratic settings as well as in regions with emerging democratic practices.

Unfortunately, the ongoing geopolitical dynamics are preventing a neutral debate about the future of democracy and instead a clash of perspectives and with it, different political systems, is prevailing, hampering an important conversation.

On the one hand, there is the liberal democracy model based on periodic elections and on the other side of the spectrum, we find the one-party ruling system.

In the between, a mix of hybrid models that, while formally embracing electoral democracy, act more like authoritarian regimes.

Yet perhaps there is another way to look at this equation, a possibility that would put universal human rights at the center of any political system being embraced, regardless its voting practices.

“The response to the pandemic, and to the widespread discontent that preceded it, must be based on a New Social Contract and a New Global Deal that create equal opportunities for all and respect the rights and freedoms of all.” – UN Secretary-General António Guterres. Credit: United Nations

You might not be able to periodically elect your representatives but still in practice, you could enjoy freedom of opinion, the liberty to express your judgement on the current status of affairs in your country.

It is unclear how criticism and divergent opinions are continuously seen as such a lethal arms that can put at risk the survival of nations but this is what is happening almost on daily basis.

For example, while Dubai is celebrating its mesmerizing Expo, the U.A.E. are still jailing human rights defender Ahmed Mansoor detained since March 2017.

Whatever the charges against him, the authorities are showing contempt for the most basic human rights and this is not just an isolated episode but rather a consistent pattern of abuses.

Undoubtedly, it can be certainly be better in relation to basic human rights and that’s why the Summit for Democracy could become an opportunity to press nations like the U.A.E. to show leadership rather than fear and insecurity in matter of democracy and human rights.

The U.A.E. like many other authoritarian or totalitarian regimes are a success stories in so many extents.
Events like the Expo or the upcoming World Cup in Qatar, another democratic outcast despite the recent election of the Shura Council or the soon to happen Winter Olympics and Paralympics Games in China, are showing how such countries have found their own path to excellence and prosperity.

There are risks associated with a nation like the USA pushing the democracy agenda but still the follow up summit that will be organized by the Biden Administration in 2022 could offer a way for more nations to step up and show some commitment at least to human rights.

Will those nations who did not get invited to the summit this year, nations like the U.A.E. and Qatar do more in this area or simply will they carry on with business with a “business as usual” approach?

To be clear, there is no doubt that it would be a mistake to just promote the liberal democratic model based on elections and representation as the only blue print to be followed universally.

There are, indeed, other ways to reinvigorate democracy and human rights and for example, the ongoing conversation on the New Social Contract being promoted by the United Nations could offer such venue to rethink the relationships between people and their governments.

That’s why it is so relevant to be as inclusive as possible in building on the momentum opened by the UN Secretary General with its push for a New Social Contract because such discussions could enable nations like the U.A.E. to also join and contribute, on their own ways, to the formulation of a better and just, not just more efficient, governance models.

Involving youth is going to be paramount.

Recently during the World Youth Forum organized by the Egyptian Government, another nation falling well behind in human right standards and practices, Secretary General Guterres, invited youth to “keeping speaking out”.

I am not entirely sure how such invite would be digested by President El-Sisi, the convener of the Forum but Guterres is right in asserting youth’s right to speak up and share their voice.

More than ever, the United Nations have an enormous responsibility to keep focusing on human rights and freedom of expression and such an effort can help move forward, even indirectly, the global agenda being embraced by President Biden.

While Guterres might not be able to explicitly talk about democracy and elections, he is well positioned to further enhance the debate around the New Social Contract and with it, bring up inconvenient topics to those leaders uncomfortable to talk about democracy and human rights.

And such leaders from states like U.A.E., Saudi Arabia, Brunei, China or Nicaragua, just to mention few nations certainly not trailblazers in human rights, should not only listen to but also get engaged with such issues.

Will Biden tactically find a way to allow the United Nations, with its proclaimed neutrality, to be involved in such difficult conversations?

Human rights abused cannot be condoned anywhere and this is also a standard applicable to everyone, including to those states who proudly burnish strong democratic credentials, for example, nations of the E.U. or the U.S.A. itself.

We hope that one day not too far from today, the U.A.E. and other likeminded nations might be able to tell their own success stories in terms of human rights protection and people’s participation to local affairs.

They do not lack the creativity and resources to find their own solutions that, while meeting the highest human rights standards, at the same time, can be localized enough to offer novel ideas to make their societies more inclusive, more open and just.

After all, a social contract just based on economic prosperity, while doing the job now, won’t go too far nor will be resilient enough to navigate future crises.

Simone Galimberti is the Co-Founder of ENGAGE, an NGO partnering with youths living with disabilities. The opinions expressed here are personal.

Categories: Africa

“Let us now praise brave women and men”: The Nobel Peace Prize 2021

Thu, 01/13/2022 - 18:32

By Jan Lundius
STOCKHOLM, Jan 13 2022 (IPS)

In several countries around the globe, telling the truth is according to its rulers and other influential, generally wealthy, persons a serious crime that might be punished by muzzling the truth-tellers, slandering and humiliating them, and threatening their families and friends. If that does not make them shut up and repent they might be tortured, imprisoned and even killed.

George Grosz: “A Writer, Is He?” (1936)

Novaya Gazeta was founded in 1993 with the self-imposed task of acting as “an honest, independent, and rich source of information benefiting Russian citizens.” However, to provide a critical and investigative coverage of Russian political and social affairs is a precarious venture and Novaya Gazeta’s 60 journalists, divided between ten major Russian cities, are all living dangerously.

In 2000, Igor Domnikov, who in Novaya Gazeta wrote witty essays about business corruption, had by the door to his apartment his skull crushed by a hammer blow. In 2001,Victor Popkov died after being wounded in a gunfight while on Novaya Gazeta’s behalf reporting about the Chechnyan war. In 2006, Anna Politkovskaya, human rights activist and Novaya Gazeta reporter, was in the elevator of her block of flats shot twice at point-blank range, in the chest and the head. In 2009, a human rights lawyer, Stanislav Markelov, was shot to death while leaving a news conference in Moscow, less than 800 metres from the Kremlin, while Anastasia Baburova, a journalist from Novaya Gazeta who tried to come to his assistance was shot and killed as well. The same year, the Novaya Gazeta reporter Natalia Estemitrova had been seen screaming while she was forced into a car just outside her house in the Chechnyan capital Grozny. Two hours later she was found dead from one shot to the head and one to the chest.

Shchekochikin, a member of the Parliament, was in Novaya Gazeta writing articles about criminal activities and corruption among officers of FSB RF, Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation, the main successor agency to KGB. Shchekochikin died suddenly on 3 July 2003 from a mysterious illness, a few days before his scheduled departure to the U.S., where he was going to meet with FBI agents investigating U.S. contacts with Russian oligarchs and FSB agents. Shchekochikin’s medical records were lost, though physicians who had treated him explained that their patient’s symptoms indicated poisoning from “radioactive materials”.

It was not the first time KGB/FSB used radioactive substances to poison defectors and detractors. The first recorded incident was in 1957 when Nikolai Khoklov was poisoned by radioactive Thallium-201, suffering symptoms similar to those of Roman Tsepov, a corrupt businessman who in 2004 after drinking a cup of tea at a local FSB office experienced a sudden drop of white blood cells and died after two weeks. In 2006, Alexander Litvinenkov, a defector and former FSB agent died in London after being poisoned with polonium-210. In 2018, another defector and former military intelligence officer, Sergei Skripal, was in Salisbury with his daughter poisoned by a Novichok Nerve Agent and in 2020, anti-corruption activist Alexei Navalny was poisoned by a similar substance.

