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UN’s First-Ever Food Systems Summit to Fight Impending Emergency

Tue, 09/08/2020 - 10:54

Women of the Batwa community tilling the soil in preparation for planting potatoes, in Gashikanwa, Burundi. Credit: FAO/Giulio Napolitano

By Agnes Kalibata
UNITED NATIONS, Sep 8 2020 (IPS)

Food systems involve all the stages that lead up to the point when we consume food, including the way it is produced, transported, and sold. Launching a policy brief on food security in June, UN chief António Guterres warned of an “impending food emergency”, unless immediate action is taken.

My commitment to improving food systems is closely linked to my early life as the daughter of refugees.

“I was born in a refugee camp in Uganda, because my Rwandan parents were forced to leave their home around the time of colonial independence in the early 60s.

Agnes Kalibata, Special Envoy for 2021 Food Systems Summit. Credit: CIAT/Neil Palmer

Thanks to the UN High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR), were given land, which allowed my parents to farm, buy a few cows, and make enough money to send me and my siblings to school. This allowed me to experience, first-hand, how agriculture, in a functioning food system, can provide huge opportunities for smallholder communities.

I took this appreciation with me when I eventually returned to Rwanda, as Minister for Agriculture, working with smallholders and seeing them grab every opportunity to turn their lives around against all odds. This was probably the most fulfilling period in my life.

But, I have also seen what can happen when threats like climate change, conflict and even more recently, a pandemic like Covid 19, hit the world’s farmers, especially those who are smallholders, like my parents were.

As a daughter of farmers, I understand how much people can suffer, because of systems that are breaking down. I often reflect that I, and other children of farmers my age that made it through school, were the lucky ones because climate change hits small farmers the hardest, destroying their capacities to cope.

My experience has shown me that, when food systems function well, agriculture can provide huge opportunities for smallholder communities. I am a product of functional food systems, and I am fully convinced of the power of food systems to transform lives of smallholder households and communities, and bring about changes to entire economies.

I’m extremely passionate about ending hunger in our lifetime: I believe it’s a solvable problem. I don’t understand why 690 million people are still going to bed hungry, amidst so much plenty in our world, and with all the knowledge, technology and resources.

I have made it my mission to understand why this is the case, and how we can overcome the challenges we see along the way. That is why I gladly accepted the offer by the UN Secretary General to be his Special Envoy for the Food Systems Summit.

Female farmers in discussion with former Rwandan Minister for Agriculture, Agnes Kalibata (far left). Credit: UN Food Systems Summit

Why food systems need to change

Today’s food systems do not respond to what we need as people. The cause of death for one in three people around the world is related to what they eat. Two billion people are obese, one trillion dollars’ worth of food is wasted every year, yet many millions still go hungry.

Food systems have an impact on the climate. They are responsible for around one third of harmful greenhouse gas emissions that are causing climate change, which is interfering massively in our ability to produce food, upending farmers’ lives, and making the seasons harder to predict.

We have built up a lot of knowledge around the things that we’re doing wrong, and we have the technology to allow us to do things differently, and better. This isn’t rocket science: it’s mostly a question of mobilizing energy, and securing political commitment for change.

Galvanise and engage

The main impetus behind the Food Summit is the fact that the we are off track with all of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) that relate to food systems, principally ending poverty and hunger, and action on the climate and environment.

We want to use the Summit to galvanise and engage people, raising awareness about the elements that are broken, and what we need to change; to recognize that we’re way off track with the SDGs, and raise our ambitions; and to secure firm commitments to actions that will transform our current food systems for the better.

Traditional Hadong Tea Agrosystem in Hwagae-myeon, Korea, cultivate indigenous tea trees around streams and between rocks in hilly areas surrounding temples. Credit: Hadong County, Republic of Korea

Pulling together the UN System

The UN system is already doing a lot of work in this area, and we’ve pulled together several agencies and bodies to support the Summit.

We have formed a UN Task Force to channel the existing research, so that nothing falls through the cracks, which will work closely with a core group of experts we have assembled, which is looking at scientific data pooled from institutions all around the world. At the same time, we are examining national food systems, to see what is and isn’t working.

We are going to pool all the information, evidence and ideas we receive, and create a vision for a future food system that benefits all.”

At a briefing on the Food Systems Summit held recently, Amina Mohammed, the UN Deputy Secretary-General, noted that a transition to more sustainable systems is already underway, with countries beginning to “take action and change behaviours in support of a new vision of how food arrives on our plate.”

UN Member States, she continued, are increasingly aware that food systems are “one of the most powerful links between humans and the planet”, and bringing about a world that “enhances inclusive economic growth and opportunity, while also safeguarding biodiversity and the global ecosystems that sustain life. “

The Summit objectives

2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development

*This article was first appeared in UN News, a publication of the United Nations.

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The post UN’s First-Ever Food Systems Summit to Fight Impending Emergency appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Agnes Kalibata, in an interview with UN News*

Agnes Kalibata, UN Special Envoy for 2021 Food Systems Summit and a former Rwandan Minister for Agriculture, has been tasked with leading the first-ever UN Food Systems Summit, on a date to be determined next year. In an interview with UN News, she outlined her vision for a transformed international system that is more resilient, fairer, and less harmful to the planet.

The post UN’s First-Ever Food Systems Summit to Fight Impending Emergency appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Categories: Africa

Regressive Taxation Must Be Reversed

Tue, 09/08/2020 - 10:05

By Jomo Kwame Sundaram
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia, Sep 8 2020 (IPS)

With many in the world experiencing declining living standards, there has been growing frustration. Many hope that progressive taxation will improve things. While some economies once had progressive tax systems, recent decades have seen regression.

Competing, contradictory trends
Triumph of Injustice, the recent book by Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman, both associates of ‘rock-star’ economist Thomas Piketty, calls for a US return to progressive taxation. The duo show that the US had one of the world’s most progressive tax systems, but now, the richest pay a lower tax rate than the poorest.

Jomo Kwame Sundaram

The two French economists at Berkeley consider the two major competing US ideologies on taxation based on rival claims with contemporary echoes. The socially regressive, ostensibly libertarian tradition has its roots in property, including slaves, who once accounted for 40% of the population of the US South.

Plantation owners and slaveholders opposed property taxes in the name of freedom and liberty. Meanwhile, the myth of the wealthy that low taxes have long been part of US history and tradition has become far more influential.

Another more progressive tax ideology can be traced to more egalitarian traditions, including some involving wealth taxation. The US has actually had some of the highest tax rates on the rich in world history, as taxation became more progressive from the 1930s, especially after the Second World War.

Regressive turn
Those most responsible for the U-turn from the 1980s have been US Presidents Ronald Reagan and Donald Trump. The authors attribute the great recent increase in US economic inequality to the “negative spiral” involving regressive tax reforms over the last four decades.

However, empirical support for their claim is suspect as the ‘primary’ distribution of income before taxation is hardly egalitarian. Besides the traditional division between capital and labour, rentier incomes and much higher executive remuneration have become far more significant in recent decades.

While regressive tax incidence has undoubtedly made things worse, exaggerating the fiscal system’s redistributive impact detracts from a more comprehensive understanding of contemporary inequality.

Avoidance and evasion
Successive US governments have also enabled tax evasion and avoidance by not investing enough to effectively enforce what remains of the US tax code. These have been portrayed by beneficiaries and their propagandists as ‘unavoidable’.

They then claim that the best option to ensure greater compliance is to lower ‘headline’ tax rates. Thus, instead of greater efforts to reduce tax avoidance and evasion, they urge further reduction of tax rates.

Saez and Zucman insist that governments, especially the world’s most powerful one in Washington, DC, must come down hard on tax dodgers, pointing out that not doing so is due to political choices made. They propose a Federal Protection Bureau to enhance capacity against tax evasion and avoidance.

Corporate taxation
The duo show that corporate taxes were crucial in narrowing the gap between rich and poor during the Keynesian Golden Age for a quarter century or so in the mid-20th century after World War Two.

While very high top personal income tax rates, and much more inheritance and property taxes can help, they show that corporate taxation was crucial. The corporate income tax rate then was 50%, taking half of firm profits.

The high tax rate also encouraged re-investing profits, rather than paying dividends and bonuses, encouraging firm growth with higher capital accumulation in the long-term.

Meanwhile, progressive government expenditure complemented progressive taxation, including more direct taxes, for a comprehensively progressive fiscal system, reducing overall economic inequality.

Proposals to reduce inequalities
Saez and Zucman persuasively offer a comprehensive set of proposals to reverse the downward spiral to rebuild a much more progressive US tax system, with many lessons very relevant elsewhere as well. Importantly, they discuss various options for the US, including many not requiring international cooperation.

They acknowledge that the US has already shown the way with its Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA). FATCA compels all US citizens, both at home and abroad, to file annual reports on all their foreign holdings, ensuring greater financial transparency in the age of globalization.

Nevertheless, they insist it is not enough, arguing that “when it comes to regulating the tax industry, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) brings a knife to a gunfight”, instead of enhancing US tax capacities and capabilities.

‘Tax all incomes equally’
The first principle of taxation for them is that all income should be taxed equally, whether from work or assets. Today, capital income is taxed much less than labour income, increasing inequality contrary to the popular presumption that taxation is progressively redistributive.

Saez and Zucman also show that the rich can afford to pay 4% of national income, or US$750 billion more in tax. Four sets of taxes would double their current average tax rate from 30% to 60%.

They propose a steeply progressive income tax, arguing that a top rate of 75% is most viable. The duo also recommend strongly enforced corporate tax, doubling inheritance tax revenues, and introducing a wealth tax.

Wealth tax necessary
The duo also insist that it will be impossible to reduce inequality in the contemporary world only by raising corporate, inheritance and income taxes, as important as these are to the overall effort.

At the rates recommended, a wealth tax would raise significant sums, but still would not radically reduce inequality or extreme wealth concentration. Hence, the authors argue for higher rates, not only to raise more government revenue, but also to reduce extreme wealth inequality and concentration.

Saez and Zucman argue that extreme wealth concentration has led to growth benefits being captured by a few. They argue for taxing the rich, not only to enhance revenue, but also to reduce extreme wealth concentration.

For them, “a radical wealth tax would lead to a reduction in the number of multibillionaires. More than collecting revenue, it would deconcentrate wealth”. They suggest a 10% rate on fortunes over US$1 billion.

This would not only make it harder to be a billionaire, but also much harder to become and remain a multi-billionaire. If their proposed wealth tax was in place from 1982, most of the 400 richest Americans would still be billionaires, but worth much less.

Their wealth shares would be closer to what they were in 1982, before the rapid rise of wealth inequality. Mark Zuckerberg would still have US$21 billion, instead of US$61 billion, while Bill Gates would be worth US$4 billion, instead of US$97 billion.

Inequalities linked
Under President Franklin Delano Roosevelt in the 1930s, an income tax top rate of 94% was introduced, apparently not to raise revenue, but rather, to limit high incomes and wealth concentration.

This effectively limited income differentials between the highest and lowest paid to far more reasonable levels. As top tax rates have drastically fallen since, executives now get several hundred times more than their lowest paid employees.

In a recent interview, Gates commented, “I’m all for super-progressive tax systems…I’ve paid over $10bn in taxes. I’ve paid more than anyone in taxes. If I had to pay $20bn, it’s fine. But when you say I should pay $100bn, then I’m starting to do a little math about what I have left over.”

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Categories: Africa

Nobel Laureate Kailash Satyarthi on Where to Find the $1 trillion Needed for Marginalised Children

Tue, 09/08/2020 - 10:03

By Stella Paul
HYDERBAD, India, Sep 8 2020 (IPS)

Nobel Laureate Kailash Satyarthi says that $1 trillion can solve many of the problems the world’s most marginalised communities are facing.

Satyarthi spoke to IPS in an exclusive interview on the eve of Fair Share for Children Summit, a global virtual conference, hosted by Laureates and Leaders for Children, which is founded by Satyarthi. The summit, which takes place from Sept. 9-10, brings together Nobel laureates, including the Dalai Lama, Tawakkol Karman, Professor Jody Williams and leading international figures and heads of United Nations agencies to demand a fair share for the world’s most marginalised children during and beyond COVID-19.

This fair share, the Laureates and Leaders for Children say, translates to 20 percent of the COVID-19 response for the poorest 20 percent of humanity and amounts to $1 trillion.

Watch as Satyarthi outlines just what the money will be spent on.

Exclusive: Kailash Satyarthi Warns over a Million Children Could Die Because of COVID-19 Economic Crisis

The post Nobel Laureate Kailash Satyarthi on Where to Find the $1 trillion Needed for Marginalised Children appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Categories: Africa

Exclusive: Kailash Satyarthi Warns over a Million Children Could Die Because of COVID-19 Economic Crisis

Tue, 09/08/2020 - 09:37

Nobel Laureate Kailash Satyarthi said that without prioritising children we could lose an entire generation as evidence mounts that the number of child labourers, child marriages, school dropouts and child slaves has increased as the COVID-19 pandemic spread across the globe. Courtesy: Kailash Satyarthi Children's Foundation

By Stella Paul
HYDERBAD, India, Sep 8 2020 (IPS)

Nobel Laureate Kailash Satyarthi warns of the danger that over one million children could die, not because of the COVID-19 pandemic, but because of the economic crisis facing their families.

In an exclusive interview with IPS, Satyarthi said that without prioritising children we could lose an entire generation as evidence mounts that the number of child labourers, child marriages, school dropouts and child slaves has increased as the COVID-19 pandemic spread across the globe.

He candidly noted that the most marginalised and vulnerable children in the world are still not prioritised by governments and policies and that the political will and urgency of action was simply not there to offer them protection.

Satyarthi is undoubtedly one of the greatest child rights’ crusaders of our time. Founder of Bachpan Bachao Andolan (Save Childhood Movement) – India’s largest movement for the protection of children and centred around ending bonded and labour and human trafficking, Satyarthi has been relentlessly working to protect the rights of children for over four decades. Save Childhood Movement has rescued almost 100,000 children from servitude and bonded labour, re-integrating them into society and aiding them in resuming their education.

