Africa - INTER PRESS SERVICE

By PRESS RELEASE
VIENNA, Jul 9 2020 (IPS-Partners)

Two-day online expert meeting to discuss recent developments and policy gaps in combating trafficking in human beings for the removal of organs concluded yesterday evening. The event was co-organized by the Office of the OSCE Special Representative for Combating Trafficking in Human Beings (OSR/CTHB), the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) and co-sponsored by the World Health Organization (WHO).

Despite being mentioned explicitly in the internationally recognized definition of trafficking in human beings, trafficking in human beings for the removal of organs remains one of the least understood and addressed forms of human trafficking globally. The event aimed to share experiences addressing this challenge and examine possible ways to enhance the OSCE region’s response. The meeting, gathering legal, criminal justice, medical and victim-protection experts from over 20 OSCE participating States, Partners for Co-operation and international organizations, explored the scope of trafficking in human beings for the removal of organs in the OSCE region. They also discussed recent developments in international and national legal frameworks, and current needs for further awareness-raising, policy, and capacity building efforts.

“One of the things I am struck by is how incredibly challenging it is to respond to trafficking in human beings. And yet I am also optimistic because we have been jointly developing some of the tools we need like on technology and financial investigations,” OSCE Special Representative and Co-ordinator for Combating Trafficking in Human Beings Valiant Richey said.

Exploitation without borders

While the number of identified victims of this form of trafficking remains limited, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) indicates that this highly lucrative form of human trafficking is perpetrated by organized criminal networks able to operate over prolonged periods with high numbers of victims before being caught. Many participants pointed out the inadequacy of the legal instruments currently in use, and the crucial necessity to enhance cooperation between countries to make perpetrators accountable.

Participants stressed that attention needs to be devoted to situations with patients traveling abroad to get a transplant or coming from abroad with a donor. The crime often has a transboundary element, that makes it much harder for investigators and prosecutors to trace all the components of the crime and exercise jurisdiction over cases often encompassing numerous countries (victim from one country, the broker from another, recruiting in a third, for the surgery taking place in a fourth, possibly with a recipient for yet another country, for example). Without international judicial cooperation, these crimes -even when detected- will hardly be successfully prosecuted.

The illegal organ trade is a crime involving global financial transactions at the expense of the most vulnerable. The role of financial investigations in detecting and countering flows of money alimenting and paying for these illegal services is vital, noted by the participants.

Trafficking in human beings for the removal of organs is reportedly an age-specific and gendered crime, affecting adult males the most. The sale of cells and tissues, including ova, was discussed. During the meeting, a specific case of successful investigation and prosecution by Greeks authorities, in which perpetrators brought to justice, included doctors and lawyers, was presented as a case study.

Several other insightful elements emerged during the meeting. A crucial point in discussions was the critical role that can be played by the medical personnel, both in preventing these crimes from happening but also in reporting dubious situations, including when the origins/donor of the organ to be transplanted are not clear. Some participants suggested that assigning criminal liability to brokers and medical personnel involved could be an effective measure to deter some of these practices and put some pressure on traffickers, who now operate mostly undetected.

Participants raised difficulties in establishing contact with victims of this form of trafficking. They encouraged to think of ways to build CTHB practitioners’ capacity and medical personnel to improve the identification of such victims. Better identification could also lead to enhanced assistance to survivors, which today is mostly lacking. And especially for such an unknown and unaddressed form of trafficking, engaging with and listening to survivors is crucial to understand the mechanism governing it.

The OSCE Special Representative and Coordinator on Combating Trafficking in Human Beings closed the discussions by saying that “this two-day meeting served as an excellent basis upon which the OSCE will build future activities on the issue. We shed some light on a largely unaddressed issue, and we look forward to working with the wide range of our partners on a list of concrete recommendations“.

What is the OSCE?

With 57 participating States in North America, Europe, and Asia, the OSCE – the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe – is the world’s largest regional security organization. The OSCE works for stability, peace, and democracy for more than a billion people, through political dialogue about shared values and practical work that aims to make a lasting difference.

The OSCE is a forum for political dialogue on a wide range of security issues and a platform for joint action to improve individual’s and communities’ lives. The organization uses a comprehensive approach to security that encompasses the politico-military, economic and environmental, and human dimensions. Through this approach, and with its inclusive membership, the OSCE helps bridge differences and build trust between states by co-operating on conflict prevention, crisis management, and post-conflict rehabilitation.

With its Institutions, expert units, and network of field operations, the OSCE addresses issues that impact our collective security, including arms control, terrorism, good governance, energy security, human trafficking, democratization, and media freedom and national minorities.

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By Mariya Brussevich, Era Dabla-Norris, and Salma Khalid
Jul 9 2020 (IPS)

The COVID-19 pandemic is devastating labor markets across the world. Tens of millions of workers lost their jobs, millions more out of the labor force altogether, and many occupations face an uncertain future. Social distancing measures threaten jobs requiring physical presence at the workplace or face-to-face interactions. Those unable to work remotely, unless deemed essential, face a significantly higher risk of reductions in hours or pay, temporary furloughs, or permanent layoffs. What types of jobs and workers are most at risk? Not surprisingly, the costs have fallen most heavily on those who are least able to bear them: the poor and the young in the lowest-paid jobs.

In a new paper, we investigate the feasibility to work from home in a large sample of advanced and emerging market economies. We estimate that nearly 100 million workers in 35 advanced and emerging countries (out of 189 IMF members) could be at high risk because they are unable to do their jobs remotely. This is equivalent to 15 percent of their workforce, on average. But there are important differences across countries and workers.

The nature of jobs in each country

Most studies measuring the feasibility of working from home follow job definitions used in the United States. But the same occupations in other countries may differ in the face-to-face interactions required, the technology intensity of the production process, or even access to digital infrastructure. To reflect that, the work-from-home feasibility index that we built uses the tasks actually performed within each country, according to surveys compiled by the OECD for 35 countries.

We found significant differences across countries even for the same occupations. It is much easier to telework in Norway and Singapore than in Turkey, Chile, Mexico, Ecuador, and Peru, simply because more than half the households in most emerging and developing countries don’t even have a computer at home.

Who is most vulnerable?

Overall, workers in food and accommodation, and wholesale and retail trade, are the hardest hit for having the least “teleworkable” jobs at all. That means more than 20 million people in our sample who work in these sectors are at the highest risk of losing their jobs. Yet some are more vulnerable than others:

• Young workers and those without university education are significantly less likely to work remotely. This higher risk is consistent with the age profiles of workers in the sectors hardest hit by lockdowns and social distancing policies. Worryingly, this suggests that the crisis could amplify intergenerational inequality.
• Women could be particularly hit hard, threatening to undo some of the gains in gender equality made in recent decades. This is because women are disproportionately concentrated in the hardest-hit sectors like food service and accommodation. In addition, women carry a heavier burden of child care and domestic chores, while market provision of these services has been disrupted.
• Part-time workers and employees of small and medium-sized firms face greater risk of job loss. Workers in part-time work are often the first to be let go when economic conditions deteriorate, and the last to be hired when conditions improve. They are also less likely to have access to health care and the formal insurance channels that can help them weather the crisis. In developing economies, in particular, part-time workers and those in informal work face a dramatically higher risk of falling into poverty.

