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Peace Corps volunteers in Nepal. Credit: Peace Corps Media Library, Nepal

By Kul Chandra Gautam
KATHMANDU, Nepal, Jul 20 2020 (IPS)

I have had 5-decade long and happy association with the Peace Corps since I was a 7th grade student in the hills of Nepal. My wonderful Peace Corps teachers were instrumental in helping transform my life. And the 4000+ Peace Corps Volunteers who have served in Nepal have contributed immensely to my country’s development.

I feel sad that because of the COVID Pandemic the Peace Corps had to temporarily withdraw its Volunteers from all countries, including Nepal.

Today I join my fellow panelists* from Guatemala and Kenya to address some weighty questions about the future of the Peace Corps from our perspective as global citizens, and that of our home countries.

I deeply appreciate the soul-searching motivation for our reflection at this time of historic convulsion in the US triggered by not only the COVID crisis but also the Black Lives Matter movement, and other crises facing America and the world.

Recent events have made all of us introspect deeply about combatting systemic racism, and more broadly, promoting social justice, and ending the long legacy of racial, ethnic, religious and gender-based disparities.

We find these phenomena not just in America, but in all countries where the Peace Corps serve.
Let me try to address these issues in a historic and holistic perspective.

During the past century, the United States has been the world’s greatest super-power. There have been 3 major sources of America’s super power status in the world – its economic prosperity, its military strength and its cultural vibrancy.

America has been the richest country in the world for nearly 2 centuries. The US has only 4% of the world’s population, but 15% of the world’s GDP, and 30% of the world’s billionaires. But we also find in America grotesque inequality, and great poverty in the midst of plenty.

It is the only rich country in the world without universal health coverage. In terms of people’s health & well-being, the US is no longer a world leader.

Peace Corps worker in Nepal. Credit: www.peacecorps.gov

The fact that the US has more cases & deaths from COVID-19 than any other country in the world, is a telling example of how America’s vast wealth fails to protect its people’s health.

America’s military strength has also been unparalleled in recent history. Currently, the US spends more than $700 billion annually on defense. That is close to 40% of the word’s military spending.

But this is increasingly becoming a burden without proportionate benefits for America. The trillions of dollars America spends on its military is increasingly becoming counter-productive. Instead of winning friends, America’s military might is turning people into enemies and even terrorists.

Look at what the trillions in military spending have produced in Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, the Arab world, and even in Latin America – a wave of anti-Americanism.

I believe it is time now to reorient the American economy, drastically reduce military spending, and redirect it to end poverty, to reduce inequality, to provide health care and quality education for all, and to protect the earth from the climate crisis.

This is where America’s third strength comes into play. America’s educational, scientific and cultural vibrancy have earned the US tremendous soft power in the world.

40 % of the world’s Nobel Prize winners have been Americans. More than 50% of the world’s Nobel laureates were trained in America. And 60 of the world’s 100 best universities are in America. The American scientific, technological and cultural innovations have enveloped the whole world.

That is what gives America a positive soft power for the good of the world. I consider the Peace Corps as one element of that benevolent American soft power.

I dare say that the less than half a billion dollars that America spends annually on the Peace Corps touches more ordinary people’s hearts, and helps nurture peace and friendship in the world than the many billions the US spends on military aid to developing countries.

I recall that was precisely the vision of President John F Kennedy when he established the Peace Corps. Kennedy envisioned the Peace Corps – as an opportunity for young Americans to better understand the challenges of living in a developing country, to impart their knowledge and skills, and to help overcome poverty and underdevelopment.

Those are precisely the building blocks for peace and prosperity. It is that spirit of solidarity and empathy that makes America, or Nepal or any other country truly Great.

To paraphrase the late Senator Teddy Kennedy, to make America Great Again: “It is better to send in the Peace Corps than the Marine Corps”.

I so wish that President Trump had been a Peace Corps volunteer. If he had the Peace Corps experience, he would have tried to make “America Great Again” by responding to the greatest challenges of our times – the COVID-19 pandemic, systemic racism, global poverty, and the climate crisis – in a completely different manner.

Let me now reflect on two questions that the NPCA asked us:

– “How can the Peace Corps be a true partner with host countries
in the new post-COVID world?
– And how must the Peace Corps change to be relevant for the 21st century”

Well, even before COVID-19 invaded and destabilized the world, we already had a universally agreed global agenda called the Sustainable Development Goals. Those goals, with dozens of specific and time-bound targets to be achieved by 2030, include ending extreme poverty, promoting prosperity with equity, protecting the environment and safeguarding people’s human rights.

They were endorsed by all countries of the world, including the United States, at the United Nations in 2015. The SDGs comprise a non-partisan agenda, so all of us can support them whether you are a Republican or Democrat or neither.

The Peace Corps Volunteers already promote these goals in their work as teachers, health promoters, agriculture extension workers, and a variety of other vocations.

What is needed now is to refine the skills of the Peace Corps Volunteers to ensure that their services are provided to truly empower local people and communities.

Like all other institutions are doing at this time, the Peace Corps too would benefit from an organizational soul searching to root out any trace of racism, gender discrimination or a colonial mentality that may occasionally and inadvertently influence its work and mission.

I honestly believe that the Peace Corps can help transform the multiple crises facing the US and the world into opportunity for achieving the Sustainable Development Goals.

I know from my own personal experience and observation that Peace Corps Volunteers can make a transformational impact on the lives of many ordinary people, and future leaders of host countries.

Our increasingly inter-connected world demands global solidarity, not charity, to solve global problems that transcend national borders like the specter of war, terrorism, racism, climate change, and pandemics like COVID-19.

I sincerely believe that the Peace Corps can be a great organization dedicated to promote such global solidarity at the people to people level.

Let us remember that solidarity, unlike charity, is a two-way street. The Peace Corps experience is just as important for the education and enlightenment of the Peace Corps Volunteers as it is for them to help their host communities.

More than any other group of Americans, I believe that Returned Peace Corps Volunteers can instill a sense of a more enlightened America as part of, not apart from, a more just, peaceful and prosperous world.

So, I hope and count on the Peace Corps to survive and thrive, and help build an enlightened post-COVID America and the world.

*In an address to the National Peace Corps Association sharing views on the future of the Peace Corps from the perspective of a host country, Nepal.

www.kulgautam.org; kulgautam@hotmail.com

 

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The post Relevance of US Peace Corps in Post-COVID World appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Kul Chandra Gautam is a former Deputy Executive Director of UNICEF, winner of the 2018 Harris Wofford Global Citizen Award conferred by the National Association of the American Peace Corps, and author of: ‘Global Citizen from Gulmi: My Journey from the Hills of Nepal to the Halls of the United Nations’.

The post Relevance of US Peace Corps in Post-COVID World appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Prior to the pandemic, supporting and catalysing women entrepreneurship was a topic that was gaining traction across intermediary organisations and investment firms. Picture courtesy: Charlotte Anderson

By Saipriya Salla
BENGALURU, Karnataka, India, Jul 19 2020 (IPS)

Two years ago, Aarti started a small business selling traditional handicrafts online, supporting artisans based in rural Karnataka. After an initial phase of struggle, she had a steady stream of orders and was looking to procure manufacturing equipment and scale the impact of her business by supporting more local talent.

All this came to a grinding halt in March 2020. The pandemic, and subsequent lockdown, meant severe restrictions on travel and business. Aarti’s new equipment couldn’t be delivered and she had no way to move her existing inventory.

Historically, it has been documented that economic crises widen existing inequalities for women across key facets like access to healthcare, education, and finances
She was slowly burning through her savings and was unsure about how she would continue to provide basic income to her staff and artisans. Moreover, her in-laws had moved in with her family, which meant she now had extra caregiving responsibilities.

Unfortunately, Aarti’s story is not unique. 2020 marks 25 years since the adoption of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action, once declared the most progressive blueprint for advancing women’s rights. Despite the years that have passed since, this story continues to be the reality for many working women, especially women entrepreneurs, who have had to deal with significant lifestyle changes in the wake of the pandemic, both personally and professionally.

We are no strangers to the fact that women are disproportionately impacted during crises. Women make up a larger percentage of health and social care workers—professions whose representatives are increasingly on the frontline fighting this pandemic.

Historically, it has been documented that economic crises widen existing inequalities for women across key facets like access to healthcare, education, and finances. Nearly 40 percent of women in wage employment are estimated to lack access to social protection mechanisms. In the social sector, there have been several articles and online webinars in the past two months that have brought to light how the pandemic and lockdown has exacerbated gender inequities across the board.

Does this impact extend to women entrepreneurs? Initial evidence indicates that it does so, disproportionately.

 

Factors impacting women entrepreneurs

 

1. Increase in unpaid care work

One in four of women entrepreneurs surveyed by WeConnect International stated that the increased care demands placed on them, with families being physically distanced and confined to their homes, has reduced the time they spend on their businesses. This shouldn’t come as a surprise because in most of the Global South, a majority of responsibilities at home have traditionally been borne by women.

With support services like domestic help and daycare facilities also being impacted due to the pandemic, women like Aarti are now having to shoulder an increased domestic workload, in addition to trying to keep their businesses afloat.

 

2. Disproportionate gender balance in affected sectors

Small and growing businesses (SGBs) have definitely been one of the hardest hit segments during the pandemic. Close to 40 percent of SGBs in emerging markets are staring at potential failure in the next half of the year.

Latest estimates from the Sixth Economic Census suggest that 13.8 percent of Indian establishments are owned by women, majority of which are microenterprises and self-financed. However, many of these women-led businesses are found in sectors like tourism, education, and beauty, which are also the ones most affected1 due to new physical distancing measures. Although we are still computing the actual economic losses, a recent survey conducted by us at the Aspen Network of Development Entrepreneurs (ANDE) shows that women-led businesses are twice as likely to consider shutting shop.

 

3. Lack of external investment

Prior to the pandemic, supporting and catalysing women entrepreneurship was a topic that was gaining traction across intermediary organisations and investment firms. Gender-lens investing was becoming a part of mainstream conversations. Now, all gears have shifted to focus on immediate relief. As one entrepreneur stated, “We were just about to raise our seed equity round when the pandemic struck. The world of equity impact investing is hard to break into for a women entrepreneur, and this has definitely set us back even further”.2

Once we enter the recovery and rebuilding phase, it is likely that women will take longer to resume their business/careers, (as was seen in the last downturn). This  will only reinforce and widen existing investor biases and slow down investment in women-led enterprises.

 

4. An assumption of access

A lot of support services for entrepreneurs have shifted online to ensure that they have access to the guidance they require even in the absence of physical convenings. However, in doing so, the assumption that both men and women have equal access to space, internet, and available time to leverage these resources, is in itself flawed. Additionally, women often do not have the same network of peers to reach out to for moral or technical support.

 

What can we do?

Supporting women entrepreneurs with relevant trainings, and providing access to flexible financing options to help keep their businesses afloat are definitely good places to start. We have an opportunity to pivot and rebuild support structures. Here are some things to keep in mind as we do so:

 

1. Make interventions gender responsive

We need to ensure that, in addition to considering gender norms, roles, and relations, our interventions understand how these affect access to resources, and offer remedial action to overcome these obstacles. Collaborating with known experts in the field is a good way to work towards this. For example, the Indian Women Social Entrepreneurs Network (IWSEN), formed from one such collaboration, seeks to provide women social entrepreneurs across India with leadership and management skills to help scale their businesses, especially in these times.

 

2. Make financial services more inclusive

Women in developing countries tend to not have the same access to information, skills, or awareness to fully leverage financial services. The pandemic provides governments and private finance providers an opportunity to design or tweak existing financial services to be made more inclusive for women entrepreneurs, both from rural and urban backgrounds.

 

3. Focus on digital inclusion

SGBs are undergoing a transformation to make it through this crisis. In a country where the female internet user population is only half of that of the men, with the divide being more distinct in rural India, this overhaul of services to digital platforms can widen inequalities. Entrepreneur-support organisations must work with SGBs to set in place an inclusive plan to gradually build digital awareness and adoption.

This pandemic has acted as a mirror for the unequal systems and structures we had become accustomed to as a society. However, it is also presenting us with an opportunity to change the status quo and look at designing inclusive and sustainable support systems for entrepreneurs. Let us use it to build back better.

