Africa - INTER PRESS SERVICE

Credit: United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR)

By Lawrence Surendra
BANGKOK, Thailand, Aug 24 2020 (IPS)

The COVID 19 Pandemic continues relentlessly. Deaths approaching a million globally, 22 million infected and growing. Brazil, India, the US and Russia accounting for almost 50% of the total cases in the world.

Medically the promise of a vaccine is given as signs of hope; what surprises awaits us when such a vaccine is available, would be another story. Economically, to address the uncertainty and the grim future ahead, the UN, some governments and even Joe Biden the US Presidential hopeful, are waving “Build Back better” as ways to achieve ‘a new normal’ out of the current pandemic.

“Build Back Better” emerged out of the 3rd International Conference on Disaster Risk Reduction held in Sendai, in March 2015 and the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction which had outlined seven clear targets and four priorities for action to prevent new and reduce existing disaster risks. (1) Understanding disaster risk; (2) Strengthening disaster risk governance to manage disaster risk; (3) Investing in disaster reduction for resilience and; (4) Enhancing disaster preparedness for effective response, and to “Build Back Better” in recovery, rehabilitation and reconstruction.

Other concepts such as Circular Economy (CE) are gaining more adherents. Professor Martin Charter in a recent edited book, “Designing for the Circular Economy’, published by Routledge (2019), says, “product circularity means taking an extended lifecycle perspective that focusses on maximising value in economic and social systems for the longest time”.

He offers ‘CE’ as a key part of achieving the SDGs, though he also cautions that CE is not a magic bullet and “achieving a more sustainable future will require integrated, systemic thinking, creativity, hard work and change”. The book is a very useful collection of contributions covering different industries and design specialists.

While we see young engineers and others, even in developing countries, applying concepts like CE and biomimicry to contribute to sustainability, CE also has its critics. ‘Low Tech Magazine’ (www.lowtech.org) is of the view that, “The circular economy – the newest magical word in the sustainable development vocabulary – promises economic growth without destruction or waste.

However, the concept only focuses on a small part of total resource use and does not take into account the laws of thermodynamics”. CE would need a movement from all sides, government, industry and consumers to be actually implemented in practice.

Talking of movements, one is represented in ideas around ‘Degrowth’. Provoked by a question, the famous French philosopher Andre Gorz, asked around 1972, “Is the earth’s balance, for which no-growth – or even degrowth – of material production is a necessary condition, compatible with the survival of the capitalist system? ”, gave rise to the famous word “décroissance”, French for ‘degrowth.

After the COVID 19 Pandemic, ‘Degrowth’ is also gaining currency. In, ‘Degrowth – A Vocabulary for a New Era’ published by Routledge, three ecological economists, Giacomo D’Alisa, Frederico Demaria and Giorgis Kallis, bring 51 contributors to examine a wide range of topics and themes related to Degrowth. Published in 2015, it gains greater relevance now.

The Editors state in their Preface, “When the ordinary language in use is inadequate to articulate what begs to be articulated, then it is time for a new vocabulary”. They point to the deep ills plaguing the world such as growing inequalities, socio-ecological disasters, climate change and the continuous disaster of deaths by lack of access to land, water, and food.

To this we can add, the pandemic deaths, the Australian Bush fires, the Beirut explosion and the massive oil spill in the serene territorial waters off Mauritius endangering livelihoods and marine life. Apocalypse now? May be not! The quote at the beginning of this contribution, is from a must read chapter in the book by Serge Latouche titled, ‘Pedagogy of Disaster’.

Latouche says, “Worshippers of progress immediately accuse anyone who reflects on the dangers that threaten our civilization of pessimism”. He quotes Hans Jonas, philosopher and author of the much celebrated book, ‘The Imperative of Responsibility: In Search of an Ethics for the Technological Age’ who had said, “it is better to lend an ear to the prophecy of misfortune than to that of happiness”.

In Latouche’s view, Hans Jonas, “does not masochistically hope for a taste of the apocalypse, but precisely to ward it off”. For Latouche, Jonas’ appeal is “an alternative to the suicidal optimism of a ‘politics of ostriches’. In a tone of melancholy, he says, “It is this latter blissful (and passive) optimism that will lead certainly to more disaster than an attitude of a crystalizing catastrophe”.

The ”worshippers of progress” in the world today are many. Among the powerful, Bolsinaro, Modi, Putin, Trump and Xi Ping represent the “progress fundamentalists” and the world of “business as usual”. In the context of the growing consciousness and awareness around climate change, these leaders also seem to represent thinking that goes back 50 years.

More than 28% of the Brazilian Rain Forest is burning, with little concern shown or actions taken to prevent it by Bolsinaro. Trump wants more fossil fuel driven “unlimited growth”; so too Narendra Modi whose government is busy dismantling environmental safeguards, built over decades and which however imperfect could in the past delay the destruction of ecology and provide defence to nature, biodiversity and forests in India.

Currently, while undermining India’s long term security, to immediately boost the economy post-Covid-19 and reduce costly imports, 40 new coalfields in some of India’s most ecologically sensitive forests are to be opened up for commercial mining.

Increasing evidence shows, the link between forest destruction and increase in viruses and pandemics. We are losing more forests and disrupting nature, says Katarina Zimmer, writing in the National Geographic.

According to her, “Over the past two decades, a growing body of scientific evidence suggests that deforestation, by triggering a complex cascade of events, creates the conditions for a range of deadly pathogens—such as Nipah and Lassa viruses, and the parasites that cause malaria and Lyme disease—to spread to people”.
(read full story at <https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/2019/11/deforestation-leading-to-more-infectious-diseases-in-humans).

In such a scenario, the UN seems powerless, with most of its economists especially in regions like Asia clinging on like religious fundamentalists to some outdated neoliberal economics much of which has brought us to where we are now. SDGs and “Build Back Better” are just labels applied by these economists “on old bottles” of wine that has almost become vinegar!.

There are no road maps nationally and globally for “sustainable futures” or “build back better”. The latter two are aspirational, what we need is more specific identification of normative pathways like Green Growth and a systems approach to achieve it by normative global public goods organization like the UN and those who work for it. Otherwise we may be back, metaphorically to, “Parachuting Cats into Borneo”.

In the 1950s, when the malaria epidemic was out of control in Sarawak and the adjoining state of North Borneo, now called Sabah, the WHO advised indoor spraying of DDT to control the spread of the malaria carrying mosquitoes. The indigenous people of Sarawak and Sabah live in each village in long houses with thatched roofing that could house as much as hundred families.

The spraying of DDT led to a chain of events such as deterioration of the thatched roofs and collapsing of the roofs which the locals complained about. A WHO team sent to investigate found out that the some of the moth larvae (caterpillars) living in the thatch were able to distinguish the presence of DDT and so avoided eating thatch sprayed with the chemical, whereas their parasites, small chalcid wasps that injected their larvae into the caterpillars, were highly susceptible to DDT, causing their decline and the subsequent increase in caterpillar numbers.

A 50% increase per roof area in caterpillar larvae led to deterioration of the thatch roofs and collapses. Accompanied by the death and decline of cats due to the DDT spraying and the boom in rat population resulted in a double crisis. The latter required new cats having to be parachuted into the area. The whole chain of events, captured in the metaphor, “Parachuting Cats into Borneo” demonstrates how one track thinking devoid of a systems approach could just lead us out of one disaster into another.

The same metaphor of ‘Parachuting Cats into Borneo’ has been very cleverly and productively used by Alan Atkisson and Axel Klimek, two among the world’s leading systems thinking practitioners and trainers, and change management experts, to produce a book of the same title, ‘Parachuting Cats into Borneo – And Other Lessons from the Change Café’.

Published by Chelsea Green Publishers, the book is offered as a ‘Toolkit of Proven Strategies and Practices for Building Capacity and Creating Transformation’. While the UN and some of their professional economists are advising member states ‘to look for a black cat in a dark room where there is no cat’ and till the UN decides that institutional reform is urgent and gets down to it, we may have to do our own homework for change and change management.

Axel Klimek and Alan Atkisson’s book, have much to contribute in these efforts towards fundamental transformations in thinking that can take us closer to sustainable futures.

* Views expressed are his own and do not represent organizations he has been affiliated or currently affiliated with.

 

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Excerpt:

Lawrence Surendra is a Chemical Engineer and Environmental Economist and a former staff member of UN-ESCAP and Council Member of Sustainability Platform Asia (TSP Asia)*

“I feel it coming, a series of disasters created through our diligent yet unconscious efforts.
If they’re big enough to wake up the world, but not enough to smash everything, I’d call
them learning experiences, the only ones able to overcome our inertia”.
                                                               Denis de Rougemont, 1977

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By External Source
Aug 21 2020 (IPS-Partners)

The Pacific Community (SPC) 7-week research expedition to monitor the health of world’s largest tuna fishery has departed from Honolulu on Saturday 15 August 2020 despite the significant challenges presented by COVID-19. With most research and fisheries observer programmes currently suspended, the importance of this cruise cannot be overstated. Half of the world’s tuna catch comes from the Western & Central Pacific, providing a critical source of protein and export revenue for Pacific Island Nations.

Source: The Pacific Community (SPC)

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By External Source
Aug 21 2020 (IPS-Partners)

Pandemic-related lockdowns, flight cancellations, and border closures may be putting a crimp on summer vacation plans. However, the precipitous drop in tourism will have an outsized impact on countries that rely on foreign travelers—with potentially large-scale effects on their economies’ national accounts.

Costa Rica, Greece, Morocco, Portugal, and Thailand could be among the hardest hit with losses in tourism proceeds exceeding 3 percent of GDP, according to the IMF’s recently released 2020 External Sector Report.

The chart calculates direct tourism impacts on imports, exports, and current account balances under a scenario that envisions gradual reopenings in September but a drop of about 70 percent in tourism receipts and international tourism arrivals in 2020.

A country’s current account balance is a measure of its total transactions—which includes but is not limited to trade in goods and services—with the rest of the world. For some economies, a drop in tourism (which is considered an export) could have an impact on overall current account balances.

For example, in Thailand, a decrease in tourism due to COVID-19 could bring the country’s overall exports down by 8 percentage points of GDP and have a direct net impact of about 6 percentage points of GDP on its current account balance in 2020. That could erode part of the 7 percent overall current account surplus the country had in 2019.

The outlook for smaller, tourism-dependent nations is even more stark. This chart and the External Sector Report focus on medium to large economies, but, under the same scenario, some smaller states especially reliant on tourism could see a dramatically larger direct impact on their trade and current account balances.

Still, the overall effect a decline in tourism will have on current account balances may be less than these projected direct impacts foretell. Smaller, tourism dependent countries and even larger economies with a large tourism industry may see offsetting indirect effects. For example, smaller nations with less domestic resources often rely on more imports to support their tourism industries. A drop in tourism exports and the economic activity that it drives, both directly and indirectly, will lead to a corresponding drop in imports—lessening the overall impact on the current account balance.

Much is still unknown about the pace of tourism recovery in 2020. Peoples’ desire and ability to travel abroad may continue to face headwinds going into 2021 due to the ongoing pandemic, leaving an uncertain outlook for tourism industries in economies both big and small.

Source: International Monetary Fund

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Before the COVID-19 pandemic, the needs of the ageing population in various African countries were not adequately addressed. However, since the pandemic a recent survey has shown that the pandemic has further compounded the existing health challenges, further increasing neglect of older persons.Credit: Dolphin Emali/IPS

By Samira Sadeque
UNITED NATIONS, Aug 21 2020 (IPS)

Nearly three quarters of respondents in a survey across 18 African countries have claimed that their countries’ COVID-19 responses are gravely lacking in addressing the ageing population.

The survey, conducted by the Stakeholder Group on Ageing (SGA) Africa, found that factors such as inadequate social protection, health care infrastructures and multi-sector engagement mechanisms on ageing on all levels are contributing to these countries’ woeful lack of policies geared towards the ageing population.

On Thursday, SGA organised its second webinar on the Rights of Older Persons in Africa with a focus on the “Inclusion of Older Persons in COVID-19 Policy Response and Development Agendas”.

“Before the COVID-19 pandemic, the needs of older persons in various African countries were not adequately addressed,” Dr. Emem Omokaro, co-chair SGA Africa, told IPS after the webinar.

“Unfortunately, the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic has further compounded the existing health challenges due to the shift in government attention from those existing challenges to containment of the COVID-19 pandemic, which further increase neglect of older persons.”

Full excerpt of the interview below:

Inter Press Service (IPS): What did this webinar aim to address?

Dr. Emem Omokaro (EO): COVID -19 is a global health, social, economic and psychosocial pandemic. Its intense activity and the mortality toll among the geriatric population have been evidenced by disaggregated data. The SGA Africa survey on the impact of COVID-19 containment and mitigation initiatives exposed social injustices, deepening inequalities, inadequate — or in some countries — non-existing healthcare and social protection infrastructure.

In Africa, the impact is materially more intense, with a prolonged systemic tendency to leave older persons behind. For a COVID-19 recovery, we cannot afford to continue as usual. The fundamental question for SGA Africa then became, what can we do differently? How do we influence the approach of ministries, departments and agencies of governments, organisational and agencies in their intervention efforts? How can we bring compassion, passion, research and data, to influence political decisions? How can we influence African member states to deliberately set up multi-sector stakeholder platforms for collective and intersecting decisions, and to set up common structures of engagement for older persons centred policy actions?

IPS: How has the ageing population in the 18 African countries (as mentioned in your brief) been affected by COVID-19?

EO: When the question was asked, responses from the various participating countries showed clearly there were certain older person-specific issues that the strategies did not fully cover. Some of the issues include: access to medical care, abuse and violence, lack of social protection for older persons, lack of research/information about older persons, voices of older persons not [being] heard, access to nutritional intervention services, age discrimination, neglect in the distribution of palliatives, and inadequate sensitisation for older persons.

The health and economic impacts of the virus are borne disproportionately by poor people. For example, homeless people who lack safe shelters, and people without access to running water, among others.

Specifically, the impacts of COVID-19 on older persons include the following:

• increased mortality rate among older persons;
• older Persons with pre-existing health challenges who lack access to health care;
• neglect and maltreatment of older persons in care homes and other institutions;
• disruption of older persons’ social networks and support systems;
• increased incidences of abuses of older persons;
• isolation, neglect and loneliness due to social distancing;
• social protection has been grossly affected; and
• erosion of the means of livelihood of older persons due to the lockdown.

IPS: How does it affect the ageing population when they’re not included in policy responses to COVID-19?

EO: Older men and women can be perfectly healthy even though their metabolic rates may slow down and their strength declines. Some mental activities also slow or change completely. These changes and declines occur at different levels and at different rates. In favourable environments, the changes will hardly be apparent, and the benefits of old age may often mean that life improves and older persons are happier, and unsure of its veracity and essence.

COVID-19 is more than a health crisis, but a human, economic and social crisis; attacking the core of the human society–as it heightens inequality, exclusion, discrimination, xenophobia, vulnerabilities and global unemployment in the medium and long terms. It affects all segments of the population and it is particularly detrimental to those in the most vulnerable situations, including people living in poverty situations (especially women), older persons, and persons with disabilities, youth migrants, and refugees among others.

IPS: In what ways have the governments responded to specific needs of the ageing population in these countries under the current pandemic?

EO: There were varied responses. Some African countries, including Togo, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Madagascar indicated that their countries had not made much progress in terms of older person-specific programmes.

Expectedly, the majority of African countries made tremendous progress in the implementation of containment and mitigation services to older persons. A few African countries that made outstanding progress in older person-specific containment and mitigation services are Rwanda, Kenya and South Africa.

The responses in these countries indicated that they’d accomplished measures such as sensitisation of social distancing, provision of food to older persons, food distributions to older persons, advocacy for older persons’ voices to be heard, building of older persons care homes, and access to medical insurance.

IPS: From the concept note, it’s clear that there’s a large focus on regional partnership to address this issue. Why is a partnership so crucial to addressing the issue? In what ways can it enhance the efforts to improve the situation? 

EO: Establishment of partnership with national, regional and international agencies and bodies is very crucial in the fight against ageism and as well in the achievement of [Sustainable Development Goals] SDGs Agenda 2030 and [African Union] AU Agenda 2063. Older persons are diverse and ageing is multi-sectoral.

