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Secretary-General António Guterres addresses the Conference on the Establishment of a Middle East Zone Free of Nuclear Weapons and Other Weapons of Mass Destruction, which took place November 29 through December 3. Credit: UN Photo/Eskinder Debebe

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Dec 8 2021 (IPS)

Israel’s nuclear presence in the Middle East is best characterized as “the elephant in the room” -– an obvious fact intentionally ignored with deafening silence.

A Wall Street Journal cartoon, amplified the idiom, when it depicted a group of animals huddled together in the jungle with the elephant complaining: “I don’t know why they keep ignoring me when I am in the room.”

Nobody wants to openly discuss Israel as a nuclear power because it is a politically-sensitive issue, particularly in the United States.

And Israel has remained tight-lipped in the company of the world’s eight other nuclear powers– US, UK, France, China, Russia, India, Pakistan and North Korea— and it has never formally declared itself a nuclear power.

In an op-ed piece in the New York Times last August, Peter Beinart, a Professor of Journalism and Political Science at the City University of New York, wrote that US attempts at “feigning ignorance about Israeli nuclear weapons makes a mockery of America’s efforts at non-proliferation.”

Last December, President-elect Joe Biden warned that if Iran goes nuclear, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Egypt might go nuclear too — “and the last goddamn thing we need in that part of the world is a build-up of nuclear capability.”

But like most US politicians and presidents, including Barack Obama, Biden too believes that Israel’s nuclear weapons are best ignored—and never challenged in public.

Back in 2000, says Professor Beinart, when Obama was asked by a reporter if he knew of any country in the Middle East with nuclear weapons, he said: “I don’t want to speculate.”

It is time for the Biden administration to tell the truth, Beinart wrote.

The nuclear weapons gamesmanship in the militarily and politically volatile Middle East goes in circles and semi-circles reaching a point of no return.

If Israel gets away with its nukes, the Iranians argue, “why shouldn’t we go nuclear too”, while the Saudis, the Egyptians and Turks warn: “If Iran goes nuclear, we will follow too”.

The Busher nuclear power plant in Iran. Talks about the country’s nuclear deal have restarted. Credit: IAEA/Paolo Contri

Meanwhile, since 1967, five nuclear-weapon-free zones (NWFZ) have been established worldwide — in Latin America and the Caribbean, South Pacific, Southeast Asia, Africa and Central Asia.

But such a weapons-free zone in the conflict-ridden Middle East continues to remain elusive.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres points out that the established five zones include 60 percent of the UN’s 193 Member States– and cover almost all of the Southern Hemisphere.

Guterres welcomed the successful conclusion of the Second Session of the “Conference on the Establishment of a Middle East Zone Free of Nuclear Weapons and Other Weapons of Mass Destruction,” which took place November 29 to December 3, and congratulated the participating States “on their constructive engagement and the decision to establish a working committee to continue deliberations during the intersessional period”.

Dr M.V. Ramana, Professor and Simons Chair in Disarmament, Global and Human Security at the School of Public Policy and Global Affairs (SPPGA), University of British Columbia, Vancouver, told IPS establishing a nuclear weapons free zone in the Middle East is not only a major challenge but it is also important.

The challenge is primarily due to Israel’s refusal to not just discuss its decades-old nuclear weapons program but even acknowledge it, while at the same time attacking countries like Iran over even its nuclear energy-related programs, he argued.

Being backed by the United States, which adopts one rule for Israel and another rule for other countries, it is very difficult to involve Israel, said Dr Ramana, who is also Director of the Liu Institute for Global Issues and the Acting Director of the Centre for India and South Asia Research (CISAR) in the Institute of Asian Research.

The only way to change this state of affairs is for efforts like this to be mounted. Even if they are not successful, they at least raise the issue publicly, Dr Ramana declared.

Hillel Schenker, Co-Editor, Palestine-Israel Journal, told IPS there is no question that a Nuclear and Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) Free Zone in the Middle East is in the interests of all the peoples of the region.

However, the issue of a WMD Free Zone is simply not on the political or public agenda in Israel, whose leaders and people find it very convenient to be the only presumed nuclear power in the region, he noted.

“And it also doesn’t appear to be on the agenda of the Egyptians who used to be the primary advocates for the Zone.”

Right now, he said, the main possible step to advancing towards this goal is a successful conclusion of the talks being held in Vienna for a revival of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), the nuclear agreement with Iran and the Western powers.

Although Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett and Foreign Minister Yair Lapid have expressed opposition to a renewed deal, many senior figures in the Israeli security establishment support it, and believe it was a major mistake for former Prime Minister Netanyahu to have urged former US President Trump to withdraw from the JCPOA, he added.

If the talks are not successful, and Iran moves forward towards becoming a nuclear threshold state, it could produce a very dangerous chain reaction which might motivate Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Turkey and perhaps others to also try to go nuclear, seriously destabilizing the entire region, said Schenker.

Abdulla Shahid of the Maldives, President of the UN General Assembly, said nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation regimes remain pivotal in ensuring that such an intolerable reality never manifests. And Nuclear-Weapon-Free Zones are crucial to the success of disarmament and non-proliferation regimes, he said.

Like other regions, he argued, the geopolitics of the Middle East are complex. Reaching just settlements that will satisfy all parties requires sound diplomacy and negotiations based on good faith.

The addition of nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction to the region’s politics will complicate an already challenging process, undermining trust and portending existential consequences.

It was in recognition of this that the General Assembly mandated a nuclear-weapons-free Middle East back in 1974, he said last week.

 

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By Anila Noor, Eliasib Amet Herrera and Shaza Alrihawi
Displaced, Dec 7 2021 (IPS)

Over the past two years, the global refugee response has been tested. The world is being rocked by the greatest pandemic in over a century, while waves of refugees have fled from Afghanistan, Myanmar, Belarus, and Tigray. So, where do we go from here? Next week, the international community will convene to take stock of the successes and shortcomings of the Global Compact on Refugees (GCR), a unique multilateral mechanism built to ensure the protection of one of the most vulnerable populations. This marquee Compact is up for review, but unlike other review processes, the participation of the people whose lives are shaped by the decisions to be made in the review process will be marginal. Unfortunately, only 1 in 50 of the invited attendees at the UNHCR High-Level Official’s Meeting (HLOM) to discuss the GCR are refugees.

Anila Noor

Decades of sideling refugees in discussions around migration and policies that impact their lives and futures has resulted in many failed policies. Refugees have been deprived of civil and political rights – and are therefore regularly excluded from multilateral arenas by their host country and/or their country of origin. The exclusive structures of international diplomacy exacerbate this culture of exclusion. Thanks to the work of the Global Refugee-Led Network (GRN), other refugee-led organizations and their allies, we are achieving more meaningful participation. Yet the fact that UNHCR’s highest-level meeting this year only includes 2% refugee representation indicates that we have considerable work to do to realize the GCR’s commitment to meaningfully engage refugees in policy processes. For us at the GRN, meaningful engagement requires active participation and inclusion in international and domestic conversations and policy decisions to account for a fuller range of the refugee experience and identities.

We urge the international community to raise the bar. UNHCR should commit to 25% refugee participation in the 2023 Global Refugee Forum and create a refugee seat in UNHCR’s governing body, EXCOM, by 2023. As representatives of affected populations, refugees add a unique perspective to the global debate on refugee policy that is not represented by Member States, UNHCR, or NGOs. By increasing our representation fully and meaningfully in these high-level discussions and bodies, we can help to shape policies that are informed by our lived experiences and drive systemic changes. Inclusive refugee policies and meaningful participation must span gender and sexual identities, religion, ethnicity, those with disabilities, youth and elders, those affected by sexual and gender-based violence, among other identities.

Eliasib Amet Herrera

If COVID-19 has taught us anything it’s that the best way to implement lasting solutions is to include and address the needs of the most vulnerable. Refugee policy is no exception. The conditions of forced displacement provide a perfect incubator for COVID-19, leading to a devastating impact on the refugee population. For this reason, we are calling for secure, equal, quality health treatment for forcibly displaced people, including access to the COVID-19 vaccine.

While COVID-19 made improving the global response to the refugee crisis more urgent, it also demonstrated the importance of refugee-led organizations (RLOs) in the refugee response. There is documented success in the power of including RLOs in the global vaccine rollout for refugees. In Uganda, the Refugee-Led Organisations Network, which brings together 34 RLOs in Africa, is on the frontlines of the COVID response, providing life-saving support to refugees and helping them to access vaccines. In the absence of specific government campaigns targeting refugee access to the vaccine, these groups have kept their community informed and protected – challenging vaccine misinformation, to translating crucial information about COVID-19 into refugees’ native languages. These kinds of refugee-led initiatives around the world are vital to fighting vaccine hesitancy and making sure refugees are protected.

Refugee engagement in the Afghanistan response once again demonstrated in real-time how including refugees can lead to better-informed policies. The Taliban’s recent seizure of Afghanistan put thousands of Afghans in grave danger, many of whom scrambled to flee the country to seek asylum abroad. This crisis is an existential test of the GCR, as the UN projects that up to half of a million Afghans could flee the country by the end of the year, which will require a global, coordinated refugee response. RLOs, like GRN’s Asia chapter, Asia Pacific network of Refugees (APNOR), have been using their personal experience and professional expertise to support Afghan refugees. APNOR was a first responder – coordinating legal aid, facilitating a hotline for psychological counseling, and supporting evacuation efforts for Afghans in danger. Having fled Afghanistan in the 90s, the refugee leaders had vital information from the ground about how the situation is progressing, as well as a unique understanding of the danger Afghans face under Taliban rule, and in the journey to seek asylum.

Shaza Alrihawi

However, it is groups like ours, formed within and profoundly committed to serving each other, that are most underfunded and under consulted. We need a global commitment to quickly alter systemic barriers and end the exclusion of affected communities from the spaces where their present and future are being debated. In global and regional fora, travel and visa issues are creating divisions in which only refugees resettled in the Global North are able to participate in decisive meetings held in Geneva, New York and the like. At local levels, safety issues also exclude girls, women, LGBTIQ+ persons, and other members of the refugee population. To promote inclusion across demographics, decision-makers must provide RLOs with flexible and direct funding to support women, youth, LGBTQI and other excluded refugee groups.

Until we are included in all decisions about the lives we lead, policies will continue to fail. Our request for broad-based inclusion of refugees and resources to meet the full range of our experiences and identities is the only form of participation that will create sustainable change and enable a more effective global refugee response.