 

Saipriya Salla is a senior program coordinator at the India chapter of Aspen Network of Development Entrepreneurs

 

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

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By External Source
Jul 17 2020 (IPS-Partners)

How do we incorporate different knowledge systems in the battle for biodiversity? Billy Offland set off on a 2-year journey to learn about conservation from as many different people as possible. In his travels, he met Dr. Anne Poelina in the Kimberley in Western Australia. Anne is a Nyikina Warrwa Traditional Owner and chair of the Mardoowarra Fitzroy River Council.What can we learn from the Fitzroy River Council? How do we create “forever industries”? How can we use this knowledge in global policymaking?Music: River Feeling by Kalaji (Mark Coles Smith)To find out more about IPBES, head to www.ipbes.net or follow us on social media @IPBES.

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Credit: Jorge Luis Baños/IPS

By Fiona Broom
Jul 17 2020 (IPS)

Global travel restrictions as a result of the COVID-19 outbreak are accelerating a trend towards research publications focussed on the global South, publishers say.

It means the days of fly-in-fly-out field work may be winding back for researchers from developed countries.

While the COVID-19 pandemic has interrupted some research programmes, the pause offers opportunities to develop greater, more equitable collaboration between researchers in the global North and South, an Oxford Forum on Research for Development (OX4RD) online seminar heard last month (30 June).

“Research by African institutions is conspicuous by its almost complete absence in Western media”

Peter Green, Managing Director, AlphaGalileo

“Recognition of the expertise of researchers worldwide is important in tackling both global and local problems,” Siân Harris, communications specialist at INASP, a research-focussed international development organisation, tells SciDev.Net.

Harris says the range of responses to the COVID-19 crisis has also highlighted the importance of learning from health workers and researchers in Africa and Asia.

The science news service AlphaGalileo says the contribution of research in the global South, but particularly Africa, must be recognised.

“Research by African institutions is conspicuous by its almost complete absence in Western media,” says managing director Peter Green.

“Research about Africa is carried by AlphaGalileo, but it is always undertaken by organisations based outside Africa.”

Green says AlphaGalileo had already been working to encourage Africa’s research community to engage with the media, by reducing subscription rates for African academic institutions and taking news from African peer-reviewed journals at no cost.

 

Journals

The Lancet, one of the world’s leading medical journal groups, has announced The Lancet Regional Health, a suite of open access titles based on World Health Organization region designations, in planning since 2019.

The English-language Western Pacific title will launch this month with online articles, while the first issue is expected to be published in August, says editor Jie Cai. The remaining five titles will follow over the next two years.

Article authors whose primary funder is in a low- or middle-income country will be exempt from an article publishing charge, but those in wealthier countries will be charged a processing fee.

A spokesperson for The Lancet tells SciDev.Net the regional titles will “aim to stimulate conversations and facilitate information exchange within and between communities”.

Local research is “immensely important and relevant to the health and wellbeing of underrepresented communities”, The Lancet spokesperson says. “[W]e see an opportunity to promote the best science from these regions to advance health and improve lives of local populations.”

Kamran Rafiq, co-founder and communications director at the International Society for Neglected Tropical Diseases, says the open access format is “something to applaud”.

Rafiq says the emerging regional focus of research publications “could … ultimately build up the evidence base that could change operating models and culture to facilitate [developing] country ownership [of research programmes]”.

 

New barriers

INASP’s Harris says there is widespread support for open access to research in the South. Many journals are publishing articles under gold open access, which makes final versions of articles freely and permanently accessible while authors retain copyright.

But, Harris says these new models are also creating new barriers. “[T]here are well-documented challenges and concerns about replicating the costs and structural inequities of the subscription model, with a pay-to-read barrier being replaced by a pay-to-publish barrier,” she says.

Costs to publish are often high, says Harris, and waivers for researchers in the global South can be unclear. “[W]e have seen in our own research that many researchers pay these costs out of their own pockets,” she says.

Many Southern journals enable open access without passing on high charges to authors, through government or institution-based support, or by using volunteers. New models for journals and research publishing platforms that are emerging in the developing world have been neglected by Euro-American science policy, Harris argues.

Language is also important, as many journals publish in English. “We hear often of challenges faced by researchers whose papers are rejected because of imperfect English rather than problems with the science,” Harris says.

“It is also important to recognise the challenges that language can bring for readers. What impact can research have to a local problem if it is written in a language that the healthcare professional or farmer or policymaker cannot understand?”

 

Future

Existing journals serving local communities play an important role in communicating research within their countries and beyond, Harris adds: “INASP believes it is vital that Southern research becomes more visible and trusted — and this requires Southern representation and accessibility to international journals.”

She cites African Journals Online (AJOL), which hosts 526 journals including 265 open access publications, Nepal Journals Online (NepJOL) — an active platform that hosts 179 journals — Sri Lanka’s journal database SLJOL and Central American Journals Online (CAMJOL), with 58 journals.

AlphaGalileo news manager Kosta Stefanov says much of the research now being published through his news service has a focus on topics that often have specific relevance in global South contexts, such as life sciences, biology, personal protective equipment and, of course, virology.

He predicts this trend will continue “for at least a year or two” — in which time the research landscape may have expanded to include a larger cohort from across the developing world.

 

This story was originally published by SciDev.Net

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Credit: UNICEF/DE WET

By Ann McLaughlin
SEATTLE, Washington, Jul 17 2020 (IPS)

The United Nations’ first Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) is “No poverty,” the most important because almost half the world, 46%, lives on less than $5.50 a day according to the World Bank. But world attention has turned away from poverty. Why?

In 2004, I founded NGOabroad to link people’s skills to humanity’s challenges. Most people coming to me to volunteer believe that the most important issue in the world today is the Syrian refugee crisis; that Syrian refugees are those suffering the most and see this as THE humanitarian crisis of our time. I say, “What about Yemen? What about Sudan? …Five million Syrians fled but 3.4 billion people struggle to meet their basic needs.”

Our focus is on what the news covers and what is dramatic or traumatic

The slow grind of poverty – what Amartya Sen, Nobel prize winning economist originally from India, calls “unfreedoms” – are more dispiriting than barrel bombs. Based on my conversations with Congolese refugee women, not being able to feed your children in the “lean months” is harder than all the rapes Congolese women suffered.

So why is the world turning its eyes away from poverty?

1. Many people in North America or Europe see fighting poverty as hopeless.
Donald Trump’s “shithole countries” comment was the epitome of this point of view.

We need to shift how we present poverty and emphasize the strides which have been made. People want to be part of a winning team. The Gapminder Institute does hilarious TED talks asserting that chimps more accurately answer questions about world poverty than people! We are operating on stereotypes, not facts. The truth is we are doing better than we think. We have made huge strides: 2 billion people have moved out of extreme poverty in the last 25 years reports the UN.

From pathos to possibility
We must switch from a negative image and instead promote the image of what the world would look like if everyone is thriving. This will attract more people to the cause. We’ve been doing it backwards.

2. People have tried in the past or joined in some effort and feel it didn’t help.

a. Jubilee 2000. Many idealistic people, myself included, jumped onboard the Jubilee 2000 movement to “Make poverty history” by forgiving the IMF debts of 35 Heavily Indebted Poor Countries hoping monies would be redirected to health and education. Sigh, it was not a panacea. Only half the HIPC are meeting MDG health and education targets. Some of those countries are now in debt again.

We need a sustained, forever-learning-and-tweaking approach to assist countries rather than “slam-dunk-done.” One of the lessons of debt forgiveness: would it help to balance budgets and tackle corruption? Autocrats live like kings while their people starve.

One of the positive results of the Make Poverty History campaign: I believe that it changed the ethos of the World Bank. Amartya Sen was invited to deliver his “Development as Freedom” lecture.

Jim Yong Kim, who with Paul Farmer founded the pro-poor organization, Partners in Health, was appointed President of the World Bank injecting pro-poor priorities into World Bank programs.

b. Microfinance.

Muhammad Yunus who received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006 for his work in microfinance inspired business schools to teach microfinance and MFI’s (microfinance institutions) were launched. I was heartened when so many people wanted to help people out of poverty. But did it work?

I talked to many MFI’s all over the world to create NGOabroad’s microfinance volunteer programs. About half the MFI directors said they struggled with staying solvent if their micro-entrepreneurs did not pay back their loans. Equally important, do micro-loans help people move out of poverty? My observation of MF programs is that you must teach entrepreneurship skills and mentor micro-entrepreneurs to ensure success.

We need to nurture solutions over time as a farmer would: planting seeds, weeding and watering

3. Shift to good news and solution focus as it empowers. Rather than more news coverage about the problem of world poverty or SDG’s, we need to put more emphasis on the solutions. E.g. from 2008 to 2015 the headline could have read “Number of people in extreme poverty fell by 192,000 since yesterday.”

4. We need to celebrate achievements:

~ Brazil’s Bolsa Família and Mexico’s Progresa program which provide cash transfers to the poor IF the children are going to school and getting vaccinated have been hailed as innovative successes.
~ Rwanda is lauded for their $1/year health insurance; incorporating tech and courting foreign investors. Rwanda emphasizes self-reliance and the empowerment of their people.

5. People need hopeful models and solutions which have worked to vanquish poverty
~ Liberation Theology – pro-poor Catholic movement in Latin America

~ Gandhi’s influence rippled through South Asia for decades

~ BRAC in Bangladesh

~ Gawad Kalinga in Philippines began with work in the slums

~ Ashesi University in Ghana teaching entrepreneurship

~ African School of Economics in Benin

6. We need to create people-centered governments that care about their citizens and will develop programs which help move people out of poverty. To move out of poverty people need a voice in matters which affect their daily lives.

7. We need models of places which have improved quality of life
~ Kerala, India: high literacy rates and quality of life; engaged citizens

~ Botswana was seen as a success story: not borrowing from IMF; their diamond profits ploughed back into health and education programs; and balancing their budget

~ Costa Rica decided in the 1930’s to not have an army and instead fund health and education. They were in the vanguard of women having the right to vote. They have a health care system that Americans flock to for medical and dental vacations.

When viewed from the top down, people say things are horrible. However if you ask local people, they are very hopeful and engaged. Common citizens and grassroots organizations are circumventing the obstacles.

When the SDG’s were launched, the United Nations emphasized that “For the goals to be reached, everyone needs to do their part: governments, the private sector, civil society and people like you.”

If we look past the poster of the stereotypical emaciated woman, behind that is a vibrant community of people collaborating to tackle poverty. We have a long way to go, but all over the world people are moving forward. When the people lead, the leaders will follow.

*Much of the content of this article will be more fully explored in a forthcoming book: International Development: Brilliant Solutions.

The post World Poverty: We Have Come So Far… But so Much Further To Go appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Ann McLaughlin has been a psychotherapist and social worker for over 20 years helping people untangle human problems and to accomplish goals. For the last 15 years she has directed NGOabroad: International Careers and Volunteering, a unique service to match skills to humanitarian needs and help people enter or advance in international development careers. https://ngoabroad.com/

The post World Poverty: We Have Come So Far… But so Much Further To Go appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Farmer ploughing the field: Source: Divya Pandey/IFPRI

By Suresh Chandra Babu and Vaishali Dassani
Jul 16 2020 (IPS)

The global outbreak of Covid-19 has disrupted the food system throughout the world. From initial lockdown by the national governments to slow the spread of the Covid-19 to now opening of the economies have had food security implications for all players in the food system ranging for the farmers to consumers and the rest in between.

The responses of the countries have also resulted in changes related to food availability, access, affordability, food safety and price levels. In response to the increasing spread of Covid-19, the government of India took early action for a complete lockdown on March 25, 2020. The lockdown continues as of July in various forms and in various states depending on the intensity of spread of Covid-19.

In the Indian context, the pandemic has hit the most vulnerable population the hardest, especially in the informal sector who were unable to work and have little or no savings. In addition, infrastructure and transportation challenges disrupted the supply of food.

On the demand side, the loss of income, closing of food transfer schemes such as school feeding programmes and rising food costs made access to food difficult leading to decline in dietary quality by a majority of households. The exports of food and agricultural commodities have stagnated. Labor availability for production has come down as the migratory laborers have moved back to their hometowns.  The sum, the food system is in doldrums.