Partnerships are crucial for resource mobilisation, exchange of information and knowledge, new technology, and capacity building. It is necessary to have inter-agencies and multi sectoral -older persons centred interventions. Specifically, partnership will promote effective coordination efforts towards multi-sector and comprehensive response to ageing and older persons during and post COVID-19. SGA Africa is advocating for a policy directive on an intervention methodology which commands all United Nations Agencies with countries in Africa to build the multi-agency mechanisms on ageing.

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By Jan Lundius
STOCKHOLM / ROME, Aug 21 2020 (IPS)

 

You can shine your shoes and wear a suit
you can comb your hair and look quite cute
you can hide your face behind a smile
one thing you can’t hide
is when you’re crippled inside.                                                                                                               John Lennon

COVID-19 made some of us aware of how dependent we are on one another, this is why so many of us become upset when confronted with the reckless behaviour of those who do not respect rules, like social distancing and the wearing of face masks. Lack of empathy appears to be spreading throughout our global society. ”Why do I have to care about others? The most important thing is my own well-being and success,” a way of reasoning that fosters contempt, misogyny and racism and worst of all – disdain for those who are old and weak, and/or for various reasons have been bodily incapacitated, making it hard for them to participate in the rat race for beauty and success.

It is becoming increasingly common to be transfixed by the idea that character is reflected by appearances and thus many individuals become obsessed with obtaining, or maintaining, an aesthetically pleasing appearance. An entire business has developed around our cult of bodily beauty, as well as the youth, glamour and success assumed to be connected to it. Beauty contests, fashion shows, cosmetic surgery, fitness studios, make-up products and a host of other phenomena profit from this craving for human beauty.

The United States of America even has a president who made a fortune from organizing beauty pageants and appeals to people´s desire for glamour and success. He even made his own name into a brand equivalent to his shallow ideals. However, that same man has through speech and actions made us aware of the abominable backside of the beauty cult — ”the ugly”, ”the fat”, ”the old and decrepit”, ”the deviants”, ”the others”, ”the aliens”, i.e. all those who do not correspond to an image of perfect beauty are by him labeled as ”losers”, or threats to ”our way of being”. One of the worst displays of the mindset of this powerful bigot was when he in public made fun of a disabled man and to the approving cheers of his followers imitated his difficulties to coordinate his body movements.

Among children, it is common to make fun of other kids with mental, or physical difficulties, happily ignoring the fact that victims of such jokes may become traumatized for life. What attract the mockery may even be quite insignificant and not even a disability – a limp, a birthmark, small stature, obesity, dark skin, big ears – you name it. Seldom have these ”pecularities” anything to do with the victim´s character.

The disdain of people with physical disabilities may result in a denial of their rights to live a decent life. On top of that comes the discomfort, or even revulsion, which several of us demonstrate while being confronted with severe ailment and disfigurement. One particularly painful stigma is facial disfigurement, something which is described in Kobo Abé´s novel The Face of Another and The Monster, a short story by Stephen Crane.

The Japanese novel describes how a man´s face is burned and disfigured in an industrial accident and how his wife becomes nauseated by his new appearance. He succeeds in undergoing a plastic surgery that alters his looks. After experiencing how his life was before his disfigurement, during it and after he had obtained a ”new” face, the main character becomes acutely aware of how his own personality is affected by how other people react to his appearance. In the end he becomes a stranger to himself.

Abé´s novel deals with several aspects of how we and others perceive us, based on our outer appearance. Among other examples he describes the awful experiences of men returning from wars with their faces disfigured from burns and head wounds and how the first question of severely wounded soldiers tend to be: ”What about my face? Is it intact?” a worry that often is greater than their concern for limbs and organs.

Crane´s short story was written in 1898 and is even more tragic. It deals with a black coachman in the southern states of the U.S., whose face became horribly disfigured when he saved the son of his employer from a fire. The boy´s father is a well-liked surgeon in a small town, and he feels obliged to take care of his son´s saviour. However, the coachman´s face looks so horrible that people become afraid of him, in spite of the fact that he remains a nice man and furthermore is a hero. That the doctor takes care of a man with such an awful complexion makes him a victim and pariah, forces him out of his practice and turns him into a wretch as well.

Apart from a deep-set aversion to other people´s disabilities we have a tendency to grade misery. For example, I once had a colleague who was severely hearing impaired. He told me: ”I often wish I had been blind instead of deaf. People feel sorry for blind people, but I am generally treated like an idiot, because I talk in a peculiar manner and people have to make an effort to make themselves understood by me. I am a nuisance to myself and everybody else.” This may be the reason for the English expression ”deaf and dumb” and the fact that not so long ago hearing impaired people were assumed to be mentally retarded and even ended up in asylums.

A slight problem might have huge consequences. A popular Swedish author and entertainer, Beppe Wolgers, suffered from stuttering. In his autobiography Wolgers described a life-long suffering from stuttering, which he at the same time acknowledged to be the reason for his success as a comedian and author – it made him aware of the extreme importance of language and to think carefully about every utterance he made. However, he did not deny that his stuttering had been an incapacitating affliction.

Late in life he met with other stutterers, who also happened to be authors and actors. Between themselves they could talk about stuttering, nervousness and fear, about finding different words and tricks to express themselves via detours, a need for finding synonyms, other verbal tools and useful gestures. ”An internal professional talk about stuttering, without inhibitions and lots of laughs.”
Wolgers realised that most of his suffering had evolved from the behaviour of ”well-meaning normal people.” Many of them had avoided talking to him about his problems and during his entire life he had been laughed at, openly or secretly. Words that he never had intended to say had been put in his mouth and made him feel stupid and isolated. In the company with other stutterers Wolgers had felt free to laugh at his problems, but when the ”outside world” laughed at him and imitated his stuttering he suffered from an ever-increasing paralysis and fear.

The current presidential candidate and former Vice President of the United States, Joe Biden has struggled with stutter throughout his life and declared that it is a handicap that people laugh and humiliate others about, often if they do not even mean to do it. Joe Biden is just one example of stutterers who while investing immense physical and mental energy to overcome their handicap have become entertainers, actors and politicians.

However, disabilities seldom lead to success, instead they might isolate you and loneliness devours your self-respect. The worst is when you have a visible physical ”disorder” that is impossible to hide from yourself and others. In spite of their good intentions ”outsiders” might judge physically disabled individuals based on their appearances. Attitudes tend to be embossed by prejudices towards the ”sick” and ”disabled” and thus our actions may be blemished by moralizing and superficial conventions. ”Non-affected” persons might carry with them a self-congratulating, vicarious suffering that prevent several victims of disabilities to be accepted as integrated parts of our society. Our awkwardness is great when it comes to spending time with afflicted indiviuals and we might thus make others ashamed of their illnesses and/or embarrassed about their disabilities. I once had a pupil who tried to explain her suffering to me:

– As you and everyone else can see I am dwarf. No one considers Eve (not her real name) as just Eve, I am always ”Eve the Dwarf”. I have found that the only way to be who I am is to accept that I am a dwarf. I have begun to admire dwarfs who work in circuses and show business. They make others laugh or cry, they make art out of their disabilities, they can even laugh at themselves. If people cannot see me as anything else than just a dwarf, so be it. Let me be a dwarf. I am a good actor, and when I act I feel free. I even applied to the Theatre School, but was not accepted. They told me: ”You´re a good actor and quite funny, but you must understand … your disability is tabú, you cannot laugh at a disabled person. We´re sorry.”

The only thing I was able to tell her was: ”OK, then you have to forget about making a living from acting. You are a good student. I assume you could go to the university and enter academia.”

She started to cry and told me: ”It´s easy for you to say.”

Instead of falling victims to a cult of bodily beauty stigmatizing those who do not meet the standards of what we assume to be ”normal and beautiful”, let us try to find the inner beauty of all those who are judged due to their appearance and realise that empathy and equal rights is something that benefit us all.

Jan Lundius holds a PhD. on History of Religion from Lund University and has served as a development expert, researcher and advisor at SIDA, UNESCO, FAO and other international organisations.

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

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Aug 21 2020 (IPS)

As it continues to vociferously preach the virtues of equality—advocating equal rights for all, irrespective of race, sex, language or religion– the United Nations has been quick to condemn racism and racial discrimination worldwide.

But how hypocritical is it when racism raises its ugly head in its own backyard— particularly in Geneva which, ironically, is home to the UN Human Rights Council and the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR)?

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

The survey revealed that “more than 1 in 3 staff have personally experienced racial discrimination and/or have witnessed others facing racial discrimination in the workplace. And two-thirds of those who experienced racism did so on the basis of nationality”.

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

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

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

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

A non-apologetic message emailed to staffers on August 19 read: “The United Nations Survey on Racism has been taken offline and will be revised and reissued, taking into account the legitimate concerns expressed by staff.”

The findings of the Geneva survey also reveal:

1. Among those who experienced or witnessed racism, a majority of staff indicated that racial discrimination affected opportunities for career advancement. A significant number of staff also indicated that racial discrimination manifested itself in the form of verbal abuse and exclusion from work events, such as decision-making, trainings, missions, assignments etc.
2. A large number who experienced or witnessed racial discrimination, harassment or abuse of authority indicated that they did not take any action. Lack of trust in the organization’s recourse mechanisms was cited as the most common reason. Many also stated that that they feared retaliation.
3. Respondents believed racism needed to be addressed in a number of different ways. These include accountability and zero tolerance, training and sensitization, greater transparency in hiring, broader diversity, and a more open dialogue on the issue.

UN staff in New York. Credit: United Nations

Prisca Chaoui, Executive Secretary of the 3,500-strong Staff Coordinating Council at the UN Office at Geneva (UNOG), told IPS: “We belief, as a staff union, that it is high time for the organization to seriously combat pervasive racism and racial discrimination. This means greater accountability and a zero tolerance Policy towards any racial act.”

She said: “We are glad to see that the UN management is willing to address this issue, and as a staff union, we are ready to assist in coming up with serious measures that go beyond empty words and lead to a real change so that the UN shows it is capable of upholding the principles that it preaches to the overall world.”

“We are concerned that many cases of racism remain unreported due to the lack of trust of the staff in the existing recourse mechanisms ad well as fear of retaliation,” she declared.

“The findings of the survey confirm that racism exists within the United Nations, as earlier stated by the Secretary-General. They also show that supervisors and senior managers have an important role to play, as do all staff, in tackling this issue”.

She said the results of the survey “will guide our interactions with management at the duty station and globally. They will also be used to help the Council propose to senior management at UNOG a strategy to fight racism in the workplace”.

Patricia Nemeth, President, United Nations Staff Union, told IPS the UN Staff Union in New York, which has a strength of over 6,500 members– with the local staff in peacekeeping operations overseas estimated at approximately 20,000 plus– ran its own survey entitled “UNHQ-NY pulse survey on racial justice”.

She said the murder of (the African-American) George Floyd on 25 May, added to those of Breonna Taylor, Eric Garner, Akai Gurley, Jerame Reid, Elijah McClain and so many more, “reopened the wounds of racial injustice that afflict our host country and the world as a whole”.

The United Nations, she pointed out, has a normative framework to address racial discrimination within the organisation, but work remains to be done, as recognised by the Secretary-General on June 4.

“In this spirit, the Staff Union is committed to serving as a platform for progress towards greater inclusion, diversity, dignity and social justice both within the UN and beyond,” declared Nemeth, who is also Vice President for Conditions of Service – the Coordinating Committee of International Staff Unions and Associations (CCISUA),

The New York survey was intended to provide the Staff Union with a better understanding of the current situation regarding racial injustice within the United Nations Secretariat and will help determine “how we as staff can contribute to making improvements and will also feed into broader policy discussions”.

The survey combined questions about racial discrimination in the workplace in all its forms; “questions about your own experience with racial discrimination; and specific questions about discrimination against individuals of African descent, which is a key focus of concern at our duty station right now.”

The responses received included:

1. 44% of the respondents noted there is no adequate racial diversity within their department and 46% noted that they feel that staff of African descent aren’t adequately represented within their department.
2. 43% of the respondents noted they have experienced workplace harassment or intimidation as a result of their race.
3. Staff members have experienced acts of racial discrimination at the workplace, primarily in tone and language used towards them, in selection and promotion processes and in recognition of their authority and grade. When it comes to witnessing racist conduct towards others, the order remains the same, but at a higher percentage.
4. New York staff would welcome if the Organization were to ensure diversity in positions of authority; establish an anonymous channel for reporting racial discrimination; and ensure racial diversity in Human Resource and Executive Offices and staff-facing offices in the formal and informal justice system, so that staff members feel safe sharing their concerns, and confident they will be understood and taken seriously.
5. Respondents believed racism needed to be addressed in a number of different ways. These include training and sensitization, greater transparency in recruitment, need for action instead of words, creating safe workspace and inclusiveness, understanding structural and systemic racism.

Nemeth said the survey results will allow the staff union’s coordination group on racial justice to plan subsequent actions tailored to the specific needs of the UN staff community in New York.

“In order to frame the conversation, we have already initiated a series of expert talks that aim to provide historical context regarding the scale and gravity of the transatlantic slave trade, the meaning and persistence of systemic racism, but also the outstanding cultural richness and contribution of the African diaspora around the world”.

Despite the inherent difficulties caused by social distancing, she said, “we will continue to find creative ways to encourage colleagues to have the difficult conversations that enable us to overcome the challenge of racism in the workplace.”

Meanwhile, in a letter to UN staff, Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said last June: “The position of the United Nations on racism is crystal clear: this scourge violates the United Nations Charter and debases our core values.”

Ian Richards, former President of the Coordinating Committee of International Staff Unions and Associations, and an economist at UNCTAD in Geneva, told IPS: “The survey has shown a problem exists, and not just based on skin colour but mainly on nationality, which for an organization called the United Nations is worrying.”

Therefore, in fixing this, management needs to recognize that each country, culture and duty station experiences racism in different forms, whether linked to slavery, colonialism, immigration, national rivalries, or conflicts. And each of these needs its own treatment, he added

“We look forward to working with the Secretary-General to solve this problem,” declared Richards..

The post Staff Surveys Reveal Widespread Racism at the United Nations appeared first on Inter Press Service.

The United Nations has warned that water shortages could affect 5 billion people by 2050. Credit: International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD)

By Sareen Malik and Benazir Omotto
NAIROBI, Kenya, Aug 21 2020 (IPS)

There is an intimate connection between corruption and COVID-19. This pandemic is making everyday life more desperate, especially in poorer communities, and that means more opportunities for those preying on vulnerable people.

Measures to manage the coronavirus has put millions of people out of work and increased the demand for water to maintain good hygiene – and in most low-income settings, fetching water is women’s work.

Where official services are insufficient or non-existent, this means women and girls are chasing a scarce resource and often do not have enough money to pay for it.

The all-too-common result is ‘sex for water’: unscrupulous water suppliers, almost exclusively male, from informal vendors to utility staff, demanding sexual favours as payment for water.

Before the pandemic, getting enough water for basic needs was a daily struggle. Women and girls would spend hours each day collecting water from the nearest source or waiting in long queues at the local tap or pump.

For females living in these circumstances, there has always been the threat of verbal abuse, physical attack or sexual assault while gathering water for their households. Now, with squeezed incomes, weak governance and huge burdens on limited government resources, the danger has got much worse.

Credit: Shutterstock/ Sanitation and Water for All (SWA)

The following three stories from recent interviews with women in Kenya – their names changed for anonymity – are depressingly familiar to activists on the ground.

Goldie

Goldie goes to the water point at 4pm and leaves at around 6 or 7pm. She talks about the lack of courtesy – the men who jump the queue and are served without being rebuked. She does not complain because she fears being beaten up.

The government’s dusk-to-dawn COVID-19 curfew has made queues worse and the situation more tense. She has been sexually assaulted three times during water collection but she says she dare not complain to anyone, fearing that this would leading to “worse consequences” for her. She now fetches water as early as possible to avoid confrontation by these men.

Maureen

Maureen fetches water in the morning with her sisters. When there is a water shortage, she must be out of the door by 4am. She walks for 30 minutes to the water point. She has grown accustomed to harassment, often by people known to her. She feels powerless to do anything about it.

The men, mainly motor bike operators, often block the path and try to ‘woo’ Maureen and her sisters. If they play along, they are allowed to proceed with their business. She has even given her phone number to one of the men and agreed to his advances, which has guaranteed her protection from other men along the route.

However, at the water point, the vendor flirts with her and touches her without her consent, making her feel violated. When Maureen has stood up for herself, the water vendor behaves harshly, yelling at her for any spillage, hiking the price and often ganging up with vendors from other water points to abuse and body-shame her.