When Novaya Gazeta’s editor-in-chief, Dmitry Muratov, in Oslo was awarded the 2021 Nobel Peace Prize he lamented Russian limitations to free speech, adding that he was not the rightful receiver of the prestigious prize. Worthier men and women had lost their lives while defending the truth: “It’s just that the Nobel Peace Prize isn’t awarded posthumously, it’s awarded to living people.” Accordingly, in his Nobel speech Muratov stated that:

“…this award is for all true journalism. This award is to my colleagues from Novaya Gazeta, who have lost their lives – Igor Domnikov, Yuri Shchekotschikhin, Anna Politkovskaya, Anastasija Baburova, Stas Markelov and Natasha Estemirova. This award is also to the colleagues who are alive, to the professional community who perform their professional duty.”

The Philippine journalist Maria Angelita Ressa shared the Nobel Peace Prize with Dmitry Muratov. The prize was awarded for “their efforts to safeguard freedom of expression, which is a precondition for democracy and lasting peace.”

In her speech, Maria Ressa mentioned that “in the Philippines, more lawyers have been killed – at least 63 compared to the 22 journalists murdered after President Rodrigo Duterte took office in 2016.” Just the day before she was giving her Nobel speech, Maria Ressa’s colleague, Jesus “Jess” Malabanan, was killed in a street in Manila.

Rodrigo Duterte remains popular among the majority of the Philippine population. After his election victory in 2016 something called DuterteNomics was introduced, including tax reforms, infrastructure development, social protection programs, a shift to a federal system of Government and strengthened relations with China and Russia. The infrastructure initiative was promoted through the slogan: “Build! Build! Build!” In 2021, 214 airport projects, 451 commercial social and tourism port projects, 29,264 kilometres of roads, 5,950 bridges, 11,340 flood control projects, 11,340 evacuation centres, and 150,149 classrooms were completed under the infrastructure program.

In spite of this progress Duterte has from some quarters been severely criticized for his obvious authoritarianism, self-glorification, and rampant populism, expressed through callous and vulgar rethorics, for example his trivialization of rape and the murderous activities of vigilante groups. Duterte has repeatedly confirmed to personally having killed suspected criminals during his term as mayor of Davao and he is the only Philippine president who has refused to declare his assets and liabilities. Furthermore, he has by human rights groups, such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, been directly linked to extrajudicial killings of over 1,400 alleged criminals and street children, while the International Criminal Court in The Hague currently is investigating his administration’s crackdown on narcotics, said to have left as many as 30,000 dead, while the administration listed the toll at around 8,000.

Duterte’s image of being a strong-willed, controversial but highly efficient leader has been actively supported by a docile propaganda machinery which, among other means, allegedly is supported by a pro-Duterte online “troll army” that is pushing out fake news stories and manipulating the narrative around his presidency. Such misuse of the web was lamented by both Markelov and Ressa, who emphasized that one of the main tasks of journalism is to distinguish between facts and fiction, meaning that a reporter must patiently and objectively investigate as many angles as possible of an issue at large. Markelov quoted the famous war photographer Robert Capa: “If your picture isn’t good enough, you aren’t close enough.”

Both Markelov and Ressa declared that the immense power of a constantly and increasingly advanced communication technology is both beneficiary and harmful for upholding the truth. It connects people from all over the world, allows for sharing ideas and the spreading of awareness about human rights abuses. However, the web also spreads a virus of lies that incites us against each other, brings out our fears, anger and hate, and sets the stage for the rise of authoritarians and dictators all over the world. Journalists have to contradict that kind of hate and violence, which by Ressa is defined as:

“the toxic sludge that’s coursing through our information ecosystem, prioritized by American internet companies that make more money by spreading that hate and triggering the worst in us. […] What happens on social media doesn’t stay on social media. Online violence is real world violence. Social media is a deadly game for power and money. […] Our personal experiences are sucked into a database, organized by Artificial Intelligence, then sold to the highest bidder. Highly profitable micro-targeting operations are engineered to structurally undermine human will – a behavior modification system in which we are Pavlov’s dogs, experimented on in real time with disastrous consequences in countries like mine,”

Markelov stated that much of the unfounded and manipulated information that spreads its poison through the web have dimmed our conscience and even worse, making people believe that:

“… politicians who avoid bloodshed are weak. While threatening the world with violence and war is the duty of true patriots. Aggressive marketing of war affects people and they start thinking that war is acceptable.”

In such a poisoned environment truth-telling journalists are suffering. In may countries they live under a real threat of being slandered and tortured, of spending the rest of their lives in jail, or being brutally murdered. They have no idea what the future holds for them. Nevertheless, these heroes of the free word assume that their sacrifices are worth the risks they are taking. They believe in their mission to bring the truth to people and thus support empathy, peace and critical thinking. In the words of Markelov:

“Yes, we growl and bite. Yes, we have sharp teeth and strong grip. But we are the prerequisite for progress. We are the antidote against tyranny. […] I want journalists to die old.”

Source: https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/peace/2021/ceremony-speech/

Categories: Africa

On Nuclear Weapons, Actions Belie Reassuring Words

Thu, 01/13/2022 - 14:21

Credit: Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament/Henry Kenyon

By Daryl G. Kimball
WASHINGTON DC, Jan 13 2022 (IPS)

On Jan. 3, the leaders of the five nuclear-armed members of the nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) issued a rare joint statement on preventing nuclear war in which they affirmed, for the first time, the 1985 Reagan-Gorbachev maxim that “a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought.”

The U.S., Chinese, French, Russian, and UK effort was designed in part to create a positive atmosphere for the 10th NPT review conference, which has been delayed again by the pandemic. It also clearly aims to address global concerns about the rising danger of nuclear conflict among states and signals a potential for further cooperation to address this existential threat.

The question now is, do they have the will and the skill to translate their laudable intentions into action before it is too late?

U.S. State Department spokesperson Ned Price hailed the statement as “extraordinary.” A more sober reading shows that it falls woefully short of committing the five to the policies and actions necessary to prevent nuclear war.

In fact, the statement illustrates how their blind faith in deterrence theories, which hinge on a credible threat of using nuclear weapons, perpetuates conditions that could lead to nuclear catastrophe.

The statement asserts that “nuclear weapons—for as long as they continue to exist—should serve defensive purposes, deter aggression, and prevent war.” Yet, such broad language suggests they might use nuclear weapons to “defend” themselves against a wide range of threats, including non-nuclear threats.

Given the indiscriminate and horrific effects of nuclear weapons use, such policies are dangerous, immoral, and legally unjustifiable.

At the very least, if the leaders of these states are serious about averting nuclear war, they should formally adopt no-first-use policies or, as U.S. President Joe Biden promised in 2020, declare that the sole purpose of nuclear weapons is to deter or possibly respond to a nuclear attack.

Even this approach perpetuates circumstances that could lead to nuclear war by accident or miscalculation. The only way to ensure nuclear weapons are never used is “to do away with them entirely,” as President Ronald Reagan argued in 1984, and sooner rather than later.

But on disarmament, the statement only expressed a “desire to work with all states to create a security environment more conducive to progress on disarmament with the ultimate goal of a world without nuclear weapons with undiminished security for all.” This vague, caveated promise rings hollow after years of stalled disarmament progress and an accelerating global nuclear arms race.

A year ago, Russia and the United States extended the 2010 New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, but they have not begun negotiations on a follow-on agreement. Meanwhile, both spend billions of dollars annually to maintain and upgrade their nuclear forces, which far exceed any rational concept of what it takes to deter a nuclear attack.

China is on pace to double or triple the size of its land-based strategic missile force in the coming years. Worse still, despite past promises “to engage in the process leading to the total elimination of nuclear weapons,” Chinese leaders are rebuffing calls to engage in arms control talks with the United States and others. The United Kingdom, meanwhile, announced last year it would increase its deployed strategic warhead ceiling.

