Africa - INTER PRESS SERVICE

News and Views from the Global South

Updated: 2 weeks 2 days ago

Inequality is Set to Kill Millions – “We Have to Fight it Together.”

Wed, 12/01/2021 - 07:40

The UN commemorated World Aids Day on 30 November. Credit: UNAIDS

By Winnie Byanyima
GENEVA, Dec 1 2021 (IPS)

This week I called out to the world to warn them that inequalities are making us all unsafe. I noted starkly our new analysis that we face millions of additional AIDS deaths – 7.7 million in the next decade alone – as well continued devastation from pandemics, unless leaders address the inequalities which drive them. We have to treat this threat as an emergency, as a red alert.

To end AIDS, we need to act with far more urgency to tackle these inequalities. And it’s not just AIDS. All pandemics take root in, and widen, the fissures of society. The world’s failure to address marginalization and unequal power is also driving the COVID crisis and leaving us unprepared for the pandemics of tomorrow. We need all leaders to work boldly and together to tackle the inequalities which endanger us all.

To tackle inequalities requires leaders to take these courageous steps:

At the United Nations General Assembly High-Level Meeting on HIV/AIDS in June this year, member states adopted a bold new plan to end the AIDS epidemic, including new targets for 2025.

We are seeing around the world examples of the transformative impact of tackling inequalities – with some people and some countries making progress against AIDS that many had believed impossible. These prove that it can be done, and guide us in what we need to take to scale worldwide to end AIDS.

On my recent visit to Senegal, I saw the power of leadership in driving down new HIV infections. In Dakar I met with the inspirational Mariama Ba Thiam, a peer educator at a harm reduction programme for people who inject drugs.

The programme helps them protect their health and to secure economic independence. Mariama’s approach works because it starts by considering the whole person, connecting the medical with the social. It rejects the failed punitive and stigmatizing approaches taken by so many, and it instead respects the dignity of every person.

It succeeds because it involves frontline communities in service provision and in leadership, and because it recognizes that access to the treatments grounded in the best science is a human right and a public good. We know what success looks like, and it looks like Mariama. Thousands of Mariamas worldwide have shown the way by walking it.

But in too many cases we are not only not moving fast enough to end the inequalities which drive pandemics, and are moving in the wrong direction – tech monopolies instead of tech sharing, donor withdrawal instead of global solidarity, austerity instead of investment, clampdowns on marginalised communities instead of repeals of outdated laws.

Six in seven new HIV infections among adolescents in sub-Saharan Africa are occurring among girls. Gay men and other men who have sex with men, sex workers, and people who use drugs face 25-35 greater risk of acquiring HIV worldwide.

Progress in AIDS, which was already off track, is now under even greater strain as the Covid crisis continues to rage, disrupting HIV prevention and treatment services, schooling, violence-prevention programmes, and more. Harm reduction services for people who use drugs were disrupted in nearly two thirds (65%) of 130 countries surveyed in 2020.

We have reached a fork in the road. The choice for leaders to make on inequalities is between bold action and half-measures. The data is clear: it is being too gradual that is the unaffordable choice.

Leaders need to turn this moment of crisis into a moment of transformation. Ending these inequalities fast is what needs to be reflected in every leader’s policy programme and every country’s budget.

If we take on the inequalities which hold back progress, we can deliver on the promise to end AIDS by 2030. It is in our hands. But if we don’t act to end inequalities, we will all pay the price.

Inequalities kill. Every minute that passes, we are losing a precious life to AIDS, and widening inequality is putting us ever more in danger. We don’t have time.

Winnie Byanyima is Executive Director of UNAIDS and Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations

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

Categories: Africa

How Inequality Drives HIV in Adolescent Girls and Young Women

Tue, 11/30/2021 - 20:18

To fight economic inequality, female dependency on relationships and gender-based violence, female education is critical. Credit: Zofeen Ebrahim/IPS

By External Source
Nov 30 2021 (IPS)

Despite the advances that have been made against HIV, the world has 37 million people living with HIV. And 680,000 people died from AIDS-related causes in 2020. While the prevention of mother to child transmission, and provision of treatment as prevention, are great successes, there are still gaps. Over 1.5 million new HIV infections were recorded in 2020.

In addition to the difference in risk between the sexes, other risk and protective factors may have an influence. So, within the population of adolescent girls and young women, differences in their unique risk profiles mean that some may be at a higher risk of HIV infection than others.

In 2020, adolescent girls and young women aged 15 to 24 accounted for 25% of new infections, while making up only 10% of the population. Six in seven new HIV infections among adolescents (aged 15 to 19) were among girls, even though boys live in similar contexts

Understanding risk profiles helps us realise that HIV is more than just a virus. These profiles highlight how HIV risk and HIV prevention uptake are influenced by biological, socio-behavioural and structural factors. So while new HIV prevention options may become available, adolescent girls and young women will weigh up the benefits of using them.

They consider factors such as partner trust, the social value of relationships, their perceived risk and the economic and social consequences that occur as a result of using them. All this happens in the context of the structural inequalities that sustain risk – things that individuals can’t always control.

Risk profiles – the unique combination of factors that work to mediate HIV risk – should inform responses to the evolving pandemic. More nuanced and locally responsive approaches are required.

Risk factors

As the world aims for the 90-90-90 goals, it’s useful to see who is falling behind. Global data suggests that in 2020, 84% of people living with HIV know their HIV status, 73% of those are accessing HIV treatment and 66% of those on treatment are virally suppressed.

Hidden in these successes are those who have still not been reached by HIV prevention and treatment efforts, who are put at risk by inequality, exclusion and social and economic vulnerability. What is the profile of those who have still not been reached? What factors within those profiles prevent us from reaching them? And how do we tailor interventions that respond to local contexts of risk? A large number of studies and programmes have already provided some of these answers.

Power in relationships: Adolescent girls and young women who are sexually active are at the highest risk of HIV infection. Delaying sexual debut is a key goal of HIV prevention. But sexual relationships often start in adolescence. The HIV transmission cycle highlights that adolescent girls and young women in age-disparate sexual relationships, (i.e “sugar daddies”) are at higher risk than those in peer relationships.

Age-disparate relationships often have social, emotional, economic and sexual value that may outweigh potential risks. But they are usually characterised by power dynamics that make discussions about sexual health difficult. In contexts of high female poverty and partner dependency, the power and gender inequalities of these relationships will increase the risk of HIV infection and may limit the ability of adolescent girls and young women to negotiate safe sex practices.

Gender-based violence: Adolescent girls and young women who are victims of gender-based violence will have risk profiles that make them more vulnerable to HIV infection. In contexts where female poverty is high and retaining relationships is critical for survival, agency to make sexual health decisions may be difficult.

In South Africa, home to the largest HIV pandemic, over 10,000 people were raped between April and June 2021. Many of these incidents took place at the home of the victim or the home of the rapist. In the same period, over 15,000 domestic violence assault cases were reported. These high rates of gender-based violence highlight that access to HIV prevention services are necessary but not sufficient to protect women from HIV infection.

To fight economic inequality, female dependency on relationships and gender-based violence, female education is critical. Additionally, changing gender norms in young boys and ensuring more equitable gender beliefs as men grow older will create an environment in which female agency is non-negotiable and respected.

Services and interventions

Use of HIV prevention services is influenced by inequalities in access and by social and gender norms. Access does not equate to uptake. A lack of knowledge about sexual health, inequitable gender norms around sex, and conservative social norms about adolescent sexual well-being contribute to poor uptake of sexual and reproductive health services among adolescent girls and young women.

Engaging their sexual partners, challenging social and gender norms, providing comprehensive sexual education, and creating sex-positive and egalitarian health services for adolescents are essential for fighting the HIV pandemic in young people.

Without understanding the social context in which adolescent girls and young women manage and negotiate sex, and tailoring interventions to break the transmission cycle, it will be a struggle to achieve epidemic control in adolescent girls and young women.

In sub-Saharan Africa, a more nuanced view of the risks faced by adolescent girls and young women will be essential for developing targeted and relevant interventions. These efforts will also help reduce inequalities and build societies more resilient to future pandemics.

Hilton Humphries, Behavioural Scientist, Centre for the AIDS Program of Research in South Africa (CAPRISA)

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

Categories: Africa

Fighting Loss of the Greater Mekong’s Prized Rosewood Forests

Tue, 11/30/2021 - 15:06

Siamese Rosewood trees on a farmland in Lao PDR - Credit_NAFRI, Laos

By Catherine Wilson
CANBERRA, Australia , Nov 30 2021 (IPS)

The famed Rosewood forests of the Greater Mekong region in Southeast Asia produce dark, richly grained timbers zealously sought after worldwide by manufacturers of luxury furniture, flooring and musical instruments, among other products. But their high value has also made them a major commodity in transnational organized crime.

Now a strategic partnership of international and national government research organizations is leading an expert endeavour to ensure their survival.

“The Rosewood species are among the most valuable species in the world. They are worth tens of thousands of dollars per cubic metre, but because of illegal logging, they were almost wiped out in the Indochina landscapes,” Riina Jalonen, a scientist working with the Alliance of Bioversity International and the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT), based in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, told IPS. The collaborative research-for-development initiative pursues research and innovative solutions to the major global challenges of land degradation, biodiversity loss and poverty around the world.

For the past three years, the Alliance has joined with national partners in Cambodia, Lao PDR and Vietnam as well as the University of Copenhagen and the Chinese Academy of Forestry to spearhead ways of conserving the genetic diversity of Rosewoods. The project, which is also working to support planting and restoration of Rosewood timbers and galvanize a strong reliable supply of seeds and seedlings, is led by the University of Oxford and funded by the Darwin Initiative in the United Kingdom.

Collecting seed of Burmese Rosewood (Dalbergia oliveri) in Cambodia – Credit_IRD, Cambodia

Chaloun Bountihiphonh at the National Agriculture and Forestry Research Institute in Vientiane, Lao PDR, has witnessed a turnaround in the fortune of the species since the project began in 2018. “The status of the Rosewood Dalbergia populations have improved and now cover more than 60 percent of their natural habitat, and a seed network has been established. And communities of the project have been strengthened in their awareness of the importance of Rosewoods and the additional income that they can get from seed collection,” Bountihiphonh told IPS.

The Greater Mekong subregion, comprising the countries of Cambodia, Lao PDR, Thailand, Myanmar, Vietnam and China, boasts immense biodiversity, including 20,000 plant species and 1,200 species of birds. The region’s forests provide the natural habitats for wildlife, but also prevent soil erosion and landslides, create essential levels of atmospheric moisture and combat climate change by reducing greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. And local communities, including many indigenous peoples, depend on the forests for shelter, sustenance, livelihoods and income.

But deforestation, driven by rapid population growth, expansion of infrastructure, agriculture and mining, as well as forest fires and illicit logging operations, has taken a heavy toll. Forest cover in the Greater Mekong declined by 5 percent, while in Cambodia alone it declined by 27 percent, from 1990-2015, reports the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).

The Rosewood conservation project has focussed on three specific species: Dalbergia cochinchinensis, also known as Siamese Rosewood, is in high demand by furniture makers. Dalbergia oliveri, or Burmese Rosewood with highly fragrant and with a pronounced grain, is popular for woodworking, and Dalbergia cultrata, also named Burma Blackwood, is a blackwood timber characterised by varied hues of burgundy.

The United Nations Office for Drugs and Crime (UNODC) reports that 8.3 million kilograms of illegally trafficked Rosewood was seized worldwide between 2005-2015. The top ten source countries included India, Thailand and Cambodia, and the main destination countries included China, Malaysia, Vietnam and the United States. This is also what makes regional collaboration so crucial for safeguarding the species.

“Illegal logging of primary forests has directly destroyed the mature trees and good quality mother trees which produce seeds for natural regeneration and silviculture,” Bountihiphonh said.

The conservation project grew out of discussions with forestry experts in the Mekong countries, who highlighted the issues threatening the valuable timber forests. The Alliance first conducted conservation assessments of the species to analyse and identify the specific threats and conservation needs.

Then, in partnership with Cambodia’s Institute of Forest and Wildlife Research and Development, Lao’s National Agriculture and Forestry Research Institute and the Vietnam Academy of Agricultural Sciences, two main conservation approaches were implemented. The ‘in situ’ approach preserves the Rosewood trees in their natural environment, for example, in the form of a national park or community-managed forest. The second ‘ex situ’ strategy promulgates the species in a different designated location, such as a plantation or in a seed production area.

However, restoring and expanding forests requires a vast supply of seeds. And so, seed and seedling production are some of the most important activities carried out in forest-dwelling communities.

“We have been helping farmers to establish seed orchards, where trees are planted specifically for seed production. It is the farmers who are interested in producing seeds and selling them. Especially in Cambodia, they have quite an active network of seed producers and seed collectors, and the Institute of Forest and Wildlife Research and Development has really spearheaded this work to help more and more farmers to participate and benefit” Jalonen said.

Seed orchards make seed collection an easier, safer and less time-consuming process than in the natural environment, and have led to substantial economic benefits for communities.

Some of the largest remaining rosewood populations in Cambodia are found within Community Forests – Credit_Alliance of Bioversity International and CIAT

“People in rural areas are increasingly realizing the value of these species. The species provides two sellable products; timber and seed. Timber takes a very long time to produce, but seed is something that the farmers can collect after a few years and Rosewood seed is highly valuable, fetching around US$200-250 per kilogram. It is something that the farmers can harvest every year for annual income,” Jalonen explained.

The work being done by the Alliance and its national partners aims to benefit seven rural forest-based communities in the Greater Mekong region and reduce poverty in 175 households by boosting earnings from the marketing of seeds and seedlings by up to 20 percent.

“Big Rosewood trees are not widely available as before because of the illegal cutting and debarking of the Burmese Rosewood,” Ou Veng, farmer and village leader of O Srao in Cambodia, said. “In the past, people were not interested to protect the forest. But now they worry about losing it because it’s required for their livelihoods. So more and more people are involved in patrolling, tree planting and fire protection. The forest has regenerated significantly.”

In Pursat, Cambodia, the expansion of a local farmer’s nursery for the sale of Rosewood seed and seedlings increased local employment opportunities in the community threefold between 2018 and 2020.