Indian policy makers have embarked on major policy reforms and have broken down regulatory challenges in food and agricultural markets in ways no one thought was possible for the past 70 years

In this context, a key policy question has been how to revive the agricultural markets that can enable both the producers and consumers by converting the challenges posed by COVID-19 into opportunities?

In response to this question, Indian policy makers have embarked on major policy reforms and have broken down regulatory challenges in food and agricultural markets in ways no one thought was possible for the past 70 years. A quick response from the farmers is to increase the area sown by 40 percent for the next season.

While this supply response will have major implications for agricultural growth and transformation in the years to come, how did the government of India use this COVID -19 pandemic as an opportunity to usher major policy reforms in the agriculture sector?

The third tranche (first was on business including MSME and second on poor including migrants and farmers) of economic relief packages, the government of India introduced a set of policy measures that remove logistical barriers in agricultural supply chains and bring in the private sector to support development of ‘one national open market.’ Though these reforms will take time to reach the grounds due to implementation challenges ahead, it is a step forward for long-term gains for farmers, marketers and consumers.

First, the government amended the Essential Commodities Act (ECA) through an ordinance route to enable better price realization for farmers which will result in the deregulation of prices for food items including cereals, edible oils, oilseeds, pulses, onions and potato.

The ordinance assures that stocking limits will not be imposed on the private sector, except under exceptional circumstances such as natural calamity, and wars. The changes in the ECA will now allow private sector investment and making agriculture sector competitive. It will help drive up investment in cold storages and modernization of food supply chain.

Second, through barrier-free trade in agriculture, the government will provide adequate choices to farmers to sell their produce at an attractive price and through free interstate trade. It will also help farmers in regions with surplus produce to get better prices and at the same time, consumers in regions with shortages, can benefit from lower prices.

In addition, a framework for e-trading of agricultural produce will be established. The move aims to end market fragmentation farmers face forcing them to sell their produce only to licensed Agricultural Produce Marketing Committee (APMC) in their locality.

Third, agriculture in India is fragmented due to small holding sizes and is highly dependant on weather which makes it risky resulting in inefficient input and output management. The Farmers (Empowerment and Protection) Agreement on Price Assurance and Farm Services Ordinance, 2020, will empower farmers for directly engaging with processors, wholesalers, aggregators, wholesalers, large retailers, and exporters to have a better say in defining the terms of the contract with the aim to remove middlemen.

In the fourth intervention, the government will create a Rs 1 trillion Agri-Infrastructure Fund for farm- gate infrastructure for small and medium farmers, which will include primary agricultural co-operative societies and farmer producer organizations. This will fix the current gap in value chains resulting from poor access to cold chain and post-harvest management near farm-gate.

Finally, through the Prime Minister Farmers Fund – Kisan Samman Nidhi (PM-KISAN), over 95.4 million farmer families (as on first June 2020) benefited disbursement of Rs. 195.15 billion and provision of Rs30,000 crores of additional refinancing facility by National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development during the lockdown period. These measures are positive steps toward long-term growth of the high value agriculture sector.

On June 3, 2020 the President of India, converted some of the key policy announcements into ordinances through swift action. The final impact of these policies will crucially depend on their implementation on the ground at the state levels.

These policy changes have gone beyond the regular challenge of individual states taking policy action given the federal nature of policy making in India. However, it is necessary for states to step up on their role in the implementation of these policy interventions. There is also a need to understand the process of translating national ordinances into state level programs.

Yet such a translation process requires institutional and human capacity at the state and at the local levels. Decentralized and context specific interventions that address specific challenges of the famers are needed for realizing he full impact of the policy reforms.

Allocation of resources at the right time that is based on right strategic and investment plans is also needed to strengthen the necessary infrastructure for developing one national market. Developing cold storage facilities through such infrastructure facilities will also reduce wastages and enhance supply chain efficiency benefiting both farmers and the consumers.

Finally, establishing monitoring and evaluation systems for learning and modifying the implementation strategies is needed to gain maximum benefits from these reforms induced by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Systematic campaigns to inform and educate the district level authorities is one of the important factors to consider for the implementation. Even in countries where suitable capacities exist to meet with long‐ term planning and policy changes, but even the capacity for planning, and implementing policies and programs to bounce back (better) from recurring challenges may be too low.

Despite the pandemic, agriculture production has been consistently growing and is expected to grow 3 per cent in 2020-21. It is ironic that despite such growth, farmers continue to lag behind. One can say, the Covid-19 pandemic was a wake up call for the government of India, and they were quick to convert crises into opportunities. The overall benefit to the farmers will only be known in due course, but from the beginning the government needs to ensure farmers benefit from the reforms.

 

Suresh Babu is Senior Research Fellow, International Food Policy Research Institute

Vaishali Dassani is Former Communications Specialist, International Food Policy Research Institute

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This screenshot from the U.S. Embassy in Ghana website shows Ambassador Stephanie Sullivan, right, donating technology to the executive director of the Economic and Organized Crime Office, Frank Adu-Poku, rear, and Jacob Puplampu, left, at a “cyber dark web investigations training” session in Accra in May 2019. Credit: Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ)

By Jonathan Rozen
NEW YORK, Jul 16 2020 (IPS)

In May 2019, senior members of Ghana’s law enforcement posed for photos with the U.S. ambassador to their country at a ceremony in the capital, Accra. Between them they held boxes and bags, gifts from the U.S. government to Ghana which, according to one of the recipients, contained Israeli phone hacking technology.

That recipient was Maame Yaa Tiwaa Addo-Danquah, then-director general of the Ghana police’s criminal investigation department. In May 2020, she spoke to CPJ about how the U.S. and U.K. governments, as well as Interpol, provided Ghana’s security forces with digital investigations training and technology.

She cited tools made by the Israel-based Cellebrite corporation – whose website says their technology can break locks and encryption – and two U.S.-based companies, IBM and Digital Intelligence.

Journalists in Ghana say they are worried about how such technology may be used against them or their sources.

Last year, CPJ documented the use of Cellebrite’s Universal Forensic Extraction Device (UFED) by Nigerian security forces, and how the military targeted journalists’ phones and computers with a “forensic search” trying to reveal their sources.

Six days before the U.S. gave the same tools to Ghana, The Washington Post reported on how police used UFED to retrieve documents from journalists’ phones in Myanmar. Amid the coronavirus pandemic, Cellebrite has pitched its technology to help authorities access devices of infected people to trace their contacts, Reuters reported in April.

“If a state agency can decode my system without access to my password, that is scary,” Emmanuel Dogbevi, managing editor of the website Ghana Business News, told CPJ in early July.

Dogbevi, a member of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, has reported on sensitive subjects, including offshore finances and Ghana’s purchase of hardware from the Israel-based spyware company NSO Group.

He told CPJ that many sources were already hesitant to speak for fear of being identified, and the years-long pattern of Ghanaian authorities trying to intimidate journalists left him worried he too may be targeted. “Sources send me information, send me documents. I wouldn’t want anyone to have access to that,” Dogbevi said.

Before being transferred from criminal investigations to head police welfare in January 2020, Tiwaa Addo-Danquah said she sought to strengthen prosecutions by building the police’s capacity to extract and analyze information from phones and computers. “In this [digital] era, most of the evidence are held on electronic devices…You arrest one person and the person says I’m not going to inform you [of] my accomplice. These are the tools that can help you to know who or whom that person is talking to,” she told CPJ.

A year earlier, in June 2019, officers from Ghana’s National Security Ministry arrested editor Emmanuel Ajarfor Abugri and reporter Emmanuel Yeboah Britwum, both of the Modern Ghana news website, held them for days, and searched their phones and computers in an effort to reveal their sources for a report on National Security Minister Albert Kan Dapaah, CPJ reported at the time.

Abugri told CPJ his devices were taken to an “IT room” and he was forced to give the officers his passwords. “They were going into my gadgets,” he said.

The Greater Accra police command still has Abugri’s phones and tablets, while the National Security Ministry has his computer, Abugri said. (A police spokesperson, Afia Tengey, said she was unable to comment because she could not locate the case files).

The experience changed the way Abugri thought about the safety of information: “Sometimes in journalism there are certain information that are very confidential to you, that you don’t want any other person to know the source…having those information on your gadgets and those same gadgets are in the hands of certain people [security forces], I feel threatened.”

Abugri sued Ghana’s national security coordinator, inspector-general of police, and attorney general claiming his arrest and detention, including alleged torture, violated his constitutionally guaranteed rights; the case is due in court July 15, he told CPJ.

CPJ’s calls to Kan Dapaah following the June 2019 arrests and in June 2020 rang unanswered. But Tiwaa Addo-Danquah told CPJ that she had at times relied on the National Security Ministry digital forensics and surveillance capacities to assist with police investigations.

“If the phone is on, [based on a telephone number] they were able to tell that this person was here at this time, he moved here at this time,” she said.

Manasseh Azure Awuni, a freelance investigative journalist, told CPJ the arrests of the Modern Ghana journalists and seizure of their devices shows that journalists and sources are vulnerable. “If it has happened to some journalists, it is possible it can happen to me,” Awuni said.

Awuni said he received death threats and was forced into hiding in 2019 because of a documentary that alleged Ghana’s ruling party operated a secret militia group. The party denied ties to the group, he said.

“It can exert a chilling effect on press freedom,” Roland Affail Monney, president of the Ghana Journalists Association, told CPJ of security forces’ capacity to break into journalists’ phones and computers.

Ghana’s police first received Cellebrite’s UFED technology from Interpol in 2017 at training for West African law enforcement in Cote d’Ivoire, Tiwaa Addo-Danquah told CPJ. The year before, Cellebrite signed an agreement to provide Interpol with “digital forensic equipment [including UFED] and training services over a three-year period,” according to their websites. Interpol’s press office acknowledged in an email that has provided Cellebrite tools to some national police but did not identify which countries or otherwise elaborate.

Tiwaa Addo-Danquah said that in 2019 the U.K. trained and provided Ghanaian police with IBM i2 Analyze to help organize and evaluate information pulled from devices. IBM i2 Analyze “facilitates analysis of large volumes of data” and “uncover[s] hidden connections,” according to its website.

CPJ emailed the British High Commission in Accra requesting an interview regarding U.K. digital forensics support for Ghanaian law enforcement, but no interview was arranged before publication.

IBM’s head of communications for the Middle East and Africa, Mark Fox, told CPJ in an email that IBM had “no record of selling or providing” IBM i2 Analyze to the government of Ghana, but declined to comment on whether Ghana’s police used the technology. “[W]e carefully review potential business opportunities to ensure they do not conflict” with IBM’s principles of trust and transparency, Fox said.

Separately, a 2019 British Immigration Enforcement document appears to show that the agency supplied Ghana’s Immigration Service with Detego digital forensics equipment made by U.K.-based MCM Solutions (the document misspells the equipment as “Detago”).

Detego can “[e]xtract and seamlessly analyse data from multiple devices,” according to MCM’s website. In March 2019, MCM posted on Twitter that its staff were in Ghana “conducting an advanced [Detego] training course for a number of specialist units.”

John-Paul Backwell, MCM Solutions’ global sales and marketing director, told CPJ that the company had multiple clients in Ghana, but did not respond by publication time to a question about which security agencies had the technology. Backwell said MCM Solutions’ ambition was to have their technology “used for good” to “solve security challenges,” but acknowledged the company “cannot always control how a customer uses the software.” MCM Solutions would investigate cases where their tools may have been used against journalists, he said.

The U.S. embassy provided Ghana with Cellebrite UFED and UltraBlock, another digital forensics tool made by the Digital Intelligence corporation, in May 2019 at the ceremony with U.S. Ambassador Stephanie Sullivan, Tiwaa Addo-Danquah told CPJ. UltraBlock is used to facilitate the extraction of information from hard drives, but does not have decryption capacity, Chris Stippich, the president of Digital Intelligence, told CPJ by phone in late June. He said company policy did not permit him to comment on Digital Intelligence’s customers.