Fresh statements by the five NPT nuclear-armed states reaffirming their “intention” to fulfill their NPT disarmament obligations are hardly credible in the absence of time-bound commitments to specific disarmament actions.

At the same time, the five, led by France, have criticized the good faith efforts by the majority of NPT non-nuclear-weapon states-parties to advance the 2017 Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW). Contrary to claims by the nuclear-armed states, the TPNW reinforces the NPT and the norm against possessing, testing, and using nuclear weapons.

Rather than engage TPNW leaders on their substantive concerns, U.S. officials are pressuring influential states, including Sweden, Germany, and Japan, not to attend the first meeting of TPNW states-parties as observers. Such bullying will only reinforce enthusiasm for the TPNW and undermine U.S. credibility on nuclear matters.

The leaders of the nuclear five, especially Biden, can and must do better. Before the NPT review conference later this year, Russia and the United States should commit to conclude by 2025 negotiations on further verifiable cuts in strategic and nonstrategic nuclear forces and on constraints on long-range missile defenses.

China, France, and the UK should agree to join nuclear arms control talks no later than 2025 and to freeze their stockpiles as Washington and Moscow negotiate deeper cuts in theirs.

Instead of belittling the TPNW, the five states need to get their own houses in order. Concrete action on disarmament is overdue. It will help create a more stable and peaceful international security environment and facilitate the transformative move from unsustainable and dangerous deterrence doctrines toward a world free of the fear of nuclear Armageddon.

Source: Arms Control Today

Daryl G. Kimball is Executive Director of the Arms Control Association, Washington DC.

Categories: Africa

Covid-19 Disrupts UN & Threatens Potential Cash Crisis in World Body

Thu, 01/13/2022 - 11:14

The UN’s empty corridors. Credit: United Nations

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Jan 13 2022 (IPS)

The 22-month-old coronavirus pandemic – which has claimed over 5.4 million lives worldwide, devastated economies and reduced an additional 100 million people to poverty—has also disrupted the work of a partially locked-down United Nations triggering a potential cash crisis in the world body.

Addressing the UN’s Administrative and Budgetary Committee late last year, a spokesperson for the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) said for “any organisation to succeed, it must be given adequate financial resources to implement its mandates. However, COVID-19 has disrupted not just the UN’s work, but many of our economies”.

“It is understandable that countries whose economies have been disproportionately affected by COVID-19 may face difficulties in paying their assessments (namely UN’s membership dues). It is therefore all the more important for Member States that have the capacity to pay their assessed contributions to do so in full, on time, and without conditions”.

“Otherwise, the UN faces a real risk of not having the resources it needs to carry out its mandates,” said the spokesman for ASEAN, a group which comprises Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.

Last year, 11 countries were in arrears under the terms of the UN charter, including Antigua and Barbuda, Comoros, the Republic of Congo, Guinea, Iran, Papua New Guinea, Sao Tome and Principe, Somalia, Sudan, Vanuatu and Venezuela.

Article 19 of the UN charter says “A Member of the United Nations which is in arrears in the payment of its financial contributions to the Organization shall have no vote in the General Assembly, if the amount of its arrears equals or exceeds the amount of the contributions due from it for the preceding two full years. The General Assembly may, nevertheless, permit such a member to vote if it is satisfied that the failure to pay is due to conditions beyond the control of the Member.”

Asked about the defaulting member states, Paulina Kubiak, Spokesperson for the President of the UN General Assembly, told reporters January 12 there were 11 Member States on the list, which is similar to the numbers in previous years.

She said these Member States are unable to vote in the General Assembly until they make the minimum payment. But there are a few exceptions.

In A/Res/76/2, the General Assembly decided that Comoros, Sao Tome and Principe, and Somalia shall be permitted to vote in the GA until the end of the current 76th session, leaving 8 countries still in default.

The exceptions are made by the General Assembly at the start of the session on the recommendation of the Committee on Contributions. These exceptions are based largely on the state of a country’s faltering economy.

On December 24, the 193-member UN General Assembly adopted a regular budget of $3.12 billion for 2022 while the annual peacekeeping budget is around $6.5 billion.

The off-and-on lock down of the United Nations since March 2020– with the overwhelming majority of its 9,900 staffers working from home—is beginning to have an impact on the operational services of the world body.

The lockdown, which was partially lifted last month, has been reinstated twice. In a message to New York-based UN staff sent out on January 10, Gilles Michaud, chair of the UN’s Occupational Safety and Health Committee, says after consultation with UN’s senior leadership, it has been decided staffers will continue to work from home (WFH) and not return to office (RTO)— through 28 January “at which point the situation will be reviewed once again.”

The decision to extend WFH has been prompted largely by the fast-spreading Omicron variant which last week averaged about 37,000 cases daily and overwhelmed New York city hospitals. But there is no official breakdown of the number of virus cases among UN staffers.

Ambassador Boubacar Diallo of Guinea, the outgoing chairman of the Group of 77 plus China, the largest single coalition of developing countries at the UN, warned late last year that the Group continues to be disappointed that due to security concerns, the Administrative and Budgetary Committee is being deprived of interpretation services (in the UN’s six official languages) during informal consultations.

This is primarily due to the absence of staff from the UN premises.

“We look forward to the day that multilingualism is fully restored, and we can enjoy interpretation services as we are doing here today. We are committed to a thorough consideration of the agenda items allocated to the Committee, and in this regard, note with disappointment that several reports are still outstanding,” he added.

This endemic situation, he pointed out, significantly compromises the Committee’s work.

“The global challenges that we face today are becoming far more complex and interconnected, and the solutions require a collective global response. As we have heard from many of our leaders (during the UN General Assembly sessions in September), this is the time for us to double down on multilateralism and reaffirm our commitment to a rules-based multilateral system,” said Ambassador Diallo.

With a resolution being adopted by consensus, including the 134 members of the G77, he said, “It is not possible to turn a blind eye to a General Assembly resolution and a deaf ear to the two-thirds majority of the General Membership.”

Speaking on behalf of the 27-member European Union (EU), Thibault Camelli, Counsellor to the delegation of the EU to the United Nations, said: “We call upon all Member States to pay their contributions in full and on time. We remain deeply concerned that the liquidity situation of the United Nations continues to undermine delivery of mandates.”

The temporary solutions introduced so far, he warned, have only alleviated the consequences of this crisis, and they corner the Organization into systemic underperformance. The Member States of the European Union call upon the Committee to rise up to this challenge. We will continue to advocate for sustainable solutions to this crisis”, he declared.

Joseph Chamie, an international demographer and a former director of the United Nations Population Division, told IPS the current crisis should not come as a surprise to Member States as the coronavirus pandemic has greatly impacted the work of the United Nations.

In addition to the large majority of UN staff members working from home, the normal day-to-day operations of the Organization have been greatly reduced and restricted, he said.

“It’s understandable that many Member States are disappointed with the lack of interpretation services. However, with the available technology, interpretation services for the UN languages should be able to be provided without difficulties”.

It is also not surprising, said Chamie, that many Member States, especially the poor less developed countries, are calling on wealthy, more developed nations to increase their financial contributions to the United Nations.

“However, it strikes me as somewhat ironic that many Member States, including less developed countries, say that have difficulties paying their UN assessments, but they have few difficulties in paying for their military expenditures.”

The UN budget for 2021 was only U.S. $3 billion, a relatively small cost for the international body. In comparison, he pointed out, the UN annual budget amounts to:

— a small percentage of the military expenditures of many countries, including China, India, Russia, the United States and the European Union; 4 percent of the worldwide pet food market; 3 percent of U.S. annual spending on soft drinks; and 1 percent of the wealth of the two richest Americans.