IPS interviews Satyarthi on the eve of Fair Share for Children Summit, a global virtual conference, hosted by Laureates and Leaders for Children – also founded by Satyarthi. The summit, which takes place from Sept. 9-10, brings together Nobel laureates, including the Dalai Lama, Tawakkol Karman, Professor Jody Williams and leading international figures and heads of United Nations agencies to demand a fair share for the world’s most marginalised children during and beyond COVID-19.

The pandemic has gravely endangered millions of children around the globe, and it is not just a moral obligation but also a practical step to protect these children, Satyarthi says.

He also elaborates what could be a fair share of the global pandemic recovery package for the children and how this could be managed. Excerpts follow:

IPS: Where does the world stand today in ensuring child rights? Which are the areas where we have clear progress, and where are we still failing?

Kailash Satyarthi (KS): I would be very blunt to say that the most marginalised and vulnerable children in the world are still not prioritised in the policies and fund allocations and spending on them. Protection of children needs a lot of political will and a lot of urgency and action which was not there. But I would agree that we have been making progress, slowly but surely, we are trying to protect our children in different areas. There is clear evidence that the number of child labourers has decreased over the last 20 years or so, the number of out-of-school children has also dropped considerably. Similarly, we made progress in the field of malnutrition. So, there were many areas we made progress. But as I said before, we require a tremendous amount of political will and action to protect our children.

IPS: How has the COVID pandemic endangered lives of children across the world?

KS: Well, before the pandemic, we had several problems in relation to safety, education, health and freedom of children. And since these children belong to the most marginalised sector of society – they are children of unorganised workers, peasants, farmers, they are children of indigenous peoples and children belonging to refugee communities. So, they were already suffering, injustice was there, inequality was there, but COVID-19 has exacerbated that inequality and injustice, and we see the worst effect is on children.

Though there is no direct infection or disease, the indirect effect is alarming, and that has to be addressed now. It is very clear that if we do not take urgent action now, then we risk losing the entire generation. It is evident and eminent from all sources that the number of child labourers, the number of child marriages, school dropouts, the number of child slaves, even children engaged in petty crimes – these will increase.

So, we have to underline these factors which are impacting the lives of children and their families, of course. And we have to be extremely vigilant and active about it. So, that sense of moral responsibility and political responsibility should be generated and educated.

I also think that this crisis is the crisis of civilisations. We were thinking that since everybody is facing the same problem, the pandemic would be an equaliser. But instead of being an equaliser, it has become a divider. Divisive forces are quite active in society, and equality and injustice are growing in the children. So, first of all, as an individual and a concerned citizen, one should generate compassion.

Two Tamil refugee children play in Mannar in northern Sri Lanka. The COVID-19 pandemic has gravely endangered millions of children around the globe. Credit: Stella Paul/IPS

IPS: The government stimulus package is expected to provide employment and help in economic recovery. Is it feasible to use this specifically for child development and child protection?

KS: It is not only feasible, it is necessary. We cannot protect humanity and ethos of equality and justice until and unless we address the problems of the most marginalised children and people of the world.

I am quite supportive of the government stimulus package, which is $9 trillion so far. I will give you an example – the stimulus is prioritised to bail out their own companies. Most of the developed countries are putting up stimulus to bail out their own economy, their banks, financial institutions and companies. In the United States, some companies have all-time high stock market situations.

On the other hand, we have a danger that over a million children will die – not because of COVID-19 pandemic, but because of the economic crisis, their parents are facing. So, this is injustice. How can you justify this? You need a stimulation package to bailout [the] economy, but you need a stimulation package to ensure that our children are protected. So, this is not just a moral question but also a very practical issue.

This is why in May earlier this year, I joined 88 Nobel Laureates and global leaders to sign a joint statement demanding that 20 percent of the COVID-19 response be allocated to the most marginalised children and their families. This is the minimum fair share for children.

IPS: The theme of the summit is #FairShare4Children. What would be considered a fair share of the estimated $9 trillion set aside globally to mitigate the effects of the pandemic? Where are the most critical areas? And how should it be managed?

KS: Even if you only look at the $5 trillion packages announced in the first few weeks of the pandemic, 20 precent of that is $1 trillion – enough funding to fund all the COVID-19 U.N. appeals, cancel two years of debt for low-income countries, provide the external funding required for two years of the Sustainable Development Goals on Education and Water and Sanitation and a full ten years of the external funding for the health-related SDGs.

Within the estimated $9 trillion of governments’ aid, this would mean $1 trillion (for children). This funding would mitigate the increase child hunger and food insecurity, tackle the increase in child labour and slavery, the denial of education and the heightened vulnerability of children on the move such as child refugees and displaced children. These are the areas of immediate criticality.

Some key demands to this end include – for one, the declaration of COVID vaccines as a global common good so that it is made available for free for the most marginalised communities. Secondly, the creation of a Global Social Protection Fund to provide a financial safety net to the poorest communities in lower and lower-middle income countries. Thirdly, all governments should cancel the debt of poor countries to allow them to redirect funds towards social protection. Lastly, governments should establish legislation to ensure due diligence and transparency for business and ensure its strict compliance to prevent the engagement of child labour and slavery in the global supply chains.

If we can prevent the devastating impact of COVID-19 on these areas in the present, if we can reduce the inequality in the world’s COVID-19 response, if we ensure the most vulnerable receive their Fair Share to we can then be in a position to salvage the future of our children.

The post Exclusive: Kailash Satyarthi Warns over a Million Children Could Die Because of COVID-19 Economic Crisis appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

IPS senior correspondent Stella Paul interviews Nobel Laureate KAILASH SATYARTHI on the eve of Fair Share for Children Summit, a global virtual conference in which Nobel Laureates and world leaders are calling for the world's most marginalised children to be protected against the impacts of COVID-19.

The post Exclusive: Kailash Satyarthi Warns over a Million Children Could Die Because of COVID-19 Economic Crisis appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Categories: Africa

COVID-19: Lessons from the Losses

Mon, 09/07/2020 - 19:14

Clementine, a community health volunteer, meets with a mother and child. Credit: Lys Arango for Action Against Hunger, Kenya

By Dr Patrick Amoth
NAIROBI, Kenya, Sep 7 2020 (IPS)

If countries considered Universal Health Coverage (UHC) a central policy in their health systems, the COVID-19 has surely demonstrated the need for its urgent and widespread roll out. The pandemic has upended world systems in a manner that no scientists or sophisticated global intelligence could have foreseen.

Having been tapped to join the World Health Organization’s Executive Board to represent Africa midst this global crisis, I am persuaded that despite its toll, this pandemic has ‘blessings’ on its flipside. COVID-19 has exposed the global crisis of weak healthcare systems that previously lay under the carpet and forced nations’ global attention on strengthening systems to achieve UHC. Kenya, for example, has never suffered any major epidemic, having escaped the SARS, Swine Flu and even the deadly Ebola that ravaged neighboring countries. This is therefore a first and has indeed tested its preparedness for epidemics.

Thankfully for Kenya, the Covid-19 epidemic appeared in the midst of the roll-out of the President’s Big 4 Agenda, which prioritized UHC as a key pillar . The pilot implementation of UHC in four counties in Kenya has demonstrated better impact on the health outcome and greater accessibility while building Resilient and Sustainable Health system that can respond to unforeseen shocks. However, the success of UHC in Kenya will require more than executive or national-level goodwill; with health as a devolved function, each of the 47 counties must put in systems and resources to ensure its success.

The county bosses ought to prioritize delivery of a better healthcare system to citizens. This will be only be possible with a deliberate cohesive approach to UHC between the central government and the counties in order to achieve desired outputs within a short time. Both the national and county budgets have to be aligned and apportioned appropriately towards this goal.

Primarily, sufficient resources have to be channeled towards better healthcare infrastructures such as more hospitals and better equipment. However, investment in infrastructure must be done simultaneously with that in human capital. State-of-the-art equipment and beautiful hospitals without competent and well-trained personnel to handle the equipment and patients, is tantamount to wastage. As such, governments and partners ought to make enormous investments in medical and health related sciences to develop well trained healthcare professionals. The country needs to improve the current ratio of healthcare workers to population to reach every citizen with quality healthcare. Continuous medical education learning and training of healthcare workers needs to be underscored to hone their skills in latest technologies and prepare them to deal with emerging diseases.

World Health Organization (WHO) recently adopted Home-Based Isolation and Care as one of the case management strategies for Covid-19. For a continent whose populations largely reside in rural areas, this change in strategy has highlighted the importance of competent, capable and motivated community health volunteers. The community health volunteers have become crucial tripods of the healthcare stand during this pandemic. Whereas most of the CHVs may not necessarily have college training in health-related fields, their experience and informal training has gone a long way to help alleviate the challenges of Covid-19 in communities.

Kenya has for example trained and oriented 60,000 CHVs to handle patients who may present with Covid-19 symptoms. Guided by a carefully thought out Community Health Policy (2020-2030) and Guidelines on training of community health workers on COVID 19, the trained CHVs are approximately 70 percent of all CHVs in the country. The training and commensurate results from the CHVs during this pandemic has demonstrated that CHVs are a key component of the UHC success. Apart from making UHC work better, the need for more and better-trained CHVs will also be a credible avenue for job creation, especially at a time when the economy has taken a massive hit and many people with diverse skill sets are jobless.

Covid-19 has been a perfect crucible for testing the effectiveness and efficacy of technology in healthcare management. Due to the unpredictability of the epidemic and having led to total and partial lockdowns, Kenya’s CHVs received relevant information about Covid-19 through text messages, once again proving that technology is indeed the present and future of healthcare management.

Apart from achieving healthier nations, Universal Health Coverage will also be a great opportunity for multilateralism. If Kenya, its neighbors and the whole region were to invest in more hospitals and better quality of healthcare, medical tourism would grow considerably. The increase in number of patients will in turn drive up revenues and eventually lead to a drop in the cost of healthcare, much to the benefit of even local citizens. This has been the model of nations like India, whose cost of healthcare has become relatively affordable due to huge numbers of global citizens seeking medicare in their country. For India and other medical destinations, technology has also played a pivotal role in healthcare since it enjoys advanced medical technology for faster and more accurate diagnosis and management.

Advanced medical technologies such as telemedicine and compliance with international quality standards will further guarantee health tourists of excellent healthcare services, thereby creating investor confidence and opening up the region further to economic investment and strength.

Covid-19 pandemic must be a turning point for nations that have not prioritized Universal Health Coverage. A healthy citizenry is a surety towards economic growth for any nation. The success of UHC will however largely depend on the political goodwill, policy priority and a well-trained and properly equipped army of healthcare workers. There can be no better time to mainstream UHC than today. The Chinese proverb on planting trees is applicable for UHC too: the best time to start was 20 years ago, the next best time is now.

Dr. Patrick Amoth is the Ag. Director General in the Ministry of Health in Kenya and is also the Vice-Chair of the World Health Organization Executive Board.

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Categories: Africa

Education Cannot Wait Responds to Beirut Explosion with US$1.5 Million in Education in Emergency Funding to Rehabilitate Damaged Schools

Mon, 09/07/2020 - 18:31

By PRESS RELEASE
NEW YORK, Sep 7 2020 (IPS-Partners)

Education Cannot Wait (ECW) today approved US$1.5 million in new education in emergency funding in response to last month’s explosion in Beirut.

The new funding comes just one month after the 4 August 2020 blast, which damaged 140 schools and affected at least 55,000 Lebanese and non-Lebanese students.

Through the ECW grant, UNESCO, in close coordination with Lebanon’s Ministry of Education and Higher Education, will support the rapid rehabilitation of approximately 40 schools in the area of the explosion, allowing at least 30,000 children and youth whose schools were damaged to resume their learning in a physically safe environment during the 2020-2021 school year.

“Beirut has suffered a lot, but will rise again. We need to support the young generation to sustain and this means rehabilitating their damaged schools without delay,” said Yasmine Sherif, Director of Education Cannot Wait. “We know that our strategic partner UNESCO, working in close collaboration with the Ministry of Education and Higher Education, will be able to rapidly rehabilitate 40 damaged schools for these girls and boys.”

Severe destruction of the schools has been reported by the Ministry of Education and Higher Education and education sector, including crumbling walls, broken windows, leaking roofs, broken desks and chairs. School water and sanitation facilities have also been damaged, further exacerbating the ongoing health crisis posed by COVID-19.

Compounding economic and political crises are putting over a million children and youth at risk in Lebanon. Analysis from ECW’s 2019 Annual Report indicates that approximately 631,209 Syrian children and 447,400 vulnerable Lebanese children faced challenges accessing education in 2019.

The approval of today’s additional funding builds on the results from ECW’s US$2.3 million grant for Lebanon, which ran from August 2018 to February 2020.

The post Education Cannot Wait Responds to Beirut Explosion with US$1.5 Million in Education in Emergency Funding to Rehabilitate Damaged Schools appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Through ECW's first emergency response window, UNESCO will rehabilitate 40 schools and support 30,000 students to resume learning.

The post Education Cannot Wait Responds to Beirut Explosion with US$1.5 Million in Education in Emergency Funding to Rehabilitate Damaged Schools appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Categories: Africa

A Red Notice against Trump?

Mon, 09/07/2020 - 17:05

By Dr Rutsel Silvestre J Martha
LONDON, Sep 7 2020 (IPS)

When INTERPOL is asked to intervene against targeted killing.

Introduction

Last June, news broke that Iran had issued an arrest warrant and asked INTERPOL for help in detaining US President Donald Trump and dozens of others it believed had carried out the drone strike that killed a top Iranian general in Baghdad.1 INTERPOL denied this request,2 stating that it “would not consider requests of this nature” because “it is strictly forbidden for the Organisation to undertake any intervention or activities of a political, military, religious or racial character.”3

Dr Rutsel Silvestre J Martha

INTERPOL General Secretariat, which is the body of the Organisation which has the power to issue red notices4, thus spontaneously or at the request of the USA, determined that the publication of such red notices would contravene INTERPOL’s Constitution and/or the rules adopted thereunder. Given Iran’s own successful challenge, in 2007, of an Argentinian request for red notices against i.a. former President Rafsanjani and the former foreign minister5, INTERPOL’s rejection should not have come as a surprise. However, on the basis of the same experience6, if all the other red notice requests have also been rejected, Iran might want to question that decision. Such challenge can potentially lead to a showdown at the INTERPOL’s General Assembly7. The following highlights the substantive issues that would be involved.