Procurement documents reviewed by CPJ and a report by the Nextgov news website indicate that in December 2018 the U.S. embassy in Ghana made a request to purchase UFED and UltraBlock technology. The request specified UFED be capable of “extraction” and “decoding” of major cellphone models, including Android, Blackberry, Nokia, and Huawei, as well as GPS systems like TomTom.

According to a U.S. government database, State Department contracts were awarded to two U.S.-based companies—BIT DIRECT INC and Lyme Computer Systems, Inc— for cyber investigations equipment for Ghana. Other contract listings indicate that in recent years U.S. embassies around the world have ordered equipment directly from Cellebrite.

CPJ’s calls and an email to Josh Longacre, Lyme Computer Systems’ CEO and president, as well as calls and a voicemail to the publicly listed number for BIT DIRECT INC, went unanswered.

CPJ’s questions emailed to Cellebrite’s press office and Masao Koda, a representative for Cellebrite’s Japan-based parent company, Sun Corporation, were not answered before publication.

The U.S. embassy in Ghana told CPJ in an emailed statement that it gave the country’s police and the Economic and the Organized Crime Office (EOCO) “assistance to enhance their capability in investigating cyber-related offenses” with technology and training.

It said those who were trained underwent “Leahy vetting,” a reference to U.S. laws that prohibit spending on foreign security forces implicated in human rights abuses. The embassy did not directly answer CPJ’s questions specific to UFED and UltraBlock.

CPJ reached Frank Adu-Poku, executive director of Ghana’s EOCO, by phone in May 2020, but he declined to comment. Ghana immigration service spokesperson Michael Amoako-Atta told CPJ by phone that he would check for information about British support in 2019, but CPJ’s subsequent calls and text messages to Amoako-Atta went unanswered.

“Any data that is accessed by police would be done so in accordance with [the] law,” Sheila Kessie Abayie-Buckman, a spokesperson for Ghana’s police, told CPJ by phone. She said a “framework for police-media relations and safety of journalists” launched on July 1 would help curb instances where officers seized journalists’ devices or interrogated them about their sources. Abayie-Buckman did not provide answers to emailed questions concerning police use of Cellebrite and IBM technology.

“Sometimes I think it is good for governments to have that kind of [digital forensics] tools,” Abugri told CPJ, noting that there are public safety reasons for devices to be searched. “But in a situation where people like us [journalists] are involved…those tools are not being used for their intended purpose…that is where it becomes a worry.”

• For information on digital security, consult CPJ’s Digital Safety Kit.

The post US, UK, Interpol Give Ghana Phone Hacking Tools, Raising Journalist Concerns on Safety & Confidentiality appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Jonathan Rozen is CPJ Senior Africa Researcher

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The post The SDGs, COVID-19 and the Global South: Insights from the Sustainable Development Report 2020 appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Every year, the Sustainable Development Report (SDR) tracks the performance of all UN member states on the seventeen Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) – adopted in 2015 by world leaders. This article discusses progress made on the SDGs in Africa, Latin America, the Caribbean, and South Asia, as well as the likely short-term impacts of COVID-19 in these regions where reported daily cases and virus transmission are growing rapidly. It identifies five key measures that international cooperation efforts should urgently include to address the immediate consequences of the health and economic crises in vulnerable countries and population groups.

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Longer term investments are needed to enable the over 500 million small holder farmers in developing countries to grow more food, thus increasing their incomes and resilience. Credit: Miriam Gahtigah/IPS

By Esther Ngumbi
ILLINOIS, United States, Jul 16 2020 (IPS)

African countries are beginning to reopen borders, and this is finally enabling many citizens to resume their normal life. However, there is still an urgent need for African countries to prioritize agriculture to tackle food insecurity issues that have been exacerbated by COVID and will continue to be an issue into the near future. According to the latest estimates by the United Nations World Food Programme, COVID-19’s compounding effects could drive 270 million people into food insecurity.

While re-opening is something we have all been looking forward to, the truth is, without a COVID-19 vaccine yet, and without implementing strict safety measures, new waves of COVID-19 may emerge, as has been seen in the United States, forcing countries to shut down again, and again, and go through new waves of hunger and food insecurity for many citizens.

Given this uncertainty, it is extremely important for countries to have well thought out actions, initiatives, strategies and articulated plans on how to address on-going and future COVID-19 related food insecurity challenges.

African countries have the potential to produce safe, abundant, and nutritious food to meet the continent’s food needs, especially, when food systems are disrupted. But to get there, there is need to invest and improve the agricultural production methods and post-harvest technologies that farmers are using

Doing so will result in improved food security and more efficient and resilient agricultural and food systems while allowing countries to implement these plans should the need arise to close countries because of COVID-19.

What are some of the actions that can be taken? Here are a few suggestions.

First, start building resilient social safety nets. Indeed, the presence of or lack of existing food banks and other social safety nets programs such as school feeding programs and social pensions was key during the shutdown as all countries grappled with finding immediate ways to provide food for their citizens. COVID19 has drawn the attention to the importance of these safety nets to ensure food security for all citizens and to reduce vulnerabilities of families.

According to a 2018 World Bank report, most African countries have recently established these social safety net initiatives as part of a broader strategy to protect the vulnerable and assist the poor. As the report reveals, these social safety net programs are reaching only 10 percent of the African population. Majority of these initiatives target children, orphans and the elderly, through school feeding, nutrition interventions and old-age social pensions.

Left out are the youth, women, people with disabilities and other groups that are equally vulnerable. Clearly, much more needs to be done, to ensure the existing programs can deliver, now and into the future.

Time is ripe for countries to scale up protective safety nets or to think of alternative approaches to meeting immediate and future food security needs. There is a need to rethink implementing equivalent of food banks across African countries.

Food banks, which are diverse-from small operations to large facilities act as food and grocery storage and distribution depots. Stored food is then distributed to people who need it through food pantries, and meal programs. In 2019, over 3.6 billion meals were distributed by Feeding America, a national network of foodbanks. A recent report suggests that because of COVID19, these numbers may have increased, by over 70 percent.

One way is to build food warehouses in cities and rural areas. These warehouses could in turn be used as foodbanks, where citizens can collect food when they need it. In the United States during the pandemic, foodbanks and government funded food programs have been main points through which Americans received food when they needed it.

Typically, food banks receive funding from several sources including government grants, donations from individuals, corporate and foundation grants. A similar model, can be implemented in African countries with modifications.

Another suggestion is to continue to invest in agriculture. African countries have the potential to produce safe, abundant, and nutritious food to meet the continent’s food needs, especially, when food systems are disrupted. But to get there, there is need to invest and improve the agricultural production methods and post-harvest technologies that farmers are using.

Accompanying improved methods is the need for farmers to easily access soil fertility assessment and management initiatives, improved seed varieties, agricultural inputs such as fertilizers to ensure that farmers make the most out of their farming enterprises for the rest of the 2020 year.

Equally, there is a need to focus on longer term investments to enable the over 500 million small holder farmers in developing countries to grow more food, thus increasing their incomes and resilience. These investments include improved access to water and water conservation technologies, financial services, better infrastructure such as roads, internet and cell phone technologies, and functioning markets

Undoubtedly, there is evidence that clearly shows that with the right knowledge, tools and resources, smallholder farmers based in the African continent can become dynamic players in agriculture. They have the potential to not only feed the world, but become the game changers of 21st century agriculture.

Accompanying the aforementioned initiatives is the need for continued surveillance, monitoring and evaluation of these food insecurity mitigating action plans and enhanced coordination among all food security stakeholders. Data driven surveillance and monitoring will continue to be key and invaluable in helping governments to predict food insecurity crisis while guiding their formulation of initiatives to tackle food insecurity.

Moving forward in these uncertain times, and learning from food insecurity challenges that have been exacerbated because of the pandemic, African countries should make it a priority to build and establish strong national food safety systems and assistance programs so as to ensure citizens are food secure.

 

Dr. Esther Ngumbi is an Assistant Professor at the Entomology Department and African American Studies, University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign. She is a Senior Food security fellow with the Aspen Institute.

The post Dealing with Food Insecurity, on a Longer Term appeared first on Inter Press Service.

By Anis Chowdhury and Jomo Kwame Sundaram
SYDNEY and KUALA LUMPUR, Jul 16 2020 (IPS)

Announcing an independent evaluation of the global Covid-19 response on 9th July, World Health Organization (WHO) Director-General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus asked why it has been “difficult for humans to unite and fight a common enemy that is killing people indiscriminately?”.

Anis Chowdhury

He warned: “The greatest threat we face now is not the virus itself. Rather, it is the lack of leadership and solidarity at the global and national levels… we cannot defeat this pandemic as a divided world”, highlighting inter-governmental conflicts over the pandemic and its containment.

Solidarity desperately needed
With more than 600,000 acknowledged deaths, almost 13 million are believed to have been infected by Covid-19 in mid-July. In less than half a year, every country had been affected by the pandemic, designated by the WHO as a “public health emergency of international concern” (PHEIC) on 30th January.

Richard Horton, editor of the prestigious Lancet medical journal, has urged the United Nations to convene an emergency special session of the UN General Assembly (UNGA) to make “appropriate recommendations to Members for collective measures”.

A “meeting under the auspices of the UN is the only means available to construct a global response to this pandemic”. Wondering “why such a global gathering has not yet taken place”, he pleaded, “It must take place. And soon”.

Covid-19 has been devastating, not only because of its heavy toll on human life, but also because of its adverse impacts on livelihoods, especially for much of the ‘precariat’, particularly in the most vulnerable developing countries.

The pandemic’s indirect impacts are not well understood as national health systems, already undermined by years of under-investment and creeping privatization, struggle to cope.

Other preventable deaths are rising as less people get medical attention due to loss of livelihoods and health coverage. The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria has estimated an additional 1·44 million deaths from the three killer diseases.

Jomo Kwame Sundaram

Horton warns, “Global health has entered a period of rapid reversal…Yet no plan is in place, or even being proposed, to address this global regression in human health”. For him, “this pandemic deserves historically unrivalled global political leadership. And yet all we have is silence”. He asks, “How have we fallen so low?”.

WHO “left out to dry”
Helen Clark, former New Zealand Prime Minister and co-chair of the independent review, lamented that the WHO has been undermined by lack of support from the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) and the G20, observing, “toxic geopolitics have stopped it doing anything useful at all”.

On 7th July, the United States gave the required one year’s notice to the UN that it would withdraw from the WHO. With the world’s largest economy, US withdrawal will greatly weaken WHO finances when it is needed more than ever.

The US has not provided meaningful world leadership in recent years, but has instead increasingly undermined the multilateral order it was the primary architect of. Yet, the current campaign against the WHO is unprecedented, and is widely believed to be connected to political, economic and diplomatic mobilization to check China’s rise.

In the current context, US withdrawal is expected to greatly undermine multilateral cooperation more broadly. sides endangering the lives and health of billions worldwide, it will undermine multilateralism more generally, not only in the UN system, but even at the World Trade Organization (WTO).

WHO could have done better
Undoubtedly, the WHO’s role in the pandemic could have been better, although how so depends on one’s perspective. Despite resource constraints and member-imposed regulations and protocols, it has done well, designating the outbreak a ‘public health emergency of international concern’ (PHEIC) on 30th January.

Then, there were only 7,818 confirmed cases of human-to-human transmission, mostly in China, and 82 cases in 18 countries outside China. The WHO advised all countries to “be ready to contain any introduction of the virus and its spread through active surveillance, early detection, isolation and case management, contact tracing, and prevention”.

Yet, mistakes were undoubtedly made, e.g., discouraging the use of face masks, ostensibly to ensure adequate protective personal equipment for medical personnel and other ‘frontline workers’.

But there is no conclusive evidence, except for uncorroborated claims by the anti-China Japanese and Taiwanese authorities, greatly amplified by the media in India, Australia and the US, of the WHO being controlled by and biased towards China.

Refusing to prepare
The first WHO fact-finding mission to China emphasized the success of prompt, early precautionary measures, including testing, tracing, isolation and treatment. Contagion could still have been contained by adopting WHO recommended measures.

Yet, except for a handful of East Asian countries and Kerala state, in southwest India, much of the rest of the world, including most who could afford more adequate precautionary measures, did little to contain the contagion until they had little choice but to impose ‘stay in shelter’ lockdown measures.