Lucy

Lucy fetches water in the evening after doing household chores and studying. Due to water scarcity in her village, she often queues for an hour at the water point, during which she receives advances from various men, including the water operators. If she is amenable to them, she gets to jump the queue.

However, some men then try to follow her home. Lucy has been cornered four times by different water operators who expected to take their ‘relationship’ a step further. She rejected them and is now denied water access and suffers public humiliation through the obscenities they hurl at her.

She is now forced to walk for 30 minutes to a new water point, accompanied by an older relative, usually her mother. Lucy is not comfortable speaking up, given that perpetrators have been known to bribe their way out of trouble and come back to the village to cause problems for the whistleblowers.

Unfortunately, stories like these are not rare. The numbers are elusive, as victims feel compelled to hide their experiences, but activists and NGO staff regularly receive testimony from girls and women whose lives are being made a misery by men demanding sexual favours for water.

COVID-19 has not created this problem, but it has certainly made it more acute. Its existence is a damning indictment of the failure of effective, accountable governance when it comes to water supply and, for that matter, sanitation and hygiene services.

Governments have the power to act swiftly. Many of the alleged perpetrators work for utilities and other official service providers. Chains of command and mechanisms of accountability must be implemented immediately to restore confidence among the public and donors alike. Unofficial, unsupervised water vendors should be removed from the market by governments to ensure universal service coverage.

That any women or girl is being sexually violated to obtain water for their family is criminal, inhumane and unacceptable. Access to water and sanitation are human rights. During the pandemic, the importance of these rights cannot be overstated.

Sextortion for water is a symptom of multiple problems, which means it will take multiple stakeholders to eradicate it. Representatives for water, sanitation, gender, governance and government must come down hard on this most pernicious of practices and end the nightmare for women and girls being forced to trade their bodies for something as essential and irreplaceable as water.

 

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The post How Women & Girls are Forced to Trade Sex for Water appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Sareen Malik is Coordinator, African Civil Society Network on Water and Sanitation (ANEW) and Steering Committee Vice-Chair, Sanitation & Water For All (SWA), and Benazir Omotto is Integrated Urban Environmental Planning Officer, UMANDE TRUST, Kenya

The post How Women & Girls are Forced to Trade Sex for Water appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Malian President Ibrahim Boubacar Keïta has resigned. Paul Morigi/Flickr, CC BY-NC-ND

By External Source
Aug 21 2020 (IPS)

What appears to have started as a mutiny, and resulted in a coup, came on the heels of renewed civilian protests in Bamako, the Malian capital. Tensions have been high since president Ibrahim Boubacar Keïta’s 2018 re-election which was marred by irregularities. All the while, he has continued to face allegations of corruption and fraud.

On Tuesday, August 18, reports of mutinying soldiers firing into the air and taking control of an army base filtered out of Mali. With limited information on the initial motives of the soldiers, fears of a mutiny, or worse, a coup, set in. The situation escalated quickly when senior government officials were arrested and tanks appeared on the streets of the capital Bamako.

By afternoon, soldiers stormed the presidential palace and arrested both president Keïta and prime minister Boubou Cissé. The two were taken to the Kati military base, where the mutiny had begun. Soon after, the president resigned in a national television address stating:

If today, certain elements of our armed forces want this to end through their intervention, do I really have a choice?

Large scale protests calling for Keïta’s resignation began in early June 2020. In July 2020, Keïta dissolved the country’s constitutional court, ostensibly in an effort to ease tensions. In April 2020, this same court overturned parliamentary election results for some 30 seats, a move that advantaged Keïta’s political party. This sparked protests in which at least 11 protesters were killed by security forces, intensifying the calls for Keïta’s resignation.

Promoting inclusiveness among the country’s various interests can help 2020 look more like Mali’s 1991 coup, that led to multiparty elections, rather than its 2012 experience

On top of potential election fraud and crackdowns by security forces, Keïta’s government has bungled its response to ethnic-religious violence. The Tuareg rebels, a group that has historically had separatist aspirations, have loosely aligned with jihadist groups, posing a steep challenge to the state.

The group Jama’at Nasr al-Islam wa al-Muslimin (JNIM) conflates the material grievances of the Tuareg with the ideological concerns of various prior Salafi-Jihadi groups, posing another ongoing threat to the state and its military.

Mali’s recent political turmoil has only been exacerbated by its economic struggles. Reliant on gold mining and agriculture, the country has been especially vulnerable to volatile commodity prices that have suffered further declines in the midst of the global pandemic. In addition, nearly half of the country’s population lives in extreme poverty.

 

Mali’s history of military unrest

Mali is no stranger to political unrest. In 2012, a small, localised mutiny at the Kati barracks escalated to the overthrow of then president Amadou Toumane Touré. The fallout was dramatic, prompting a failed countercoup and political and civil disorder.

Worse still was the loss of half the country’s territory to insurgents. As a result, the international community intervened in an effort to mediate the crisis.

Yet, it is important to consider the parallels. The 2012 coup occurred when disgruntled soldiers rioted to demand better weapons, ammunition, and equipment to battle against Tuareg insurgents in the north. When the defence minister’s attempts to negotiate with the mutineers failed, the crisis quickly escalated.

Though the original intent was not to overthrow president Touré, inaction led to a putsch. Mutinies are public events that occur within a state’s active armed forces, benefit from their collective nature, and have political aims short of the seizure of executive power. Coups, on the other hand, are rebellions led by the military and sometimes political elites, seeking to oust the executive.

While scholars have studied coups extensively, research on mutinies is still in its infancy. Mutinies are important to investigate as they can often have dire consequences for civilians and occur more frequently than coups in the post-Cold War era. Further, they can escalate to other, more severe forms of political violence.

Mutinies are also likely a proximate indicator for coup activity. For example, in 2011 Burkina Faso experienced four mutinies, shortly followed by a successful coup in 2014 and another coup attempt in 2015. Guinea Bissau saw three mutinies between 1998 and 1999 and experienced three coups, one of which was successful, between 1998 and 2000.

An interesting empirical question is raised here: why do some mutinies escalate to coups while others do not? While this is an emerging line of research and important question for policymakers, there is an initial consideration to be made in the case of Mali: mass political protests matter.

We know that protests spur both mutinies and coups. Further, protests in the capital city are most likely to spur coup activity, like those protests that have troubled Bamako this summer.

Protests can signal to mutineers and military leaders that there is widespread, civilian support for a putsch. This may shift mutineers’ or military leadership’s objectives from demonstrating grievances to upending the status quo and ousting the executive.

 

International reaction

The apparent coup drew sharp criticism from the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS). The influential grouping of 15 countries proceeded to close all borders with Mali and ordered sanctions against the conspirators. The African Union, European Union, and United Nations each also issued statements condemning the coup.

ECOWAS recently demonstrated its willingness to help oust illegitimate leaders, the most recent case being The Gambia. More broadly, the African Union has adopted a strong anti-coup norm, and the creation of the organisation’s anti-coup framework has seen an accompanying decline of coup attempts in the region.

Given the swift and wide-ranging international condemnation from regional organisations and world powers alike, Mali’s putschists would seem to be especially vulnerable to international responses. This is particularly the case given the substantial presence of foreign troops. These include over 11,000 soldiers deployed to Mali as part of the UN stabilisation mission and an additional 5,000 French soldiers.

Aid dependence here could also play an important role. The World Bank estimates that overseas development assistance amounts to around 70% of Mali’s central government expenditure.

International interventions can be important, but they will ultimately be informed, and either strengthened or weakened, by the role of Mali’s internal dynamics. While Burkina Faso saw Gilbert Diendéré’s 2015 coup unravel within a week, this was primarily due to internal resistance. In sharp contrast, there has so far been no public support for Keïta and his government.

Public opposition to Keïta makes his return unlikely, but external pressure can help right the ship. It remains to be seen what promises of elections will ultimately lead to.

Elections have increasingly become the norm following coups, and given swift international pressure a poll can be seen as a forgone conclusion. However, the holding of elections–even if “free and fair”–says little about the quality and durability of the future government.

Promoting inclusiveness among the country’s various interests can help 2020 look more like Mali’s 1991 coup, that led to multiparty elections, rather than its 2012 experience.

 

Christopher Michael Faulkner, Visiting Assistant Professor in International Studies; 2018-2019 Minerva-USIP Peace and Security Scholar, Centre College; Jaclyn Johnson, Director of Analytics (StableDuel), University of Kentucky; Jonathan Powell, Associate professor, University of Central Florida, and Rebecca Schiel, Postdoctoral researcher, University of Central Florida

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

The post Another Mutiny Turned Coup: Mali Is No Stranger to Military Unrest appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Ploy Phutpheng. Credit: UN Women.

By Valeria Esquivel
GENEVA, Aug 20 2020 (IPS)

The pandemic is disproportionately affecting women workers. Governments should prioritize policies that offset the effects the COVID-19 crisis is having on their jobs.

I am a feminist economist. My job is to examine how the inequalities between women and men are part and parcel of the functioning of labour markets, and to assist our constituents in implementing what we call “gender-responsive” employment policies – i.e., macroeconomic, sectoral and labour market policies that explicitly contribute to gender equality.

Prior to the onset of the COVID-19 crisis large numbers of women were excluded from the labour market. The pandemic has made things much worse.

It is disproportionately affecting women workers who are losing their jobs at a greater speed than men. More women than men work in sectors that have been hard hit by the economic fallout from the pandemic, such as tourism, hospitality and the garment sector. Large numbers of domestic workers, most of whom are women, are also at risk of losing their jobs.  The vast majority of health workers are women, which raises the risk of them catching the virus.

School closures and caring for those who become sick, has forced women lucky enough to remain in employment to cut down on paid working hours or to extend total working hours (paid and unpaid) to unsustainable levels

Moreover, the fragility of their employment situation, coupled with reduced access to labour and social protection have meant that women have found they are particularly vulnerable to the pandemic, even in sectors which, until now, have experienced less disruption.

One of the ideas at the core of feminist economics is that the unpaid care work that takes place in households and families to support everyday life is a vital part of the economic system. This type of work is primarily carried out by women and most of the time is not recognized as such. School closures and caring for those who become sick, has forced women lucky enough to remain in employment to cut down on paid working hours or to extend total working hours (paid and unpaid) to unsustainable levels.

Here are five ways to ensure that women’s job prospects are not damaged long-term by the COVID-19 crisis:

•  Prevent women from losing their jobs by implementing policies that keep them in work, as women have a harder time than men in getting back to paid work once crises have past. By compensating for wage losses caused by the temporary reduction in working hours or the suspension of work, these policies can help maintain women workers in their jobs, and safeguard their skills.
• Help women find new jobs if they’ve lost them:  Public Employment Services (PES), that connect jobseekers with employers, can help women find jobs in essential production and services. At the local level, they can speed up job placement in sectors that are recruiting amidst the pandemic
• Avoid cutting subsidies: Expenditure cuts in public services have a disproportionate effect on women and children. That’s why it’s so important to avoid cuts in health and education budgets, wages and pensions. Past crises have shown that when support for employment and social protection are at the core of stimulus packages, they help stabilize household incomes and lead to a speedier recovery.
• Invest in care: Care services have the potential to generate decent jobs, particularly for women. This crisis has highlighted the often difficult and undervalued work of care workers, whose contribution has been, and remains, essential to overcoming the pandemic. Improving their working conditions will have a significant impact on many women workers, given the large numbers who work in the care sector.
• Promote employment policies that focus on women: Governments need to pro-actively counterbalance the effects of the COVID-19 crisis on women. From a broader perspective, macroeconomic stimulus packages must continue to support and create jobs for women. Policies should focus on hard-hit sectors that employ large numbers of women, along with measures that help close women’s skill gaps and contribute to removing practical barriers to entry.

 

This article was originally published by Work in Progress

The post Put Gender Equality at the Heart of the Post-COVID-19 Economic Recovery appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Valeria Esquivel is Senior Employment Policies and Gender Officer, Employment, Labour Markets and Youth Branch, International Labour Organization (ILO)

The post Put Gender Equality at the Heart of the Post-COVID-19 Economic Recovery appeared first on Inter Press Service.

By External Source
Aug 20 2020 (IPS-Partners)

Small island nations face an existential and developmental threat from ship-source pollution endangering their vulnerable marine ecosystems and ocean economies. An effective international legal regime can help.

Often close to world shipping lanes, small island and coastal nations are at particular risk from oil spills.

MV Wakashio oil spill. Credit: IMO

Reliant on the marine environment and its biodiversity for tourism, fishing and aquaculture, islanders face an existential threat when oil spills happen in their waters.

This is why the environmental crisis unfolding in Mauritius is of grave concern.

It also brings into focus the international legal framework in place to provide support when ship-source environmental disasters strike, a new UNCTAD article says.

The seas and their use are governed by several international conventions. But some are not ratified by all countries that might benefit, and others are yet to enter into force.

This creates murky waters when oil spills happen, as not all parties have the same liability and compensation recourse, depending on which kinds of ships are responsible for the pollution and whether they have signed up to existing conventions.

“There’s a need for universal participation in the existing international legal framework, where all nations are party to agreements, so when incidents like this occur, vulnerable countries are protected,” said Shamika N. Sirimanne, UNCTAD’s technology and logistics director.

She said such oil spills herald negative environmental and socio-economic consequences for developing countries, especially small island developing states (SIDS).

Ms. Sirimanne added: “Sustainable Development Goal 14 calls on us to protect life below water and this means minimizing pollution at every possible turn, including putting all necessary precautions in place to manage environmental disasters like oil spills when they do happen.”

Using legal mechanisms to protect nations, blue economy

Different kinds of ships are subject to different international legal conventions.

The UNCTAD article maps out all the recent and applicable legislation which would apply to Mauritius based on the fact that liability and compensation will be critical in the aftermath of the spill on two fronts: economic and environmental.

The challenge in the Mauritius case is that the legislation that would provide higher compensation to the island nation does not apply, because the ship which ran aground is from a bulk-carrier, not an oil tanker.

Oil tanker pollution is governed by a different convention to that of bulk carriers, which is covered by the International Convention on Civil Liability for Bunker Oil Pollution Damage (Bunkers Convention).

It provides for a lower financial cap on liability, dependent on ship size or gross tonnage.

In the case of the MV Wakashio (101.932GT), the maximum compensation for economic losses and costs of reinstatement of the environment would be about $65.17 million.

If it were an oil tanker, the applicable International Oil Pollution Compensation Funds regime could have provided compensation of up to $286 million.

This is more than four times the Bunkers Convention provision and for Mauritius, could mean less financial aid to restore the environment and economic activity in the wake of the oil spill.

The UNCTAD article’s authors, Regina Asariotis and Anila Premti, emphasize the need for all countries to adopt the latest international legal instruments, given the potentially high costs and wide-ranging environmental and economic implications of ship-source pollution incidents.

What happened to the bulk carrier MV Wakashio?

The MV Wakashio, a Japanese-owned and Panamanian-flagged bulk-carrier, was sailing without cargo when it grounded on a coral reef on 25 July in an environmentally sensitive and biodiverse area off the east coast of Mauritius. The cause of the grounding is still unknown.

At the time of the grounding, the ship reportedly contained approximately 3,894 tons of fuel oil, 207 tons of diesel and 90 tons of lubricant oil on board.

By 11 August, some estimates indicated that between 1,000 and 2,000 tons of fuel oil had reportedly leaked from a breached tank and drifted into the surrounding lagoon, including areas of mangrove.

On 15 August, the ship split in two, at which point most of the fuel on-board had been recovered, according to the Japanese firm that owns the wrecked vessel.

The spill is considered as the worst in the history of Mauritius. It has endangered coral, fish and other marine life, imperiling the economy, food security, health and the $1.6 billion tourism industry in the country, already suffering from the negative effects of COVID-19.

Source: UNCTAD

The post Mauritius Oil Spill Puts Spotlight on Ship Pollution appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Deforestation due to the expansion of livestock farming dominates the landscape near Alta Floresta, a southeastern gateway to the Brazilian Amazon. Credit: Mario Osava / IPS

By Sue Branford
Aug 20 2020 (IPS)

“The xapiri [shamanic spirits] have defended the forest since it first came into being. Our ancestors have never devastated it because they kept the spirits by their side,” declares Davi Kopenawa Yanomami, who belongs to the 27,000-strong Yanomami people living in the very north of Brazil.

He is expressing a commonly held Indigenous belief that they — the original peoples on the land, unlike the “white” Amazon invaders — are the ones most profoundly committed to forest protection. The Yanomami shaman reveals the reason: “We know well that without trees nothing will grow on the hardened and blazing ground.”