Interventions against Heads of State are not per se political

The reason why Iran might be tempted to challenge the General Secretariat’s decision is because of the less assertive position adopted by the Commission for the Control of INTERPOL’s Files (“CCF”) in an advisory opinion of 2005. The CCF rejected the view that an intervention against a Head of State or a Head of Government should systematically be considered in contravention of Article 3 of INTERPOL’s Constitution. According to the CCF, the advisability of processing such information must be assessed in the light of a number of criteria, such as: (i) any immunities enjoyed by the person concerned or attached to the person’s office at the time when police co-operation is requested, (ii) the entity which had issued the arrest warrant, it being understood that, even in the case of a military tribunal, this fact alone does not mean the entity is systematically considered to be in contravention of Article 3 of INTERPOL’s Constitution, even if at first sight it tended to support the idea that the information should not be processed, (iii) the type and seriousness of the crime concerned; fraud, for example, was not considered to be an aggravated crime with regard to the risks of damage to property or persons.8

It is firmly established that, unless waived, certain holders of high-ranking office in a State, such as the Head of State, Head of Government and Minister of Foreign Affairs, enjoy immunities from jurisdiction in other States.9 This immunity entails “full immunity from criminal jurisdiction and inviolability”10 public, private, before or in office.11 Full immunity protects the individual concerned against any act of authority of another State which would hinder him in the performance of his duties.12 Accordingly, in 2006, the General Secretariat acted upon this advice and cancelled a diffusion concerning Kosovo’s Prime Minister Agim Ceku13. Against this background, it is unsurprising that the INTERPOL General Secretariat refused to assist Iran in detaining President Trump.

Targeted killings as ordinary law crimes

The identity of the 35 other individuals wanted by Iran in connection with the death of Soleimani is unclear. Thus, it is not possible to determine whether the INTERPOL General Secretariat was justified in refusing to assist Iran in respect of those 35 individuals on the basis of any immunity. In the absence of any immunity, the “nature of the offence” is particularly important. It has been reported that the 35 individuals are the subject of “murder and terrorism” charges in Iran. Prima facie, INTERPOL considers that murder and terrorism are ordinary law crimes.

According to Resolution AGN/20/RES/11 (1951) “… no request for information, notice of persons wanted and, above all, no request for provisional arrest for offences of a predominantly political, racial or religious character, is ever sent to the International Bureau or the NCBs, even if – in the requesting country – the facts amount to an offence against the ordinary law”. This requires a case by case assessment, taking into account its particular context. Thus, while the resolutions concerning the interpretation of Article 3 generally focused on the nature of the offence (e.g. pure political offences such as treason), the requirement of evaluating the overall context of the case introduces other relevant elements to be assessed14. The general trend of Article 3 interpretation clearly points to the narrowing of its application in relation to the nature of the offence.

Given that the individual concerned is denied the right to be heard—to establish his identity and demand that prosecutors prove his selection for sanctions was justified15, targeted killing cannot be considered an act of international criminal law enforcement16. Therefore, such targeted killing can hardly be distinguished from ordinary assassinations because arguably, outside the context of active hostilities, the use of drones for targeted killing is almost never likely to be legal17.

Interestingly, in 2010, INTERPOL issued a red notice against 11 individuals wanted for the assassination of a Hamas commander in Dubai18 and even joined the task force established to investigate the murder19. However, in the same year, the INTERPOL General Assembly, concerned about the exposure of the organisation becoming involved in political conflicts between its member countries, moved to curtail the use of the organisation’s channels and tools against targeted killings. Resolution AG-2010-RES-10 effectively precludes the publication of red notices against non-nationals of the requesting country in cases where the country of nationality opposes. It provides that:

“DECIDES, in light of the above that, in addition to the application of INTERPOL’s general rules and regulations with regard to processing of requests for international police co-operation, the processing via INTERPOL channels of new requests concerning genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes shall continue with regard to: …

3. Requests submitted by member countries, except in cases where the request concerns a national of another member country, and that other member country, upon being informed by the General Secretariat of the request, protests against the request within thirty days;

This resolution only applies to cases where the request concerns persons suspected or guilty of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes. If Iran’s request for police cooperation was predicated on the commission of war crimes, the INTERPOL General Secretariat will have informed the US of Iran’s request and the US will, no doubt, have protested against Iran’s request. In that case, it is likely that, relying on AG-2010-RES-10, the USA successfully opposed the issuance the of the red notices requested by Iran against its nationals. If this is the case, it is unlikely that either the Executive Committee or the INTERPOL General Assembly would overrule the decision of the General Secretariat to deny the requested red notices.

A potential way forward for Iran

If Iran’s request for police cooperation was not predicated on the commission of war crimes, there is a potential way forward for Iran in respect of the wanted individuals who do not benefit from any immunity. Resolution AG-2010-RES-10 would not apply and the request would have to be examined in accordance with the predominance test set forth in Resolution AGN/20/RES/11 (1951). At first sight, it is not obvious what would make this case different than the targeted killing in Dubai in 2010, in which case INTERPOL did issue a red notice against the suspected Israeli officials20. Indeed, as mentioned before, Iran successfully invoked this dispute settlement mechanism in the 2000s in connection with red notices published by the INTERPOL General Secretariat at the request of Argentina against Iranian nationals for allegedly participating in the bombing of the AMIA building in Buenos Aires in 1994.

Conclusion

To conclude, if as the CCF advised in 2005, interventions against Heads of States are not per se prohibited by Article 3 of the INTERPOL Constitution, the rejection of the red notice against President Trump was probably justified only on account of his personal immunity under international law. This also means that the same justification would not necessarily apply to all the other persons wanted by Iran. It is thus possible that like in 2007, INTERPOL’s General Assembly could agree that, given the predominance test, the red notices against those not enjoying immunity under international law can be issued by INTERPOL. However, the USA would be able to invoke AG-2010-RES-10, to oppose the issuance the of the red notices requested by Iran against its nationals. Resolution AG-2010-RES-10 only applies to genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes. Thus, if the Iranian request against the others than Trump, was not predicated on war crimes, Iran could challenge the General Secretariat’s decision in connection with the death of Soleimani, and could again invoke the INTERPOL dispute settlement mechanism and agitate for a showdown at the 89th session of the INTERPOL General Assembly in December 2020.

__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
1 Iran Issues Arrest Warrants for Trump and 35 Others in Suleimani Killing, The New York Times 29 June 2020. Available at: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/29/world/middleeast/iran-trump-arrest-warrant-interpol.html
2 Iran issues arrest warrant for Trump; Interpol denies help, Al Jazeera 20 June 2020. Available at: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/06/iran-issues-arrest-warrant-trump-asks-interpol-200629104710662.html
3 Interpol shuts down Iran’s request for Trump arrest, CNBC 30 June 2020. Available at: https://www.cnbc.com/2020/06/30/interpol-shuts-down-irans-request-for-trump-arrest.html
4 Article 74 INTERPOL Rules on Data Processing (“IRPD”).
5 Iran rejects Interpol wanted notices – official, Reuters 8 November 2007. Available at: https://www.reuters.com/article/idUSHAF837597
6 INTERPOL General Assembly upholds Executive Committee decision on AMIA Red Notice dispute, INTERPOL Press Release 7 November 2007. Available at: https://www.interpol.int/ar/1/1/2007/INTERPOL-General-Assembly-upholds-Executive-Committee-decision-on-AMIA-Red-Notice-dispute
7 For a detailed analysis of these procedures and a discussion of the previous instances inter-State dispute settlement within INTERPOL, see: RSJ Martha, C. Grafton & S. Bailey, Chapter 10, The Legal Foundations of INTERPOL, Hart Publishing, 2nd edition (forthcoming October 2020).
8 Annual Activity Report of the Commission for the Control of INTERPOL’s Files 2005, Section 7.2.
9 Arrest Warrant of 11 April 2000 (Democratic Republic of the Congo v Belgium) (Judgment) [2002] ICJ Rep 3, para. 51.
10 Arrest Warrant of 11 April 2000 (Democratic Republic of the Congo v Belgium) (Judgment) [2002] ICJ Rep 3, para. 54.
11 Arrest Warrant of 11 April 2000 (Democratic Republic of the Congo v Belgium) (Judgment) [2002] ICJ Rep 3, para. 55.
12 Arrest Warrant of 11 April 2000 (Democratic Republic of the Congo v Belgium) (Judgment) [2002] ICJ Rep 3, para. 54.
13 INTERPOL statement concerning arrest warrant for Agim Ceku, INTERPOL Press Release 28 March 2006. Available at: https://www.interpol.int/en/News-and-Events/News/2006/INTERPOL-statement-concerning-arrest-warrant-for-Agim-Ceku
14 See: Yaron Gottlieb, Article 3 of Interpol’s Constitution: Balancing International Police Cooperation with the Prohibition on Engaging in Political, Military, Religious, or Racial Activities (January 1, 2011). Florida Journal of International Law, Vol. 23, p. 135, 2011, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2325891
15 Anyone targeted for sanctions is entitled to the basic rights. Joined Cases C-402 & C-415/05, Kadi & Al Barakaat Int’l Found. v. Council & Commission, 2008 E.C.R. I-6351, 336-337.
16 Barry Kellman, Targeted Killings—Never Not an Act of International Criminal Law Enforcement, 40 B.C. Int’l & Comp. L. Rev. 27 (2017), http://lawdigitalcommons.bc.edu/iclr/vol40/iss1/3
17 Cf Patryk I. Labuda, The Killing of Soleimani, the Use of Force against Iraq and Overlooked Ius Ad Bellum Questions, EJIL Talk 13 January 2020. Available at: https://www.ejiltalk.org/the-killing-of-soleimani-the-use-of-force-against-iraq-and-overlooked-ius-ad-bellum-questions/ ; The Killing of Qassim Suleimani Was Unlawful, Says U.N. Expert, The New York Times, 9 July 2020. Available at: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/09/world/middleeast/qassim-suleimani-killing-unlawful.html
18 Interpol Posts Wanted Notice in Hamas Assassination, VOA News 17 February 2010. Available at: https://www.voanews.com/world-news/middle-east-dont-use/interpol-posts-wanted-notice-hamas-assassination
19 Interpol joins international task force investigating Dubai assassination, The Christian Science Monitor 9 March 2010. Available at: https://www.csmonitor.com/World/Middle-East/2010/0309/Interpol-joins-international-task-force-investigating-Dubai-assassination
20 Interpol red notices on 11 Hamas murder suspects, Euronews 18 February 2010, Available at: https://www.euronews.com/2010/02/18/interpol-red-notices-on-11-hamas-murder-suspects

Dr Rutsel Silvestre J Martha is the principal of Lindeborg Counsellors at Law, a London-based public international law boutique firm, and Fellow Partner of the Lauterpacht Centre for International Law. From 2004 to 2008 he was the General Counsel and Director of Legal Affairs of INTERPOL.

His publications on international law include: The Legal Foundations of INTERPOL (Hart Publishing, Oxford, 2010.), “Challenging Acts of INTERPOL in Domestic Courts” In: Challenging Acts of International Organizations Before National Courts, Edited by August Reinisch, OUP, September 2010., and “Remedies Against INTERPOL: role and practice of defense lawyers” Conference European Criminal Bar Association Lyon, 6 October 2007 (online).

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Categories: Africa

US Poll Predictions and Presidential Politics in the American Polity

Mon, 09/07/2020 - 13:36

By Dr. Iftekhar Ahmed Chowdhury
SINGAPORE, Sep 7 2020 (IPS)

The US residential polls are akin to a drama that is staged every four years in which the American are actors on stage and the rest of the world is the audience. With one major difference, however. While in a usual theatrical performance the viewers are there mostly for amusement, though some may be enlightened and enriched by the experience, in the case of the US elections, unlike in others, their fates are inextricably linked to the outcome of the play. This is not predetermined by any playwright, though it can often be predicted. It is not implausible therefore for some on-lookers to want to intervene in what’s happening onstage. It must be done discreetly, and with great circumspection. Take for instance, the Russians in the American elections in 2016. The Russians and President Donald Trump hotly dispute allegations of any such interference.

Dr. Iftekhar Ahmed Chowdhury

Unsurprisingly, there is a great deal of intellectual resources devoted to model-building in order to be able to predict election outcome. The purpose is to develop a methodology superior to mere crystal -ball gazing. So many caveats are often entered into the exercise that robs it of major value. In the US, elections are ultimately decided according to votes cast by the electoral college of 538, comprised of representatives from the States. So, the magic number for victory is 270. Each State chooses its own electors, and these members of the electoral college vote on a ‘winner take all basis’. In other words, if a majority of the voters from a State vote for one candidate, all electoral college votes from that State are meant to be cast in favour of that candidate. Electoral college vote results may not, therefore, as they have not in some cases in the past, reflect the winner in terms of national popular votes.

For the purposes of prediction, the prestigious British journal ‘The Economist’ has developed a somewhat complex model indicating Mr Joe Biden of the Democratic Party as the winner. At writing, it is giving 91.7% chance of electoral victory and 98% chance of popular majority to Mr Biden. The Financial Time’s tally for Biden stood at 298. Professor Allan Lichtman of the American University and author of “The keys to the White house”, who has accurately predicted every Presidential electoral outcome correctly since 1984 using “13 key factors”, has predicted Mr Biden will win. In the ancient times, Greek and Roman drama-writers used a concept called “deus ex machina’, literally god out of a machine, in their scripts. This is an unexpected power originating from the gods, is introduced which alters the course of the narration.

It seemed for a while that nothing short of a divine intervention, a remote likelihood for Mr Trump in the view of his detractors, could save him from certain defeat. But then the race began to tighten, partly caused by apprehensions in some quarters with regard to the social unrest currently sweeping America, and Mr Trump’s repeated reassertion of Jeremiads against violence .Given the dichotomized and divided nature of the American electoral , both sides have loyal bases who will vote in accordance with their a priori views, come what may. So, the contest is basically for the minds and hearts of 8 to 9 % who are still undecided. These are the potential Biblical ‘Sauls on the Road to Damascus’ of the electorate, the potential converts to the other side. That is also the percentage point of Mr Biden’s current lead. So even if Mr Trump should win over most of the undecided numbers, which in itself is a stretch, Mr Biden would still have an edge.