Anila Noor, Eliasib Amet Herrera and Shaza Alrihawi are steering committee members of the Global Refugee-led Network (GRN), a Refugee-Led Organization (RLO) composed of refugees groups in North America, South America, Europe, Africa, MENA, and the Asia Pacific.

 

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Credit: Yousef Alfuhigi / Unsplash

By Hanna Valynets
VILNA, Dec 7 2021 (IPS)

Independent journalism has come increasingly under attack in Belarus, as the country has become a regional hotspot of media repression. Lately, as many as six media outlets have closed shop to ensure the security of their staff. Some media workers have fled the country.

Among those who have left were employees of the country’s largest media outlet, TUT.BY. The site shut down in May, after government officials raided the newsroom’s offices and the homes of some employees. Fifteen staffers were arrested on criminal charges, and currently are being held in jail.

The TUT.BY site was blocked, and the government declared over 20 years of their published reporting extremist material. Under penalty of administrative and criminal sanctions, their reporting can no longer be disseminated or reprinted in Belarus, the publication’s logos cannot be used, and the TUT.BY name can’t be mentioned.

After the site was blocked, the newsroom’s journalists began to publish their reporting on Telegram. In early July, some of these reporters launched a new project called Zerkalo.io. Now registered in Ukraine but still reporting for a Belarusian audience, the Zerkalo team considers itself the successors to TUT.BY.

Looking back, Pushkina believes that TUT.BY’s editors made a critical mistake — one that she personally regrets. They hadn’t anticipated the dire turn of events inside Belarus: “I would advise all media outlets that find themselves in a similar position in other countries to try to answer the question: How far might the repressive crackdown go?”

“I consider our [relocation] case noteworthy, but it’s not by any means positive,” said Alexandra Pushkina, Zerkalo’s public relations manager. Approximately 30 members of TUT.BY’s 260-person team now work for Zerkalo, she explained. They’re based across five countries.

The employees who left the country are safe — an especially meaningful development in light of the Belarusian government bringing a second criminal case against TUT.BY employees in early October.

“I feel guilty for every day that my colleagues spend in prison. I would gladly swap places with them,” said Pushkina. “But I manage the country’s largest media outlet, and I’m responsible for keeping it alive.” She added that the editorial staff’s current objective is to “make clear that [the government] can’t simply flip a switch and stop the flow of information.”

Zerkalo went live two months after the government raids of TUT.BY. Upon deciding to launch the new site, the Zerkalo team discussed it with the owners of TUT.BY, registered the new outlet in another country (Ukraine), bought the domain name, and designed and launched the new site, Pushkina explained. For journalists who find themselves in similar situations, she recommended making relocation arrangements ahead of time: buy a domain name, make a backup copy of your existing content, and safeguard it in another country.

Less than an hour after Zerkalo launched, Belarusian authorities blocked access to it. A month later, the court ruled that the site’s content is extremist. “Today, our average daily figure is 200,000 page views. According to Google Analytics data from September, the site has 2.9 million monthly visitors,” Pushkina said, noting that the numbers are growing. “Today, we [Zerkalo] are once again the largest media outlet covering politics. We are ahead even of the state-run media,” said Pushkina. Still, they are much smaller than TUT.BY’s readership was before it was shut down. In April 2021, for instance, 18.2 million unique visitors visited TUT.BY.

The relocation provided critical advantages for Zerkalo. “The editorial staff are in greater safety, and nobody has been arrested since the new site was launched,” Pushkina said.

Zerkalo continues to prioritize security. The newsroom doesn’t have a physical office that can be bugged, or where its employees could be detained. Reporters’ names are kept off the record, and their articles have no bylines. To safeguard information, employees communicate via secure messaging apps.

Zerkalo has no journalists physically working in Belarus; the editorial staff receives information about developments inside the country from their readers. “Our staff are facing 12 years [of prison]. We get letters from the journalists who say they are ready [to work with us]. But I’m not ready to be responsible for anyone else who might end up in prison,” said Pushkina.

She noted that Zerkalo reporters maintain their editorial integrity, despite the challenges they’re up against. “When your colleagues are imprisoned, when many people are forced to leave their homeland, you want to defend yourself. But we decided to uphold the previous editorial policy because [we don’t want to depart from] high journalistic standards.”

Looking back, Pushkina believes that TUT.BY’s editors made a critical mistake — one that she personally regrets. They hadn’t anticipated the dire turn of events inside Belarus: “I would advise all media outlets that find themselves in a similar position in other countries to try to answer the question: How far might the repressive crackdown go?”

Journalists and newsrooms elsewhere that face efforts to silence their reporting might similarly consider relocating. Here are tips to keep in mind should the need arise:

• Ensure that employees understand what they are signing up for — including the financial situation. For the first few months, Zerkalo employees worked without compensation because TUT.BY’s bank accounts had been frozen. It was impossible to implement commercial projects because the site’s content was identified as extremist, too. It might also not be safe for relocating employees to return to their home country.
• Re-think your business model. Zerkalo editorial staff sought news ways to sustain themselves given the circumstances. This included soliciting donations and assistance from foundations that support free media.
• Remember that, in addition to your editorial staff, your newsroom must have people who are familiar with the business side of the initiative, familiarity with legal issues, and experience in project management. It’s also important to identify who will be the chief decision-maker.
• Define your editorial policy and communications strategy before launching.

 

This article was originally published by IJNet, International Journalists’ Network

 

Many in the crowd taking videos of the extrajudicial killing in Sialkot.

By Zofeen Ebrahim
KARACHI, Dec 7 2021 (IPS)

Mukhtiar’s heart sank when he saw the grisly incident of lynching of a man in the industrial city of Sialkot, in Punjab province.

The videos, taken on cell phones and put online, showed 49-year-old Priyantha Kumara Diyawadanage, a Sri Lankan national and manager of a garment factory, showing him being punched, kicked, hit with stones and iron rods, and killed. Not content, they then dragged his dead body out of the factory and set it on fire.

It was the same city which 11 years ago, had witnessed mob lynching two brothers, 22-year-old Hafiz Muhammad Mughees Sajjad and Mohammad Muneeb Sajjad, 16, in 2010, with support of the local police, on charges of theft. Later their bodies were hung upside down in the city square.

“There must have been no less than 2,000, men, mostly young, charged and in a frenzy, chanting ‘Labbaik Ya Rasool Allah’ (Here I am at your service, O Messenger of Allah), a slogan used by a far-right Islamic extremist political party, Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan (TLP),” said Sakhawat Mughal, a reporter working for Hum News, a private television channel, recalling what he saw.

“Many men had batons in hand. The police looked on and waited for backup,” he said, adding: “Had the handful of the law enforcers reacted, many more lives would have been lost.”

People from all walks of life have been shocked and condemned the incident.

“The Sialkot incident is a horrible example of the growth of extremism and violent mob lawlessness,” said the National Commission for Human Rights chairperson, Rabiya Javeri Agha. “The government should ensure speedy and equitable justice, and perpetrators must face the full force of law.”

According to rights activist Usama Khilji, director of Bolo Bhi, a civil society organisation geared towards advocacy, policy, and research in civic responsibility and digital rights, the TLP has managed to infiltrate the middle class disenchanted with mainstream political parties. The party stirred up ordinary people’s sentiments using tools of “religious passion and hatred towards any perceived act of anti-Islam” to drum support for itself and respond with violence when called upon to cause mischief.

What was even more disturbing was that not only did the people join in throngs to watch the horrendous incident, but they also filmed it and even took selfies showing Diyawadanage body burning in the background.

“Today, sections of the middle-class youth feel proud of lynching on a genocidal level, believing killing alleged blasphemers is an act of valour,” lamented Khilji.

Sitting 130 kilometres away in Lahore, the capital city of the Punjab province, and belonging to the Christian community, the breaking news from Punjab, for Mukhtiar, who goes by one name, was even more disturbing.

Along with the footage of the mob and burning of Diyawadanage body, the various television channels also showed archival photos of his late daughter Shama, and her husband, Shahzad. They were lynched by a mob in 2014 and pushed into a burning brick kiln where the husband worked, in Kot Radha Krishan’s village of Chak 59, near the city of Kasur, also in Punjab. They were punished for allegedly burning pages of the Holy Quran.

“Her three kids who are living with me were disturbed and cried a lot on seeing their parents’ faces plastered on the screen, as the older two remember the incident quite clearly,” said the grandfather, talking to IPS over the phone.

“The incident that happened yesterday (Friday, December 3) was a criminal act, as was my daughter’s and son-in-law’s lynching,” he said, adding: “Do you think any civilised person would want to carry out a sacrilegious act against any faith?”

“Nothing that happened on the part of Diyawadanage constitutes the offence of blasphemy as is the case in nearly all cases prosecuted under these laws,” pointed out Peter Jacob, executive director of Centre for Social Justice. Initial investigations by police suggest the manager had removed posters of a religious moot, as the factory would be whitewashed.

Peter Jacob, executive director of Centre for Social Justice addressing a crowd of protestors in Lahore. He and other rights activists have condemned the killing.

Mukhtiar further pointed out the consequences of committing blasphemy against Islam in Pakistan were “far too grave” for anyone to dare.

Statistics also point that one does not have to belong to a religious minority to be accused of blasphemy and face vigilante violence. The majority of the accused are Muslims.

At least 1,890 persons have been accused of committing blasphemy, under various clauses of the blasphemy law, from 1987 to 2021, said Jacob, who has been collecting data for the last 30 years, adding: “The year 2020 saw the highest number of accused.”

Of the 75% Muslims accused this year, 70% belonged to the Shia sect, he said, and 20% belonged to the Ahmadi community, 5% were Sunni, 3.5% were Christians and 1% Hindus. Religions of 0.5% could not be ascertained, Jacob told IPS over the phone from Lahore.

From 1992 till December 4, 2021, there have been 81 extrajudicial killings on suspicion of blasphemy and apostasy, 45 were Muslims, 23 Christians, nine Ahmadis, two Hindus and two persons whose religious identity could not be ascertained, Jacob noted.

In 2017, Mashal Khan, a Muslim student studying at Abdul Wali Khan University, in Mardan, in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, was killed by his peers for allegedly posting blasphemous content online. The accusation was later proved to be fabricated.

Even in Shama and Shahzad’s murder, rights activists later found the attack was instigated by the brick kiln owner who had an altercation with Shahzad over a money dispute.

The Prime Minister terming the incident a “horrific vigilante attack” promised that all those responsible would be punished with “full severity of the law”. News reports say police have arrested over a hundred, including 19 who played a “central role” in the brutal killing.