In the village of Kampeng, also in Cambodia, Soeung Sitha, a farmer described how reafforestation efforts had also acquired a heritage purpose. “Many of our community forest members have planted Siamese Rosewood in their home gardens and farms. They don’t want the species to become extinct. They want the younger generation to use them as well,” he said.

Ahead of the initiative coming to an end in December, Jalonen reflected on what is likely to be some of its important legacies.

“A model for farmer-led seed production for Rosewoods now exists. What has been really successful is the establishment of seed orchards by farmers,” she said. “Seeds are providing incomes and job opportunities and, what is also important, is that it generates more opportunities for women because collecting the seeds of these trees from the forest is difficult. You actually have to climb the trees. So when the seed production is done on farms with smaller plants, it is much easier to collect.”

And the new forest growth will be more robust. “By helping to improve the quality of seeds and seedlings in restoration areas and making sure they are genetically diverse, the planted forest will grow to be productive and also resilient. Under the rapidly changing environment, this capacity of the trees to adapt is more important than ever – and not only for the species themselves but also for the global efforts to mitigate climate change through forest conservation and restoration,” Jalonen emphasised.

Categories: Africa

How to Tackle the Femicide Epidemic

Tue, 11/30/2021 - 12:20

After suffering in a violent and abusive relationship, Layla went to the police, accompanied by a friend. Meanwhile, Covid-19 has exacerbated gender-based violence. Fighting patriarchal power structures and gender inequalities is essential in putting an end to it. Credit: UN Women/Mohammed Bakir

By Jade Levell
BRISTOL, UK, Nov 30 2021 (IPS)

Since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, the increase in domestic violence rates has led the United Nations to declare a ‘shadow pandemic’ of gender-based violence. In the most brutal cases, the violence has led to murder – or ‘femicide’, as the World Health Organisation calls the killing of women specifically because of their gender.

This is distinct from male homicide because of the power differentials that underline femicide; most cases are perpetrated by current or ex-partners and emerge from a context of abuse, control, violence, and intimidation.

‘Femicide’ as a label aims to draw specific attention to the gendered nature of the victimisation. Domestic violence is both a cause and consequence of gender inequality. The threat of violence, and the presence of abuse, serve to grant the perpetrator power and control over their victim.

A study by WHO and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine show that more than 35 per cent of all murders of women globally are reported to be committed by an intimate partner, as opposed to 5 per cent of male murders. 137 women across the world are killed by a member of their own family every day.

Domestic violence’s correlation with times of crisis

Although we do not yet have the data on the increases of femicides, many countries have evidence of a much higher demand for domestic violence support services since the pandemic broke out. In some countries, calls to helplines have increased five-fold as rates of reported intimate partner violence increased alongside the Covid-19 pandemic.

Jade Levell

In Mexico, refuge services saw a 77-fold increase in demand. There has been much research that shows prevalence of domestic and sexual violence increases during times of crisis.

There have also been specific aspects of the Covid-19 national lockdowns that have materially exacerbated isolation for victims. The closure of face-to-face health services, support services, and even local amenities has reduced opportunities for victims seeking help.

The closure of schools and youth services meant that children living with domestic violence and abuse also faced being cut off from support and respite of the school day. Dubravka Šimonović, the Special Rapporteur on violence against women, also critiqued the ‘gender-blind’ lockdown measures which had resulted in an increased risk of domestic violence and abuse (DVA) for those confined at home with abusers.

The danger of a gender-neutral approach

Despite the framing of ‘femicide’ as a distinct outcome of gender-based violence, however, there is still a general lack of accountability for perpetrators. In 2018, the United Nations invested €50 million to focus particularly on femicide in Latin America, where 98 per cent of gender-related murders are unprosecuted.

Part of the problem lies in reticence to connect patriarchal power structures to the prevalence of femicide. Instead of seeing an increase in gendered framing of DVA, we are instead witnessing an increasing trend towards gender neutrality.

This is occurring in a wider context of rolling back of women’s rights more broadly, including increased abortion restrictions around the world, and increased reactionary responses to so-called ‘gender ideology’. There has also been an alarming roll back in international cooperation around gender-based violence through the push back against the Istanbul Convention.

In July this year, Turkey withdrew from the convention despite the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) noting this would ‘deepen the protection gap for women and girls during a time when gender-based violence against women is on the rise’.

Some countries like the United Kingdom have only signed, but not ratified, the Istanbul convention. In 2021, UK launched the Domestic Abuse Bill in parliament. This, however, frames DVA in gender-neutral terms. Indeed, domestic abuse murders in UK government procedures are still framed as ‘domestic homicides’. In contexts such as this, the term ‘homicide’ is framed as a gender-neutral term which refers to the killing of a human being by another person.

For advocates of remaining with one umbrella term, a key advantage is that it focuses on the act of killing and applies to victims of all genders. This approach also reflects the fact that not all murders of women are related to gender-based violence; 42 per cent of global murders of women in 2019 were by perpetrators who were not partners or family members.

However, gender remains an important aspect of understanding violence, as males commit 90 per cent of murders worldwide. This has led some campaigners to call for the naming of ‘male violence’ as the key issue, regardless of the gender of the victims. Gender-neutrality under the guise of inclusivity serves to obscure the role that patriarchal systems and gender-inequality play in violence worldwide.

In considering the response to femicide, countries also need to take into account the living victims of femicide, namely the children that are left when their mothers are killed. In 2018, Italy became the first country in Europe to pass a law for orfani speciali, or special orphans.

The fund financially supports a range of issues; scholarships, legal aid, and funding for medical and psychological care. All too often children are left with sparse and oversubscribed services with a postcode lottery of support provided by charities and NGOs.

The UK Domestic Abuse Bill has designated children as victims of domestic abuse in their own right, marking a distinct change from their previous peripheral recognition as witnesses and bystanders.

Femicide is preventable

Femicide as a term hones our attention to the gendered dynamics murder related to domestic violence against women. In reality, however, femicide is overlooked, undercounted, and under-prosecuted across the globe.

Although there has been some attention paid to the shadow pandemic of gender-based violence, the burden of this has fallen on the shoulders of already under-resourced NGO services.

It is essential to remember that femicide is actually a symptom of a much wider problem. It is patriarchal norms and gender inequality that are both the cause and consequence of gender-based violence in society.

To effect change, we need to address systematic gender-inequality, societal tolerance of violence against women, and properly fund resources and services to support victims to access help as well as perpetrators to be held accountable and have targeted interventions to effect change. Femicide is not an inevitable part of life. It is preventable

Jade Levell is a Lecturer in Social & Public Policy at the University of Bristol. She is a specialist in gender-based violence and serious youth violence, as well as gender theory including studies of masculinities

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

Categories: Africa

Profiting from the Carbon Offset Distraction

Tue, 11/30/2021 - 08:00

By Anis Chowdhury and Jomo Kwame Sundaram
SYDNEY and KUALA LUMPUR, Nov 30 2021 (IPS)

Carbon offset markets allow the rich to emit as financial intermediaries profit. By fostering the fiction that others can be paid to cut greenhouse gases (GHGs) instead, it undermines efforts to do so.

Anis Chowdhury

Committing to achieve ‘net-zero’ carbon emissions has become a major climate change policy goal. But most climate scientists agree the target is dangerously misleading. Ostensibly promoting decarbonization, it actually allows carbon emissions to continue rising.

Breakthrough?
On 28 January 2021, two High-Level Climate Action Champions, the COP25 and COP26 Presidents, and the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) Executive Secretary launched the Davos’ World Economic Forum’s ‘Race to Zero Breakthroughs’ initiative.

More than 130 countries pledged in Glasgow to reach net-zero carbon emissions by 2050. Despite well-known setbacks, the COP26 Glasgow Climate Pact has been hailed as a breakthrough on the “path to a safer future”.

Before COP26, many cities, regions, businesses, investors and higher education institutions joined the 120 countries already committed then. Achieving net-zero via offset trading has thus become the main climate action distraction.

Following difficult, protracted negotiations after the 2015 Paris Agreement (PA), Article 6 was the last of its 29 Articles agreed to. Article 6 unifies carbon offset trading standards in order to minimize ‘double counting’.

Offsetting allows countries and companies to continue emitting GHGs instead of cutting them. Buying offsets lets them claim their emissions have been ‘cancelled’. Thus, offset markets have slowed climate action in the rich North, responsible for two-thirds of cumulative emissions.

Jomo Kwame Sundaram

Cheap cheats
Clearly, Article 6 does not stop emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) and other GHGs. The Kyoto Protocol’s Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) also enables not cutting GHG production by paying others to do so. Thus, offset markets enable the wealthy to avoid cutting GHG discharges at little cost.

But why pay for emission cuts which would have happened anyway, even without being paid for via offset sales? At best, net-zero is a zero-sum game maintaining atmospheric GHG levels. But progress requires CO2 reduction, i.e., being net-negative, not just net-zero.

Many carbon credits sold as offsets do not additionally remove carbon as claimed. For example, J.P. Morgan, Disney and BlackRock have all paid millions to protect forests not even under threat. A CEO agreed its offset – buying into a Tanzania forestry programme – “is cheating”.

The Economist sees carbon offsets as “cheap cheats”. By ramping up the supply of offsets, prices were kept low. Much scope to game the system remains. Energy-intensive companies collude and lobby against high carbon prices, insisting they damage competitiveness.

Often buying in bulk, they pay too little for carbon credits to incentivize switching to renewable energy. Averaging only US$3 per tonne of CO2 in 2018 cannot accelerate desirable energy transitions.

Less than 5% of all offsets actually reduce CO2 in the atmosphere. A 2016 European Commission study of CDM offset projects found 85% provided no environmental benefits.

Making money instead
The Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero (GFANZ) – a US$130 trillion investor club of over 450 financial firms in 45 countries – was launched at COP26 in Glasgow. It is chaired by former Bank of England Governor Mark Carney, now UN Special Envoy for Climate Action and Finance.

The GFANZ claims to be leveraging the power of big finance to innovatively achieve the PA goal of keeping the temperature rise over pre-industrial levels under 1.5 degrees Celsius.

Advocates claim this will unlock trillions of dollars to protect forests, increase renewable energy generation and otherwise mitigate global warming. But GFANZ does not even seek to cut finance for GHG-intensive industries.

GFANZ members pay ‘experts’, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and governments to achieve net-zero ‘pathways’. Offset markets have enabled environmental NGOs to make money from supposed climate mitigating projects or by certifying other schemes.

Meanwhile, big businesses burnish their green credentials with offset purchases. After all, there are no agreed metrics to ensure portfolio alignment with the PA. Unsurprisingly, the Marshall Islands’ climate envoy urges remaining “vigilant against greenwashing”.

Touting market solutions, the World Bank has noted a recent surge in demand from major financial investors, including Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and Lansdowne Partners. But much goes to profits from arbitrage, speculation or trading for third parties – not decarbonization or net-zero.

Even Larry Fink – CEO of Blackrock, the world’s largest asset manager – is sceptical, “We are lying to ourselves if we think we can do it just by conveniently asking banks and financial service companies, public companies, to conform to TCFD reporting. We are creating the biggest capital arbitrage of our lifetimes.”

Selling the sky
Offset markets have meant new opportunities to create new tradable assets. By aggregating all GHG emissions – from fossil fuels, deforestation, landfills, agriculture, etc. – profitable new financial products have been engineered for emissions trading and carbon credits.

The implicit premise is that market-based approaches always work best to address problems, in this case, to reduce GHG emissions. They do not distinguish between ‘luxury emissions’ and those due to the poor’s livelihoods.

Meanwhile, the world’s wealthiest 1% produces twice the total carbon emissions of the poorest 50%! Worse, emissions from private jets, mega-yachts and space travel of the super-rich greatly exacerbate global warming.

As with CDM and voluntary offset markets, the burden of emissions reduction has been shifted from North to South. While rich countries continue emitting GHGs, developing countries are now expected to ‘come clean’!

But no money for poor
At the GFANZ launch, Mark Carney claimed, “Make no mistake, the money is here, if the world wants to use it”. But developing countries are still waiting to see the promised US$100bn yearly to help finance their mitigation and adaptation efforts.

Following strong US opposition at the Article 6 negotiations, developing countries failed to secure ‘international transfers of mitigation outcomes’, i.e., mandatory contributions to the Adaptation Fund from the proceeds of international emissions trading among parties to the PA.

The US and European Union also successfully blocked a ‘loss and damage’ fund to finance recovery and reconstruction after climate disasters. Thus, Glasgow failed to deliver any significant additional climate finance for poor countries – for climate change adaptation as well as losses and damages.

Categories: Africa

High Global Fertiliser Prices Overshadow Malawi’s Farm Subsidy Programme

Mon, 11/29/2021 - 15:05

A maise farmer in her fields last year. This year small-scale farmers are anxiously waiting for an impasse between government and private traders to be resolved so they can get their subsidised fertiliser. Credit: Charles Mpaka/IPS

By Charles Mpaka
BLANTYRE, Malawi, Nov 29 2021 (IPS)

Ellena Joseph, a small-scale maize farmer in Chiradzulu District in Southern Malawi, finished preparing her field early in October.

As the first rains start falling in some parts of the country, her anxiety is growing because she is yet to purchase fertiliser because she does not have any money.

Joseph, 63, is one of the 3.7 million farmers the government targets to benefit under the 2021 Agricultural Input Programme (AIP).

In this programme, the government subsidises fertiliser and seeds for small-scale producers who make up more than 80 percent of farmers in Malawi.

The programme has been running since 2005, and every year, it is saddled with challenges – like corruption, non-availability of goods at sales points and delivery hitches.

This year, these challenges are compounded by a rise in prices of fertiliser which shot up by nearly 100 percent.

The impact of the increase has trickled down to the farmers. For every $23 in government subsidies for a 50kg bag of fertiliser, the farmers are contributing about $9. Last year they paid $5.4.

And Joseph is feeling the weight of that rise on her shoulders. First, she needs money to redeem her two bags of fertiliser.

Then, because chaos is the norm at the agro-dealer shop in her area, she has to bribe the clerks or pay some youths to stand in the queue on her behalf. The more the days and nights they stand in the line for her, the more the money she needs to fork out.

Once she buys the fertiliser, she will have to hire a motorbike to transport the commodity to her home, some 17km away.

In total, she needs at least $28 to meet these expenses.

“I don’t have that kind of money, and I don’t know where to get it from,” she tells IPS. “I hope by the time the fertiliser comes, I will have found the money.”