This has encouraged Mr Trump to fight back. Unlike in the UK where the system of governance usually follows a culture of “good- chap model”, whereby political actors conform to a code of conduct perceived to be virtuous, no such tradition appears to shape American political behaviour. The absence of European-style feudalism that helped inspire such norms in the ‘old world’ might have impeded the development of such values in the immigrant political milieu of the ‘new world’. Mr Trump has provided a supreme example of this phenomenon almost all through his entire first term in office. He capped it at the Republican National Convention by using the White House, always seen as an apolitical institution (a ‘Peoples’ House’) as the venue for his speech accepting Party nomination for his second term of the presidency. Past occupants of the official residence of the president of the United states have abstained, indeed recoiled from politicizing what is largely accepted as a national symbol of unity Because of these reasons, the framers of the US Constitution had thought it wise to put down in writing the details of how the polity should be governed. They were wary of putting their trust entirely trust entirely on intrinsic human morality. Their faith in God did not extend to the faith in their own ilk. They were uncertain if their fellow-Americans would be able to rule democratically within a framework of established tradition of good governance unless a written Constitution set-out the guidelines. They were wise, but apparently not comprehensive enough. They left sufficient gaps and loopholes for the system to be gamed by politicians of lesser virtuous pedigree.

The equivalent of the US President in Britain is, not the Queen, but the Prime minister. Across the Atlantic the Prime Minister is the ‘primus inter pares” or first among equals who governs with the aid and joint responsibility of a Cabinet of colleagues. In the US the Secretaries, often termed Cabinet-officers rather than Cabinet–members, are, though appointees of the President, are approved by the Senate. As heads departments they are loosely equated with British Ministers. But they are not colleagues of the President in a political sense and become a part of their department whose role is apolitical. For instance, the top diplomat in Washington the Secretary of State does not while performing duties at home and abroad, associate his office with domestic politics. Recently, the current incumbent, Mike Pompeo, blatantly broke that rule, by politically using a trip to Jerusalem to advance the President’s political aspiration publicly.

According to British public service culture, as also in many democracies, officials shun active politics. In the US such behaviour was written into law. The Hatch Act of 1939 prohibits employees of the federal government, except for the President and Vice President, in engaging in some form of political activities. But nowadays some allege that it is being honoured more in the breach than the observance. Many elements of democracy, such as voting rights for all, came later in the US than is often realized. The author and historian Michael Beschloss worries that unless these are protected they may also erode quickly. The incredibly sad consequence would be what the Fathers of the Republic wanted to avoid foremost, a descent into tyranny. Any law has content and spirit. The spirit is often equally important.

Take the question of leaving office. In Britain, should a Prime Minister lose the elections, or be defeated in a vote of no-confidence in the House of commons, he or she would proceed to the Palace, either kiss the Queen’s hands or offer her a curtsy and resign office. For this politician, it would not mean a withdrawal from politics, and thereby would be less painful. Office is seen as merely a privilege to serve the community. In America on the other hand for the President calling quits is forever, hence there is a burgeoning view that given Trump’s disinclination to conform to ‘good chap ‘ behaviour , he may drag his feet at leaving office , particularly if the results are close , alleging electoral fraudulence. The Biden crowd is suggesting if that be the case, the military would, or should, march Trump out of office. The US military has experience of marching several foreign Presidents out of office, but never one of its own. That would indeed be a unique experience!

While the component States of the American Union is largely governed by the Governors, foreign policy is the President’s domain. Given the military and economic clout of the US, their politics often become central to our concerns. Hence the need for the world beyond the US to understand, assess and evaluate them. For instance, a re-election of Mr Trump would mean a further retreat of the US into “Fortress America” and a greater disengagement from the world. On the other hand, a Biden Administration would mean a greater engagement, with other nations, multilateral institutions and issues such as Climate Change and Arms Control. That is why a US Presidential election generates a degree of interest in say India, Pakistan or Bangladesh as in Hawaii, Nebraska or North Carolina.

Text-books in Civics and Comparative politics, particularly in the Anglo-Saxon world, often tend to differentiate the British and American systems, sometime a tad simplistically, as being ‘Parliamentary’ ‘and ‘Presidential’ forms of governance. The French, with their own mixed form, never quite played along with this idea. That was also before China came to salience with their model of government based on ‘socialism with Chinese characteristics”, which no one else follows till now, but is important because China is. The Indian example is too chaotic to be recognized as a norm.

Writing his classic work ‘The English Constitution’ in 1867, Walter Bagehot argued a Constitution needed two parts: a ‘dignified’ one, to ‘excite and preserve the reverence of the population’ and the other , an ‘efficient’ part , ‘to employ that homage in the work of the government’. In Britain the two parts were sought to be kept distinct and to date has operated more or less smoothly. In the US they became, somewhat of a mixed hodgepodge. Around the mid- nineteenth century, a French political observer visiting America, de Tocqueville, perceived a discernible difference between appearance and reality in America. So, while trying to rid the new world of the tyranny of a King, were the framers of the US Constitution inadvertently creating an Emperor? Some may ponder. Confronted with such a question, Mr Trump might nonchalantly respond, “it is what it is”!

Dr Iftekhar Ahmed Chowdhury is Principal Research Fellow at the Institute of South Asia Studies, National University of Singapore. He is a former Foreign Advisor (Foreign Minister) of Bangladesh and President of Cosmos Foundation Bangladesh. The views addressed in the article are his own. He can be reached at: isasiac @nus.edu.sg

This story was originally published by Dhaka Courier.

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Categories: Africa

UN Women Calls for Accelerating its Unfinished Business

Mon, 09/07/2020 - 11:47

Women in Bangladesh stand up for gender equality. Credit: UNICEF/Jannatul Mawa

By Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka
NEW YORK, Sep 7 2020 (IPS)

Twenty-five years ago, the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing set a path-breaking agenda for women’s rights. As a result of the two-week gathering with more than 30,000 activists, representatives from 189 nations unanimously adopted the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action.

This historic blueprint articulated a vision of equal rights, freedom and opportunities for women – everywhere, no matter what their circumstances are – that continues to shape gender equality and women’s movements worldwide.

A quarter century on, the UN Secretary-General, Antonio Guterres, calls for urgent action: “With nations around the world searching for solutions to the complex challenges of our age, the leading way for all of us to rebuild more equal, inclusive, and resilient societies, is to accelerate the implementation of women’s rights – the Beijing Platform for Action. That vision has been only partly realized. We still live in a male-dominated world with a male-dominated culture, and this simply has to change”.

The Beijing Platform for Action imagined a world where every woman and girl can exercise her freedoms and choices, and realize her rights, such as to live free from violence, to go to school, to participate in decisions and to earn equal pay for work of equal value. As a defining framework for change, the Platform for Action made comprehensive commitments under 12 critical areas of concern.

Twenty-five years later, no country has fully delivered on the commitments of the Beijing Platform for Action, nor is close to it. A major stock-taking UN Women report published earlier this year showed that progress towards gender equality is faltering and hard-won advances are being reversed.

Women currently hold just one quarter of the seats at the tables of power across the board. Men are still 75 per cent of parliamentarians, hold 73 per cent of managerial positions, are 70 per cent of climate negotiators and almost all of the peacemakers.

Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka

The anniversary is a wake-up call and comes at a time when the impact of the gender equality gaps is undeniable. Research shows the COVID-19 pandemic is exacerbating pre-existing inequalities and threatening to halt or reverse the gains of decades of collective effort – with just released new data revealing that the pandemic will push 47 million more women and girls below the poverty line.

We are also witnessing increased reports on violence against women throughout the world due to the lockdowns, and women losing their livelihoods faster because they are more exposed to hard-hit economic sectors.

While much works remains on fulfilling the promises of the Beijing Platform for Action, it continues to be a global framework and a powerful source of mobilization, civil society activism, guidance and inspiration 25 years later.

It was at the Fourth World Conference on Women, specifically at the Women & Health Security Colloquium, where Hillary Clinton coined the phrase, “Women’s rights are human rights, and human rights are women’s rights”.

In a recent article in The Atlantic, she recalled her participation at the Conference as the Honorary Chairperson of the US delegation, and the significance of the Beijing Declaration: “A 270-page document might not lend itself to bumper stickers or coffee mugs, but it laid the groundwork for sweeping, necessary changes.”

Underlining the urgency for implementation, she added: “As the changes laid out in the Platform for Action have been implemented, what’s become clear is that simply embracing the concept of women’s rights, let alone enshrining those rights in laws and constitutions, is not the same as achieving full equality. Rights are important, but they are nothing without the power to claim them.”

Years after, global activists continue the hard work and those who participated at the 1995 Beijing Conference remain touched by this historic meeting. Zeliha Ünaldi, a long-standing gender advocate from Turkey, said it was a life-changing experience: “When I recall those days, mingling around the tents with thousands of women committing to a better world, two words immediately come to my mind: sisterhood and peace. The Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action and the subsequent five years helped me understand the power in us and of us as the global women’s movement.”

The upcoming UN General Assembly later this month will be a key opportunity to bring to the forefront the relevance of the Beijing Declaration and move the needle on implementation, with a High-Level Meeting attended by global leaders on “Accelerating the Realization of Gender Equality and the Empowerment of all Women and Girls” on 1 October.

The event will showcase how building equal and inclusive societies is more urgent than ever, as the COVID-19 pandemic ravages lives and livelihoods.

Calling on world leaders to use their political power to accelerate robust action and resources for gender equality and the empowerment of all women and girls: “This is a re-set moment. On this important anniversary, let us reaffirm the promises the world made to women in 1995. Let us draw on the activist spirit of the Beijing Conference and commit to forging new alliances across generations and sectors to ensure we seize this opportunity for deep, systemic change for women and for the world.”

The anniversary will be further commemorated in the context of the Generation Equality Forum, a civil society–centred, global gathering for gender equality, convened by UN Women and co-hosted by the governments of France and Mexico, foreseen to take place in the first half of 2021.

Exactly 25 years after the opening of the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing, China, its significance is undimmed. In that quarter century we have seen the strength and impact of collective activism grow and have been reminded of the importance of multilateralism and partnership to find common solutions to shared problems.

Back in 1995, the deliberations of the Conference resulted in the framing of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action: a bold agenda for the change needed to realize the human rights of women and girls, articulated across 12 critical areas of concern.

The Platform for Action provided a blueprint for the advancement of gender equality and the empowerment of women and girls, adopted by 189 UN Member States and universally referenced.

The continued relevance of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action cannot be overstated today. The far-reaching social and economic impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, including the significant increases in violence against women, threaten to reverse many of the hard-won advances made in the last 25 years to empower women and girls.

At the same time, the outstanding value of women’s leadership through the COVID-19 pandemic is in plain sight, along with the recognition of just how much women’s work and women’s movements have sustained the world, from domestic life, the fight for human rights, to national economies.

We also know that by next year, 435 million women and girls are likely to have been reduced to extreme poverty. Governments, local administrations, businesses and enterprises of all sorts must not let this happen.

To tackle persistent systemic barriers to equality, we need transformative approaches and new alliances that engage the private sector alongside governments and civil society. This is a re-set moment. The economic and policy lifeboats for our struggling world must put women and children first.

The political will of leaders can make the difference. World leaders convening at this year’s United Nations General Assembly have the opportunity to use their power in action to accelerate the realization of gender equality and the empowerment of all women and girls, and to support the role of civil society organizations and youth.

Our humanitarian responses to COVID-19, our economic stimulus packages, our reinventions of working life and our efforts to create solidarity across social and physical distance – these are all chances to build back better for women and girls.

For success, we need to work together on these transformative actions. In 2019, we launched a global campaign called Generation Equality: Realizing Women’s Rights for an Equal Future, with a call for renewed commitment by governments in partnership with civil society, academia and the private sector.

It included clear timelines, responsibilities and resources towards realizing the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, an ambitious long-term framework that included goals to achieve universal gender equality.

On October 1, 2020, when a High-Level Meeting on the 25th anniversary of the Beijing Platform for Action is convened by the President of the General Assembly, Member States can put into action their commitment toward a more gender-equal world.

On this important anniversary, let us reaffirm the promises the world made to women and girls in 1995. Let us draw on the activist spirit of the Beijing Conference and commit to forging new alliances across generations and sectors to ensure we seize this opportunity for deep, systemic change for women and for the world.

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Excerpt:

Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka is UN Under-Secretary-General and Executive Director, UN Women

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Categories: Africa

World Risks Losing Entire Generation of Children, Nobel Laureates Warn

Mon, 09/07/2020 - 11:10

Kailash Satyarthi, founder of Laureates and Leaders for Children and 2014 Nobel Peace Laureate, says the COVID-19 pandemic has exposed and exacerbated the deep inequalities faced by the poorest families. Courtesy: Marcel Crozet / ILO

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Sep 7 2020 (IPS)

The COVID-19 pandemic has upended the lives of millions of people worldwide, accounted for over 869,000 deaths, destabilised the global economy and triggered a marked rise in poverty and hunger in the developing world.

But the fallout from one of the most devastating consequences of the spreading virus is on the lives of a growing new generation: children.

Kailash Satyarthi, founder of Laureates and Leaders for Children and 2014 Nobel Peace Laureate, rightly points out that the pandemic has exposed and exacerbated the deep inequalities faced by the poorest families, who are the least equipped to protect themselves in times of global crisis.

“However, despite unprecedented government spending to protect national interests and the global economy,” he warns, “little has been allocated to protect the 1 in 5 children who live on $2 per day or less.”

Without urgent action now, he said, “we risk losing an entire generation”.