The impact on low-income and precariously-employed workers could be particularly severe, amplifying long-standing inequities in societies. Our finding—that workers at the bottom of the earnings distribution are least able to work remotely—is corroborated by recent unemployment data from the United States and other countries. The COVID-19 crisis will exacerbate income inequality.

To compound the effect, workers at the bottom of the income distribution are already disproportionately concentrated in the hardest-hit sectors like food and accommodation services, which are among those sectors least amenable to teleworking. Low-income workers are also more likely to live hand-to-mouth and have little financial buffers like savings and access to credit.

How to protect the most vulnerable?

The pandemic is likely to change how work is done in many sectors. Consumers may rely more on e-commerce, to the detriment of retail jobs; and may order more takeout, reducing the labor market for restaurant workers.

What can governments do? They can focus on assisting the affected workers and their families by broadening social insurance and safety nets to cushion against income and employment loss. Wage subsidies and public-works programs can help them regain their livelihoods during the recovery.

To reduce inequality and give people better prospects, governments need to strengthen education and training to better prepare workers for the jobs of the future. Lifelong learning also means bolstering access to schooling and skills training to help workers displaced by economic shocks like COVID-19.

This crisis has clearly shown that being able to get online was a crucial determinant to people’s ability to continue engaging in the workplace. Investing in digital infrastructure and closing the digital divide will allow disadvantaged groups to participate meaningfully in the future economy.

 

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A dated photo of indigenous women in Chiquimula in Guatemala making rope out of maguey (Agave americana) fibre. Experts say there is concern about whether there will be the protection and respect of indigenous peoples’ right to land and national resources as there will be huge interest in those resources during the post-COVID-19 recovery. Credit: Danilo Valladares/IPS

By Samira Sadeque
UNITED NATIONS, Jul 9 2020 (IPS)

When governments and states begin their recovery journey from the economic downturn caused by the coronavirus pandemic, there might be a heightened threat to indigenous peoples, their land and resources. 

“The fear is [that] the economic recovery is based on access to land and natural resources,” Lola García-Alix, senior advisor on Global Governance at the International Work Group for Indigenous Affairs (IWGIA), told IPS.

“Indigenous people also live in areas with the most biological diversity. So of course they are the last frontier where the many governments meet in a situation of economic recovery. It’s an economic asset for them to have access there,” she said.

García-Alix moderated a panel on Jul. 7 about the impact of COVID-19 on indigenous communities around the world and key factors that states must keep in mind during the recovery process. 

The panel, “Delivering Results For Not Leaving Indigenous Peoples Behind: COVID-19 Responses and Beyond” was organised as part of the United Nations’ High Level Political Forum (HLPF). 

“One of the main threats that indigenous people are facing today is land grabbing,” García-Alix added. “So, it’s not so much the issue of financial support but the issue of where will be the protection and respect of indigenous peoples’ right to land and national resources in a context where there will be huge interest in those resources.” 

She was responding to concerns posed by other indigenous leaders about different factors affecting the impact of COVID-19 on their communities. 

At the Jul. 7 talk, Antonia Urrejola, vice president of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights and the rapporteur on the rights of indigenous peoples, warned of “external actors” coming into territories of indigenous peoples that are exacerbating the pandemic’s impacts. 

“External actors are coming into these territories now more than ever so there’s more contagion and this is why they’re putting at risk not only the individual people but as a collective group as well,” she said. 

These “actors” include members of security forces, drug traffickers as well as miners. García-Alix said that there’s been an increase in illegal logging, entering of different actors, as well as an increase in killing of indigenous community members under the pandemic. 

“It’s a hunger to access their resources in their lands. And this hunger is in the part of states’ as well as other actors – from cartels to illegal logging, or companies,” she told IPS. “Many of these illegal actors don’t stop because there’s quarantine. It’s even better because there’s no police.”

Urrejola added other concerns that are currently exacerbated because of the pandemic, such as lack of access to health services.

“Hospitals are very far away in general from indigenous areas, and sometimes [the people] have to travel even for a day, and they [still] cannot receive medical treatment,” she said. “We know that they don’t have basic needs, many times they can’t even get tested.” 

A dated photo of an ethnic matriarch in India’s biodiversity-rich Sikkim State in the Himalayan foothills. She is a repository of traditional knowledge on plants both for food and medicinal properties. Experts say that indigenous women are being denied their fundamental right to access information because the information is not being disseminated in indigenous languages. This is especially crucial as indigenous women hold a key role as caretakers in many of their communities. Credit: Manipadma Jena/IPS

García-Alix pointed out how language and accessibility can play a role in this lack of services for the indigenous community. 

“In most cases, the problem is that indigenous people haven’t had the information in their own language and have not had the access to the medical services,” she said. 

Kamla Thapa, executive director of National Indigenous Women’s Federation in Nepal, also brought up this issue during a panel talk about indigenous women in COVID-19 responses and impacts on Jul. 8. 

“Indigenous women are not in decision-making positions, and they are ignored,” she said, adding that many of these women are being denied their fundamental right to access information because the information is not being disseminated in indigenous languages. This is especially crucial as indigenous women hold a key role as caretakers in many of their communities. 

Thapa expressed hope going forward, citing the example of a group of indigenous women in India who developed a herbal sanitiser, as well as the Santal community from India and Nepal who are making sure outsiders aren’t allowed into the community so as to protect members from contracting COVID-19.

“We indigenous women are the knowledge holders, we have hope; we are knowledgeable, and changemakers,” she said. “We have the power to transform the pandemic into an opportunity, to derive a new normal by applying our knowledge, our skills.”

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Indian farmers are no longer able to get their produce easily to market since the coronavirus outbreak. Experts say that leveraging technology to match supply and demand of resources and food is key to overcoming the issues of starvation and food supply interruptions. Credit: Neeta Lal/IPS

By Neeta Lal
NEW DELHI, Jul 9 2020 (IPS)

Digital technologies in agriculture are helping address the twin problems of food security and supply chain disruptions triggered by COVID-19 in India, while augmenting the income of smallholder farmers.

Leveraging technology to match supply and demand of resources and food is key to overcoming the issues of starvation and food supply interruptions, Anshul Sushil, CEO and co-founder at Wizikey, an online platform linking over 500 agriculture-related business, tells IPS.

“Agritech is finally getting its fair share of attention and the innovation and research that is happening in India right now will change the way we all get food from farm to fork. The technology transformation in the industry will ensure direct supply and smoother distribution,” Sushil says.

According to the entrepreneur, the growth of homegrown agritech start-ups such as Ninjacart, India’s largest tech-driven supply chain platform, as well as Dehaat and Jumbotail, which aim to bolster the agritech ecosystem by maximising productivity, increasing supply chain efficiency and improving market linkages, are helping tackle the challenges of agriculture and food production successfully.