For Mukhtiar, these promises ring hollow.

“There will be a lot of promises for a few weeks, and then when the public’s attention is diverted, the perpetrators will be released, you wait and see,” he said.

“Of the five men charged with murder and sentenced to death, two have been released,” he said. After seven years, he was tired of doing the court rounds or seeking justice. “I’m old and a heart patient, and I have the responsibility of these three kids too!”

Khilji also remained sceptical whether justice will be “dispensed to the mob” given Pakistan’s “dismal track record” in such cases.

“Entire police stations have been burnt down for perceived inaction towards blasphemy-accused people by the TLP,” he said, giving the example of the state caving into this group that exudes “massive street power”.

And this “capitulation” to those demanding, inciting, encouraging, and perpetuating violence, pointed out Saroop Ijaz, senior counsel with Human Rights Watch’s Asia division, has reinforced the “legitimacy of violence” in the public consciousness.

A December 5 editorial in Dawn said: “… on the last day of his life, Mr Diyawadanage came face-to-face with the consequences of the Pakistani state’s decades-long policy of appeasing religious extremists.”

“The Sialkot incidence is yet another reminder that violence and impunity are now embedded in society on the issue of blasphemy,” Ijaz told IPS, emphasising the urgent need for holding a “national conversation on violence” and, in particular, on how religion is often used to incite violence.

But, he was not sure if the government was “ready and willing to provide an enabling environment for such a conversation” to be had.

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A woman receives a dose of a COVID-19 vaccine at a health clinic in Garowe, Somalia. As scientists continue to investigate the Omicron COVID-19 variant, the World Health Organization (WHO) last week urged countries not to panic but to prepare for its likely spread. Credit: UNICEF/Ismael Taxta

By Alexander Kozul-Wright
GENEVA, Dec 7 2021 (IPS)

On 25 November, news emerged from South Africa of a new COVID-19 variant. It has since been identified as Omicron, a Greek alphabet derivation the World Health Organization (WHO) reserves for virus variants “of concern”.

For now, scientists are still racing to understand Omicron’s virulence. There is, however, growing concern that its high number of mutations make it more transmissible and more resistant to existing vaccines (or previous infections) than other variants.

Currently, these worries are based on preliminary analysis emerging from South Africa, where the new variant was first detected. Further data monitoring will be needed to inform countries about appropriate policy responses. But irrespective of whether Omicron panic is justified, economic shockwaves have run ahead of the disease.

The virus has already sent jitters through financial markets in advanced economies and complicated the policy stance of central bankers in Europe and the USA. In the global South, meanwhile, some regions are likely to be more affected than others. Three key observations underscore where economic risks are the greatest.

The first is a threat of renewed country lockdowns. To date, COVID-19 has tightened the fiscal space available to many developing countries. Recent inflationary pressures have also put paid to further monetary policy loosening.

Lockdowns would be particularly damaging in Latin America, therefore, as macro-financial policies across the continent are approaching an upper-bound.

Although Omicron has not yet been detected in China, its presence there would almost certainly prompt Beijing to double-down on its ‘zero tolerance’ strategy, resulting in local lockdowns and reduced consumption.

If authorities decided to reimpose restrictions comparable to those observed in August 2021, following an outbreak in Nanjing, the toll on growth would be considerable – economists slashed China’s quarterly growth expectations at the time due to city-wide closures.

While other countries lack China’s willingness to choke off economic activity, under-funded health care systems may force developing country governments to impose social distancing to try and limit pressure on hospitals.

Here, countries in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia are least well prepared, as vaccine rates remain particularly low (from 1-30 percent).

The second factor relates to trade. Omicron could dampen the recent gains in global trade, which UNCTAD forecasts will increase by 23% in 2021 from the year before, due to the easing of pandemic restrictions and economic stimulus packages.

However, UNCTAD’s forecast did not consider an outbreak of Omicron. A fresh wave of lockdowns would be particularly damaging in East Asia, where intra-industry value chains are deeply connected. With global supply chains still vulnerable, further supply disruptions across China – which accounts for roughly one-fifth of world merchandise exports – would pare back world trade.

Tourism could take a big hit over the coming weeks if governments continue suspending travel routes. Shrinking foreign exchange earnings would be especially hard felt in the Caribbean, the Middle East and North Africa, where tourism makes up a relatively large share of national income, compared to other developing country regions.

The third angle relates to financial market fluctuations. The VIX index, a measure of Wall Street’s expected volatility one month into the future, has risen by 47% since 24 November. Meanwhile, the yield on 10-year US Treasury securities, which move with in line growth and inflation expectations, fell 13% over the same period.

Jitters have been apparent in a broad array of financial market barometers. The prices of developing country currencies and commodities – both considered risky assets – have nosedived over the past two weeks, with oil benchmarks on both sides of the Atlantic down 10-15% since the discovery of Omicron.

A sustained period of falling energy prices would undermine OPEC countries’ net export and fiscal balance positions.

The upshot is that a slump in global risk appetite would undermine developing countries’ growth prospects. What’s more, any shift to higher pandemic spending would lead to a rise in bond yields, causing financial conditions to tighten even further. This would be especially problematic for countries with large external financing costs like Ghana and Turkey.

On the other hand, concerns it may also stall the rebound in advanced economies could delay the normalisation of monetary policy by the US Federal Reserve and the European Central Bank, which would ease the pressure on developing countries to adopt more aggressive monetary tightening.

The COVID-19 crisis continues to expose the disparity in fiscal and monetary firepower available to developed vs. developing economies. And while the severity of Omicron remains in doubt, this latest variant risks further undermining global growth convergence.

Alexander Kozul-Wright is a consultant for the Third World Network (TWN)

 

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By Anis Chowdhury and Jomo Kwame Sundaram
SYDNEY and KUALA LUMPUR, Dec 7 2021 (IPS)

Funding for developing countries to address global warming is grossly inadequate. Very little finance is for adaptation to climate change, the urgent need of countries most adversely affected. Also, adaptation needs to be forward-looking rather than only addressing accumulated problems.

Anis Chowdhury

Suicide pact?
Climate change poses an existential threat, especially to poor countries with little means to adapt. Rich countries’ failure to deliver promised financial support has only made things worse. COVID-19 has dealt another knock-out blow, worsened by rich countries’ “health apartheid”.

The COP26 deal was undoubtedly a “historically shameful dereliction of duty” and “nowhere near enough to avoid climate disaster”. Glasgow’s failure shows up lack of real progress and inadequate policy responses. Worse, no significant new resources came with the “Glasgow Suicide Pact”.

The United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD)’s Trade and Development Report 2021 laments rich countries’ unwillingness to address grave challenges facing developing countries. After all, Agenda 2030 for Sustainable Development was in trouble even before COVID-19.

Climate policy responses involve both mitigation and adaptation. Mitigation seeks to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions through more efficient energy use, and by using renewable energy instead of fossil fuels. Adaptation involves strengthening resilience and protection to minimize adverse effects on human lives.

National adaptation needs get far less international funding than mitigation for the world. Thus, poor countries struggle alone addressing global warming mainly caused by others. Adaptation challenges are also wide-ranging, due to varying country vulnerabilities.

Risky approach to risk
Governments have been advised to reduce vulnerability to shocks by improving data and risk assessment. Most measures to strengthen resilience use conventional financial risk management methods. These seek to better protect existing assets, and to provide temporary financial support when shocks happen.

Jomo Kwame Sundaram

Climate adaptation is thus addressed via disaster risk assessment, early warning systems, improved ecosystem management and better social safety nets. But the approach hardly distinguishes climate change from other risks.

Relying on past experience, the conventional approach is hardly forward-looking in addressing new challenges. Recommended measures tend to deploy scarce resources to address past and current effects of climate change.

Focussing on current vulnerabilities enables adapting to extant climate threats. This may provide some temporary resilience and relief. But it does not prepare for new threats. Thus, the approach ignores future problems, not providing much protection from or reducing vulnerability to emerging threats.

Counting on pricing and other market techniques for climate adaptation risk assessment is also limiting. The approach tends to focus on what is predictable and incremental, rather than on what is more uncertain and systemic.

With its roots in financial risk management, the approach favours returning to some assumed norms of normality and stability. It thus rejects considering new possibilities, including a more dynamic approach to sustainable transformation.

Furthermore, returning to ‘normal’ for many communities implies exploitation and precarity. Preservation and coping are also favoured by the approach. Typically, these are hardly enough to address the complex challenges faced. Worse, they may inadvertently cause maladaptation.

Avoid maladaptation
A transformative approach to climate risk is needed instead. The only lasting solution may be to reduce developing countries’ reliance on climate sensitive activities, such as cattle breeding, through far reaching changes to create more resilient economies.

This requires moving away from de-risking in favour of a more integrated and systemic approach to diversify economies for greater resilience. More diversified economies are more supportive of sustainable development, and much less vulnerable or likely to be disrupted by external shocks.

In recent years, this has been clear from the greater vulnerability of primary export-dependent economies to economic shocks originating elsewhere. But it is also true of climate shocks. Thus, climate adaptation requires a new vision of common goals, instead of merely avoiding risks and worst-case scenarios.

Diversification crucial
Thus, climate adaptation in the global South needs to be addressed through development. Moving from de-risking to diversification requires a developmental state committed to ‘green’ industrial policy – involving investment and technology – to do so.

Diversification involves two cumulative processes working in tandem. First, shifting from primary production to manufacturing and higher value services. Second, moving resources from less to more capital-intensive activities.

Developing countries have to pursue sustainable development, keeping emissions and resource consumption within ecological limits. This requires economic diversification, raising productivity and improving social conditions.

Such new transformation strategies must recognize ecological and climate constraints. Developing country policymakers have limited means to address such challenges. With uneven ‘neo-liberal’ globalization, they are also handicapped by institutional weaknesses, e.g., even in mobilizing domestic resources.

Multilateralism key
Some rich countries – e.g., the UK and Australia – have cut their aid budgets and not deployed their unused Special Drawing Rights to help developing countries. They have done little to encourage private creditors to enable developing countries to invest to develop out of the multiple crises they face.

Thus far, measures for debt relief are very modest and grossly inadequate, “kicking the can down the road”. Deferring debt simply means borrowings are due to be paid later, as compound interest accumulates. Meanwhile, debt burdens continue to grow.

The UNCTAD report warns that measly climate funding is accelerating global warming, undermining prospects for decarbonizing the world. It highlights the need for pro-active multilateralism and support for developing countries to address the climate and pandemic induced crises.