An upcoming summit – officially called the Nobel Peace Laureates and Leaders for Children at a Fair Share for Children Summit, scheduled to take place remotely on Sept. 9-10 – will focus on the plight of children, and more importantly, call for increased spending on marginalised families ravaged by the pandemic

Several Nobel laureates, along with world leaders and heads of UN agencies, are listed as speakers, including the Dalai Lama, Satyarthi, Dr. Rigoberta Menchú Tum, Leymah Gbowee, Prince Ali Bin Al Hussein of Jordan, and Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Löfven, among others.

Kailash says if the world gave the most marginalised children and their families their fair share, which translates to 20 percent of the COVID-19 response for the poorest 20 percent of humanity, the results would be transformative.

Kul Gautam, a former United Nations Assistant Secretary-General and Deputy Executive Director of the U.N. Children’s Fund (UNICEF), told IPS the COVID-19 pandemic has commanded unprecedented attention and action throughout the world in recent months.

While some leaders have tried to capitalise it for their own political gain, there has also been an outpouring of support and solidarity for international cooperation to tackle it, he noted.

Though subjected to unfair and unfounded criticism by leaders like United States President Donald Trump, he argued, the World Health Organisation (WHO) and the U.N. system are playing a valuable coordinating role and providing much needed technical and material support, particularly for developing countries

“While the elderly and those with pre-existing health complications are the most susceptible to COVID-19, as always, women and children often become extra-vulnerable not only from the virus but also from their exposure to domestic abuse, gender-based violence and lack of effective social safety nets in most societies.”

“Millions of children being deprived of schooling and confined at home for a prolonged period threatens their future,” declared Gautam.

Mary Robinson, former President of Ireland and Chair of The Elders, points out the COVID-19 pandemic is leading to a global child rights crisis with increases in poverty and hunger, child labour and child marriage, child slavery, child trafficking and children on the move.

“We must ensure that the most marginalised children and communities have their fair share of the relief funds and services. We must unite in this effort to protect the most vulnerable among us,” she warns.

Mohammad Rafique, along with other refugee children, gathered at the Rohingya market of Kutupalong camp to sell vegetables he brought earlier from a local market in this photo dated Mar. 11, 2020. This was two weeks before Bangladesh went into a nationwide lockdown in an attempt to contain the spread of the coronavirus. the pandemic is leading to a global child rights crisis with increases in poverty and hunger, child labour and child marriage, child slavery, child trafficking and children on the move. Credit: Rafiqul Islam/IPS

Kerry Kennedy, President of Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights, says the pandemic’s public health emergency is set to exacerbate the abuse and exploitation of children, including those in detention.

Calling for government action, Prince Ali Bin Al Hussein of Jordan, said: “We need the governments of the world to come together to announce a rescue package for the most marginalised children and their families.”

The ongoing crisis could increase the number of children living in monetary poor households by up to 117 million by the end of the 2020, according to the latest analysis from UNICEF and Save the Children.

“Immediate loss of income often means families are less able to afford basics, including food and water, are less likely to access health care or education, and are more at risk of violence, exploitation and abuse”.

The children’s agency also pointed out that 188 countries have imposed countrywide school closures, affecting more than 1.6 billion children and youth. The potential losses that may accrue in learning for today’s young generation, and for the development of their human capital, are hard to fathom.

“More than two-thirds of countries have introduced a national distance learning platform, but among low-income countries the share is only 30 percent. Before this crisis, almost one third of the world’s young people were already digitally excluded”.

UNICEF also said the COVID-19 crisis could lead to the first rise in child labour after 20 years of progress. Child labour decreased by 94 million since 2000, but that gain is now at risk.

“Among other impacts, COVID-19 could result in a rise in poverty and therefore to an increase in child labour as households use every available means to survive. A one percentage point rise in poverty could lead to at least a 0.7 percent increase in child labour in certain countries.”

Gautam, who was Director of Planning and responsible for drafting the Plan of Action at the 1990 first-ever World Summit for Children, told IPS: “So far, the international response and focus of national action to combat COVID-19 has not given enough attention to the multi-dimensional plight of children, especially in poor countries and communities”.

He said there is also an imminent risk that “Vaccine nationalism” in the rich countries will lead to life-saving treatments being over-priced and hoarded by the rich leaving the world’s most vulnerable people, especially children, waiting in the cold.

In this context, the initiative by a group of Nobel Peace Laureates and Leaders for Children calling for a fair share of the resources mobilised for COVID-19 to be devoted to the wellbeing of children is most timely and welcome, he said.

“Children have only one chance to grow, and if they do not get the priority for protection from this devastating pandemic, they will be doomed for life. This simple truth is often forgotten or neglected by political leaders and decision-makers driven by short-term political calculations.”

Hence the importance of the voice of Nobel Peace Prize laureates with their moral authority and non-partisan credibility, he added.

A joint statement released here by Nobel Laureates and world leaders, said: “ We, the Laureates and Leaders for Children, call upon the world’s Heads of Government to demonstrate wise leadership and to urgently care for the impoverished and the marginalised. Decisions made by our leaders, actions taken by us and the discourses that ensue in the next few weeks will be crucial.”

“They are going to shape the future of polity, economy, culture and morality. Development priorities will be recalibrated, individual freedom, privacy and human rights will be redefined. We must take this opportunity to transform traditional diplomacy and politics into compassionate politics. COVID-19 has exposed and exacerbated pre-existing inequalities in our world.”

While this virus does not differentiate between nationalities, religions or cultures, said the statement, it is most adversely impacting those who are already marginalised – the poor, women and girls, daily wage earners, migrant labourers, indigenous peoples, victims of trafficking and slavery, child labourers, people on the move (refugees, internally displaced and others), the homeless, differently abled people, among others.

The virus, restrictions placed on the majority of the world’s population, and the aftermath will have a devastating impact on the most vulnerable amongst us

Elaborating further on the potential dangers of “Vaccine nationalism,” Gautam singled out the example of “Vaccine nationalism” — i.e the U.S. refusal to join the Covid-19 Vaccines Global Access Facility (Covax) – an international effort to develop, manufacture and equitably distribute a COVID-19 vaccine.

The result of this US boycott of a joint effort by 170 countries coordinated by WHO, Global Alliance for Vaccine and Immunisation (GAVI) and the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) is that it could potentially lead to hoarding of the vaccine and higher prices for doses, he said.

“The ultimate victims of such “vaccine nationalism” are likely to be children in poor countries – who might be the last on the line to get the vaccine, contrary to the call for vulnerable “Children First” priority that organizations like UNICEF, Save the Children and others have been promoting for decades.”

“I hope that the Nobel Peace Laureates and Leaders for Children at a Fair Share for Children Summit will raise their voice against the risk of any such “vaccine nationalism,” Gautam declared.

The post World Risks Losing Entire Generation of Children, Nobel Laureates Warn appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Categories: Africa

COVID-19: Presidents, the Press, and the Pandemic

Mon, 09/07/2020 - 10:36

US President Donald Trump (right) and Mexican counterpart Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador at the White House July 2020. Credit: Toa Dufour/White House

By Andrés Cañizález
CARACAS, Sep 7 2020 (IPS)

The presidents of the Americas, beyond their ideological differences, seem to agree in questioning the role of journalists and the media in the coverage of the COVID-19 pandemic. On the other hand, human rights organizations remind us of the fundamental role of information, especially in times of crisis and uncertainty like the one we are experiencing in this 2020.

NGO Inter-American Dialogue and expert Edison Lanza, current Inter-American Commission on Human Rights rapporteur for Freedom of Expression, prepared the report “COVID-19 and Freedom of Expression in the Americas” which has three thematic areas: The role of journalists and the pressure against them from those in power, access to public information in the current context, and the dynamics of pandemic-related disinformation and misinformation.

Ultimately, the goal is for journalists and the media, as well as healthcare professionals and relevant experts, to be able to speak and report freely about COVID-19, "including coverage that is critical of government responses, without fear or censorship”. And this mandate goes beyond the ideological leanings of those who govern

The report, released on August 31 in Washington, reviews the role of leaders who, in the face of the pandemic, divert the focus towards challenging or discrediting newspersons’ work in their respective countries. This policy has coincidentally been implemented by leaders who, ideologically speaking, are at the antipodes from one another, such as Mexico’s Andrés Manuel López Obrador and Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro, or Daniel Ortega and Alejandro Giammattei in Central America.

The report confirms, on the one hand, the importance of the right to inform freely, even in situations of crisis, as set forth in documents by the Inter-American Human Rights System and, in turn, echoes public concerns expressed, for example, by UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet.

“Undermining rights such as freedom of expression may do incalculable damage to the effort to contain COVID-19 and its pernicious socio-economic side-effects”, remarked Bachelet.

The report outlines this situation: “[…] under the cover of Covid-19 response, some governments in the Americas have taken steps to criminalize free speech […]”

In Mexico, in the context of the pandemic, president Andrés Manuel López Obrador (or AMLO, his acronym) criticized the ethics of both Mexican and international “conventional media” for questioning official data on COVID-19 provided by his administration. This was in May. In April, AMLO had already said that professional journalism did not exist in his country and verbally attacked newspapers Reforma, El Universal, Milenio, and Excélsior.

In theory, ideologically on the other side of the aisle, Bolsonaro also infamously launched a tirade of verbal attacks against journalists and the media in Brazil. Only in the first quarter this year, when the onset of the pandemic was being faced by the South American giant, the president made 32 verbal attacks.

The climate of “continued harassment and abuse” compelled several of Brazil’s main news organizations to stop reporting outside the presidential residence at the end of May, in order to underscore their discontent with Bolsonaro’s public statements.

The report highlights the permanent verbal sparring with the media engaged by President Donald Trump, from Washington, DC, during the harsh weeks of the pandemic that has significantly affected the United States. Between the months of March and May, Trump confronted at least eight journalists during his daily press conferences on COVID-19. The President has responded irately or simply left unanswered questions that are uncomfortable for him and that have been asked in these exchanges with the press at the White House.

Andrés Cañizález

In Nicaragua, meanwhile, president Daniel Ortega accused the media of spreading fake news about his government’s concealment of COVID-19 figures. According to Ortega, there is “disinformative terrorism” in his country on the part of those journalists critical of him.

However, one premier from around the continent who has most clearly voiced his rejection to the exercise of independent journalism during the pandemic has been the president of Guatemala, Alejandro Giammattei. “I would like to put the media in quarantine but I cannot”, he said candidly last March, when he lashed out at what he called negative coverage of his government’s policies in response to the pandemic.

The Inter-American Dialogue report closes with recommendations. As has been the case in other situations of crisis, amidst uncertainty, societies need more and better information.

Regarding the role of authorities, it is stated in the document: “Governments have a duty to ensure that journalism thrives and plays its essential role during the pandemic, as the protection of the media is a protection of the public’s right to information”.

Ultimately, the goal is for journalists and the media, as well as healthcare professionals and relevant experts, to be able to speak and report freely about COVID-19, “including coverage that is critical of government responses, without fear or censorship”.

And this mandate goes beyond the ideological leanings of those who govern.

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Categories: Africa

UNESCO urges action to meet rampant $200 billion annual funding gap for education in poorest countries due to COVID-19

Fri, 09/04/2020 - 17:14

By PRESS RELEASE
PARIS, Sep 4 2020 (IPS-Partners)

New research by the Global Education Monitoring Report at UNESCO shows an increase in the annual funding gap for education in the poorest countries to as much as US$200 billion a year. These findings are published in the new paper, Act Now: Reduce the impact of COVID-19 on the Cost of Achieving SDG4.

The paper calls for the immediate introduction of emergency remedial programmes, which could reduce the potential cost of COVID-19 on education by 75%. This could also reduce the social cost of failing to meet the Sustainable Development Goal on Education (SDG4) which calls for the provision of inclusive quality education for all by 2030. It is therefore imperative for leaders to prioritize investment in education for low and middle-income countries and avoid the higher cost of catching up on lost education later.
Before the pandemic, UNESCO estimated the annual spending requirement to meet SDG4 at US$504 billion, of which US$148 billion were unavailable. Under plausible school closures and present GDP growth scenarios, COVID-19 looks set to increase this funding gap by up to a third.

COVID-19 is pushing countries’ educational costs up due to the need to re-enrol students and to offer remedial programmes to support the return to school of the most marginalized learners, help them catch up and maximize their chances of staying in school. Additional costs are needed to ensure children are safe in the classroom, with access to hygiene facilities and more space to enable physical distancing. These programmes and actions imply costs of up to US$35 billion. Immediate action is, however, far cheaper than having to roll out second chance programmes later.

With less than a decade to go before the SDG deadline, the world is facing a funding crisis that threatens to unravel progress in education so far. An entire generation is at risk due to the pandemic. An estimated 11 million children of primary and secondary school age may not return to school. But while education is clearly a victim of the pandemic, it is also the solution to longer-term recovery. To #SaveOurFuture, investment in education must become an urgent priority.

Actions to reduce the impact of COVID-19 on children’s education:

Manos Antoninis, Director of the GEM Report added: “The uncertainty about when schools will reopen means reduced participation and prolonged learning loss, particularly for the most marginalized children. We know from previous research that poorer learners are least likely to catch up, which will affect their future ability to earn a living. Urgently needed long-term planning for recovery from the pandemic must include increased funding for education in the form of remedial programmes, rather than waiting to pay for second chance classes many will not be able to join or afford.”

Filling a finance gap that risks rising to $200 billion per year due to COVID-19 requires systemic change- and is only possible if leaders respond to the ongoing global education emergency.

UNESCO has warned that total aid to education is likely to decline by 12% by 2022 due to the economic consequences of COVID-19. This poses a threat to the recovery of education from the disruption of the pandemic.

The international community urgently needs to mobilize additional funding for education if there is any hope of achieving the SDG 4 targets made all the more difficult by the pandemic.

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Categories: Africa

Americans By Force

Fri, 09/04/2020 - 16:26

Protests have been taking place in cities across the United States. Credit: UN News/Shirin Yaseen

By Joaquín Roy
MIAMI, Sep 4 2020 (IPS)

Why, in the United States, where change is the most pronounced hallmark, do some aspects never change? Why do many bad habits resist giving way to novelties that prove to be the basis of the success of the most developed country on earth and still the leading power? Why is the explanation for that leadership due to a few factors? Why does Trump profess a visceral opposition to immigration, knowing that it is the key to the country’s success? Because millions of his compatriots interpret the sinew of American DNA as a threat to their comparative social advantage.

