Africa - INTER PRESS SERVICE

News and Views from the Global South

Updated: 2 weeks 2 days ago

US-China Cold War Could Lead to a More Dangerous Nuclear Stand-off

Mon, 04/26/2021 - 11:19

Credit: United Nations

By Joseph Gerson
NEW YORK, Apr 26 2021 (IPS)

Despite the negotiation of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW), we are confronted by the increasing dangers of great power war, even nuclear war.

Instead of making necessary investments to ensure public health, reverse climate change and ensure the security of their peoples, trillions of dollars are being wasted to construct new nuclear weapons and their delivery systems, including new hypersonic delivery systems.

The U.S. and Russia are the lead drivers of this race to annihilation, with more than 90% of the world’s nuclear weapons. The U.S. is in the process of upgrading all its nuclear weapons and deploying an entirely new and more deadly nuclear triad at an estimated cost of two trillion dollars.

Faced with U.S. conventional supremacy and the expansion of NATO to its borders, Russia has increased its reliance on nuclear weapons and is deploying new and more exotic nuclear weapons.

We face the existential danger that escalation of the conflict in Ukraine and accidents and miscalculations as the two powers confront one another in the Baltic and Black Seas, could escalate beyond control.

In each case, in addition to the drive for imperial power, military-industrial complexes contribute to the nuclear crisis. There also demands coming out of Ukraine to the effect that if it is not allowed to join NATO, it should construct its own nuclear arsenal.

Potentially more dangerous is the new U.S.-Chinese Cold War. Here the Thucydides Trap, the historic dynamic of inevitable conflict between rising and declining powers, is driving this dimension of the nuclear arms race. In its effort to retain its regional (and global) hegemony, the U.S. is moving to deploy standoff nuclear-armed cruise missiles targeted against China.

It is also pressing increased deployments of its “missile defenses” which can serve as shields for U.S. first-strike swords along China Asia-Pacific periphery. These, in turn, lead Chinese policy makers to serious consider increasing the size of their much smaller nuclear arsenal and the possibility of abandoning their no first use doctrine.

The explosion of spending for nuclear weapons and their delivery systems is not limited to the great powers. The Johnson government in Britain has just shocked the world with the announcement that it will increase the size of its nuclear arsenal by roughly 30%.
France is deploying new nuclear armed submarines designed to threaten nuclear war throughout the 21st century. Pakistan is in the process of trying to match India’s nuclear triad. Israel is secretly expanding it Diamona nuclear weapons site.

And having been repeatedly threatened by U.S. conventional and nuclear attacks, North Korea has publicly announced it will continue manufacturing more nuclear weapons and diversifying their delivery systems which threaten South Korea, neighboring nations and even the United States.

This is suicidal madness. Here in the United States, as Tax Day and Congressional debates over the national budget approach, popular movements and the Congressional Defense Spending Reduction Caucus are demanding significant reductions in military spending. Funding for the replacement of the nation’s ground based and first strike ICBMs and “more usable” low-yield battlefield weapons are thought to be most vulnerable to funding cuts.

As the Russell-Einstein Manifesto warned the world at the height of the first Cold War in 1955, humanity faces the choice of life or death for our species. They appealed to the world to press for nuclear disarmament, to “remember your humanity and forget the rest.”

Fifty years ago, the nuclear powers committed in Article VI of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty to engage in good faith negotiations for the complete elimination of their nuclear arsenals.

The world’s nuclear powers must be held to the NPT commitments. Governments won’t deliver us the nuclear free world humanity requires for survival. It can only be achieved by popular pressure.

I encourage people around the world to join the International Peace Bureau initiated Global Days of Action on Military Spending, now under way and continuing to May 17 and to press on beyond to stanch the existential nuclear danger with nuclear disarmament actions and demands for Common Security diplomacy.

*Dr Joseph Gerson’s books include Empire and the Bomb: How the U.S. Uses Nuclear Weapons to Dominate the World and With Hiroshima Eyes: Atomic War, Nuclear Extortion and Moral Imagination.

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

The post US-China Cold War Could Lead to a More Dangerous Nuclear Stand-off appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

The writer* is President of the Campaign for Peace, Disarmament and Common Security and Vice-President of the International Peace Bureau.

The post US-China Cold War Could Lead to a More Dangerous Nuclear Stand-off appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Categories: Africa

Addressing the Impact of COVID-19 on Infants and Young Children

Mon, 04/26/2021 - 10:25

Children display dexterity during a free play session prior to the pandemic. Credit: BRAC

By Erum Mariam
DHAKA, Bangladesh, Apr 26 2021 (IPS)

Conventional wisdom is that the health of young children is not at great risk from COVID-19, but, in the Global South, the space constraints imposed on young children by the pandemic pose a significant risk to the stimulation on which brain development thrives. Early childhood development is further jeopardized by the pandemic’s impact on caregivers.

A new early childhood development infrastructure has been built in Bangladesh by BRAC, the largest international development organization in the world, providing weekly one-on-one phone calls by trained specialists to the caregivers of 40,000 infants and children under the age of six. It offers educational and psychosocial support – and a model that can benefit children worldwide.

A child’s early years are crucial to brain development, and stimulation is especially important. With schools closed in Bangladesh beginning in March 2020 – and play groups thereby halted and young children largely at home – the challenge was to ensure stimulation within home environments.

The program that emerged combines playful learning for children and psychosocial support for caregivers through mobile phone communications and a multi-layered architecture of specialized training and outreach. While enhancing needed stimulation among children, this replicable program also engages and supports family members in children’s learning and raises the prospect of continuing that engagement after the pandemic.

The program is part of a much wider drive for play-based learning by BRAC. A multi-year partnership between BRAC, the LEGO Foundation, and Porticus supports an extensive play-based learning initiative. Through this initiative, BRAC has created 110 community-based Play Labs in Bangladesh, Uganda, and Tanzania. Another 400 Play Labs have also been created within government primary schools in Bangladesh (with 300 of them supported by Porticus and 100 by the LEGO Foundation). BRAC has further trained 315 adolescent girls and young women to act as facilitators or Play Leaders in the community-based Play Labs. The Play Labs are safe spaces where children can engage in play, supported by a play-based curriculum that is culturally sensitive and designed to suit the local contexts, while also promoting children’s cognitive, language, physical, and social-emotional development.

Children engaged in a storytelling session with the Play Leader prior to the pandemic. Credit: BRAC

Both the play spaces and curriculum are designed by BRAC Institute of Educational Development, BRAC University (BRAC IED). Within a few months of the Rohingya influx in 2017, BRAC IED as part of BRAC started developing and implementing the Humanitarian Play Lab model within Child Friendly Spaces. The Humanitarian Play Lab is an adaptation of BRAC IED’s award-winning Play Lab model, adapted to the humanitarian context of the Rohingya camps, where play is used as a tool for healing from trauma as well as for learning. Since December 2018, the model has continued to run for Rohingya infants and children under the age of six as part of the Play to Learn project, in partnership with Sesame Workshop, International Rescue Committee, and New York University, with funding from the LEGO Foundation.

For children in displaced communities, the COVID-19 pandemic is a crisis on top of a crisis. It is vital to provide these children – and their caregivers – with improved access to learning, psychosocial support, safe spaces, and playful early learning and stimulation opportunities to help address trauma, support healthy development, and provide a sense of routine and normalcy. Play helps children better manage trauma, especially when they have experienced crisis, violence, and poverty.

When schools closed due to the pandemic, children no longer had access to the safe spaces provided by the Play Labs and Humanitarian Play Labs. BRAC felt the need to stay connected to children and their families, so Play Leaders and other frontline staff started using mobile phones to maintain regular contact with program participants. That initial instinct led to the creation of the telecommunication model called Pashe Achhi (English translation: Beside You), a remote learning mechanism that not only provides learning opportunities for children and psychosocial support for caregivers but also serves as a new emergency infrastructure for early childhood development.

Experts at BRAC IED brought together psychologists and play-based curriculum developers to develop 20-minute tele-conversational scripts, with a component for psychosocial support and another component on play-based learning. BRAC trained 1,300 Play Leaders on the effective delivery of scripts. The Play Leaders now facilitate weekly 20-minute one-on-one calls with caregivers and children from both Play Lab and Humanitarian Play Lab families. An initial pilot of a five-to-seven-minute conversation proved to be inadequate, and the 20-minute design now in use allows for meaningful engagement with both caregiver and child. The call scripts emphasize active listening as well as practicing empathy to ensure that callers can listen and address parents’ feelings and suggest play-based stimulation strategies to engage with the children within the home environment.

In calling the caregivers of infants and children under the age of two in the Rohingya camps, Play Leaders provide basic psychosocial support plus tips on how to take care of infants and stay safe from COVID-19. For children ages two to six in the Rohingya camps, Play Leaders speak with the children and mothers or caregivers. For children ages four to five across Bangladesh, Play Leaders engage remotely with children through activities such as reciting Bangla rhymes, while giving the adults basic psychosocial support, tips on engaging with the children, and health and hygiene messages.

BRAC has begun to expand the Pashe Achhi project to target infants and children under the age of five and their families from vulnerable backgrounds across Bangladesh. These families often lack access to basic early childhood development services, and BRAC sees great potential in Pashe Achhi to promote optimal children’s development and help break the cycle of poverty.

In total, outreach to caregivers of 40,000 children now takes place weekly, providing support for both the children and the adults. The fact that such scale was reached within weeks underscores the need and the replicability. Data has been collected throughout, and research is underway to assess the impact quantitatively and qualitatively, but anecdotal evidence makes clear the extraordinary value of this intervention. Its impact includes enhancing children’s stimulation in every household; addressing the well-being of children and adults; engaging children and their families in early childhood education; increasing educators’ connections with the children’s households; and addressing pedagogical and social-emotional needs, while also providing capacity building for front-liners and addressing their well-being.

Some of the lessons that implementation has already revealed are especially illuminating: First, play is key. It provides a profound educational vehicle and an easy way to engage households in ways that can potentially continue throughout a child’s education. Second, engagement can enhance both learning and psychosocial support. A child’s learning is greatly affected by the relationship with caregivers, hence Pashe Achhi places great emphasis on developing the caregiver-child bond. Third, the content must be kept simple to enable scaling.

The model depends on empathetic and educational conversations, the impact of which must be maximized to reach enough people. Fourth, the pervasiveness of technology is far more important than whether it is state-of-the-art. In this case, a cutting-edge initiative was developed with basic mobile phones.

The COVID-19 pandemic has necessitated innovation in the education of young children. Extending that innovation could benefit children broadly long after the pandemic has subsided.

The post Addressing the Impact of COVID-19 on Infants and Young Children appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

The author is the Executive Director of the BRAC Institute of Educational Development, BRAC University in Bangladesh.

The post Addressing the Impact of COVID-19 on Infants and Young Children appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Categories: Africa

World Military Spending Rises to a Hefty $2.0 Trillion Despite UN Pleas for Cutbacks

Mon, 04/26/2021 - 09:36

SIPRI’s research on arms and military spending has been the core of the Institute's work since its foundation in the 1960s. Credit: Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI)

By Thalif Deen*
UNITED NATIONS, Apr 26 2021 (IPS)

The United Nations– which is desperately seeking funds to help developing nations battling a staggering array of socio-economic problems, including extreme poverty, hunger, economic inequalities and environmental hazards– has continued to be one of the strongest advocates of disarmament.

The world body has relentlessly campaigned for reduced military spending in an attempt to help divert some of these resources into sustainable development and humanitarian assistance.

But according to a new report released April 26 by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), world military expenditure rose to nearly $2 trillion in 2020, an increase of 2.6 percent, in real terms, from 2019.

The COVID-19 pandemic, which brought the world to a virtual standstill for the last 14 months, apparently has had no impact on military spending.

Ironically, four of the five biggest spenders were permanent members of the UN Security Council (UNSC), namely the US, China, Russia and UK. The fifth biggest spender was India, currently a non-permanent member of the UNSC.

Military spending by China, which is currently in a new Cold War with the US, grew for the 26th consecutive year.

The latest figures of rising arms expenditures by some of the big powers makes a mockery of the UN’s longstanding pleas for cutbacks and diversion of funds from the military into sustainable development.

William D. Hartung, Director, Arms and Security Program at the Washington-based Center for International Policy told IPS: “At a time when a global pandemic, climate change, and racial and economic injustice pose the greatest risks to human lives and livelihoods, the increase in global military expenditures in 2020 marks a dismal failure by policymakers across the world to address the most urgent challenges we face”.

He argued that even a fraction of. the nearly $2 trillion spent on the military last year could have gone a long way towards sustainable investments in public health, environmental protection, and combating inequality.

“World leaders can and must do better,” said Hartung.

The UN Office for Disarmament Affairs (UNODA) points out that over the past century, governments have sought ways to reach a global agreement on reductions in military expenditures. Various proposals were discussed in the League of Nations, and later in the UN. Early proposals in the UN focused on reducing the expenditures of States with large militaries, and on freeing up funds for development aid.

China’s J-15 Naval Fighter Jet. Credit: Chinese Military Review

“But proposals for cutting military spending did not materialize,” says UNODA. However, they led to the development of the UN Standardized Instrument for Reporting Military Expenditures in 1981—later renamed United Nations Report on Military Expenditures (MilEx)—under which countries are encouraged to report on their military expenditures.

https://undocs.org/en/A/75/140

Dr. Natalie J. Goldring, a Senior Fellow and Adjunct Full Professor with the Security Studies Program in the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University, told IPS “the latest military spending data from SIPRI are difficult to reconcile with the reality of the world we live in today”.

In a year in which the global community was dealing with the horrors of the Covid-19 pandemic, SIPRI’s data show that military spending continued unabated. Military spending increased in nine of the 10 countries with the highest military expenditures, she pointed out.

Even though the global economy as measured by global gross domestic product (GDP) decreased by 4.4 percent, she said, global military spending increased 2.6 percent over the year. Global military spending is going in exactly the wrong direction.

“Unfortunately, the United States continues to lead the world in military spending, accounting for 39 percent of the global total,” said Dr Goldring, who is Visiting Professor of the Practice in Duke University’s Washington DC program and also represents the Acronym Institute at the United Nations on conventional weapons and arms trade issues.

According to SIPRI’s data, that’s more than the rest of the top 10 military spenders combined. And It’s more than twice the total of the countries which are most commonly perceived by US policymakers as its main military competitors, Russia and China, she added.