Regarding possible reductions in the numbers, salaries and benefits of UN staff members, it makes little sense and appears to be largely for domestic political consumption. Hopefully, Member States, and the General Assembly, will focus on those critical global issues facing the world’s nearly 8 billion inhabitants.

The relatively small budget of the United Nations is a real bargain for Member States and the world.
In terms of cost, deaths and injuries, the price of peace is far less than the price of war, Chamie declared.

Meanwhile, US Ambassador Patrick Kennedy, Senior Advisor for UN Management and Reform, told delegates the United States urges budget discipline across the UN system and will closely examine the increasing demands for assessed contributions.

This includes ensuring that only necessary construction is undertaken and that major projects avoid cost over-runs. The UN should also seek to contain increased spending in response to new and expanded mandates by eliminating outdated ones, consolidating duplicative areas of work, and repurposing existing resources.

He said staff entitlements and conditions of service comprise nearly two-thirds of the UN’s costs. Reestablishment of a unified salary scale remains a priority for the United States, including through addressing divergent decisions by different administrative tribunals across the UN common system, enhancing transparency on compensation costs including by use of commercially available data, and reaffirming the authority of the ICSC, while improving its methodology.

Speaking on behalf of the African Group, Ambassador Harold Adlai Agyeman of Ghana said: “We insist that, as much as possible, all in-person meetings be held with interpretation services as required by the relevant rules of procedure of the General Assembly and agreed resolutions on multilingualism that is at the core of this organization”.

He said Members of the African Group use, as working languages, four of the six official languages of the United Nations. The Group therefore considers it of utmost importance that Member States should be able to contribute to the deliberations of the Committee in the official language they are optimally effective in.

The UN’s six official languages are: Arabic; Chinese; English; French; Russian; and Spanish.

Categories: Africa

Can Barter System Work in Today’s India?

Wed, 01/12/2022 - 23:28

Barter opens up avenues for rural women who often do not have access to cash and markets. | Credit: Wikimedia Commons.

By External Source
MUMBAI, India, Jan 12 2022 (IPS)

When COVID-19 hit in early 2020, it affected every aspect of people’s lives. For many from the most marginalised sections of society, it meant loss of employment and lack of access to education, food, and the market, among other things.

Farmers in rural India were dealing with a peculiar problem. They had their produce, but since markets were shut during the lockdown there was no place to sell. Further, many bank branches were closed and ATMs were far away. With restrictions on travel, cash was practically out of reach, which curtailed people’s buying power.

Communities had to look for alternate modes of survival. One approach that some of them took was a return to the barter system—a solution they were familiar with. People bartered perishable goods such as vegetables, kirana stores in villages provided essentials in exchange for wheat, and food grains became a currency to pay children’s tuition fees. Those who did not have goods offered physical labour in exchange.

How did the transition happen?

Communities in rural India have been practising barter for centuries. In states such as Assam, where barter was extremely popular during the pandemic, it has been celebrated in the form of a fair called Jonbeel Mela for more than five centuries now.

Markets have evolved, and there have been many changes in the way business transactions work, but barter continues to thrive in the close-knit communities of the villages. This is because villages unlike cities are driven by producers as much as consumers and the rural societies survive on trust.

Amid a cash crunch and market shutdowns during COVID-19 many rural communities in India used barter to meet their needs—showing us why this form of exchange still works

The close relationships that people share also allow for easier collectivisation and mobilisation. This was evident during the pandemic when people navigated various COVID-19 safety norms to meet individual and community needs.

Beauty Dutta Borah, a farmer and a grocery store owner in Kawoimari, Sivasagar district, Assam, says that during the pandemic she bartered not only goods, but also services such as getting people to reap and thresh the rice crop. “In most instances I had to just call out to a neighbour for this,” she explains. Dutta Borah adds that goods from various wholesale stores like hers moved across districts often in a single transport vehicle from the village. “A car goes from our village across Sivasagar district twice a week. It can be my car or anyone else’s from the locality. We collect goods from the various local stores and sell it to people at once,” she adds.

A resident of Chetti Thirukonam in Ariyalur district of Tamil Nadu, R Raja compares barter to debit and credit card payments that people in the cities use. He calls it an ‘older form of cashless payment’ that rural communities returned to.

New meanings of an old concept

Nonprofits working in the livelihoods sector in rural India are aware of this well-oiled barter machinery. This has allowed them to work with communities for their sustenance—especially in spaces where income alone is not enough for survival. However, since barter is a localised form of exchange, the organisations have also had to develop a nuanced understanding of cultural contexts and histories.

When Drishtee, a nonprofit that works with rural entrepreneurs, developed a mobile barter application during the pandemic, they chose Sivasagar district to start with. The nonprofit’s regional head of the Northeast, Paragdhar Konwar, said that it was a conscious decision considering the region’s history. “Sivasagar was the capital of the Ahom dynasty, which ruled Assam for six centuries. People here have followed the same age-old practices, including that of barter, for a long time now.”

As a result, there was pre-existing community knowledge waiting to be harvested. Konwar adds, “We told people that you will be continuing with the binimoy protha (exchange tradition) before explaining the renewed importance of barter during the pandemic.” The mobile application was used by people in Assam to exchange rice for oil and ducks for chicken eggs and to avail tractor-operated-rice-mill services when mills nearby were shutting down.

For Goonj, a nonprofit that works on community development, barter is core to their work, and a philosophy it embraced even before the pandemic. The names of its initiatives such as Vaapsi (giving back) and ideas such as ‘cloth for work’—aimed at building sustainable livelihoods—are borrowed from the cultural vocabulary of India. Thus, in times of crisis when Goonj mobilises people, it does so from a place of wanting to revive extant concepts rather than introducing jargon that communities might find difficult to comprehend.

Anshu Gupta, founder director at Goonj, says, “I believe we aren’t doing anything new. We are valuing what already exists. Village wisdom has always been valued in the villages, perhaps it wasn’t by people like us. We are just working with that community knowledge and recognising it.”

What does barter do for the communities?

Apart from facilitating hyperlocal markets during emergencies, barter also has other advantages for communities. Nonprofits using barter during the pandemic found that it was particularly popular among low-income households and women in rural India.

In cash-poor regions, barter helps people meet their needs locally—be it for immediate necessities, such as food grains, or a used smartphone. Additionally, barter is a viable way for local producers to sell their products. These are producers who cannot avail the benefits of e-commerce platforms or access urban markets, which are driven by large production volumes, standardised packaging, and homogenised aesthetics.

People have also used barter to work on community issues such as lack of water, sanitation, and infrastructure. Goonj, for instance, has used barter as a reward for labour. Villagers work on solving local problems on their own, and are rewarded in the form of goods that often travel from cities to them. Gupta says, “Typically people wait for access to a government scheme to address their local-level problems. Meanwhile, there are unused materials in the city, for which there is demand in villages.”

The nonprofit connects these two. Gupta adds, “Just imagine a situation: You give a person a shirt and the next day you say, ‘This is mine,’ he will say, ‘Yes, it is yours.’ But if a person is building a road or working on a water body for his village and you give him a shirt as a reward, he will say, ‘It might be yours, but I have earned it.’”

Barter opens up avenues for rural women who often do not have access to cash and markets. Satyan Mishra, co-founder and managing director at Drishtee, says, “Women who were earlier making things just for themselves saw barter as a big opportunity.” They started exchanging hand-made products for goods that they or their families wanted.

In Varanasi, women were found bartering hair for goods. Monixa Bordoloi, a resident of Dhekeria Gaon, Sonitpur district, Assam, asserts that she will continue to barter whether or not there is a pandemic. She says, “Women barter things they need, not what they already have.”