In the previous years, she relied on the government-funded public works programme to earn a small wage. For the past two years, there haven’t been any projects in her area.

Amid the perennial challenges rocking the food subsidy programme intended to ensure food security in Malawi, the rise in fertiliser prices has been the most dramatic.

It all began in June, soon after Parliament passed the national budget in which the government allocated $172,000 towards the programme, targeting 3.7 million farmers – the same number as last year.

Following the hike in price on the global market, the cost of fertiliser increased in the country. Malawi was hit hard. It relies on imports because it does not have a fertiliser manufacturing plant.

In reaction, the Ministry of Agriculture, the implementing agency of the flagship food security programme, announced it would trim the number of beneficiaries.

“Due to financial constraints and the rising prices of fertiliser, the ministry, after looking into these two compound challenges, has decided to have AIP beneficiaries scaled down. It is therefore very necessary that the scaling down of the beneficiaries be done up to village level,” said the ministry’s secretary Sandram Maweru in a circular dated July 21, 2021 and addressed to all 28 district commissioners.

The ministry recommended specific figures from every district, resulting in fewer beneficiaries totalling 2.7 million.

But a week after the district commissioner had submitted the revised data to the ministry, on August 21, President Lazarus Chakwera overturned the decision of his agriculture officials. He directed that no one who was on the list last year could be taken off.

“I will not allow anyone to remove any family or village from the list of beneficiaries,” he said.

And so began a tug of war between the government and private traders.

While the private traders insisted they would need to sell the fertiliser at the new prices, which would have outstripped the budget allocated, the government accused the private traders of inflating the prices to sabotage the programme.

It told them it would buy their fertiliser for AIP at $29 per 50kg bag instead of the $43.6 per 50 kg which the private traders had set for it.

Efforts to resolve the standoff did not yield results. Last week, 13 of the 164 traders the government had engaged had not signed contracts to supply the fertiliser. This amounts to close to a million bags of fertiliser.

In a statement in Parliament on November 18, Minister of Agriculture Lobin Lowe insisted it was up to the traders to take it or leave it while admitting that only 10 percent of the targeted 371,000 metric tonnes had been procured.

The private traders account for 66 percent of the commodity, while two public agencies supply 34 percent for the programme.

However, the fact that 151 traders have signed the contract does not guarantee that the fertiliser will be supplied, indicates Mbawaka Phiri, Executive Administration Officer for the Fertiliser Association of Malawi, a grouping of the private traders.

“Caution must be taken to not assume that all 151 traders have stock and can supply. Many of those who have signed contracts are still having difficulty procuring stock,” she says.

According to Phiri, some private traders have decided not to participate in the programme this year because the AIP fertiliser price is too low to do business.

Traders are not obliged to sign the government’s contract offer – that is a business decision.

“However, it is also up to the government to decide whether the programme can be successful without the participation of suppliers from the private sector. Last year’s programme was successful mainly due to the participation of private suppliers who were able to deliver larger amounts of fertiliser in a very short period and to all areas of the country,” she says.

Agriculture policy expert, Tamani Nkhono-Mvula, says in general, the implementation of the programme this year has not been satisfactory.

“This is November, and we have less than 10 percent of the fertiliser supplied when we were supposed to have at least 50 percent of the farmers reached by mid-October. Once rains start in a matter of weeks, that will compound the logistical challenges we already have,” he says.

He says the programme is crucial because it targets low-income farmers who cannot afford the farm inputs, but its management is concerning.

“It seems the programme has become a way for some people to make money. They would love to see chaos in the programme because that is the way they are able to benefit,” says Nkhono-Mvula.

Categories: Africa

Pakistan: Gender-Intentional Policy Can Make Agent Banking Work Better

Mon, 11/29/2021 - 12:16

“I belong to a marginalized sector of my country where educated women are confined into four walls in rural settings”. Photo courtesy of Tahir Watto Credit: UN Women

By Kathryn Imboden and Naeha Rashid
WASHINGTON DC, Nov 29 2021 (IPS)

Many women in Pakistan remain financially excluded. In 2020, only 7% of the female population had a formal account.

One of the reasons for this is that agent networks — the bridge between the cash economy and digital financial services — remain largely inaccessible to many women. Approaching policy and regulation through a gender-intentional lens that considers prevailing social norms can help regulators affect positive change in this arena.

Agent networks are recognized as a powerful enabler for the expansion of digital financial services to low-income populations, particularly in rural areas. They can increase access to financial services by lowering the cost of delivery in otherwise hard-to-reach areas.

Agents can also support women during onboarding and use of digital financial services. However, agent networks are part of a market system deeply influenced by social norms and policies that may perpetuate or exacerbate gender inequalities.

The reality is that women often don’t have equal access to agent banking.

Between 2017 and 2020, the financial inclusion gender gap has not narrowed but rather grown from 13 to 29 percentage points, according to the Financial Inclusion Insights survey. Qualitative field research indicates that this constitutes a major barrier to women’s financial inclusion.

Women avoid dealing with male agents due to social norms that restrict non-familial interaction and mobility. If more women were agents, this may not be such an issue. However, just 1 in 100 agents in Pakistan is a woman.

The same norms that limit women’s use of agents, along with other norms such as restrictions in work outside the home and access to technology, make it difficult for women to become agents.

To better understand these norms and support policy makers and regulators in identifying responses that can advance women’s digital financial inclusion more effectively, CGAP explored the interplay between gendered social norms and the four basic regulatory enablers for digital financial services, including the use of agents.

We started our analysis by identifying the financial behaviors that women currently exhibit in the market and tracked associated social norms and barriers underlying such behaviors. Then we looked at how existing regulations consider the norms at play and address, ignore or even reinforce them.

Analyzing the problem and ideating responses

Using this process, we identified two behaviors related to the issue of women and agents.

The first is that women rarely become agents. Core requirements to become an agent include cellphone ownership, high-school level equivalent literacy, and openness to frequent interaction with an organization’s staff, which is often predominantly men.

However, social norms restrict women’s ability to work outside home, interact with people outside the family, and access technology. The perception that women are at greater risk than men when it comes to issues such as robbery and fraud makes it even harder to find willing and able participants.

The second behavior we focused on was that women avoid dealing with male agents independently. We found that this is largely a result of societal limitations in non-familial interaction and limited mobility.

Taken together, these behaviors present a challenge for women’s financial inclusion: it’s easier for women to engage with other women while using digital financial services, but few women are willing or able to serve as agents.

Up to now, regulations did not explicitly account for these limitations. Key guidelines, such as 2016’s agent acquisition and management framework, do not have a gender angle.

The requirement that all agents have a Level 2 account (the highest tier available) and the associated paperwork is not realistic for many women. It serves as one example of how regulations can unintentionally contribute to the gender gap.

The forthcoming gender-intentional “Banking on Equality” policy is a positive step, and the State Bank of Pakistan has recently taken concrete measures to address the issue.

In September 2021 the State Bank of Pakistan became one of the first regulators globally to introduce a new instruction that mandates a minimum proportion of female agents.

The instruction states that “All Branchless banking providers shall formulate a clear and well-documented ‘Gender Mainstreaming in Agents Strategy’ duly approved by its Board, with a goal to reach 10% women in their agent portfolio by 2024 with interim milestones of 4% for the end of 2022 and 7% for 2023.”

This is a promising measure, but it is largely provider centric. It does not propose regulatory changes to make it easier for women to become agents or address the structural issues that women face in dealing with male agents.

This type of analysis leads to several recommendations for policy makers and regulators, adding an additional dimension to current gender-positive efforts such as the soon-to-be-finalized “Banking on Equality” policy.

To create widescale change, policies and regulations must consider and address the social norms that limit women’s participation in agent banking. Critically, the “right” agent model has the potential to increase women’s access to financial services — especially low-income women — by simultaneously accounting for and possibly shifting social norms. Our suggested responses include:

• Conducting additional research into the factors leading to the low number of female agents and better understanding the agent-customer experience from a female perspective

• Reviewing and adjusting existing agent guidelines to develop a comprehensive gender-intentional agent framework, potentially incorporating the following:

• Exploring the role that roving agents (permitted during COVID-19) can play in increasing women’s financial inclusion, and considering extending permission for this agent category

By accounting for social norms and being gender-intentional, policy makers and regulators can make adjustments to policy and regulatory formulation to advance women’s digital financial inclusion.

Kathryn Imboden is Senior Financial Sector Specialist at CGAP and Naeha Rashid is a graduate of the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, and of McGill University.

Source: Consultative Group to Assist the Poor (CGAP)

CGAP is an independent think tank that works to empower poor people, especially women, to capture opportunities and build resilience through financial services. Housed at the World Bank, CGAP is supported by over 30 leading development organizations committed to making financial services meet the needs of poor people.

Categories: Africa

UNESCO Member States Adopt Recommended Ethics for AI

Fri, 11/26/2021 - 23:33

The agreement outlines the biases that AI technologies can “embed and exacerbate” and their potential impact on “human dignity, human rights and fundamental freedoms, gender equality, democracy … and the environment and ecosystems.”

By SWAN
PARIS, Nov 26 2021 (IPS)

The member states of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) have agreed on a text of recommended ethics for artificial intelligence (AI) that states can apply on a “voluntary” basis.

The adopted text, which the agency calls “historic”, outlines the “common values and principles which will guide the construction of the necessary legal infrastructure to ensure the healthy development of AI,” UNESCO says.

UNESCO Director-General Audrey Azoulay. Credit: AM/SWAN

The text states that AI systems “should not be used for social scoring and mass surveillance purposes,” among other recommendations.

The organization’s 193 member states include countries, however, that are known to use AI and other technologies to carry out such surveillance, often targeting minorities and dissidents – including writers and artists. Governments and multinational companies have also used personal data and AI technology to infringe on privacy.

While such states and entities were not named, UNESCO officials acknowledged that the discussions leading up to the adopted text had included “difficult conversations”.

Presenting the agreement Nov. 25 at the organization’s headquarters in Paris, UNESCO’s Director-General Audrey Azoulay said the initiative to have an AI ethics framework had been launched in 2018.

“I remember that many thought it would be extremely hard if not impossible to attain common ground among the 193 states … but after these years of work, we’ve been rewarded by this important victory for multilateralism,” Azoulay told journalists.

She pointed out that AI technology has been developing rapidly and that it entails a range of profound effects that comprise both advantages to humanity and wide-ranging risks. Because of such impact, a global accord with practical recommendations was necessary, based on input from experts around the world, Azoulay stressed.

The accord came during the 41st session of UNESCO’s General Conference, which took place Nov. 9 to 24 and included the adoption of “key agreements demonstrating renewed multilateral cooperation,” UNESCO said.

The text states that AI systems “should not be used for social scoring and mass surveillance purposes,” among other recommendations. The organization’s 193 member states include countries, however, that are known to use AI and other technologies to carry out such surveillance, often targeting minorities and dissidents - including writers and artists

While the accord does not provide a single definition of AI, the “ambition” is to address the features of AI that are of “central ethical relevance,” according to the text.

These are the features, or systems, that have “the capacity to process data and information in a way that resembles intelligent behaviour, and typically includes aspects of reasoning, learning, perception, prediction, planning or control,” it said.

While the systems are “delivering remarkable results in highly specialized fields such as cancer screening and building inclusive environments for people with disabilities”, they are equally creating new challenges and raising “fundamental ethical concerns,” UNESCO said.

According to UNESCO, these types of technologies “are very invasive, they infringe on human rights and fundamental freedoms, and they are used in a broad way.”

The agreement stresses that when member states develop regulatory frameworks, they should “take into account that ultimate responsibility and accountability must always lie with natural or legal persons” – that is, humans – “and that AI systems should not be given legal personality” themselves.

“New technologies need to provide new means to advocate, defend and exercise human rights and not to infringe them,” the agreement says.

Among the long list of goals, UNESCO said that the accord aims to ensure that digital transformations contribute as well to the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals” (a UN blueprint to achieve a “better and more sustainable future” for the world).

“We see increased gender and ethnic bias, significant threats to privacy, dignity and agency, dangers of mass surveillance, and increased use of unreliable AI technologies in law enforcement, to name a few. Until now, there were no universal standards to provide an answer to these issues,” UNESCO stated.

Regarding climate change, the text says that member states should make sure that AI favours methods that are resource- and energy-efficient, given the impact on the environment of storing huge amounts of data, which requires energy. It additionally asks governments to assess the direct and indirect environmental impact throughout the AI system life cycle.

On the issue of gender, the text says that member states “should ensure that the potential for digital technologies and artificial intelligence to contribute to achieving gender equality is fully maximized.”

It adds that states “must ensure that the human rights and fundamental freedoms of girls and women, and their safety and integrity are not violated at any stage of the AI system life cycle.”

Alessandra Sala, director of Artificial Intelligence and Data Science at Shutterstock and president of the non-profit organization Women in AI – who spoke at the presentation of the agreement – said that the text provides clear guidelines for the AI field, including on artistic, cultural and gender issues.

“It is a symbol of societal progress,” she said, emphasizing that understanding the ethics of AI was a shared “leadership responsibility” which should include women’s often “excluded voices”.

In answer to concerns raised by journalists about the future of the recommendations, which are essentially non-binding, UNESCO officials said that member states realize that the world “needs” this agreement and that it was a step in the right direction.

Categories: Africa

School Meals Coalition Hopes to Provide a Meal to Every Child

Fri, 11/26/2021 - 14:00

School meals have a host of benefits, including improving enrollments and preventing malnutrition. Now the School Meals Coalition plans to recruit local food producers to assist in the programme. Credit: Bill Wegener/Unsplash

By Naureen Hossain
United Nations, Nov 26 2021 (IPS)

Meals at schools not only give each child a nutritious meal but increase enrolments, among other benefits.

This emerged at a recent launch of the School Meals Coalition, a new initiative that aims to give every child a nutritious meal by 2030 through bolstering health and nutrition programmes. The coalition comprises over 60 countries and 55 partners dedicated to restoring, improving and up-scaling meal programs and food systems. Among their partners are UN agencies UNICEF, World Food Programme (WFP), UN Nutrition, Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), and UNESCO.

In the briefing, the speakers identified School Meals Coalition’s primary goals to restore school meal programmes to the status before the COVID-19 pandemic and reach children in vulnerable areas who have not accessed these plans before. The member countries’ political leaders have come together to support this “important initiative”, according to the permanent representative of Finland to the United Nations, Jukka Salovaara.