A number of urban agritech startups have leveraged the model of facilitating direct transactions between communities and farmers, enabling the latter to tap into demand in cities.

Digital Green, an organisation that trains Indian farmers in sustainable practices is developing a voice-enabled WhatsApp chatbot. The technology will provide seamless market connections, enabling smallholder farmers to improve their incomes amid economic disruptions caused by COVID-19.

Farmers can use the chatbot to share the type, quantity, and price of crops they wish to sell using a chatbot accessed via WhatsApp. Buyers, including small purchasers from the local community looking for nutritious foods, large industrial and retail buyers, use the same chatbot interface to discover available produce, using farmer-uploaded photos to assess quality. The buyers can directly contact farmers via WhatsApp to complete the transaction.

“In the best of times Indian farmers have limited selling options — typically to local traders or regional markets — which present low prices and high transaction costs (time and money) for relatively small volumes.

“The transportation restrictions and market closures due to COVID-19 further restricted their options, with major implications for livelihoods, India’s food supply and the rural economy,” explains Rikin Gandhi, CEO of Digital Green.  

Using technology to match supply and demand of agricultural resources and food will be critical to absorb the influx of people amid tenuous conditions in which farmers who already operate on thin margins are unable to sell their crops and face uncertainty about the upcoming season, adds the expert. 

Amidst the global pandemic’s devastating impact on lives and livelihoods, India’s farming community remains one of the most vulnerable. 

• As per the International Labor Organisation’s statistics, 43.9 percent of India’s total workforce worked in agriculture in 2018.
  
• Nearly 700 million Indians rely directly or indirectly on an agriculture-derived livelihood. Agriculture and allied sectors contribute 16.5 percent to the country’s $2.6 trillion GDP, according to the Indian government’s Economic Survey 2019-20.
  

The United Nations World Food Programme estimates that COVID-19 will lead to a surge in the number of people facing acute food insecurity, leading to an upswing in children’s malnutrition cases while pushing back the achievement of Sustainable Development Goals. 

The 2020 Global Nutrition Report, the world’s leading independent assessment, stresses the need for more equitable, resilient and sustainable food and health systems to ensure food security for all. 

India’s 1.4 billion people present a daunting challenge for the country’s COVID-19 response. The country imposed one of the world’s strictest lockdowns, confining its population at home from Mar. 25 to May 18.

Expectedly, the lockdown has had ramifications on people’s health. A survey of 12 Indian states by leading civil society organisations titled “COVID-19 induced Lockdown – How is the Hinterland Coping?” revealed that over 50 percent of respondents have reduced the number of times they are eating each day and 68 percent have whittled down the items in meals. 

A World Bank analysis predicts that 12 million Indians will plunge into extreme poverty (living on less than $1.90/day) in 2020 as a result of COVID-19. Credit: Neeta Lal/IPS

Worse, rampant hunger is jeopardising the health of millions. According to the Global Hunger Index, the pandemic will only exacerbate the situation with a greater likelihood of people dying from hunger than the coronavirus in the wake of the lockdown. This will only add to India’s burden of malnutrition. 

According to the National Family Health Survey 2015- 2016, 38.4 percent of children under five are stunted (low height for age), 21 percent are wasted (low weight for height) and 35.8 percent are underweight (low weight for age). 

Even more disconcerting is the prediction of a rise in poverty.

A World Bank analysis predicts that 12 million Indians will plunge into extreme poverty (living on less than $1.90/day) in 2020 as a result of COVID-19. This is in addition to about 415 million people who already exist below the poverty line in rural India. This demographic refers to people earning less than the country’s per-capita monthly income of approximately $100.

India maintains nearly 60 million tons of food grain in its granaries, according to the Food Corporation of India. The Food Sustainability Index created by the Barilla Centre for Food and Nutrition and the Economist Intelligence Unit, ranks India among other middle income countries with an above-average score of 65.5 out of 100 in sustainable agriculture, but disruption of traditional supply chains has impacted  farmers badly. 

CSC Sekhar, Professor of Economics, Institute of Economic Growth, University of Delhi, writes in his column for The Economic Times that the incomes of farmers of perishable crops and poultry products are going to be much lower due to crop losses, storage problems and a halt of transportation networks. 

The expert advocates a judicious mix of policies, combining direct payments with free food provision, in addition to providing employment under the flagship MGNREGA job employment scheme [Mahatma Gandhi Employment Guarantee Act 2005, an Indian labour law and social security measure that guarantees the right to work], to ensure economic and physical access to food for vulnerable sections.

As per the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the U.N., the four pillars of food security are availability, access, stability and utilisation. These indicate the physical availability of food; economic access to food; stability of the availability and access; and absorptive capacity (health status).

But availability and access thus become critical in the present context, writes Sekhar.

“The public and the private sector buyers are looking for ways to reliably access products and struggling to find reliable, aggregated supply. These changes have highlighted the need for a new digital marketplace that enables lower transaction costs for buyers and sellers, and greater value capture for smallholder farmers,” says Gandhi.  

Apart from such innovations, necessitating public-private partnerships, the country’s food safety net also needs to be expanded, an officer in the Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers’ Welfare, who didn’t want to be quoted, tells IPS.

India’s social safety net is extensive and an elaborate array of programmes exist to assist the poor, including the world’s largest food-based social programme; the Public Distribution System, which covers 800 million people. However, all these programmes face bottlenecks because of the lockdown. 

In an article “Food security for children amidst Covid19: A cause for concern”, Shoba Suri, senior fellow at the Observer Research Foundation, a New Delhi-based think tank, states the lockdown has led to children being deprived of nutrition support, adding to the burden of families not able to meet ends due to loss of wages and looming poverty.  

Particularly vulnerable are slum dwellers and migrants returning to their villages  who often miss out on food support from government schemes, says Asha Devi, a volunteer with a Delhi-based NGO. 

“Hundreds of thousands of factory workers and wage earners who have lost their jobs continue to face uncertainty about livelihood and food security for their families. Various marginal groups such as HIV/AIDS patients and sex workers complain to us of rising hunger due to loss of income. We need to reach out to them urgently,” Devi tells IPS. 

 

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By Jomo Kwame Sundaram and Michael Lim Mah Hui
KUALA LUMPUR and PENANG, Jul 9 2020 (IPS)

The 1971 Bretton Woods (BW) system collapse opened the way for financial globalization and transnational financialization. Before the 1980s, most economies had similar shares of trade and financial openness, but cross-border financial transactions have been increasingly unrelated to trade since then.

Although Covid-19 recessions have rather different causes and manifestations from the financially driven crises of recent decades, financialization continues to constrain, shape and thus stunt government responses with deep short-, medium- and long-term consequences.