“Global challenges clearly require multilateral responses”. But so far, only the IMF has provided some real relief by cancelling debt service obligations for 28 countries – worth US$727 million – between April 2020 and October 2021.

The end of the first Cold War undermined the felt need for UN-led multilateralism. If US President Biden really seeks to emulate President Roosevelt, he can begin by reviving the UN-led multilateralism FDR envisaged, instead of recklessly pursuing the new Cold War favoured by neo-conservatives in his team.

 

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By Baher Kamal
MADRID, Dec 6 2021 (IPS)

”All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights.” These words are a sound introduction to the transcendental issue of human rights and equalities, as stated by the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR).

The Declaration proclaims the “inalienable rights that everyone is entitled to as a human being – regardless of race, colour, religion, sex, language, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status.”

“All Human, All Equal” is the slogan for the 2021 Human Rights Day, marked 10 December. Its theme relates to equality: “The principles of equality and non-discrimination are at the heart of human rights.”

According to the UN, “equality, inclusion and non-discrimination, in other words - a human rights-based approach to development  - is the best way to reduce inequalities and resume the path towards realising the 2030 Agenda”

“Equality includes addressing and finding solutions for deep-rooted forms of discrimination that have affected the most vulnerable people in societies, including women and girls, indigenous peoples, people of African descent, LGBTI people, migrants and people with disabilities, among others.”

According to the UN, “equality, inclusion and non-discrimination, in other words – a human rights-based approach to development – is the best way to reduce inequalities and resume the path towards realising the 2030 Agenda,” which principle is leaving no-one behind.

Shamefully, this is not the case. In spite of all well-intentioned words, declarations, statements and appeals, the grave spread of inequalities all over the world remains prevailing and expanding.

The numerous and severe aspects of inequality are manifested in rampant poverty, pervasive inequalities and structural discrimination are human rights violations and among the greatest global challenges of current time.

 

A new social contract urgent

Human rights, including economic, social and cultural rights as well as the right to development and the right to a safe, clean, healthy and sustainable environment, are central to building a new human rights-based economy that supports better, fairer and more sustainable societies for present and future generations. A human rights-based economy should be the foundation of a new social contract, according to World Day.

Here are just some examples of the prevailing violation of the most basic freedom, equality and human rights.

 

Racism

Racism is just one of the various severe forms of inequalities.

In fact, racism, xenophobia and related discrimination and intolerance exist in all societies, everywhere. Racism harms not just the lives of those who endure it, but also society as a whole.

“We all lose in a society characterised by discrimination, division, distrust, intolerance, and hate. The fight against racism is everyone’s fight. We all have a part to play in building a world beyond racism,” the UN urges.

 

The COVID generation

Successive financial and health crises have had long-lasting and multidimensional impacts on millions of young people, according to this year’s World Day.

Unless their rights are protected, including through decent jobs and social protection, the “COVID generation” runs the risk of falling prey to the detrimental effects of mounting inequality and poverty.

 

Vaccine inequality

Vaccine injustice through unfair vaccine distribution and hoarding contravenes international legal and human rights norms and the spirit of global solidarity.

In fact, while rich societies have reached between 70 and 80 percent of vaccination, only 1 percent of the population of some countries in Africa has been vaccinated.

 

Climate injustice

Environmental degradation, including climate change, pollution and nature loss, disproportionately impacts persons, groups and peoples in vulnerable situations. These impacts exacerbate existing inequalities and negatively affect the human rights of present and future generations.

In a follow-up to the Human Rights Council’s recognition of the human right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment, urgent action must be taken to respect, protect and fulfill this right.

“Such action should be the cornerstone of a new human rights-based economy that will produce a green recovery from COVID-19 and a just transition.”

According to recent estimates, the number of climate migrants and refugees could rise to up to one billion in the coming few years.

They would proceed from continents and countries that are the least polluting and the least responsible of the ongoing climate emergency.

For example, Africa has generated around four percent of the causes of the climate crisis, while bearing the brunt of 80 percent of its consequences.

 

Conflicts inequality

Human rights have the power to tackle the root causes of conflict and crisis, by addressing grievances, eliminating inequalities and exclusion and allowing people to participate in decision-making that affect their lives, says the UN.

“Equality and non-discrimination are key to prevention: all human rights for all ensure everyone has access to the preventive benefits of human rights but, when certain people or groups are excluded or face discrimination, the inequality will drive the cycle of conflict and crisis.”

 

Women, girls

Such an abohrent abuse against women and girls is carried out all over the world. In fact, one third of all women and girts have been subjected to physical or sexual violation in their life-time.

And it is estimated that 800 million girls are being pushed into early marriage and forced to become child-mothers.

 

Child forced labour

Meanwhile, it has been reported that more than 160 million boys and girls are subjected to the abuse of forced child labour.

Many of them are recruited as child soldiers in armed conflicts. Others are being smuggled and trafficked for sexual exploitation, begging, and organs removals, among other forms of cruelty.

 

‘Modern’ slavery

It is estimated that one billion humans are victims of the so-called ‘modern’ slavery, including forced labour, migrants smuggling, sexual exploitation, youth sold and bought in public squares, migrants and refuggees stranded in borders behind barbed walls, millions of dispalced due to violence and armed conflicts they did not launch.

 

Smuggling, trafficking

“Human trafficking and migrant smuggling have evolved a lot since I first took over this job. They have become more severe, in the sense of what the criminals involved inflict on people. There is more violence, victims are younger and there are more child victims,” said Ilias Chatzis who heads up a global team of more than 60 experts at the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), committed to countering Human Trafficking and Migrant Smuggling.

“It is a crime that can sometimes happen in front of our eyes, as we go to work, do our shopping, drive our children to school or meet friends for dinner. There are industries that we come into contact with in our everyday lives, like hospitality, agriculture, construction, and others where trafficking victims are exploited.”

Traffickers in Europe take groups of children from country to country and force them to beg. Then they take all the money and often let them starve. For criminals, it is all about the money, and people are just a way to make a profit, the expert warned.

 

Poverty, hunger

The number of the poor and poorest and hungry is steadily rising. It is estimated that the figure is now approaching one billion, in a world that produces enough food for the global population. And that rich societies waste up to one-third of purchased food.

”All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights.” Nice words. But the dramatic reality shows all the opposite.

 

Members of families threatened with eviction ride in a boat down a mangrove channel in the community of Cuatro Vientos, in the municipality of San Luis La Herradura, on the Salvadoran coast. They denounced to IPS that one of the country's main banks now claims to be the owner of the land where they have lived for 20 years. CREDIT: Edgardo Ayala/IPS

By Edgardo Ayala
SAN LUIS LA HERRADURA, El Salvador, Dec 6 2021 (IPS)

Small farmer Francisco Martínez pushed his son’s wheelchair to another part of the courtyard of their house, located in a small coastal community in El Salvador, before saying sadly: “It would be a great injustice if they kicked us out of here.”

Martínez, 77, lives with his wife Gloria García, 50, and their severely disabled 21-year-old son Fredy Martínez in the Cuatro Vientos community, formed some 20 years ago by homeless families from different parts of the country.

The settlement is located in San Luis La Herradura, a municipality in the south of the department of La Paz, on the Salvadoran coast.

Martínez, his skin toasted by the sun, added: “Now we have reached the difficult moment when they want to remove us, which is very unfair,” referring to the threat of eviction that is hanging over his family and others in the settlement, from a bank and wealthy families in the area, as they told IPS during a day spent in their community."They are State lands, we have cadastral records that say they are State lands, but when people clear them and fix them up, others want to take them over." -- Mélida Alvarado

Driven by necessity, some 180 poor families settled in Cuatro Vientos, on what they considered to be public land: a narrow 17-kilometer-long strip of land separating the Pacific Ocean and the Jaltepeque estuary, one of the main wetlands in this Central American country.

A paved road runs through the middle of the strip connecting the highly touristic area with the rest of the country.

In addition to Cuatro Vientos, 18 other settlements or communities have sprung up in the area over the past 50 years and have also been threatened with eviction, either by private consortiums or by wealthy families who have beach houses there.

Extreme inequality

On this strip of land, ostentatious wealth coexists with painful poverty.

Some families do have legal title to their plots, the ones that are located along the roadside, lawyer Teresa Hernández of the Foundation for Legal Studies for the Application of Law (Fespad) told IPS.

However, some 40 meters further inland towards the estuary, the situation is different for most of the people, who live in conditions of poverty and without documents certifying that they own the land.

“In general, all 19 communities find themselves in this legally precarious position,” the lawyer explained.

Francisco Martínez, 77, with his wife Gloria García, 50, and their severely disabled 21-year-old son Fredy Martínez pose for a photo in the courtyard of their house in Cuatro Vientos, a settlement formed some 20 years ago by homeless families from various parts of El Salvador. The Martínez family fears that they will be evicted because the property is claimed by one of the country’s main banks. CREDIT: Edgardo Ayala/IPS

Fespad and the Movement for the Defense of the Land in El Salvador (Movitierra) are providing legal assistance to the affected families, especially in 12 communities that have organized to fight for their rights.

About 850 families live in these 12 settlements, but the lawyer said she did not know the total number of inhabitants of the 19 communities.

Insecurity of title

According to official figures, about 10 percent of El Salvador’s 6.7 million people are in a position of land tenure insecurity.

Cases like those of the families in Cuatro Vientos, who thought they were living on land that they could call their own because it belonged to the State, but who now face the risk of removal.

The conflict over property rights in this area known as Costa del Sol arises from the fact that the land has a high value as a result of tourism, which drives the construction of hotel complexes.

In addition, for decades it has been impossible to establish exactly which land is privately owned and which belongs to the State, which has generated disputes over land ownership, the Fespad lawyer added.

Tourism businesses such as hotels and restaurants have set up shop there because of the beauty of the area: the sea on one side and the lush estuary, with its mangroves and wildlife, on the other.

Wealthy families have also built beach houses in the area for decades to spend vacations or weekends. That is why the real estate sector is also in high demand in the area.

Boats are moored to private docks in one of the channels of the Jaltepeque estuary. On El Salvador’s Costa del Sol, a narrow 17-kilometer-long strip separates the Pacific Ocean from one of the country’s main wetlands, where luxury homeowners and tourism and real estate companies are threatening to evict poor communities. CREDIT: Edgardo Ayala/IPS

Institutions should clarify

Every beach, whether on an estuary or on the sea, belongs to the State, and wealthy families and companies have been buying up adjacent or nearby lands, initially considered private in origin. But after decades of disorder, the limits of what is private and what belongs to the State have become entangled.