Meanwhile, in this drama, blacks continue to bear the brunt of it all. The explanation for their endemic discrimination is the contrast between their implantation in the United States and the way the rest of the public settled in the “American dream.” Almost everyone came to this idea that is the United States of free will.

No one can say that their grandparents were forced to change residence. Although it can be argued that hunger, religious persecution, and the desire for economic improvement were important factors in driving emigration from Europe, Africa, or Asia, it is also true that voluntary americanization is the key to the success of the United States.

Joaquín Roy

This country is the most genuine example of national construction opposed to that based on ethnicity, religion, race. America is the most definite specimen of the nation of choice, based on personal conviction.

It is not by chance that theorists of nationalism call this alternative “liberal.” The “American dream” explains its survival. As long as millions of citizens of other continents answer Ernest Renan’s question with a negative vote every night in his imaginary “daily plebiscite”, and decide to opt for the residency trick, the United States will exist.

The day a majority of Americans vote negative for residency, the country would be deserted. There is nothing that unites Americans, except their desire to be. Their religion is summarized in the offer provided by the Declaration of Independence: life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. He does not give them a guarantee, but a promise. And it is enough for them.

However, the absence of a residency obligation has two crucial exceptions: black and indigenous minorities. These two sectors contrast in their implementation in what for them is, more than a dream, an “American nightmare.”

Although it can be argued that hunger, religious persecution, and the desire for economic improvement were important factors in driving emigration from Europe, Africa, or Asia, it is also true that voluntary americanization is the key to the success of the United States.

The original owners of the immense territory, although their immemorial ancestors crossed the Straits of Alaska at the dawn of North America, have been reduced to their reservations, marginalized, eaten away by poverty and alcoholism. Even in the sporadic mythos in Hollywood movies, Sitting Bull and his imitators do not overcome the mystique of Buffalo Bill.

The blacks were unfortunately marked by the original sin of not having booked a ticket for the forced trip to the United States. Their implantation has been resisted from the beginning by themselves and by the descendants of the merchants who deposited them in America.

With their emancipation and its disastrous execution, the peculiarity of their residence became more apparent. When they were stripped of the benefits that they had given away to their owners for free, their value was lost in Wall Street.

The successive corrective measures of discrimination and segregation only made the division of society even more evident. Despite the actions of Martin Luther King, who paid for his daring with his life, legal advances supercharged racist resentment from a part of society that resisted reform. “Affirmative Action” and food stamps multiplied the opposition.

Simultaneously, the black community, which had ceased to call itself “colored,” to take a curious journey back to being classified as “African,” watched with amazement as other newcomers from other continents were climbing ranks.

Latin Americans began to outnumber blacks not only in economic resources, but in numbers. As a result of the new census parameters, while whites held 63%, Hispanics (15%) and Asians (10%) cornered blacks (13%).

Internally, the new “African-Americans” decided to opt for a peculiar nationalism: they defended themselves with their signs of “black is beautiful”, they enthroned their peculiar English inherited from their owners, and they monopolized some entertainment professions.

Some were more fortunate and co-opted the rosters of basketball teams. For their part, some managed to settle on the ladders of power as senators and congress people, thanks in part to the restructuring of electoral districts.

Then they even aimed, with the decisive support of white sectors, to opt for the incredible: the presidency of the United States. It was already too much and the opposition to this impudence did not forgive Obama or the rest of the community, and even less the Democrats and liberals.

The mirage of the election of the first black president bypassed the resistance of deep America and the withdrawal of the “silent majority” that Nixon tried to awaken. Now Trump has reinvented it.

It was forgotten that only about a third of the electorate voted for Obama, while another third chose the Republican candidates. Another third stayed home. Among those 60-70% of Americans who abstained from voting on the traditional electoral correction, crouched was the mostly white sector, both high-income and lower-middle-class that followed the sounds of the piper Trump.

Those who rejected the candidate Hillary Clinton believed, and still believe, that their faltering economies have been pierced by the rise of the historically vanquished. They now believe that their pristine suburbs, real or imagined, are threatened by the “socialist” hordes of predominantly Latino origin, and the “terrorists” who insist on protesting against what they consider dangerous interference by the security forces in daily life.

The only thing missing is that the statistical evidence of the black overpopulation of the prisons and the number of crime victims of the same origin is “enriched” with sad deaths of blacks at the hands of white policemen.

Joaquín Roy is Jean Monnet Professor and Director of the European Union Center at the University of Miami

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Categories: Africa

Mozambique Reels from Repeated Attacks on Press Freedom

Fri, 09/04/2020 - 10:37

There is currently a grave pattern of detention or unsubstantiated allegations against journalists in Mozambique. Last month unknown attackers set on fire the office of a weekly newspaper Canal de Moçambique that had recently published investigations exposing corruption in the government. Courtesy: CC by 2.0/The Commonwealth

By Samira Sadeque
UNITED NATIONS, Sep 4 2020 (IPS)

While Mozambique was recently rattled by an arson attack on a local media organisation, experts say that it’s only a part of a worrying pattern of continuous attacks on the media in the country.

On Aug. 23, unknown attackers set on fire the office of a weekly newspaper Canal de Moçambique that had recently published investigations exposing corruption in the government.
The attack not only destroyed equipment and furniture, but also the files at the office.

Angela Quintal, the Africa programme coordinator at the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), told IPS that while they had never before witnessed an attack of this magnitude or nature, there is currently a grave pattern of detention or unsubstantiated allegations against journalists in the country. CPJ, a non-profit focused on press freedom, also monitors such attacks on the media around the world.

Quintal pointed some of the recent cases: arbitrary arrest and detention of radio journalist Amade Abubacar; the arrest of investigative journalist Estacio Valoi; the detention of Amnesty International researcher David Matsinhe, and driver, Girafe Saide Tufane, who were held for two days before being released without charge; and the repeated harassment of Canal’s executive editor Matias Guente.

Then there are the other cases, such as the enforced disappearance of Ibraimo Mbaruco, a community radio journalist and newscaster in Palma district in Cabo Delgado province.

On the same day as the arson attack, journalist Armando Nenane was arrested for not fully complying with regulations surrounding COVID-19, according to Quintal. Nenane published a story about how he managed to deposit funds in a former Defence Minister’s bank account in order to verify an exposé that Canal had published.

These arbitrary arrests are part of a pattern, says Matsinhe, the Mozambique researcher for Amnesty International. He told IPS that under the pandemic, there’s been an increase in harassment, intimidation, arbitrary arrests and detentions of journalists often under the guise of allegations that they were “violating COVID-19 regulations”.

“The police have used COVID-19 state of emergency to practice extortion on people,” he told IPS. “Some journalists have been exposing this practice and the police have taken a retaliatory approach against the journalists.”

The country’s increasingly deteriorating press freedom is also an attack on human rights, he said.

“People’s right to information depends on the journalists’ ability to do their work, which in turn depends on respect, protection, promotion and fulfilment of press freedom by the government,” Matsinhe said. But in taking that away, the government of Mozambique “relies on people’s ignorance, lack of information, to exercise its power and practice corruption unchecked.”

“Under the current economic, social and political conditions in Mozambique, access to information – which is only possible where press freedom is guaranteed – enables Mozambicans to participate in their country’s political life, to hold their government accountable, to exercise their civil and political rights,” he added.

While the lack of this right is worrisome, Quintal said the reaction by Canal’s staff members – by continuing to work and publish – shows they’re not bowing to this pressure. Staff had set up a makeshift office and published a front-page editorial vowing not to back down from their investigative journalism. “Obviously such an attack might have a chilling effect on the media and could well result in some self-censorship by journalists. However, it has been heartening to see how Canal de Moçambique and its online daily publication continued to publish,” she said.

“In terms of solidarity, the fact that a rival media group and its journalists rallied to assist and even offered their premises so that Canal journalists could produce that week’s edition of the newspaper, was also great to see,” Quintal added.

Still, a lot of work remains to be done.

“In my opinion [the government] has simply ignored the attempts to reach out and to engage,” Quintal said.

Matsinhe said the government can take some “concrete steps” to improve and ensure freedom of press in the country.

“The government must refrain from seeing the press as the state enemy and investigate the cases of injustices committed against various journalists and bring those found responsible to justice.”

Echoing similar demands, Quintal acknowledged the positive efforts by the Media Institute of South Africa-Mozambique, “to form a reference group with the government to review and consolidate the legal framework for cybersecurity and digital rights, and to ensure that it does not undermine access to information”.

The government must also conduct a review of legislation that is hostile towards press freedom, such as “overly broad” sections of the Penal Code that are often used to crack down on journalists.

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Categories: Africa

Nobel Laureates and Global Leaders Call for Urgent Action to Prevent COVID-19 Child Rights Disaster

Fri, 09/04/2020 - 09:47

The Laureates and Leaders for Children, founded in 2016 by Nobel Peace Laureate Kailash Satyarthi, state that if the world gave the most marginalised children and their families their fair share, which translates to 20 percent of the COVID-19 response for the poorest 20 percent of humanity, the results would be transformative. According to the international Labour Organisation and the United Nations Children’s Fund, one in five children in Africa are involved in child labour. Credit: Miriam Gathigah/IPS

By Miriam Gathigah
NAIROBI, Sep 4 2020 (IPS)

Regina Njagi’s four children, aged between 11 and 17, have not benefitted from online learning since the COVID-19 led to the closure of all schools in Kenya, earlier in March. With the closure, Njagi lost her job as a teacher at a local private school.

“As a widow, these are desperate times for me. I exhausted my savings by paying school fees for my two children in high school, just three weeks before the closure. How many times can I borrow food from relatives and neighbours? Everyone I know is struggling so the children must work. Otherwise, they will starve,” Njagi tells IPS.

Nobel laureates galvanise action for world’s vulnerable children

Njagi is not alone in having to send her children to work for the families’ survival. The impact of the pandemic on children will be a focus of Nobel Peace Laureates and Leaders for Children at a Fair Share for Children Summit on Sept. 9 and 10. Several Nobel laureates and heads states and directors of United Nations agencies are listed as speakers, including Nobel laureates the Dalai Lama, Professor Muhammad Yunus, Dr. Rigoberta Menchú Tum, Leymah Gbowee and Tawakkol Karman, and Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Löfven, among others.

To globalise compassion and galvanise action for the world’s most vulnerable children, the Laureates and Leaders for Children founded in 2016 by Nobel Laureate Kailash Satyarthi, state that if the world gave the most marginalised children and their families their fair share, which translates to 20 percent of the COVID-19 response for the poorest 20 percent of humanity, the results would be transformative.

The Nobel laureates fear that despite pledges of unprecedented sums of money to support world economies, this may not reach children.

“As a result, COVID-19 could turn the clock back a decade or more on progress made on child labour, education, and health for hundreds of millions of children,” the Laureates say in a joint statement.

Satyarthi, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2014, has personally rescued tens of thousands of children from slavery and will be one of the speakers at the Fair Share for Children Summit.

As the COVID-19 pandemic rages on and concerns escalate that even more children have been placed in harm’s way, the Laureates and Leaders for Children is calling upon the world’s heads of government to demonstrate wise leadership and urgently care for the impoverished and the marginalised with a special focus on children.

“One trillion dollars would fund all outstanding United Nations and charity COVID-19 appeals, cancel two years of all debt repayments from low-income countries, and fund two years of the global gap to meet the SDGs on health, water and sanitation, and education,” Laureates and Leaders for Children says.

Education is a particularly vital step as quality education is the most powerful way to “end exclusion and change the future for marginalised children. There would still be enough left to fund social protection safety nets which are crucial in the fight against child labour. More than 10 million lives would be saved, a positive response by humanity to the tragedy of COVID-19,” Laureates and Leaders for Children says.

No school but work during the pandemic

But from May to July this year, all four of Njagi’s children were unable to attend school as they were employed on a daily wage to pick coffee at plantations in the Mbo-i-Kamiti area, Kiambu County, Central Kenya.

The children are currently engaged in this year’s second coffee picking season which has just begun and will last through October. Njagi says her children will then participate in the final and major coffee picking season from October through December.

Picking coffee is a difficult job, and her children must leave for the plantation, some two kilometres away from their home in Kagongo village, by six o’clock in the morning.

After harvesting the coffee, each worker, child or adult, is expected to load their harvest onto waiting trucks which transport the day’s pickings to the local coffee factory.

All workers must do everything possible to get onto the truck with their coffee or else they will walk to the factory, at least a kilometre away.

“At the factory, each person places their coffee on a weighing scale, and each worker is paid their daily wage based on the weight. I advised my children to combine their harvest because if the weight is too low, they might not get paid,” she adds.

Children across the world at risk

The World Bank estimates that globally the pandemic will push 40 to 60 million people into extreme poverty in 2020.

The International Labour Organisation (ILO), together with UNICEF, warns that a one percentage point rise in poverty leads to at least a 0.7 percent increase in child labour in certain countries.

Child rights experts, such as Nairobi-based Juliah Omondi, are increasingly concerned that Njagi’s household is far from the exception. For millions of households across Africa, child labour is now a lifeline, and vulnerable children must adapt or starve.

Omondi is a member of the G10 (groups of 10 civil society organisations) local movement that agitates for the rights of women and children. She tells IPS that in “many African countries, including Kenya, Uganda, Botswana, Eritrea and Nigeria, international labour standards on the minimum age protection are ignored in the informal sector”.

In Nigeria, for instance, the National Bureau of Statistics show that as of 2019, 50.8 percent of Nigeria’s children were working full time. Omondi adds that the situation is dire in Africa’s poorest countries, including Mali, Niger, Somalia and South Sudan.

COVID-19 likely to exacerbate the abuse and exploitation of children

Danson Mwangangi, a regional socio-economic expert and independent consultant based in Kigali, Rwanda, says that the pandemic has provoked economic severe and labour market shocks and that children are bearing the brunt.

While the number of working children has fallen by 94 million since the 2000s, the plight of Njagi’s children confirms fears by the ILO that the pandemic is likely to exacerbate the abuse and exploitation of children and roll back progress towards the eradication of child labour.