Can barter replace cash?

Despite the many innovative ways in which people have used barter, cash remains a necessity for many of people’s needs. For instance, while parents of students in Begusarai district, Bihar, have been able to use barter for their children’s education, they have not been able to pay their medical bills using the same method.

The world is therefore unlikely to shift overnight to a system of social exchange. Most aspects of our lives will continue to be defined by abstract monetary currencies. There will also be people’s aspirations that can only be met with money.

For this we will need jobs, job securities, equal opportunities for education, affordable health care, and more. But as many rural communities using barter confirm, it will coexist as a parallel economy embodying the many intangibles of a human society, such as trust, goodwill, and resistance.

Debojit Dutta is an editorial associate at India Development Review

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

Categories: Africa

Climate Action Incomplete Without Women’s Contribution

Wed, 01/12/2022 - 11:51

Women make up 75 percent of the agricultural labour force in Kenya. Women are increasingly exposed to the effects of climate change, and a Commonwealth report shows that without their inputs, climate action policies compound inequality. Credit: Joyce Chimbi/IPS

By Joyce Chimbi
Nairobi, Kenya, Jan 12 2022 (IPS)

Judy Wangari is one of an estimated 800,000 smallholder potato farmers who, according to the National Potato Council of Kenya, contribute at least 83 percent of the total potato production.

In a good season, her two acres in Molo in Kenya’s Rift Valley region produce between 60 to 80 90kg bags of potato per acre. Due to drastic and erratic weather patterns, Wangari tells IPS that a good season is often not guaranteed.

“We have two potato planting seasons, and we plant before the rains begin. Sometimes we plant too early and other times too late because we are not able to properly read the weather.”

“The rains come too early or too late. Two years after I started potato farming back in 2018, I lost all my potatoes to heavy rainfall,” she says.

Women make up 75 percent of the agricultural labour force in this East African nation.

Overall, women also manage approximately 40 percent of the smallholder farms. As pillars of food production and largely lacking in financial and technical support, women are increasingly exposed to the effects of climate change and consequent land degradation.

“We may be in the same storm, but we are definitely not in the same boat. Nowhere is this truer than for women in the face of climate change,” says Patricia Scotland, the Secretary-General of the Commonwealth.

A Commonwealth report titled Gender Integration for Climate Action: A Review of Commonwealth Member Country Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs), presented at the recent UN climate summit COP26, shows how underrepresentation of women in climate policies and plans, poor access to climate finance, technologies, and lack of capacity for effective decision-making compounds inequality.

The lack of representation also creates a barrier to women fully contributing to climate action, reinforcing the circle, and continuing vulnerability.

However, the report also showed that countries are increasingly acknowledging the vulnerability and inequality of women in climate action, taking concrete steps to address it.

At the heart of the review is a macro-level overview of the extent of gender integration in NDCs – the technical term for national climate action plans under the Paris Agreement – in Commonwealth member countries. The study covered both ‘intended’ NDCs, and new or revised NDCs submitted to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) before 26 July 2021.

Overall, 65 percent of Commonwealth countries included gender as a cross-cutting or mainstreaming priority in new or updated NDCs.

“Without women, these commitments to limit global warming won’t be reached,” says Scotland, adding that the Commonwealth Secretariat has undertaken to strengthen gender engagement within the respective NDCs of its 54 member states.

Countries have also identified challenges, particularly in finance, where international support is urgently needed.

“The Kingdom of Eswatini recognises gender as a cross-cutting issue with the National Development Strategy and National Development Policy calling for the mainstreaming of gender equity,” says Duduzile Nhlengethwa-Masina, Director of the Eswatini Meteorological Service in the Ministry of Tourism and Environmental Affairs.

“In developing the NDC, we specifically engaged gender and women groups. This included having a session with Women in Parliament in October 2020 and another on Climate Change and Gender in November 2020.”

These activities encouraged women politicians to plant trees in the country’s capital. They also initiated the idea of a women’s group to increase women’s involvement in climate action and ensure it is gender sensitive.

Furthermore, Nhlengethwa-Masina tells IPS that a gender assessment of policies was undertaken and baselines and indicators for gender-sensitive mitigation and adaptation developed.

“A National Gender Policy was developed in 2021, and climate change was incorporated into this, through support from the Commonwealth Climate Finance Access Hub,” Nhlengethwa-Masina confirms.

Similarly, small island nations such as Saint Lucia recognise the crucial link between climate action, gender, and women’s empowerment.

Saint Lucia’s Chief Sustainable Development and Environment Officer, Annette Rattigan-Leo, says that “gender and women feature more prominently in climate action interventions and strategies.”

Country-wide policies, including the NDC, the National Adaptation Plan and sectoral strategies, clearly state the need to consider gender-related factors. At the same time, the Department of Gender has drafted a National Gender Equality Policy and Strategy to mainstream the issue across various sectors.

Saint Lucia is currently implementing a project to mainstream gender in disaster recovery and climate resilience while improving women’s economic autonomy, supported by Canada and the UK.

The role of women in smart agriculture practices, including agro-processing, is now embraced nationally. While not the main economic stay, agriculture contributes significantly to the country’s revenue.

“Noteworthy, women have assumed entrepreneurial roles over regular farming skills, in women-only farming groups. Consequently, as entrepreneurs, women can actively influence the strategic decision-making requirements necessary for the agriculture sector to become more climate-resilient,” says Rattigan-Leo.

In Namibia, the head of the Monitoring and Evaluation Unit at the Environmental Investment Fund, Aina-Maria Iteta, hopes to strengthen ongoing efforts to emphasise gender inclusivity in the country’s National Climate Change Policy and implementation strategy.

Namibia’s Ministry of Environment, Forestry and Tourism has appointed a UNFCCC National Focal Point on Gender. However, “a lot still needs to be done from creating awareness, developing an action plan, and ensuring a budget to support such initiatives is in place,” she tells IPS.

Experts such as Iteta are quick to point out that even though the review finds considerable progress towards gender representation in policies, plans and strategies, additional financial and technical support is needed.

“There is a gap on the budgeting of climate action on gender, overall. Gender initiatives or actions are always planned and funded on an ad hoc basis making it difficult to ensure this goal of gender mainstreaming in climate action is achieved,” Iteta says. “The Commonwealth can facilitate access to financing gender climate-action initiatives.”

Rattigan-Leo adds that St Lucia is looking to adopt “gender budgeting” into the development of the annual national budget/estimates.

“Capacity building specific to strategic gender budget approaches is an area that can benefit from the Commonwealth Climate Finance Access Hub’s expertise. With the country’s existing financial constraints, especially in the face of COVID-19 related recovery efforts, it would help to determine the best entry points,” she says.

Nhlengethwa-Masina also welcomed more technical assistance in line with the specific needs of relevant agencies and women groups in Eswatini.

For local farmers such as Wangari, the help cannot come soon enough because they continue to struggle to survive and provide for their families on the front lines of climate change.

“If we do not tackle climate change with sufficient urgency and success, those on the wrong end of inequalities, especially women, will bear the hardest burden,” Secretary-General Scotland concluded.

“Climate action is, therefore, incomplete without the contribution of women.”

Categories: Africa

Disparities in the Arab Region: Hunger Doubles, Indebtedness Triggers, Recovery Uneven

Wed, 01/12/2022 - 10:59

Tents and makeshift shelters at an IDP camp in Yemen. Credit: UNICEF/Alessio Romenzi

By Baher Kamal
MADRID, Jan 12 2022 (IPS)

The panorama is bleak: hunger in the Arab region continues to rise, with more than 90% increase since 2000, while indebtedness is growing, and the economic recovery is tenuous and uneven.