Now Brazil’s Indigenous people have gained scientific backing for their strongly held belief from two American academics.

In a study published this month in the PNAS journal, entitled Collective property rights reduce deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon, two political scientists, Kathryn Baragwanath, from the University of California San Diego, and Ella Bayi, at the Department of Political Science, Columbia University, provide statistical proof of the Indigenous claim that they are the more effective forest guardians.

In their study, the researchers use comprehensive statistical data to show that Indigenous populations can effectively curb deforestation — but only if and when their full property rights over their territories are recognized by civil authorities in a process called homologação in Portuguese, or homologation in English.

 

Full property rights key to curbing deforestation

The scientists reached their conclusions by examining data on 245 Indigenous reserves homologated between 1982 and 2016. By examining the step-by-step legal establishment of Indigenous reserves, they were able to precisely date the moment of homologation for each territory, and to assess the effectiveness of Indigenous action against deforestation before and after full property rights were recognized.

In their study, the researchers use comprehensive statistical data to show that Indigenous populations can effectively curb deforestation — but only if and when their full property rights over their territories are recognized by civil authorities

Brazilian law requires the completion of a complex four-stage process before full recognition. After examining the data, Baragwanath and Bayi concluded that Indigenous people were only able to curb deforestation within their ancestral territories effectively after the last phase ­— homologation — had been completed.

Most deforestation of Indigenous territories occurs at the borders, as land-grabbers, loggers and farmers invade. But the new study shows that, once full property rights are recognized, Indigenous people were historically able to reduce deforestation at those borders from around 3% to 1% — a reduction of 66% which the authors find to be “a very strong finding.”

However, they emphasize that this plunge in deforestation rate only comes after homologation is complete. Baragwanath told Mongabay: The positive “effect on deforestation is very small before homologation and zero for non-homologated territories.” The authors concluded: “We believe the final stage [is] the one that makes the difference, since it is when actual property rights are granted, no more contestation can happen, and enforcement is undertaken by the government agencies.”

Homologation is crucially important, say the researchers, because with it the Indigenous group gains the backing of law and of the Brazilian state. They note: “Without homologation, Indigenous territories do not have the legal rights needed to protect their territories, their territorial resources are not considered their own, and the government is not constitutionally responsible for protecting them from encroachment, invasion, and external use of their resources.”

They continue: “Once homologated, a territory becomes the permanent possession of its Indigenous peoples, no third party can contest its existence, and extractive activities carried out by external actors can only occur after consulting the [Indigenous] communities and the National Congress.”

The scientists offer proof of effective state action and protections after homologation: “For example, FUNAI partnered with IBAMA and the military police of Mato Grosso in May 2019 to combat illegal deforestation on the homologated territory of Urubu Branco. In this operation, 12 people were charged with federal theft of wood and fined R $90,000 [US $23,000], and multiple trucks and tractors were seized; the wood seized was then donated to the municipality.”

 

Temer and Bolsonaro tip the tables

However, under the Jair Bolsonaro government, which came to power in Brazil after the authors collected their data, the situation is changing.

Before Bolsonaro, the number of homologations varied greatly from year to year, apparently in random fashion. A highpoint was reached in 1991, when over 70 territories were homologated, well over twice the number in any other year. This may have been because Brazil was about to host the 1992 Earth Summit and the Collor de Mello government was keen to boost Brazil’s environmental credentials. The surge may have also occurred as a result of momentum gained from Brazil’s adoption of its progressive 1988 constitution, with its enshrined Indigenous rights.

Despite wild oscillations in the annual number of homologations, until recently progress happened under each administration. “Every President signed over [Indigenous] property rights during their tenure, regardless of party or ideology,” the study states.

But since Michel Temer became president at the end of August 2016, the process has come to a standstill, with no new homologations. Baragwanath and Bayi suggest that, by refusing to recognize the full property rights of more Indigenous peoples, the Temer and Bolsonaro administrations “could be responsible for an extra 1.5 million hectares [5,790 square miles] of deforestation per year.” That would help explain soaring deforestation rates detected by INPE, Brazil’s National Institute of Space Research in recent years.

Clearly, for homologation to be effective, the state must assume its legal responsibilities, says Survival International’s Fiona Watson, who notes that this is certainly not happening under Bolsonaro: “Recognizing Indigenous peoples’ collective landownership rights is a fundamental legal requirement and ethical imperative, but it is not enough on its own. Land rights need to be vigorously enforced, which requires political will and action, proper funding, and stamping out corruption. Far from applying the law, President Bolsonaro and his government have taken a sledgehammer to Indigenous peoples’ hard-won constitutional rights, watered down environmental safeguards, and are brutally dismantling the agencies charged with protecting tribal peoples and the environment.”

Watson continues: “Brazil’s tribes — some only numbering a few hundred living in remote areas — are pitted against armed criminal gangs, whipped up by Bolsonaro’s hate speech. As if this wasn’t enough, COVID-19 is killing the best guardians of the forest, especially the older generations with expertise in forest management. Lethal diseases like malaria are on the rise in Indigenous communities and Amazon fires are spreading.”

In fact, Bolsonaro uses the low number of Indigenous people inhabiting reserves today — low populations often the outcome of past horrific violence and even genocide — as an excuse for depriving them of their lands. In 2015 he declared: “The Indians do not speak our language, they do not have money, they do not have culture. They are native peoples. How did they manage to get 13% of the national territory?” And in 2017 he said: “Not a centimeter will be demarcated… as an Indigenous reserve.”

The Indigenous territory of Urubu Branco, cited by Baragwanath and Bayi as a stellar example of effective state action, is a case in point. Under the Bolsonaro government it has been invaded time and again. Although the authorities have belatedly taken action, the Apyãwa (Tapirapé) Indigenous group living there says that invaders are now using the chaos caused by the pandemic to carry out more incursions.

 

A little girl in Sawré Muybu, an indigenous village on the Tapajós River between the municipalities of Itaituba and Trairao in the northern Brazilian state of Pará. Credit: Fabiana Frayssinet/IPS

 

Land rights: a path to conserving Amazonia

Even so, say the experts, it still seems likely that, if homologation was implemented properly now or in the future, with effective state support, it would lead to reduced deforestation. Indeed, Baragwanath and Bayi suggest that this may be one of the few ways of saving the Amazon forest.

“Providing full property rights and the institutional environment for enforcing these rights is an important and cost-effective way for countries to protect their forests and attain their climate goals,” says the study. “Public policy, international mobilization, and nongovernmental organizations should now focus their efforts on pressuring the Brazilian government to register Indigenous territories still awaiting their full property rights.”

But, in the current state of accelerating deforestation, unhampered by state regulation or enforcement, other approaches may be required. One way forward is suggested in a document optimistically entitled: “Reframing the Wilderness Concept can Bolster Collaborative Conservation.”

In the paper, Álvaro Fernández-Llamazares from the Helsinki Institute of Sustainable Science, and others suggest that it is time for a new concept of “wilderness.”

For decades, many conservationists argued that the Amazon’s wealth of biodiversity stems from it being a “pristine” biome, “devoid of the destructive impacts of human activity.” But increasingly studies have shown that Indigenous people greatly contributed to the exuberance of the forest by domesticating plants as much as 10,000 years ago. Thus, the forest and humanity likely evolved together.

In keeping with this productive partnership, conservationists and Indigenous peoples need to work in harmony with forest ecology, say the authors. This organic partnership is more urgently needed than ever, they say, because the entire Amazon basin is facing an onslaught, “a new wave of frontier expansion” by logging, industrial mining, and agribusiness.

Fernández-Llamazares told Mongabay: “Extractivist interests and infrastructure development across much of the Amazon are not only driving substantial degradation of wilderness areas and their unique biodiversity, but also forcing the region’s Indigenous peoples on the frontlines of ever more pervasive social-ecological conflict.…  From 2014 to 2019, at least 475 environmental and land defenders have been killed in Amazonian countries, including numerous members of Indigenous communities.”

Fernández-Llamazares believes that new patterns of collaboration are emerging.

“A good example of the alliance between Indigenous Peoples and wilderness defenders can be found in the Isiboro-Sécure National Park and Indigenous Territory (TIPNIS, being its Spanish acronym), in the Bolivian Amazon,” he says. “TIPNIS is the ancestral homeland of four lowland Indigenous groups and one of Bolivia’s most iconic protected areas, largely considered as one of the last wildlands in the country. In 2011, conservationists and Indigenous communities joined forces to oppose the construction of a road that would cut across the heart of the area.” A victory they won at the time, though TIPNIS today remains under contention today.

Eduardo S. Brondizio, another study contributor, points out alternatives to the industrial agribusiness and mining model: numerous management systems established by small-scale farmers, for example, that are helping conserve entire ecosystems.

“The açaí fruit economy, for instance, is arguably the region’s largest [Amazon] economy today, even compared to soy and cattle, and yet it occupies a fraction of the [land] area occupied by soy and cattle, with far higher economic return and employment than deforestation-based crops, while maintaining forest cover and multiple ecological benefits.” he said.

And, he adds, it is a completely self-driven initiative. “The entire açaí fruit economy emerged from the hands and knowledge of local riverine producers who [have] responded to market demand since the 1980s by intensifying their production using local agroforestry knowledge.” It is important, he stresses, that conservationists recognize the value of these sustainable economic activities in protecting the forest.

The new alliance taking shape between conservationists and Indigenous peoples is comparable with the new forms of collaboration that have arisen among traditional people in the Brazilian Amazon. Although Indigenous populations and riverine communities of subsistence farmers and Brazil nut collectors have long regarded each other as enemies — fighting to control the same territory — they are increasingly working together to confront land-grabbers, loggers and agribusiness.

Still, there is no doubt time is running out. Brazil’s huge swaths of agricultural land are already contributing to, and suffering from, deepening drought, because the “flying rivers” that bring down rainfall from the Amazon are beginning to collapse. Scientists are warning that the forest is moving toward a precipitation tipping point, when drought, deforestation and fire will change large areas of rainforest into arid degraded savanna.

This may already be happening. The Amazon Environmental Research Institute (IPAM), a non-profit, research organisation, warned recently that the burning season, now just beginning in the Amazon, could devastate an even larger area than last year, when video footage of uncontrolled fires ablaze in the Amazon was viewed around the world. IPAM estimates that a huge area, covering 4,509 square kilometers (1,741 square miles), has been felled and is waiting to go up in flames this year — data some experts dispute. But as of last week, more than 260 major fires were already alight in the Amazon.

Years ago Davi Kopenawa Yanomami warned: “They [the white people] continue to maltreat the earth everywhere they go.… It never occurs to them that if they mistreat it too much it will finally turn to chaos.… The xapiri [the shamanic spirits] try hard to defend the white people the same way as they defend us.… But if Omoari, the dry season being, settles on their land for good, they will only have trickles of dirty water to drink and they will die of thirst. This could truly happen to them.”

 

Citations:

Kathryn Baragwanath and Ella Bayi, (10 August 2020), Collective property rights reduce deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Álvaro Fernández-Llamazares, Julien Terraube, Michael C. Gavin, Aili Pyhälä, Sacha M.O. Siani, Mar Cabeza, and Eduardo S. Brondizio, (29 July 2020) Reframing the Wilderness Concept can Bolster Collaborative Conservation, Trends in Ecology and Evolution.

 

This story was originally published by Mongabay

The post Indigenous Best Amazon Stewards, but Only When Property Rights Assured: Study appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Credit: 2020 John Holmes for Human Rights Watch

By A Kenyan Migrant Worker
DOHA, Aug 19 2020 (IPS)

Like thousands of migrant workers from Africa and Asia, I am finally in the land of my dreams, Qatar. I knew working here would be tough, but I thought I would be able to regularly send money home to my family and live decently.

I had imagined that once here, I could sneak a peek at gli Azzuri, the Italian national team and my favorite, but seeing the way Qatar treats workers like me preparing for the 2022 FIFA World Cup, my excitement dwindled. 

In the land of my dreams, every day feels like a nightmare. 

The soaring unemployment rate in Kenya, my home country, pushes thousands of young people to look for jobs overseas. A family friend had moved here recently to work in the hospitality industry. He appeared to have a decent life. That, plus the lack of income tax and the promise of medical coverage helped lure me here. 

My friend did say that working in the Gulf is not for the faint of heart, but I asked myself if things could be worse than they are in Kenya. I have a bachelor’s degree with honors and still found no stable job opportunities in my hometown. I knew I needed something to supplement the freelance writing I was doing.

Overworked, underpaid, and left on my own without any security net, I have a false choice: stick it out, or return to Kenya, defeated and drowning in debt

I found a local recruiting agent who agreed to facilitate my visa and job application process for a security guard job. He demanded $1,500 in recruitment fees. This is a huge amount, but I asked around and I found that all Kenyan migrant workers pay recruitment fees for a job in Qatar. My parents offered to cover me. They said it would leave them in a financial crunch, but it would be worth it to see my life take off. After working hard their whole lives, both of them will be forced to retire this year, so it is up to me to fend for myself and shoulder my family’s responsibilities. 

The recruiting agent turned out to be both disorganized and surreptitious. The flight he arranged for me was an eight-hour journey from my hometown. I had paid him to secure me a job as a security guard, but after the non-refundable payments were made, when he handed me my paperwork hours before my departure, I discovered my visa and employment contract were for a cleaning position. Not to worry, he said, when I get to Qatar I can change jobs.  

My Qatar dream was finally in motion as the plane powered into the gloomy night sky. I was greeted by the architectural masterpiece that is Hamad International Airport. Things were bound to pick up now, I thought. But my employer, who was supposed to meet me, was nowhere to be found. After numerous frantic phone calls, he told me to get a taxi and go to my accommodations.

Inside my room, at the shoebox accommodations I found four other workers who seemed miserable. We didn’t talk much. The place was rundown, with no beds, only used mattresses and soiled duvets which harbored an insect colony. I willed myself to be optimistic and decided to talk to my employer in the morning about changing jobs. 

My employer heard my concerns and took me for an interview at a local security services company. I was offered an employment contract that seemed fair. For eight hours of work a day, my monthly salary would be 1,500 Qatari riyals ($412), I would be paid at a higher rate for any overtime work, and the employer would cover my health care and housing.  

In Qatar, a migrant worker needs to get their previous employer’s written permission to change jobs while on contract. While for me, it was a smooth process, other workers have told me how difficult it was for them, and how employers often use the power they have over workers to further exploit them. My new company made it a point to inform me that they themselves never give workers the permission to change jobs. I didn’t think too much about this, I was just happy to leave my infested room and start earning money. In retrospect, I wish I had.  

The legal transfer of my immigration documents took a month, without pay, and when I finally was ushered into the security company’s housing, I was ready for better days. 

The new housing was better than where I had been living, but still not up to bare minimum standards. Ten of us were stacked in a stuffy room. About 15 people shared a toilet, and about 60 shared the communal kitchen, which was built for a handful of people.

Since then, with different assignments, I have lived in various places. At one point I was sleeping in the educational facility I was guarding. For the last month I have been sharing my room with five other men from my company, and for a while, water from the air conditioner was leaking onto our beds. 

As for my working conditions, the four hours of overtime I put in daily are ignored in my pay slips, I work seven days a week without a day off, wages are delayed for up to three months, and during this time they don’t even provide us with a food allowance. 

My March salary arrived in June, April’s salary came in July.  I have not been paid for May, June, and July. For every day that my wages are delayed, I go deeper into debt, because I send 1,000 Qatari Riyals ($275) a month home and have no choice but to borrow money for food. 

I have been here for more than six months, but I have not been issued a Qatar Identity Card, which is mandatory for migrant workers. Other employees tell me it takes eight to ten months for our company to issue Identity Cards. Without the card, I can’t take a complaint to the Labor Department; I can’t even step out of my housing without risking arrest.  

I have not had a single off day since I started working six months ago – a single day off will cost me 50 Qatari Riyals ($14). I desperately need a few days off to fight the fatigue that is dragging me down. However, I also desperately need a complete salary to break even and start moving toward a decent life. 

My assignments vary. I have worked at hotels, offices, and schools. Currently I stand for 12 hours a day, outside a hotel in one of Qatar’s upscale neighborhoods. I am tasked with directing and controlling traffic, conducting regular foot patrols, and assisting and escorting guests who enquire about whether rooms are available. My duty is made harder by the unwavering and relentless Middle East sun.  