Jomo Kwame Sundaram

It is thus necessary to revisit and contain the virus of financialization wreaking long-term havoc in developing, especially emerging market economies. No one is financing work on a vaccine, while all too many with influence seek to infect us all as the virus is touted as the miracle cure to contemporary society’s deep malaise, rather than exposed for the threats it actually poses.

Financialization
Global financialization has spread, deepened and morphed with a changing cast of banks, institutional investors, asset managers, investment funds and other shadow banks. Transborder financialization has thus been transforming national finance and economies.

The changing preferences of financial market investors have been reshaping the uneven spread of market finance across assets, borders, currencies and regulatory regimes. To preserve and enhance their value, new financial asset classes and relationships have been created.

Within borders, banks and shadow banks are lending to households, companies and one another, while national frontiers do not matter for securities and derivative markets, often financed via wholesale money markets.

Over the last four decades, the scope, size and concentration of finance have grown and changed as mainly national regulatory authorities try to keep up with recent financial innovations and their typically transnational consequences.

Managing discontents
Financialization has involved reorganizing finance, the economy, and even aspects of society, to enable investors to get more from financial market investments, effectively undermining sustainable growth, full employment and fairer wealth distribution. The following measures should help slow financialization and limit some of its adverse effects:

Michael Lim Mah Hui

Strengthen international financial regulation
While financialization has become transnational, financial regulation remains largely national, albeit with some transborder effects of the most powerful, e.g., US tax rules and Fed requirements. Transnational finance has often successfully taken advantage of loopholes and ‘arbitrage’ to great profit.

Multilateral cooperation to strengthen effective and equitable regulation will be difficult to secure as voting power in the only multilateral institution, the IMF, remains heavily biased against developing countries.

Strengthen national capital account management
Transnational financialization has made developing countries more vulnerable to transnational finance and its rent-gouging practices, while also causing greater instability, and limiting policy space for development.

Although the IMF’s Article 6 guarantees the national right to capital account management, all too many national authorities in developing countries, especially emerging markets, have been deterred from exercising their rights effectively.

Improve national regulation of finance
Improving effective, equitable and progressive national regulation of finance, particularly market-based finance, remains challenging, especially in emerging market economies where typically divergent, if not contradictory, banking and capital market interests seek to influence reforms differently in their own specific interests.

Strengthen bank regulation
There were few banking crises from the 1930s to the 1970s after banking was strictly regulated following the 1929 Crash. With financial deregulation from the 1980s, major financial and currency crises have become more frequent. More effective regulation and supervision are urgently needed, not only of banks, but also of ‘shadow banks’, that account for a large and growing share of transnational finance.

Make finance accountable
Instead of improving regulations to achieve these objectives, the growth and greater influence of finance have led to regulatory capture, with reforms enabling, not hindering financialization, including its adverse consequences. Political financing reforms are also urgently needed to limit the influence of finance in politics.

Promote collective, not asset-based welfare
Financialization has been enabled by the reduced role of government. Nationalizing or renationalizing pension funds and improved government ‘social provisioning’ of health, education and infrastructure would reduce the power and influence of institutional investors and asset managers.

Ensure finance serves the real economy
The original and primary role of finance – to provide credit to accelerate productive investments and to finance trade – has been increasingly eclipsed by financial institutions, including banks, engaging in securities and derivatives trading and other types of financial speculation.

Such trading and speculative activities must be subjected to much higher and more appropriate regulatory and capital requirements, with commercial or retail banking insulated from investment or merchant banking activities, e.g., insulating Main Street from Wall Street, or High Street from the City of London, instead of the recent trend towards ‘universal’ banking.

Promote patient banking, not short-termist profiteering
National financial authorities should introduce appropriate incentives and disincentives to encourage banks to finance productive investments and trading activities, and deter them from pursuing higher short-term profits, especially from daily changes in securities and derivatives prices.

This can be achieved with appropriate regulations and deterrent taxes on securities and derivatives financing transactions. An alternative framework for banking and finance should promote long-term investment over short-term speculation, e.g., by introducing an incremental capital gains tax where the rate is higher the shorter the holding period.

Ensure equitable financial inclusion
While financial exclusion has deprived many of the needy of affordable credit, new modes of financial inclusion which truly enhance their welfare must be enabled and promoted.

Ostensible financial inclusion could extend exploitative and abusive financial services to those previously excluded. In some emerging market economies, for example, levels of personal and household debt have risen rapidly, largely due to inclusive finance initiatives.

New financial technologies
Financial houses are profitably using new digital technologies to capture higher rents. While technological innovations can advance financial inclusion and other progressive development and welfare goals, thus far, they have largely served financial rent-gouging and other such exploitive and regressive purposes.

For example, while big data has been used to track, anticipate and stop the spread of infectious diseases, it has also been more commonly abused for commercial and political purposes.

National regulators must be vigilant that ostensibly philanthropic foundations and businesses are actively promoting ‘fintech’ in developing countries without sufficient transparency, let alone consideration of its mixed purposes, implications and potential.

Minimize tax avoidance
Besides curtailing and penalizing tax avoidance practices at the national level, tax accountants, lawyers and others who greatly enable and facilitate tax evasion and related abuses should be much more effectively deterred.

Strengthen multilateral cooperation to equitably enhance national fiscal capacities
Governments must cooperate better multilaterally to more effectively and equitably tax transnational corporations and high net worth individuals. Such cooperation should effectively check illicit financial flows with strict regulations to deter private banking, banking secrecy, tax havens and other international facilitation of tax evasion.

Existing initiatives need to be far more inclusive of, sensitive to and supportive of developing country governments. OECD led initiatives previously excluded developing countries, but their recent inclusion, while an advance, remains biased against them.

Related Articles

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• Finance’s New Avatar

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Excerpt:

Soumik Dutta is a freelance investigative journalist based in Kolkata and Bangalore, India, covering energy transition, environmental or green corruption, human interest, land acquisition-related conflicts and human rights violation issues.

The post In India, Climate Change is Increasing Refugees & Human Trafficking appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Credit: Jeffrey Moyo/IPS.

By Ifeanyi Nsofor
ABUJA, Jul 8 2020 (IPS)

Recently, Barcelona’s Liceu opera opened its 2020-2021 season by serenading a full house of plants with classical music. The plants will then be given to over 2,200 health workers who serve at the frontlines to battle the pandemic. The performance was both an appreciation for the workers and it also celebrated the return to normalcy following the devastations caused by COVID-19.

It is commendable that health workers are being celebrated this way. However, from the beginning of this pandemic, health workers have been victims. For instance, Li Wenliang, who first raised an alarm about a serious infectious disease in Wuhan, China was hounded by Chinese authorities for inciting fear. This caused a delay in China accepting and reporting the occurrence of a new deadly disease.

In the heat of the pandemic, NHS workers wore bin bags as protection. Shockingly, personal protective equipment were fashioned out of clinical waste bags, plastic aprons and borrowed skiing goggles

Consequently, there are currently more than 9 million cases of COVID-19, above 5 million recoveries and almost 500,000 deaths globally. Unfortunately, Li Wenliang caught the virus and died from COVID-19.