Dr. Alon Ben-Meir, professor of international relations at the Center for Global Affairs at New York University, told IPS it is indeed ironic that four of the five permanent members of the UNSC are the largest military spenders.

“The more ironic problem is the fact that all of these countries spend a small fraction of these amounts on social programs, which explains to a great extent the growing poverty in all of these countries”.

Needless to say, he noted, the key to reducing military budgets is directly connected to the level of tension between the various countries.

“I do not expect any serious discussion about world disarmament unless many of the consuming conflicts are resolved, and in particular the growing, rather than diminishing, tension between the United States, Russia, and China,” Dr Ben-Meir declared.

‘The recent increases in US military spending can be primarily attributed to heavy investment in research and development, and several long-term projects such as modernizing the US nuclear arsenal and large-scale arms procurement,’ said Alexandra Marksteiner, a researcher with SIPRI’s Arms and Military Expenditure Programme.

Meanwhile, China’s military expenditure, the second highest in the world, is estimated to have totalled $252 billion in 2020. This represents an increase of 1.9 per cent over 2019 and 76 per cent over the decade 2011–20. China’s spending has risen for 26 consecutive years, the longest series of uninterrupted increases by any country in the SIPRI Military Expenditure Database.

In an open letter to Secretary-General Antonio Guterres last September, the Berlin-based International Peace Bureau called for world disarmament and the reduction of global military spending.

“We write to you on behalf of the International Peace Bureau and more than 11.000 signatories to express our support for your call for a global ceasefire. We would also like to emphasize the need for (nuclear) disarmament and the reallocation of money from the military to healthcare, social, and environmental needs – to the fulfilment of the Social Development Goals.”

This pandemic has also made clear that states need to re-prioritize their spending. While many of the problems raised by the pandemic could have been at least partially solved, it was the lack of funding which hindered it, the letter declared.

Last month, the United Nations was hoping to raise soma $3.85bn from more than 100 governments and donors at a virtual pledging conference. The funds were meant to avert widespread famine in the world’s worst humanitarian crisis in Yemen,

But the total pledges amounted to only $1.7bn – less than half – in what the UN secretary general described as a “disappointing outcome”. “Millions of Yemeni children, women and men desperately need aid to live. Cutting aid is a death sentence,” António Guterres said in a statement.

In its latest study, SIPRI said even though military spending rose globally, some countries explicitly reallocated part of their planned military spending to pandemic response, such as Chile and South Korea. Several others, including Brazil and Russia, spent considerably less than their initial military budgets for 2020.

‘We can say with some certainty that the pandemic did not have a significant impact on global military spending in 2020,’ said Dr Diego Lopes da Silva, Researcher with the SIPRI Arms and Military Expenditure Programme. ‘It remains to be seen whether countries will maintain this level of military spending through a second year of the pandemic.’

Dr Goldring pointed out that in 2020, approximately 1.8 million people around the world died of covid. SIPRI’s military spending figures suggest that the countries with the highest military expenditures decided that business as usual was the correct direction to follow, despite the covid pandemic.

“This is a time for reevaluating priorities. Countries should be giving priority to the health and welfare of their people, rather than continuing to fund the military-industrial complex. Cutting military spending would free funds for human needs and sustainable development.”

“The UN has suggested diverting funds from military expenditures to fund sustainable development. But in reality, this isn’t a question of diverting funds – it’s devoting them to what they should have been allocated to in the first place.”

“In the early days of his Administration, President Biden has not shown an inclination to reverse the United States’ excessive military spending patterns. He is proceeding with expensive new nuclear weapons and continuing to propose bloated military budgets.

There’s still time to reevaluate this approach, restructure US military spending, and focus on human needs. Cutting the military budget would also free US financial resources to help deal with the urgent global problems of the covid pandemic and the climate crisis.”

“More than a decade ago, then UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said, “The world is over armed, and peace is underfunded.” Unfortunately, this statement continues to be true.”

*Thalif Deen is the author of the newly-released book on the United Nations titled “No Comment – and Don’t Quote Me on That.” The 220-page book is peppered with scores of anecdotes– from the serious to the hilarious– and is available on Amazon worldwide and at the Vijitha Yapa bookshop in Sri Lanka. The links follow:
https://www.rodericgrigson.com/no-comment-by-thalif-deen/
https://www.vijithayapa.com/

The post World Military Spending Rises to a Hefty $2.0 Trillion Despite UN Pleas for Cutbacks appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Categories: Africa

Youth Demand Action on Nature, Following IUCN’s First-Ever Global Youth Summit

Fri, 04/23/2021 - 15:00

The United Nations Secretary-General’s Envoy on Youth, Jayathma Wickramanayake, told IPS that the Summit achieved an important goal of bringing institutions and political conversations closer to young people. Clockwise from top left: Jayathma Wickramanayake, Swetha Stotra Bhashyam, Emmanuel Sindikubwabo, Diana Garlytska. Courtesy: International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN)

By Alison Kentish
UNITED NATIONS, Apr 23 2021 (IPS)

Following almost two weeks of talks on issues such as climate change, innovation, marine conservation and social justice, thousands of young people from across the globe concluded the first-ever International Union for Conservation of Nature’s (IUCN) One Nature One Future Global Youth Summit with a list of demands for action on nature.

Under three umbrella themes of diversity, accessibility and intersectionality, they are calling on countries and corporations to invest the required resources to redress environmental racism and climate injustice, create green jobs, engage communities for biodiversity protection, safeguard the ocean, realise gender equality for climate change mitigation and empower underrepresented voices in environmental policymaking.

“Young people talk about these key demands that they have and most of the time, they are criticised for always saying ‘I want this,’ and are told ‘but you’re not even sure you know what you can do,’” Global South Focal Point for the Global Youth Biodiversity Network (GYBN) Swetha Stotra Bhashyam told IPS. “So we linked our demands to our own actions through our ‘Your Promise, Our Future’ campaign and are showing world leaders what we are doing for the world and then asking them what they are going to do for us and our future.”

Bhashyam is one of the young people dedicated to climate and conservation action. A zoologist who once studied rare species from the field in India, she told IPS that while she hoped to someday return to wildlife studies and research, her skills in advocacy and rallying young people are urgently needed. Through her work with GYBN, the youth constituency recognised under the Convention on Biological Diversity, she stated proudly that the network has truly become ‘grassroots,’ with 46 national chapters. She said the IUCN Global Youth Summit, which took place from Apr. 5 to 16, gave youth networks like hers an unprecedented platform to reach tens of thousands of the world’s youth.

“The Summit was able to create spaces for young people to voice their opinions. We in the biodiversity space have these spaces, but cannot reach the numbers that IUCN can. IUCN not only reached a larger subset of youth, but gave us an open space to talk about critical issues,” she said. “They even let us write a blog about it on their main IUCN page. It’s called IUCN Crossroads. They tried to ensure that the voice of young people was really mainstream in those two weeks.”

The United Nations Secretary-General’s Envoy on Youth, Jayathma Wickramanayake, told IPS that the Summit achieved an important goal of bringing institutions and political conversations closer to young people. During her tenure, Wickramanayake has advocated for a common set of principles for youth engagement within the UN system, based on rights, safety and adequate financing. She said it is important for institutions to open their doors to meaningful engagement with young people.

“I remember in 8th or 9th grade in one of our biology classes, we were taught about endangered animal species. We learned about this organisation called IUCN, which works on biodiversity. In my head, this was a big organisation that was out of my reach as a young person.

“But having the opportunity to attend the IUCN Summit, even virtually, engage with its officials and engage with other young people, really gave me and perhaps gave other young people a sense of belonging and a sense of taking us closer to institutions trying to achieve the same goals as we are as youth advocates.”

The Youth Envoy said the Summit was timely for young people, allowing them to meet virtually following a particularly difficult year and during a pandemic that has cost them jobs, education opportunities and raised anxieties.

“Youth activists felt that the momentum we had created from years of campaigning, protesting and striking school would be diluted because of this uncertainty and postponement of big negotiations. In order to keep the momentum high and maintain the pressure on institutions and governments, summits like this one are extremely important,” Wickramanayake said.

Global Youth Summit speakers during live sessions and intergenerational dialogues. Courtesy: International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN)

Other outcomes of the Global Youth Summit included calls to:

advance food sovereignty for marginalised communities, which included recommendations to promote climate-smart farming techniques through direct access to funding for marginalised communities most vulnerable to the impacts of climate change and extreme events,
motivate creative responses to the climate emergency, and
engineer sustainable futures through citizen science, which included recommendations to develop accessible education materials that promote the idea that everyone can participate in data collection and scientific knowledge creation.

The event was billed as not just a summit, but an experience. There were a number of sessions live streamed over the two weeks, including on youth engagement in conservation governance, a live story slam event, yoga as well as a session on how to start up and scale up a sustainable lifestyle business. There were also various networking sessions.

Diana Garlytska of Lithuania represented Coalition WILD, as the co-chair of the youth-led organisation, which works to create lasting youth leadership for the planet.

She told IPS the Summit was a “very powerful and immersive experience”.

“I am impressed at how knowledgeable the young people of different ages were. Many spoke about recycling projects and entrepreneurship activities from their own experiences. Others shared ideas on how to use different art forms for communicating climate emergencies. Somehow, the conversation I most vividly remember was on how to disclose environmental issues in theatrical performances. I’m taking that with me as food for thought,” Garlytska said.

For Emmanuel Sindikubwabo of Rwanda’s reforestation and youth environmental education organisation We Do GREEN, the Summit provided excellent networking opportunities.

“I truly believe that youth around the world are better connected because of the Summit. It’s scary because so much is going wrong because of the pandemic, but exciting because there was this invitation to collaborate. There is a lot of youth action taking place already. We need to do better at showcasing and supporting it,” he told IPS.

Sindikubwabo said he is ready to implement what he learned at the Summit.

“The IUCN Global Youth Summit has provided my team and I at We Do GREEN new insight and perspective from the global youth community that will be useful to redefine our programming in Rwanda….as the world faces the triple-crises; climate, nature and poverty, we made a lot of new connections that will make a significant positive change in our communities and nation in the near future.”

The Global Youth Summit took place less than six months before the IUCN World Conservation Congress, scheduled forSep. 3 to 11. Its outcomes will be presented at the Congress.

Reflecting on the just-concluded event, the UN Secretary-General’s Envoy on Youth is hoping to see more of these events.

“I would like to see that this becomes the norm. This was IUCN’s first youth summit, which is great and I hope that it will not be the last, that it will just be a beginning of a longer conversation and more sustainable conversation with young people on IUCN… its work, its strategies, policies and negotiations,” Wickramanayake said.

The post Youth Demand Action on Nature, Following IUCN’s First-Ever Global Youth Summit appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Categories: Africa

Pathogens, Public Health, & Political Will: Why Sustained Leadership is Critical

Fri, 04/23/2021 - 11:44

Two decades of investments in malaria so far have saved a staggering 7.6 million lives and prevented 1.5 billion malaria cases. But progress plateaued by the end of 2019 with political will and funding declining. Credit: Mercedes Sayagues/IPS

By Joy Phumaphi and Sarthak Das
Apr 23 2021 (IPS)

The occasion of World Malaria Day amidst a global pandemic warrants an examination of the intersection between our decades long battle against the world’s oldest known fever and the newest known pathogen fueling a global pandemic.

In our estimation, one theme is abundantly clear: effective management of COVID-19 through coherent public health responses protecting their people are underpinned by strong leadership. For months now, we are largely operating with the same set of public health guidance such as physical distancing and masking.

When national leadership decide to prioritize an issue, there is no question that progress will follow; malaria provides an excellent example. After two decades of strong political commitment and effective interventions, 21 countries from every region worldwide eliminated malaria, and many more are on the cusp of elimination. 7.6 million deaths have been averted since 2000

From Singapore to Spain, Mauritania to Manhattan, outcomes, however, have been radically different. Yes, capacities to test, track and treat vary widely; the poor face greater risk exposure. Even with these disparities, it is clear that leadership is key: from accepting the guidance of science to the role of communities in translating policies into action.

How then, in the midst of a global pandemic, can we accelerate the fight against malaria? Indeed, what are relevant lessons from malaria for public health amidst COVID-19?

Three areas are critical to re-accelerate the momentum and ensure malaria elimination remains a viable goal.

First, we must maintain the political will that drives leadership at multiple levels– families to communities to districts up to the national level.

Second, we need sustained financing for malaria and to communicate effectively to leaders the return on investment in terms of improved health outcomes.

Third, we must clearly articulate the link between malaria and health systems strengthening.

Leadership & continued renewal of political commitment

Progress to date has shown that political will is fundamental to elimination. Leaders in the two regions have demonstrated this political will.

From the 2000 Abuja Declaration, 2006 Abuja Call, 2012 African Union Roadmap, 2013 Abuja Declaration to the 2014 commitment of East Asia Summit Leaders to eliminate malaria in Asia Pacific by 2030 and the commitment of the Heads of State and Government of Africa to eliminate malaria also by 2030.

We believe that with continued political leadership; reinforced by increased public and private sector funding to expand access to life-saving tools, we can – and must – end malaria. The establishment of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB and Malaria, the President’s Malaria Initiative as well as ALMA and APLMA were due to this political commitment and demonstrates shared responsibility and global solidarity.

To effectively translate political will to action and impact, sub-national leadership at the district, provincial and state levels is also critical, particularly as we approach elimination. Strong local leadership can support sub-national tailoring of interventions based on locally available data to maximize impact in both the Asia Pacific and in sub Saharan Africa.

To drive the malaria response, joining the dots coherently between all levels of Governments, from Heads of State right to the hearts of communities, including the most vulnerable and hard to reach, is the only way to ensure sustainable change.

Sustain Financing for Malaria

Political will translated to financial commitment for malaria must be sustained. We have come so far and have a historic opportunity to end a preventable and curable disease, in a time marked by devastating communicable disease impact.

Two decades of investments in malaria so far have saved a staggering 7.6 million lives and prevented 1.5 billion malaria cases, which in turn has significantly reduced burdens on health systems worldwide, improved maternal and child health, survival and prosperity.

But WHO’s 2020 Global Malaria Report shows progress plateaued by the end of 2019 with political will and funding declining. There is too much at stake if we do not sustain the momentum on the gains we have made to date: Malaria can put immense strain on economies, having a damaging impact on some nations’ GDP by as much as an estimated 5 – 6%.