When the WHO declared Covid-19 a “pandemic” on 11th March, there were over 118,000 confirmed cases and 4,291 deaths in 114 countries, with more than 90% of cases in four countries: China, Iran, Italy and South Korea.

By then, new infections were already declining rapidly in China and South Korea, while 81 countries reported no cases, and 57 had ten cases or less. Yet, inaction persisted, even justified in terms of developing ‘herd immunity’.

To be sure, many rich countries had been weakening the WHO for decades before the Covid-19 pandemic. Reliable long-term mandatory funding had fallen from 62% of its budget in 1970-71 to 18% in 2017.

As Stewart Patrick noted, “much of the blame can be laid at the feet of member states, which have saddled the WHO with an ever-expanding mission set reflecting their individual priorities, while providing it with a modest operating budget… smaller than that of some big city U.S. hospitals.

“Compounding these difficulties, national governments have repeatedly proved resistant to accepting WHO guidance or fulfilling their international legal obligations during declared public health emergencies”.

Security Council must act
In 2014, the UNSC responded promptly to the Ebola crisis, declaring the virus a threat to peace and security, thus ‘legally obliging’ Member States to do whatever they can to check the threat.

Despite its much greater morbidity and mortality impacts worldwide, the UNSC took half a year to back the UN Secretary-General’s global ceasefire appeal following the Covid-19 outbreak.

Covid-19 is arguably the greatest threat to peace and security since the Second World War. Now that the UNSC is finally acting, only seven of the 15-member Council can convene UN Member States for an emergency UNGA special session to do the right thing.

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By Miriam Gathigah
NAIROBI, Jul 15 2020 (IPS)

While men are more likely to die from COVID-19, women are facing the full blow of the socio-economic fallout from the ongoing pandemic as well as seeing a reversal in equality gains made over the last two decades, says an all-women panel of international thought leaders, who met virtually during a discussion convened by IPS.

“The Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Women and Girls” took place on Tuesday, Jul. 14, with the aim to bring to the fore the dangers of neglecting gender dimensions in COVID-19 response and recovery plans.

The panel included gender and development experts with a wide range of expertise:

• Catherine Bertini, a distinguished fellow of global food and agriculture at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, professor emeritus at the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University and former executive director of the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP);
• Yasmine Sherif, the director of Education Cannot Wait (ECW) – a global fund for education in emergencies and protracted crisis established by the World Humanitarian Summit. Sherif, a lawyer specialising in in International Humanitarian Law and Human Rights Law, has 30 years of experience with the U.N. and international NGOs;
• Saima Wazed Hossain, advisor to the director-general of World Health Organisation on mental health and autism, the chairperson of the Bangladesh National Advisory Committee for Autism and Neurodevelopment Disorders as well as the chairperson for the Shuchona Foundation;
• Josefina Stubbs, senior manager multilateral relations in Enel Green Power, Italy and former assistant secretary-general and vice president strategy and knowledge at U.N. International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD); and
• Susan Papp, the managing director of policy and advocacy at Women Deliver and an award-winning advocate and policy expert.

Women eat last

“In COVID-19, the disproportionate impact to women and girls is magnified many times over because of their roles as caregivers, as mothers, as cooks. And ultimately as the people who are holding families together,” Bertini said during the discussion.

She noted that in 1995 she had given a speech titled “Women eat last”, saying that she was told by WFP deputy executive director Amir Abudalla that a recent report on the Rohingya and food assistance had the same conclusion; “Women eat last.”

“What have we been doing for 25 years if this is still a tagline for what is happening in the world, especially for women in crisis?” she asked.

• The State of Food Security And Nutrition in the World 2020 report jointly launched by United Nations agencies this week stated at least 83 million to 132 million more people may go hungry this year because of COVID-19.
• While experts are still gathering data on the current crisis, recent past studies show that women are more affected by food insecurity than men, often allocating food to others before themselves, just as Bertini had noted back in 1995. 

Increased gender-based violence and income inequality

Papp, from Women Deliver, said the pandemic was compounding inequalities across the board.

“It is revealing fractures in our systems that are becoming too big to ignore,” Papp told IPS after the webinar.

“The pandemic is showing us how women are facing heightened levels of gender-based violence (GBV). It is also showing us how insufficient our social protection systems are with respect to sick leave, parental leave, child care, health care, and unemployment subsides,” Papp said.

Sherif, of Education Cannot Wait, said that the closure of schools and other educational settings in response to the COVID-19 pandemic has deprived young girls of a protective environment.

“The risks of all forms of violence that girls and young women face outside of emergencies are multiplied in humanitarian contexts. The COVID-19 pandemic is rapidly becoming a protection crisis with surging levels of violence against women and girls, including child marriages,” Sherif told IPS before the webinar.

“Social isolation measures to limit the spread of COVID-19 have increased the risk of intimate partner violence and other forms of GBV as girls and young women are confined with abusers,” she added.

During the panel discussion, Stubbs said that not only will COVID-19 roll back progress made for women and girls in achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SGDs) over the last two decades in areas such as health, education, employment, micro-, small and medium enterprises, social protection and social cohesion, but that it will be harder to regain those losses. 

“But we are seeing in the case of Latin America is that indeed the pandemic is exacerbating [the existing] economic inequality. It has made care work at home much more burdensome for women, 45 percent who live as single-headed households, and of course the issue of gender violence,” she said, explaining that more than 35 percent of Latin Americans live in and under poverty.

• In May, the International Labour Organisation noted “of the 740 million women working in the informal economy, 42 percent are found in high-risk sectors”, noting that despite global lockdowns women continued to work, “putting their health in peril as hand washing, self-isolation and wearing masks or other personal protective equipment are not realistic options”. 

As women experience a greater caregiving burden compared to men, they are at even greater risk of getting infected with the contagious disease. Further, women now have to contend with additional responsibilities of being homemakers and teachers, and the pressure could impact negatively on their mental health.

Sherif decried the impact of COVID-19 on education as the most vulnerable, poor children are less likely to return to school after a crisis. She said that many girls, especially adolescents, may never return to school.

• A U.N. Population Fund report released this month stated an additional 5.6 million child marriages can be expected because of the pandemic. It also stated, that delays in female genital mutilation (FGM) programmes could result in an increase of two million FGM cases over the next decade that would otherwise have been averted.
• A Kenya government health survey has revealed that an estimated 4,000 school-going adolescents have fallen pregnant during the COVID-19 lockdown.

Access to sexual and reproductive health has been significantly curtailed by the pandemic, with experts calling for a prioritisation of maternal and child health for women in crisis.

Papp said that as stresses to health and economic systems were compounded due to COVID-19 response and recovery, sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) cannot take a back seat and that conservative voices should not be allowed to diminish women’s rights.

Women now have to contend with additional responsibilities of being homemakers and teachers. In the absence of gender sensitive, gender responsive measures to the ongoing global crisis women and girls will emerge from the pandemic even further behind than they were pre-COVID-19. Credit: Miriam Gathigah/IPS

Education is key

But in looking for solutions, Sherif said education should never be under-prioritised in a crisis and financial contributions were needed to provide for continuing education.

“And when you look at countries affected by conflict and crisis, with half of the population being women, the only way to arise out of that crisis once and for all, and the only way, if you really want to empower women or any human being, is a good education,” she told panelists, making note that it needed to be quality education that went beyond primary school.

“That is the only way to liberate a woman from the yoke of oppression,” Sherif said.

Hashtags to curb GBV

Stubbs said that even though GBV is exacerbated during a crisis, a number of civil society organisations in Latin America were working very hard and using innovative models to protect women during the lockdowns. Hashtags have also had an impact.

“The use of technology has been absolutely essential. There is wide connectivity around Latin America and some hashtags in Mexico, Ecuador, Argentina and Colombia have made an enormous difference. Because women cannot go out, or because their cases cannot be followed, because the judiciary system is closed, … but social media has played a very important role,” she explained to panelists and viewers.

Referring to the phrase, ‘Building Back Better,’ Stubbs said this needed to include women, “making sure that women where not left even further behind than where we were before the crisis hit”.

“Bringing women into the economic reconstruction of their countries in a model that is more inclusive is going to be absolutely essential for sustainable development,” she said, adding that women’s small and medium enterprises needed to get more access to credit, technical assistance, than they had previously and that the working rights of women in the informal industry needed to be respected.

The former IFAD assistant secretary-general also said that women will play a fundamental role in producing food that is distributed in countries.

“Yet, women again do no have enough access to land, they do not have access to technological packages, the do not have access to credit. In the new “Building Back Better” we need to make sure that some have access to those [instruments], because their contribution to food security at home, and for the whole country will be absolutely fundamental,” she said.

Policies and practices for protection

Wazed Hossain, who is also the daughter of Bangladesh’s Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, told IPS that women’s contribution to the economy cannot be under-estimated and that their protection during this crisis must be a priority.

She made reference to the ready-made garments industry in Bangladesh and emphasised that women’s participation pushed the country to become a leading producer in the world.

“To reduce their vulnerabilities, there needs to be policies and practices in place that help to protect their physical, financial, and mental well-being. As with many other sectors, COVID-19 has highlighted the shortcomings in our policies and practices, but it is also an opportunity to look at the measures that need to be in place to ensure the various rights and protections workers deserve,” she told IPS before the webinar.

Wazed Hossain explained to viewers and panelists  that Bangladesh had seen a truly significant impact in keeping women at the centre of the country’s economic and social activities.

“In the last two decades the system that has been in place, the priorities that has been given to girls’ education, girls’ healthcare, all of that has come in tremendous use during this crisis,” she explained. 

She said when it came to health care, community-based health centres were kept active during the lockdown.

“That was one of the first decisions. Again, it is a woman making that decision,” she said referring to the prime minister. Other priorities for the country during the lockdown also included, “food security for the women, food security for the children, ensuring that relief funds went directly to women”.

Schools also play a role in the emergency food response. When asked how to apply a gender lens to this, Bertini said that in the context of ‘Building Back Better’ for women, responses needed to be more inclusive and more women were needed in leadership, “If schools aren’t back in place, one of the things we have to absolutely be sure we do, is feed children…one thing the community can do is be sure there is an opportunity to feed children.”

She said when schools reopened, the existence of feeding schemes could bring girls back to school.

Experts have further emphasised that a gender lens will guarantee that the needs and realities of everyone confronted by the virus are reflected in established responses.

Sherif cautioned, “Without a gender lens, 50 percent of the world population affected by the pandemic could be left behind.”

In opening the webinar, IPS senior vice president Farhana Haque Rahman acknowledged the “enormous wealth of experience and knowledge” of panel participants, stating that viewers wanted to hear about “concrete actions that will accelerate positive change for women and children”.

** Additional reporting by Nalisha Adams in Bonn.

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The project to repair and install new fog traps in the Peña Blanca Agricultural Community will be completed by the end of 2020. With funding from UNDP, the initiative will include infrastructure to receive visitors in this community in Coquimbo, the region that forms the southern border of Chile's Atacama Desert. CREDIT: Fundación Un Alto en el Desierto

By Orlando Milesi
OVALLE, Chile, Jul 15 2020 (IPS)

“The harvested water has helped us at critical times and the fog nets have also brought us visibility. Today we produce beer here and many tourists come,” says Daniel Rojas, president of the Peña Blanca Agricultural Community in Chile.

Located in the south of the Coquimbo region, 300 km north of Santiago, Peña Blanca is suffering a brutal drought and faces the threat of becoming part of the Atacama Desert by 2050, the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) warned two years ago.

¨In Peña Blanca until 2000, water ran off the surface, and the villagers had dikes to take turns to use the water,” Nicolás Schneider, a geographer with the “Un Alto en el Desierto” (A Stop in the Desert) Foundation, the NGO behind the installation of fog harvesters in the region, told IPS.

The official record of rainfall in the municipality of Ovalle, in the basin of the Limarí River, the main river in Coquimbo, indicates an annual average of just 102.6 millimetres in the last 30 years.

But in 2018 the average fell to 38.1 mm, and in 2019 to just 8.5 mm. In June, three non-consecutive days of rain were greeted with joy because they totaled more rainfall than in all of 2019.