“School meals are so much more than just a plate of food. It’s really an opportunity to transform communities, improve education, and food systems globally,” he said.

School meal programmes are a significant safety net for children and their communities. As one of the primary means for children to get healthy meals, they help combat poverty and malnutrition. Their impact on education is seen in increased engagement from students. They also serve as incentives for families to send their children, especially girls, to schools, thus supporting children’s rights to education, nutrition and well-being.

“We see documented jumps of 9 to 12 per cent in enrollment increases just because the meals are present,” WFP Director of School-Based Programmes Carmen Burbano said. “So, these are really important instruments to bring [children] to school.”

The programmes would also provide opportunities for sustainable development practices and transformations in food systems. One key strategy is to promote and maintain home-grown school meal programmes, recruiting local farmers and markets to provide food supplies. Investing in school meal programmes, especially through domestic spending, has proven to increase coverage. In low-income countries, the number of children receiving school meals increased by 36 percent when their governments increased the budgets for these programs.

A WFP study found that at the beginning of 2020, over 380 million children globally received meals through school meal programmes. The closure of schools due to the COVID-19 pandemic effectively disrupted those programmes, depriving 370 million children of what was effectively their main meal for the day. While there have been marked improvements since schools re-opened worldwide, with 238 million children accessing the school meals, there are still 150 million children that don’t have access.

The School Meals Coalition aims to close this gap through a system of collaboration between member countries and their partners. Among their initiatives will be a monitoring and accountability mechanism that is being developed by the WFP and its partners, which will be used to follow the coalition’s accomplishments, and a peer-to-peer information-sharing network, spearheaded by the German government, between members and partners that will use findings to influence their programme output.

Even before the pandemic, school meal programmes did not reach the most vulnerable children, 73 million, who could not access these programmes. Reaching children that have fallen through the cracks can be challenging, but it is significantly more difficult in countries affected by conflict or environmental disruptions.

Education Cannot Wait (ECW) and the World Food Programme (WFP) earlier signed a memorandum of understanding to feed children in protracted crises.

At the signing, WFP Assistant Executive Director, Valerie Guarnieri said: “Simply put, sick children cannot attend school and hungry children cannot learn. It is essential we invest more in the health and nutrition of young learners, particularly girls.”

ECW Director, Yasmine Sherif said a feeding scheme made a massive difference in children’s lives.

“For many children and youth in crisis-affected countries, a meal at school may be the only food they eat all day and can be an important incentive for families to send and keep girls and boys in school. It is also essential for a young person to actually focus and learn,” she said.

The coalition plans to find ways to break the barriers to enable children to reach school or look for alternative learning pathways to reach children who could not physically attend school.

The factors that can prevent children from fully attending schools, such as poverty, complexity in family lives, or conflict, have only been exacerbated over the last nearly two years, thanks mainly to the COVID-19 pandemic. As more schools open worldwide, the restoration of school meal programmes is expected to provide much-needed support for children and their communities in turn.

“This is a very urgent and timely priority,” said Head of the Sustainable Development Unit of the Permanent Mission of France to the United Nations, Olivier Richard. “Because school meals are very important for the recovery of our societies from the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.”

To learn more about the School Meal Coalitions, you can follow their page.

Categories: Africa

Growing Amazon Deforestation a Grave Threat to Global Climate

Fri, 11/26/2021 - 13:50

Brazil has a "green future," announced Environment Minister Joaquim Leite and Vice-President Hamilton Mourão, in a videoconference presentation from Brasilia at the Glasgow climate summit, in an attempt to shore up Brazil’s credibility, damaged by Amazon deforestation. The two officials concealed the fact that deforestation in the Amazon rose by 21.9 percent last year. CREDIT: Marcelo Camargo/Agência Brasil-Fotos Públicas

By Mario Osava
RIO DE JANEIRO, Nov 26 2021 (IPS)

For three weeks, the Brazilian government concealed the fact that deforestation in Brazil’s Amazon rainforest increased by nearly 22 percent last year, accentuating a trend that threatens to derail efforts to curb global warming.

The report by the National Institute for Space Research (INPE) based on the data for the year covering August 2020 to July 2021 is dated Oct. 27, but the government did not release it until Thursday, Nov. 18.

It thus prevented the disaster from further undermining the credibility of far-right President Jair Bolsonaro’s government, already damaged by almost three years of anti-environmental policies and actions, ahead of and during the 26th Conference of the Parties (COP26) to the climate change convention, held in Glasgow, Scotland from Oct. 31 to Nov. 13.Brazil had managed to reduce Amazon deforestation since the 2004 total of 27,772 square kilometers. A concerted effort by environmental agencies reduced the total to 4,571 square kilometers in 2012. This shows that it is possible, but it depends on political will and adequate management.

INPE’s Satellite Monitoring of Deforestation in the Legal Amazon Project (Prodes) recorded 13,235 square kilometers of deforestation, 21.97 percent more than in the previous period and almost three times the 2012 total of 4,571 square kilometers.

The so-called Legal Amazon, a region covering 5.01 million square kilometers in Brazil, has already lost about 17 percent of its forest cover. In a similar sized area the forests were degraded, i.e. some species were cut down and biodiversity and biomass were reduced, according to the non-governmental Amazon Institute of People and the Environment (IMAZON).

Carlos Nobre, one of the country’s leading climatologists and a member of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), says the world’s largest tropical forest is approaching irreversible degradation in a process of “savannization” (the gradual transition of tropical rainforest into savanna).

The point of no return is a 20 to 25 percent deforestation rate, estimates Nobre, a researcher at the Institute of Advanced Studies of the University of São Paulo and a member of the Brazilian and U.S. national academies of sciences.

Reaching that point would be a disaster for the planet. Amazon forests and soils store carbon equivalent to five years of global emissions, experts calculate. Forest collapse would release a large part of these greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.

A similar risk comes from the permafrost, a layer of frozen subsoil beneath the Arctic and Greenland ice, for example, which is beginning to thaw in the face of global warming.

This is another gigantic carbon store that, if released, would seriously undermine the attempt to limit the increase in the Earth’s temperature to 1.5 degrees Celsius this century.

The Amazon rainforest, an immense biome spread over eight South American countries plus the territory of French Guiana, is therefore key in the search for solutions to the climate crisis.

Evolution of the deforested area in the Brazilian Amazon since 1988, with its ups and downs and an upward tendency in the last nine years. Policies to crack down on environmental crimes by strengthened public agencies were successful between 2004 and 2012. Graphic: INPE

Brazil, which accounts for 60 percent of the biome, plays a decisive role. And that is why it is the obvious target of the measure announced by the European Commission, which, with the expected approval of the European Parliament, aims to ban the import of agricultural products associated with deforestation or forest degradation.

The Commission, the executive body of the 27-nation European Union, does not distinguish between legal and illegal deforestation. It requires exporters to certify the exemption of their products by means of tracing suppliers.

Brazil is a leading agricultural exporter that is in the sights of environmentalists and leaders who, for commercial or environmental reasons, want to preserve the world’s remaining forests.

The 75 percent increase in Amazon deforestation in the nearly three years of the Bolsonaro administration exacerbates Brazil’s vulnerability to environmentally motivated trade restrictions.

This was the likely reason for a shift in the attitude of the governmental delegation in Glasgow during COP26.

Unexpectedly, Brazil adhered to the commitment to reduce methane emissions by 30 percent by 2030, a measure that affects cattle ranching, which accounts for 71.8 percent of the country’s emissions of this greenhouse gas.

As the world’s largest exporter of beef, which brought in 8.4 billion dollars for two million tons in 2020, Brazil had previously rejected proposals targeting methane, a gas at least 20 times more potent than carbon dioxide in global warming.

Brazil also pledged to eliminate deforestation by 2028, two years ahead of the target, and stopped obstructing agreements such as the carbon market, in a totally different stance from the one it had taken in the previous two years.

The threat of trade barriers and the attempt to improve the government’s international reputation are behind the new attitude. The new ministers of Foreign Affairs, Carlos França, and Environment, Joaquim Leite, in office since April and June, respectively, are trying to mitigate the damage caused by their anti-diplomatic and anti-environmental predecessors.

But the new data on Amazon deforestation and the delay in its disclosure unleashed a new backlash.

President Jair Bolsonaro stated that the Amazon has kept its forests intact since 1500 and does not suffer from fires because it is humid, in a Nov. 15 speech during the Invest Brazil Forum, held in Dubai to attract capital to the country. He made this claim when he already knew that in the last year deforestation had grown by almost 22 percent. CREDIT: Alan Santos/PR-Fotos Públicas

Leite claimed not to have had prior knowledge of the INPE report, difficult to believe from a member of a government known for using fake news and disinformation. He announced that the government would take a “forceful” stance against environmental crimes in the Amazon, commenting on the “unacceptable” new deforestation figures.

Together with the Minister of Justice and Public Security Anderson Torres, who has the Federal Police under his administration, he promised to mobilize the necessary forces to combat illegal deforestation.

The reaction is tardy and of doubtful success, given the contrary stance taken by the president and the deactivation of the environmental bodies by the previous minister, Ricardo Salles, who defended illegal loggers against police action.

The former minister stripped the two institutes executing environmental policy, one for inspection and the other for biodiversity protection and management of conservation units, of resources and specialists. He also appointed unqualified people, such as military police, to command these bodies.

President Bolsonaro abolished councils and other mechanisms for public participation in environmental management, as in other sectors, and encouraged several illegal activities in the Amazon, such as “garimpo” (informal mining) and the invasion of indigenous areas and public lands.

The result could only be an increase in the deforestation and forest fires that spread the destruction in the last two years. The smoke from the “slash-and-burn” clearing technique polluted the air in cities more than 1,000 kilometers away.

Bolsonaro, however, declared on Nov. 15 in Dubai, in the United Arab Emirates, that fires do not occur in the Amazon due to the humidity of the rainforest and that 90 percent of the region remains “the same as in 1500,” when the Portuguese arrived in Brazil.

His vice-president, General Hamilton Mourão, acknowledged that “deforestation in the Amazon is real, the INPE data leave no doubt.” His unusual disagreement with the president arises from his experience in presiding over the National Council of the Legal Amazon, which proposes and coordinates actions in the region.

Brazil had managed to reduce Amazon deforestation since the 2004 total of 27,772 square kilometers. A concerted effort by environmental agencies reduced the total to 4,571 square kilometers in 2012. This shows that it is possible, but it depends on political will and adequate management.

Categories: Africa

Gender, Education and Drop Outs

Fri, 11/26/2021 - 12:06

By Jan Lundius
STOCKHOLM / ROME, Nov 26 2021 (IPS)

While COVID 19 is keeping the world and news media in its constant grip and national politics often come to the forefront, it might be easy to forget urgent and nevertheless related matters. One is how global education has suffered and how children and youngsters have been forced to cope with a different reality. This aspect like so many other of human existence is gendered and while addressing education it is relevant to talk about changing gender roles as well.

Wonder Woman, DC Comics

The global plight of girls and young women has for several years been rightly emphasized. However, this focus may overshadow a phenomenon that increasingly is occurring in both developed and developing countries – boys are increasingly dropping out from schools, while young men to a higher degree than young women are not attracted by higher education. A recent article in the magazine The Atlantic pointed out that US colleges and universities currently enroll six women for every four men, a gender gap that is getting wider with every year.

The phenomenon is far from unique to USA. All over the world, more women than men are currently entering tertiary education. In all OECD countries with available data, women have a higher degree frequency than men. The average is currently 72 percent among women and 61 percent among men and everywhere the gap is widening. Several reasons have been put forward for this trend, most common is to emphasize that young men might value connections and contacts more than higher education, while female students usually view education as more than a means to make money. It has been found that more young women than men assume that education is an essential part of their development and personal independence, something that generally has been related to the clearing away of barriers to women’s education and an opening up for their access to professions requiring advanced higher education. Women are increasingly competing with men for advanced professions. Skills are becoming more crucial than gender. Still, the gender gap in remuneration continues to persist.

However, the connection between gender and education continues to be complicated. In several countries, the importance of gender roles is more pronounced in schooling at first – and secondary levels, than at the tertiary one. Economic concerns tend to be decisive for children’s schooling. Even if poor parents don’t pay school fees, money is spent on transportation, textbooks and clothing. Since schooling could mean that a girl will spend less time helping at home, a poor family might consider sending her to school as detrimental to its well-being. To a higher degree than boys, responsibilities like, cooking, cleaning and taking care of sick parents and babysitting siblings, still tend to fall on girls.

Furthermore, schools may be far from home and if lessons take place in the evenings, roads, schools and homes may have limited, or no electricity and light at all. All over the world, girls and boys are harassed and abused on their way to school and girls are disproportionately targeted. The school might also be a place of discomfort and danger, and not only fellow students but even teachers may behave like predators. A situation worsened in conflict and crisis-affected areas. Schools are often targeted by rebel groups; education suffers, schools stop functioning. During such, and other, emergencies, gender is an important factor. In several areas, schools providing education for girls are particularly targeted and refugee girls are half as likely to be in school as boys in the same situation.

Some poor parents may assume that it is not worth the effort and loss of earnings to educate their daughters – they might be married off to a man who will take responsibility for them. It is thus common that poor parents consent that their daughters marry before they reach the age of 18, explaining that this will protect them from harm and social stigma. However, an uneducated child bride is more likely to experience early pregnancy, undernourishment, domestic violence, and pregnancy complications. Furthermore, she will generally, due to dependency on her spouse’s whims and needs, as well as lack of education, be unable to gain financial independence. Girls’ lack of schooling is detrimental to national growth and general health. Providing efficient and free education to girls benefit the entire society, fomenting not only equality and general well-being – child marriage rates decline, but family health also improves, while child and maternal mortality rates fall, and child stunting drops.

In developing countries drop-outs from school tend to be most common among girls and early marriages and pregnancy are the main reasons for this. Teen mothers may find it impossible to continue their schooling due to lack of daycare, while other young women may decide that it is preferable to leave school and start a family early. If they lack a spouse and/or support of a family it is even harder for them to continue an education and survival becomes their main goal. If opportunities in the labour market, not the least in the “informal” sector, are attainable any desperate person may choose those earnings which in the short term are preferable to a continued investment in schooling.