The 2021 Near East and North Africa Regional Overview of Food Security and Nutrition shows that the number of hungry people in the region reached 69 million people in 2020, “triggered by protracted crises, social unrests and exposure to multiple shocks and stresses such as conflicts, poverty, inequality, climate change, scarce natural resources and the economic repercussions associated with the recent COVID-19 pandemic.”

According to the report, nearly one-third of the Arab region’s population, – or 141 million people – experienced “moderate or severe food insecurity” in 2020, a more than 10 million increase from the previous year.

Barely four out of the major Arab oil producers (Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, and Kuwait), enjoy an income that allows them to overcome the worsening hunger crisis in the region.

The other 18 Arab countries –some of them are also oil and gas producers, like Algeria, Iraq, and Libya– are facing "health, food and nutritional insecurities."

The Arab Region includes: Algeria; Bahrain; the Comoros; Djibouti; Egypt; Iraq; Jordan; Kuwait; Lebanon; Libya; Mauritania; Morocco; Oman; Qatar; Saudi Arabia; Somalia; Sudan; Syria; Tunisia; the United Arab Emirates; Yemen, as well as Palestine. Their combined population totals nearly 450 million inhabitants.

Barely four out of the major Arab oil producers (Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, and Kuwait), enjoy an income that allows them to overcome the worsening hunger crisis in the region.

The other 18 Arab countries –some of them are also oil and gas producers, like Algeria, Iraq, and Libya– are facing “health, food and nutritional insecurities.”

Sharp contrasts

In the case of Yemen, for example, with 30 million inhabitants, the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is as low as 19 billion US dollars, compared to the United Arab Emirates (10 million inhabitants), with its GDP amounting to 100 billion US dollars, that’s over five folds that of Yemen with just a third of population.

Another example is the case of Saudi Arabia (33 million inhabitants), with its GDP reaching 700 billion US dollars, compared to Egypt (102 million inhabitants), whose population tripling that of Saudi Arabia, but with just one third of its GDP amounting to less than half of it: to 280 billion US dollars.

Conflicts cause hunger for 53 million-plus people

Conflicts continue to be one of the leading causes of hunger in the region, with approximately 53.4 million people facing hunger in countries and areas affected by conflict, which is more than six times higher than in non-conflict countries, says Abdulhakim Elwaer, FAO’s Assistant Director-General and Regional Representative for the Near East and North Africa.

“There may be no visible improvement in the situation this year since hunger’s primary drivers will continue to drag the situation further down the road.”

Under-nutrition; over-nutrition

The coexistence of under and over-nutrition is a double burden that many families, communities and countries in the Arab region have to shoulder, especially for children under the age of five, according to the report, which informs that in 2020, 20.5% of children under the age of five are stunted and 7.8% are wasted in 2020.

“Childhood overweight remains a high public health problem in the region, exceeding the global average of 5.7% and reaching 10.7% in the region,” Elwaer adds.

Child malnutrition; adult obesity

According to the FAO’s Regional Representative for the Near East and North Africa, the Arab Region is not only struggling with child malnutrition but also with adult obesity.

The prevalence of obesity among adults has been increasing steadily in the region since 2000, reaching 28.8% in 2020, which is more than double the global average of 13.1% and ranks the region as the third most obese in the world, following Northern America with 36.7%, and Australia and New Zealand with 30.7%.

Uneven economic recovery

Meanwhile, a World Bank study reports that almost two years into the COVID-19 pandemic, economic recovery in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) is tenuous and uneven.

“The performance of each of the region’s 20 economies depends on its individual exposure to oil-price fluctuations and how well it is managing the pandemic. Thus, forecasts for an average regional GDP growth rate of 2.8% in 2021 and a brighter 4.2% in 2022 if the pandemic recedes mask individual country differences.”

The study goes on saying that on top of its tragic human toll, the global health crisis of 2020/21 has shown the extent to which economic performance depends on pandemic control, “with MENA economies among those paying the price for decades of under-investment in public health.”

“Indeed, most MENA countries entered the pandemic overconfident and ill-prepared to cope and vaccination rates too will affect their economic recovery. Again, the outlook is uneven, with richer nations ahead of the field.”

Vaccine inequality

By early December, the United Arab Emirates had the world’s highest fully vaccinated population at 90%, while Yemen only fully vaccinated 1% of its population, according to the study, which adds that a more equitable rollout of vaccines across the region is “essential” for recovery.

“In parts of MENA, political instability, fragility, and conflict compound the challenges faced as governments try to handle the pandemic. In Lebanon, economic collapse has had a catastrophic impact on public utilities and people’s livelihoods. In Yemen and Syria, continued armed conflict has combined with the pandemic to plunge the countries deeper into crisis”.

Much Uncertainty

MENA’s modest economic recovery follows a contraction of 3.8% in Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in 2020, 0.6 of a percentage point higher than predicted in April that year.
“Overall, the region is facing a tenuous recovery, and one with much uncertainty, with the estimated cumulative cost of the pandemic in terms of GDP losses amounting to almost 200 US billion dollars by the end of the year.”

According to the World Bank, GDP per capita—often considered a more precise measure of the standard of living—conveys an even more sobering message. A projected increase of 1.1% in 2021, after a drop of about 5.4% in 2020, has left real GDP per capita 4.3% below its 2019 level.
Substantial Borrowing

The substantial borrowing that MENA governments have had to incur to finance emergency expenditure on health and social welfare has increased government debt dramatically.

“Average public debt in MENA countries is forecast to decline from 56.3% to 53.6%, while in the developing oil-importing countries, public debt-to-GDP is forecast to rise from 90.4% to 92.3% in 2021, as fiscal deficits remain large” concludes the World Bank.

Rapid accumulation of public debt

Parallelly, the accumulated cost of the pandemic is estimated to top 227 billion US dollars by end of 2021, according to another World Bank’s report.

The COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated long-standing development challenges in the Middle East and North Africa region, “contributing to a rise in poverty, a deterioration of public finances, an increase in debt vulnerabilities, and a further erosion of trust in government,” warns the report.

The World Bank’s latest regional economic update report details the “economic devastation” of the COVID-19 pandemic to date, the long-term ramifications of the resulting explosion in public debt, and the difficult choices governments will face, even as the public health crisis abates.

More spending, more indebtedness

The need to keep spending — and keep borrowing — will remain strong for the immediate future. MENA countries will have no choice but to continue spending on healthcare and social protection as long as the pandemic continues, according to the World Bank.

“Consequently, in a post-pandemic world, most MENA countries may find themselves stuck with debt service bills requiring resources that otherwise could be used for economic development.”

Categories: Africa

The Straw that Broke Kazakhstan’s Back

Wed, 01/12/2022 - 09:25

View of downtown Nur-Sultan, the capital of Kazakhstan. Credit: World Bank/Shynar Jetpissova

By Paolo Sorbello
ALMATY, Kazakhstan, Jan 12 2022 (IPS)

The most violent protests of the past 30 years have erupted across Kazakhstan — exposing decades of inequality, injustice, and corruption. The protests of an unprecedented scale have rocked cities across Kazakhstan for days, as the population grew increasingly dissatisfied with the country’s leadership.

The government initially tried a carrot-and-stick approach to the unrest, but later was pushed to call a state of emergency and ultimately to request military help from former Soviet allies.

On 6 January, foreign troops landed in Almaty, Kazakhstan’s largest city, with a mandate from the Collective Security Treaty Organisation (CSTO), a NATO-like military alliance that includes Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, and Tajikistan. This marked the first official deployment of CSTO forces in the organisation’s so-far unassertive existence.

Kazakhstan’s President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev called for CSTO countries to send in military help and aid the country’s army and special forces in restoring public order. Although temporary and limited in its remit, the CSTO operation could be a cautionary tale regarding the capacity of the Kazakhstani leadership to maintain law and order in the country.