I finally got a health card after five months. Imagine being in a foreign country during a global pandemic and not having health care. To make matters worse, it seems that my company doesn’t care much about personal protective equipment. They bring gloves and masks just once in a while.  The hotel staff often lends us masks. Luckily, the only person I know of who has had Covid-19 was a supervisor at the hotel before I was assigned here. 

My workmates encourage me when I am at my lowest points. We understand the systematic challenges workers experience daily. The government talks about reforming labor laws but most of it feels like it is only on paper. People on the ground are really suffering and rogue employers are getting away with gross injustices. The class division is stark in Qatar. The country is one of the richest in the world, but it was built and continues to run on the fuel of its migrants. The exploitation and oppression have taken a mental and physical toll on us, but the resolve to improve our lives keeps us going. 

The 2022 World Cup is another thorny matter. Even the biggest and glitziest stadiums can’t justify maltreatment of workers.  

Overworked, underpaid, and left on my own without any security net, I have a false choice: stick it out, or return to Kenya, defeated and drowning in debt.  

 

The author asked not to use his name for his protection.        

The post I Came to Work in Qatar to Pursue My Dreams, But My Life is a Nightmare appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

The author is one of the 93 migrant workers Human Rights Watch interviewed for a recent report on salary abuses ahead of Qatar’s 2022 FIFA World Cup, he has requested anonymity for his safety; work visas and residence permits for migrant workers in Qatar are directly tied to employers, hence workers are often afraid to speak publicly against salary abuses

The post I Came to Work in Qatar to Pursue My Dreams, But My Life is a Nightmare appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Women in Minsk, Belarus. Unsplash/Jana Shnipelson

By External Source
Aug 19 2020 (IPS)

President Aliaksandr Lukashenka’s government is teetering after he declared victory in a rigged 9 August vote. Protests have exploded. Moscow, Brussels and other stakeholders should avoid transforming the Belarus crisis into a European one, cooperate to warn against repression and insist on new, fair elections.

As protests and strikes in Belarus enter their second week, Moscow, Brussels and many other European capitals have struggled to respond. The politics that brought Belarusians to the streets of their villages, towns and cities are local: they are angry that their president of 26 years has tried to steal yet another election.

But if the crisis in Belarus is at its core anything but an East-West standoff, it is happening at a time when hasty responses by either Russia or Western states could turn it into just that. Because such a showdown would serve no one’s interests, all stakeholders should take care to consult with each other and coordinate their policies, even as they do what they can to help Belarus and Belarusians.

Aliaksandr Lukashenka has been president of Belarus since 1994, and both citizens and outside observers have roundly questioned the legitimacy of every vote in the country since the one that brought him to power. This one, held on 9 August, was even less transparent than its predecessors.

Instead of competing, Russia and other European states would be better advised to work together to help Belarusians chart their own path forward, including through mediation involving Tsikhanouskaya (now in Lithuania for her safety) and her team

The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) complained that it was invited too late to send observers, while staff from the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) stayed away due to COVID-19. Lukashenka’s primary opponent on the ballot, Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, registered to run only a few weeks ago, when her husband, along with other prospective candidates, was prevented from doing so and arrested instead.

Tsikhanouskaya’s central campaign promise was a new, free, fair and transparent election within six months of taking office. Her campaign drew tens of thousands of citizens to its rallies in the lead-up to the vote, the first sign that this time might be different.

And, indeed, when Lukashenka claimed to have garnered an improbable 80 per cent of the vote, a lot of Belarusian citizens simply did not believe him. Solid evidence that they are right lies in their own numbers, which grow each day, even as both demonstrators and passersby are arrested en masse; the use of rubber bullets and, reportedly, live ammunition; and the clear signs of torture on the bodies of those released from Lukashenka’s jails, which are rapidly running short of space.

As even state-run factory workers call on Lukashenka to leave, television presenters refuse to work, and some police appear to join the protesters, the president has asked Moscow for help. This is a change – albeit not the first one – for Lukashenka, who one week ago claimed that Russian (as well as Polish) “puppet masters” were behind the opposition and, prior to the 9 August vote, announced the arrest of 33 alleged members of a Russian private militia, whom he accused of planning to destabilise the country. (Thirty-two were sent back to Russia on 14 August. The one with Belarusian citizenship stayed.)

Although Russian President Vladimir Putin congratulated Lukashenka on his victory, relations between the two countries had been cooling for a while, as the Belarusian president periodically courted Western support to limit Moscow’s leverage.

Putin may see advantages in supporting a weakened Lukashenka – particularly if European states deem him illegitimate. Lukashenka may be counting on this eventuality. His most recent comments have clearly been aimed at Moscow, alleging that NATO troops are massing near the country’s borders, something the alliance has denied (and of which there is no evidence).

Some in the Kremlin may see this crisis as an opportunity for Russia to bring Belarus back more squarely into its corner. Nor would Moscow relish the precedent of an ally and neighbour losing power in the face of popular protests. That said, the Belarus opposition so far has not been particularly hostile to Moscow, and Russia risks alienating them if it throws its weight behind the discredited president. Lukashenka’s demise is far from guaranteed, but it seems increasingly plausible. Russia has reasons to keep its options open.

Up to now, Western countries have largely limited themselves to expressions of concern, although a few, including Lithuania, Estonia, the UK, Ireland and Canada, have declared the election illegitimate. But growing Russian/European divergence on Belarus could have more serious geostrategic implications. 

Just as NATO strategists often postulate that war with Russia would begin as a result of a Russian attack on a Baltic country, Russian scenarios for that same war often start with a Western-backed revolution in Belarus. What is happening today reflects neither scenario: as noted above, it is Lukashenka, not the opposition, who reached out to Western leaders in the past.

But Russian fears of Western influence in Belarus coupled with Western concerns over Russia’s hold on Minsk could undermine efforts from both to respond to the unfolding crisis and make it worse.

Either direct Russian military intervention or heavy-handed Western efforts to foster a transition would risk transforming this crisis into the NATO-Russia standoff it is not and turn the people of Belarus into pawns. Because this struggle has not been about East-West competition, Lukashenka’s fall, if it comes, need not be a geostrategic loss for Moscow any more than his survival would be a victory over Brussels or Washington.

Instead of competing, Russia and other European states would be better advised to work together to help Belarusians chart their own path forward, including through mediation involving Tsikhanouskaya (now in Lithuania for her safety) and her team. As of 17 August, Lukashenka has called for a constitutional referendum followed by new elections, an apparent effort to buy time. But with or without him, the next step ought to be the more transparent, fair race that Tsikhanouskaya promised.

In the longer term, Belarus will need support from all of its neighbours in order to rebuild, particularly given the public health crisis caused by poor management of the pandemic by Lukashenka’s team (which dismissed the coronavirus’ risks) – a crisis that could worsen as a result of mass detentions.

In the meantime, as long as the threat of further violence and repression remains, more states should follow Lithuania’s lead and ease entry requirements – paired with appropriate quarantine – for Belarusians, whether temporarily or, if needed, for the still uncertain long term.

 

This statement was originally published by the Crisis Group

The post How to Help Belarus appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Leo Messi. Credit: FCB.

By Joaquín Roy
MIAMI, Aug 19 2020 (IPS)

The Barcelona Football Club disaster in the quarterfinals of the Champions League, which was once more appropriately called the European Cup, is indeed a cataclysmic event, unprecedented, with predicted drastic and hurtful consequences.

Future Barça fans, when faced with the hardships of life, will argue that “more was lost in … not in Cuba … but in Lisbon.”

The end of Barcelona in the maximum European competition has all the characteristics to be not only the closing of a chapter of its sporting journey, but the end of an entire era of a team led by Messi.

The Barça of two long decades, trained by technicians who tried to follow the anthological schemes of Johan Cruiff and Pep Guardiola, transferred their style to the Spanish team that won two European Cups and a world trophy.

That strategy was embodied in the Cruiff doctrine composed of the three Ps: position, possession and pressure. Now the new European style is predicted to be based on physical power and speed, embraced by Bayern Munich, who have destroyed Barça.

What can also be blurred in the future Barça is a set of identity signs that had made it emblematic. Barça has been the refuge of foreigners who chose to nest in Catalonia at different times.

It was founded in the late 19th century by a handful of Germans and English, led by the Swiss Hans Gamper. It was presented with a name that did not fit with the academic rules: Football Club Barcelona, ​​which only the Franco regime managed to hispanicize by force into Club de Fútbol Barcelona.

This external insert in the Barcelona of that time, which had already exceeded its medieval limits with the Cerdá Plan grid, sent a global message that received the “national” response from a sector that called itself the Club Deportivo Español, later spiced up as Real. Thus a rivalry generally resolved in favor of Barça would be born, which would not hide its foreign inclinations.

Joaquín Roy

As an example, its “culers”, in a friendly match in 1925 booed the Spanish Royal March, the national anthem, and applauded the God Save the King performed by an English Navy band that had landed in the port of Barcelona.

That whim would cost Barcelona five years of closure decreed by General Primo de Rivera, a strong man of Alfonso XIII. Dazed by financial debts, Gamper was forced into exile and upon his return his health deteriorated to the point that he committed suicide.

Politics continued intertwined with the life of the club, and at the beginning of the Civil War, with Catalonia allied on the Republican side, one of its presidents, Josep Sunyol, of the pro-independence party Esquerra Republicana, was shot by Franco’s troops.

At the end of the conflict, a group of its players, who had moved to Latin America in search of income that had evaporated during the war, opted for self-imposed exile and their return was prohibited by Franco.

Despite the fact that Barça managed to recover and win several national competitions, thanks in part to the leadership of the Hungarian Kubala, only under the direction of Cruiff’s “Dream Team” it did manage to capture the longed-for first European Cup until 1992 at Wembley with the goal by Koeman.

In line with the rebirth of democracy, Barça built a nationalist image, although not pro-independence, since the majority of its mass was socially conservative in its upper sectors, and moderately leftist in its bases.

Some presidents contributed to claim that Barça exceeded sporting limits. Narcís de Carreras forged an emblematic slogan: “Barça is more than a club.” The shirt incorporated the Catalan flag on its neck and back. The captain, a position to which Messi was elevated, wore, in addition to the regulation armband, another with the “senyera”.

The slow transformation of Catalan nationalism into independence-seeking, which increased the percentages of radical votes to almost half the electorate, coincided with the rise of Barça to the heights of European football, without dangerously contaminating the collective image of the club.

The international style was reinforced by the incorporation of young products from La Masía, the players’ school. Spanish-speaking immigrants used the support for Barça as a remedy for the always difficult integration. Even outside the Spanish borders, Barça was recognized as one more product of globalization.

But after Guardiola’s departure, various presidents, poorly advised by the stars, inserted a long dozen players with a difficult fit (such as Neymar, Coutinho and Giezmann) and others with financially unjustifiable contracts.

Simultaneously, the offspring of La Masía were unable to join the team. Only Sergi Roberto had reached the Spanish team, in contrast to the seven Barcelona starters who won the World Cup in South Africa.

The few national titles and the unaffordable Champions League did nothing more than make up the triumphant emptiness of yesteryear. The musketeers who had once forged Messi’s supremacy had grown old. You could smell the decline. Future failures will be relativized with a comforting sigh of “more was lost in Lisbon.”

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

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Increased cases of violence against women and children have been reported in Sri Lanka during the COVID-19 lockdown. The loss of income because of the COVID-19 lockdown has made some more vulnerable to abuse. Credit: Amantha Perera/IPS.

By Mantoe Phakathi
MBABANE, Aug 19 2020 (IPS)

The coronavirus pandemic has resulted in the escalation of violence against women and children in Sri Lanka.

A recent survey by CARE Consortium, a collection of three organisations including Delivery and Solitary Trust (DAST), Young Out Here and National Transgender Network, found that 26 percent of respondents experienced violence during the COVID-19 curfew. The COVID-19 curfew was imposed in March and lifted in June in an effort by the government to curb its spread.

The survey titled COVID19 Impact on Key Populations PLHIV and SR Organisations shows that 76.8 percent of the respondents experienced verbal abuse, while 7.8 percent encountered physical and 5.6 percent sexual violence. The survey further reveals that the main perpetrators were neighbours at 49 percent followed by parents at 25 percent, intimate partners at 24 percent and the police at 10 percent.

Out of the 329 respondents, 56 percent were men, 16 percent transgender women, 16 percent sex workers, 32 percent people who use drugs and 3 percent beach boys.

According to Niluka Perera, a consultant from CARE Consortium, most of the respondents did not seek support after experiencing the violence because they did not know where to go.

“There is no safety net when key populations face violence because they cannot go to the police,” Perera told IPS. “The violence is based on their identity which is stigmatised and even the police tend not to care.”

For example, he said, a sex worker who gets beaten up by someone is not likely to report the incident to the police because, although sex work is not criminalised, it is not practised in the open.

“It gets worse with men because they’re expected to be strong such that men who have sex with men find it difficult to report abuse because they are supposed to be strong [as well as] the fact that they are supposed to operate in private,” said Perera.

He attributed the escalation of violence during COVID-19 lockdown to the fact that members of the key populations had to be confined to their homes with their abusers who maybe their family members. Some of them lost their sources of income which exposed them to further abuse.

“The abuse further contributed to mental health concerns,” said Perera. The survey found that out of 248 respondents, 174 expressed hopelessness, 159 said they were stressed, 95 suffered from anxiety and 34 experienced depression.     

He told IPS it is acceptable that the focus is on women and children when talking about gender-based violence because they are the ones who experience it the most. However, Pereira said it is important to address violence against men as well because it is often overlooked.

“The issue is not who is perpetrating violence against men but it is how the status quo normalises that kind of violence. The same applies to violence against women,” said Pereira.

He said trillions, that could help to reduce poverty and hunger, are invested in activities that perpetuate violence such as buying guns for the army or supporting wars. Army budgets across the world are always increasing.

“The systems we have, not only in Sri Lanka but all over the world, are too happy to invest in things that perpetuate violence,” said Perera.

Shelani Palihawadana, the coordinator of the sexual and reproductive health access to youth with disabilities at the Youth Advocacy Network Sri Lanka, concurs, adding that the COVID-19 pandemic has worsened police violence. She argued that most of the violence meted by police is against men which is referred to as police brutality and not GBV.

“Police tend to be violent when arresting men compared to when they’re arresting women,” Palihawadana told IPS. “There needs to be awareness around GBV against men because men then take the violence they experience to their families.”

She said men who are members of the Lesbian Gays Bisexual Transgender Intersex and Queer (LGBTIQ) are ignored even when they go to report GBV cases at the police because they are expected to be tough.

Like Perera, Palihawadana said some forms of GBV have been normalised in Sri Lankan society such that complaining about them does not attract any action. For example, she said, women are always exposed to sexual harassment when using public transport, something that is no longer considered an issue because it happens all the time.

According to Desaree Soysa, the chairperson of the youth technical advisory committee at Family Planning Association of Sri Lanka, the government is not making enough effort towards meeting the commitments made at the Nairobi Summit to end GBV and eliminate any discrimination against vulnerable groups including key populations.

She said, since the 25th International Conference on Population Development (ICPD) where the promise to accelerate progress towards meeting the target of SDG5 by 2030, nothing much has been done.

The Japan Parliamentary Federation for Population and its secretariat, the Asian Population and Development Association (APDA), has committed to endorse the ICPD25 agenda. As part of its work in Asia, APDA has focused its work on the prevention of violence against women and girls.

“Attention is given to COVID-19 and during the curfew period we couldn’t even meet,” Soysa told IPS.

Besides, she said, ministers are not interested in GBV issues in the middle of a pandemic and hoped that more work will be done once COVID-19 has been put under control.

Soysa said Sri Lanka has made progress in reducing its maternal mortality rate to 1 percent, the lowest in Asia. But she said more needs to be done in giving women access to safe abortions.

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Yasmine Sherif, Director of Education Cannot Wait

By Yasmine Sherif
NEW YORK, Aug 19 2020 (IPS)

There are moments when the world has no choice but to come together. Those moments become historic turning points. This is one of them. We are now faced with the greatest education emergency of our time. Over one billion children are out of school. The COVID-19 pandemic has created an unprecedented crisis of such magnitude and depth that the next generation might neither have the capacity and tools, nor the will, to rebuild – let alone build back better.

Yasmine Sherif

The world has not planned well for the future. At its worst, education has for too long been underprioritized, and at its best, has been viewed as just one among many competing priorities. Before COVID-19, the funding gap for education in low-income and middle-low income countries – many already plagued with extreme poverty, weak infrastructure, armed conflicts, climate-induced disasters and forced displacement – amounted to $148 billion. This funding gap is now estimated to increase by up to one-third.