More recently, it has to a higher degree than before been noticed that gender roles might also be detrimental for boys’ education. Social change affects them as well as it affects girls. For example, in Mongolia poor families depending on cattle herding tend to take their boys out of school and as farm lands and rural economy evolves, families find it more economically rewarding to keep boys in farming, rather than sending them to school. In Mongolia, 65 percent of those children not finishing secondary school are boys and the trend continues, while female domination is reported in the entire education system.

In many poor countries, opportunities for jobs after graduation are limited, making alternative lifestyles more attractive, even if they might go against accepted values and behaviour. There is always an allure of rapidly and easily gained money through unskilled work and illicit activities, instead of dreary and unpaid schooling, combined with the risk of not obtaining a job answering to skills developed through education. Just like girls might be needed for household chores, boys and young men may be expected to support poor, often single-headed households with work that cannot be obstructed by schooling. Such a situation might in poor districts with an inadequately supported school system be worsened by violence in and around schools, making it untenable for youth to continue attending, while illicit activities may offer more attractive alternatives than staying in school. Predators are lurking to abuse and exploit boys – criminal gangs and militia recruit youngsters, supported by prevalent myths about male superiority and temerity.

Marginalized areas in both wealthy and poor nations suffer from boys dropping out of school and ending up in illicit activities, which make them prone to violence. Jamaica is for example struggling with boys from poor families increasingly dropping out of school, ending up in unemployment, idleness, reckless behaviour and even worse – criminality. In Jamaica, boys’ participation in secondary schooling is rapidly declining. At all levels, girls are outperforming boys and young women are more than twice as likely as young men to enter tertiary education.

It is in higher education that differences between young men’s and women’s attendance is becoming even more apparent than at first – and secondary levels. The latest OECD report on education states that the gap between female and male attendance at tertiary levels of education is with every year increasing with at least one percentage point. In 2020, overall education levels combined, enrollment rates were on average 7 percentage points higher for 20-24 year-old women than for men. The largest gap in this age group was found in Slovenia (20 percentage points) and the gap was at least 15 percentage points in Argentina, Israel and Poland. On average across OECD countries with available data, boys are more likely to repeat a grade than girls and represent 61 percent of the number of repeaters in lower secondary education.

These ratios are even wider in the Gulf Emirates, where boys are dropping out of secondary school at a rate of up to 20 percent in a single year. This while girls and young women surpass their male counterparts in attendance and outperform them at all levels and across all subjects. In the Emirates this tendency may be explained by the fact that men are privileged and may to a higher degree than women count upon good connections and general support. Even in a country like Saudi Arabia, the only Islamic country (so far – Afghanistan is moving in the same direction) that has a separate system of female education and where women’s access to the labour market is restricted, more than 60 percent of higher education graduates are women.

These are just a few examples of how education, both positively and negatively, is affected by gender and socioeconomic change. Equality is beneficent for any social system and while addressing an area like education the entire spectrum of gender and access must be taken into consideration, meaning that different needs and prerequisites for boys and girls must be part of the equation. Society is constantly changing and education changes in close symbiosis with it. Nevertheless, for the benefit of us all we must strive for guaranteeing that this change fosters equal rights and general well-being, something that will not be achieved if gender aspects are ignored.

Sources: Thompson, Derek (2021), “Colleges Have a Guy Problem,” The Atlantic, 14 September. https://www.unicef.org/education/girls-education and https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/education/education-at-a-glance_19991487

Categories: Africa

New Pan-African Payments System Provides Big Relief for African Traders

Fri, 11/26/2021 - 07:55

The launch of PAPSS will save $5 billion yearly and boost intra-African trade. Credit: Africa Renewal, United Nations

By Kingsley Ighobor
UNITED NATIONS, Nov 26 2021 (IPS)

When Fidelis Adele, the CEO of Freetown-based Solid Graphics, a printing and communications company, needed to order some printing equipment from Nigeria in September, he paid an extra $165 on top of a $10,000 bank transfer to the seller. Yet it took three days for the money transferred in Sierra Leone to be credited to the beneficiary’s account in Nigeria.

“I paid $30 as transfer fee, $35 as SWIFT charges and another $100 bank charges,” Adele told Africa Renewal. SWIFT stands for Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication, a global network that processes international payments.

Adele did not attempt to use financial services companies such as Western Union or MoneyGram because the “exchange rate for those companies is just bad.”

The other option would have been to fly to Lagos, a three-hour journey, carrying the physical cash along. “I have done that a few times,” he said, “but it is not cost-effective unless it’s a huge amount, and it is risky.”

Traders across Africa experience similar ordeal paying for goods or services across borders. In the process they lose valuable time and money.

This cumbersome and time-consuming process “costs us [Africans] about $5 billion in [money transfer] charges each year,” according to Benedict Oramah, President of the African Export-Import Bank (Afreximbank), who said, in an interview with Africa Renewal: “We are a poor continent. We shouldn’t waste money like that.”

Payment system launched

To address the situation, Afreximbank has partnered with the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) Secretariat to launch the Pan-African Payments and Settlement Systems (PAPSS), a platform that facilitates instant cross-border payments in local currencies between countries.

Kingsley Ighobor

The PAPSS has been piloted successfully in the six countries that make up the West African Monetary Zone (WAMZ)—Nigeria, the Gambia, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Ghana and Guinea. Because of its multi-currency and bi-lingual makeup, WAMZ is considered a microcosm of the continent.

On using WAMZ for the pilot, Prof. Oramah says: “The six WAMZ countries have different currencies. One of the countries is Francophone and the others are Anglophone. You have a big economy like Nigeria and then you have smaller economies. So, anything that can go wrong in other parts of Africa would have gone wrong in the WAMZ, and we will have been able to address it during the piloting phase.”

The operational rollout of PAPSS was announced at the end of September, meaning that countries’ central banks, which will be the clearing agents, can now coordinate with Afreximbank, which is the main clearing agent and provider of settlement guarantees and overdraft facilities.

Afreximbank doled out $500 million to service West Africa and intends to provide a further $3 billion for an Africa-wide PAPSS operation.

Analysts expect African traders, especially those in West Africa, to begin to take advantage of the platform by the end of 2021.

Oramah, who is based in Cairo, Egypt, explains the hurdles faced by African traders in personal terms: “I want to transfer money to Nigeria from Egypt. It goes through a corresponding bank in a country outside of Africa before it arrives in Nigeria. I pay charges before the person in Nigeria gets it.

“And it takes time. Sometimes it takes weeks. So, we [Afreximbank] calculated how much that costs the continent—forget about the time—it costs Africans $5 billion yearly.

“Also, if I am in Egypt, and I want to watch my favourite Nollywood movies, I probably have to remit in US dollars. But the PAPSS changes that for you. All you need do is pay the Nigerian producer in Nigerian Naira.”

The CEO of PAPSS Mike Ogbalu says that during the piloting phase in West Africa, bank accounts in different countries were debited and credited within 10 seconds. He has assured of a robust technology that can handle large transactions.

How PAPSS works

Sending money using the PAPSS is a five-step process:

In announcing the rollout of PAPSS, Afreximbank says that by “simplifying cross-border transactions and reducing the dependency on hard currencies for these transactions, PAPSS is set to boost intra-African trade significantly.”

Intra-African trade is currently at a meager 17 per cent.

The PAPSS is also expected to lead to increases in value addition to products, jobs creation and more earnings for traders.

Wamkele Mene, the Secretary-General of AfCFTA Secretariat, said PAPSS will lead to efficient cross-border trade transactions and put Africa on a new economic trajectory.

“There are 42 currencies in Africa. We want to make sure that a trader in Ghana can transfer Ghanaian cedi to a counterpart in Kenya who will receive Kenyan shillings,” Mene told Africa Renewal in an earlier interview.

Adele agrees that PAPSS will help his business. “If I can take the Leones to a bank here [in Sierra Leone] and pay for printing products in Nigeria, and the money is instantly deposited in the beneficiary’s account in Nigeria, that would be extraordinary,” he says.

Until briefed by Africa Renewal, Adele was not aware of the PAPSS, underscoring the communication challenge of raising intra-African traders’ awareness about the platform.

Oramah notes, however, that a campaign is underway to market and promote the PAPSS, hoping that by the end of the year African traders will be informed enough to use the system.

Source: Africa Renewal, which reports on, and examines, the many different aspects of the UN’s involvement in Africa, especially within the framework of the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD).

Categories: Africa

How to Tackle Africa’s Employment Crisis

Thu, 11/25/2021 - 14:58

Youth at the Grand Médine town hall in Dakar, Senegal. Senegal has a large youth population, half of which is under the age of 18. By 2025, 376,000 youth are expected to enter the job market that offers only 30,000 jobs. And this number will rise to 411,000 in 2030, according to the Wilson Centre. Credit: Samuelle Paul Banga/IPS

By Johann Ivanov
ACCRA, Ghana, Nov 25 2021 (IPS)

The Covid-19 pandemic aggravated Africa’s already severe employment crisis. The solution lies in a long-term political and economic transformation.

Africa is facing a severe employment crisis. But if nothing is done to find a solution, it could get much worse in the not-too-distant future, as World Bank projections from 2017 show: By 2035, Africa’s working age population will expand by 450 million.

At the same time, however, only 100 million jobs are expected be created in the same period. And that was before the Covid-19 pandemic hit: Africa was severely affected and its economies experienced a contraction by 2 per cent in 2020. UNECA estimates that almost 30 million Africans have been pushed below the extreme poverty line.

In the years prior to the pandemic, especially between 2016 and 2020, Africa had experienced solid economic growth. Yet, such growth was mainly driven by high commodity prices and has not translated into the creation of sustainable employment. That’s particularly concerning when looking at Africa’s demographics.

By the year 2050, Africa’s youth (15-35 years) is expected to double to 830 million people and the total population of the continent will reach about 2,5 billion people. Today, Africa is the world’s youngest continent – in 2020, it’s median age was 19,7 years. And Africa will remain the world’s youngest continent for decades to come.

Johann Ivanov

In this context, current estimates show that Africa needs to create between 10 to 18 million jobs annually solely to absorb the youth entering its labour markets. However, only around three million formal jobs are created at the moment and the majority of Africa’s youth is destined to remain in the informal economy, which comprises more than 80 per cent of the continent’s workforce.

A progressive approach to employment

It is a modern-day tragedy that millions of young Africans will not be able to find employment, have enough resources to support their families, or realise their full potential. And although there is a very active and informed international debate around generating employment, it does not seem to generate viable solutions that would lead to significant changes in the employment situation.

All too often, governments seem to only pay lip service to democratic processes and institutions.

Africa’s employment crisis is so complex that it requires fundamental thinking about the direction of structural transformation on the continent. Do the approaches of gradual industrialisation that worked for East Asia also work in Africa?

To what extent is free trade part of the problem and not part of the solution to the employment crisis? How can there be real change if governments are undemocratic, corrupt, and forestalling reforms?

A progressive approach to tackling the employment crisis in Africa, which could inspire and inform both leaders in Africa and European policy-makers, is long overdue. This progressive approach is based on two interdependent sets of principles – political and economic. Here are some ideas.

First and foremost, the political side means putting in place solid democratic institutions to organise and oversee structural transformation and economic reforms. All too often, governments seem to only pay lip service to democratic processes and institutions.

Without accountability, enforced through democratic institutions, the popular will won’t be reflected in the developmental model. Without the corrective function of democracy, development will lead to more inequality and benefit just the privileged few.

Political reforms also need to include a bold stance against corruption. Africans are fed up with governments that are primarily concerned with remaining in power to pocket the state’s resources.

State capture needs to be confronted by shifting power from the executive to a politically independent and efficient judiciary that is able to enforce accountability and democratic principles.

Fundamentally, it is the responsibility of the state, controlled by democratic institutions and an active civil society, to ensure that economic growth actually translates into employment creation.

Broad societal coalitions, including democratic trade unions, NGOs, activists, environmental groups, and progressive political leaders have to take the lead here and articulate their demands for a democratic turn towards more accountability. In particular, women have to play a key role in this process as they are disproportionately affected by the current employment scenario.

Together, these groups need to pile more pressure on governments to actively involve civil society, academia, labour representatives, and the private sector in building strategies to create employment and monitor the execution of employment programmes. This is not just an inconvenient exercise, but a crucial attempt to improve the quality of political decisions and outcomes.

The economic principles have to be pursued and demanded with the same energy as the political ones. Fundamentally, it is the responsibility of the state, controlled by democratic institutions and an active civil society, to ensure that economic growth actually translates into employment creation.

For that to succeed, systems of revenue mobilisation have to be improved. Firstly, the focus could be put on the commodities sector – a major source of income in many African countries. Many are exporting oil, gold, metals, cocoa but struggle to negotiate agreements that guarantee a fair share of these exports.

More funds could be extracted from multinationals operating in Africa. Moreover, some parts of the vast informal economy in Africa, remaining in the informal sector for tax evasion reasons – like some professionals in the urban economies –, could be another source of revenue. Loopholes in the tax system also have to be plugged proactively.

African states have to invest heavily into public goods such as education, healthcare, energy, and digitalisation. The basic infrastructure is key for the transformation of the economies.

The construction sector, for instance, could be one of the areas where significant employment can be generated. In public tender processes for large infrastructure projects, financed either by African countries or international financial institutions, African companies should get a preferential treatment.

Significant state investment is required into well-designed public works programmes across the continent. Those are both a strategy towards poverty reduction and generation of employment. A constant evaluation of public works programmes and reasonable exit strategies are necessary to keep costs under control.

Moreover, states have to roll out programmes for providing bank accounts to all citizens – the transfer of basic income could be an element for direct support.

A decades-long project

It is an illusion to believe that all of the employment challenges can be solved by states only. The main source of employment will remain the private sector and most employment will be created in urban areas, mainly in the services sector.

So called ‘industries without smokestacks’, namely tourism, agri-business, remote office services, creative industries, have some potential for employment creation. To generate long-term sustainable employment and decent jobs, however, will require significant transfer of knowledge and technology from developed countries to African ones.

Last but not least, trade among African countries – accelerated through the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) which has started its operations on 1 January 2021 – could lead to economic growth and employment effects. At the same time, free trade may have adverse effects on immature industries in Africa.