“Ongoing crisis will make it exceptionally difficult for the United Nations to realise its commitment to end child labour in the next five years. For the first time in 20 years, we are going to see a spike in the number of child labourers,” Mwangangi warns.

The impact of COVID-19 on vulnerable children clearly visible

ILO pre-pandemic statistics indicate that approximately 152 million children between the ages of five and 17, or one in 10 children, worldwide work. Of these, 73 million are in hazardous work. Nearly half of all children in labour are from the African continent and are aged between five and 11 years.

According to ILO, 85 percent of child labourers in Africa are in the agriculture sector; another 11 percent are in the services sector, with the remaining four percent in industry.

“We are beginning to see the fallout. More child marriages, more girls being employed as domestic workers and, unfortunately, domestic work for children in Africa has been normalised,” Omondi says.

Mwangangi agrees. He says that while statistics by child agencies, like the U.N. Children’s Fund, show that one in five children in Africa is in child labour, there is a general understanding that this does not include underage domestic workers such as house girls and farm boys.

Unfortunately, child labour is not the only problem facing marginalised and vulnerable children in Africa. When Save the Children released a report in July entitled “Little Invisible Slaves”, it became apparent that COVID-19 has created more children vulnerable to trafficking and revealed that the world lacks much-needed child protection infrastructure.

The report says that COVID-19 “changed the pattern of sexual exploitation, which is now operating less on the streets and more indoors or online”.

Omondi speaks of fears that millions of children are trapped in houses with their abusers and that it has becoming that much more difficult to reach them.

Save the Children estimates that of the 108,000 cases of human trafficking reported in 164 countries in 2019, at least 23 percent involved children.

Worse still, one in 20 child victims of sexual exploitation worldwide is under eight years old. Overall, Africa accounts for eight percent of child sex trafficking in the world.

According to the United States Department of State, 19 percent of world’s enslaved population is trafficked in Sub-Saharan Africa. In the same breath, nearly half of all countries in Africa including Kenya, Nigeria, Ghana, Cameroon, Lesotho, Tunisia, Tanzania, Zambia, Malawi and Botswana have been flagged as notable sources, transit points and destination for people subjected to sex trafficking and forced labour.

In Kenya, for instance, one of six such victims are children, this is according to the Trafficking Data Collaborative, a data hub on human trafficking.

Meanwhile, Laureates and Leaders for Children caution that the inequalities the world’s children face, combined with the “impact of COVID-19 will reverberate for years to come”. But, they say, “none will feel it as painfully as the world’s most marginalised children”.

The post Nobel Laureates and Global Leaders Call for Urgent Action to Prevent COVID-19 Child Rights Disaster appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Categories: Africa

Not Guilty Verdict in Kuciak Killing – a Chilling Message for Journalists

Fri, 09/04/2020 - 08:49

Experts say that the not guilty verdict in the trial of the murder of investigative journalist Jan Kuciak sends a chilling message to Slovak journalists that they cannot be protected or work in safety. In this dated photo, a protester in the Slovak capital, Bratislava holds up a picture of murdered journalist Kuciak and his fiancée Martina Kusnirova. Credit: Ed Holt/IPS

By Ed Holt
BRATISLAVA, Sep 4 2020 (IPS)

A Slovak businessman with alleged links to organised crime has been found not guilty of ordering the murder of journalist Jan Kuciak in a ruling that has left press freedom campaigners and politicians shocked.

Marian Kocner had been accused of ordering the killing of Kuciak, an investigative reporter with the Slovak news website Aktuality.sk.

Kuciak and his fiancée Martina Kusnirova, both 27, were shot dead at Kuciak’s home in Velka Maca, 40 miles east of the capital Bratislava in February 2018. Self-confessed hired killer Miroslav Marcek, 37, had earlier this year pleaded guilty to murdering the couple and was sentenced to 23 years in jail.

But a court in Pezinok, north of the capital, ruled yesterday, Sept. 3, that there was not enough evidence to prove Kocner had ordered the murder. A woman also on trial for helping Kocner facilitate the murder, Alena Zsuszova, was acquitted, but a third person, Tomas Szabo, was found guilty of taking part in the killings.

“We are surprised and disappointed that after a long investigation and legal process that it has ended in this verdict. This is a sad day for press freedom in Slovakia and internationally,” Tom Gibson, EU Representative for the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), told IPS.

“This has sent out a potentially very chilling signal to other journalists that they cannot be protected and cannot do their work safely,” he told IPS.

The murders of Kuciak and Kusnirova shocked Slovakia and led to the largest mass protests in the country since the fall of communism.

Prime Minister Robert Fico and Interior Minister Robert Kalinak were forced to resign, and the head of the police service later stepped down.

Police said that the murders were related to Kuciak’s work as an investigative journalist – Kuciak’s last story had exposed alleged links between Italian mafia and Fico’s Smer party – and the subsequent investigation uncovered alleged links between politicians, prosecutors, judges, and police officers and the people allegedly involved in the killings.

At the heart of these was Kocner, a controversial figure frequently linked to alleged serious criminals and who in a separate case was earlier this year sentenced to 19 years in jail for forging promissory notes.

Prosecutors argued in court that Kocner had ordered the killing in revenge for articles he had written about the multimillionaire’s business dealings.

Although not accused of pulling the trigger himself, for many Kocner was the central figure in the trial and a symbol of deep-rooted corruption at the highest levels of state.

And ahead of the verdict, journalists had said the outcome of the trial would be a watershed in Slovak history, in terms of both restoring public trust in a judiciary which the Kuciak murder investigation has shown to apparently be riddled with corruption, and in showing that same judiciary can clearly punish crimes designed to silence journalists.

But soon after the ruling, many local journalists said they had been left shocked and disappointed, while others said they were angry and could not understand how the court had reached its verdict.

But many said they simply felt the justice system had failed the victims and their families, as the people who ordered the murder had still not been brought to justice.

Christophe Deloire, Secretary General of press freedom watchdog Reporters Without Borders (RSF), describe the acquittals as “a huge failure of the investigation bodies and the judiciary”.

“We expected Slovakia to set a positive example regarding the prosecution and condemnation of crimes against journalists. Instead, we remain in a situation of impunity. Who ordered the killing of Jan Kuciak? Why was he killed? We should have a clear answer,” he said.

Regardless of what judicial failures may or may not have led to the decision, it is expected to have serious repercussions in Slovakia and other countries with some arguing it is a serious setback in battling impunity and ensuring justice.

Pavol Szalai, Head of European Union and Balkans Desk at Reporters Without Borders, told IPS: “This [verdict] is the biggest setback for freedom of the press in Europe since the murder itself. During this investigation and the court process Slovakia had been seen as an island of hope in Europe and today a strong signal of hope could have been sent out to other countries.

“But now, with the Slovak justice system unable to identify and bring to justice the person, or persons who ordered these murders despite massive public and political pressure to do so, how can other countries, like Serbia for example, be expected to do so?”

CPJ’s Gibson added: “This case was closely followed internationally and for European institutions especially this was an important case in terms of strengthening press freedom in Europe.

“One of the important things about Jan Kuciak’s murder was that he was a journalist working on investigative stories involving sensitive information and there are journalists in lots of other countries doing similar kind of work. This case was kind of symbol in terms of [highlighting] the need to protect journalists in other countries doing similar work.”

Prosecutors have appealed the court’s verdict and it will now go to the Supreme Court, which will either confirm the verdict or could send the case back to court to be heard again.

However, it is expected it will be months before the Supreme Court delivers any ruling and if the case is sent back to court, it could be years before another verdict is reached, which could again be appealed.

Some observers fear this could lead to a complete erosion of trust in the Slovak judiciary which has already been severely weakened by the court’s ruling.

Zuzana Petkova, a former journalist who worked on stories with Kuciak, told IPS: “This is not the end of the case, but if the people who ordered the murders are not put behind bars, Slovakia will drag this case around like a trauma, and there will be no trust left in the Slovak justice system. Already after today’s verdict there is far less trust in the system.”

Anti-corruption watchdog Transparency International Slovakia, wrote in a Facebook post: “It must be a top priority for the Supreme Court and law enforcement bodies to prevent this case becoming the last nail in the coffin of the trust of the public in the judiciary and justice in Slovakia.”

Slovak politicians, many of whom openly admitted they had been shocked by the court’s ruling, urged people to believe that those behind the killings would eventually be brought to justice.

But some who have followed the trial are taking a more pessimistic view.

Drew Sullivan, Editor at the Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, told IPS he had little hope that the people who ordered the killings would ever be convicted.

He told IPS: “The ruling was a huge disappointment although not completely unexpected. Experienced crime figures know how to isolate themselves from their crimes and there was no direct forensic evidence of [Kocner’s] involvement.

“However, there was testimony and clear circumstantial evidence of his involvement. If he had been a regular person, he’d have been found guilty based on witness testimony, but courts don’t accept the testimony of commoners against the ruling class. He is rich, powerful and murderous, and will cause problems for some time now in Slovakia.”

The post Not Guilty Verdict in Kuciak Killing – a Chilling Message for Journalists appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Categories: Africa

The First “Virtual” Post-Pandemic UN General Assembly Meeting

Fri, 09/04/2020 - 07:54

Tijjani Muhammad-Bande. Adhering to physical-distancing guidelines, the General Assembly met fully in-person on 3 September, for the first time in nearly six months, with its president urging all Members to “galvanize multilateral action…to deliver for all”, as the COVID-19 pandemic continues. Credit: United Nations

By Tijjani Muhammad-Bande
UNITED NATIONS, Sep 4 2020 (IPS)

Although we have not convened in this Hall since March, New York-based delegations have worked tirelessly to uphold the values and principles set out in the Charter of the United Nations, whilst contending with the COVID-19 pandemic.

The UN’s chief deliberative body continued the Organization’s work, all the while forging and deepening partnerships to build back better.

I commend the body for its foresight in adopting and extending Decision 74/544, which has allowed the Membership to adopt more than 70 decisions and resolutions and elect Main Committees chairs for the upcoming milestone 75th Assembly session.

This has ensured business continuity on issues of critical importance.

We employed virtual methods to gather stakeholders from around the world on Charter Day, and once again at the multi-stakeholder hearing on the occasion of the 25th anniversary of the Fourth World Conference on Women.

I thank the Secretariat for its continued commitment.

I applaud the work of the intergovernmental negotiations on the commemoration of the 75th anniversary of the United Nations.

The Member States demonstrated leadership in responding to the global pandemic by adopting two resolutions with wide co-sponsorship calling for solidarity and global access to medicines and medical equipment.

The first in-person meeting since March is held in the General Assembly following the outbreak of the coronavirus. Credit: UN Photo/Eskinder Debebe

I congratulate the Fifth Committee Chair – responsible for administrative and budgetary matters – for adopting creative methods that allowed the resumed session to conclude with 21 draft recommendations, and a peacekeeping budget of $6.5 billion for the 2020-2021 fiscal year.

Your work has ensured that the United Nations can continue to operate on the ground and meet the needs of the people we serve.

I also applaud the World Health Organization (WHO) for leading the COVID-19 response from the outset.

The entire UN system has rallied to address the needs of the people we serve, and particularly our humanitarian workers in the field and our Peacekeepers, who continue to protect communities in the most complex environments globally.

We maintain the importance of these efforts as we begin the Decade of Action and Delivery to implement the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), or as it is likely to become, the decade of recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic.

I urge you to galvanize multilateral action now to fulfill our financing for development commitments. We remain in this together, as nations, united. Let us continue striving together to deliver for all.

The post The First “Virtual” Post-Pandemic UN General Assembly Meeting appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Tijjani Muhammad-Bande is President of the outgoing 74th Session of the United Nations General Assembly

The post The First “Virtual” Post-Pandemic UN General Assembly Meeting appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Categories: Africa

COVID-19: Without Help, Low-Income Developing Countries Risk a Lost Decade

Thu, 09/03/2020 - 12:49

South Sudanese refugees practice social distancing as they wait to access a food distribution at Kakuma camp. © UNHCR/Samuel Odhiambo

By Daniel Gurara, Stefania Fabrizio, Daniel Gurara, and Johannes Wiegand
WASHINGTON, Sep 3 2020 (IPS)

While the COVID-19 crisis is sending shockwaves around the globe, low-income developing countries (LIDCs) are in a particularly difficult position to respond. LIDCs have both been hit hard by external shocks and are suffering severe domestic contractions from the spread of the virus and the lockdown measures to contain it. At the same time, limited resources and weak institutions constrain the capacity of many LIDC governments to support their economies.

Growth in LIDCs is likely to come to a standstill this year, compared to growth of 5 percent in 2019. Further, absent a sustained international effort to support them, permanent scars are likely to harm development prospects, exacerbate inequality, and threaten to wipe out a decade of progress reducing poverty.

Multiple shocks take a heavy toll

LIDCs entered the COVID-19 crisis in an already vulnerable position—for example, half of them suffered high public debt levels. Since March, LIDCs have been hit by an exceptional confluence of external shocks: a sharp contraction in real exports, lower export prices, especially for oil, less capital and remittances inflows, and reduced tourism receipts.

Take remittances, for example, that exceeded 5 percent of GDP in 30 (out of 59) LIDCs in 2019. Between April and May, they fell by 18 percent in Bangladesh, and by 39 percent in the Kyrgyz Republic, compared to the previous year. The repercussions are likely to be felt widely where remittances are the main source of income for many poor families.

As for the domestic impact, while the pandemic has evolved more slowly in LIDCs than in other parts of the world, it is now inflicting a sizeable toll on economic activity. Many LIDCs acted swiftly to contain the spread. From mid-March, when reported infections were still low, they put in place containment measures including international travel controls, school closures, the cancelation of public events and gathering restrictions.

Mobility—a proxy for domestic economic activity—also declined sharply, and continued to retreat as measures were broadened to include workplace closures, stay-at-home orders, and internal movement restrictions. From late April/early May, containment measures have gradually loosened and mobility has recovered, but has yet to return to pre-crisis levels.

Managing difficult trade-offs with scarce resources

Most LIDCs cannot sustain strict containment measures for long as large segments of the population live at near subsistence levels. Large informal sectors, weak institutional capacity, and incomplete registries of the poor make it difficult to reach the needy. Further, governments have only limited fiscal resources to support them.