It has been estimated that the malaria “penalty” to GDP ranges from 0.41% of GDP in Ghana to 8.9% in Chad, all of which could be regained following elimination of malaria. Complete eradication of the disease would increase GDP in Uganda by 50 million USD.

In Asia, despite the progress made, malaria elimination has the potential to save over 400,000 lives and avert 123 million malaria cases, translating to almost $90 billion in economic benefits for Asia Pacific.

Countries in Africa are rolling out and leading multisectoral End Malaria Councils and Funds which are keeping malaria high on the local political, development and local funding agenda. These institutions have resulted in increased action from the private sector and the public, sustaining the countries’ responses.

Surging investments in ending malaria is the pathway to eradication and will strengthen our ability to respond to future threats in this pandemic era. Investments in malaria have supported the scaling up of a community health workforce that serves as the eyes and ears on the ground for millions of fever-suffering children, adolescents and adults that don’t reach health clinics.

Fighting malaria to build stronger health systems

The basic yet most critical component of the fight against malaria, infectious disease management and public health at large is to test, track and treat. Strengthened surveillance, real-time data, and diagnostics are critical for early detection of malaria and other infectious diseases like COVID-19.

Africa has established the Africa CDC and its Regional Collaborating Centres to support African countries in their efforts to strengthen health systems and improve surveillance, emergency response, prevention and control of diseases. Asia Pacific countries are looking to establish similar mechanisms in the wake of the pandemic.

Countries that invested in frontline malaria capacity and interventions – especially Community Health Workers– are now leveraging them effectively for the COVID-19 response. Last year alone, malaria control efforts prevented ~500 million fevers, and one million Community Health Workers equipped with malaria Rapid Diagnostic Tests diagnosed 267 million fevers. Seven of ten symptoms overlap between malaria and COVID-19, led by fever.

This speaks to the importance of integrating the surveillance of malaria within the broader health system. From 40,000 Health Extension Workers and an estimated three million Women’s Development Army Volunteers in Ethiopia, 33,000 trained front line healthcare workers in Uganda, to 1 million Village Health Volunteers in Thailand – all are managing COVID-19 while continuing to provide effective malaria case management during the outbreak.

While there is no single magic bullet for malaria elimination, evidence suggests that investments in the fight against malaria can in turn strengthen health system preparedness and help protect against current and future pandemics.

This World Malaria Day, we must come together as political, social, religious, administrative and economic leaders and recommit the political will and combined action to protect our people, to re-accelerate gains against malaria, and leverage malaria investments to fight COVID-19 and emerging diseases.

We have the tools and technology to test, track, and treat the most prevalent forms of the malaria parasite. Countries like Bhutan or Botswana have shown us what progress is possible; places the ten highest burden countries in Africa as well high burden countries in Asia Pacific such as India, Indonesia, Papua New Guinea reveal what work remains.

We know these challenges can be addressed; seizing this moment to double down on accelerating the task of malaria elimination while strengthening health systems is not only possible, but critical for our planet in the age of pandemics. To support this, platforms that allow for the exchange of expertise among leaders across districts and across national borders, that help track policy progress towards the end goal and drive accountability, can help make the difference.

Ms Joy Phumaphi is Executive Secretary, African Leaders Malaria Alliance (ALMA), former Minister of Health, Botswana

Dr. Sarthak Das is DrPH, Chief Executive Officer, Asia Pacific Leaders Malaria Alliance (APLMA) & Communicable Disease Threats Initiative

The post Pathogens, Public Health, & Political Will: Why Sustained Leadership is Critical appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Categories: Africa

Education Cannot Wait Calls on World Leaders to Urgently Fund Education in the Democratic Republic of the Congo with US$45.3 Million

Fri, 04/23/2021 - 10:51

ECW Director Yasmine Sherif visits the Modale ‘Settlement of Hope’ with UN High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

By External Source
KINSHASA, Democratic Republic of the Congo , Apr 23 2021 (IPS-Partners)

Education Cannot Wait (ECW) Director Yasmine Sherif today called on world leaders to urgently support the children and youth in desperate need of education support in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), affected by new emergencies and multiple protracted crisis.

An additional US$45.3 million is required to reach 200,000 children and youth impacted by the large-scale, complex and protracted crisis in the DRC through Education Cannot Wait’s multi-year resilience programme. The programme was launched with US$22.2 million in catalytic seed funding from ECW in December 2020, and is delivered by UNICEF as grantee, through a joint programme with the Government of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, UN agencies and civil society organizations.

Sherif, the Director of ECW – the United Nations global fund for education in emergencies – made the appeal after meeting this week with senior government officials of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, key donors, UN agencies, and international and National NGOs in Kinshasa and visiting refugees from the Central African Republic in a settlement located 30 kms outside of Yakoma, Nord-Ubangi province, DRC.

“We can no longer turn a blind eye to this crisis and away from those left furthest behind. We have a global responsibility, moral imperative and commitments to honour before those suffering the most in this world. We urgently call on donors, the private sector and other partners to mobilize an additional US$45.3 million to reach 200,000 children and youth impacted by this crisis in DRC by 2023,” said Sherif. “The world must respond to this pressing crisis of profound human suffering. Girls face significant risks of child marriage, early pregnancy and sexual gender-based violence. Many children may never return to school, be forced to find work, join armed groups and pushed even further to the margins, of no return,” said Sherif. “Education provides these children and youth with learning, safety and protection, it provides them with hope to arise from the ashes of human misery and create a better future.”

Children and youth face significant protection risks in this escalating humanitarian and long-standing development crisis. According to recent estimates by local authorities, over 90,000 refugees have arrived in the DRC since the December 2020 presidential elections in neighboring Central African Republic, which displaced nearly a third of the country’s population. This has occurred on top of ongoing crises in other parts of the country, such as in the provinces of Ituri, Tanganyika and Kasai Central. Throughout the country, the impact of COVID-19 and epidemics such as Ebola and cholera have been disastrous. School closures have resulted in at least six months of missed learning.

Education Cannot Wait and global partners have responded to the escalating humanitarian crisis in the DRC and neighboring countries with a number of education emergency investments in addition to the triple-nexus multi-year resilience programme delivered by UNICEF and partners.

An additional US$3.8 million has been allocated for ECW’s COVID-19 education in emergency response, and an ongoing multi-year resilience programme in the Central African Republic will reach an estimated 900,000 children in the next three years.

During this week’s visit, Sherif and the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, Filippo Grandi, announced an additional US$2 million ECW first emergency response grant to provide educational support for the influx of refugees.

Despite these ongoing support and efforts by all partners in DRC, funding is a major obstacle to ensure the right to a quality education for the children and adolescents in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

The post Education Cannot Wait Calls on World Leaders to Urgently Fund Education in the Democratic Republic of the Congo with US$45.3 Million appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

4.7 million refugee, displaced and host community children and youth in urgent need of educational support

The post Education Cannot Wait Calls on World Leaders to Urgently Fund Education in the Democratic Republic of the Congo with US$45.3 Million appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Categories: Africa

One Year Later; No Justice for Victims of 2020 Mali Protests & Coup

Fri, 04/23/2021 - 08:27

Amnesty International investigations revealed that 18 people were killed and dozens injured, despite military claims that the 2020 coup was bloodless. The organisation has listed several instances of fatal shots being fired by security forces, backed up by witness testimonies and statements from the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Mali (MINUSMA) (pictured here in this file photo). Courtesy: UN Photo/Sylvain Liechti

By Alison Kentish
UNITED NATIONS, Apr 23 2021 (IPS)

It has been about a year since anti-government demonstrations and a coup in Mali, which saw 18 people, including a 12-year-old boy being killed. But there has been no justice for the families of those injured and killed by defence and security forces during last year’s May to August protests.

Today, Apr. 23, Amnesty International released the findings of a report into injuries and fatalities that occurred titled “Killed, wounded, and forgotten? Accountability for the killings during demonstrations and the coup in Mali”.

Following field and remote interviews with victims’ families, civil society representatives, journalists and members of the judiciary, it chronicled the use of deadly force by armed forces in the towns of Kayes and Sikasso, as well as the capital Bamako.

The military seized power in Mali after forcing President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita to resign. It was Mali’s fourth coup since independence in 1960 and its second in a decade. His resignation followed months of opposition protests in the capital and the soldiers who orchestrated the coup stated that it was done to save the country. The international community strongly denounced the ouster, with the soldiers promising to oversee a transition to new elections and elect an interim, civilian leader.

According to Amnesty International, investigations revealed that 18 people were killed and dozens injured, despite military claims that the coup was bloodless. The organisation says the lack of accountability is troubling.

“Many victims were hit or wounded in the chest, sometimes in the back. Many were bystanders or people at work or at home, indicating that security forces were not firing in self-defence or response to an imminent threat of death or serious injury – in contravention of international standards,” Amnesty International said.

The document lists several instances of fatal shots being fired by security forces, backed up by witness testimonies and statements from the United Nations Stabilisation Mission in Mali (MINUSMA). This included the May 6 killing of a man in Sikasso, a city in southern Mali.

“Despite this, the authorities have not investigated the use of firearms by law enforcement against demonstrators in Sikasso leaving the families of those killed without justice, truth and reparation,” the report said.

Five days after the Sikasso incident, violent protests against police deaths resulted in more bloodshed. According to the report, an off-duty police officer shot a 17-year-old who was fleeing detention. It adds that while the officer was suspended, the teen’s death sparked widespread protests, with angry mobs attacking police stations and government buildings. It states that police fired live rounds in the crowds, leaving a 30-year-old man and a 12-year-old boy dead.

The Amnesty report says that a lack of accountability for police deaths triggered uprisings in other areas in Mali, adding that in the capital, protests in July which turned violent were ‘heavily repressed by the authorities,’ adding that armed forces fired into throngs of demonstrators, leaving 4 people dead and dozens injured.

“Although some demonstrators threw stones at security forces, occupied public buildings and at times, refused to comply with orders given by law enforcement officials, it is clear from the cases documented by Amnesty International that most of the killings and serious injuries resulted from the excessive use of force by security forces,” the report said.

Demonstrators took to the streets with numerous grievances. There was anger over the results of the parliamentary elections, stringent measures in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, including restrictions to freedom of movement and peaceful assembly, high unemployment, security and social grievances.

However, among bystanders also became casualties, including Ibrahim Traore’, a 16-year-old boy, whom the report states was shot twice by police. His brother told Amnesty International that he was denied a copy of Traore’s autopsy report.

The rights group says it worked hard to ensure that it could put a name and face to the victims, so that they are not forgotten. It adds despite progress, accountability is lacking. They say that they have been told that investigations into lethal use of force by security forces were opened, but at the time, February 2021, those probes were in the preliminary stages.

Amnesty International says it is time for accuracy and accountability. It is calling on the transitional authorities to ensure impartial and prompt investigations into cases of excessive and lethal use of force by law enforcement officers, protect freedoms of expression and assembly according to international human rights standards and ensure law enforcement authorities respect the United Nations basic principles on the use of force and firearms by law enforcement officials.

“The Malian authorities must show their determination to fight impunity by first acknowledging these killings. Victims of illegal use of force and firearms and their families must be provided with justice, truth and full reparations,” Amnesty International said.

The post One Year Later; No Justice for Victims of 2020 Mali Protests & Coup appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Categories: Africa

On World Malaria Day, We Must Step Up Efforts to Combat Malaria

Fri, 04/23/2021 - 08:04

Distribution of mosquito nets in Kadiolo, region of Sikasso, Mali June 2020. Credit: PSI, A US based NGO. The UN commemorates World Malaria Day on Sunday April 25.

By Hervé Verhoosel
GENEVA, Apr 23 2021 (IPS)

Despite its 229 million cases and 409,000 deaths in 2019, malaria is an overlooked epidemic. The emergence of COVID-19 has thrown health systems into disarray and forced countries to shift their focus from malaria to the pandemic response, threatening to reverse 20 years of malaria gains.

Now, as we enter the second year of the pandemic, the global response to COVID-19 must not come at the expense of progress against malaria, a preventable and treatable disease. Not only is eliminating malaria possible, but it is also crucial to fighting current and future diseases.

It is vital that the international community remembers that eliminating malaria remains an achievable goal for all countries. Indeed, more countries than ever are either achieving or approaching elimination.

In 2017, as part of the “E-2020 initiative”, the World Health Organization (WHO) identified 21 countries that could defeat malaria by 2020. Spread across five regions of the world, these countries share the ambitious goal of achieving zero indigenous cases of malaria by 2020.

And last year, Algeria, Belize, Cabo Verde, China, El Salvador, the Islamic Republic of Iran, and Malaysia all reported zero indigenous malaria cases, achieving their goal, while others made impressive strides forward.

Ridding the world of malaria is a central component of achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), linking closely to targets on poverty, inequality, and health and well-being. But as long as it persists, malaria will continue to have a devastating impact on the most vulnerable communities.

Innovation plays a vital role in the elimination of this disease. New tools, such as those being developed by Unitaid and partners, are needed in the face of emerging insecticide and drug resistance. These can only be developed with sustained and significant investment in malaria research.

Hervé Verhoosel. during aa press briefing at the UN in Geneva

Global investments to end malaria have an enormous return on investment. In 2018, they saved 600,000 lives and prevented close to 100 million malaria cases compared to 2000 levels.

In the Asia-Pacific region, weighing against the epidemiological and economic costs of inaction, Wellcome Trust researchers estimated that eliminating malaria by 2030 could save over 400,000 lives, prevent 123 million malaria cases, and lead to a 6:1 return on investment.

These investments also strengthen health systems that are vital to responding to threats such as COVID-19, and help address other vector-borne diseases.

Together with partners, global health agency Unitaid has been supporting the evaluation of the performance of new bed nets under real conditions in malaria-endemic countries to guide policy on their use.

This aims to open a market for these new nets and bring about competition among manufacturers, leading to lower prices and a sustainable tool for countries.

Unitaid also invests to accelerate access to next-generation insecticides to reestablish indoor spraying as a malaria-control measure, and to vary new spray formulas to prevent mosquito populations from growing resistant to them.