Hernández said that in order to clarify these boundaries, the government’s land registry should carry out a cadastral survey to determine the background of these lands and define who owns them. But this has not been done and the communities do not have the resources to carry it out on their own.

She added that, in view of this situation, Fespad and Movitierra requested in 2019 that the governmental Institute of Property Legalization (ILP) conduct an inspection to determine the boundaries between State and private land in at least five communities on the Costa del Sol, as a pilot test.

The covid-19 pandemic stalled the effort, but it was resumed in April.

However, although the investigation into the legal status of the property in these settlements has been completed, the final report has not been released.

“The final report of those inspections has been requested and the ILP has not delivered it to us, the communities or Fespad, as applicants together with Movitierra,” said Hernández.

A group of women from the community of El Mozote, on the Salvadoran coast, express their concern about the uncertainty of not knowing if they will be evicted from their homes built on a plot of land claimed by a real estate company. They are asking the authorities to carry out a complete survey of the land. CREDIT: Edgardo Ayala/IPS

Evictions have already started

Threats of eviction, which in some cases have already materialized, are based on the argument that the poor families do not have property titles, while the companies and wealthy families claim to possess them.

These sectors claim part of the land where poor people live, many of whom work in the hotels or in the vacation homes of the opulent families who generally sail their yachts in the estuary.

“There was a hole here, and with the pennies I earned, I filled it in and made my champita (hut) covered with coconut and banana palm leaves,” Martínez told IPS, while taking care of his son in the wheelchair.

On a visit to the area by IPS, the affected families in Cuatro Vientos said the threats come mainly from the private Banco Agrícola, one of the most important banks in the country.

According to the families, the bank owns a plot of land about a block and a half in size – approximately one hectare – where several families built their houses two decades ago believing that it was abandoned land, which is common in the area.

These plots had owners decades ago, but for one reason or another were no longer used and over time became overgrown by weeds.

Now the bank has reportedly found a buyer and wants to remove the families living on that specific plot.

“We did not come to this land to take advantage of anybody, but out of need. I had nowhere to live,” said Martinez, whose small house stands on the disputed land.

According to some estimates, El Salvador has a housing deficit of 1.3 million homes.

Along El Salvador’s Costa del Sol the ostentatious wealth of families who own beach houses and yachts moored at the docks stands in sharp contrast with the poverty of hundreds of families who have built shacks in areas that were considered state property and from which companies and families now want to evict them. CREDIT: Edgardo Ayala/IPS

Several families in Cuatro Vientos met with IPS to explain how the situation affects them.

They live with the uncertainty of not knowing when they may be forced by the police to leave their homes, which took them so much effort and sacrifice to build.

“I have sleepless nights, my eye twitches, I have nightmares, I’m so worried,” Alba Díaz told IPS.

Diaz, 48, is a single mother raising three teenage sons and a daughter without many job opportunities. She manages to earn a living by going to take care of her mother and grandfather, for which an uncle pays her 100 dollars a month. She also sells pizzas from time to time.

“We are threatened by the bank, they want to take back the property and sell it, we don’t know exactly,” she added.

But that’s not all.

The bank also seems to be interested in seizing other areas outside the land it owns, plots of land where other families live.

Those affected in Cuatro Vientos mentioned a strange situation in which police officers wearing masks showed up in July accompanying two people who told some families that they were there on behalf of the government to carry out a census.

The two people, who they said were probably representatives of the bank, collected personal identity document numbers, they added.

“I ran, but I couldn’t find them. I asked myself: Masks? Masked policemen don’t come to conduct a census,” said Diaz.

Francisco Martinez’s wife Gloria García confirmed that the hooded men and the two other people came to their house.

“They came here, who knows why. We gave them our identify document numbers and signatures. We don’t know if they came from the bank or from where,” Garcia said.

On Nov. 16, the Banco Agrícola sent an official statement of its position in an e-mail to IPS.

“It is important to clarify that, as an agricultural bank, no eviction action is being considered or planned for the inhabitants of the Cuatro Vientos community,” it stated.

The bank confirmed a day later that it did own a piece of land there since June 2000, but that it sold it in March 2021 and that the property is currently in the process of being registered in the name of the new owner. The bank also denied that any of its representatives had visited the community.

Meanwhile, in another community located on the Costa del Sol strip, El Mozote, some 125 families are also living in uncertainty and threatened with eviction, because a real estate company is trying to evict them, claiming to be the owner of the land.

“They are State lands, we have cadastral records that say they are State lands, but when people clear them and fix them up, others want to take them over,” one of the residents, Mélida Alvarado, an activist in the collective struggle against eviction, told IPS.

The Republic of Congo received just over 300,000 doses of the COVID vaccines through the COVAX Facility in August 2021. The international COVAX initiative aimed at guaranteeing global access to the vaccines, recently announced that it was being forced to slash planned deliveries to Africa, by around 150 million doses this year. The scheme is now expected to deliver 470 million doses through the end of December. These will be enough to protect just 17 per cent of the continent, far below the 40 per cent target, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). Credit: UNICEF/Aimable Twiringiyima

By Victoria Fan and Steve Kuo
MANOA, Hawaii / TAIPEI, Taiwan, Dec 6 2021 (IPS)

Many countries around the world have punished most of the African continent for the scientific discovery of the Omicron variant through the imposition of travel bans.

These travel bans are more injury upon the injury of low vaccination in Africa. Even well-intentioned rallying phrases such as “vaccine apartheid” or “vaccine equity” still lack the moral weight, indignation, and urgency that we should all feel, no matter which country we live. Words fail us.

How can it be that—even now—vast swaths of a continent go without access to these lifesaving vaccines? How is this situation even possible, let alone acceptable? For sure, there’s not been enough vaccines arriving to African countries.

Flowery donor pledges gone unfilled are no better than empty promises. Some say it’s the monopolized production from a vaccine company based outside of Africa or intellectual property issues.

Others cite supply chain and cold chain problems, the need for refrigeration, and lack of electricity. Still others note vaccine hesitancy and misinformation. Throw in “corruption” and “poor governance.” Yadda yadda yadda.

Let us please transfer all the energy spent on the manufacturing of excuses to create ideas for how we’ll get vaccines to Africa.

One thing we should have learned during COVID-19 is that so-called “leaders” are amazing at coming up with excuses for things not getting done. Let’s remind ourselves of the HIV pandemic when world “leaders” were hesitating to distribute antiretroviral treatment to so-called “developing countries.”

There was even an administrator of USAID, supposedly a leading aid agency, who conveniently came up with a racist excuse that the reason why Africans couldn’t get treatment against HIV was because they couldn’t tell time.

Excuses easily come out of the human mouth. Let us please transfer all the energy spent on the manufacturing of excuses to create ideas for how we’ll get vaccines to Africa.

If Africa can’t get the vaccines it needs, perhaps Africa should take a play from the Indonesian playbook during the 2007 avian flu.

The Indonesian Government argued that its decision in January 2007 to stop sending avian flu samples (H5N1 virus) to the WHO’s reference labs was justifiable because the samples provided freely from lower-income countries were used by companies in higher-income countries to develop vaccines that the lower-income countries couldn’t afford and couldn’t benefit from.

Indonesia wanted a guarantee that it would benefit from the samples it provided. After months of withholding the samples, WHO and the Indonesian government eventually came to an agreement and changed the terms of reference for sample sharing.

As Sedyaningsih et al noted in 2008, “This event demonstrates the unresolved imbalance between the affluent high-tech countries and the poor agriculture-based countries.” Their words still hold true more than a decade later.

When dealing with those who are habituated to a “me first” mentality, you must negotiate and bargain hard. African countries trying to gain support through an idealistic notion of global solidarity will fail unless applying “shrewd business practices.” Not just African countries, but the whole world will fail.

So, negotiate hard. Know what your opponent wants the most, and don’t give them what they want so easily till you get what you need. Empty promises and excuses won’t stop COVID-19, but hard bargaining might.

Victoria Y. Fan, ScD, is an associate professor and interim director of the Center on Aging at the University of Hawaii at Manoa and a non-resident fellow at the Center for Global Development. Steve Kuo, MD, PhD, served as director of Taiwan Centers for Disease Control including during SARS, and most recently he was the president of National Yang Ming University, now National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University.

 

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A US Army soldier coaches an Afghan National Police officer in a bygone era before US forces withdrew from Afghanistan in August 2021. Credit: The US Army/Flickr via SIPRI

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Dec 6 2021 (IPS)

The 21-month long pandemic, which began with the outbreak of the deadly corona virus back in March 2020, ravaged hundreds and thousands of businesses and industries resulting either in widespread losses, closures or bankruptcies.

But one of the few industries that survived and prospered in 2020 was the multi-billion-dollar global arms industry led by the United States.

A new report released December 6 by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) says sales of arms and military services by the industry’s 100 largest companies totalled a staggering $531 billion in 2020—an increase of 1.3 per cent in real terms compared with the previous year.

The arms sales of the Top 100 arms companies in 2020 were 17 per cent higher than in 2015—the first year for which SIPRI included data on Chinese firms. This marked the sixth consecutive year of growth in arms sales by the Top 100.

Arms sales increased even as the global economy contracted by 3.1 per cent during the first year of the pandemic.

According to SIPRI, the United States once again hosted the highest number of companies ranked in the Top 100.

Together, the arms sales of the 41 US companies amounted to $285 billion—an increase of 1.9 per cent compared with 2019—and accounted for 54 per cent of the Top 100’s total arms sales.

Since 2018, the top five companies in the ranking have all been based in the US.

“The (US) industry giants were largely shielded by sustained government demand for military goods and services,” said Alexandra Marksteiner, Researcher with the SIPRI Military Expenditure and Arms Production Programme.

“In much of the world, military spending grew and some governments even accelerated payments to the arms industry in order to mitigate the impact of the Covid-19 crisis.”

Nevertheless, said SIPRI, operating in the military market did not guarantee immunity to the effects of the pandemic.

French arms manufacturer Thales, for example, ascribed a drop in arms sales of 5.8 per cent to lockdown-induced disruptions in the spring of 2020. Some companies also reported supply chain disruptions and delayed deliveries.

Meanwhile, even as the more deadly Omicron virus threatens another lockdown, the Associated Press (AP) reported December 3 of a multibillion-euro French deal to sell fighter planes and combat helicopters to the United Arab Emirates (UAE), “aiming to boost military cooperation with its top ally in the Persian Gulf amid their shared concerns about Iran”.