Coquimbo is home to 771,085 people, 148,867 of whom live in rural areas. It is the southern border of the Atacama Desert, the driest desert on earth which has the most intense solar radiation on the planet. It encompasses six northern regions in this long, narrow country that stretches between the Andes Mountains and the Pacific Ocean and has a population of 18.7 million people.

“I am a livestock breeder and I also organise events for delegations that visit the fog nets in Cerro Grande,” Claudia Rojas, who at 53 is making the shift from livestock raising to a tourism microenterprise, told IPS.

“I was born and raised in Peña Blanca and I wouldn’t change it for any other place. Now I have only a few goats (20) and sheep (60). I had up to 200 goats but I have been reducing the herd because there is not enough natural pasture,” she said.

“I hope to continue receiving delegations when the pandemic is over. I serve them cheese, roasted kid (young goat) and local products. At my house or in the reserve,” she said.

What Claudia loves the most are the visits by hundreds of schoolchildren “who are happy to see nature.”

“From up above they can see the (Andes) mountain range and on the other side the sea. The main characteristic here is the fog. And they are amazed when the fog reaches the hill and they see how the water is harvested,” she said.

The Agricultural Community of Peña Blanca, made up of 85 families, has 6,587 hectares, 100 of which constitute the Cerro Grande Ecological Reserve, where the fog harvesters were installed 15 years ago. Back then, many locals could not imagine the impact and benefits the nets would have.

“They have made us well-known and that has brought the community resources for other projects,” said its president, Daniel Rojas, 60 (no relation to Claudia or other sources with the same surname, which is common in the area).

Hundreds of primary school students in Chile attend workshops and talks on the environment at the facilities of the Cerro Grande Ecological Reserve in Peña Blanca. University students also come to work on their theses, and researchers visit, interested in replicating water harvesting through fog traps in other locations in Chile. CREDIT: Fundación Un Alto en el Desierto

In Chile, the “agricultural community” is a legal figure for the collective property and usufruct of the land, in which the community members are given portions of land to use while another part is collectively managed.

“We have harvested a significant amount of water that has helped us in difficult times. At first to irrigate the vegetation and reforest with native species, and then to water the animals. We built a drinking trough, piping the water two km downhill.”

“Later, a 10,000-litre tank was made to collect water for people living nearby, to use when the tanker truck does not come,” he said.

Eight years ago, Peña Blanca beer began to be brewed, made with fog water, which is softer. Its light (Scottish) and dark (Brown) versions competed at the 2015 ExpoMilan and won the audience award.

Mario Alucema, 59, also born and raised in Peña Blanca, works in the artisanal brewery.

“Our beer made with 100 percent fog water is popular and successful. It has drawn attention to our farming community. I work (in the brewery) every (southern hemisphere) summer and receive 30 tourists a days, from Argentina, Brazil and other countries,” he told IPS proudly.

The plant produces 2,500 litres a week, and production is set to increase because the plant will be expanded.

“When these young entrepreneurs showed up I said to myself: ‘Who’s going to come all this way for the beer?’ We’re a long way from the Pan-American Highway. Then I thought, ‘Who’s going to drink this beer?’ And third, I thought it was money laundering. But everything was the other way around. Today, in the midst of this global pandemic, they’re still coming for the beer,” he said.

Daniel Ogalde, 47, who is also from Peña Blanca, has been the park ranger since March. He is dedicated to the maintenance, irrigation and replanting of native species in the ecological reserve.

“My idea is to be here for a long time. Because of the coronavirus, visits are suspended, but in August we plan to restart them,” he told IPS, adding that the reserve “is a source of pride for the community and everyone is concerned about its care and maintenance.”

Guido Rojas, 58, lives in Peña Blanca but works at the nearby lookout point at the Talinay Wind Park, owned by the ENEL Green Power company. “Harvesting water helps us because there have been many dry years,” he said.

The experience “has been maintained by the support of the community and the people who live here,” he added.

A qualitative leap has been made since July. The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) has granted 40,000 dollars to renovate and build fog nets, install lookouts, paths, signage and toilets. The programme ends on Dec. 31.

Since it was created in 2006, the reserve has had 24 fog-catchers, with a total of 216 square metres of double-layer 35 percent Raschel mesh.

“The expansion consists of the repair of 12 and the construction of 16 new fog nets. We will have 28 totaling 252 square metres, to harvest water,” said Un Alto en el Desierto’s Schneider.

Now 1,537 litres of water will be harvested per day, he explained.

In a calendar year, half of the fog water is harvested in September, October and November, when 20 litres/day are harvested per square metre, more than three times the average.

Fog traps were, in fact, an invention of Chilean physicist Carlos Espinosa, who donated the patent in the 1980s to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO), making it possible for them to be used in different countries.

Fog catchers consist of fine mesh nets known as Raschel set up on foggy slopes to catch suspended drops of water, which gather and merge, running from small gutters into collection tanks.

The new systems have a design called “comunero” and created by Schneider and Daniel and Guido Rojas.

They are individual structures of nine square metres each that have several advantages: they are cheaper, easier to transport and to maintain and if any one suffers a flaw the others continue harvesting water.

They are expected to remain fully operational until 2028.

The first fog-catching project in Chile was in the mining town of El Tofo, in a region north of Coquimbo. But it was abandoned in the 1990s. In Coquimbo, there are other facilities for harvesting fog water, for individual and collective use. But none are as well-known as Peña Blanca’s.

In Alto Patache, near Iquique, in the far north of Chile, there are fog traps that harvest seven litres a day per square metre, but the project is for scientific research. Meanwhile, in Chañaral, a municipality in the Atacama region, there are fog catchers whose water is bottled and also used for aloe vera production.

According to Schneider, the fog catchers “can be replicated along the entire coastal strip between Papudo (centre) and Arica (far north), which is more than 2,000 km” of this South American country’s 6,435-km coastline.

“They are really useful for isolated areas, fishing coves and scattered populations neglected by public spending. And they are very important for combating desertification because so much water can be harvested in springtime, to use in the hot summers,” he said.

The problem standing in the way of expanding the use of fog traps, according to Rojas, the community president, is the lack of government funding for this technology and its implementation.

“We have a lot of coves that are only supplied by tanker trucks. Perhaps fog traps are not the total solution, but they can help a lot when water is scarce,” as is the case in northern Chile, he argued.

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An eight-month-old boy with pneumonia is examined by a doctor at Amana Hospital in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. Credit: Kristin Palitza/IPS

By External Source
Jul 15 2020 (IPS)

In March, 10,000 NHS staff signed a letter to UK prime minister Boris Johnson demanding better protection against COVID-19. Nurses and doctors wanted to treat patients without fear of infecting them and to minimise their own risk of falling ill. But they lacked the proper protective equipment.

The problem they described was rooted in changes made long before the arrival of the coronavirus. The NHS’s reduced capacity for dealing with the pandemic – including a lack of PPE – has been the result of years of allowing financial considerations to dictate the quality of care. Back in 2017, the government rejected advice that the NHS should stockpile protective equipment in case of a potential influenza pandemic. The reason? An economic assessment found it would be too expensive.

The US’s private healthcare system epitomises the failure of letting the market govern care services. The country spends 17% of its GDP – or US$3.6 trillion (£2.8 billion) – on health, more than any other nation. Despite this, almost 30 million Americans (9% of the entire US population) remain uninsured because their employer does not offer health benefits or they cannot afford their own insurance

Such failings are representative of the long-running trend, beginning in the 1980s, of letting the logic of the market dictate how health and social care systems are run, both in Britain and abroad. It has left many systems without the capacity to withstand a crisis of the scale we’re currently seeing.

In turn, the pandemic has seen whistleblowers in health and social care disclosing systemic failures to protect staff and patients. The marketisation of health and social care, we suggest, has increased the need for these whistleblowers to protect the common good – and we need to support them better.

 

The results of market logic

The US’s private healthcare system epitomises the failure of letting the market govern care services. The country spends 17% of its GDP – or US$3.6 trillion (£2.8 billion) – on health, more than any other nation. Despite this, almost 30 million Americans (9% of the entire US population) remain uninsured because their employer does not offer health benefits or they cannot afford their own insurance. These are mostly working-age adults in families with low incomes.

The inaccessibility of health services to those who need them has contributed to the US having the highest number of COVID-19 fatalities in the world (together with one of the highest death rates per 1 million population). Yet, even while the pandemic spreads, some of its poorest hospitals and other healthcare institutions have had to put much-needed staff on leave. Having to compete in a ruthless market environment, they cannot afford to pay them.

The pandemic has also exposed failings in care homes. Prompted by the rising costs of elderly care and users’ expectations for personalised services, both the UK and Sweden introduced a market-based system of care in the 1980s. The idea was that encouraging competition among multiple providers would deliver more cost-effective and responsive services and empower consumers by letting them choose among them.

Large for-profit businesses with no prior experience of delivering such services were encouraged into the market. In the intervening years, research has clearly shown the deficiencies of these changes. Both sociological and economic analyses debunk claims that the market delivers high-quality care services efficiently.

In order to reduce costs, both British and Swedish organisations have come to rely on short-term staff with rudimentary training. During Sweden’s COVID-19 outbreak, a lack of continuity and skills stemming from using short-term staff has contributed significantly to the high death toll in care homes, exacerbated by the relaxed approach to social restrictions that was adopted by the government.
Sweden’s care homes account for half of the country’s COVID-19 deaths.

In the UK, care homes account for half of all excess deaths. Higher rates of infection among residents have been linked to these institutions relying on temporary workers and not offering sick pay to staff (incentivising them to work even if ill).

 

The need for whistleblowers

Health professionals’ disclosures have become a societal safety valve. Over 100 UK carers have called a whistleblowing helpline to report safety concerns during the pandemic.

Whistleblowers’ disclosures are invaluable for showing us the necessity of reform, and also the specifics of what must be done. The Mid Staffordshire NHS Trust scandal – which saw up to 1,200 patients die as a result of substandard care – was made known by a whistleblower. So too the infamous failings in paediatric heart surgery at Bristol Royal Infirmary in the 1990s.

However, whistleblowing is typically a last resort, requiring significant moral courage. The sector can be hostile to doctors and nurses who disclose wrongdoing. Because of this, we need stronger systems for making disclosures and effective protection for whistleblowers forced to go outside their organisation to speak up. Offering whistleblower protection that covers all employees at an organisation is also key.

But first and foremost, we should bring health and social institutions back to their rightful purpose. This work should start by putting to rest, once and for all, discredited market-driven ideologies and prioritising providing good quality care.

Marianna Fotaki, Network Fellow, Edmond J Safra Center for Ethics, Harvard University and Professor of Business Ethics, Warwick Business School, University of Warwick and Kate Kenny, Professor in Business and Society, National University of Ireland Galway

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

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By External Source
Jul 15 2020 (IPS-Partners)

The NDC Partnership is a global initiative to accelerate climate and development action — ensuring countries have the support and tools they need to achieve ambitious climate and sustainable development targets as fast and effectively as possible.

The post Putting Young People at the Heart of Their Climate Plans appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Credit: UN Staff Coordinating Council in Geneva

By Prisca Chaoui
GENEVA, Jul 15 2020 (IPS)

Two years have passed since the introduction of the illegal pay cuts imposed on staff in the Professional category– and above– working for the UN in Geneva, following a cost of living survey conducted by the International Civil Service Commission (ICSC) in 2016.

For this second anniversary, the UN Dispute Tribunal (UNDT), whose jurisdiction covers staff working in the UN secretariat, issued its judgement declaring the cuts legal.

This was contrary to the ILOAT (Administrative Tribunal of the International Labour Organization) judgement of 2019 that led to the restoration of the salaries that were prevailing before the introduction of the cuts for staff working in the agencies, namely WIPO, ILO, WHO, ITU and IOM.

This means that for a work of equal value, staff working for the Secretariat, in a duty station that is among the most expensive ones in the world, are paid less than their peers in the agencies.

The irony is that the UN preaches for very noble principles, one of them being the “equal pay for equal work” for the outside world, but it is obviously failing in implementing them for its own staff.

In 2019, the General Assembly declared 18 September, “International Equal Pay Day”, but it seems the UN is exempted from guaranteeing it to its own staff. The question is why?