Unitaid’s work has also resulted in the delivery of seasonal malaria chemoprevention to over six million children across seven countries in the Sahel, fulfilling more than 25% of the region’s need, while monitoring the safety, efficacy, cost, and public health impact of such programmes at scale.

This World Malaria Day, the global health community must reaffirm its commitment to combat malaria by increasing global investments to prevent, control, and ultimately eliminate this disease. COVID-19 has exposed the weaknesses in health systems around the world. Now is the moment to step up efforts against this preventable disease.

About Unitaid
*Unitaid is a global health agency engaged in finding innovative solutions to prevent, diagnose, and treat diseases more quickly, cheaply, and effectively, in low- and middle-income countries. Our work includes funding initiatives to address major diseases such as HIV/AIDS, malaria, and tuberculosis, as well as HIV co-infections and co-morbidities such as cervical cancer and hepatitis C, and cross-cutting areas, such as fever management.

Unitaid is now applying its expertise to address challenges in advancing new therapies and diagnostics for the COVID-19 pandemic, serving as a key member of the Access to COVID Tools Accelerator. Unitaid is hosted by the World Health Organization.

The post On World Malaria Day, We Must Step Up Efforts to Combat Malaria appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

The writer is Spokesperson and Head of Communications at Unitaid*, hosted by the World Health Organization (WHO)

The WHO says Malaria is a life-threatening disease caused by parasites that are transmitted to people through the bites of infected female Anopheles mosquitoes. It is preventable and curable. WHO recommends protection for all people at risk of malaria with effective malaria vector control. Two forms of vector control – insecticide-treated mosquito nets and indoor residual spraying – are effective in a wide range of circumstances.

The post On World Malaria Day, We Must Step Up Efforts to Combat Malaria appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Categories: Africa

Towards a More Democratic & Inclusive UN this International Day of Multilateralism

Thu, 04/22/2021 - 19:02

United Nations, Geneva. Credit: Mathias P.R.Reding

By Andreas Bummel, Caroline Vernaillen and Mandeep Tiwana*
BERLIN/COLOGNE/NEW YORK, Apr 22 2021 (IPS)

One of the most recently established international UN days is the day of multilateralism and diplomacy for peace. First observed on 24 April 2019 to promote UN values and to reaffirm the faith of people in the purposes and principles of the UN Charter, the relevance and the irony of this day is obvious.

On the one hand, COVID-19 vaccine nationalism is causing huge inequities in the supply of lifesaving immunization from reaching disadvantaged people, especially those in the Global South who need them the most amid a global pandemic of epic proportions. On the other hand, aggressive militarism and proliferation of weapons of war by the permanent members of the UN Security Council threatens international peace and security, diverting vital resources that could be used to address inequality and exclusion around the globe.

The need for inclusive and democratic global governance to support the three founding pillars of the UN – peace and security, human rights, and development – remains pressing. Yet, major reforms have been elusive despite a wealth of reports and innovative ideas drawn up by experts and activists.

Over the years, geo-political intransigence of powerful actors and entrenched state interests have remained a major stumbling block. However, a potential breakthrough was achieved in 2020 through a UN General Assembly resolution to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the UN.

The resolution includes a commitment to upgrade the world body and tasks Secretary-General Antonio Guterres to compile a report in 2021 on furthering ‘Our Common Agenda’ with a focus on reinvigorating inclusive, networked and effective multilateralism.

The report is supposed to be submitted to the UN General Assembly by September this year. It’s likely that the report will take into account findings from a year-long global listening exercise undertaken by the UN in 2020.

Over 1.5 million people from 195 countries participated in surveys and dialogues on people’s priorities and expectations from international cooperation. Notably, while the overwhelming majority (97%) saw the work of the UN as indispensable, four out of ten also reported that the UN felt remote from their lives.

People across the world support the UN’s mission but want the institution itself to be more transparent, accountable and participatory. In this spirit, over 80 international, regional and national civil society organisations and networks have come together under an initiative titled “We the Peoples,” drawing inspiration from the opening words of the UN Charter.

United Nations Headquarters, New York. Credit: Tomas Eidsvold

Three practical ideas aimed at enhancing the agency of people, elected representatives and organised civil society in global governance lie at the heart of a joint statement on inclusive global governance published by the initiative on 23 April 2021:

First, a citizens’ initiative could be established to mandate key UN bodies including the General Assembly and Security Council to act on matters of global importance following a joint petition signed by a certain number of citizens around the world. Such a mechanism would enable people to have their voices heard and also provide an avenue to shape the agenda of the UN.

Second, people across the world could be given an opportunity for direct representation and voice at the UN through a parliamentary assembly. Deficits in representative democracy that exist in far too many parts of the world are further accentuated at the UN through a state-centric bureaucracy driven model. A parliamentary assembly could help make the UN more accessible to people.

Third, an office of a civil society envoy could be created to identify barriers in participation, spur inclusive convenings and drive the UN’s outreach to the public and civil society organisations. Such a champion could lead the implementation of a broader strategy for opening up the UN to people’s participation and civil society voices while addressing asymmetries in engagement across UN agencies, departments and forums.

Taken together these ideas have game-changing, transformative potential to overcome blockages in the UN system. More than that, they are also supported around the world: both a World Citizens’ Initiative and a UN Parliamentary Assembly were frequently mentioned by people who took part in last year’s UN evaluation exercise, as the UN’s own report testifies.

If implemented in earnest, these three changes will enable the UN to respond more effectively and with greater inclusivity to global challenges such as discrimination, inequality, conflict and climate change. However, their adoption will require visionary leadership and cooperation by political executives and the UN’s top management. The present system is stymied by bureaucratic approaches and a lack of imagination.

There’s clearly an opportunity to strengthen and revitalize multilateralism by enabling input and participation beyond member states. The UN needs to be fit for purpose for our times. However, a new more participatory era will require a leap of faith and courage of conviction.

Andreas Bummel is Executive Director of Democracy Without Borders based in Berlin; Caroline Vernaillen is the Global Manager for PR and Community Building at Democracy International based in Cologne; and Mandeep Tiwana is Chief Programmes Officer at CIVICUS based at their New York office.

The post Towards a More Democratic & Inclusive UN this International Day of Multilateralism appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Categories: Africa

Press Freedom under Lockdown Across Two-Thirds of the Globe

Thu, 04/22/2021 - 16:12

Reporters Without Borders said press freedom was restricted either partly or completely in two thirds of the globe. It warned that authoritarian regimes had used the pandemic to “perfect their methods of totalitarian control of information”, and as a pretext for imposing “especially repressive legislation with provisions combining propaganda with suppression of dissent”. (file photo) Credit: Miriam Gathigah/IPS

By Ed Holt
BRATISLAVA, Apr 22 2021 (IPS)

Independent journalism is facing a growing crackdown one year into the COVID-19 pandemic as governments around the world restrict access to information and muzzle critical reporting, media and rights watchdogs have warned.

Authoritarian regimes have used existing and new legislation to attack, intimidate, and jail reporters under the guise of acting to protect public health, they say, and fear the situation is unlikely to improve in many states if and when the pandemic ends.

“Dictators and authoritarian leaders exploited the cover of COVID to crackdown on independent reporting and criticism. Some, instead of battling the virus, turned their attention to fighting the media.

“Countries from Cambodia to Russia, Egypt and Brazil all sought to divert attention from their failures to deal with the health crisis by intimidating or jailing journalists,” Rob Mahoney, Deputy Executive Director of the Committee to Protect Journalists, told IPS.

Recent months have seen a slew of reports highlighting how media freedom in many places has been curbed during the pandemic.

In February, Human Rights Watch released a report COVID-19 Triggers Wave of Free Speech Abuse showing how more than 80 governments had used the COVID-19 pandemic to justify violations of rights to free speech and peaceful assembly with journalists among those affected as authorities attacked, detained, prosecuted, and in some cases killed critics, and closed media outlets, while enacting vague laws criminalising speech that they claim threatens public health.

In April, global press freedom campaigners the International Press Institute (IPI), released a report painting a similarly grim picture and detailing the physical and verbal abuse of journalists reporting on COVID-19 across the world.

And just this week, Reporters Without Borders said journalism was restricted either partly or completely in two thirds of the globe.

It warned that authoritarian regimes had used the pandemic to “perfect their methods of totalitarian control of information”, and as a pretext for imposing “especially repressive legislation with provisions combining propaganda with suppression of dissent”.

It also highlighted how some had developed legislation to criminalise publishing of ‘fake news’ relating to coronavirus reporting, and used COVID-19 as a pretence to deepen existing internet censorship and surveillance.

In some states authorities had banned publication of non-government pandemic numbers and arrested people for disseminating other figures. In others, such as Tanzania, they even went as far as imposing a complete information blackout on the pandemic, the group said.

The problems are not confined to any single area of the world, according to the groups’ reports. However, some of the most severe restrictions have been seen in the Asia-Pacific region and Africa.

Journalists on the ground in these regions have said they have seen a deterioration in press freedom over the last year.

IPS’ own correspondent and an award-winning journalist in Uganda, Michael Wambi, said that the government had used pandemic restrictions introduced for the entire population to deliberately restrict journalists’ reporting.

Presidential elections were held in the country in January and, Wambi told IPS, there were “targeted attacks on journalists in an effort to curtail them from giving coverage to leading opposition candidates” in the run up to them.

Journalists were violently attacked by police at the events, and police later accused reporters of violating COVID-19 restrictions by attending them.

Wambi said Uganda’s Police Chief, Martin Okoth Ochola, made a joke of the situation.

“He joked to journalists that ‘security forces would continue beating them to keep them out of any danger [to their own health]’,” said Wambi.

Stella Paul, IPS’ award-winning journalist in India — which RSF describes as one of the world’s most dangerous countries for journalists — told IPS: “In India, COVID restrictions were basically used as an excuse to intimidate journalists.”

Press freedom groups say the Indian government has taken advantage of the coronavirus crisis to increase its control of news coverage, using legal action against journalists who have reported information about the pandemic which differs from the official position.

Early in the pandemic, the government launched a number of legal cases against journalists for reports about the effects of the government-enforced lockdown on migrant workers while an editor of a local news portal was arrested and charged with sedition for writing about a possible change of state leadership following a rise in coronavirus cases.

“The last year has seen a lot of journalists detained while trying to report the truth about the pandemic, to get to accurate information and find things out,” said Paul.

Paul, who also writes for IPS, co-operates with a number of other journalists across Asia and says the situation for independent media in most other parts of the region is equally perilous.

“It is the same thing in many other countries. What we have seen during COVID is a lot of journalists, not just in India, asking themselves what will happen if I report on something? Will I end up in jail? They are scared of getting arrested,” she said.

One country where media freedom is seen as particularly restricted is Bangladesh. It came in at 152 out of 182 in RSF’s 2021 Press Freedom Index. The group said there had been “an alarming increase in police and civilian violence against reporters” during the pandemic with many journalists arrested and prosecuted for their reporting on it.

This has been made easier by the Digital Security Act (DSA) passed in 2018 under which “negative propaganda” can lead to a 14-year jail sentence, local journalists say.

The DSA was at the centre of the controversial death in police custody of a Bangladeshi writer and commentator earlier this year.

Mushtaq Ahmed, who was detained under the DSA in May last year for allegedly posting criticism of the government’s response to the COVID-19 on Facebook, died in police custody in February. An official investigation found he died of natural causes but others in prison with him at the time claimed he was tortured and some suspect he died of injuries sustained during his incarceration.

Few local journalists were willing to talk about their experiences of working in the country, but one, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said Ahmed’s arrest and death had had a profound effect on the media.

“After what happened to Mushtaq Ahmed, many journalists were immediately less willing to challenge anything the government said about the coronavirus pandemic,” the journalist told IPS.

“The DSA is being used to harass journalists – many have been arrested under the act after publishing news critical of the authorities.

“Doing reporting under the DSA is the main challenge for journalists in Bangladesh right now. News outlets use self-censorship to avoid harassment under the DSA. If anyone sees a single item of news that is negative about them, they can use the DSA to bring legal action against the reporter and the editor,” the journalist added.

But while the COVID-19 pandemic has undoubtedly allowed governments to crack down on critical media, there is no guarantee the situation will improve once the pandemic ends, press freedom watchdogs say.

Scott Griffen, Deputy Director at IPI, told IPS: “Who will decide when the pandemic is over? Governments for whom the pandemic is a useful tool to suppress civil liberties may be tempted to maintain a state of emergency in some form, even after the immediate health threat is ended.”

He added that there were also fears that measures introduced during the pandemic may not be rescinded at all.

“The aftermath of the September 11 attacks in the US brought with it new anti-terrorism measures including unprecedented civil liberties rollbacks. Countries around the world have used anti-terror laws to crack down on critical speech. Similarly, we fear that emergency laws introduced during the coronavirus pandemic may become part of the permanent legal framework in some states, not to mention a culture of tracking and surveillance of citizens that is very unlikely to be rolled back. This has profound implications for journalists’ privacy and their ability to protect their sources,” he said.

However, despite the bleak outlook for press freedom in many states as the pandemic drags on, there is hope that independent media will continue no matter how severely they might be restricted.

“Journalists will still produce independent reporting even in the most hostile of circumstances. That’s their mission. You can have independent journalism without democracy. But you can’t have democracy without independent journalism,” said Mahoney.

The post Press Freedom under Lockdown Across Two-Thirds of the Globe appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

May 3 is World Press Freedom Day. This feature is part of a series highlighting the current state of media freedom globally

The post Press Freedom under Lockdown Across Two-Thirds of the Globe appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Categories: Africa

Pacific Women Triennial – Flashback

Thu, 04/22/2021 - 14:09

By External Source
Apr 22 2021 (IPS-Partners)

SPC hosted the first triennial conference of Pacific women more than 40 years ago with the purpose to create a space where Pacific women could meet, share their experiences and identify measures for the advancement of women.

The Triennial Conference of Pacific Women plays a key role in linking to other intergovernmental fora due to its convening of National Women’s Machineries and women’s rights organizations. In the past, the Triennial has provided space for some preparations for the Commission on the Status of Women, as well as reflecting on progress towards gender equality commitments including the Pacific Leaders Gender Equality Declaration (PLGED) as well as the Beijing Declaration.

Watch the video below for more information about the Triennial Conference of Pacific Women and the journey in progressing gender equality in the region.