COVID-19 has laid bare our collective failure to prioritize education. “The pandemic has exacerbated inequalities and magnified the global learning crisis. The future of an entire generation is at risk,” warned United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres when launching his Policy Brief on Education earlier this month, “The COVID-19 pandemic has created the largest disruption of education systems in history.”

The number of out-of-school children who may never set foot in a school again is now rapidly escalating. An estimated 30 million children and youth are of immediate concern, according to UNESCO’s assessment. In a letter to the international community, UN Special Envoy for Global Education and Chair of the Education Cannot Wait’s High Level Steering Group, the Rt. Hon. Gordon Brown, together with 275 world leaders, politicians, academics and civil society, calls for urgent action to address the global education crisis triggered by COVID-19.

In support of the mission of Education Cannot Wait, they state: “We cannot stand by and allow these young people to be robbed of their education and a fair chance in life. Instead we should be redoubling our efforts to get all children into school – including the 260 million already out of school and the 75 million children affected by protracted conflicts and forced displacement, including 35 million children living as refugees or internally – with the comprehensive help they need – and to make it possible for young people to start or resume their studies in school further and higher education.”

Similarly, the Geneva Global Hub for Education in Emergencies, composed of UN agencies and non-governmental organizations, has issued an urgent call for firm political action to make financial investments in education for those left furthest behind in armed conflicts, forced displacement and climate-induced disasters, calling on the international community to “act fast and keep recovery and preparedness in sight.”

In the same spirit, the global education community has come together to Save Our Future, a coalition composed of the UN, the World Bank and civil society, raising the alarm of an entire generation at risk due to the rapidly escalating learning crisis, as a result of the massive funding gap, “The Covid-19 pandemic brought about the biggest cataclysm to education any of us have seen!”

On the ground, joint programming supported by pooled funding keeps delivering results. Education Cannot Wait’s 2019 Annual Results Report, Stronger Together in Crisis, launched on 11 August, illustrates that it is possible to deliver quality education to those left furthest behind – provided we come together, politically, strategically, programmatically and financially.

As the global fund for education in emergencies and protracted crises, ECW’s joint investments are rolling out the New Way of Working and ensuring humanitarian-development coherence, bringing together all partners: host-governments, affected populations, UN agencies, civil society, private sector, the World Bank, the Global Partnership for Education, and the International Facility for Financing Education, among others. Stronger together, we share a sense of absolute urgency and uncompromising commitment to results, which is put into action thanks to sustained funding by our strategic donor partners.

As a result, Education Cannot Wait has already reached 3.5 million children and youth since its inception. Yet, the scale and the depth of the education emergency in crisis-affected countries needs to be matched by adequate and scaled up financial investments to end the learning crisis for those left furthest behind, and to swiftly shift the course towards the SDGs. With 20 times more funding, the estimated 75 million children and youth can be reached. Indeed, financing stands between what is possible and what is not for these vulnerable girls and boys.

This truly is the defining moment in our time. There can be no sustainable development goals without education. “Education is a fundamental human right, the bedrock of just, equal and inclusive societies and a main driver of sustainable development,” the UN Secretary-General stated at the launch of his Policy Brief on Education, “As the world faces unsustainable levels of inequality, we need education – the great equalizer – more than ever. We must take bold steps now, to create inclusive, resilient, quality education systems fit for the future.”

We now have a chance to learn from the past by acting in the present, and, as the Secretary-General concluded, recognize the fact that: “The future of education is here!”

 

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Excerpt:

Yasmine Sherif, Director of Education Cannot Wait

The post Future of Education Is Here appeared first on Inter Press Service.

A performance at a photo show in El Fasher, Sudan, 2018. The new transitional government of Sudan criminalized female genital mutilation this spring, but the practice has not ended. Credit: MOHAMAD ALMAHADY/UNAMID

By Rhona Scullion, PassBlue*
Aug 18 2020 (IPS)

Just four months ago, Sudan took the monumental step to ban female genital mutilation, a painful, unnecessary and dangerous procedure that leaves lasting scars. Generally carried out on girls before they reach puberty, genital mutilation is now punishable in Sudan by up to three years in prison and subject to a fine.

In a country where 88 percent of women between 15 and 49 years old have undergone some form of genital mutilation, according to the United Nations Population Fund, the new law is considered a huge progressive step toward democratic reforms a year after a revolution ousted the dictator, Omar al-Bashir.

But any law is only as good as its enforcement, and this one faces challenges that include not only cultural resistance but also the effects of a pandemic that enable abuse to happen behind closed doors.

The new law became enforceable upon final ratification, on July 10, 2020, almost three months after it passed. In the interim period, those caught performing FGM, as it is known, risked only confiscation of medical equipment and required educational training.

Then came the pandemic. As it began ravaging the globe, Sudanese schools closed early, and it appears that many families took this moment to have girls cut.

According to the World Health Organization, FGM is a procedure that intentionally alters or causes injury to female genital organs and has no medical basis. There are three main types, ranging from removing the clitoris (type one) to partly sewing up the vaginal opening by cutting and repositioning the labia (type three). The practice is not condoned by any religious texts but is carried out mostly in Muslim communities in parts of Africa, the Middle East and sections of Asia.

In many communities, it is regarded as a prerequisite for marriage. It is generally performed without anesthetics by traditional “cutters” with no medical training or equipment, and the girls are often forcibly restrained.

FGM’s effects are significant and enduring. Tamador Ahmed Abdalla, a child protection specialist with Unicef in Sudan, told PassBlue in a phone interview that cutting leaves both physical and mental scars. In the most severe cases, she said, “They lose their lives because of the bleeding or maybe they get tetanus from the things the midwife uses.” More often, they experience intense pain when they start their period, have sex and go through pregnancy and give birth.

The mental trauma is equally severe. “That moment of your life which has been physically violent on your body — two women physically holding you down, keeping you on the bed and trying to do something to you that you are not aware of . . . it lives with you,” Abdalla said.

Efforts to outlaw the practice in Sudan started in 1946, when legislation banned some forms of FGM but went largely unenforced. With the reintroduction of Sharia law under the regime of President Bashir, attempts to criminalize FGM in 2002, 2009 and 2015 failed. (Bashir is now in prison in Sudan for corruption charges and awaiting other trials.)

Women’s advocates say the new law could face the same fate, regardless of Bashir’s ouster and a new, more progressive “sovereignty council,” chaired by Lt. Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, leading the country.

Sufian Abdul-Mouty, a representative of the UN Population Fund (UNFPA) in Sudan, told PassBlue via email that although there is “no precise data” on instances of FGM since the pandemic began in March, there are “anecdotal reports from UNFPA’s partners . . . that show an increase in received reports of cases in Khartoum and other states.” (Khartoum is Sudan’s capital.)

Abdalla echoed this view, telling PassBlue that Unicef’s information shows numbers rising in the Sudanese states of White Nile, Khartoum and Jazeera. The reported increase led many advocates who track the practice to think the surge was due to people taking advantage of children being out of school during the pandemic, as was widely reported to be the case in Somalia.

However, Jarai Sabally, a program officer from Donor Direct Action, which promotes women’s rights, suggested that the pandemic only jump-started an FGM season that takes place each summer in Somalia as well as Sudan. According to Hawa Aden Mohamed, the founder of the fund’s Somali partner, the Galkayo Education Center for Peace and Development, when schools are closed parents traditionally take their children to rural areas where FGM usually occurs.

“The only difference is, this time around schools closed early due to the Covid-19 outbreak,” Mohamed said. “Therefore, many parents living in the urban areas sent their children to rural areas earlier than usual, which resulted in the girls getting cut, and that is why we are seeing this sudden increase early in the summer.” The UNFPA and Unicef confirmed that it is normal for families to perform FGM on girls during school holidays.

If the new law had been enforceable earlier, it would likely have prevented many girls from being cut and the perpetrators remaining at large during this peak time for FGM.

For Sudan’s new law to be useful, it must be supported by robust educational and cultural reforms, experts say, a challenge made more difficult by the pandemic. (Sudan currently has 12,033 confirmed cases of Covid-19 and 786 deaths in a population of 43 million.)

Abdul Mounty of the UNFPA highlighted the difficulties to PassBlue: “Advocacy and awareness on the enforcement of the law can cause an increase in the practice because of the fear of social exclusion or social stigma for not conforming to the norm, which may be stronger than the fear of fines and imprisonment. The government needs to be very careful, focusing first on intensive community awareness to increase the acceptance and demand for the law.”

There is still a large stigma attached to girls who have not undergone FGM. According to Abdalla of Unicef, if a husband finds that his new wife has not been cut, he will sometimes try to return her to her family and ask for her to undergo FGM. Conversely, anecdotal surveys conducted by Unicef with university students in Sudan suggest that a younger generation of men prefer to have a relationship with an uncut girl. While this may, as Abdalla suggested, affect the prevalence rate of FGM in ensuing years, it could also create a new stigma for those girls who have been cut.

Raising awareness of FGM’s lasting damage is particularly important for advocates who are trying to dispel myths about the practice. But with the news media now dominated by pandemic updates, it’s hard to get mention of the new law.

“Every single thing is about coronavirus, and that is shrinking the space for other programs and other advocacy messaging,” Abdalla said. “We need to work closely with the media, NGOs and even in the schools to orient teachers and parent councils in the community.

“We need to work with them to introduce them to the law and to help them understand what it means to have this law in place because there are some people who might misuse this opportunity and misinform communities that the law is coming to criminalize parents.”

Similarly, Nahid Jabralla, the founder and director of the SEEMA Center for the Training and Protection of Women and Children’s Rights, based in Sudan, pointed out that FGM is not part of the national education curriculum, which she thinks needs to change.

“Ending FGM is not only a matter of the law,” she said. “We need efficient mechanisms, we need resources, we need proper partnerships that include governmental bodies, civil society, community-based organizations, people on the ground . . . [and] international actors [UN agencies and other NGOs]. We need to go for it and push for it, taking the initiative — and this includes academic institutions. This has to be part of the curricula, in general and higher education.”

Another problem is the lack of official data and research that would enable risk-mapping and help campaigners target areas with the highest rates of the practice.

Abdalla pointed out that while the overall rate of FGM is high in Sudan, it varies among communities and states. This disparity often results in parents traveling to certain states to have their children cut. In one case, Abdalla said a woman in Khartoum wanted to have her five daughters cut. The midwife she went to refused, so the mother took the girls to a different state, White Nile, to find someone who would do the job. Fortunately, several officials challenged the mother with the new law and prevented it from taking place.

Such official intervention shows a sea-change in the government approach, giving activists hope that this new law is more than empty words. Jabralla of SEEMA thinks the new approach will succeed in Sudan because of a reframing of FGM as a human-rights violation rather than as a cultural practice. A technical adviser for the National Program for Abolition of FGM (a joint program with the Sudanese government and Unicef) from 2004 to 2010, she knows the issue well.

Previous governments in Sudan had used FGM as “a tool of suppression,” she told PassBlue, and even the UN was slow to recognize the practice as a human-rights violation. In 2008, however, she said, human-rights campaigners in Sudan pushed back against fundamental Islamist groups that had attempted to legalize certain forms of FGM, leading to the creation of the national anti-FGM agenda.
Since then, the momentum for change, extending to efforts to stamp out child marriage, has been growing.

Jabralla admitted to being “exhausted” from the battles but still positive. “We have the space, we do not need any permission from anyone, even the government,” she said. “Now the law is there because of our will as civil society, as actors, we have the law, and of course it standing alone will not solve anything, but taking it with a genuine campaign I think we can join the world at the UN Sustainable Development Goals summit in ending FGM in 2030.”

This story was originally published by PassBlue

The post Sudan May Have Banned FGM, but the Harsh Practice Continues appeared first on Inter Press Service.

By External Source
Aug 18 2020 (IPS-Partners)

Despite the significant challenges presented by COVID-19, the Pacific Community (SPC) 7-week research expedition to monitor the health of world’s largest tuna fishery will depart from Honolulu on Saturday 15 August 2020.

Half of the world’s tuna catch comes from the Western & Central Pacific, providing a critical source of protein and export revenue for Pacific Island Nations.

With most research and fisheries observer programmes currently suspended due to COVID-19, Graham Pilling, the SPC Deputy Director for the Oceanic Fisheries Programme, said the importance of this cruise cannot be overstated.

“These tuna fisheries are worth approximately USD6 billion annually and, along with tourism, are the main income for most Pacific Island Nations. With global tourism effectively shutdown due to COVID-19, the income derived from tuna is even more critical for Pacific economies,” he said.

To avoid any potential for COVID-19 transmission to the remote communities of the Pacific the cruise will not make any port calls to Pacific Island Nations. The crew members, including the scientific team, are in isolation for 14 days prior to departure and have undergone COVID-19 virus testing. The vessel will then return directly to Honolulu on October 5, 2020 – 50 days after departure.

The expedition will only sample from the tropical waters of the high seas and the vast Kiribati Exclusive Economic Zone. The cruise will also provide the first opportunity to collect data on tuna sustainability from the Phoenix Islands Protected Area, which was established in 2008.

From 2006 to 2019, SPC has tagged 452,489 tuna and 81,402 tags have been retrieved, generating the most comprehensive data set for tuna management in the world. In addition to monitoring the health of the tuna stocks, Dr Simon Nicol, SPC Principle Fisheries Scientist said the electronic tags inserted into the tuna are also being used to monitor the health of the Pacific Ocean.

Dr Stuart Minchin, the Director-General of the Pacific Community, said this continued research is critical to ensure that the region remains a global leader in sustainable use of its fisheries resources.

“Around 70% of the catch is taken by international fleets and the fees generated by these licenses provides major source of revenue for Pacific governments to support their development goals. The tagging of bigeye and yellowfin tuna in this region is critical for researchers to understand the impacts of the fisheries on these species,” he said.

According to SPC’s 2019 Tuna assessment report, four key tuna stocks of yellowfin, big eye, skipjack, albacore are in a healthy state in the Western Central Pacific Ocean region.

Source: The Pacific Community (SPC)

The post Pacific Tuna Tagging Expedition Overcomes COVID Challenge appeared first on Inter Press Service.

In Latin America, indigenous teenage girls, together with their rural counterparts, are the group most discriminated against in terms of opportunities and access to education. Credit: Rajesh Krishnan/UN Women

By External Source
WASHINGTON, Aug 18 2020 (IPS)

In 1990, Latin America’s average GDP per capita was a little over a quarter of the United States’ income level, while emerging and developing Asian countries’ GDP per capita was only 5 percent. In 2019, Asian countries had grown fourfold, but Latin America was still at the same level.

What explains this weak relative income growth? Since Asia has twice the investment level of Latin America, it is tempting to blame low growth on low investment. But Central, Eastern, and Southeastern Europe casts doubt on this narrative, having achieved faster growth than Latin America with lower investment than Asia.

 

 

In a new working paper, we compare the experiences of these three regions (before COVID-19) and conclude that Latin America is poorer because of lower levels of human capital and productivity, not investment.

 

Temporary boost

Take Mexico and Poland. In the last 25 years, Mexico has had more investment (as a percent of GDP), but its growth per capita has been much slower. What explains that?

Investment does raise income. A higher so-called capital stock per worker increases GDP per capita. But only up to a certain point, after which the return on investment starts to decrease. A pizza deliverer with a motorcycle will do more deliveries than one who has to walk. But giving the same deliverer two motorcycles, or a more expensive one, will not do much to increase his output.

 

 

 

Productivity growth, human capital, and institutions

In the long run, it is not more input (labor and capital) that generates growth, but productivity (how much more output can be produced with the same input) in the same amount of time.

Productivity growth depends only partially on technological progress. In Charles Dickens’ time, letters were written with goose-feather quills. A century ago, with typewriters. Today, with computers. No wonder current office workers are much more productive! But it also depends on human capital. The same computer will make a college graduate much more productive than someone who has only finished elementary school.

We studied the different components of GDP growth for Poland and Mexico since 1995 and the picture is very clear: the combination of human capital and productivity is a major contributor for the European country, while often a negative factor for the North American one.

Strong governance and good business climate matter for productivity growth. In countries where property rights are not secure and governance is poor, firms will remain small and productivity low. In well-run countries, successful firms can become large and more efficient.

 

Cross-country differences in income levels

Our paper shows that countries with higher human capital and better governance and business climate tend to be richer than those with low scores on these variables. High human capital alone is not sufficient: our analysis shows that countries become rich only when governance also improves.