The UAE has agreed to buy 80 upgraded Rafale warplanes in a deal the French Defense Ministry said is worth a whopping 16 billion euros ($18 billion) and represents the largest-ever French weapons contract for export. It also announced a deal with the UAE to sell 12 Airbus-built combat helicopters.

AP said the arms deal was a shot in the arm for France’s defense industry after the collapse of a $66 billion contract for Australia to buy 12 French submarines that ultimately went to the U.S. But the deals faced criticism by human rights groups concerned about the UAE’s involvement in the years-long war in Yemen.

The UAE contracts were signed as French President Emmanuel Macron visited the country on the first stop of a two-day visit to the Persian Gulf. France and Gulf countries have long been concerned by Iran’s nuclear ambitions and influence across the region, particularly in Iraq, Syria and Lebanon, according to AP.

Dr. Natalie Goldring, a Visiting Professor of the Practice in the Sanford School of Public Policy at Duke University, told IPS the SIPRI data demonstrate once again that the military-industrial complex is severely disconnected from real world needs. Even as the global economy was suffering from the effects of the global covid pandemic in 2020, global arms sales were increasing.”

“This disconnect between economic realities and the global arms trade is profoundly disturbing. Every dollar that is spent on arms sales is a dollar that isn’t available for responding to the covid pandemic and meeting basic human needs such as food, clothing, and housing.”

“Unfortunately, these statistics are not surprising. What we’re seeing is the continuation of business as usual.” said Dr Goldring, who is also the Acronym Institute for Disarmament Diplomacy’s UN representative for conventional weapons and arms trade issues.

“Although these data are for 2020, there is little evidence that the Biden administration is changing these patterns. On the campaign trail, for example, candidate Biden said that his administration would take seriously Saudi Arabia’s consistent pattern of human rights abuses.

But in reality, said Dr Goldring, the Biden administration continues to ignore these abuses and proposes to transfer weapons that will allow Saudi Arabia to perpetuate its systematic patterns of abuse. The Biden administration has also labeled proposed arms sales as defensive in nature even when the weapons have both defensive and offensive capabilities.”

“The US and other arms suppliers have an opportunity to learn from the Covid pandemic, reevaluate priorities, and reallocate resources to human needs. We can’t afford business as usual,” she declared.

According to the SIPRI report, the US arms industry is undergoing a wave of mergers and acquisitions. To broaden their product portfolios and thus gain a competitive edge when bidding for contracts, many large US arms companies are opting to merge or acquire promising ventures.

‘This trend is particularly pronounced in the space sector,’ said Marksteiner. ‘Northrop Grumman and KBR are among several companies to have acquired high-value firms specialized in space technology in recent years.’

Norman Solomon, Executive Director, Institute for Public Accuracy, told IPS the insatiable appetite of weapons dealers for bloated profits has continued to result in financial killings while literally killing many people around the world – directly with guns and bombs and indirectly by siphoning off desperately needed resources for human survival.

So many people in the world, he said, are in great pain due to lethal shortages of everything from medicine, potable water and minimal food supplies to housing and health education. And vast numbers of people are suffering and dying while powerful governments avidly serve the institutionalized greed of weapons industries, said Solomon, who is also Director, RootsAction.org

“That the United States has continued to lead the way in profiteering from technological instruments of mass killing is a shameful and ongoing crime against humanity,” he added.

The synergy between governmental power and corporate military enterprises is a global toxin that embodies a downward spiral. In any year, this would have been a colossal betrayal of the scantest human decency. In a year that brought the world the emergence of the Covid pandemic, this record is nothing short of systemic mass homicide, he argued.

“The fact that the United States is the source of upwards of half the world’s total arms sales is a profound indictment of the U.S. government’s role on this planet. One way or another, any government of a nation engaged in massive arms exports is a partner in that activity. The US and other countries engaged in large-scale exporting of weaponry should be vehemently and unrelentingly condemned,” he declared.

Meanwhile, the combined arms sales of the five Chinese companies, included in the Top 100, amounted to an estimated $66.8 billion in 2020, 1.5 per cent more than in 2019. Chinese firms accounted for 13 per cent of total Top 100 arms sales in 2020, behind US companies and ahead of companies from the United Kingdom, which made up the third largest share.

‘In recent years, Chinese arms companies have benefited from the country’s military modernization programmes and focus on military–civil fusion,’ said Dr Nan Tian, SIPRI Senior Researcher. ‘They have become some of the most advanced military technology producers in the world.’ NORINCO, for example, co-developed the BeiDou military–civil navigation satellite system and deepened its involvement in emerging technologies.

The Chinese were followed by European arms companies, French companies, German and Russian companies—all of them in the top 100.

Thalif Deen is a former Director, Foreign Military Markets at Defense Marketing Services; Senior Defense Analyst at Forecast International; military editor Middle East/Africa at Jane’s Information Group; and a former UN correspondent for Jane’s Defence Weekly, London.

 

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Yohei Sasakawa – WHO Goodwill Ambassador for Leprosy Elimination and Chairman of Sasakawa Health Foundation speaking at the 3rd of the “Don’t Forget Leprosy” webinar series organized by Sasakawa Health Foundation on Dec 2. Credit: Stella Paul

By Stella Paul
Hyderabad, Dec 3 2021 (IPS)

As 2021 nears its end, public health systems worldwide remain severely strained by COVID 19, which is showing no sign of ending. But even as countries battle to control the deadly pandemic, they must also maintain the progress made against other diseases, including leprosy, global leprosy experts and advocates have urged.

On Thursday, at a webinar organized by the Sasakawa Health Foundation, the World Health Organization (WHO) and over 150 members of several leprosy-affected people’s organizations expressed their concerns of leprosy resurgence as new cases continue to come to light. In Comoros, in East Africa, hundreds of new cases had been detected in the smaller islands, and many of the affected are children.

“We have carried out case-finding mini-campaigns in targeted areas of Anjouan and Mohéli (islands in Comoros) with the help of community health workers and have detected new cases including in children aged 15 and above,” said Dr. Aboubacar Mzembaba, National Programme Manager, Leprosy & Tuberculosis in the Ministry of Health, Comoros.

Data shared by Mzembaba shows that in 2020, there were 217 new cases, which increased to 239 in 2021. He said about 33 percent of children are affected by leprosy, and the government aims to bring this down to 10%.

The growing number of cases among children was “a concern,” said Pemmaraju V Rao, Acting Team Leader, Global Leprosy Programme, WHO.

Rao, who also facilitated the webinar, said that since cases continued to be unreported in many regions of the world, it was essential to continue with the current strategies of detecting and managing leprosy cases, including door-to-door visits, strengthening local health facilities, regular training, and supervision of health workers.

Tesfaye Tadesse, the Managing Director of Ethiopian National Association of Persons Affected by Leprosy (ENAPAL), said the organization has been at the forefront of Ethiopia’s battle for leprosy eradication. It was also concerned with protecting the dignity and rights of leprosy-effected people.

At the webinar, Tesfaye highlighted how COVID undermined leprosy in Ethiopia even though new cases have continued to grow. Also, fear of social exclusion drove people to seek alternative cures, like faith-healing.

“This year, we have detected 21 new cases, many of them in the holy water areas of the Amhara region. People are so scared of social stigma, instead of seeking medical treatment, they are going to collect holy water for their cure,” said Tadesse.

As stigma and discrimination remain a challenge across countries and cultures, people affected by leprosy have emerged as a tight-knit community. They take the opportunity to come together at any community event and share each other’s struggles and wins. In Thursday’s webinar, the third of a series of virtual seminars in the ‘Don’t Forget Leprosy’ campaign, participants and speakers could be seen encouraging each other and sharing their thoughts freely.

When Kofi Nyarko – a leprosy-affected person from Ghana, stressed the importance of early detection and appropriate treatment without stigma for preventing disabilities in leprosy, participants from other countries were quick to express their support and cheer him on.

Yohei Sasakawa – WHO Goodwill Ambassador for Leprosy Elimination and Chairman of Sasakawa Health Foundation responds to a question from IPS News correspondent at a webinar organized by Sasakawa Health Foundation on Dec 2. Credit: Stella Paul

However, to win their fight in a post-pandemic era, the leprosy-affected community would need more external support as well, said Yohei Sasakawa, WHO Goodwill Ambassador for Leprosy Elimination and Chairman of the Sasakawa Health Foundation.

According to Sasakawa, whose foundation has been instrumental in providing financial, technical, and moral support to leprosy-affected organizations worldwide, achieving a zero-leprosy world cannot be accomplished through a technocratic approach alone. A rights-based, human-centered approach that stresses full dignity and equality for the leprosy-affected community is crucial to achieving the goal.

For that, support of new allies would be vital – and Sasakawa advised the participants to seek more partners for their campaigns, including youth and media.

“The young generation is not aware of the struggle of the leprosy-affected people, especially of the older generation. We should therefore find ways to engage with them, make them aware,” Sasakawa told IPS.

“Designing educational programs is a good way to do this. Taking a human-rights approach, sharing your personal stories with the youth can help. It is also important to engage with media who can help highlight the causes.”

All the speakers and participants at the webinar agreed that the best way to achieve the aims of the “towards zero-leprosy” drive is to strengthen their campaign by increasing its global visibility.

Observation of the World Leprosy Day on January 30 presented an opportunity toward that and, the participants agreed to utilize it with renewed passion and a broader outreach plan.

“Engage with the media, utilize the radio networks in your country. COVID is there, but we must continue with our campaign,” Sasakawa advised.

 

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By Jan Lundius
STOCKHOLM / ROME, Dec 3 2021 (IPS)

In these times of COVID isolation, social distance get on the nerves of several of us and the effects may be long-lasting, even endemic. Many schoolchildren have interacted and still meet with their teachers through computer networks, while the same phenomenon applies to their contact with others. Technical devices are with an ever-increasing scope becoming an integral part of all communication, teaching, and entertainment, in short – of social interaction. When it comes to education, given all the poor and even harmful educators we are forced to encounter during our lifetime, mechanization of education might be perceived as a step forward. Nevertheless, too much dependence on the internet might undoubtedly have its pitfalls; contributing to an abstraction of our existence where real adventures and life-changing encounters with other human beings become all the rarer. The world may be demystified, losing its wonder and magic.