The 14th Triennial this year will focus on three key priority areas received from the Pacific Island Countries and Territories including: gender responsive climate justice, women’s economic empowerment and gender-based violence. The conference will take place from 27 – 29 April (Fiji-Time). A few pre-triennial side-events are scheduled to take place from 22-23 April in the lead up to the main conference next week. #PacificWomenTriennial #PacificPeoples

Source: The Pacific Community (SPC)

The post Pacific Women Triennial – Flashback appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Categories: Africa

Disability in Goma. The Power of Staying Together Against Covid-19, War, and Stigma

Thu, 04/22/2021 - 10:41

Credit: Elena L. Pasquini

By Elena L. Pasquini
ROME, Apr 22 2021 (IPS)

Sylvain Kakule Kadjibwami lost the use of his legs during one of those ambushes that bloodlessly bleed North Kivu. “When I was shot, I thought it was the end of my life, but when I shared it with other disabled people, I discovered that life is still possible,” he said. Now it is Covid-19 that risks destroying the dreams of Sylvain, a small trader from Goma, a city whose roads are volcanic rock-ridden screes where pick-ups trudge. Those who walk face the risk of falling at every step. However, for those who cannot, the same roads can become traps where it is not only war that kills but also a stigma fostering misery and disease.

Confined to their homes by poverty, even before the pandemic, people living with disability in the capital of North Kivu, in the East of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, must overcome obstacles higher than those erected by the lava of the Nyiragongo. They are obstacles made even more challenging by the coronavirus containment measures that are severely affecting the fragile local economy, made up of informal activities and community solidarity.

“Since the outbreak of Covid, here, in North Kivu, more than a dozen disabled people have died not because they had Covid: They have died of hunger because they had nothing to eat,” Herman Cirimwami, coordinator of the Paph, a Congolese organization that assists and protects people with disabilities, including promoting their rights and social inclusion, told Degrees of Latitude.

They die because they survive thanks solely to the solidarity of their communities, friends, and families. However, confinement has reduced everyone’s incomes along with the economic capacity of those who took care of people unable to provide for themselves. The disabled live off charity because employment has always been almost inaccessible to them.

“Most of them also beg in the street, because they can’t access employment or get a good job,” said Therese Mabulay, athlete, president of the North Kivu Paralympic Committee, and founder of Asam – Stand up disabled, a small vocational training center for women and young people with disabilities. The reason lies in a rooted prejudice. The disabled are perceived as “useless” or even seen as the “devil,” as Cirimwami said still occurs to those suffering from albinism.

Between Goma and Rwanda, the crisis of small traders

A man who trades food in Goma. Credit: Elena L. Pasquini

The few people disabled who have managed to build a business are struggling to not slip into complete destitution, as is happening to the small traders who transport agricultural products across the border with Rwanda: flourishing commerce in the restless heart of the African Great Lakes region, which, for decades, has been tax-free for people with disabilities.

Corn, flour, bananas, plantains, cabbage, potatoes, beans: They use tricycles or rickshaws adapted for those who cannot walk. Propelled by the strength of arms or by men paid to push, they defy rough terrain, loaded almost to instability. These are small ventures that play a key role in the food market of North Kivu’s capital, providing goods at competitive prices compared to those who use trucks. They are exhausted by the eight-month closure of the border during last year’s lockdown, as well as by the costs of Covid tests and passes introduced after the pandemic began.

Jacques Bisimwa Mitima is president of the Association of People with Physical Disability Tuungane, which means “let’s unite” in Kiswahili. It is composed of two hundred and ten members who trade food across the “petite barrière” between the twin cities of Goma, in the DRC, and Gisenyi, in Rwanda. When we met him, he was coordinating a meeting that was a forest of hand-bikes, raised arms, and determination. Members—who tax themselves to help those in need pay for medical expenses or for funerals for those who cannot afford them—were electing new leadership and discussing financial solutions to the crisis. Their life has been harder after the Covid-19 outbreak.

“We have many difficulties. Some of our members have been evicted because they did not have the money to pay the rent. We spent the little money we had during the period of the border closure,” Mitima said. On his tricycle, the painted word “President” and the flag of the DRC are the graphic representations of the charisma of this man who started to trade almost twenty years ago. He has five children and other young members of the family to feed: thirteen people who live on his income. Before Covid, he told us, you could earn as much as fifteen dollars a day. Today, that amount is perhaps fifty cents: “We are looking for some money just to eat and we eat with difficulty,” he added.

Jacques Bisimwa Mitima, president of TUUNGANE. Credit: Elena L. Pasquini

To cross the border, traders need the CEPGL, an administrative document from the Great Lakes Community that must be renewed every two weeks, as well as a Covid test, to be repeated every two or three weeks as well. Maman Soki, a mother of five, is also in the business: “We pay five dollars for the test and thirteen for the CEPGL … and the rickshaw must have the same documents too. So, you have to invest thirty-six dollars every two weeks. The small gain we might get is spent on customs,” she explained. “We live a really difficult life, but at least they have reopened the border.”

It can happen, however, that the documents necessary to travel must be renewed even before goods are sold. This pushes traders into the grip of debt, as Sylvain Kakule Kadjibwami told us. He was a driver before being wounded. “On April 28, 2009, our vehicle was attacked on our way back from Bunia. Armed bandits shot the car I was driving on the Kiwanja road in Rutshuru territory. Two people died in the cabin and I was injured. Behind us, there were nine other injured but I only know of one person who survived and who is now disabled like me. The bullets hit my legs and I still have metal in [my bones]. These fragments should have been removed for a long time, but I cannot afford to pay for a new operation.”

North Kivu’s war has made Goma a city where disability is a frequent condition. Grief inflicted by a war that has not ceased for decades can be read in the amputated limbs and tortured bodies of its population. “Since 2008, people have started fleeing to the city and have settled in refugee camps. It was difficult then to return to the villages and they remained [here] … I don’t have the exact figures, but I can estimate that fifteen percent of the population of Goma has a disability,” Cirimwami said. Not only is war a cause of injuries and physical and mental traumas but it also makes disabled people more vulnerable. According to Cirimwami, many are left alone when conflicts break out. They manage to escape only with difficulty and when they reach safer places, they often do not have the means to survive.

Kadjibwami thanks God. He is alive. He has a tricycle that can cost almost $400—the investment of a lifetime. If one of those expensive vehicles were to break, for many it would mean no longer being able to work because there is no money for repairs. Now the challenge for Kadjibwami is to imagine the future despite the pandemic. Business was good before the outbreak; he could send his children to school, feed them, and save for future projects. Now, there’s only uncertainty. “I can only dream according to my income and with this one, I cannot plan anything.”

The talent of fighting against prejudice

People with disability at the “petite barrière” want to return to living off their work. They do not ask the government for help, but wish to reduce the costs that weigh too much on their fragile income. “We don’t want to beg for our dignity,” Mitima said. It is a dignity that Congolese society still struggles to recognize at all, beyond the fragility of bodies and mind.

“Towards people with problems of mobility, or people with visual impairments, there is a stigmatization … the social environment thinks those people are useless,” Mabulay explained.

Getting married is still hard for women with disabilities, and they can easily be abandoned by their husbands if they give birth to disabled children. Thus, children are not always accepted at schools and even education is not a guarantee of landing a good job. Isolation is greater for those suffering from deafness or blindness: Without knowledge of sign language or Braille, information technologies remain inaccessible.

Credit: Elena L. Pasquini

“When we try to practice sport, when we get them involved in sports, it is to show the community that people with disability have many talents, that they are persons like them, that they can do more if the society gives them a space which can allow them to be useful. For those who have [psychological] problems because they are neglected, our activity in sport is to show that they can have self-esteem, they can do more in society, they can’t be hidden in the houses but they have to show what they can do, their talents,” she added. “Our athletes feel integrated because they accept their disability, they can travel. The community is astonished when they play—wheelchair basketball, sitting volley—or when they sing. Some are singers too. They are proud.”

Making sport an integration tool, however, is a challenge that can be even harder than those faced by the athletes who brought the colors of the DRC to the Olympics in London and Rio, such as Rosette Luyina Kiese, who competes in shotput. Her right leg was amputated after she stepped on a landmine in the territory of Rushuru. In Goma, there is only an equipped space, built by the International Committee of the Red Cross, and athletes often have no money to buy equipment, or even wheelchairs to leave their houses and reach the Paralympic area. It is more difficult to reach the villages in rural North Kivu, where about one hundred and fifty armed groups are fighting. Yet the members of the Paralympic Committee continue to go to Sake, Rutshuru, Masisi, Lubero, and Beni and Butembo to advocate for practicing sport. “The greatest risk of working in conflict areas is the accessibility, kidnapping, and logistical resources to respond to the people in need,” said Mabulay, whose organization also implements vocation training.

Denied rights and Covid-19 prevention

Credit: Elena L. Pasquini

There are about two hundred and fifty athletes from the Paralympic Committee; about fifty are victims of war, but each awareness campaign reaches at least one thousand disabled people. This is a huge number for a single organization, but perhaps still small for a city that is estimated to have close to one million inhabitants and where the lives of most people with disabilities are consumed by poverty, between walls made of wooden boards and lava, in houses facing roads without asphalt and without light, where the water does not reach the kitchens but digs craters that only a 4 by 4 can wade through. The poor population struggles to eat and take care of themselves, vulnerable to disease and, today, more exposed than others to the risk of contracting Covid-19.

Despite the work of organizations such as those of Mabulay and Cirimwami, which provide sanitation and prevention, the situation is very serious: “In the families of these people there are no handwashers, there are no disinfectants … and thus, they are exposed to contamination from Covid. Similarly, people who go to Rwanda, pushed by others on the tricycle, cannot respect the distances of one meter; equally, the blinds, ”Cirimwami explained.

However, the health risks faced by people with disabilities are the result of longstanding limited access to basic social services and of an expensive health care system with few specialized facilities which leaves families with no other options than to “abandon the disabled at home,” Cirimwami said.

“Covid-19 came with more difficulties. Even to get information about Covid is not easy. [They] didn’t reach all kinds of disabled. People who can’t hear, who can’t move from their home, they have more difficulty being updated on the situation of Covid,” Mabualy explained. “Most of them can’t afford the kits, the safety kits to wash hands, to protect themselves.”

No access to health, education, employment, sport: That’s a question of denied rights.

Although the DRC has ratified the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, the instrument has been neither properly implemented by the institutions nor disseminated to the population. “People do not know the rights of the disabled and so the marginalization continues both in the community and at the political and administrative level,” he explained. But people with disability want to have a voice in that decision-making process where “there is no one to take the disabled out of marginalization,” he added.

Mitima said it clearly when we met him in Goma: “The life of a disabled person is very difficult … We have no help from the government, sometimes we receive a few small sums from people of goodwill … But if we have to say that there is a person or institution that supports us, no, there isn’t. We can only count on ourselves.”

Mama Soki. Credit: Elena L. Pasquini

Elena Pasquini is an Italian journalist who visited DRC recently. She is founder and editor in chief of Degrees of Latitude

The post Disability in Goma. The Power of Staying Together Against Covid-19, War, and Stigma appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Categories: Africa

This Earth Day, a People’s Perspective is What is Most Needed

Thu, 04/22/2021 - 09:45

Refugees fleeing conflict and climate change conditions in Africa’s Lake Chad basin, north of Diffa, Niger. Credit: Amali Tower

By Amali Tower*
NEW YORK, Apr 22 2021 (IPS)

Today marks Earth Day and all around the globe, advocates and activists, concerned citizens and the like will gather to raise awareness about the climate crisis.

World leaders will be among them, notably U.S. President Joe Biden speaking as his administration kicks off its Leaders Summit on Climate, while a growing number of migrants and asylum-seekers at the U.S. southern border, a vast majority from Central America fleeing compounding crises, continue to have their rights and protection needs unmet.

Today, my organization Climate Refugees will also gather in an Earth Day event, Frontlines: Climate Risks & Migration with US Congressman Joaquin Castro of Texas, and longstanding activists and advocates in immigrant and migrant rights, climate policy, and environmental justice working with frontline communities.

We will look for a reflective conversation on Central American migration to discuss solutions, and what can be done by the Biden administration and the international community to protect the world’s most vulnerable, ahead of climate negotiations at COP26 in Glasgow.

For most of the world, climate change is by no means only an environmental concern. For communities dependent on the land and natural resources for livelihood, even survival, climate change is a socio-economic and political concern as well.

As we shared in a recent report, in response to President Biden’s executive order to better understand the impacts of climate change on migration, a deeper review of Central American migration will reflect the interconnections between climate change impacts, the killing of environmental leaders, historic oppression of Indigenous Peoples, the ways in which people are losing access and being moved off their lands, specific industries, and direct or indirect drivers of conflict and violence by gangs.

Climate change effects in Central America’s Dry Corridor are contributing to pre-existing poverty, underdevelopment, marginalization and historic oppression of populations living in the region’s agricultural backbone.

This is no different to the all-too familiar situations observed in traditional refugee contexts where conflict generally exacerbates underlying poverty, exclusion and marginalization of certain populations that force individuals to flee.

Eastern and southern African nations have faced an increase in floods, droughts and other climate-related events over recent years. The UN says a new bond with nature is the goal of UN’s annual Earth Day celebrations on April 22. Credit: UNDP/Arjen van de Merwe

The Dry Corridor covers nearly 30 percent of the entirety of Central America, home also to the greatest population density where a number of Indigenous groups reside, and where rural poverty rates are higher than the national averages, and food insecurity has soared.

This region is home to another type of convergence as well: extreme climatic events like the recent hurricanes Eta and Iota, tropical storms and drought, which render social, economic, environmental and political vulnerability on the region, its people, and ultimately, its national economies.

The expansion of mega development projects, extractive industries on mostly Indigenous lands and smallholder farmers’ land rights, hand-in-hand with gang violence, can’t be overlooked as contributory forces driving displacement either.

Several migrants we’ve spoken to have included sustained climate changes amongst the reasons for their displacement, and the resulting challenges when crop failures equal sustained losses and adaptation is hindered by ever smaller plots of land.

As much as we know about ‘climate migration’, we still know very little. What we know is that every situation will look different, largely because there is no single driver for movement that can be singularly attributed to ‘climate change.’ Instead, climate change is exacerbating underlying tensions and contributing to social disruptions.

Even in situations of disasters, we can move people out of harm’s way in order to save lives, but it’s their protection needs to the increased frequencies of disasters, as well as before, during and after a disaster that requires cohesive global action.