So far, official sources say there are hundreds of casualties, both among law enforcement agents and protesters, thousands were injured in clashes resulting in up to 164 deaths (the number of deaths is currently disputed by the authorities), that lasted multiple days in several cities. More than 6,044 were arrested during the violent confrontation.

The explosive mix of inflation and poverty

The spark that generated such a massive wave of protest originated in the sharp increase of the price of liquified petroleum gas (LPG), a type of fuel that is commonly used in the western regions of the vast Central Asian country.

Paolo Sorbello

Initially justified by the government as the unintended consequence of a decision to enhance competition in the fuel market, the price inflation was met with street protests in Aktau and Zhanaozen, major cities in the Mangistau region, on 2 and 3 January.

Importantly, Mangistau is also one of the main hydrocarbon-producing regions in the country and oil workers often take to the streets when they feel wronged by the companies or the government.

In 2011, for example, an eight-month strike in Zhanaozen was dispersed violently by special forces and police. Unarmed oil workers were shot and the government declared a state of emergency. In the aftermath, the regime did not allow an independent investigation of the matter and jailed three-dozen civilians, calling them guilty for the clashes that officially resulted in 16 deaths.

Up until the first days of January, ‘Zhanaozen’ was synonymous with ‘tragedy’ in Kazakhstan. And it is one of the darkest pages in the country’s three decades since independence. Afraid of even uttering the word, most people referred to the killing of oil workers as ‘the events’.

This time, however, the protests quickly spread to other urban centres across the country, reaching a peak on 4 January in Almaty, where thousands gathered near a sports arena before moving to the main square. Unsurprisingly, the protesters were met by a mass of special police forces that used tear gas, stun grenades, and rubber bullets to disperse the crowd.

The protest continued the next morning with a more belligerent crowd, which set ablaze the city government building and the presidential residence. Fires were reported in other cities as well.

Blind eye towards long-lasting discontent

Drivers in Almaty or the capital Nur-Sultan, however, do not use LPG to fuel their cars, which begs the question: Why did they protest? The answer is political dissatisfaction, which can be summarised in three words: inequality, injustice, and corruption.

After two years of hardship also caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, Kazakhstan’s socio-economic texture was damaged beyond repair. Inflation and a weak currency accompanied by worsening employment statistics is a recipe for disaster.

Four million people lost their jobs during the pandemic, a weaker oil price negatively influenced the Kazakh tenge/US dollar exchange rate, which saw the tenge weaken by 16 per cent in two years.

While the poor were getting poorer, the rich were getting richer. The Forbes list of billionaires grew from four to seven in 2021. And this does not include the riches accumulated by Tokayev’s predecessor, Nursultan Nazarbayev, who ruled the country from its independence until his resignation in 2019.

Under Nazarbayev and Tokayev, political reforms lagged behind the people’s demands. Rule of law was an arbitrary concept and was considered a systemic cost by trans-national companies who were willing to invest.

A weak set of rules opened a significant space for corruption. The Kazakhstani elite is known for having used offshore vehicles to launder money, for having taking bribes, and for curbing competition in certain market sectors. The LPG market in the west of the country, for example, was rigged, and this was well known.

In 2019 and 2020, the promise of reform that came with the new leader was disattended, and the population reacted with a wave of protests that were once again brutally repressed. Already in 2021, an incessant wave of labour protests demonstrated how the government was unable to keep most sectors of the population satisfied.

The geopolitical angle

On 5 January, as tensions grew into urban violence in Almaty, to the south, and Aktobe, in the north of the country, Tokayev sacked and arrested long-time Nazarbayev loyalist Karim Massimov from his post as the chief of the KNB, the successor of the KGB. Tokayev also took charge of the position of head of the National Security Council, a post previously held by Nazarbayev.

In the meantime, the world had turned its eyes to Central Asia. When Tokayev asked for a deployment of CSTO troops, his legitimacy within the domestic power apparatus fell. It became clear that he needed both the material help and the approval of his neighbours and allies to stay in power.

This scenario seemed to be reasonable for Russia, which sent the first military contingent and equipment to the south of the border. After taking control of strategic logistics assets, such as the Almaty airport, which had been previously seized by protesters, the CSTO soldiers moved into the city and took part in the local army’s ‘special operation’ to quell the protests.

While the official explanation rests on the infiltration of ‘foreign-trained terrorists’, it is more likely that Russia decided to nudge the CSTO towards an intervention given the weakness of the Tokayev regime.
Speculations of a confrontation between great powers, with Russia and China as the neighbouring interested parties, and the West as the herald of democracy and business interests, seem to be premature.

It is yet unclear if and how Tokayev would retain power, what kind of concession will he or his successor be willing to make for the people – who still feel dissatisfied, marginalised, and betrayed – and what long-term reforms would be planned to make sure that the violence of January 2022 does not repeat.

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

Dr Paolo Sorbello is a Research Fellow at Ca’ Foscari University of Venice (Italy) and holds a PhD from the University of Glasgow (UK). He also works as a freelance journalist in Kazakhstan covering labour topics and the political economy for several news outlets.

Categories: Africa

UN Plea to Save Afghanistan from Full-Blown Humanitarian Crisis

Tue, 01/11/2022 - 17:15

Gul Khan*, 53, alongside his children and grandchildren, adds a handful of plastic to the stove in their home in Kabul. Gul Khan* has five sons and two daughters, and two grandchildren. They fled their home in Nangarhar province three years ago. All the children are now in school and Gul Khan and his 26-year-old son work as day laborers. Life is a struggle and winter is the hardest time. “In summer we only have to worry about food,” said Gul Khan. “But in winter we have to worry about finding fuel to burn, fixing the heating system, falling down on the ice when collecting water.” *Names changed for protection reasons. Credit: UNHCR

By Naureen Hossain
Geneva, Jan 11 2022 (IPS)

UN agencies have asked for a record USD 4.4 billion in aid for Afghanistan to avert a full-blown humanitarian crisis that could see hunger, distress, and death and a mass exodus of people from the country.

The agencies OCHA, UNHCR, and their non-governmental organization partners launched their 2022 Humanitarian Response Plans to provide relief for Afghanistan and the region on Tuesday, January 11, 2022.

Speaking at a press conference in Geneva to launch the relief plans, UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator Martin Griffiths stated that this is the “largest-ever appeal for a single country for humanitarian aid”.

Mullah Ahmed* and his children unload firewood that he bought after receiving a cash payment from UNHCR to help his family meet their winter needs. One thousand vulnerable families in the Afghan capital have received cash assistance. Mullah Ahmed, his wife, and their nine children fled their home in Jalalabad four months ago and now live in a house in Kabul that was abandoned by its owner who fled the country during the Taliban takeover. “The cash assistance is very important because my work stops in winter as there is no construction,” he said. “So we need it to buy food and also warm clothes for the children.” *Name changed for protection reasons. Credit: UNHCR

“Events in Afghanistan over the past year have unfolded with dizzying speed and with profound consequences for the Afghan people,” said Griffiths. The world is perplexed and looking for the right way to react. Meanwhile, a full-blown humanitarian catastrophe looms.”

These humanitarian and refugee response plans aim to provide vital humanitarian relief to 23 million people in Afghanistan. They will also be provided to 5.7 million Afghans displaced in local communities in five neighboring countries: Iran, Pakistan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan.

Funding will be required from donors. The Afghanistan Humanitarian Response Plan has requested USD 4.4 billion. If funded, this is expected to support aid organizations to ramp up the delivery and output of health services, education, protection services, food and agriculture support, and access to clean water and sanitation.