That’s why pockets of industries should rather be nurtured and protected against competition. Also, areas that are going to be affected by potential negative effects of AfCFTA, need to be compensated for their losses.

Tackling Africa’s employment crisis is a process that will take years, if not decades. Small steps are more realistic than leapfrogging fantasies. All too often, however, the political conversation is preoccupied with a shortsighted emphasis on how favourable economic factors may stimulate employment creation.

But it is key to understand that solid political and economic principles, overseen by the people primarily affected by the transformation, must walk hand in hand – as both are determining a progressive approach to economic growth and employment creation in Africa.

Johann Ivanov is the Resident Director of the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung Ghana Office and coordinator of the Economic Policy Competence Center (EPCC) for Sub-Saharan Africa operating from Ghana. Previously, he worked as Deputy Resident Director with FES India and desk officer at FES headoffice in Berlin. He holds a BA degree in Political Science from the Freie Universität Berlin and a MSc in International Political Theory from the University of Edinburgh.

Source: International Politics and Society (IPS)-Journal published by the International Political Analysis Unit of the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung, Hiroshimastrasse 28, D-10785 Berlin

Categories: Africa

Safety of Women Journalists

Thu, 11/25/2021 - 12:13

By External Source
Nov 25 2021 (IPS-Partners)

On International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women (25 November), UNESCO is raising awareness for the continued violence, threats and harassment that women journalists and female media workers face all around the world.

Their safety is put at risk by offline and online attacks, ranging from violence, stigmatization, sexist hate speech, trolling, physical assault, rape to even murder. In addition to being attacked on the basis of their work as journalists, they are the targets of gender-based violence. These attacks seek to silence the voices of women journalists and threaten freedom of speech by interrupting valuable investigative work. They distort the media landscape by threatening diversity and perpetuating inequalities both in newsrooms and in societies.

To improve the safety of women journalists and to address the threats they face, UNESCO and its partners take effective measures through research, capacity-building and awareness raising.

During the 16 Days of Activism Against Gender-Based Violence, please help raise attention for the safety of women journalists.

Irene Khan, Special Rapporteur on the Promotion and Protection of the Right to Freedom of Opinion and Expression publishes essay collection “#JournalistsToo – Women Journalists Speak Out”

On International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, Irene Khan, Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of freedom of opinion and expression, is publishing the essay collection “#JournalistsToo – Women Journalists Speak Out”, which chronicles personal experiences of harassment by eleven journalists from ten countries. The publication is supported by UNESCO and the Special Procedures of the Human Rights Council. The essays describe the many – often intersectional – threats women journalists face simply for doing their work. But they are not the stories of victims. Rather, they are testaments of courage, resilience, solidarity and the refusal to be silenced. As Irene Khan highlights, “It is unacceptable that women journalists are attacked and abused for doing their job. It is high time we listen to the voices of the women themselves”.

Online course on Safety of Women Journalists by UNESCO and partners available in self-directed format

To improve the safety of women journalists, UNESCO, the International Women’s Media Foundation (IWMF) and the University of Texas at Austin’s Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas launched a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC), addressing the gender dimensions of journalists’ safety. Experienced instructor Alison Baskerville provides frameworks to mitigate and manage risks associated with reporting for women.

The course is available in English in a self-directed format and will soon be accessible in Spanish and French.

Access the course materials here

UNESCO discussion paper “The Chilling” reveals orchestrated campaigns behind online violence against women journalists

The UNESCO discussion paper “The Chilling: Global trends in online violence against women journalists” points to a sharp increase in online violence against women journalists and reveals how these attacks are inextricably bound up with disinformation, intersectional discrimination and populist politics. 73% of surveyed women journalists reported having experienced online attacks while 20% said they had been attacked or abused offline in connection with online violence. The study, conducted in cooperation with the International Center for Journalists (ICFJ), is unprecedented in its scope and methodology, with a global survey of 901 journalists from 125 countries. It also includes two big data case studies assessing over 2.5 million social media posts directed at prominent journalists Carole Cadwalladr from the United Kingdom and Maria Ressa – this year’s Nobel Peace Prize Laureate and winner of the 2021 Guillermo Cano World Press Freedom Prize – from the Philippines.

Read the full paper here

Online violence against women journalists harms everyone. Let’s end it!

When a women journalist is attacked online, she is not the only one that suffers. Online violence harms women’s right to speak and society’s right to know. To tackle this increasing trend, collective solutions are needed to protect women journalists from online violence. This includes strong responses from social media platforms, national authorities and media organizations.

During the 16 Days Against Gender-Based Violence, help us end online violence by sharing UNESCO’s campaign materials.

Find out more about UNESCO’s work on the Safety of Women Journalists

Categories: Africa

Ethiopia’s Civil War Fueled by Weapons from UN’s Big Powers

Thu, 11/25/2021 - 08:19

From the early days of UN peacekeeping to some of today’s most vital operations, Ethiopian men and women have played an important role in the UN’s efforts to advance peace in the world’s hot spots. The country’s participation in UN peacekeeping operations dates back to 1951, as part of the UN multinational force in the Korean War. Credit: United Nations

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Nov 25 2021 (IPS)

In Hollywood movies, the legendary Wild West was routinely portrayed with gunslingers, lawmen and villains—resulting in the ultimate showdown between the “good guys and the bad guys”.

Linda Thomson-Greenfield, US ambassador to the UN, told the Security Council early this month that the warring parties in the devastating 12-month-long civil war in Ethiopia involve the Ethiopian National Defense Forces, the Eritrean Defense Forces, the Amhara Special Forces, and the Tigrayan People’s Liberation Front.

And invoking a Hollywood metaphor, she remarked “there are no good guys here”.

The battle is perhaps best characterized as a showdown between one set of bad guys vs another set of bad guys –despite the fact that Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, who is currently leading the conflict, triggering accusations of war crimes, ethnic cleansing and genocide, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2019.

As in many ongoing conflicts and civil wars—whether in Afghanistan, Yemen, Myanmar, Syria, Palestine, Iraq or Ethiopia, the five veto-wielding permanent members of the Security Council, namely the US, UK, France, China and Russia, are sharply divided and protective of their allies — and their prolific arms markets.

But the conflict in Ethiopia has also resulted in a “monumental humanitarian disaster” where UN agencies and relief organizations are being hindered by the Ethiopian government from delivering food and medical supplies for political reasons.

Still, who are the merchants of death in this vicious conflict which has “already claimed tens of thousands of lives and displaced upwards of 2 million people,” and where rape is being increasingly used as a weapon of war.

The World Food Programme (WFP) is providing emergency food assistance to more than 800,000 people affected by conflict in the Afar and Amhara regions of northern Ethiopia. Credit: WFP/Claire Nevill

According to figures released by international aid organizations, tens of thousands of people are reportedly displaced in Amhara and Afar regions because of active fighting in multiple locations; about two million rendered homeless overall and about seven million urgently in need of humanitarian assistance.

Ambassador Thomson-Greenfield told delegates it is time for all parties to immediately halt hostilities and refrain from incitement to violence and divisiveness.

The bellicose rhetoric and inflammatory language on all sides of this conflict only aggravate intercommunal violence. It is time for the Government of Ethiopia, the TPLF, and all other groups to engage in immediate ceasefire negotiations without preconditions to find a sustainable path toward peace, she said.

And it is long past time for the Eritrean Defense Forces to withdraw from Ethiopian territory.

“It is time to put your weapons down. This war between angry, belligerent men – victimizing women and children – has to stop,” she declared.

But one lingering question remains: where are these weapons coming from?

China and Russia, two permanent members of the UN Security Council, have been identified as the primary arms suppliers to Ethiopia.

“The time when the Ethiopian National Defence Force (ENDF) almost solely relied on aging Soviet armament, mixed in with some of their more modern Russian brethrens, is long gone.”

“Over the past decade, Ethiopia has diversified its arms imports to include a number of other sources that presently include nations such as China, Germany, Ukraine and Belarus”.

Arguably more surprising is the presence of countries like Israel and the UAE in this list, which have supplied Ethiopia with a number of specialised weapon systems, according to a Blog posting in Oryx.

Alexandra Kuimova, Researcher, Arms Transfers Programme at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), told IPS in terms of volume (measured in SIPRI’s TIVs), Russia and Ukraine were the largest supplies of major arms to Ethiopia over the last two decades, accounting for 50 per cent and 33 per cent of Ethiopia’s imports in 2001-2020, respectively.

Deliveries from Russia included an estimated 18 second-hand combat helicopters and combat aircraft transferred to Ethiopia between 2003-2004.

The most recent deliveries included an estimated four 96K9 Pantsyr-S1 mobile air defence systems imported by Ethiopia in 2019. Deliveries from Ukraine included an estimated 215 second-hand T-72B tanks received by Ethiopia between 2011-2015.

She said there are also European states transferring major arms to Ethiopia since 2001. For example, Hungary supplied 12 second-hand Mi-24V/Mi-35 combat helicopters to Ethiopia in 2013. French Bastion vehicles delivered to the state in 2016 were financed by the US. Deliveries from Germany included 6 trainer aircraft in 2019.

Stephen Zunes, a professor of Politics and chair of Middle Eastern Studies at the University of San Francisco, who has written extensively on the politics of the Security Council, told IPS: “The perception of such conflicts as being simply an African problem ignores the fact that much of the killing would not be possible were it not for Western arms sent to the combatants.”

In most civil wars, however, small arms and light weapons were critically important, and were often backed up by major conventional weapons.

Since 2011, China has emerged as one of the largest arms suppliers to Ethiopia. Some of the known deliveries from China included a single HQ-64 air defence system delivered in 2013 and 4 PHL-03 300mm self-propelled multiple rocket launchers received by Ethiopia in 2018-2019.

Ethiopia also imported about 30 armoured personnel carriers from China between 2012 and 2014, said Kuimova.

Other media reports have provided information on the presence of Chinese Wing Loong and Iranian Mohajer-6 drones in Ethiopia. In addition, several media outlets claim that Turkey is negotiating arms deals on selling an identified number of Bayraktar TB-2 armed drones to Ethiopia.

Meanwhile, in one of the world’s worse conflict zones, namely Yemen, the air attacks are mostly by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, equipped with arms primarily from the US and UK, two permanent members of the Security Council.

According to SIPRIs Kuimova, there is not much known about transfers of major arms to Eritrea. She said it appears that the country has not received any major weapons since 2009 when the UN arms embargo on Eritrea came into force. The embargo was lifted in 2018, however, no deliveries of major arms have been documented since then.

Between 2001-2007, Eritrea’s imports of major arms included two second-hand modernized S-125-2T air defence systems supplied by Belarus in 2005. Bulgaria supplied 120 second-hand T-55 tanks in 2005. Between 2001-2004 Russia delivered 4 combat aircraft to Eritrea, and an estimated 80 Kornet-E anti-tank missiles between 2001 and 2005. Deliveries from Ukraine included 2 second-hand combat aircraft.

“We are currently collecting, analyzing and verifying open-source information on deliveries of major arms to both Ethiopia and Eritrea over the last year,” she said.

But lack of transparency in armaments in the cases of both importer states and exporters make it difficult to determine the order and delivery dates and the exact numbers and types of weapons transferred over the last years.

For example, Ethiopia has not been submitting reports on its imports of arms to the UN Register of Conventional Arms (UNROCA), the main UN transparency instrument on conventional weapons, since 1997.

And China, one of the largest exporters to Ethiopia over the last decade, stopped submitting reports to UNROCA in 2018. In addition, China has not reported information on its arms transfers to Ethiopia in the previous years.

Categories: Africa

Wave

Wed, 11/24/2021 - 19:01

By Mohammad Rakibul Hasan
DHAKA, Bangladesh, Nov 24 2021 (IPS)

Rising sea levels, extreme climate conditions such as severe storms faced by Bangladesh, one of the primary victims of anthropogenic climate change, the country is set to be the worst sufferer from climate change by 2025, far worse than any other country.

Bangladesh, with a population of over 166 million, is imperilled due to its position between two key rivers, the Brahmaputra and Ganges. Many regions in the country are also prone to drought. As a developing country Bangladesh does not have enough financial resources for protective or reparative measures.

The photo story ‘Wave’ by Mohammad Rakibul Hasan, an award wining Bangladeshi photo journalist, captures images of people who face this crisis as a human problem. Bangladesh is a small, overpopulated country in Southeast Asia with primarily an agro-based economy. Besides, climatic hazards like cyclones, floods, drought, soil salinity, and river erosions are more frequent nowadays. These two facts contribute to the increasing number of climate refugees forced to migrate to the cities, worsening the socio-economic problems. The barrages [1] built across the rivers inside the border of India have resulted in both flooding and drying of the river beds in Bangladesh. Major rivers like Padma, Jamuna, Meghna, Brahmaputra, and smaller rivers in the coastal region erode when the water level rises. Due to prolonged droughts, the temperature is increasing every year at an alarming rate. Sadly, people can’t adapt to this rapidly changing climate and are on the brink of socio-economic insecurity. The waves, whether present or absent, don’t bring any hope for these people. When they hit, they take away the valuable land and lives. When the waves are gone, nothing is left but parched, cracked riverbeds.