The Biden administration must realize these changed dynamics in policies both at home and abroad. To do so is to understand that many migrants fleeing Central America’s Dry Corridor are likely both asylum-seekers as defined by international refugee law, as well as individuals displaced by climate change, a category not protected in that area of law.

Climate Justice Meets Social Justice Meets Racial Justice

Central America’s poorest, marginalized and Indigenous are emblematic of a global phenomenon that climate change presents: the intersection of climate change and race.

The climate crisis disproportionately impacts marginalized populations, many of whom may be displaced or forced to migrate because of years of unequal access to opportunities and gaps in human rights, a topic my organization delved into with human rights and environmental justice experts in this event.

Philip Alston, the UN Special Rapporteur on Extreme Poverty and Human Rights’ report on Climate Change and Poverty, revealed developing countries will bear 75 to 80 percent of the financial costs and losses associated with the climate crisis, despite contributing only 10 percent of carbon dioxide emissions, creating a situation in which those in extreme poverty now also live in extreme weather.

He warned of increasing divisions as well, the risk of a ‘climate apartheid’, where the wealthy escape the negative impacts of climate change, leaving impacts to be borne by disproportionate groups ostracized by divisions, including race.

In the U.S., people of color are far more likely to live near pollutants, Black communities face higher risks from air pollution, and Black mothers are most affected by pregnancy risks associated with climate change, linking race, even more than poverty, to environmental pollutants, something long stated by environmental justice and Indigenous rights activists who articulated the systemic nature of environmental racism.

Those same activists were instrumental in bringing to light the interconnectedness of social, economic and environmental factors to the international stage at the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, which helped to form the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).

This November, as world leaders gather at yet another UNFCCC Conference of the Parties – COP 26 – in Glasgow, Scotland, world leaders will likely gather to tell us “climate change affects us all”, and risk forgetting, “but not equally.”

They may speak of solutions that provide “dignity” for the world’s impacted, as if dignity were something they never had. They might project images of war-ravaged refugees, as if this is an accurate depiction of the intersection of climate and displacement, failing completely to understand the impacts of climate on entire societies.

They may speak of climate risk populations as poor and destitute, when in fact poor is relative and those with options are exhausted, rapidly running out of fight and solutions.

The poor, the vulnerable, the marginalized are actually the one’s systematically left behind, the oppressed and the disenfranchised.

As the emissions continue to go unchecked, the planet warms and impacts disproportionately punish these groups of people, they know and we know we can no longer be expected to wait for the world’s leaders to get this right.

*Amali Tower previously worked for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees and various NGOs in the humanitarian sector, including the US Refugee Admissions Program administered by the US Department of State’s Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration.

The post This Earth Day, a People’s Perspective is What is Most Needed appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

The writer is the Founder and Executive Director of Climate Refugees, a human rights NGO that calls for the protection and rights of those displaced by climate change.

The post This Earth Day, a People’s Perspective is What is Most Needed appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Categories: Africa

Table Mountain Ablaze in Cape Town

Wed, 04/21/2021 - 18:59

For three days from Sunday morning until late on Tuesday night, Cape Town’s firefighters were dispatched to Table Mountain and surrounding areas to battle a blaze that destroyed 600 hectares of land, displaced 4,000 students from the University of Cape Town and left heritage buildings damaged. Credit: Yazeed Kamaldien

By Yazeed Kamaldien
CAPE TOWN, South Africa, Apr 21 2021 (IPS)

Cape Town-based photojournalist Yazeed Kamaldien reported on a massive mountain fire that broke out on Sunday on Table Mountain and near residential areas on its foothills. By this morning, Wednesday 21 April, officials said the fire had been extinguished after three grueling days for firefighters. Firefighters are still monitoring on the ground for any flare-ups.

South African National Parks, which manages the Table Mountain area, estimates that the fire destroyed 600 hectares of land. A total 135 firefighters were dispatched along with 125 mountain rangers and an additional 170 fire and rescue workers.

While there were no deaths in the blaze, at least 4,000 students from the University of Cape Town were evacuated from their university residences. Locals have been assisting students with meals and other necessities.

Residents living on the Table Mountain slopes also had to evacuate their homes as the fire reached closer to their doors. Firefighting teams were deployed to extinguish the flames.
Heritage sites and university buildings were damaged and destroyed. Of the 11 affected buildings, seven are in the University of Cape Town campus.

Among these was the J.W. Jagger Library, which housed special collections that are well over a hundred years old. Other destroyed landmarks are the Mostert Mill and the Rhodes Memorial Restaurant.

Local police have arrested and charge with arson a vagrant while two other suspects are still being sought.

By Wednesday morning, the fire had been contained and firefighters were still out monitoring areas around Table Mountain and areas nearby. The fire had started on Sunday at 9am around the historical Rhodes Memorial site. The fire destroyed the Rhodes Memorial Restaurant, which overlooks the city. Credit: Yazeed Kamaldien

Homeless people living on the slopes of Table Mountain lost their shacks and few possessions. They escaped with their lives to find shelter in safer spaces. Credit: Yazeed Kamaldien

A lone homeless man sits amidst the burnt out grass around him on the slopes of Table Mountain, where Cape Town’s firefighters fought back flames across 600 hectares of land. Local police arrested a vagrant for allegedly starting the fire and charged him with arson. Two more suspects are being sought. Credit: Yazeed Kamaldien

A homeless man pulls his few possessions in a suitcase, leaving an area where firefighters were still battling flames on Tuesday afternoon. Homeless people living on the slopes of Table Mountain, where the fire spread for a few kilometers, fled their shacks for safer spaces. By Wednesday morning, officials had extinguished most of the fire that has left a trail of destruction. Credit: Yazeed Kamaldien

The post Table Mountain Ablaze in Cape Town appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Categories: Africa

Agro-industry Surrounds Xingu Indigenous Territory in Brazil

Wed, 04/21/2021 - 13:01

The peoples of the Xingu say agricultural activity beyond the borders of their territory has impacted fish populations (image: Alamy).

By Flávia Milhorance
RIO DE JANEIRO, Apr 21 2021 (IPS)

Watatakalu Yawalapiti is 40 years old. She was born in the Amakapuku village, surrounded by a large preserved forest in the heart of Brazil. She spent part of her childhood on the white sands and clear waters of the Tuatuari river. At other times, she would sit in a circle listening to her great-grandfather telling stories, like the one about how the white man would arrive with a huge blade and cut down the trees as one shaves one’s body hair.

“Everyone laughed because no one thought it was true,” she said, then immediately remembers a song in the Yawalapiti language that her great-grandfather used to sing to narrate the legend.

Yawalapiti, today a local indigenous leader, grew up protected by the borders of the Xingu indigenous territory (TIX), between the states of Mato Grosso and Pará. The Xingu was the first indigenous reserve created by Brazil’s government, established 60 years ago to preserve the biodiversity and the 16 ethnic groups living there.

Inside an area larger than Israel, Yawalapiti has experienced the calmness of time marked by the rainy and dry seasons. Outside, however, things were moving fast. Every time she crossed the 290 kilometres from the village to Canarana, the nearest town, the forest had decreased. More fields had replaced it. Her great-grandfather’s fable began to take a more realistic quality.

While the agricultural frontier advances through the Xingu basin, exports continue to break records. At the same time, this is where the largest deforestation in the Amazon is happening.

Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro supports opening up the forest to mining and agriculture, sparking protests from tribes in the Xingu who feel they are under threat.

Xingu’s indigenous people: “We no longer drink the water”

The 13 municipalities around the Xingu, including Canarana, exported 8.7 million tonnes of soy in 2020, more than half to China, according to foreign trade (Comex) data.

The same municipalities also exported 8.5 million tonnes of corn — which is intercropped with soy — which represents a quarter of last year’s shipments.

“On the east side, where Querência is, and south, with Canarana, there is an advanced consolidation of agribusiness, with multinational groups and their huge silos investing heavily,” explained Ivã Bocchini, from the Socio-Environmental Institute’s Xingu Programme.

Multinational companies such as Bunge and Cargill from the US, the Chinese Cofco and Brazil’s Amaggi have major operations in the region, according to data from the Trase platform, which tracks deforestation risk in supply chains.

As there are few unoccupied areas left, farms and reserves are now much closer together. They are like the edges of two worlds. But the consequences of deforestation and monoculture go beyond their borders.

In the last 20 years, the region around the land of Yawalapiti has been transformed into a production hub for soybeans, corn, cotton and meat, connected by highways and railways. Today, the Xingu area produces 10% of Brazil's soybean exports

Watatakalu Yawalapiti says that her people, who share the reserve with 15 other ethnic groups, have noticed the climate changing. The sun became hotter, the dry season longer, the river shallower and more turbid. Fish are more scarce. They lived through years of hunger and saw artesian wells appear: “We no longer drink river water, it is no longer clean.”

Other disturbances come from the increase in bush pigs, which feed on corn and soy from the plantations and invade the fields of small farmers and indigenous people.

Studies confirm the Yawalapiti experience. Research shows that the rains are decreasing in the municipalities surrounding the Xingu territory where deforestation is growing. With less rainfall, drought is more intense and bush fires more frequent.

The construction of thousands of dams and reservoirs for livestock, agriculture and electricity generation also alters the flow of the waterways of the Xingu basin. The Belo Monte hydroelectric dam in Altamira threatens the very survival of the Xingu River.

This basin begins in the Cerrado biome, in Mato Grosso state, and runs for 770 thousand kilometres towards the Amazon, in Pará. More than half of it is sheltered by preservation areas, but the river headwaters are impacted by deforestation and pesticides.

“Pesticides are the worst threat, because they are silent, and the TIX is like a drain into which the rivers flow,” said Bocchini, who advises indigenous organisations in the Xingu region.

In a decade, the area planted with grain crops around the Xingu territory grew 135%, and the use of pesticides, 130%. More recently, cotton, a major consumer of pesticides, began to emerge as a crop. Municipalities of the Xingu more than doubled their cotton exports in the last decade. By the end of 2020, 31,000 tonnes were exported, Comex shows. China is the main importer.

Three brothers and their campaign to protect the Xingu

Landscape in the Xingu basin started to change following the exploration of the interior of Brazil, sponsored by the 1937-1945 Getúlio Vargas government. In 1943, the Roncador-Xingu expedition left Leopoldina, in Minas Gerais, and headed northwest, cutting through central Brazil.

The expedition, made up mostly of “lawless” prospectors, opened up 1,500 kilometres of roads and erected airfields and military bases. Towns sprang up along the way.

But the expedition did not only serve to map Brazil. Due to lack of funding, it stalled in the Upper Xingu, in Mato Grosso, where the leaders, the now celebrated Villas Bôas brothers, established contact with indigenous peoples.

“The purpose of our expedition had nothing to do with Indians, this was an accident,” Orlando, the older brother, said in an interview in 2000.

The risk of the agro-industry threatening the indigenous way of life was already becoming clear. The Villas Bôas brothers allied themselves with local leaders, including Paru Yawalapiti, Watatakalu’s grandfather, in a near decade-long campaign to create the reserve.

“My grandfather was part of the expedition together with the Villas Bôas [brothers], my father learned to read with their sister, Maria de Lourdes,” Watatakalu remembered.

Orlando, Cláudio and Leonardo left their “mediocre bureaucratic lives” in search of adventure after the death of their parents, as described in the book The March Westwards.

Their chosen cause, to protect the Xingu, eventually resulted in the establishment of a protected territory in 1961. Two of the brothers earned Nobel peace prize nominations for their efforts. When Orlando died in 2002 he was given a tribal funeral, a mark of respect.

Another bid to colonise the forest

With a new government push by the military dictators to colonise central Brazil in the 1970s, large-scale deforestation began to skirt the Xingu territories. From the 2000s onwards, the international demand for commodities injected further impetus.

Following pressure to conserve the Amazon, measures including fines, the suspension of agricultural credit and pacts with companies operating in the agriculture sector have helped curb deforestation over the last decade. But a recent wave of destruction has awakened long-standing fears.

Logging, ranching and soy cultivation influence the expansion of the agricultural frontier in the Amazon. In the Xingu basin, the pattern of each industry’s growth is becoming clear. Soy is already consolidated in the south, while timber and cattle ranching are more commonplace from the middle to the north of the basin.

Data from Comex shows that 18 municipalities in the Xingu region exported 18,300 tonnes of wood in 2020, mainly from Pará. Also, 14,800 thousand tonnes of beef were exported, 40% to China.

Infrastructure works to make mass exporting easier are major incentives for the opening of forest areas.

Edeon Vaz was a soy producer in Mato Grosso. But he decided to develop the sector in a different way. He moved to Brasília with the mission of improving infrastructure to reduce the cost of agricultural production.

“We participate in the creation of regulatory frameworks to negotiate parliamentary amendments, and we charge for the progress of the works, all of which takes a lot of time and we have to stay on top of the government,” said Vaz, who is now executive director of the Mato Grosso Pro-Logistics Movement, a lobby group.

The stretch of national highway BR-163 between Cuiabá and Santarém, is on the list of his accomplishments. The Ferrogrão railway and the dozens of industrial ports on the rivers of the Amazon from part of the same corridor.

But people from the indigenous lands of Baú, Menkragnoti and Panará say that paving the highway has created all sorts of problems, boosting land grabbing, deforestation and forest fires in the northern portion of the Xingu basin.

The highway began to be built by the military government in the 1970s and left its mark on the history of the Panará.

“It was a disaster,” said Paulo Junqueira, who advises the peoples of the region for the Socioambiental Institute. “BR-163 passed over their territory and brought infectious diseases that killed hundreds of people.”

These people were moved to the Xingu and only managed to return to their original territory two decades later, in 1996.

A village on the move

Winti Khĩsêtjê, 47, was born and raised in the indigenous land of Wawi, part of the municipality of Querência, in Mato Grosso. Less than five years ago it saw the arrival of agribusiness.

“Soy is already right at our border,” said the indigenous leader. “And the population has already been suffering the deterioration of the water, which created skin problems and diarrhea.”

Concerned about the organic production of honey and pequi, a native fruit, her community this year moved the village 20 kilometres into the forest. “We were afraid that the agrotoxins, which are sprayed from planes, would hit our production,” he said.