The Afghanistan Situation Regional Refugee Response Plan alone will require USD 623 million in funding for 40 organizations that provide protection, health and nutrition, shelter and non-food items, livelihoods and resilience, and logistics and telecoms, among other necessary services.

Griffiths was describing the ongoing humanitarian crisis overwhelming Afghanistan. In 2021, it faced increased disruptions to services and struggled to meet its population’s needs.

Its economy has suffered dramatically due to the freezing of assets in central bank reserves, the disruptions in markets, not to mention the sudden pause in international development assistance, upon which many basic social services are dependent. Severe climate-induced problems such as the harsh winter season and one of the worst recorded droughts in the country’s history have only exacerbated poverty among its citizens. Twenty-three million people are at risk of acute hunger.

This also accounts for those Afghans who have been internally displaced – 700,000. OCHA’s relief aid plan accounts for these displaced citizens.

UN High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi remarked that the international community must take the steps needed to “prevent a catastrophe in Afghanistan, which could not only compound suffering but would drive further displacement both within the country and throughout the region.”

“It is key not to forget that there is a regional dimension to this crisis,” he said. “Not only Afghan refugees but the people who have been involved in hosting.”

Girls scavenge for fallen olives in an orchard on the edge of Jalalabad. The city is the capital of Nangarhar Province, which hosts internally displaced people from 17 of the country’s 34 provinces – up to 52 percent of the country’s total displaced population — and 72 percent of the country’s returnees live there. Credit: UNHCR

Neighboring countries currently host 5.7 million registered refugees from earlier waves of forced displacement. Iran and Pakistan account for 2.2 million Afghan refugees. While they have implemented inclusive policies in education and healthcare, the COVID-19 pandemic has compounded the countries’ own needs, which presented challenges to these governments to continue their policy of inclusion.

The UNHCR Plan will directly support 40 partner organizations working in the region to provide emergency relief, health and social services, education, and protection to refugees and host communities. It is also estimated to work closely to improve the livelihood and resilience of the Afghans, particularly to those who are more susceptible to exploitation or abuse when crossing borders.

One of the target goals addressed in the press conference was to ensure the country’s stability by supporting efforts to rebuild the economic and social structures.

“The key here is to stabilize the situation inside Afghanistan, which includes the people who are displaced,” Grandi said.

Griffiths also remarked it was crucial to invest in services and structures so that the country is eventually “secure for those [Afghans] who have been displaced to return to their homes”.

The UN leaders expressed hope that the relief plans would accomplish their target goals with the requested funding.

“With continuing adaptation, continuing adjustment, the plans can improve, and access to services can improve,” said Griffiths.

The Taliban’s takeover in August 2021 contributed to the decline in the economy and the freeze in international development assistance. It has threatened to undermine services, further undermining the development gains made in the last two decades. Education has been used as the prime example, with the concern over girls being allowed to return to schools or return to mixed classes with boys.

There is concern about the Taliban’s involvement with the relief plans. However, Griffiths stated that the partner organizations in Afghanistan, almost all NGOs, would “receive the money directly”, including programs that would directly pay frontline workers in the health and education sector.

Grandi remarked that their UN colleagues in the field were in talks every day with the Taliban, who have been open to discussing the scope of these programs, stating: “Humanitarian assistance… has created a space for dialogue.

“It’s that space we need to preserve… that then can be developed and make room for stabilization.”

Open dialogue between the international community and the Taliban would be needed to provide immediate relief to Afghanistan and the region, eventually paving the way for stabilizing the region and alleviating its dependence on donors. In this spirit and the palpable urgency to protect the people of Afghanistan, UNCHR and OCHA are launching their plans for 2022.

When asked at the conference what would happen to Afghans if they did not receive the required funds, Grandi said that if the country’s humanitarian system collapsed, it would likely result in a mass exodus of peoples into the neighboring states and beyond. “We will need that solidarity in those neighboring countries because they will be the first ones hit.”

Griffiths added apart from seeing “hunger, distress, death, despair, at the family level… we would be robbing the people of Afghanistan of the hope that their home is secure and that they can spend the rest of their lives here.”

As a Humanitarian Crisis Engulfs Afghanistan, Education Cannot Wait Makes Urgent Appeal for Access to Quality Learning for All Children

Categories: Africa

Afro-descendants in Costa Rica: A Movement for Justice & Equity

Tue, 01/11/2022 - 13:11

Jan André overcame violence and adversity to become an outstanding university student. Credit: UN Costa Rica 2030 Agenda and the SDGs

By Allegra María del Pilar Baiocchi
SAN JOSÉ, Costa Rica, Jan 11 2022 (IPS)

Jan André is a cheerful and outgoing young man, a superb dancer, and aspiring schoolteacher. Indeed, he wants to become the best schoolteacher in Costa Rica. Fortified by his own will and the encouragement of his family, he overcame violence and adversity to become an outstanding university student.

Yet, in spite of his accomplishments, some people cross the street when they see him coming their way. They hide their belongings when he approaches them on the bus. Guards and staff single him out for surveillance when he enters a supermarket. Police search him and seize his belongings even when he is in a crowd in a public space.

Deeply affected by these experiences, Jan André is now fighting for the rights of people of African descent in Costa Rica.

Inspired by Jan’s work, my colleagues and I decided that the UN has a crucial role in collecting and sharing the life stories of Afro-Costa Ricans. The resulting stories are collected under an initiative called “I am Afro-descendant in Costa Rica and this is my story.”

Caption: The cover of the “I am Afro-descendant in Costa Rica and this is my story,” online publication. Cedit: UN Costa Rica

Published online and in the form of a book, these stories were also designed to celebrate the first International Day for People of African Descent and the bicentenary of Costa Rica’s independence.

With this initiative, we wanted to stop talking about Afro-descendants in the abstract and instead introduce our readers to a variety of women and men, young and old, rural and urban. All of them as unique individuals who help make Costa Rica what it is today.

What have we learned from these stories?

On the one hand, we were able to reveal the incredible diversity of the Afro-descendant community in Costa Rica, the life stories, struggles and dreams true to each one of our profiles. On the other hand, however, we identified a shared experience of discrimination and injustice, a common sense of not being ‘seen’ in their own country and a collective strength that is borne out of families and communities.

It is not for Afro-descendants to “overcome” the discrimination and exclusion to which they are subjected. It is up to all of us to eradicate racism and the enduring legacy of slavery.

That is why, in December 2020, the UN General Assembly adopted a resolution that 31 August would henceforth be the International Day for People of African Descent. The resolution was initiated by the Government of Costa Rica, led by its Vice-President, Epsy Campbell, and garnered the support of 52 member states.

With UNFPA as the leading entity, we in Costa Rica marked the first commemoration of this international day last year.

“The legacy of slavery echoes down the centuries,” UN Deputy Secretary-General Amina Mohammed reminded us as part of this commemoration. “The world has not yet overcome racism. Equality and justice for all still elude us. Millions of people of African descent continue to suffer systematic discrimination, perpetuating inequality, oppression and marginalization.”

When we ensure equal opportunities for all populations to achieve their potential and the fulfillment of their rights, we are creating a fairer and more prosperous society for all of us.

The International Day for People of African Descent is a chance to promote the diverse heritage and extraordinary contributions of the African Diaspora. It is also a call to action, a call for all of us to commit ourselves every day throughout the year to build a culture of ever-greater freedom, inclusion, equity and opportunity.

Source: UN Development Programme (UNDP)

Allegra María del Pilar Baiocchi is UN Coordinator Costa Rica. Editorial support was provided by Carolina Lorenzo, Development Coordination Office, and Paul Van DeCarr, Development Coordination Office. To learn more about the United Nation’s work in Costa Rica, please visit CostaRica.UN.org.

Categories: Africa

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