Recent surveys conducted across 20 African countries reveal that more than 70 percent of respondents risk running out of food during a lockdown that lasts more than two weeks.

Faced with such constraints, the short but sharp front-loading of containment fulfilled a critical purpose: it flattened the infection curve, while granting time to build up capacity in the health sector.

Many LIDCs have followed this path: while they expended less fiscal support to their economies than advanced or emerging market economies, the share of additional spending dedicated to health has been higher.

As broad-based containment becomes difficult to sustain, LIDCs should transition to more targeted measures, including social distancing and contact tracing—Vietnam and Cambodia are good examples. Policy support should focus on supporting the most vulnerable, including the elderly, and on limiting the health crisis’s long-term fallout.

For example, protecting education is critical to ensure that the pandemic does not—as highlighted in a recent Letter to the International Community by a group of eminent persons—“create a COVID generation who loses out on schooling and whose opportunities are permanently damaged.”

Where the necessary infrastructure exists, technology can sometimes be leveraged in innovative ways. For example, to limit the spread of the virus, Rwanda is leveraging its digital finance infrastructure to discourage the use of cash. Togo employs the voter registration database to channel assistance to vulnerable groups.

A decade of progress under threat

Despite the best efforts of LIDC governments, lasting damage seems unavoidable in the absence of more international support. Long-term “scarring”—the permanent loss of productive capacity—is a particularly worrisome prospect.

Scarring has been the legacy of past pandemics: mortality; worse health and education outcomes that depress future earnings; the depletion of savings and assets that force firm closures—especially of small enterprises that lack access to credit—and cause irrecoverable production disruptions; and debt overhangs that depress lending to the private sector. For example, in the aftermath of the 2013 Ebola pandemic, Sierra Leone’s economy never recovered to its pre-crisis growth path.

Scarring would trigger severe setbacks to LIDCs’ development efforts, including undoing the gains in reducing poverty over the last 7 to 10 years, and exacerbating inequality, including gender inequality. The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) will thus be even more difficult to achieve.

LIDCs cannot make it alone

The support of the international community is key to enable LIDCs to tackle the pandemic and recover strongly. Priorities include: (1) guaranteeing essential health supplies, including cures and vaccines when they are discovered; (2) protecting critical supply chains, especially for food and medicines; (3) avoiding protectionist measures; (4) ensuring that developing economies can finance critical spending through grants and concessional financing; (5) ensuring that LIDCs’ international liquidity needs are met, which requires International Financial Institutions to be resourced adequately; (6) reprofiling and restructuring debt to restore sustainability where needed, which, in many cases, may require relief beyond the G20/Debt Service Suspension Initiative; and (7) keeping sight of the United Nations’ SDGs, including by reassessing needs when the crisis subsides.

The COVID-19 pandemic will be defeated only when it and its socioeconomic consequences are overcome everywhere. Urgent action by the international community can save lives and livelihoods in LIDCs. The International Monetary Fund is doing its share: among other things, the IMF has provided emergency financing to 42 LIDCs since April. It stands ready to provide more support and help design longer-term economic programs for a sustainable recovery.

Daniel Gurara is an Economist at the Strategy, Policy, and Review Department of the IMF.

Stefania Fabrizio is Deputy Unit Chief in the IMF’s Strategy, Policy, and Review Department.

Johannes Wiegand is Chief of the Development Issues Unit in the IMF’s Strategy, Policy and Review Department.

This story was originally posted on IMFBlog – Read the original here

The post COVID-19: Without Help, Low-Income Developing Countries Risk a Lost Decade appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Categories: Africa

Qatar Accuses UAE of Racial Discrimination in UN’s Highest Court

Thu, 09/03/2020 - 12:04

Qatar filed a case with the International Court of Justice under the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination against the United Arab Emirates. The hearings were held by video link. Courtesy: International Court of Justice

By Samira Sadeque
UNITED NATIONS, Sep 3 2020 (IPS)

Qatar officials reiterated their claim on Wednesday that the United Arab Emirates (UAE) be held responsible for their “discrimination” against Qatari citizens, as the third day of public hearings proceeded at the International Court of Justice (ICJ), the United Nation’s highest court. But foreign policy experts caution that the case is not good for stability in the Persian Gulf region.

The case, filed under the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (CERD), deals with, among other things, the expulsion of Qatari citizens from the UAE because of their nationality.

“In 2017, the UAE began ‘unprecedented discriminatory measures’ that target Qatar based on their national origin,” Mohammed Abdulaziz Al-Khulaifi, legal advisor to Qatar’s Minister of Foreign Affairs and Dean of the College of Law at Qatar University, said at the hearing.

Qatar claims the discrimination began following a 2017 boycott by Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and Egypt. The countries had reportedly cut diplomatic ties with Qatar because of its alleged support of terrorist groups.

“The UAE has engaged in the violations of the human rights of Qatari people,” Al-Khulaifi added later.

Michael Stephens, a scholar with the Foreign Policy Research Institute (FPRI), told IPS: “Whilst it was understandable Qatar and the UAE had some very big differences over regional politics, the way in which this has been handled has been highly damaging and has really not produced any of the sort of results that the UAE initially hoped for.”

He said that the dispute might be posing a challenge in the Persian Gulf region overall.

“It’s not good because they’re playing out their rivalries in weaker countries, like Libya and Somalia, and polarising politics in those areas,” he said. “I don’t think this is good for the stability of the Gulf.”

He added that this might further undermine the negotiations over the nuclear deal, and “has emboldened actors to play the Gulf states against one another, who are smart and “can take money from both sides”.

In 2015, Iran signed a nuclear deal with world powers to limit operations on its nuclear industry, among other things. It was reported that since January Iran has begun reducing its commitments to the deal.

“In general, it has made the Gulf look divided and weak,” Stephens said.

Lubna Qassim Mohammed Yousuf Bastaki, one of the speakers for the UAE, said Qatar’s case, “masquerading” as discrimination, “concerns UAE measures that were addressed to Qatari nationals on the sole basis of their nationality, as nationality was both the focus and the effect of the UAE measures”.

At the start of proceedings this week the UAE argued that the ICJ had no jurisdiction in the matter as the dispute was based on nationality and not race and thereby did not relate to the CERD.

Bastaki argued that Qatar was invited “based on our commonalities as one people” to join the new union of the Arab emirates. “The fact that we have a common origin which traversed the new national boundaries was understood,” she said.

She also said under the UAE law, Qataris are among the few who have the ability to become UAE nationals easily.

“This well illustrates the artificiality of the supposed racial distinctions which Qatar is now seeking to conjure up,” she said.

Bastaki is not the only person to express her concern about the specific allegations of discrimination based on nationality.

“The Qataris have a much stronger argument, I think in that they sense that their nationals have been mistreated, but they’ve also made this slightly odd claim that this is about racism, when they are basically from the same background,” Stephens of FPRI told IPS. “Certainly the ruling families come from the same background.”

“So, claiming ‘racism’ is a difficult one that would only be possible if you had a Qatari from an Iranian origin, or a different background,” he added.

Stephens said that the UAE has certainly at times acted discriminatingly towards those who showed support for Qatar, citing the arrest of a British fan who was supporting Qatar during a football match. Last January, Ali Issa Ahmad was held by UAE police for two weeks after he supported Qatar in a football tournament held in the UAE.

“But the Qatari football team was allowed to play in the tournament and actually won,” Stephens said. “So it’s not a complete shutdown.”

Stephens said he can’t gauge the outcome of the rulings; he said Qatar’s position appears to be “strengthening” with more international arbitrators getting involved.

Stephens said the UAE’s claims that they were acting against people who supported terrorism, is a “very, very difficult claim to make: how would they prove that? How would they show just a normal Qatari walking around in Dubai or Abu Dhabi was supporting terrorism, by virtue of the fact that they’re Qatari?”

The hearings will continue till Friday.

The post Qatar Accuses UAE of Racial Discrimination in UN’s Highest Court appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Categories: Africa

“Hidden” Costs of Our Food Systems

Thu, 09/03/2020 - 09:44

SOFI launch event. Credit: FAO

By Zoltán Kálmán
ROME, Sep 3 2020 (IPS)

Five years after the adoption of the 2030 Agenda we are far from achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). According to the recently launched SOFI Report (The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World 2020), we are not on track to eradicate poverty, hunger and malnutrition. On the contrary, with the current trends, the global number of undernourished people in 2030 would exceed 840 million. Moreover, WHO has reported alarming rates of overweight and obesity, globally affecting 39% and 13% of the adult population, respectively.

What are the reasons?

The SOFI Report identifies conflicts and climate-related shocks as main causes, adding that even in peaceful settings, food security has worsened, due to increased inequalities and economic slowdowns affecting access to food for the poor. Unhealthy diets contribute to increasing rates of overweight and obesity, creating serious social, health problems, triggering heavy burden on public health expenditures. Our broken food systems have negative impacts on the environment as well, leading to biodiversity loss, soil degradation, increased GHG emissions, etc. Food losses and waste, as preventable consequences of unsustainable food systems, are also contributing to food insecurity. This year’s SOFI Report makes a clear reference to some of the externalities, the so-called “hidden” costs of our food systems. It quantifies the increased medical costs: Diet-related “health costs are projected to reach an average of USD 1.3 trillion in 2030” and the costs of climate damage: “The diet-related social cost of GHG emissions related to current food consumption patterns are estimated to be around USD 1.7 trillion for 2030 for an emissions-stabilization scenario”. In addition, the costs of inaction on biodiversity loss, described by a recent OECD report, should also be taken into consideration: “The world lost an estimated USD 4-20 trillion per year in ecosystem services from 1997 to 2011, owing to land-cover change and an estimated USD 6-11 trillion per year from land degradation.”

The shocking figures confirm the urgent need for an overall assessment of all positive and negative externalities of our food systems. Results of this assessment, based on neutral science, could be a solid foundation for policy decisions to elaborate and apply appropriate policy incentives aiming at more sustainable food systems. Scientists agree that transforming our food systems is among the most powerful ways to change course and realize the vision of the 2030 Agenda. Therefore, it is of utmost importance that in 2021, UN Secretary-General António Guterres will convene a Food Systems Summit as part of the Decade of Action to achieve the SDGs by 2030. As UNSG said: “Transforming food systems is crucial for delivering all the Sustainable Development Goals.”

According to the concept of the Summit “we are all part of the food systems, so we need to come together to bring about the transformation that the world needs”. Transformation of our food systems should be a bottom-up, inclusive process, where all stakeholder groups are involved: FAO and other UN organizations, governments, local communities, private sector, civil society, academia, famers’ associations. In this regard, the unique, inclusive and multistakeholder model of the UN Committee on World Food Security (CFS) could apply. The reports of the High Level Panel of Experts are valuable, relevant instruments and the CFS policy recommendations and other CFS “products” (adopted by consensus) can also provide proper guidance for governments and all other stakeholders in their policy decisions.

To enhance the role of private sector in the process of transforming our food systems, it is much appreciated that the new management of FAO decided to prepare a revised strategy for the private sector engagement, following the recommendations of FAO governing bodies.

From FAO Members’ perspective, the basic values such as transparency, accountability, inclusivity, neutrality and independence and regular impact assessments could be guiding principles of the new FAO private sector engagement strategy. For the sake of transparency and accountability, it would be desirable to make available some basic information on existing private sector partnerships (main objectives, the financial and non-financial contributions, etc.). Naturally, it requires the (hopefully granted) consent of the private sector partners. What does it mean if they do not agree? It might mean there is something to hide and this lack of transparency would be a matter of serious concern.

FAO has an important role and responsibility to ensure, as honest broker, that private sector partnerships follow the principle of inclusivity, address the real needs of people and contribute to eliminating poverty and hunger. FAO should guarantee the participatory and needs-based approach and make sure that all private sector investment projects and initiatives are developed in consultation and close collaboration with national governments, local communities, civil society organisations and farmers’ associations. This would increase ownership of the rural communities. In addition, FAO could help countries with policy advice to create the enabling economic policy environment where private sector finds its profit interests while the investments are serving the needs of the local communities, contributing to their development.

Neutrality and independence of FAO has been a great value and it should be preserved, in particular when private sector engagement is extended to fields like policy dialogue, norms and standard setting. In this regard, appropriate process for selecting partners should be in place to reduce and manage any potential risks (conflicts of interests, reputational risks, interference in standard setting, etc.).

In addition, compliance with CFS policy recommendations and other CFS “products”, such as the RAI principles and the Voluntary Guidelines on Land Tenure (VGGT), could be a prerequisite for private sector partners wishing to engage in partnership with FAO. Why? Because CFS “products” are relevant instruments, they can guide governments and all other stakeholders in their policy decisions. CFS “products” are adopted by consensus, after inclusive, multistakeholder discussions, including by the Private Sector Mechanism at CFS. Compliance with the CFS VGGT is a rather serious issue, statistical figures clearly show that in many parts of the world land grabbing situation has been worsening also in the past decade.

In order to improve efficiency and effectiveness of private sector partnerships, it is essential to regularly assess their impacts, possibly involving external, independent experts. Appropriate benchmarks should be in place to understand the extent to which the private sector partnerships contribute to the achievement of SDGs, in particular SDG 1 and 2, eliminating poverty and achieve zero hunger. Based on these assessments, private sector partnerships performing well should be scaled up, and those with poor results should be improved or terminated.

All in all, private sector has an essential role to play (engaged with due respect to the above principles) to achieve the common goals. As Agnes Kalibata, UN Special Envoy for the 2021 Food Systems Summit has put it: “We believe in a world where healthy, sustainable and inclusive food systems allow people and planet to thrive. It is a world without poverty or hunger, a world of inclusive growth, environmental sustainability, and social justice. It is a resilient world where no one is left behind.”

The post “Hidden” Costs of Our Food Systems appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Zoltán Kálmán, Ambassador, Permanent Representative of Hungary to the UN Food and Agriculture Agencies in Rome, Member of the Advisory Committee of the UN Food Systems Summit

The post “Hidden” Costs of Our Food Systems appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Categories: Africa

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