[1] A report on the impact of Farakka barrage on the human fabric. Manisha Banerjee, on behalf of the South Asian Network on Dams, Rivers, and People (SANDRP).
http://sandrp.in/dams/impct_frka_wcd.pdf

The two rivers Jamuna and Brahmaputra are surrounded by Islampur, a sub-district of Jamalpur, one of the most climate-vulnerable places in Bangladesh. The Jamuna River is the ferocious, devastating and eating village after village by eroding its banks. Islampur town is at risk; the protecting dam is not built sustainably. Islampur, Jamalpur, Bangladesh. Credit: Mohammad Rakibul Hasan

Dohar, a sub-district of Dhaka, is bordered by Padma River. The mighty Padma during the summer behaves like a monster and eats its surrounded lands, and even changes the usual floating path. It creates enormous erosion and displaces inhabitants on both sides of the river. Due to the change in climate, floods cause environmental degradation. Dohar, Dhaka, Bangladesh. Credit: Mohammad Rakibul Hasan

People are removing the remaining structures and belongings as the River Padma is about to swallow the area. River Padma at Mawa is aggressive in the summer and very often it erodes massively, displacing people and their belongings. Mawa, Dhaka, Bangladesh. Credit: Mohammad Rakibul Hasan

Women, children and the elderlyare the most vulnerable due to the climate crisis. In Islampur, during floods, low-income households in the villages suffer the most. A woman is in search of food relief to feed her children. Islampur, Jamalpur, Bangladesh. Credit: Mohammad Rakibul Hasan

The vast area outside Rajshahi City is flooded on both sides of the Padma River banks. People have been experiencing adverse calamities; the change in ecology affects adapting to the new norms of hot weather. Rajshahi, Bangladesh. Credit: Mohammad Rakibul Hasan

People are trying to adapt to extreme climate conditions. Many places of Dohar, Dhaka, are washed away and many people moved to other cities while many others still live there as they have nowhere to go except to move back slowly away from the river. Dohar, Dhaka, Bangladesh. Credit: Mohammad Rakibul Hasan

The frequent floods across Rajshahi division by the River Padma are causing massive economic loss, displacement, and health hazards. The whole ecology and biodiversity have changed, and even animals are trying to adapt to extreme climate conditions. Rajshahi, Bangladesh. Credit: Mohammad Rakibul Hasan

The River Jamuna has caused floods in the whole territory of Islampur, and villagers are waiting for flood relief. They had to shift their houses and belongings. Many of them were starving as relief was insufficient. Islampur, Jamalpur, Bangladesh. Credit: Mohammad Rakibul Hasan

The Climate Crisis is leading to school drop outs. The rivers swallow up many schools; children with their families had to move from place to place with no sustainable livelihoods near the big rivers. Islampur, Jamalpur, Bangladesh. Credit: Mohammad Rakibul Hasan

Frequent changes of the riverscapes are problematic for the fishermen as they have to shift their homes. The village markets get moved too and the villagers go to different places to secure their livelihoods. Climate Crisis makes it harder for everyone in terms of its economic impact and other socio-geographical effects.
Mawa, Dhaka, Bangaldesh. Credit: Mohammad Rakibul Hasan

Categories: Africa

Ongoing Pandemic Push Africa’s Children Out of School

Wed, 11/24/2021 - 10:44

Quality, safe, gender-responsive and inclusive education for Africa’s children increasingly out of reach, say experts. Credit: Joyce Chimbi/IPS

By Joyce Chimbi
Nairobi, Nov 24 2021 (IPS)

Kenya’s secondary schools’ administration has been in the eye of a storm since schools reopened in October 2021. Since then, students have set on fire 35 schools and counting, forcing the government to announce an unscheduled break from school – ahead of the planned December 23 closing.

Sarah Kitana, a secondary school teacher in Kathiani, Machokos County, tells IPS that fewer students are in classrooms after a year of COVID-19-driven disruptions and the ensuing prolonged out-of-school period. This is even more evident in rural areas.

“Those that returned are finding it very difficult to cope with the new fast-paced learning to make up for the lost time. Secondary school students take on eight to 13 subjects. Some schools have their students waking up at 3.00 am to be in class by 4.30 am and to end the day at 10.45 pm,” she says.

“These are efforts to help bring some normalcy to a disrupted, restructured and shortened academic calendar. It will take up to January 2023 for Kenya’s school calendar to regain some normalcy.”

Pre-COVID Africa and more so, sub-Saharan Africa was already off-track to achieve Sustainable Development Goal 4 to “ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all.”

In 2019, UNESCO’s Institute for Statistics indicated that of all regions, sub-Saharan Africa has the highest rates of education exclusion, as, over one-fifth of children between ages six and 11, one-third of 12 to 14-year-olds and 60 percent of those aged 15 to 17 were not in school.

In July 2021, UNICEF announced that at least 40 percent of all school-aged children across Eastern and Southern Africa were out of school due to COVID-19 and other pre-pandemic challenges facing the persistently fragile education system.

UN data shows there are at least 15 countries with active armed conflict in sub-Saharan Africa. Civil war, adolescent girls’ pregnancies, child marriages, access challenges due to disabilities, climate change-induced displacements, COVID-19 economic shocks will only increase the number of out of school children, says Josephat Kimathi, an educationist at Kenya’s Ministry of Education.

Missing out on education can have lifelong impacts. Save the Children’s July 2020 forecasts suggested that children, at that time out-of-school due to pandemic-driven school closures, could lose out on $10 trillion in earnings.

In 16 out of Kenya’s 47 counties, a baseline survey by UNICEF found that more than 27,500 children with disabilities were out of school.

Not only has an entire generation’s education disrupted in the history of humanity, Kimathi says quality, safe, gender-responsive and inclusive education for Africa’s children is increasingly out of reach.

“In comparison, Kenya is a fairly stable country. But the fact that 1.8 million children and adolescents aged six to 17 years are out of school. Another 700,000 small children, aged four to five years, cannot access early childhood interactive opportunities to prepare them for entry into primary school speaks volumes about less stable nations,” Kimathi tells IPS.

One in four children in Africa live in conflict zones. A new analysis by Save the Children of 12 countries at extreme risk of increased school dropouts show that apart from Afghanistan, Pakistan and Yemen, the rest are African countries, including Cote d’Ivoire, Guinea, Liberia, Mali, Chad, Niger, Mauritania, Nigeria and Senegal.

Across Africa, Kimathi says, the poorest children in rural, drought-stricken, minority and marginalized communities will suffer the most from the devastating effects of the pandemic.

Grace Gakii, a Nairobi-based gender expert, says the pandemic is already pushing even more girls out of Africa’s education system. At least one million girls in Africa may never return to school, according to a 2021 report by the Mo Ibrahim Foundation.

Pre-COVID, nine million girls between six and 11 years, compared to six million boys of the same age, living in sub-Saharan Africa will never go to school, according to UNESCO.

Gakii speaks of escalating challenges in arid, semi-arid and pastoralist communities to enrol and retain girls in school and fears losing gains made.

Elangata Enterit boarding primary school in Kenya’s pastoralist community of Narok South is a perfect example of success. In 2007, the school did not have a single girl sit for the crucial and compulsory Kenya Certificate of Primary Education (KCPE).

With intervention, the number of girls sitting for KCPE rose to 30 students in 2016 and continues to grow.

Despite 42 countries in Africa providing free and compulsory primary school education and the Africa Union Member States striving to invest at least 20 percent of their domestic budget in education, before COVID-19, UNESCO data shows that 100 million children were out of school in sub-Saharan Africa.

In July 2020, Save the Children estimated that the pandemic-driven “recession will leave a shortfall of $77 billion in education spending in some of the poorest countries in the world over the next 18 months.”

Kimathi says that Africa will need context-specific education plans to help build resilience against shocks to an already weak education system to get back on track. It will also need money to implement the action plans. Finally, it will require proactive measures to keep children safe and systems to track and ensure that the continent stays on course.

He lauds Kenya’s efforts to accelerate the implementation of the right to education for all children.

This includes the ongoing ‘Operation Come to School Programme’ targeting 16 rural Counties notorious for out-of-school children.

This, he says, is critical to achieving SDG 4, especially in light of dire predictions by UNESCO estimating that 50 percent of children in sub-Saharan Africa will not complete secondary school education by 2030.

Categories: Africa

Feminism Weaponized Against Trans People

Wed, 11/24/2021 - 07:30

LZ is an advocate for women, trans people, and gender minorities in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. Amidst an “alarming rise in hateful discourse” against transgender people globally, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) warned last month that this community still lacks safeguards against abuse. Credit: UN Women/Dar Al Mussawir

By Cleo Kambugu and Lori Adelman
NEW YORK / KAMPALA, Nov 24 2021 (IPS)

There is a resurgence of anti-trans sentiment right now. It’s not only Dave Chapelle’s toxic rants in his most recent Netflix special: we see it across social, political and cultural arenas including in JK Rowling’s ongoing embrace of trans exclusionary radical feminists (TERFs); the introduction of bills designed to harm trans kids in the US; Uganda’s Sexual Offenses bill, which violates international human rights; and “gender-critical” academics like Kathleen Stock profiting from their inflammatory rhetoric.

These recent examples are alarming, and their impact is devastating for trans people globally. But transphobia is not new. And we won’t make true progress on gender liberation until we address it head-on, including by reclaiming the feminist movement as unabashedly pro-trans.

Cis and trans people’s liberation are linked. The same logic that drives the policing of trans people’s genders also reinforces the anti-feminist notion that a woman dressing “provocatively” is more deserving of violence; that a Black woman’s natural hair renders her less professional or deserving of respect; or that cis men shouldn’t display emotion or risk being perceived as weak.

Many transphobic arguments promote a kind of reproductive essentialism that could be ripped straight out of a page from the Handmaid’s Tale, insisting, for example, that only people who menstruate and/or have a womb are women.

Beyond reducing women down to their bodies in ways that align deeply with patriarchy, such an approach also misgenders cis women who are infertile or can’t menstruate.

Cleo Kambugu

On the flip side, fighting for the self-determination and bodily autonomy of trans people can help us build a stronger feminist movement that fights and wins on issues like defunding the police/abolitionism, promoting expansive, family-friendly policies and practices, ending workplace discrimination, and gaining reproductive justice for all.

Queer and trans activism can help to defy and free us from deeply engrained patriarchal ideals about what is “normal” or “natural” for women, men, and all of society. And dismantling the gender binary can also help us question other systems that aren’t serving us and imagine a different, better world.

Feminist abolitionist Angela Davis has summed it up thus: “The trans community has taught us how to challenge that which is totally accepted as normal…if it is possible to challenge the gender binary, then we can certainly, effectively, resist prisons, and jails, and police [and on and on].”

Despite these linkages, feminism is too commonly being invoked not as a platform for mobilizing in support of trans rights but as a cover for bigotry. The feminist movement is increasingly co-opted by organized and well-resourced opposition to trans rights, including (majority white women) TERFs who generate swells of attention and sympathy for exploring “debates” like whether trans women are forcing themselves upon lesbians (they’re not) or transitioning too late to deserve our support (also, no).

Even beyond TERFs, plenty of feminists participate in microaggressions; erasures of the trans experience; invasive inquiries about trans people’s bodies; and more. Such ideas and behaviors are entertained in otherwise progressive spaces because they are ostensibly coming from self-identified feminists or voices that have traditionally supported the rights of the marginalized like Chapelle’s own. This has to stop.

If trans lives and identities have long been and continue to be a politically potent rallying cry for people who seem not to care very much for trans people, we need a counter narrative urgently from folks who feel differently.

Lori Adelman

Following the release of The Closer and Netflix’s refusal to remove it as well as their firing of B Pagels Minor, a Black trans employee, for their organizing around the issue, there have been a deluge of articles talking about trans people.

It’s rare to hear from trans people themselves who are fighting not only for survival, tolerance, and visibility — but for the space to thrive. But it’s also too rare to hear from non-trans feminists reclaiming the movement and centering our trans sisters in the work.

Feminists must forcefully counter transphobia and especially the pernicious narrative that we are pitted against each other in the quest for liberation. Affirming trans women as women and trans men as men is a good start, but feminists and all progressives must get beyond tolerance to extend radical support and solidarity to our trans siblings including with funding and across borders.

Nobel Prize winner Elie Wiesel once said “The opposite of love is not hate, it’s indifference.” Trolls, TERFS and bigots monopolize so much attention when it comes to trans people and their rights in part because there is no similarly organized and funded corollary within feminism advocating for an alternative view.

This silence is deafening, and directly enables and empowers TERFs and their agenda.

Feminism has its roots in gender liberation, not policing. If we cut our chains, we are free, but when we cut our roots, we die. Just as they would fight misogyny, feminists also need to fight back against transphobia in culture and media (which has real world consequences), in the law, in academia, and in politics.

In the words of the great Angela Davis, feminism should be capacious. A feminist who uses hateful logic to deny trans people rights and resources isn’t a feminist at all. But until we speak up, we will be spoken for.

Cleo Kambugu is a Trans activist, Director of Programmes at UHAI EASHRI and the protagonist of The Pearl of Africa. She is based in Uganda.

Lori Adelman is a Vice President at Global Fund for Women and co-hosts the feminist podcast Cringewatchers. She is based in New York.

Categories: Africa

No Vaccine for the Pandemic of Violence Against Women in Latin America

Wed, 11/24/2021 - 02:35

Despite restrictions due to covid, women from various feminist, youth and civil society groups gathered in the central Plaza San Martin in Lima and marched several blocks demanding justice and protesting impunity for violence against women, on Nov. 25, 2020. CREDIT: Mariela Jara/IPS

By Mariela Jara
LIMA, Nov 24 2021 (IPS)

Despite significant legal advances in Latin American countries to address gender-based violence, it continues to be a serious challenge, especially in a context of social crisis aggravated by the covid-19 pandemic, which hits women especially hard.

“Existing laws and regulations have not stopped the violence, including femicide (gender-based murders). There is a kind of paralysis at the Latin American level, on the part of the State and society, where we don’t want to take much notice of what is happening, and women are blamed,” said María Pessina Itriago, a professor and researcher and the director of the Gender Observatory at UTE University in Quito.

Pessina, a Venezuelan who lives in the Ecuadorian capital and spoke to IPS by telephone from the university, said violence against women is ageold, and “we are still considered second-class citizens who are not recognized as social subjects.” And this dates way back – to the slaughter of “witches” in Europe in the Middle Ages, for example, she added."It hasn’t been easy to achieve my independence, have my own income and raise my children. I have suffered humiliation and slander, but I knew who I was and what I wanted: to live in peace and have a home without violence." -- Teresa Farfán

“The genocide of women is something that has not stopped and now in the context of the pandemic has become more serious. I believe that, in reality, the pandemic that we have experienced for many years is precisely this, that of gender violence,” she remarked.

Her reflection came ahead of the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, which is celebrated on Thursday, Nov. 25 and kicks off 16 days of activism up until Dec. 10, World Human Rights Day.

The World Health Organization (WHO) and U.N. Women warned in March that globally one in three women suffers gender-based violence. And that the problem, far from diminishing, had grown during the covid pandemic and the restrictions and lockdowns put in place to curb it.

The study “Global and regional estimates of violence against women: prevalence and health effects of intimate partner violence and non-partner sexual violence”, which analyzed data from 2000 to 2018, is the most far-reaching produced by WHO on the topic.

The report, published in March of this year, stresses that violence against women is “pervasive and devastating” and affects one in three women with varying degrees of severity.