Not surprisingly, Mexico has worse readings in both areas than Poland. In general, Latin America scores poorly on both dimensions, compared to advanced countries or emerging Europe, which helps explain why it is relatively poorer. Of course, there are exceptions: Chile’s governance ranks well against some advanced economies and is better than most of emerging Asia.

Our paper argues that countries won’t grow faster and close the income gap with richer parts of the world without improving human capital, governance, and business environment.

 

Eastern Europe’s success factor

In 1989, on the eve of the fall of the Berlin wall, countries behind the Iron Curtain were much poorer than Western Europe. Now, some of them have income levels similar to Spain and Italy.

They converged rapidly because their human capital was already similar to Western Europe’s, while income was much lower in the early 1990s. Strengthening of institutions helped the process, and here the European Union (EU) played an important role. The prospect of EU membership led to more reforms and higher growth. Countries that joined, or worked toward that objective, saw significant improvements.

 

Why has Latin America not converged?

Latin America fell behind in the convergence process mostly for two reasons. First, it did not have that same combination of high human capital and low income of former communist countries. In fact, in the mid-1990s, GDP per capita was somewhat above what could be expected for the level of human capital. Second, the strong institutional improvement seen in Europe also didn’t happen in Latin America. Governance indicators actually deteriorated in many countries.

The same factors that hold back growth also make investment less attractive. Our conclusion is that low investment in Latin America is not the cause, but the result of low growth. Governments solely focused on boosting investment might want to look at the problem from a different perspective.

 

By Bas B. Bakker, Manuk Ghazanchyan, Alex Ho, and Vibha Nanda IMF Western Hemisphere Department

 

This story was originally posted by IMF NEWS

The post Lack of Human Capital is Holding Back Latin America’s Growth appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Credit: UNICEF Mali / Dicko

By External Source
NEW YORK, Aug 18 2020 (IPS)

We write to call for urgent action to address the global education emergency triggered by COVID-19. With over 1 billion children still out of school because of the lockdown, there is now a real and present danger that the public health crisis will create a COVID generation who lose out on schooling and whose opportunities are permanently damaged. While the more fortunate have had access to alternatives, the world’s poorest children have been locked out of learning, denied internet access, and with the loss of free school meals – once a lifeline for 300 million boys and girls – hunger has grown.

An immediate concern, as we bring the lockdown to an end, is the fate of an estimated 30 million children who according to UNESCO may never return to school. For these, the world’s least advantaged children, education is often the only escape from poverty – a route that is in danger of closing. Many of these children are adolescent girls for whom being in school is the best defence against forced marriage and the best hope for a life of expanded opportunity.

Many more are young children who risk being forced into exploitative and dangerous labour. And because education is linked to progress in virtually every area of human development – from child survival to maternal health, gender equality, job creation and inclusive economic growth – the education emergency will undermine the prospects for achieving all our 2030 Sustainable Development Goals and potentially set back progress on gender equity by years. According to the World Bank the long-term economic cost of lost schooling could be as much as $10 trillion in lost productive output.

We cannot stand by and allow these young people to be robbed of their education and a fair chance in life. Instead we should be redoubling our efforts to get all children into school – including the 260 million already out of school and the 75 million children affected by protracted conflicts and forced displacement, including 35 million children living as refugees or internally displaced – with the comprehensive help they need – and to make it possible for young people to start or resume their studies in school further and higher
education.

There is a longer-term challenge we must also meet. Even before COVID-19, the world faced a learning crisis. Over half of the children in developing countries suffering ‘learning poverty’ and even at age 11 had little or no basic literacy and numeracy skills. As a result, 800 million of today’s young people leave education with no qualifications whatsoever. If we are to avoid this, millions of children who are now preparing to return to school, who have lost over half a year of education, need their governments to invest in catch-up programmes and proper learning assessment. When schools reopened after Pakistan’s 2005 earthquake attendance recovered, but four years later children had lost the equivalent of 1.5 years of schooling.

Resources are now urgently needed to get young people back into education and enable them to catch-up. What is more, we should rebuild better: more support for online learning, personalised learning, teacher training, conditional cash transfers for poor families and safer schools that meet ‘distancing’ rules, building on the enormous community effort that has been displayed during the pandemic. And to spur global momentum in support of progress in education, a coalition of global organisations has now joined forces in the ‘Save our Future’ initiative launched on August 4.

Yet at the very time we need extra resources, education funding is in danger on three fronts:

1. As slower or negative growth undermines tax revenues, less money may be available in almost every country for public services, including education.
2. When allocating limited funds, some governments may leave education crowded out and underfunded as they prioritise expenditure on health and economic recovery.
3. Intensifying fiscal pressure in developed countries will result in reductions in international development aid, including aid for education, which has already been losing out to other priorities in the allocation of bilateral and multilateral aid. There is also a danger that multilateral donors, who already under-invest in education, will reallocate funds.

The World Bank now estimates that, over the next year, overall education spending in low and middle-income countries could be $100-150 billion lower than previously planned.

This funding crisis will not resolve itself.

We call on the G20, the IMF, World Bank and regional development banks and all countries to recognise the scale of the crisis and support three initiatives to enable catch-up to happen, and progress towards SDG4 to be resumed:

– First, every country should pledge to protect front line education spending, prioritising the needs of the most disadvantaged children through where possible, conditional and unconditional cash transfers to promote school participation.
– Second, the international community must increase aid for education, focusing on the most vulnerable, including the poor, girls, children in conflict situations and the disabled. The quickest way to free up resources for education is through debt relief. The 76 poorest
countries have to pay $86 billion in debt-service costs over the next two years. We call for debt suspension with a requirement that the
money for debt servicing be reallocated to education and other priority investments for children.
– Third, the IMF should issue $1.2 trillion in Special Drawing Rights (its global reserve asset) and its membership should agree to channel
these resources toward the countries that need them most, creating a platform for recovery.

And the World Bank should unlock more support for low income countries through a supplementary International Development Association budget, and, following the lead of the UK and Netherlands which have now pledged $650 million to the new International Finance Facility for Education (IFFEd) to help unlock billions in extra finance for education in lower middle income countries, invite guarantees and grants from donors. This is in addition to – and compliments – over the next 2 years the replenishment of GPE (Global Partnership for Education) and scaled up investment in ECW (Education Cannot Wait) and continued support for the UN agencies focused on education and children led by UNESCO and UNICEF. We call on private sector corporations and foundations to make support for global education a greater priority.

Sustainable human development can only be built upon a foundation of quality education. While the challenges are momentous, the impact of the crisis on children has made us even more determined to realise our ambition contained in Sustainable Development Goal 4, that ours can be the first generation in history in which every child is at school and has the chance to develop their potential to the full. Now is the time for national governments and the international community to come together to give children and young people the opportunities they deserve and to which they are entitled.

Signed,

María Elena Agüero – Secretary General of the WLA-Club de Madrid

Esko Aho – Prime Minister of Finland (1991-1995)¹

Dr Shamshad Akhtar – UN Under Secretary-General and Executive Secretary of ESCAP & Assistant Secretary-General at UN DESA (2013-2018); Governor of the State Bank of Pakistan (2006-2009)²

Dr Farida Allaghi – Ambassador of Libya to the European Union (2015-2016)³

HE Dr Abdulaziz Altwaijri – Director General of the Islamic Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (1991-2019)³

Mohamed Amersi – Founder & Chairman, The Amersi Foundation

Dr Roger Ames – Director of the Center for Chinese Studies, University of Hawaii

Dr Kwame Anthony Appiah – Professor of Philosophy and Law, NYU

Shaukat Aziz – Prime Minister of Pakistan (2004-2007)³⁴

Professor Julian Baggini – Academic Director of the Royal Institute of Philosophy

Gordon Bajnai – Prime Minister of Hungary (2009-2010)

Harriett Baldwin MP – Member of Parliament of the United Kingdom; Founding Co-Chair, International Parliamentary Network for Education

Jan Peter Balkenende – Prime Minister of the Netherlands (2002-2010)¹

HE Joyce Banda – President of Malawi (2012-2014)¹

Kaushik Basu – President of the International Economic Association; Chief Economist of the World Bank (2012-2016)

Carol Bellamy – Executive Director of UNICEF (1995-2005)²

Nicolas Berggruen – Chairman of the Berggruen Institute⁴

Suman Bery – Chief Economist at Royal Dutch Shell (2012-2016); Director-General of the National Council of Applied Economic Research, New Delhi

Sir Tim Besley – President of the International Economic Association (2014-2017); Professor of Economics and Political Science, LSE

Valdis Birkavs – Prime Minister of Latvia (1993-1994)¹

Tony Blair – Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (1997-2007)

Dr Mario Blejer – Governor of the Central Bank of Argentina (2002); Director of the Centre for Central Banking Studies, Bank of England (2003-2008)

Irina Bokova – Director-General of UNESCO (2009-2017)²

Patrick Bolton – Professor of Finance and Economics, Imperial College London; Professor, Columbia University

Kjell Magne Bondevik – Prime Minister of Norway (1997-2000; 2001-2005)¹

Professor Sir Leszek Borysiewicz – Vice Chancellor, University of Cambridge (2010-2017)

Ouided Bouchamaoui – President of UTICA (2011-2018); Nobel Peace Prize Laureate (2015)³

Dumitru Braghiș – Prime Minister of Moldova (1999-2001)³

María Eugenia Brizuela de Ávila – Minister of Foreign Affairs of El Salvador (1999-2004)²

Gordon Brown – Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (2007-2010)

John Bruton – Taoiseach of the Republic of Ireland (1994-1997)¹⁵

Robin Burgess – Professor of Economics, LSE

Kim Campbell – Prime Minister of Canada (1993)¹

Fernando Henrique Cardoso – President of Brazil (1995-2003)¹

Wendy Carlin – Professor of Economics, University College London

Dr Vinton G. Cerf – Co-Inventor of the Internet³

Hikmet Çetin – Minister of Foreign Affairs of Turkey (1991-1994), Speaker of the Grand National Assembly (1997-1999)³⁵

Baroness Lynda Chalker – Minister of Overseas Development of the United Kingdom (1989-1997)⁵

Professor Bai Chong-En – Dean, Tsinghua School of Economics and Management, Tsinghua University

Helen Clark – Prime Minister of New Zealand (1999-2008); UNDP Administrator (2009-2017)¹³⁵

Joe Clark – Prime Minister of Canada (1979-1980)⁵

Emil Constantinescu – President of Romania (1996-2000)³

Radhika Coomaraswamy – UN Under-Secretary-General and Special Representative for Children and Armed Conflict (2006-2012); UN Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women (1994-2003)²

Chester Crocker – Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs, United States (1981-1989)⁵

Mirko Cvetković – Prime Minister of Serbia (2008-2012)³

Dr Antonio Damasio – David Dornsife Professor of Neuroscience, Psychology and Philosophy; Director, Brain and Creativity Institute, USC

Dr Hanna Damasio – Dana Dornsife Professor of Neuroscience and Psychology; Director, Dornsife Cognitive Neuroimaging Center, USC

Marzuki Darusman – Attorney General of Indonesia (1999-2001)⁵

Frederik Willem de Klerk – State President of South Africa (1989-1994)⁵

Kemal Derviş – Minister of Economic Affairs of Turkey (2001-2002); Administrator of UNDP (2005-2009); Senior Fellow Global Economy and Development, Brookings Institute

Beatrice Weder di Mauro – President, Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR); Professor of International Economics, Graduate Institute in Geneva

Dr Victor J. Dzau – President of the National Academy of Medicine

Gareth Evans – Foreign Minister of Australia (1988-1996); President and CEO of International Crisis Group (2000-2009)⁵

Professor Sir Jeremy Farrar – Director of the Wellcome Trust

Jan Fischer – Prime Minister of the Czech Republic (2009-2010); Finance Minister (2013-2014)³

Professor Tom Fletcher CMG – UK Ambassador to Lebanon (2011-2015); Principal-Elect of Hertford College, University of Oxford

Vicente Fox – President of Mexico (2000-2006)¹

Franco Frattini – Minister of Foreign Affairs of Italy (2002-2004; 2008-2011); European Commissioner for Justice, Freedom and Security (2004-2008)³

Dr Anton Friedrich Koch – Professor of Philosophy, Universität Heidelberg

Chiril Gaburici – Prime Minister of Moldova (2015); Minister of Economy and Infrastructure (2018-2019)³

Ahmed Galal – Finance Minister of Egypt (2013-2014)

Nathalie de Gaulle – Chairwoman & Co-founder of NB-INOV; Founder of Under 40³

Lord Anthony Giddens – Director of the London School of Economics (1996–2003); Professor, Department of Sociology, LSE

Dr Lawrence Gonzi – Prime Minister of Malta (2004-2013)⁵

Dr Alexander Görlach – Senior Fellow at the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Relations, University of Cambridge

Dalia Grybauskaitė – President of the Republic of Lithuania (2009-2019)¹

Rebeca Grynspan – Ibero-American Secretary-General; Second Vice President of Costa Rica (1994-1998); UN Under-Secretary-General and Associate Administrator of UNDP (2010-2014)²

Ameenah Gurib-Fakim – President of Mauritius (2015-2018)³

Sergei Guriev – Chief Economist of the EBRD (2016-2019); Professor of Economics, Sciences Po

Dr Han Seung-soo – Prime Minister of South Korea (2008-2009)¹

Senator Robert M. Hertzberg – Majority Leader of the California State Senate, United States

Dr Noeleen Heyzer – UN Under-Secretary-General and Executive Secretary of ESCAP (2007-2015)²³

Bengt Holmström – Nobel Laureate for Economics (2016); Professor of Economics, MIT

Wang Hui – Professor of Chinese Language, Literature, and History, Tsinghua University

Mo Ibrahim – Founder fo Celtel; Chairman of the Mo Ibrahim Foundation⁴

Enrique Iglesias – Foreign Minister of Uruguay (1985-1988); President of the Inter-American Development Bank (1988-2005)¹⁵

Ekmeleddin İhsanoğlu – Secretary General of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (2004-2014)³

Dalia Itzik – Interim President of Israel (2007); President of the Knesset (2006-2009)³

Mladen Ivanić – Member of the Presidency of Bosnia and Herzegovina (2014-2018)³

Pico Iyer – Distinguished Presidential Fellow, Chapman University; Writer & Essayist, TIME

Garry Jacobs – President & Chief Executive Officer of the World Academy of Art and Science³

HE Ellen Johnson Sirleaf – President of Liberia (2006-2018); Member of The Elders⁵

T. Anthony Jones – Vice-President and Executive Director of the Gorbachev Foundation of North America¹

Ivo Josipović – President of Croatia (2010-2015)¹³

Jean-Claude Juncker – Prime Minister of Luxembourg (1995-2013); President of the European Commission (2014-2019)¹

Mats Karlsson – Vice President, External Affairs at the World Bank (1999-2002)³

Caroline Kende-Robb – Executive Director of the Africa Progress Panel (2011-2017); Secretary General of CARE International (2018-2019)

Rima Khalaf – Executive Secretary of the UN Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (2010-2017)²

Dr Moushira Khattab – Executive President, Kemet Boutros Boutros Ghali Foundation for Peace and Knowledge; Minister of Family and Population of Egypt (2009-2011)³

Ban Ki-moon – UN Secretary General (2007-2016); Deputy Chair of The Elders¹

Horst Köhler – President of the Federal Republic of Germany (2004-2010)¹

Jadranka Kosor – Prime Minister of Croatia (2009-2011)³

Professor Anne Krueger – First Deputy Managing Director of the IMF (2001-2006); Senior Research Professor of International Economics, School for Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University

HE John Kufuor – President of Ghana (2001-2009)¹

Chandrika Kumaratunga – President of Sri Lanka (1994-2005)¹³

Aleksander Kwaśniewski – President of Poland (1995-2005)¹

Rachel Kyte – Dean of The Fletcher School, Tufts University; UN Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Sustainable Energy for All (2016-2019); World Bank Group VP & Special Envoy (2012-2015)²

Ricardo Lagos – President of Chile (2000-2006); Member of the Elders¹⁴

Zlatko Lagumdzija – Prime Minister of Bosnia and Herzegovina (2001- 2002); Foreign Affairs Minister (2012-2015)¹³

Yves Leterme – Prime Minister of Belgium (2008; 2009-2011)¹³

Dr Margaret Levi – Director of the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences & Professor of Political Science, Stanford University