The answer is simple: the pay cuts have initially been introduced as a cost-saving measure, based on what was inadvertently recognized by one of the ICSC commissioners in 2017. The mere fact that the UN secretariat never budgeted the retroactive payment of salaries in case the judgement was in favour of staff, says it all.

The UNDT, whose judges are appointed by the General Assembly, is supposed to be independent and to ensure justice for the involved parties. However, it failed to prove its independence in the pay cut file.

In the past, the UNAT, which is the appeal tribunal, was accused of politicization but in this particular case, the UNDT followed suit.

Indeed, the words of one of the top administrative law lawyers who represented some of the applicants are very revealing: “I can only state my deepest disagreement on what the judgement says regarding the ICSC and the overall process that led to these cuts.

The judge seems to become suddenly deaf and blind on any real criticism concerning the past and interprets in a very tendentious manner the diverse opinions, all this with the aim of proving that the applicant is wrong in its submission”.

It is important to recall that the first hearing regarding the Geneva pay cut case took place in October 2018. Based on the code of conduct of the judges, the judgement should have been issued three months later.

The early issuance of the judgement would have made sense for a case that was submitted by over 800 staff, which is totally unprecedented since the establishment of the tribunal in 2009.

But, instead of issuing its judgement early on time, the UNDT tried to gain time in order to dismiss all the arguments used by ILOAT to declare the cuts illegal. The late issuance of the judgement was perceived by staff as a denial of justice, as “justice delayed simply means justice denied.”

Apart from breaching the sacred principle of equal pay for equal work, this judgement announces the end of the common system which was initially put in place to secure equal treatment to all international civil servants, in order to avoid any undue competition between the different organizations that constitute the UN system.

What is troubling in this situation is that it might repeat itself in other locations leading to a complete fragmented system whereby each organization decides on the salaries and benefits that would be paid to staff, which in turn put into question the future of the ICSC that is supposed to be a technical body but is turning into a mere political one.

The “one UN” that is dear to both Member states and staff is becoming a delusion, even for administrative matters.

UN staff in Geneva are under shock since the announcement of the results of this legal battle that was their only remaining hope, as all their past attempts to make the Secretary General correct this unfortunate situation failed to bear any concrete result.

“Guterres doesn’t seem to care about his staff as he pretends it, he lost their trust”, says a staff member. Another one says: “I used to believe that the UN walks the talk but this was the past. This situation is a blatant breach of fundamental labour rights, which is unacceptable for an organization such as the UN ”.

Staff in Geneva feel abandoned by a Secretary General, whose main objective is to be re-elected, regardless of how his own staff are treated, which is a real pity.

Staff feel demotivated to see that their employer cares about everything except about them, giving them the impression that they are goods that can be easily traded off.

What’s next? In normal times, this situation should have warranted an industrial action such as an open strike to oblige the organization to find a solution that would save the common system from agonizing.

However, the Covid-19 impact on the organization and its finances, as well as the deliberate attacks against multilateralism by certain international players make it difficult for staff to opt for such a move.

If it weren’t out of belief in the organization and its mandate, many staff would have let the lack of motivation and trust in the UN as employer take hold of them.

Would the coming years bring more bad surprises for staff? Will Guterres be able to defend his own staff or will he choose to remain silent, regardless of what happens to them?

Will UN jobs still be attractive for young generations who are seeking for a reliable and trustworthy employer?

These are legitimate questions that each and everyone is entitled to ask but who has the answer? I guess only time will be able to bring answers.

 

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Excerpt:

Prisca Chaoui is Executive Secretary of the Staff Coordinating Council of the UN Office in Geneva (UNOG)

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Improving the genetic quality of seeds in Somalia. Credit: Mustafa Saeed /FAO

By Juan Carlos García y Cebolla
ROME, Jul 15 2020 (IPS)

The COVID-19 pandemic has revealed some lesser-known realities, or some we had not wanted to think about, and exposed its consequences for the right of people to feed themselves in dignity.

In distant places, from the United States to Germany, the United Kingdom or Spain, contagion hotspots among workers in meat processing plants have been reported. In Florida, Ontario or Catalonia, outbreaks have been associated with the harvesting of fruits and vegetables, which also requires temporary labour.

What the pandemic highlights is not a new issue, but the consequence of that deeply rooted idea over the last two centuries that food should be cheap, instead of adequate and accessible to all

In many of these cases, what we find are unfair socioeconomic conditions -although not necessarily illegal ones. The reduction of food prices is frequently achieved through migrant labour, which due to its circumstances finds working and living conditions that increase the risk of contagion (overcrowding or lack of hygiene services). 

It is not that the pandemic causes the poor working conditions and lower wages than are necessary for a decent life, it is simply shedding light on what happens in normal periods. In times of the pandemic, the cost of these “savings” increases: besides the suffering of workers, there is a high cost to the entire population, as local lockdowns and fears of infections due to outbreaks have shown.

What the pandemic highlights is not a new issue, but the consequence of that deeply rooted idea over the last two centuries that food should be cheap, instead of adequate and accessible to all.

At first glance, it seems reasonable that the lower the food prices are, the more accessible food becomes for the population. But keeping down the price of food at any cost is a risk, as the market may not be willing to pay the cost of unwanted damage to people’s health, their living conditions and nature.

Some practices that in the short run allow for the production of food’s raw materials at low prices, by replacing forests with industrial palm plantations or with other types of intensive monocultures that degrade soils, are destructive to the environment. 

Juan Carlos García y Cebolla. Credit: FAO

The impact can also be seen in millions of small farmers, herders and fisherfolk who suffer from food insecurity and malnutrition despite producing 80% of the world’s food. We also find that child labour forms part of the equation that lowers the prices of products such as cocoa.

This can be partially addressed through social policies, such as income transfers to ensure access to food for vulnerable groups, or school policies supported by income transfers to fight against child labour. But these policies have limitations if they are not accompanied by greater awareness on the part of citizens and a change in their behaviour as consumers. Certain alternatives that combine rules and market dynamics can help to avoid some of these negative effects and modify consumers´ preferences, as well as economic and food policies.

In recent decades, certification systems have proved to be useful tools. However, some systems should strengthen their coherence and take into consideration food sustainability. For example, some food denominations or geographical indications are identified with ecological and responsible production models, even when in reality, a part may be produced under unfair labour and social conditions. 

We cannot remain as impassive witnesses. We must face these kinds of challenges. At the international level, there are multiple governance mechanisms for food and global security with this mandate. A clear exponent is the Committee on World Food Security (CFS), the only platform of the United Nations System in which States, civil society and the private sector participate.

Food systems and the effects of COVID-19 will be discussed at the next CFS sessions, which will be held in October. This could be a good opportunity for multiple stakeholders to make progress in responding to these problems from a human rights approach and perspective. 

 

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Excerpt:

Juan Carlos García y Cebolla is Leader of the Right to Food Team of the Social Policies and Rural Institutions Division of the FAO

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Food markets were closed as many countries across the globe went into a lockdown to prevent the spread of COVID-19. The reduced access to high-value foods and higher food prices for nutritious foods has led to a risk of declining dietary quality globally. Credit: Jorge Luis Baños/IPS

By Samira Sadeque
UNITED NATIONS, Jul 15 2020 (IPS)

While it is too early to assess the full impact of the global COVID-19 lockdowns, at least 83 million to 132 million more people may go hungry this year — 690 million people were classified as hungry in 2019 — as the pandemic has highlighted the vulnerabilities and inadequacies of global food systems. 

This is according to the State of Food Security And Nutrition in the World 2020 report jointly launched by United Nations agencies this week.

The report also noted “the nutritional status of the most vulnerable population groups is likely to deteriorate further due to the health and socio-economic impacts of COVID-19”.

Experts say that during the pandemic a myriad of factors, including reduced access to high-value foods, higher food prices (especially for nutritious, perishable foods) and the higher consumption of ultra-processed foods, has led to a risk of declining dietary quality globally.

“Understanding who is the most affected by the repercussions of the COVID-19 pandemic is essential to build momentum for action, to guide decision-making and to engage and empower the vulnerable as agents,” Katarzyna Dembska, a researcher at the Barilla Centre For Food and Nutrition (BCFN), told IPS.

“This requires robust tracking and investments in monitoring systems and predictive analysis. Data has to be easy to access, interpret and used by policymakers and other relevant stakeholders, to enable evidence-based decisions.”

Dembska further echoed a message from the Global Alliance for the Future of Food, an alliance of philanthropic foundations working together and with others to transform global food systems, stating the importance of shifting away from a “feed the world” or “productivist” narrative, “based on assumptions that we need to ‘double food production by 2050’ and focused on providing food and calories.” 

“A new narrative needs to be adopted, aiming at nourishing a growing global population and focusing on the quality of food, so that it contributes to human and planetary health,” she added. 

At the launch of the report, Dr. Qu Dongyu, Director-General of the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the U.N. (FAO), highlighted the need for low-cost production.

“We have to produce food with low cost of raw materials, that’s where we need innovation,” he said. The report had noted that healthy diets are at least five times more expensive than diets that meet dietary energy needs, with the former remaining unaffordable to an estimated 3 billion people.

“We have to encourage people, especially small farmers, to produce more and better, [and] to shorten supply chains. If you can shorten the supply chain, it’s better for the environment and there’s also less dependence.”

The report noted that the world was not on track to achieve zero hunger by 2030 and malnutrition among children remained a challenge and needed to be prioritised. The report’s key messages stated that countries needed to mainstream nutrition in their agricultural policies, noting also that nutrition-sensitive social protection policies would be required to provide healthy diets to vulnerable populations.

IPS spoke with Dembska and Dr. Marta Antonelli, head of research at BCFN. Excerpts of the interview follow. Some of the answers have been paraphrased for clarity purposes. 

Dr. Marta Antonelli, head of research at the Barilla Centre For Food and Nutrition (BCFN). Courtesy: BCFN

Inter Press Service (IPS): How has the COVID-19 pandemic affected food sustainability measures around the world? 

Marta Antonelli (MA): The measures to control or mitigate the pandemic have affected food supply chains, with slower harvests and disruptions (both production and processes) due to the lack of seasonal labour force, especially for high-value supply chains; higher price volatility, which may adversely impact low-income and countries dependent on food imports; potentially reduced pools of capital for smallholders which provide about 80 percent of the food supply in Asia and Africa; higher food losses due to trade disruptions, blockages to transport routes and lockdowns; risks for the life and livelihoods of all workers. 

As the pandemic evolves, the impacts on food security and nutrition have also been observed. For example, reduced access to high-value foods, such as fruits and vegetables; higher food prices, especially for nutritious (perishable) foods; reduced food affordability and accessibility, with particularly adverse impacts on low-income households; higher consumption of ultra-processed foods, as access to healthy food becomes more difficult; increased household food waste due to food hoarding during lockdowns. 

IPS: The report states: “the number of people affected by hunger in the world continues to increase slowly. This trend started in 2014 and extends to 2019”. How is global hunger linked to food sustainability? 

MA: Transforming food systems encompasses changes across all the three dimensions of sustainability: social, economic, environmental. There is evidence that the quality of diet worsens with increasing levels of food insecurity. Low-income- and lower-middle-income countries rely heavily on staples like cereals, roots, tubers and plantains, which represent the largest share of food available (over 60 percent in some cases), and often fruit and vegetables are not enough to meet the requirement of a minimum intake of 400g/day. 

A sustainable food system ensures access and affordability of nutritious food at all times, thus preventing hunger, while at the same time preserving and stewarding the natural resource base. 

Katarzyna Dembska, a researcher at the Barilla Centre For Food and Nutrition (BCFN). Courtesy: BCFN

IPS: At the State of Food Security And Nutrition in the World 2020 report launch, Henrietta Fore, executive director of the U.N. Children’s Fund, said one of the reasons behind low-birth rate is “sub-optimal diets for mothers and many of the mothers are adolescents”.

How is food sustainability important to the issue of maternal diets and health? 

Katarzyna Dembska (KD): Women represent 43 percent of the total agricultural labour force worldwide, with shares close to 50 percent in some regions of Asia and in sub-Saharan Africa. However, despite their crucial role in guaranteeing food security in their household and community, they suffer from important disadvantages and inequalities, from lack to land rights, to reduced access to credit or inputs, unpaid work, insecure employment and exclusion from decision making and political representation.