All over the world, health workers continue to suffer a great deal during this pandemic. This is shocking because health workers save lives. In the U.S., more than 400 health workers have died from COVID-19, according to the Centres for Disease Control.

In the United Kingdom, more than 200 health workers have died from COVID-19. Sixty percent of the U.K. deaths are among Black, Asian, and minority ethnic groups. In Nigeria, over 800 health workers have been infected with COVID-19 and 10 doctors have died. This led to Nigerian doctors embarking on a national strike recently.  These deaths are attributed to lack of Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) for health workers.

As cities begin to reopen globally, the world must reflect on this pandemic and how it has claimed the lives of hundreds of thousands of people, including health workers.

 

These three lessons, which ensure safety of health workers should guide preparedness for the next infectious disease outbreak.

 

First, Infection, prevention and control protocols must be put in place in all health facilities and should be strictly adhered to. Infection, prevention and control measures include provision of clean running water, availability of soaps in health facilities and provision of personal protective equipment for health workers.

As common as these seem, they are not available in most health facilities in both low- and middle-income countries and high-income countries. A World Health Organization report on water, sanitation and hygiene from 54 low- and middle-income countries, shows that 38% lack access to even basic levels of water, 19% lack sanitation and 35% do not have water and soap for handwashing.

High-income countries have not done well with regards to infection, prevention and control during this pandemic. Reports from the United Kingdom revealed that in the heat of the pandemic, NHS workers wore bin bags as protection. Shockingly, personal protective equipment were fashioned out of clinical waste bags, plastic aprons and borrowed skiing goggles.

 

Second, improve salaries and conditions of service for health workers everywhere, especially in developing countries. These are ways to show health workers that they are appreciated. Poor salaries and poor conditions of service are major reasons for emigration of health workers from low to high income countries.

A 2017 study on emigration of Nigerian doctors conducted by Nigeria Health Watch and NOI Polls explored reasons for emigration. More than 700 medical doctors were interviewed. The result revealed that improved remuneration (18%), upgrade of all hospital facilities and equipment (16%), increased healthcare funding (13%), and improved working conditions for health workers as major reasons for reducing emigration of doctors.

Furthermore, it is mind-boggling that medical doctors in Nigeria are paid a monthly hazard allowance of less than $13. If this poor remuneration continues, emigration would persist and will adversely affect response to pandemics in poor countries.

 

Third, build regional coalitions for epidemic preparedness because epidemics will always happen. One lesson from COVID-19 is that epidemics do not respect borders and therefore, no country is safe as far as one country is at risk of epidemics. Going forward, countries should no longer operate in silos.

The African continent is leading in this regard through the Africa Medical Supplies Platform. This is an African Union initiative which enables African governments to join forces in bulk buying and transportation of COVID-19 commodities.

This would help countries procure and supply infection, prevention and control commodities needed by health workers, such as personal protective equipment and sanitizers. Furthermore, this should be taken to scale to cover other healthcare needs necessary to make health facilities safer for health workers in the post-COVID-19 period.

Pulling forces together is an important way to ensure sustainable funding for epidemic preparedness and protect health workers.

It is gratifying that all the plants serenaded with classical music by the Barcelona Opera will be donated to 2,292 health workers at the Hospital Clínic of Barcelona.

When health workers are appreciated, properly salaried and protected, the world would be healthier and safer.

 

Dr. Ifeanyi M. Nsofor, is a medical doctor, a graduate of the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, the CEO of EpiAFRIC and Director of Policy and Advocacy at Nigeria Health Watch. He is a Senior Atlantic Fellow for Health Equity at George Washington University, a Senior New Voices Fellow at the Aspen Institute and a 2006 International Ford Fellow. 

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By Saima W. Hossain
DHAKA, Bangladesh, Jul 8 2020 (IPS)

The issue of women’s rights, feminism and gender is complex and ongoing in most countries including Bangladesh. When I was asked to write about impact of COVID-19 on women and girls, I found myself drawn towards writing about women’s situation in general as that automatically impacts COVID-19 response as well. Since I am a woman who has been a part of many different cultures, yet a Bangali at heart, I am not only a survivor within its ranks but also responsible for being a part of the solution to the problems we face.

Saima W. Hossain

At the heart of it is the question: Are women in Bangladesh truly equal in all social, economic, cultural and legal practices in our country, as stated in our Constitution, as our Founding Father intended for us to be?

A decade and a half ago, findings from my graduate thesis (unpublished) exploring psychological well-being of women in Bangladesh showed that interestingly women reported valuing education above employment, and those who were employed did not exercise any control over their income. Also, they perceived the ‘purdah’ as a tool that enabled them to access greater social freedom, for which they were still required to garner permission.

In his chronicles as a young adult, Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, the Founding Father of Bangladesh, wrote about the need for equal rights for men and women. He stayed true to his vision by giving them equal voice in the political process of the country as an equal citizen. As a President he went to tremendous lengths to rehabilitate and support the survivors of the genocide committed by the Pakistani military on Bengali civilians in 1971.

Since independence, much progress has been made to ensure that women from childhood have every opportunity to participate in educational and economic opportunities in the country. We not only have a woman as the Head of Government, but women holding positions in the justice system, as Speaker of the House of Parliament, as ministers, in academia, armed forces, and the corporate sector, among others. New laws addressing age of marriage, gender violence, domestic abuse and others have also been adopted.

Cornerstones of the transition of the role of women in Bangladesh are the growth in the RMG (ready-made garments) sector, and the opportunities created by small cottage industries. In the 1980’s, Bangladeshi society experienced a major shift due to the demand by the growing RMG sector for large number of cheap labor who would work under practically any circumstances.

Despite the many questionable labor practices and human rights issues, for the young women living in abject poverty and treated as a burden on their families, it was an opportunity for financial freedom, and to be valued within their families. Up until that time, the only other income opportunity for women with minimal education was domestic work. The same time that women began to be employed in the RMG sector, women were simultaneously also making incremental earnings through small cottage industries. Looking at these notable and impactful changes, it is undeniable that the most significant reason behind Bangladesh’s dramatic economic development is the role and function women have played, be it as a leader or as a daily wage earner.
Nevertheless, the question remains, has economic participation, opportunities for education, and employment truly impacted how women are treated in society on a daily basis?

Women have always struggled and continue to struggle to find balance between what is expected of them by their families and society, and what they wish to do for themselves. For many, the choice may appear easy to make and they happily do what is expected and needed, but for many it can lead to a lifetime of emotional turmoil. The choice women face between motherhood and a successful career cannot simply be addressed by changing laws without also addressing social expectations and attitudinal pressures to be the primary carer of children and dependents.

The societal imbalance that exists between men, women, and those we identify as third gender in Bangladesh, are in almost every country but manifests themselves differently. Thus, a one- size-fits-all solution does not work because of this very reason. The Covid 19 pandemic we are all trying to survive, demonstrates that no issue or solution is as simple as it appears.