A past closeness between storytellers and listeners is being forgotten and the spellbinding experience of listening to a good storyteller within a fascinating environment is something that many children currently are being denied. Even storytelling in the form of books and movies are becoming rarer, being replaced by video chats, podcasts, twitter and Instagram. Admittedly some video games offer a certain degree of excitement, imagination and storytelling, though most of them provide a one-way communication, which unfortunately is characterized by unbound commercialism, questionable role modeling, crude violence, nutty conspiracy theories and a glamourization of luxury and greed. Dependency on electronic “entertainment” may be even be more mind-numbing than that, for example by inducing its users to sit hour after hour trying to complete a meaningless puzzle, directing a ball through a maze, or ride a virtual motorbike across artificial hills and vales.

I came to think about this while remembering evenings I spent in isolated places. Some of the communities found there lacked electricity and within a circle lightened by a fire, or a kerosene lamp, with darkness around and the starry sky above, I had the pleasure listening to old women and men telling stories about their surroundings and way of life. Such places might by an outsider be perceived as confined and desolate, far as they are from the big city lights, crowds of strangers, stress, hustle and bustle. Nevertheless, locals may feel they are surrounded by strange creatures, by domains of powerful, spiritual forces. After days of hard work in fields and garden plots, or roaming through jungles and mountains in search of prey and food, families and friends gather on porches of ramshackle huts, or under a tree in the middle of the village, where stories are told about otherworldly inhabitants of mountains and jungles, deserts and oceans.

Narrators convey the vastness of another, though still present world, which occasionally may be manifested in what we are accustomed to call “reality”. Discrete and gentle spirits rise from springs, caves and streams to dance in the moonlight, or sinister forces sneak upon lonesome wanderers, whispering in their ears to lure them astray, to kill and devour them, or to take them away to graves and abodes of the dead, the realms of ghosts, monsters and demons.

Of course, as an educated, modern person you do not believe in those stories, but … among believers, in worlds which in spite of mundane worries seem to be alive with uncanny creatures and unknown mysteries, it may anyway be hard to remain unaffected. Old people tell us about their world and before they reminisce marvelous tales that once were told to them, they might look around and state:

“Listen to the dog howling out there in the dark. I tell you, that is no dog. Oh no, it is a human who has been turned into a dog, or maybe … a Loup Garou, a werewolf. The butterfly you saw in your room last night, that was no butterfly … it was your beloved who dreamt about you, far away in another land, while her dream turned her thoughts into a butterfly. The fireflies you see over there are no flies, they are souls of dead ancestors. All around us; up in the air, in the earth below us, in the springs and the trees are mysteries alive, creatures of the night and our dreams. All around us are living beings that are commonly unknown, most of us cannot see them, nor touch, nor understand them… at least not when we are awake. In our dreams, when our soul leaves our mind behind, when we in the spirit are visiting an unknown world, we might see and experience, but not understand the uncanny. What we believe to be our world is only a fraction of something else, something much, much bigger.”

Participating in such enchanted moments make us feel alive. Even if it all might be lore and illusion we feel amazingly present, the world comes closer. The realms conjured up by storytellers, the myths, legends, and fairy tales enchant and scare us in an engrossing manner. A child listening stories about and thus enters fantastic dimensions realizes how vast the world is, how it includes both fiction and reality.

A computer programmer might call this immensity the “Cyber World”, an astronomer the “Universe”, a biologist the “Biosphere”. These scientists are actually knowledgeable of only a fraction of human existence and the laws of nature governing it. Realizing this does not mean that you are a science denier. That you are not abhorred by flat earthers, anti-vaxxers, coronavirus truthers, literalists, chauvinists, misogynists and other zealots who do not believe in climate change, empathy, love and solidarity, but cling to unfounded myths and conspiracy theories as if they were the “plain truth”. People like that live in a bubble, a delusive environment in which they want others to join them. They assume they know the truth, while they actually defy reason.

In the16th and 17th centuries modern science developed in Europe A process during which a notion was created that might be described as a realization that the world is governed by natural laws and forces can be perceptible, even understandable and possibly controlled. All phenomena are part of nature and can thus be explained by natural causes. A conviction meaning that also human cognitive, social and moral phenomena are part of a comprehensible world where human and social problems can find solutions if supported by a cosmopolitan worldview that revere science and reason, eschews magic and the supernatural, while rejecting dogma and repressive authorities.

However it was far from being a unified movement. Many scientists defended the reality of supernatural phenomena, while skeptical humanists, inspired by ancient authors, mounted a critique not only of orthodox religion, magic and other forms of superstition, but also demonstrated their skepticism of hard-line “experts” who simplified human existence to a set of “natural laws”. Even if the religious heterodoxy of such men tarnished their reputation and postponed a general acceptance of anti-magical views, change came about. This “enlightening” revolution in human notions actually owed less to the scientific testing of magic notions, than to the growth of confidence in a stable world in which magic no longer had a place.

Since then, in almost every realm of human existence, progress has been breathtaking, principally by a scientific naturalism which has been used to solve problems, from engineering bridges and eradicating diseases, to extending life spans and establishing human rights. However, this does not have to mean that a” scientific thinking and approach” unilaterally ought to dominate all human reasoning and be allowed to despise, forbid and deny the right to make things up, to dream, fantasize, telling about and creating wonderful things. We have to make room for music, art and literature and allow ourselves and others to be entertained and stimulated by these human expressions. We need to provide depth and relief to our short life spans, our human existence.

These reflections emerged when I as a teacher experienced how art, music, philosophy, history, and comparative religion, as well as gymnastics and handicraft became limited or entirely disappeared from curricula. This was done in favour of more practical purpose-oriented subjects like math, physics, chemistry, business administration and computer science. Of course, these topics are essential for obtaining a solid education and be attractive for the labour market. However, humans do not live on bread alone, our brains are stimulated by inputs like art, music and entertainment. Humanities enrich human interaction and allow us to take part of the dreams, visions and fantasies of others. Let us not deny our children the pleasure of becoming familiar with storytelling; with fairy tales, fantasies, myths and legends, preferably told in communion with others and in harmony with our surrounding world. Not only within realms that is electronically created, but a real world consisting of tangible, impressionable and caring individuals.

The stimulus and pleasure of partaking in storytelling might learn us to look at and perceive human existence from several angles and thus develop into critical thinking individuals able to avoid falling into traps set by Pied Pipers who through the World Wide Web invoke narrow-mindedness, cold-heartedness, prejudices, and greed.

 

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Yasmine Sherif, Director of Education Cannot Wait and Jan Egeland, Secretary General of the Norwegian Refugee Council meet students at the Souza Gare school in the Littoral region, Cameroon. The school hosts displaced children who have fled the violence in the North-West and South-West regions. Credit: ECW/Daniel Beloumou

By Joyce Chimbi
Yaoundé, Cameroon, Dec 3 2021 (IPS)

Education is under attack in Cameroon. As one of the most complex humanitarian crises in the world unfolds, Education Cannot Wait’s director Yasmine Sherif and the Secretary-General of the Norwegian Refugee Council, Jan Egeland, say the children are pawns for grown men in a political conflict.

In an exclusive interview with IPS from Cameroon, where Sherif and Egeland are on a four-day visit, they told of the impact of this ongoing conflict between armed groups and government forces in this central African country.

“The situation in Cameroon is devastating, and education is under attack. Only last week, an attack in a school killed four children and one teacher. A girl had their fingers chopped off for attending school. The result is fear. Fear of going to school,” says Sherif.

Egeland agrees that children are the victims of violence that has nothing to do with them.

“Conflict between grown-ups on political, cultural, and governance issues that are very real and very important to settle are not being settled in negotiations. They are being settled by armed violence against children and life-threatening attacks on their places of learning,” he says.

In the face of threats, harassment, violence, kidnapping, and death targeted at teachers and school-going children, two out of three schools are closed in the North-West and South-West regions, the epicenter of the ongoing conflict between armed groups and government forces in this Central African country.

There is heightened alarm that the situation has placed an entire generation of children in Cameroon’s North-West and South-West regions at risk of losing lifelong learning opportunities.

Girl writing on a blackboard at the Souza Gare school in the Littoral region, Cameroon. The school hosts displaced children who have fled the violence in the North-West and South-West regions. Credit: ECW/Daniel Beloumou

Sherif, who heads ECW, the global fund for education in emergencies and protracted crises, and Egeland have urged all involved to end violence against children.

Hundreds of civilians, including children, have been killed since January 2020 in the North-West and South-West regions. Armed groups and government forces are in violent conflict, and the risks and needs of children impacted by the conflict have increased.

“This is among the most complex humanitarian crises in the world today. Children and youth are having to flee their homes and schools, are threatened with violence and kidnapping, and are being forced into early childhood marriage and recruited into armed groups,” says Sherif.

“We call for urgent support from donors to respond to this forgotten crisis. We call for the respect of human rights and adherence to the principles of international humanitarian law and the Safe Schools Declaration – and for partners to redouble efforts so all children and adolescents can get back to the safety, protection, and hope that quality learning environments provide.”

Sherif says nine out of 10 regions of Cameroon continue to be impacted by one of three complex humanitarian crises, including the North-West and South-West crisis, conflict in the Far North, and a refugee crisis of those fleeing Cameroon.

Children are devastatingly affected as over one million children need urgent education support. While impressed by their resilience, courage, and hunger for education, Sherif says this is not enough to keep them in school.

“The children will need protection, school meals, health and psychosocial support, and tools for teachers to do their job,” she says.

To address these multiple emergencies, made worse by COVID-19 and climate change, Sherif says ECW is working hand-in-hand with organizations in Cameroon, the Ministry of Basic Education, Ministry of Secondary Education and UN agencies, the Norwegian Refugee Council, and civil society education partners to build a multi-year resilience programme in Cameroon.

Egeland tells IPS that the partnerships are timely and critical because what is happening in North-West and South-West regions in Cameroon deserves international outrage.

Yasmine Sherif, Director of Education Cannot Wait and Jan Egeland, Secretary-General of the Norwegian Refugee Council meet with Joseph Dion NGute, Prime Minister of Cameroon. Credit: Cameroon, Prime Minister’s Office

He says more than 700,000 children in Cameroon are “either completely out of school because they lost their school at gunpoint or because they ended up with 90 others in cramped classrooms in the few remaining schools. Children should never be pawns for grown men in political conflict.”

Sherif fears that even more children will exit the education system and not return.

“I feel very strongly about improving and reinforcing the education rights of all children in Cameroon. Just because you live in Cameroon does not mean that you cannot go to school. Legal provisions for children impacted by conflict must be activated,” she says.

With many schools remaining closed or non-operational, Sherif says there is cause for worry. In the absence of urgent, timely, and practical risk management interventions such as building walls around schools and reinforcing on-school security, an entire generation of children in Cameroon could become illiterate.