Professor Justin Yifu Lin – Chief Economist & Senior Vice-President of the World Bank (2008-2012); Dean of Institute of New Structural Economics, Peking University³

Tzipi Livni – Vice Prime Minister & Minister of Foreign Affairs of Israel (2006-2009); Minister of Justice (2013-2014)³

Petru Lucinschi – President of Moldova (1997-2001)³

Ricardo Luna – Minister of Foreign Affairs of Peru (2016-2018)⁵

Nora Lustig – President Emeritus of the Latin American and Caribbean Economic Association; Professor of Latin American Economics, Tulane University

Graça Machel – Education & Culture Minister of Mozambique (1975-1986); Deputy Chair of The Elders

Sir John Major – Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (1990-1997)

Susana Malcorra – UN Under-Secretary-General for Field Support (2008-2012); Chef de Cabinet to UN Secretary-General (2012-2015); Minister of Foreign Affairs of Argentina (2015-2017)²

Purnima Mane – UN Assistant-Secretary-General and Deputy Executive Director UNFPA (2007-2012)²

Moussa Mara – Prime Minister of Mali (2014-2015)³

Paul Martin – Prime Minister of Canada (2003-2006)⁴

Colin Mayer CBE – Professor of Management Studies, Saïd Business School, University of Oxford

Péter Medgyessy – Prime Minister of Hungary (2002-2004)³

Rexhep Meidani – President of Albania (1997-2002)¹³

Mario Monti – Prime Minister of Italy (2011-2013)¹⁴

Rovshan Muradov – Secretary General of NGIC

Joseph Muscat – Prime Minister of Malta (2013-2020)³

Mustapha Kamel Nabli – Governor of the Central Bank of Tunisia (2011-2012)

Piroska Nagy-Mohácsi – Programme Director of the Institute of Global Affairs, LSE; Director of Policy, EBRD (2009-2015)

Dawn Nakagawa – Executive Vice President, Berggruen Institute

Dr Rebecca Newberger Goldstein – Philosopher

Bujar Nishani – President of Albania (2012-2017)³

Chief Olusegun Obasanjo – President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria (1999-2007)¹

Josiah Ober – Professor of Political Science and Classics, Stanford University

Dr Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala – Board Chair of the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunisation; Finance Minister of the Federal Republic of Nigeria (2011-2015)

Djoomart Otorbaev – Prime Minister of Kyrgyzstan (2014-2015)³

Ana Palacio – Minister of Foreign Affairs of Spain (2002-2004)²³⁵

Elsa Papademetriou – Vice President of the Hellenic Parliament (2007-2009)³

George Papandreou – Prime Minister of Greece (2009-2011)³

Andrés Pastrana – President of Colombia (1998-2002)¹

P. J. Patterson – Prime Minister of Jamaica (1992-2005)¹⁵

Dr Philip Pettit – L.S. Rockefeller University Professor of Politics and Human Values, Princeton University

Ambassador Thomas R. Pickering – United States Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs (1997-2000); Ambassador to the UN (1989-1992)⁵

Sir Christopher Pissarides – Nobel Laureate for Economics (2010); Professor of Economics & Political Science, LSE

Rosen Plevneliev – President of Bulgaria (2012-2017)³

Richard Portes CBE – Professor of Economics, London Business School; Founder and Honorary President of the Centre for Economic Policy Research

Marie-Louise Coleiro Preca – President of Malta (2014-2019)³

Romano Prodi – Prime Minister of Italy (2006-2008); President of the European Commission (1999-2004)¹

Michael Puett – Walter C. Klein Professor of Chinese History, Department of East Asian Languages and Civilization, Harvard University

Jorge Quiroga – President of Bolivia (2001-2002)¹

Iveta Radičová – Prime Minister of Slovakia (2010-2012)¹

José Ramos Horta – President of Timor Leste (2007-2012)¹⁵

Òscar Ribas Reig – Prime Minister of Andorra (1982-1984; 1990-1994)¹³

Lord George Robertson – Secretary General of NATO (1999-2003)⁵

Mary Robinson – President of Ireland (19990-1997); UN High Commissioner for Human Rights; Chair of the Elders¹

José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero – Prime Minister of Spain (2004-2011)¹

Dani Rodrik – President-Elect of the International Economic Association; Professor of International Political Economy, Harvard University

Gérard Roland – Professor of Economics & Professor of Political Science, University of California, Berkeley

Petre Roman – Prime Minister of Romania (1989-1991)¹³

Dr Michael Roth – President of Wesleyan University

Nouriel Roubini – Chairman & CEO, Roubini Macro Associates LLC

Ruslana – World Music Award and Eurovision Song Contest winning recording artist; Special Envoy of NGIC

Isabel Saint Malo – Vice President of Panama (2014-2019)²

Juan Manuel Santos – President of Colombia (2010-2018); Nobel Peace Prize Laureate (2016); Member of The Elders

Amartya Sen – Nobel Laureate for Economics (1998); Professor of Economics & Philosophy, Harvard University

Ismail Serageldin – Vice President of the World Bank (1992-2000); Co-Chair of NGIC

Fatiha Serour – Deputy Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General in Somalia (2013-2014)²

Rosalía Arteaga Serrano – President of Ecuador (1997)³

Dame Jenny Shipley – Prime Minister of New Zealand (1997-1999)¹

Javier Solana – Secretary General of the Council of the EU (1999-2009); Secretary General of NATO (1995-1999)¹⁵

Professor Sir Richard Sorabji – Honorary Fellow, Wolfson College, University of Oxford

Michael Spence – Nobel Laureate for Economics (2001); William R. Berkley Professor in Economics & Business, NYU⁴

Devi Sridhar – Professor of Global Public Health, University of Edinburgh

Dr Eduardo Stein – Vice President of Guatemala (2004-2008)⁵

Lord Nicholas Stern – Chief Economist & Senior Vice-President of the World Bank (2000-2003); Chief Economist of the EBRD (1994-1999) & Professor of Economics and Government, LSE

Joseph Stiglitz – Chief Economist of the World Bank (1997-2000); Nobel Laureate for Economics (2001); Professor, Columbia University⁴

Petar Stoyanov – President of Bulgaria (1997-2002)³

Laimdota Straujuma – Prime Minister of Latvia (2014-2016)³

Lawrence Summers – United States Secretary of the Treasury (1999-2001); Deputy Secretary of the Treasury (1995-1999); Chief Economist of the World Bank (1991-1993); Director of the National Economic Council (2009-2010)⁴

Boris Tadić – President of Serbia (2004-2012)¹³

Jigme Y. Thinley – Prime Minister of Bhutan (2008-2013)¹

Helle Thorning-Schmidt – Prime Minister of Denmark (2011-2015)⁴

Eka Tkeshelashvili – Deputy Prime Minister of Georgia (2010-2012)³

Danilo Türk – President of Slovenia (2007-2012); President of WLA-Club de Madrid

Professor Laura D’Andrea Tyson – Director of the United States National Economic Council (1995-1996); Faculty Director, Haas Institute for Business & Social Impact, University of California, Berkeley⁴

Cassam Uteem – President of Mauritius (1992-2002); Vice-President of WLA-Club de Madrid⁵

Juan Gabriel Valdés – Minister for Foreign Affairs of Chile (1999); Ambassador to the UN (2000-2003)⁵

Marianna Vardinoyannis – UNESCO Goodwill Ambassador; Board Member of NGIC

Emiliana Vegas – Senior Fellow and Co-Director of the Center for Universal Education, Brookings Institution

Andrés Velasco – Finance Minister of Chile (2006-2010); Dean of the School of Public Policy, LSE

Vaira Vike-Freiberga – President of Latvia (1999-2007)¹; Co-Chair of NGIC

Ernst-Ludwig von Thadden – President, Mannheim University (2012-2019); Professor, Economics Department

Filip Vujanović – President of Montenegro (2003-2018)³

Leonard Wantchekon – Founder & President of the African School of Economics; Professor of Politics and International Affairs, Princeton University

Shang-Jin Wei – Chief Economist of the Asian Development Bank (2014-2016); Professor of Chinese Business and Economy & Finance and Economics, Columbia Business School

Rebecca Winthrop – Senior Fellow and Co-Director of the Center for Universal Education, Brookings Institution

R. Bin Wong – Distinguished Professor of History; Director of the Asia Institute, UCLA (2004-2016)

Kateryna Yushchenko – First Lady of Ukraine (2005-2010); Board Member of NGIC

Viktor Yushchenko – President of Ukraine (2005-2010)³

Fareed Zakaria – Host of Fareed Zakaria GPS, CNN⁴

Valdis Zatlers – President of Latvia (2007-2011)³

Ernesto Zedillo – President of Mexico (1994-2000); Member of The Elders¹⁴

Min Zhu – Deputy Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund (2011-2016)⁴

ActionAid UK – Girish Menon, CEO

African Center for Economic Transformation (ACET) – Dr K.Y. Amoako, President and Founder

BRAC International – Dr Muhammad Musa, Executive Director

CARE International UK – Laurie Lee, CEO

Catholic Agency for Oversees Development (CAFOD) – Christine Allen, Director

Save the Childr
en International – Inger Ashing, CEO

Save the Children UK – Kevin Watkins, CEO

The Education Commission – Dr Liesbet Steer, Director

Theirworld – Dr Justin van Fleet, President

WaterAid UK – Tim Wainwright, CEO
¹ Member of the World Leadership Alliance-Club de Madrid
² Member of Global Women Leaders: Voices for Change and Inclusion
³ Member of Nizami Ganjavi International Center (NGIC)
⁴ Member of the Berggruen Institute 21st Century Council
⁵ Member of Global Leadership Foundation

Members of the Parliamentary Network on the World Bank & IMF

Denis Kpwang Abbé – Senator of the Republic of Cameroon (2013-2018)

Francisco Ashley L. Acedillo – Member, House of Representatives of the Republic of the Philippines (2013-2016)

Mohammed Jawad Ahmed – Advisor to the Speaker, Parliament of the Republic of Iraq

Shakeel Shabbir Ahmed – Member of Parliament, National Assembly of the Republic of Kenya

Shamsul Iskandar Bin Mohd Akin – Member of Parliament of Malaysia

Iqbal Abdul Hussein Almadhy MP – Member of Parliament, Parliament of the Republic of Iraq; President of the PN Chapter in Iraq

Njume Peter Ambang – Member of Parliament of the Republic of Cameroon; Member of the Education and Youth Affairs Committee

Ecaterina Andronescu – Senator, Parliament of Romania; Minister of Education (2018-2019); Professor, University Politehnica of Bucharest

Ibtissame Azzaoui – Member of the Parliament of Morocco

Alban Sumana Kingsford Bagbin – Second Deputy Speaker, Parliament of Ghana

Alpha Bah – Vice President, National Assembly of Guinea

Hafida Benchahida – Senator of the Republic of Algeria; Founding Member of the Mediterranean Women Mediators Network

Hervé Berville – Member of the National Assembly of the French Republic

Nozha Beyaoui – Member of Parliament of the Republic of Tunisia

Sunjeev Kour Birdi – Member of Parliament, National Assembly of the Republic of Kenya

Gary Bodeau – President of the Chamber of Deputies, National Assembly of the Republic of Haiti (2018-2020)

Peter M. Boehm – Senator, Senate of Canada

Mārtiņš Bondars – Member of Parliament of the Republic of Latvia

Liam Byrne MP – Member of Parliament of the United Kingdom; Chair of the Parliamentary Network on the World Bank and IMF

Professor Alejandro Cacace – Representative, National Congress of Argentina

Yunus Carrim – Member of Parliament, National Council of Provinces of Parliament, Republic of South Africa; Chairperson of the Select Committee on Finance

Giulio Centemero MP – Member of the Chamber of Deputies of Italy; Member of the Finance Committee; Co-Chair, PAM Panel on Trade and Investments

Sarah Champion MP – Member of Parliament of the United Kingdom

Olfa Soukri Cherif – Member of Parliament of the United Republic of Tanzania

Sven Clement – Member of the Luxembourg Chamber of Deputies

Gordana Comic – Member of Parliament, National Assembly of the Republic of Serbia (2001-2020)

Shiddi Usman Danjuma – Member of the National Assembly of the Federal Republic of Nigeria

Colin Deacon – Senator, Senate of Canada

Issa Mardo Djabir MP – Member of the National Assembly of the Republic of Chad

Percy E. Downe – Senator, Senate of Canada

Worlea-Saywah Dunah – Founder and Chairman of the Board, Center for Africa Development and Democracy

Nathaniel Erskine-Smith – Member of Parliament of Canada

Marouan Felfel – Member of Parliament of the Republic of Tunisia

Cedric Thomas Frolick – Member of Parliament, National Assembly of Parliament of the Republic of South Africa

Mahmut Celadet Gaydalı – Member of Parliament of the Republic of Turkey

Hajia Alijata sulemana Gbentie – Member of Parliament of the Republic of Ghana (2013-2016)

Najeeb Ghanem – Member of the House of Representatives, Parliament of Yemen

Hawa Abdulrahman Ghasia – Member of Parliament of the United Republic of Tanzania (2005-2020)

Preet Kaur Gill MP – Member of Parliament of the United Kingdom; Shadow Secretary of State for International Development

Patrick Grady MP – Member of Parliament of the United Kingdom

Dr Lahcen Haddad – Member of the Parliament of Morocco; Minister of Tourism, Government of Morocco (2012-2016); Vice President of the SID International Governing Council

Laura Angélica Rojas Hernández – Speaker of the Chamber of Deputies of Mexico

Anthony Kimani Ichung’Wah – Member of Parliament, National Assembly of the Republic of Kenya

Eunice Kabiru – Member of Parliament of Estonia

Rebecca Yei Kamara – Member of Parliament, Parliament of Sierra Leone

Abdul Kargbo – Member of Parliament, Parliament of Sierra Leone

Gideon Keter – Member of Parliament, National Assembly of the Republic of Kenya

Volkmar Klein – Member of the Bundestag of the Federal Republic of Germany

John Muiruri Makuno – Director, Action for Children in Conflict UK

Doruntinë E. Maloku – Member of Parliament of the Republic of Kosovo; Chair of the Committee on Economic Development

Teodomiro Nzé Mangué – Senator, Senate of the Republic of Equatorial Guinea

Janet Zebedayo Mbene – Member of Parliament of the United Republic of Tanzania

Betty McCollum – Congresswoman, United States House of Representatives

Hayat Meziani – Member of Parliament of the People’s Democratic Republic of Algeria (2012-2017)

Dr Ammar Moussi – Member of Parliament of the Republic of Algeria

Ruzanna Muradyan – Founder, Education Without Boundaries

Irene Wairimu Mwangi – Public Policy Specialist, Kenya

Cornelius Mweetwa – Member of Parliament of the Republic of Zambia

Adamou Namata – Member of the National Assembly of the Federal Republic of Nigeria

Bekono Ebah epse Ndoumou – Member of Parliament of the Republic of Cameroon

Professor George Bureng V. Nyombe – Chairperson of the Committee for Foreign Affairs, Transitional National Legislative Assembly (TNLA), Republic of South Sudan

Hassan Omar Mohamed – Member of Parliament, National Assembly of the Republic of Djibouti; President of the Parliamentary Group of Population and Development

Margaret Mary Quirk MLA – Member of the Parliament of Western Australia

Niki Rattle – Speaker of Parliament of the Cook Islands

Mohamed-Iqbal Ravalia – Senator, Senate of Canada

Dharma Raj Regmi – Parliamentarian, Federal Parliament of Nepal

Dr Azmi Shuaibi – Anti-Corruption Advisor, TI Palestine, Transparency International

Amanda Simard MPP – Member of the Provincial Parliament, Legislative Assembly of Ontario

Andres Sutt – Member of Parliament of Estonia; Deputy Governor and Member of the Executive Board, Bank of Estonia (2001-2009)

Catherine Zainab Tarawally – Member of Parliament, Parliament of Sierra Leone; Deputy Whip, All People’s Congress Party

Dr Olanrewaju Adeyemi Tejuoso – Senator of the Federal Republic of Nigeria (2015-2019)

Umayya Toukan – Senator, Parliament of Jordan

Nguyen Tuong Van – Secretary General of the ASEAN Inter-Parliamentary Assembly

 

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The post Call for Urgent Action by 275 World Leaders on Global Education Emergency In Face of Covid19 appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

275 World Leaders Letter to G20, IMF, World Bank, Regional Development Banks and Governments

The post Call for Urgent Action by 275 World Leaders on Global Education Emergency In Face of Covid19 appeared first on Inter Press Service.