Ensuring women are protected during this global crisis needs a solution which is based significantly on an understanding of the culture where the woman belongs; and importantly that the biased ocial and economic structure ensures they are impacted even more adversely. In order to effectively address the issue we need to be willing to take the ‘bull by the horn’ i.e. rather than reaching for the lowest hanging fruit, work at solutions that are mindful of its impact to all including women, and the diverse communities that make our country.

We need to acknowledge that we have not sufficiently delved into legal, social and economic protections that are necessary. Despite many female political leaders, the everyday woman still suffers in silence because she does not have the voice or the agency to speak her mind or pursue her dreams independently. Addressing these issues become even more important when we are faced with a global pandemic, making this gap starkly apparent. In the past few months, women across the globe have been victims of a rising number of domestic violence situations, which have escalated. In addition, women who hitherto worked in the informal sector, have been left particularly vulnerable; essentially unaccounted for and unsupported, significantly impacting their financial and emotional well-being.

Saima W. Hossain, a licensed School Psychologist, is currently Advisor to the Director General of WHO on Autism and Mental Health, Member of WHO’s Expert Advisory Panel on Mental Health, Chairperson of the National Advisory Committee on Autism and NDDs in Bangladesh, and Chairperson of Shuchona Foundation.

 

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By GGGI
KAMPALA, Uganda, Jul 8 2020 (IPS-Partners)

The European Union (EU) represented by the European Commission in Uganda and the Government of Uganda through the Global Green Growth Institute (GGGI) have signed a contract today to cooperate on advancing the Greening Uganda’s Urbanization and Industrialization agenda. This project is part of the European Union’s Inclusive Green Economy Uptake Programme (GreenUP) financed under the 11th European Development Fund (EDF) and will be implemented for a 36 months period with a total cost estimated of just under EUR 5mln. The MoU was signed by European Union in Uganda and Ms. Dagmar Zwebe, Country Representative of the GGGI Uganda office.

The overall objective of the GreenUp action is to contribute to the Ugandan transition toward an inclusive, green and competitive low carbon economy with the creation of decent green jobs. Within the framework of this intervention this Project has been designed to support the Government of Uganda (GOU) with their National Development Plan III (NDPIII) commitments for 2020/21-2024/25, and the long term commitments as expressed in the Uganda Green Growth Development Strategy (UGGDS) and Uganda’s Vision 2040. It will directly contribute to greener growth paths to becoming a middle-income country, through the acceleration of investments in green growth pathways.

The Projects impact objective is therefore “Uganda achieves strong, inclusive and sustainable economic growth”. The Uganda Vision 2040 specifically highlights industrialization and urbanization as key focal are as it envisions that 60% of Ugandans will live in urban areas by 2040 and therefore, actions of designing, servicing and attracting investments into greening secondary cities will help Uganda to benefit from the economic and social dividends that come with urbanization.

Through a multistakeholder process guided by the National Planning Authority (NPA) as the project coordinator the industrial zones of Gulu, Entebbe, Pakwach and Soroti have been identified to receive support from the Project in the development of their Masterplans in a green manner and the identification of potential investment projects. The Project is committed to attract investment commitments for at least 6 projects for these industrial areas to accelerate and green the industrialization process in Uganda. This process will be guided by specific guidelines setting out what a green industrial could look like.

With a similar process the cities of Arua, Gulu, Jinja and Mbarara have been identified by the stakeholders, led by the Ministry of Lands, Housing and Urban Development in close coordination with the NPA, to receive similar support as the industrial zones in the development of their Masterplans and the acceleration of financing in potential (public and private) projects. For the Arua-Pakwach corridor, and for Gulu there will be a joined focus combining both elements to ensure inclusive green growth is accomplished. Overall, the aim is to set the country on a low carbon development pathway, generating green jobs, to reduce the environmental burden and the use of natural resources and to contribute substantially to increasing green investment flows into Uganda.

Increased waste collection and sorting in the Greater Kampala Metropolitan Area (GKMA) is another element of the Project. Guided by the GKMA Waste Management Strategy 2021-2030, two waste sorting and diversion centers will be designed, and investment commitment will be sought for at least one of these sites to support the GKMA commitment of 30% recycling by 2030. Furthermore, business development support will be provided to multiple small and medium enterprises in the waste sector to strengthen their operations and be able to widen their scope and increase their waste recycling or treatment.

All stakeholders involved within this Project including -but not limited to- the Government of Uganda, the EU and GGGI and are strongly committed to support Uganda’s transition toward an inclusive, green and competitive low carbon economy, and especially the sectors as elaborated upon in the UGGDS. This includes making Uganda’s business environment more conducive to inclusive and green investments and improving the environment for investing in Uganda’s economic green transformation and the urbanization and industrialization agenda.

Learn more about GGGI’s work in Uganda by clicking here.

 

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PRESS RELEASE

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Mumbai, India. Credit: Sthitaprajna Jena (CC BY-SA 2.0).

By Sanjeet Bagcchi
NEW DELHI, Jul 8 2020 (IPS)

Indian health experts say the findings of a US study — which suggest that population density is unrelated to COVID-19 infection rates — to be completely contradictory to their experience of dealing with the pandemic in India, a country with 1.3 billion people.

Shima Hamidi, lead author of the study, published June in the Journal of the American Planning Association, claimed in a press statement that “the fact that [urban] density is unrelated to confirmed virus infection rates and inversely related to confirmed COVID-19 death rates is important, unexpected and profound”.

“In theory, density leads to closer contact and more interaction among residents, which makes them potential hotspots for the rapid spread of emerging infectious diseases,” Hamidi of Bloomberg School of Public Health at Johns Hopkins University, said.

However, after controlling for metropolitan population, county density is not significantly related to the infection rate, possibly due to greater adherence to social distancing guidelines, the authors pointed out. Also, counties with higher densities have significantly lower virus-related death rates than do counties with lower densities, possibly due to superior healthcare systems, they added.

Hamidi and colleagues assessed SARS-CoV-2 infection rates and Covid-19 death rates, from 20 January to 25 May at 913 metropolitan counties in the US. They used ‘Structural Equation Modelling’ that considered education levels, population size, healthcare infrastructure and demographic variables such as age and race to reach their findings.

But public health experts and doctors involved in COVID-19 care in India — which recorded 605,000 cases and 17,800 deaths by the virus, as of 2 July — say the findings are contradictory to their observations while working in densely populated India.

“The COVID-19 challenge in India centres on the classical factor of higher population density,” says Diptendra Kumar Sarkar, public health expert and COVID-19 strategist affiliated to the Institute of Post Graduate Medical Education and Research, Kolkata, India.

Further, in India, higher mortality has been noted in densely populated cities such as Mumbai, Delhi and Chennai as compared with the smaller urban centres, Sarkar tells SciDev.Net.

Ahsan Ahmed, chief consultant of critical care and emergency services at the KPC Medical College and Hospital, Kolkata, India, agrees. “The study findings are completely opposite to what I observed while dealing with COVID-19 patients,” he tells SciDev.Net.