Within households, food insecurity may not be evenly distributed, with studies finding that women are more affected by food insecurity than men, mainly due to the fact that women are responsible for caregiving and food provisioning in their households, often allocating food to others before themselves.

In addressing women’s inequalities, it is essential to move towards a food policy that addresses right to food issues beyond food production support, food aid and export bans prevention, that guarantees adequate  nutrition, especially to the marginalised, whose main issues are access and inequality, that has broad political and social support, and is easily implemented.   

IPS: How will COVID-19 affect food sustainability concerns for women and children specifically? 

KD: The societal disruptions and economic shocks arising from COVID-19 control and mitigation measures have been severe, particularly for vulnerable groups. 

The Global Nutrition Report states that today, 613.2 million adolescent girls and women aged 15 to 49 years suffer from anemia; 20.5 million newborns (14.6 percent) have a low birth weight; stunting still affects 149.0 million (21.9 percent) children under five years of age, and wasting affects 49.5 million (7.3 percent) children under five years of age.

All these numbers could grow rapidly due to COVID-19 restriction measures and social and economic aftermath. As of late May, 368 million school children were missing out on daily school meals on which they depend, and estimates predict the pandemic could push about 49 million people into extreme poverty in 2020, and every percentage point drop in global GDP is expected to result in an additional 0.7 million stunted children.

IPS: The report states that having enough to eat is important, but what people eat also needs to be nutritious. Addressing the issue of affordability is crucial to address hunger and malnutrition. What are currently some of the key concerns about accessibility and affordability to nutritious food? 

KD: Those who are food insecure usually spend most of their income on food. The effects of the pandemic on the economy has reduced their ability to purchase food, so there is a risk in a decline in dietary quality, not only resulting from compromised employment, but also from the revocation of schemes such as school feeding programmes, and shocks on the demand and supply sides resulting in the breakdown of food markets.

MA: Affordability is a key aspect of food security and a key determinant of food access, which depends not only food cost but also on the disposable income spent on food. 

Among the major impacts of COVID-19 on food systems, we should mention rising food costs, especially in urban centres that are home to over half of the world population, as rural supply was unable to reach properly urban demand.

Increased food prices have a direct impact on the quality of diets, preventing access to fresh fruits and vegetables, but also dairy, meat and fish due to the failure in reaching wholesale and retail markets, with loss of income for those operating in the food sector, especially for smallholder farmers and small-scale producers, and led to disruptions in production. FAO has crucially pointed out that the cost of the diet increases incrementally as the diet quality increases, a key issue that needs to be tackled worldwide as healthy diets are not affordable for three billion people in the world.

 

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Ethiopia's Grand Renaissance Dam (GERD). Credit: Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Ethiopia.

By Ricard González
TUNIS, Jul 14 2020 (IPS)

In the 1990s, after the collapse of the USSR, the idea that water would drive the wars of the future took hold among analysts and the media. Three decades later and that grim prospect has, fortunately, not yet materialised, and international cooperation, despite its ups and downs, is the norm in the management of transboundary waters.

But the world may never have been as close to a ‘war over water’ as it is now, following the escalation in the dispute between Egypt and Ethiopia over the construction of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD), which has reached its final stage. The Ethiopian authorities intend to start filling the dam’s reservoir in the coming days, before finalising an agreement with Egypt, which has inflamed tensions.

The disputes between Cairo and Addis Ababa over water from the Nile began a decade ago when the announcement was made of the plans to build a huge dam, one of the largest in Africa and the world, covering an area of 1,800 km2 and with a capacity of 74 billion cubic metres.

The world may never have been as close to a ‘war over water’ as it is now, following the escalation in the dispute between Egypt and Ethiopia over the construction of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD), which has reached its final stage

The main purpose of the dam is to generate electricity, a project that the Ethiopian government considers essential for the development of the country, which is in the full throes of economic and demographic growth. The GERD could even enable it to become an energy hub and to export electricity to its neighbours. Egypt, meanwhile, fears a considerable reduction in the flow of the Nile, which accounts for more than 90 per cent of the desert country’s water resources.

“The Ethiopian government is following a policy of fait accompli. It seems their aim is to prolong the negotiations while they keep building the dam, to avoid any restrictions on their management of the project,” says Nader Noureddin, a professor specialising in water resources at Cairo University.

These suspicions have been reinforced since Ethiopia reneged on the agreement reached between the three countries in February, after months of negotiations in Washington under the mediation of the United States and the World Bank.

“The negotiations have progressed a lot, and there are only a few points of contention between both countries now. There is no indication that Ethiopia is not negotiating in good faith. I think it wants a deal, to avoid pressure from the international community, which it needs if it wants to develop,” says Alfonso Medinilla, a researcher for the ECDPM think tank, specialising in Africa.

The three parties (Egypt, Sudan and Ethiopia) resumed their negotiations in early June, this time with the US, the European Union and South Africa as observers. Egypt is trying to step up the international pressure on Ethiopia by involving the United Nations Security Council.

In 2015, the leaders of the three countries signed a Declaration of Principles that was to serve as a framework for resolving the dispute. The document, however, was very vague, and each side interpreted it differently. One of the main stumbling blocks has been the length of the process of filling the reservoir (Ethiopia wanted three years, Egypt ten), but a consensus seems to be emerging around a period of between five and seven years.

More challenging is the issue of the mechanism for resolving future conflicts over the dam’s management, and above all, the minimum flow that Egypt should receive in the event of one or several years of drought. This last point is crucial in the context of climate change.

“Studies show that the deviation describing inter-annual variability of total Nile flow could increase by 50 per cent, but that extreme events such as drought and floods will become more recurrent,” writes Ana Elisa Cascao in the chapter on the GERD in the book Natural Resource Conflicts and Sustainable Development.

 

Development ‘at any cost’ or ‘fair and sustainable’ development

“This conflict is very complicated because it is not only about the GERD but also has historical roots that one needs to know about to understand it,” explains Medinilla.

Egypt’s demands are based on agreements reached during the British colonial era and updated in 1959 in a bilateral treaty signed with Sudan. By virtue of the treaty, 55,500 cubic metres correspond to Egypt and 18,500 to Sudan, which means, between the two of them, they control around 90 per cent of the Nile’s flow.

The other nine Nile Basin states (Burundi, Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Kenya, Rwanda, South Sudan, Uganda and Tanzania) consider these quotas to be unfair, and in 2010 six of them signed what is known as the Entebbe Agreement, which seeks to redefine the distribution of the water from the world’s longest river, the fruit of the confluence, near Khartoum (Sudan), of the White Nile and the Blue Nile. The GERD is located on the Blue Nile.

“Egypt cannot live with a substantial reduction in Nile water. Its economy and water consumption depends on it,” says Noureddin, pointing out that each Egyptian has an average of just over 500 cubic metres of water a year, half of the threshold set by the United Nations for a country to be considered under water stress.

According to the professor, the water should be distributed on the basis of need and the existence of alternative water sources: “Ethiopia has nine rivers, several big lakes and abundant rains. In total, its annual water resources amount to 122 billion cubic metres, while Egypt has only 62 billion, 55.5 of which come from the Nile.”

Agriculture now accounts for 12 per cent of GDP and employs 24 per cent of the workforce in Egypt, where the first great human civilization could not have arisen in the desert without the waters of the powerful river.

“More than 65 million people live [in Ethiopia] without access to electricity. The river’s potential is huge. Ethiopia has long been known for its humanitarian crises and famine. This has to change and [we must] lift people out of abject poverty,” says Zerihun Abebe, a member of the Ethiopian negotiating team.

Ethiopia’s GDP per capita is around US$780 (€780), four times lower than in Egypt. For Ethiopians, the construction of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam is a matter of national pride.

Given the difficulties raising the €4.5 billion (around US$4.9 billion) to cover the cost of the project through international funding, on account of its controversial nature, the Ethiopian government has covered much of the cost through ‘patriotic’ bonds purchased by its own citizens.

According to some experts, the politicisation of the conflict and the fact that it has inflamed nationalist sentiment in both countries is, precisely, one of the main obstacles to a negotiated settlement.

“Egyptians and the rest of the world know too well how we conduct war whenever it comes,” Birhanu Jula, Ethiopia’s deputy chief of staff, recently declared in response to the drums of war being beaten in certain circles in Cairo. The limited trade between Egypt and Ethiopia also makes it difficult to find imaginative solutions, as it does not allow for negotiations to be expanded to include compensation mechanisms at other levels.

“The only matter that could take Egypt to war again is water,” said President Anwar Sadat in 1979, after signing the Camp David Accords with Israel. The countdown to avoiding this scenario is coming to an end, and the Ethiopian prime minister, Abiy Ahmed, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize in 2019, is left with very little room for manoeuvre during this election year.

“I think the deadline to reach an agreement is three more months. After that, we could see the first water war in history,” warns Noureddin. Although the two countries do not share a border, a war could be waged through a proxy, be it another state or a militia. The skirmishes recently seen on the border between Ethiopia and Sudan are not, perhaps, coincidental.

 

This story was originally published by Equal Times

The post Countdown to a Bitter Battle Over the Water of the Nile? appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Angelina Jolie with Syrian refugees. Credit: UNHCR / Laban Mattei

By External Source
NEW YORK, Jul 14 2020 (IPS-Partners)

We must not leave young refugees by the wayside, urged UNESCO, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and Education Cannot Wait as they urged more support in favour of young refugees’ education during an online debate today, moderated by UNHCR Special Envoy Angelina Jolie, on how best to provide them with improved learning during and after the pandemic.

“Mobilizing for refugees is extremely urgent at a time when they are particularly vulnerable to the Covid-19 crisis and its aftermath,” said UNESCO Director-General Audrey Azoulay, as she opened the meeting. “The Covid-19 crisis is jeopardizing everything we have done for the education of refugees and migrants, their integration and chances of self-realization. We must strengthen our action in favour of the most vulnerable in order to guarantee them this fundamental right.”

“The Global Compact on Refugees rests on an important foundation: responding to crises of forced displacement needs to bring together governments, civil society, networks like Education Cannot Wait, businesses like Vodaphone and above all, refugees,” said the High Commissioner for Refugees, Filippo Grandi.

“ECW sees that all too often, refugee children and youth – among the most vulnerable people in the world – are left out of COVID-19 responses. It is important that ECW’s responses reach those left furthest behind. For this reason, we dedicated our newest round of education in emergency funding for COVID-19 to support refugee children and youth, especially girls,” said Yasmine Sherif, Director of Education Cannot Wait. “We are also looking at distance learning to open up access to education for forcibly displaced children and youth.”

The roundtable was attended by young refugee students and graduates, the ministers of Education of Cameroon, Kenya and Pakistan, and representatives of the Global Coalition for Education established under the auspices of UNESCO. The debate was moderated by the United Nations Special Envoy, actor Angelina Jolie, a displaced persons’ advocate of long standing.

Introducing the discussion, Canada’s Minister of International Development, Karina Gould, said, “As the world is still dealing with the devastating impacts from the pandemic, we must ensure that displaced and refugee youth can continue to learn. Every child deserves a quality education in an environment that is safe and inclusive.”

Concluding the meeting, the United Kingdom’s Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs, Baroness Sugg, stressed that “Education must be prioritized in the global recovery from coronavirus. This epidemic is not just a health crisis, it is an education crisis, especially for refugee children. Without school and an education, they will be unable to rebuild their lives and achieve their full potential.”

Speakers warned that the pandemic risked jeopardizing the progress made in education in recent years, especially for young girls, at least 20% of whom are at risk of not resuming the studies they had to interrupt during school closures, according to a UNHCR estimate. However, a number of governments are planning to include refugees in post-pandemic response measures, such as distance education, in line with their commitments under the Global Compact on Refugees.

The event was co-sponsored by Canada, the United Kingdom and the global Education Cannot Wait fund, which channelled its second COVID emergency allocation to refugees.

The post UNESCO, UNHCR & EDUCATION CANNOT WAIT Call for the Inclusion of Refugees in the Post-Covid-19 Education Effort appeared first on Inter Press Service.