“We dropped everything to make everything again: housing, school, a health centre,” said Khĩsêtjê. “But we are afraid of how it will be in the future, whether the situation will stabilise or get even worse.”

Rising land prices

Farmer Acrísio Luiz dos Reis lives in Canabrava do Norte, a municipality in the south of the Xingu region, which faced a recent wave of deforestation.

“The soy industry is moving very fast, and these people, if they can, won’t even leave a tree standing,” said the farmer. “I think this is too bad, because, with the knowledge that we have, the more we deforest, the worse it gets; less water, more heat.”

He is also concerned about the real estate speculation that usually accompanies the entry of new neighbours. It is already a reality in Canabrava: “Four years ago, there was land for ten thousand reals US$1,770], or even less, per bushel; now it’s 150 thousand reals [$26,560],” he said.

The Minas Gerais native arrived in Canabrava in 1985 and today lives on a 50-hectare plot in the Manah settlement, granted by the agrarian reform programme. “I will only leave here in a wooden box now. I like it here too much, my dream came true,” said the 70-year-old farmer. “I have a small herd, I work with milk, I plant a vegetable garden and some fruit trees.”

Growing the seed network

In areas of the Xingu basin where deforestation is advancing, local indigenous and environmental groups fight to slow it. But where the damage has already been done years ago, land restoration is underway.

Since 2008, Reis has supplemented his income by collecting native seeds, including angico, cajazinha, jatobá and guaritá, found in the transition area between the Cerrado and Amazônia. He is one of the pioneers of the Xingu Seed Network, a project that promotes the planting of seedlings to restore areas degraded by agribusiness.

The initiative, which emerged after local groups noticed deteriorating water quality and scarcity of fish and turtles, ended up promoting an unusual dialogue.

On one side, farmers whose activities incur an impact on the environment promote the network. On the other, small farmers and indigenous people collect seeds. Today, there are 600 collectors from 16 municipalities of the Xingu basin.

“In the planted areas, we notice the fauna returning and the water becoming more abundant,” said Bruna Ferreira, director of the Xingu Seed Network Association.

But the work is tiny in the great scheme of what is happening. In 13 years of the initiative, the network has restored 6,000 of the more than 200,000 hectares degraded in the region. “The obstacle is not financial, because there are several organisations wanting to support restoration initiatives,” said Ferreira.

Today, the biggest problem is the lack of enforcement and the lack of interest by large deforesters in participating. “We are sought out by farmers who need to restore and want to be partners, but it’s far less than the size of the damage,” he said.

This article was originally published by ChinaDialogue

The post Agro-industry Surrounds Xingu Indigenous Territory in Brazil appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Categories: Africa

Earth Day 2021: Passing On a Cleaner World

Wed, 04/21/2021 - 07:51

A woman with an umbrella walks in the rain in a field. To the left is a rainbow. The UN says a new bond with nature is the goal of UN’s annual Mother Earth Day celebrations on April 22. Credit: World Meteorological Organization (WMO)

By Bill Pekny*
MIDWAY, Utah USA, Apr 21 2021 (IPS)

Preserving the beauty and wonder of our natural world for future generations should certainly be a goal everyone can get behind. While progress is often stymied by polarizing debates, clean air and water should be a priority for everyone.

We all want to pass on a clean and healthy world, But the science is confusing to the average person, and it can be easy to get lost in the details. Meanwhile, instead of focusing on the fruit closest to the ground we waste our energy trying to convince “the other side” to see things our way.

What we need is to focus on combatting pollution in meaningful ways that are right in front of us instead of getting lost in debate that often just produces gridlock. And Earth Day, coming up on April 22, is the perfect time to start working together for solutions.

Small, incremental changes can get us moving toward bigger changes in the future. People will start seeing the benefits right away. These little victories can generate some real momentum and get people excited about working toward a cleaner world.

With that in mind, here are nine ways to fight pollution that we can all get behind. These ideas could pack a big punch in our quest for clean air, land, and water.

1. Focus our efforts on pollution mitigation. All too often we get caught up on reducing carbon emissions in the abstract, and it can distract from other more meaningful ways to fight air pollution. Plus, getting rid of CO2 won’t help one iota to reduce toxic pollutants such as smoke, dust, soot, carbon monoxide (CO), ammonium nitrates, and sulfur and nitrogen oxides.

2. Manage forests better to minimize wildfires and resultant smoke (PM2.5) pollution. This includes carefully controlled burns, well managed logging operations, and preemptive thinning and removal of underbrush that fuel wildfires. This is a wise step, since trees usually leave the forest in only two ways—lumber or smoke!

3. Place more emphasis on walking trails, biking trails, car-pooling, and public transportation in order to reduce vehicle pollutant emissions wherever possible, affordable, and realistic.

4. Insist that policy decisions be based on thorough life-cycle (aka cradle-to-grave) cost-benefit analyses. This will help in making wise decisions about what to do, and how to spend, our nation’s precious money. We must resist the tendency to narrowly focus just on dazzling technologies without assessing their upfront environmental impacts such as mining and toxicity of materials or end-of-life disposal problems.

5. Build more dams and reservoirs, especially in drought and fire prone areas. Find ways to trap seasonal floodwater for drought mitigation and hydroelectric power. Hydropower has been around for a long time and is perfectly clean but widely underused. Its gravity-based advantage comes from rainfall being retained by dams/reservoirs, and later released to a lower level to turn a turbine that generates electricity.

There are far-ranging possibilities, here. We should build more dams/reservoirs to capture and utilize the potential energy of rainwater, rather than let water simply wash away into the oceans, unused. For example, the last dam built in California with a reservoir capacity exceeding one million acre-feet was in 1979.

6. Build more firebreak and logging roads. These roads improve accessibility to fire prone areas and gives give us greater ability to inspect remote power lines (a frequent source of wildfires).

7. Fight poverty. While it might seem counterintuitive, poverty is a major driver of pollution. When people are struggling just to get by, they can’t focus on their impact on the environment. As a result, they tend to ignore more environmentally friendly alternatives in favor of whatever is convenient.

For example, burning dung and wood for heat releases far more pollutants compared to more modern fuel sources, but this practice persists in less developed parts of the world. If we invest in raising the standard of living all around the world, then we can help guide these populations towards more sustainable long-term practices, while also greatly improving their day to day lives.

8. Continue to fund life-cycle research and development of flexible, reliable, and continuous sources of clean energy, such as advanced modular nuclear reactors and the geothermal fracking process. Advanced reactors offer many advantages, such as perfectly clean energy, relatively small physical footprints, as well as reduced capital investment, the ability to be sited in locations not possible for larger nuclear plants, and provisions for incremental power additions. Most importantly, they also offer distinct safeguards, security, and nonproliferation advantages.

Geothermal energy has been around for a long time, but its availability is spotty and its cost expensive—until now. Hydraulic geothermal fracking is an up-and-coming, perfectly clean energy revolution, and is a boundless source, as long as the Earth keeps spinning about its axis.

9. Last, but certainly not least: Keep learning and having productive civil conversations. Teach our children the scientific method, logic, and history. These skills are fundamental to accurate information gathering, critical thinking, and understanding truth, and will help inform the next generation of scientists and activists.

Further, we must learn to have productive conversations about keeping our air and water clean. We can’t afford for this to be a politicized topic and digging in to one side or another prevents us from finding the best solutions. We have to listen to each other and be willing to change our minds if we learn something new. Without real communication we’re not brainstorming—we are just storming.

The good news is, more people than ever are recognizing the need to preserve the Earth’s resources. One of the unintended consequences of COVID-19 has been the rise in people getting outdoors and enjoying our world—and seeing firsthand the importance of protecting it.

Another encouraging factor is that young people today love spending time in the great outdoors and being active in nature with friends and family. For example, millennials are bringing back camping. Meanwhile, Generation Z cares deeply about protecting our environment. Our young people will help lead the charge in finding more solutions in the future, as they are smart and incredibly resourceful. I can certainly relate to their passion.

As a young radar meteorologist with the U.S. Navy Weather Research Facility, I flew with the famous Hurricane Hunters into the eye of storms. This experience awakened my fascination with weather and sparked my lifelong commitment to preserving the environment. I am excited to see how our younger generations will make a positive impact.

The natural beauty of our planet is incredible. My hope is that everyone will gain and enjoy a greater understanding of how we can work together to preserve this natural beauty for ourselves and future generations. Earth Day is a great time to begin this conversation.

*Bill Pekny’s academic credentials include graduate study in physical meteorology and numerical analysis at Florida State University and the University of Utah. He is also a visiting scholar appointment at the Ginzton Laboratory of Applied Physics at Stanford University.

About the Book:
A Tale of Two Climates: One Real, One Imaginary (Two Climates LLC, 2020, ISBN: 978-1-73493-960-6, $34.59) is available from major online booksellers.

The post Earth Day 2021: Passing On a Cleaner World appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

The writer holds physics M.S. and B.S. degrees from Georgia Tech and DePaul University and is the author of A Tale of Two Climates: One Real, One Imaginary.

The post Earth Day 2021: Passing On a Cleaner World appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Categories: Africa

Rights Group Calls for Overhaul of Criminal Justice Systems’ Response to Sexual Violence Across South Asia

Wed, 04/21/2021 - 07:38

According to a new report, ‘burdensome’ evidence requirements in sexual violence cases are impeding access to justice for survivors across South Asia. Credit: Stella Paul/IPS

By Alison Kentish
UNITED NATIONS, Apr 21 2021 (IPS)

Gaps in laws, illegal out-of-court settlements, rape survivor intimidation and law enforcement failure to adequately respond to sexual violence reports are hindering women from seeking justice and maintaining impunity for perpetrators of rape in South Asia.

This is according to the women and girls rights group Equality Now which, along with Dignity Alliance International, released a report titled “Sexual Violence in South Asia: Legal and Other Barriers to Justice for Survivors” today, Apr. 21.

The report focused on six countries; Bangladesh, Bhutan, Nepal, the Maldives, India and Sri Lanka. It follows focus group discussions with survivors in four of the countries, as well as stakeholder interviews with lawyers and activists working on sexual violence. It unveiled protection gaps in the laws across the countries.

“It is just the text of the law is contributing to impunity for perpetrators and preventing survivors from getting justice. One of the major gaps that we found is that in four out of the six countries, there is no criminalisation of marital rape,” Equality Now’s legal advisor Divya Srinivasan told IPS.

According to the report, ‘burdensome’ evidence requirements in rape cases are impeding access to justice for survivors. It states that five out of the six countries, India being the exception, allow evidence on the past sexual history of a rape victim.

The report also highlights the prevalence of extra-legal settlements, or compromises, across the region. To arrive at these pay-outs, survivors are sometimes pressured by their families, relatives of the accused or community members.

“Even though such settlements are illegal, they are still happening in large numbers. Often, they are done between the families without even asking the survivor or getting her consent. Even when she consents, it is because she’s put under enormous pressure and even threatened with violence and other threats and this is one of the reasons that cases are dropping out of the system,” Srinivasan said.

The report contains survivor stories, sobering first-person accounts that include protracted trials, members of caste systems who refused to listen to pleas for redress and protection following marital rape and one survivor from India whose husband blamed her for disgracing the home by being raped. Apart from being ostracised, survivors also reported that the courage to file an official police report was often met with disbelief and refusals to record statements.

“Failures include inadequacies in the way justice system officials are responding to sexual violence, including the refusal of police to register cases or even filing wrong information in the police report and victim-blaming attitudes. We saw a lot of that across the board from police, medical professionals and even from judges,” Srinivasan said.

The report notes that many of the survivor stories were told by women in the six countries who are marginalised based on caste, ethnicity and religion, noting that they face intersectional forms of discrimination when trying to access justice.

“Women and girls from socially excluded communities are often at higher risk of being subjected to sexual violence as compared to other communities, due to the use of rape as a weapon of suppression, accompanied by a general culture of impunity for sexual violence and particular impunity for those from dominant classes, castes or religions, which often leads to a denial of justice,” it states.

“Further, lack of social, political and economic clout often hinders reporting of cases by these communities or increases their vulnerability to threats and pressure from perpetrators. Survivors are further subjected to discrimination when dealing with the criminal justice system. Survivors of sexual violence from socially excluded communities thus face severe obstacles to accessing justice.”

The report makes comprehensive recommendations to all sectors of the government, listing what must change to ensure access to justice for survivors.

It calls on authorities to rectify the protection gaps in the law. It zeroes in on policing, asking South Asian governments to put measures in place to improve police response to cases of sexual violence, including educating and training officers in gender sensitisation. It also demands action against police officers who refuse to file cases or actively obstruct justice in rape cases.

The authors are also asking for more humane medical examinations in rape cases, denouncing the continued use of the two-finger or virginity tests in some countries, despite this being a human rights violation

Our fourth recommendation is to improve prosecution procedures and trials of sexual offences to ensure that there is quality prosecution that leads to increased conviction rates, along with speedy trials.

The fifth point calls for designing and funding holistic interventions to improve access to justice for survivors. It notes that while convictions are needed, there are not enough and should be accompanied by support for survivors including psychosocial care and access to compensation, measures that can help them get their lives back on track.

“What we have seen across South Asia is that there are lots of very high-profile rape cases and following public protests, the government comes out with a superficial response to pacify the public sentiment,” said Srinivasan. “Really, there needs to be systemic changes, every aspect of the system needs to improve access to justice for survivors.”

The post Rights Group Calls for Overhaul of Criminal Justice Systems’ Response to Sexual Violence Across South Asia appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

A new report on sexual violence in South Asia by women and girls rights group Equality Now has found that survivors face threats, pressure to settle out of court and obstacles to justice from systems rife with implementation failures.

The post Rights Group Calls for Overhaul of Criminal Justice Systems’ Response to Sexual Violence Across South Asia appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Categories: Africa

GGGI appoints Kyung Hee University Professor, Mr. Kyung Nam Shin, as Assistant Director-General and Head of Investment and Policy Solutions

Tue, 04/20/2021 - 19:43

By External Source
SEOUL, Republic of Korea, Apr 20 2021 (IPS-Partners)

The Global Green Growth Institute (GGGI) has officially appointed Professor Kyung Nam Shin as Assistant Director-General and Head of Investment and Policy Solutions. He will assume his duties at the GGGI Seoul headquarters on May 1, 2021, to further the organization’s aim to catalyze green investments and policies for its Members.