For Latin America and the Caribbean, the study puts the prevalence rate of violence among women aged 15 to 49 at 25 percent.

María Pessina Itriago is a professor, researcher and director of the Gender Observatory at UTE University in Quito. CREDIT: Courtesy of María Pessina

A regional epidemic during the global pandemic

With respect to femicides, the Gender Equality Observatory of the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) reports that 4640 women died from this cause in 2019. The organization also called attention to the intensification of violence against girls and women during the pandemic.

The panorama is compounded by the gendered impacts of the pandemic on employment, which reduces women’s economic autonomy and makes them more vulnerable to violence.

According to the International Labor Organization (ILO), the region of the Americas experienced the largest reduction in female employment during covid, a situation that will not be reversed in 2021.

Peruvian sociologist Cecilia Olea, of the non-governmental Articulación Feminista Marcosur (AFM), which is made up of 17 organizations from 11 countries – nine South American nations, Mexico and the Dominican Republic – said there have been significant advances in the last 30 years in the fight against gender violence.

Among them, she cited the fact that States recognize their responsibility for the problem and no longer consider it a private matter.

She also pointed out that Latin America is the only region in the world with a specific human rights treaty on the issue: the Inter-American Convention on the Prevention, Punishment and Eradication of Violence against Women, known as the Convention of Belem do Para after the Brazilian city where it was approved in 1994, which established women’s right to live free of violence and set the framework for national laws to address this violation of women’s rights.

However, Olea said in an interview with IPS in Lima that the legal and regulatory framework has not been accompanied by political strategies to change the social imaginary of masculinity and femininity, which would provide incentives to modify the culture of inequality between men and women; on the contrary, she said, the violence forms part of a culture of impunity.

“Males feel free to oppress and governments are failing in their responsibility to guarantee comprehensive sex education throughout the educational system, in primary school and technical and higher education; this program exists by law but implementation is deficient due to lack of training for teachers and the opportunity to train people in new forms of masculinity is lost, for example,” she remarked.

Olea, a feminist activist and one of the founders of the AFM, said that not only do governments have a responsibility to prevent, address and eradicate gender violence, but there is also an urgent need to ensure health services; justice with due diligence, as the current delays revictimize and inhibit the use of regulatory instruments; and budgets to correct the current shortfall that prevents a better response to this social problem.

Peruvian sociologist Cecilia Olea, a member of the Articulación Feminista Marcosur (AFM), which brings together feminist networks from 11 Latin American countries, takes part in a demonstration outside the Peruvian Health Ministry in Lima, demanding reproductive rights. CREDIT: Mariela Jara/IPS

Cultural change in the new generations

Raised in a machista home, Pessina rebelled against gender norms from an early age and her constant questioning led her to come up with a new definition of how a good person should act.

“I believe that good people do not tolerate injustice or inequality of any kind, which is why I became a feminist about 15 years ago and I am very happy to be able to contribute a grain of sand with my students,” she said.

Pessina said the challenges to progress in the eradication of violence against women are to provide public policies with a budget to make them work; and to achieve an alliance between the State, civil society organizations and feminist movements to create a road map that incorporates excluded voices, such as those of indigenous women.

“The places where they can file reports are not near their towns, they have to go to other towns and when they get there they often cannot communicate in their own language because of the colonialist view that everything must be in Spanish, and there are no interpreters,” she complained.

Another part of the problem, she said, is that “the State itself blocks complaints and keeps these people marginalized, and they are not taken into account in the countries’ statistics on violence.”

The third challenge was to work with the media in Latin America because of their role in the construction of imaginaries, in order to generate the figure of the ombudsperson focused on gender to ensure that information is treated in a way that contributes to equality and does not reproduce discriminatory stereotypes.

Pessina said that what is needed is a cultural transformation driven by the new generations, in favor of gender equality.

“We see more young feminist women activists mobilizing to make it happen and they will make a turnaround; not now, but maybe in a decade we will be talking about other things. These new generations not only of women but of men, I think they are our hope for change,” she said.

Quechua Indian woman Teresa Farfán, in the foreground, stands with two other rural women with whom she shares work and experiences in her Andes highlands community in Peru. She is convinced that telling her personal story of gender-based violence can help other women in this situation to see that it is possible to escape from abuse. CREDIT: Courtesy of Teresa Farfán

“I wanted a home without violence”

Teresa Farfán reflects the lives of many Latin American women who are victims of machista violence, but with a difference: she left behind the circle of gender violence that so often takes place in the home itself.

She is 35 years old and describes herself as a peasant farmer, a single mother and a survivor of an attempted femicide. She was born and lives in the town of Lucre, an hour and a half drive from the city of Cuzco, the capital of ancient Peru, in the center of the country.

Like most of the local population, she is dedicated to family farming.

Nine years ago she separated from the father of her children who, she says, did not let her move forward.

“He wanted me just to take care of the cows, but I wanted to learn, to get training, and that made him angry. He even beat me and it was horrible, and at the police station they ignored my complaint. He kicked me out of the house and thought that out of fear I would come back, but I took my children and left,” she told IPS during a day of sharing with women in her community.

At her moment of need she didn’t receive the support of her family, who urged her to return, “because a woman must do what her husband says.”

But she did have supportive friends who gave her a hand, both inside and outside her community, as part of a sisterhood of Quechua indigenous peasant women like her in the Peruvian highlands.

“It hasn’t been easy to achieve my independence, have my own income and raise my children. I have suffered humiliation and slander, but I knew who I was and what I wanted: to live in peace and have a home without violence,” she said. A wish that remains elusive for millions of Latin American women.

Excerpt:

This article is part of IPS coverage of the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women on Nov. 25, which kicks off 16 days of activism on the issue around the world.

Categories: Africa

The Good, the Bad, the Ugly: What Went Wrong During India’s COVID-19 Response

Tue, 11/23/2021 - 15:25

During the pandemic, there was little support from the government when it came to making funding and resources available to the nonprofits that were working closely with communities. | Picture courtesy: Digital Empowerment Foundation

By External Source
Nov 23 2021 (IPS)

From its devastating economic impact and the migrant crisis to the startling death toll, the COVID-19 pandemic in India unfurled one crisis after the other. The glaring gaps in our system, which had always been there, became even more prominent during the pandemic. There is one question at the back of everyone’s mind that still remains unanswered: What went wrong?

No entity can operate in isolation, be it the government, the private sector, or civil society. During times of crisis, the government must ensure that all cogs in the wheel continue to work effectively. Civil society—local communities and nonprofits—must enable delivery of public services up until the last mile. And, finally, the private sector needs to step up in terms of financial resources and leveraging of networks and influence.

Nonprofits in 13 states and union territories were able to provide meals to more people during the lockdown than the concerned state governments - Would a collaborative relationship between the government and the social sector have aided a better response to the COVID-19 crisis?

However, when the pandemic was at its peak in India, these three entities failed to come together and work collaboratively to cushion the devastating effects of COVID-19 on the people.

The missing link between the government and the social sector

According to our village-level digital entrepreneurs in the SoochnaPreneur programme at Digital Empowerment Foundation (DEF), the four essential systems that were massively hit by the pandemic were education, healthcare, finance, and citizen entitlements. When the pandemic was raging, our SoochnaPreneurs reported that all people wanted was food and rations, a device to access online education for their children, the ability to talk to a doctor or health worker to learn how to keep themselves safe, and to make some money to meet their daily needs from the confines of their homes. Ironically, given the stringent nature of the lockdowns, all this needed access to the internet.

However, across the country, lack of access to resources, high levels of digital illiteracy, and the deepening digital divide exacerbated by the pandemic acted as major roadblocks in India’s COVID-19 response. Even as the government announced relief packages—food grains and cash payments—the mechanisms of delivery to beneficiaries at the last mile were unclear.

For instance, common service centres (CSCs), which are supposed to work as access points that enable digital delivery of services such as banking and finance across rural India, were mostly non-functional. During the pandemic, the government claimed that people could use their local CSCs to access various digital services including telehealth and registration for vaccinations. However, like any other office, shop, or business centre, almost all CSCs had closed their operations due to the strict lockdown rules in various states.

With government services not always being available, the social sector stepped up. Whether it was making access to digital tools and digital literacy a priority or the distribution of essentials, nonprofits across the country filled in the gaps. According to one report, nonprofits in 13 states and union territories were able to provide meals to more people during the lockdown than the concerned state governments.

The question that arises is: Would a collaborative relationship between the government and the social sector have aided a better response to the COVID-19 crisis?

For instance, the distribution of food grains could have been made efficient from the get-go if, rather than having long queues of people waiting at shops, organisations with the digital know-how had been allowed to deliver ration at the doorsteps of people with a biometric machine in hand. This synchronisation and management of resources is something that should have been under the government’s purview, while a partnership with civil society organisations could have helped with execution and delivery. Considering that hundreds of thousands of nonprofits working at the grassroots were tasked as frontline workers, the government could have tapped into this already existing infrastructure and network.

The lack of trust between the social sector and the government didn’t help. During the pandemic, there was little support from the government when it came to making funding and resources available to the nonprofits that were working closely with communities. For instance, while local nonprofits worked as service providers during the pandemic, funds lying with local government bodies could have been diverted to their operations to successfully navigate the panic-like situation brought on by the first lockdown when everything came to a halt.

The Foreign Contribution (Regulation) Amendment Bill, 2020, also imposed difficult conditions on what could be considered eligible expenses for nonprofit organisations, thus creating more obstacles in raising and distributing crucial aid. Even as the prime minister called for nonprofits to step in, many organisations found their hands tied due to certain rules imposed in the middle of the pandemic.

Moreover, during the first lockdown, there was a diversion of CSR funds to PM Cares. At present, not only is there a lack of transparency on how these funds have been deployed, but this diversion of funds has also been a huge blow to nonprofits who have been struggling to look after their own employees and their organisations while providing relief to communities on the ground.

The private sector did not step up either

There was lack of communication and collaboration across business, and a piecemeal approach was adopted. Industry associations could have encouraged CEOs and company heads to interact with each other and solve issues on a larger scale. For instance, industry bodies such as the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII), Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce & Industry (FICCI), and Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry of India (ASSOCHAM) could have deployed their resources to help manage the mass migration of workers from industrial towns and urban centres more systematically and humanely.

In pre-pandemic times, CSR within corporates would ask nonprofits to work in areas where they have manufacturing facilities and offer localised support. Corporates could have extended this reasoning during the lockdown as well and enlisted the support of their nonprofit partners to help those workers and informal sector migrants who were homebound, while providing the nonprofits with the required monetary and infrastructure support.

There was also a reluctance from corporates to innovate in times of need. Since DEF works on digital integration to fight poverty, we reached out to many CSR funders to provide funds for buying smartphones, tablets, projectors, and other electronic devices to provide digital infrastructure in the villages. However, it took us more than a year to convince some of them to help us offer support to people with no digital access and empowerment through our Digital Daan initiative.

It is important to contextualise the social and economic support at the time of disaster and that can happen only if there is a relationship of trust between the stakeholders.

What the social sector could have done better

The onset of the pandemic brought with it uncertainty for most nonprofits. In addition to lack of funding and overstretched resources, many nonprofits had to take up the role of relief workers and divert efforts from their primary objectives, which would have been domestic violence, child protection, water and sanitation, and so on.

One important factor missing in this entire conversation was the inability of many nonprofits to adopt digital tools to improve operations, efficiency, and delivery of services. While webinars became a recurring feature in their calendars, thus creating a space for knowledge sharing, grassroots nonprofits were often not a part of these dialogues. Smaller nonprofits were also overwhelmed with work on the ground due to the needs of their communities coupled with inadequate support from either their funders or governments; hence, many of them had little time or resources to think or build their capacity to go digital.

The pandemic did however push several nonprofits to adopt digital tools for operations and delivery of services. Larger nonprofits with their own networks, adequate funding, and a strong digital presence were able to leverage digital platforms. However, many of the smaller nonprofits and those at the frontlines had to innovate to reach beneficiaries digitally.

Moreover, with the government aggressively pushing Digital India—from telehealth to online education and even the vaccine roll-out—it became imperative for organisations to incorporate digital and technological solutions in their everyday operations. Many nonprofits therefore had to work on building in-house digital capacity and infrastructure during the pandemic, while also serving their communities and raising funds.

In the case of mobilising money, digital platforms could have been a powerful tool for the sector, and they did help many nonprofits raise funds. However, this was not the case for the entire social sector.

According to the India Giving Report 2021 by the Charities Aid Foundation, individual donations were at an all-time high during the pandemic. Crowdfunding platforms such as GiveIndia provided people easy access to donate to various causes. However, this giving may not have been as diversified—the absence of reliable information online acted as a barrier for many givers while donating. Therefore, givers may have chosen to stick to organisations they trusted. And many local nonprofits with limited digital know-how had to rely on local giving or local resource mobilisation.

For example, our colleague Mohamed Arif, whom we lost in the second wave, was in charge of DEF’s digital centre at Nuh, Haryana. He was digitally savvy and active on social media and was thus able to raise approximately INR 25 lakh (in cash and food grains, and other essentials) through his personal Facebook profile and networks.

However, while the pandemic did push many nonprofits to incorporate technology-led solutions, I find that urgency dwindling again. Digital empowerment of the sector requires sustained efforts wherein organisations put aside certain funds every year for digitally upskilling their employees, maintaining digital collaterals, and modifying their approach to include technology in their everyday operations.

I see the pandemic as an inflection point in the future of nonprofits and civil society as a whole. Which organisations survive this period of transition will largely depend on how well they can adapt to these changing times. According to me, one of the key changes the sector will have to make to stay relevant is to become more digitally aligned.

Osama Manzar, the author of this article, is the founder and director of Digital Empowerment Foundation. He is a Senior Ashoka Fellow, a Chevening Scholar, and has served on several boards such as the Association for Affordable Internet, Association of Progressive Communications, World Summit Awards, and Down To Earth. He specialises in creating digital models for poverty alleviation and has travelled to more than 10,000 villages. Get in touch with him on Twitter: @osamamanzar

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

Categories: Africa

Pages

THIS IS THE NEW BETA VERSION OF EUROPA VARIETAS NEWS CENTER - under construction
the old site is here
Copy & Drop - Can`t find your favourite site? Send us the RSS or URL to the following address: info(@)europavarietas(dot)org.

You are here

Africa - INTER PRESS SERVICE

Pages