For schools to reopen, Egeland says that children must be exempted from political grievances. Keeping with international law, he says safe zones or areas established in armed conflict for the protection of civilians must be declared, and genuine negotiation between warring groups activated.

He says negotiations are much needed as the situation is now out of hand – five years since renewed tensions between the government and armed groups imploded into an emergency crisis.

On his visit to Cameroon three years ago, Egeland says an estimated 500,000 people were displaced. Today, the figure has risen to over 700,000 people.

“Then, hundreds of thousands of children were out of school for a second year running. Today, the children are out of school for the fifth year running,” he says.

Sherif says the situation is untenable and that a resilient, safe and secure learning environment is the most pressing need for children in Cameroon.

“ECW is contributing US$25 million over three years and calls for other donors to fill the gap, which is estimated at US$50 million. When fully funded, the programme will provide approximately 250,000 children and adolescents with access to safe and protective learning environments in the most-affected areas,” she says.

Egeland says such investments are much needed.

He told IPS the turmoil had not dimmed the children’s dreams of a bright future in nursing, medicine, and law.

There is an urgent need for the international community to focus on Cameroon – a forgotten and neglected conflict.

“Cameroon should no longer be the most neglected in terms of funding per person in need. The country is significantly underfunded despite the ongoing humanitarian crisis and increasing vulnerabilities for children,” he cautioned.

He further says that warring groups must be encouraged to reach compromises because the end of the ongoing conflict will be a beginning full of immense opportunities for Cameroonian children.

Meanwhile, Sherif says the situation is so dire that school-going children dress in camouflage, so violent armed groups do not target them. They need secure environments now – their education cannot wait.

 

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By Armida Salsiah Alisjahbana
BANGKOK, Thailand, Dec 3 2021 (IPS)

As the world observes the International Day of Persons with Disabilities today, we honour the leadership of persons with disabilities and their tireless efforts to build a more inclusive, accessible and sustainable world. At the same time, we resolve to work harder to ensure a society that is open and accommodating of all.

Armida Salsiah Alisjahbana

An estimated 690 million persons with disabilities, around 15 per cent of the total population, live in the Asia-Pacific region. Many of them continue to be excluded from socio-economic and political participation. Available data suggests that persons with disabilities are almost half as likely to be employed as persons without disabilities. They are also half as likely to have voted in an election and are underrepresented in government decision-making bodies. Just about 0.5 per cent of parliamentarians in the region are persons with disabilities. Women with disabilities are even less likely to be employed and hold only 0.1 per cent of national parliament positions.

One of the main reasons behind these exclusions is a lack of accessibility. Public transportation and the built environment in general — including public offices, polling stations, workplaces, markets and other essential structures — lack ramps, walkways and basic accessibility features. Accessibility, however, goes beyond the commonly thought of physical structures. Barriers to access to services and information and communication technology must also be removed, to allow for the participation of persons with diverse types of disabilities, including persons with intellectual disabilities and hearing and vision impairments.

The COVID-19 pandemic and related lockdowns has exacerbated existing inequalities. Many persons with disabilities face increased health concerns due to comorbidities and were left without access to their personal assistants and essential goods and services. As much of society moved online during lockdowns, inaccessible digital infrastructure meant persons with disabilities could not access public health information or online employment opportunities.

Despite these challenges, persons with disabilities and their organizations were among the first to respond to the immediate needs of their communities for food and supplies during lockdowns in addition to continuing their long-term work to support vulnerable groups.

ESCAP partnered with several of these organizations to support their work during the pandemic. Samarthyam, a civil society organization in India led by a woman with disabilities, has trained many men and women with disabilities to conduct accessibility audits in their home districts. With these skills, they are becoming leaders and advocates in their communities, working towards improving the accessibility of essential buildings everywhere.

Another ESCAP partner, the National Council for the Blind of Malaysia (NCBM), is working to improve digital accessibility by training a group with diverse disabilities in web access auditing, accessible e-publishing and strategic advocacy. NCBM hopes to support participants in forming a social enterprise for web auditing and accessible publishing, creating employment opportunities and enabling persons with disabilities to lead efforts to improve online accessibility.

Women and men with disabilities have been leaders and champions to break barriers to make a difference in Asia and the Pacific. Today, ESCAP launches the report “Disability at a Glance 2021: The Shaping of Disability-inclusive Employment in Asia and the Pacific.” The report highlights some innovative approaches to making employment more inclusive, as well as recommendations on how to further reduce employment gaps.

Adjusting to a post-COVID-19 world presents an opportunity for governments to reassess and implement policies to increase the inclusion of persons with disabilities in employment, decision making bodies and all aspects of society. Accessibility issues impact not only persons with disabilities but also other people in need of assistance, including older persons, pregnant women or those with injuries. Implementing policies with universal design, which creates environments and services that are useable by all people, benefits the whole of society. Governments should mainstream universal design principles into national development plans, not only in disability-specific laws and policies.

As a global leader in disability-inclusive development for over 30 years, the Asia-Pacific region has set an example by adopting the world’s first set of disability-specific development goals in the Incheon Strategy to “Make the Right Real.” Meeting the Incheon Strategy goals will require governments to intensify their efforts to reduce barriers to education, employment and political participation.

At ESCAP, we know that achieving an inclusive and sustainable post-COVID-19 world will only be possible with increased leadership and participation of persons with disabilities. To build back better — and fairer — we will continue to strengthen partnerships with all stakeholders so together we can “Make the Right Real” for all persons with disabilities.

Armida Salsiah Alisjahbana is Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations and Executive Secretary of ESCAP

 

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By Jennie Lyn Reyes
BANGKOK, Thailand, Dec 3 2021 (IPS)

Almost two years into the COVID-19 pandemic, many countries in the developing world continue to grapple with basic issues such as securing sufficient vaccines and providing essential medical care for their sick. Many economies are in recovery mode as governments scramble to resuscitate them with recovery packages and build back better plans.

In this mix, COVID-19 did not dent Big Tobacco’s profits as it exploited the pandemic and persuaded governments to treat cigarettes as “essential,” accept its charity, obtain perks such as tax breaks and treat new tobacco products more favorably. These were the main findings of the 2021 Asian Tobacco Industry Interference Index.

Although many countries in Asia, a target for Big Tobacco to grow its business, already reject tobacco industry gift-giving, health and non-health frontliners fell prey to its corporate social responsibility activities at the height of the pandemic. The industry doled out emergency medical equipment, hospital supplies, and cash and food provisions in areas under lockdowns.

As many governments limited the movement of non-essential tobacco to mitigate the spread of COVID-19, the governments of Bangladesh and the Philippines caved in to industry pressure and exempted the manufacture and sale of tobacco products.

In Bangladesh, British American Tobacco and Japan Tobacco International received special permission from business-friendly departments to continue purchasing tobacco leaf, manufacturing, and distributing finished goods while the country was under a nationwide lockdown.

The Philippines classified tobacco as non-essential and restricted its transport and delivery in areas under lockdown in March 2020, but eventually lifted the restrictions and announced that the tobacco industry could fully operate in areas under general community quarantine.

The Asian index shows that although nearly all countries included in the report are Parties to the global health treaty, the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC), many governments still deem the tobacco industry’s business as fiscally beneficial even at the expense of public health.

In Thailand, the date of repealing the ineffective two-tier cigarette tax rate was also extended for another year, while in India, Korea, Malaysia, and Nepal, no tax increase was announced for 2021.

In Indonesia, the government eased the tobacco excise tax scheme by extending the payment deadline, which allowed the industry to sell at old market prices, deprived the government of additional revenues, and sustained rather than discouraged tobacco use.

In Japan, where cigarette tax rates are already low, heated tobacco products introduced by Big Tobacco are taxed significantly lower. Similarly, in the Philippines, the excise tax rate on electronic smoking products is substantially lower than that for cigarettes.

The index quantifies industry meddling in 19 Asian countries and ranks governments according to their efforts in shielding public policies. While a few countries show marginal progress, many showed deterioration in addressing tobacco industry influence, primarily due to the industry’s more aggressive tactics that capitalized on the COVID-19 situation.

Key findings:

• Protective measures in tobacco control are still needed. Eight (8) countries are still unprotected from tobacco industry influence, while other countries still have room to strengthen enforcement of their protective measures.
• Tobacco industry continued rebuilding its image through CSR activities. The tobacco industry targets socio-economically vulnerable groups as CSR beneficiaries to disassociate its corporate image from its toxic products and irresponsible business practices. Brunei, Lao PDR, Maldives, Mongolia, Myanmar, Nepal, and Thailand have banned these activities as fake charities.
• Tobacco industry enjoyed government benefits such as waived duties, tax breaks, and subsidies. These deprived government of potential revenues for pandemic response or social services.
• Even when most social events and physical gatherings were banned, many government officials interacted unnecessarily with the tobacco industry.
• There is a systemic lack of transparency in disclosing government interactions with the tobacco industry. None of the countries have a registry to publicly disclose the tobacco industry’s affiliate organizations, individuals, or lobbyists acting on its behalf.

There is hope as some governments move to protect public policy from undue influence of the tobacco industry, such as India, whose Ministry of Health and Family Welfare adopted a code of conduct for its officials when interacting with the tobacco industry.

Cambodia’s Ministry of Education also introduced tobacco-free policies in educational facilities and banned any sponsorship or collaboration with the tobacco industry.

Although COVID-19 figures have now surpassed 250 million infections and 5 million deaths globally, tobacco continues to kill 8 million people annually. As the pandemic lingers, Big Tobacco continues to expand its business simultaneously.

Philip Morris International reported pre-tax earnings of almost $11 billion for 2020, while British American Tobacco reported revenues of about $12 billion, primarily from cigarette sales. These figures are far more than the health budgets of poor countries and what they spend on tackling the pandemic.

Governments must strengthen their efforts to protect public health policy in the spirit of anti-corruption and good governance, as civil society continues to do its part to monitor, expose, and de-normalize this harmful industry and its products.

Jennie Lyn Reyes is the author of the 2021 Asian Tobacco Industry Interference Index and the Monitoring and Evaluation Manager of SEATCA

About SEATCA
SEATCA is a multi-sectoral non-governmental alliance promoting health and saving lives by assisting ASEAN countries to accelerate and effectively implement the tobacco control measures contained in the WHO FCTC. Acknowledged by governments, academic institutions, and civil society for its advancement of tobacco control in Southeast Asia, the WHO bestowed on SEATCA the World No Tobacco Day Award in 2004 and the WHO Director-General’s Special Recognition Award in 2014.

 

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