“I have treated over 200 COVID-19 patients who belong to the densely populated areas of Kolkata [population density of 24,000 people per square kilometre]; the death numbers are also more among patients from these areas,” Ahmed adds.

According to Ahmed, Mumbai’s densely populated Dharavi area — the largest slum in Asia where 650,000 people reportedly live in an area of 2.5 square kilometres — had a total of 2,301 COVID-19 cases as of 2 July,  as compared with 80,262 cases reported from Mumbai, a city of 19.5 million people with an average population density of 32,303 per square kilometre.

Thekkekara Jacob John, a top virologist and emeritus professor and former head of clinical virology at the Christian Medical College, Vellore, India, says, citing the study authors, that healthcare and educational facilities are better in denser communities. Intensive care unit (ICU) beds per 1000 population is an important measure of good healthcare and India has inadequate ICU beds, he says. “Our healthcare quality is not proportional to dense or sprawling living.”

“Where planning is practiced diligently, this study is a special one — applicable only to contagious outbreaks,” John tells SciDev.Net.

Reid Ewing, an author of the study and distinguished professor of city and metropolitan planning at the University of Utah, Salt Lake City, US, says there appears to be a misunderstanding of the study. “Results in low-density US, with superior health care and greater ability to social distance have no implications for India.”

 

This story was originally published by SciDev.Net

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Credit: United Nations

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Jul 8 2020 (IPS)

The coronavirus—which has claimed the lives of over 538,000 people and infected more than 11.6 million worldwide—has destabilized virtually every facet of human life ever since its outbreak in late December.

Providing a grim economic scenario of the devastation caused by the pandemic– including rising poverty, hunger and unemployment– UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned last week of the possibility of an even worse disaster: the risks of bioterrorist attacks deploying deadly germs.

He said it has already shown some of the ways in which preparedness might fall short, “if a disease were to be deliberately manipulated to be more virulent, or intentionally released in multiple places at once”.

“So, as we consider how to improve our response to future disease threats, we should also devote serious attention to preventing the deliberate use of diseases as weapons,” he declared, speaking at a Security Council meeting on the maintenance of international peace and security— and the implications of COVID-19.

Guterres pointed out that the Biological Weapons Convention (BWC), which codifies “a strong and longstanding norm against the abhorrent use of disease as a weapon”, has 183 States Parties.

“I urge the 14 States that have not yet joined the Convention to do so without any further delay,” he urged.

Opened for signature on April 10, 1972, the BWC entered into force on March 26, 1975, and currently has 183 states-parties.

Of the 14 countries outside the Convention, 10 have neither signed nor ratified the BWC, including Chad, Comoros, Djibouti, Eritrea, Israel, Kiribati, Micronesia, Namibia, South Sudan and Tuvalu, while four countries, Egypt, Haiti, Somalia and Syria, have signed but not ratified it.

John Loretz, a former Program Director and a senior consultant with International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW) told IPS: “I think the Secretary-General is absolutely correct in both assessments– that the BWC is a strong treaty with widespread support, which needs to be strengthened, and that building up our public health institutions and pandemic response infrastructure would ensure that essential resources are in place should we ever have to deal with a biological weapons attack”.

That said, one of the obstacles to getting effective oversight and verification into the BWC—perhaps the biggest obstacle—has been lobbying by the biomedical and pharmaceutical industries and their allies, who have argued that it’s difficult to determine intent when assessing whether someone is using a toxin for legitimate reasons (e.g., vaccine development) or for prohibited reasons (i.e., weapons), and that intrusive inspections would compromise trade secrets and intellectual property rights.

Loretz said those who want to strengthen the BWC will have to find a way past industry stonewalling in order to give the treaty compliance tools such as those incorporated into the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC).

Jez Littlewood, a freelance researcher with expertise in biological weapons, arms control, and national security issues, told IPS the use of a biological weapon would be an act involving the deliberate use of disease.

“We know from consistent data about disease and its impacts worldwide that it can have potential devastating consequences”.

The outbreak of Ebola in West Africa in 2014, the influenza pandemic of 1919 and the diseases brought by European explorers and settlers to the Americas from the 15th century onwards all had significant implications for populations, he noted, adding that 2017 data makes this clear: https://ourworldindata.org/causes-of-death

Tracing its history, Littlewood said bioterrorism certainly exists, but in the 25 years since Aum Shinrikyo launched its chemical weapons attack on the Tokyo subway system, bioterrorism has been low level and relatively unsophisticated.

Terrorists have killed far more people with vehicles, knives and basic firearms than they ever have with disease causing organisms, said Littlewood, who served under secondment to the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office; and worked at the United Nations in Geneva.

John Hart, Non-Resident Scholar at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies, Monterey, California, told IPS it seems that the Secretary-General’s basic message is that preparedness against disease outbreaks also strengthens preparedness against so-called deliberate events—not that COVID-19 per se would be used as a method of warfare or for hostile purposes.

He pointed out that health infrastructures are fragile and societal resilience is weak. Therefore, international preparedness against biological warfare requires further strengthening.

And there are those who are working to strengthen the broader global architecture, he noted.

Credit: World Future Fund

Littlewood said it is correct to note that the barriers to creating a biological weapon are lower today than they were two decades ago, or even a decade ago, but deliberately causing a large-scale outbreak of a disease is far from easy”.

He said States, rather than bioterrorists, are far more likely to have the technical, financial, and organizational capabilities to develop bioweapons of concern.

“Deliberate manipulation for weaponization and multiple attacks requires capabilities no terrorist group has yet demonstrated it has, and no known group has demonstrated it has even come close to such a capability”.

Littlewood also said that bioterrorism should not be dismissed, but empirical data from the last 25 years is clear in indicating there is far more interest in biological weapons among some terrorist groups than there is a capability to develop and use such weapons.

Purposefully manipulating the virulence of a disease-causing organism with a view to using it as a weapon is far more likely to be in the realm of a state-led program than a terrorist one, and features more prominently in Hollywood and fiction and political speeches than in reality, said Littlewood, who previously worked at Carleton University (Ottawa) and the University of Southampton (United Kingdom).

“No state openly admits to or claims to have an interest in developing biological weapons, which speaks to the strength of the normative constraints on using disease deliberately as a weapon”.

Nevertheless, Littlewood pointed out, a lack of preparedness of natural outbreaks of disease is a cause for concern and being prepared for natural outbreaks of disease is the foundation of any response to a deliberate use of a biological weapon.

Guterres said there is also need to strengthen the Convention, which lacks an oversight institution and contains no verification provisions, by enhancing its role as a forum for the consideration of preventative measures, robust response capacities and effective counter-measures.

Fortunately, the best counter to biological weapons is effective action against naturally occurring diseases. Strong public and veterinary health systems are not only an essential tool against COVID-19, but also an effective deterrent against the development of biological weapons, he added.