“Considering all that has happened over the past year with the COVID pandemic, now is a crucial time for countries to integrate green policies and projects into their national priorities in order to regain economic stability for the long-term. To this end, GGGI has a lot of potential to greatly aid its Members to achieve impactful results and catalyze the investments necessary for this transition,” explains Prof. Shin.

Prof. Shin serves as a Committee Member for International Development Cooperation under the Prime Minister’s Office in Korea and is a Professor at the esteemed Kyung Hee University in Seoul. He holds a BA in Economics and an MA in Public Policy, from Seoul National University, as well as a Juris Doctor from Colombia University School of Law.

He has diverse background and professional experience of working to accelerate green growth development across Asia.

“Prof. Shin’s deep and broad expertise in the development of green investment projects and the mobilization of green and climate finance will be a great asset for GGGI to further its initiative to catalyze green investments and policies for its Members,” shared Dr. Frank Rijsberman, Director-General of GGGI.

Prof. Shin has over 30 years of international development experience throughout Asia, working with the Ministry of Economy and Finance of the Republic of Korea and the Asian Development Bank in Manilla, Philippines, as well as serving as the Director-General of the Green Technology Center Korea.

The post GGGI appoints Kyung Hee University Professor, Mr. Kyung Nam Shin, as Assistant Director-General and Head of Investment and Policy Solutions appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Categories: Africa

COVID-19 Locks Down Therapy Support for Zimbabwe’s Trafficking Survivors

Tue, 04/20/2021 - 12:26

The ability of trafficked persons to access services has greatly reduced. In many countries, resources that had been set aside for legal, physiological and police support for trafficked persons have been diverted to deal with the effects of the pandemic. Credit: Miriam Gathigah/IPS

By Ignatius Banda
BULAWAYO, Zimbabwe, Apr 20 2021 (IPS)

Before Zimbabwe imposed lockdown measures last March as part of global efforts to curb the coronavirus pandemic, Grace Mashingaidze* would attend workshops in Harare arranged by a nongovernmental organisation assisting trafficked women who had safely made it back home.

A survivor of trafficking, the 27 year-old Mashingaidze told IPS she joined a group of other young female survivors and had received assistance that ranged from counselling, psychosocial support and self-sufficiency skills. The latter was important as many of the young women struggled to earn an income in a country already suffocated by high levels of unemployment.

“It has been tough ever since we were told we could not attend the workshops and trainings because of the coronavirus. But you come to understand that safety first is a priority for everyone,” Mashingaidze told IPS.

The coronavirus lockdown has meant her life is at a standstill when ideally she and other young women who are part of support group ought to be accessing much-needed help to deal with the trauma of human trafficking and also fend for themselves.

Mashingaidze, who said her ordeal took her as far Mozambique, has ambitions to educate herself and “do a course” that will help her provide for her three-year-old son.

“Up to now, I do not know how I have managed,” she said.

Her story is a microcosm of disruptions brought by the coronavirus in virtually all sectors of human existence in this southern African nation. Non-governmental organisations working with trafficked women have conceded that while there remains a huge need to assist survivors, they cannot risk violate government-imposed public health restrictions for a greater good.

“The immediate impact (of the coronavirus) that raised an immediate outcry from victims of human trafficking was the lack of personalised face-to-face counselling and also loss of livelihoods,” said Dadirai Chikwekwete, who served as coordinator African Forum for Catholic Teaching (AFCAST) at Arrupe Jesuit University where she worked with trafficking survivors until September.

“The therapeutic weekly sessions enabled them to have a “me time” away from their homes and families. They were also engaged in various economic activities ranging from buying and selling groceries, small business entrepreneurship, cake making among other things,” she told IPS.

The experiences of the trafficked women are part of broader interruptions that hit other sectors of the economy such as informal traders who have been forced to stay home as government enforced measures to stem the spread of the coronavirus.

Previously thriving home-based businesses which trafficked women started have suffered because of restrictions.

“Some of the women lost their incomes during the lockdown. Those who had spent their incomes sewing school uniforms ended up with piles of them since schools were closed,” Chikwekwete told IPS.

“Tailors had spent sleepless nights making garments for which they were unable to receive payment for since clients want to first fit the garment before making payment,” Chikwekwete explained.

Schools only reopened in Zimbabwe last month.

The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) says the COVID-19 pandemic has had “a major impact on the support provided to victims of human trafficking as services are reduced, postponed and in some cases halted”.

In February, UNODC’s Global Report on Trafficking in Persons noted that while COVID-19 had exposed more people to trafficking, there was a need for governments to “support victims as part of integrated efforts to build forward from the pandemic”.

It’s a sentiment shared by Tsitsi Matekaire, the global lead for Equality Now’s End Sex Trafficking campaign.

“The ability of trafficked persons to access services has greatly reduced. In many countries, resources that had been set aside for legal, physiological and police support for trafficked persons have been diverted to deal with the effects of the pandemic,” Matekaire told IPS.

“It is imperative that governments recognise the gendered impact of the pandemic and also build in to their COVID responses measures to increase identification of victims of human trafficking,” she said.

In the absence of such interventions, the most visible COVID-19 response for low-income countries like Zimbabwe has been to enforce lockdown restrictions that have, in many instances, been routinely violated as people seek ways and means to survive.

According to the Zimbabwe Republic Police, by July 2020 over 100,000 people had been arrested for violating the restrictions in the four months since the March 2020 lockdown. Of these, the bulk were informal traders – most of whom are women who survive by street vending.

But it was a risk Mashingaidze said she had not been willing to take.

“I have already been through a lot already with my experience being trafficked I do not want any brushes with the law,” Mashingaidze told IPS, expressing a desperation that has only been heightened by the government’s failure to provide coronavirus stipends for informal traders.

A UN Zimbabwe report on the effects of COVID-19 noted that the country still needs to do more for victims of human trafficking and “support for women-owned enterprises and social innovations that can lead to self-employment,” something that has been lacking in young women such as Mashingaidze in their efforts to pick up the pieces and lead productive lives.

The southern African country remains a favourite target for human traffickers as desperate young women attempt to escape the economic hardships that have stalked the country for more than two decades.

However, as Mashingaidze explained, being back home has not been without its headaches as COVID-19 added more difficulties to her already desperate situation.

“My prayer is that the pandemic ends soon so that we can get on with our lives,” she said, echoing what has become a global sentiment.

*Name changed to protect source’s identity

This is part of a series of features from across the globe on human trafficking. IPS coverage is supported by the Airways Aviation Group.

The Global Sustainability Network ( GSN ) is pursuing the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal number 8 with a special emphasis on Goal 8.7 which ‘takes immediate and effective measures to eradicate forced labour, end modern slavery and human trafficking and secure the prohibition and elimination of the worst forms of child labour, including recruitment and use of child soldiers, and by 2025 end child labour in all its forms’.

The origins of the GSN come from the endeavours of the Joint Declaration of Religious Leaders signed on 2 December 2014. Religious leaders of various faiths, gathered to work together “to defend the dignity and freedom of the human being against the extreme forms of the globalisation of indifference, such us exploitation, forced labour, prostitution, human trafficking” and so forth.

The post COVID-19 Locks Down Therapy Support for Zimbabwe’s Trafficking Survivors appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Categories: Africa

Child Trafficking in South Asia Facilitated by Open Borders

Tue, 04/20/2021 - 08:39

Thousands of men, women and children fall victim each year to human trafficking, a serious crime and a grave violation of human rights. The 18-year-old girl (pictured) was taken to Almaty, Kazakhstan, and promised work as a housekeeper but forced to become a sex worker. Credit: UNICEF/UN045727/Pirozzi

By Simone Galimberti
KATHMANDU, Nepal, Apr 20 2021 (IPS)

The numbers are so staggering that is hardly imaginable striking a positive tone about the situation of child trafficking in Nepal and yet some positive developments are occurring here in a country that soon could be set to graduate from the group of least developing countries.

Only last week a story was published about seven girls aged between 10-18 from a district neighboring India that had gone missing but luckily were found safe by the Indian police and returned back to their families.

The existence of an open border between the two countries poses one of the greatest challenge in fighting child trafficking as also explained by Nobel Peace Laureate Kailash Satyarthi in a program held in December 2020. This is just one episode amid an ongoing crisis that is affecting thousands of children every single year.

For example, on the 2nd of April, the national police arrested five men accused of trafficking and forcing to prostitution underage teenage girls.

Unbelievably as it might seem, according to the official data from the Government of Nepal, around 300 children, with girls being in the majority, go missing because of child trafficking.

Those ending up in India, deceived and entrapped without apparent escape, are forced into a circle of exploitation and abuse that will mark their lives, while for others their subjugation means a new life characterized by misuse and ill treatment in the Gulf countries.

At the same time, we should not forget the heinous patterns of enslavement within Nepal that feed many industries, from entertainment to construction to public transportation. While boys are also victimized, it is clear that child trafficking is particularly hard on underage girls that become objectified as domestic and sexual workers.

In all the cases, none of the children dragged into these abuses know if one day will be able to be rescued, rehabilitated and have a chance to start their lives anew.

#EndHumanTrafficking visual. According to the UNODC Global Report on Trafficking in Persons, 30% of human trafficking victims are children. Credit: UNODC

A recent report published by the Ministry of Women, Children, and Senior Citizens portrays the situation even in starker terms with estimates that 2,729 children, including 831 boys and 1,898 girls, were reported missing in fiscal 2019- 20, a stunning number but still a reduction in comparison to the previous year when 3,422 had been missing.

Probably the only factor that contributed to the slowdown was the closing of the international borders due to the pandemic but with the lockdown that followed hitting the poorest the most and with a second wave of the virus now reaching the country, it is very realistic to imagine a much worse scenario in the months ahead with more and more children finishing in the networks of unscrupulous traffickers, many of which are relatives or known people.

The economic boom that followed the signing of the peace agreements and the abolition of the monarchy did not materialize in positive advantages for the most vulnerable segments of the population, another evidence that trickle down economy only works to help the middle class move on the social economic ladder.

Despite the gloomy scenario, we are witnessing some positive developments that might help revert the trend and constitute important steps towards ending child exploitation in the country.

The Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons of the US State Department in the latest edition of its annual Trafficking in Persons Report published in 2020 highlights the challenges faced by the country but also recognizes some important improvement, especially in terms of the Government’s commitment to eradicate the problem.

First of all, Nepal ratified the United Nations Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons also known as Palermo Protocol that came into force in the country on the 16th of June 2020.

It is an important legislative milestone that is now prompting the Government to amend the Human Trafficking and Transportation (Control) Act, making it a more robust legislation able to better deter and punish those engaging in acts of children’s trafficking.

Due to the complexity of the issue, other legislations have to be amended including the Foreign Employment Act but also The Immigration Act, exposing the links between child trafficking, force labor and abuses in foreign employment.

The National Child Rights Council is a new institution that builds on the legacy of the Central Child Welfare Board and was born out of Section 59 of the Children’s Act 2018, the recent piece of legislation aimed at modernizing the entire approach to child protection in the country.

Just recently the Council was able to rescue 53 children in Nepal involved in street vending selling items like water and food through local contractors that have been recommended to the Labor Office for prosecution.

Now these children are being protected, thanks to the Council, in safe shelters with the goal of having them reunified with their families as soon as the conditions will allow.

“We are expanding in, cooperation with the Provincial Governments, our outreach in all the seven provinces and soon we will be able to have a stronger presence throughout the nation” says Milan Raj Dharel who has been involved in the field of child protection for his entire life, first working with established civil society organizations and now as founding executive director of the Council.

In order to better intervene in the incidents of child trafficking like the one involving the seven girls, the Council, explains Dharel, is working to systematize cross border rescue protocols so that it will be easier for children rescued in India to be repatriated back to Nepal.

Moreover, some improvements have been also made in the sensitive process of de-institutionalization, closing many faked orphanages that have been taking advantage of and profiting out of the hosted children.

It is still a serious problem, said Dharel, but important achievements have been taken in this regard but at least stronger regulations are in place and very importantly, these are now being enforced.

“Another area we are working with is the upcoming entering in force of new Child’s Rights Rules” that we expect to be endorsed within the end of the May this year”.

According to Dharel, with the new Children’s Act in place, it is now imperative to have the new rules endorsed that will better reflect the transformation of the country in a federal republic where many powers are enshrined with locally elected governments and provinces.

The new regulations will also codify the existence of two child help lines, the 104 being managed by the central police with technical support of the Council and the 1098 that instead is managed, always with Council’s help, by CWIN, a leading civil society organization working in the area of child protection.

According to its official data, only in 2021, 492 case were registered by the 1098 help line, the majority of which were made by female with abuse and child marriage resulting as the two main causes for the requests of help, reinforcing the rationale that only long term solutions encompassing a full spectrum of support, including better social protection schemes directly reaching out the most vulnerable families, are the answers to the complex factors underpinning child abuses, including trafficking.

According to Dharel, the Ministry of Women, Children and Social Affairs, is working to ensure that the amendments to the Human Trafficking and Transportation (Control) Act will be tabled in the next winter session if the situation allows as Nepal is undergoing a delicate situation politically and fresh elections might be called soon.

Despite the objective difficulties of the problem itself and the instability that the country faces, the fact that in this particular sphere of governance, focused on ensuring better life prospects for the most vulnerable children, there is a political will to act and improve the existing legislations whereas needed and finally enforcing them is definitely encouraging.

Partnerships with civil society organizations remain indispensable as they play a big role in stopping and rescuing many minors as well more efforts are required to ensure intra-institutional collaborations within the organs of the State, including with the National Human Rights Commission that since 2005 has been publishing the flagship annual National Report on Trafficking In Persons in Nepal.

Will the country be able to do more, leveraging its “whole of system” approach, mobilizing more partnerships and innovative social programs to root out the causes of child trafficking and finally shut down this dark business that still enriches many and victimizes many more innocent minors?

*Simone Galimberti writes on volunteerism, social inclusion, youth development and regional integration as an engine to improve people’s lives.

The post Child Trafficking in South Asia Facilitated by Open Borders appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

The writer* is Co-Founder, ENGAGE, Inclusive Change Through Volunteering, a not-for-profit in Nepal.

The post Child Trafficking in South Asia Facilitated by Open Borders appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Categories: Africa

Pages

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

You are here

Africa - INTER PRESS SERVICE

Pages