All of these issues must be on the agenda next year at the Convention’s Review Conference, declared Guterres.

Asked if chemical weapons, used by warring factions in Syria, were categorized as biological weapons, Hart said both the BWC and the Chemical Weapons Convention cover toxins.

The allegations of use of weapons in Syria relate to chlorine, sarin and sulphur
mustard. These agents do not meet the definition of a biological weapon under the BWC, he declared.

The Syrian government carried out toxin research which it characterized as being defensive in nature.

This work is mentioned in Syria’s declaration to the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) and has been discussed at Executive Council meetings and at the margins of EC meetings, said Hart.

“It is my understanding this particular matter is now largely resolved. The matter is referenced in statements, and some official public documentation, said Hart.

http://www.ipsnews.net/2020/03/coronavirus-biological-weapon-not-distant-future/

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

He can be reached at thalilfdeen@aol.com

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By Umberto Labate
ISTANBUL, Jul 7 2020 (IPS)

COVID-19 continues to race across the African continent. People are dying, and even more are being pushed into hunger and poverty, in many cases risking to overturn years of development gains.

The numbers are staggering. While the pandemic is only now taking root in Africa, there are at least 400,000 confirmed cases, and according to the World Health Organization (WHO), the outbreak is accelerating across the continent.

Add to this the risks of hunger and poverty. Three out of four people on the continent are food insecure. More than 320 million people are without access to safely managed drinking water, and over half the population lack access to any sanitation.

While this pandemic has already taken hundreds of thousands of lives, there are far greater risks on the horizon for the African people.

Left unchecked, climate change, environmental destruction, rising sea levels, droughts, floods and other environmental risks could trigger mass migration, increase conflict and disrupt, if not reverse, a decade of economic growth.

“It is imperative that post-COVID-19 stimulus packages integrate short and long term climate impacts as well as unlock significant appropriate technological and financial solution packages, for robust economic recovery and enhanced resilience for the wellbeing of people and ecosystems,” said Ambassador Seyni Nafo, Coordinator of the Africa Adaptation Initiative (AAI).

While international support is needed and is being programmed and reprogrammed across the UN system – with UNDP leading the global socio-economic recovery – rebuilding efforts will primarily come from African ingenuity, African resilience, African institutions and African leaders.

Africa out front

African minds are stepping up to create solutions. One noteworthy example is the purchase and deployment of Smart Anti-Epidemic Robots to fight against COVID-19 in Rwanda. Other examples include the use of blockchain technology to give online rewards for forCOVID-19 reduction efforts in South Africa and an innovative ‘solar for health initiative.’

Africa is leading the way at the political and strategic levels too. Late last month, 54 African leaders endorsed a new policy recommendation outlined in a brief on “Integrated Reponses to Building Climate and Pandemic Resilience in Africa.”

The recommendations include adaptation actions to secure the food supply for vulnerable populations and strengthen the agricultural value chain, increase access to water and sanitation in parallel with efforts to improve water governance, and the need to invest in resilient infrastructure to create jobs. These recommendations result in a triple dividend for African countries: reduced pandemic risk, increased climate resilience and strengthened economic recovery.

According to the World Bank, Africa needs about US$100 billion a year for the next decade to fill its infrastructure gap. “Low and middle-income countries alone could see a net benefit of $4.2 trillion from investing in infrastructure that prioritizes future-focused resiliency. That’s a $4 return for every $1 spent. By contrast, investing in ‘business-as-usual’ infrastructure not optimized for resilience only returns $1.5 for every $1 spent.”

The brief was champion by Gabon President Ali Bongo Ondimba, and created in partnership with the Global Commission on Adaptation (GCA) and the Africa Adaptation Initiative (AAI).

At last year’s Climate Talks, the European Union announced ramped up support for AAI with a EUR 1 million grant, administered by UNDP. With this catalytical seed money the initiative is now serving as a broker and catalyst to bring together key stakeholders to discuss and enact climate resilient strategies for sustainable development in Africa.

“The impact of climate change on our world is accelerating. Ambitious and coordinated actions are necessary to address this global threat. The EU is placing sustainability criteria at the centre of its recovery policies, both domestically and internationally. The African continent has an enormous potential to adapt and enhance its efforts towards a climate resilient development future, and the EU is a proud supporter of this endeavor,” said Alessandra Sgobbi, Policy Officer at the European Commission – DG Clima.

The big picture
The international community has moved swiftly to support African countries in responding to the COVID-19 crisis with over $50 billion announced thus far. This is a good start, but only a portion of the funds required to future-proof investments and build long-term resilience.

African institutions, such as AAI, are stepping up to fill this gap. Together with support from the UN system, donors, and global leaders, they are making the case and showing the way for a resilient future.

About the author
Umberto Labate is a Portfolio Management Specialist and Technical Advisor working in the ‘Nature, Energy and Climate Team’ of the UNDP Global Policy Network. He supports countries to identify and address developmental risks through integrated interventions, access to climate finance, and coordination with multiple partners, with the ultimate objectives of enhancing climate action and achieving the SDGs.

 

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The post Building Back Greener in Africa appeared first on Inter Press Service.

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African leaders highlight the opportunity for a triple dividend: reduced risk, increased resilience and strengthened recovery.

The post Building Back Greener in Africa appeared first on Inter Press Service.

By Ambassador Lois M Young
NEW YORK, Jul 7 2020 (IPS)

Our world is transfixed by the great human toll and economic impact of the worst global pandemic in a century. For the 65 million inhabitants of small island developing states (SIDS), the impact of the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) is reminiscent of the worst forms of extreme weather events that SIDS contend with annually. Such events cost lives, undermine our hard-earned development gains, and hamper the aspirations and quality of life of our people. Our governments are routinely compelled to shift already scarce resources from social and economic investments to recovery and sustenance in the aftermath of disasters. For decades islands have been treading a development tightrope, which is increasingly precarious with the intensification of adverse climate impacts.

The acute vulnerability of small islands to sudden systemic shocks is now being experienced by the world collectively. Ultimately, the hard decisions and tradeoffs that nations must make to secure human health are akin to the decisions that small islands have made to tackle the root causes of climate change and to advocate for planetary health. The one difference is that there is no potential vaccine to eradicate climate change, only global respect for and adherence to the Paris Agreement.

From the perspective of islands, the immediate responses to both the COVID-19 and climate change must reflect their intricate connection and profound compatibility. The current crisis is a compelling global reminder that our shared development aspirations and the climate emergency are inextricably linked. Emblematically, the world’s foremost authority on climate science, the United Nation Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, warns that inaction on climate change is likely to pave the way for more frequent pandemics and a panoply of vector-borne diseases. Much like the existential climate crisis we face, the spontaneity of more frequent and global pandemics, will be of greatest detriment to the most vulnerable – both directly through infections and by dwindling public support as governments struggle to shift resources from long-term development to crisis responses. Undoubtedly, these uncertainties are stark reminders that crisis financing is insufficient and too often pulls from development financing, leaving countries unable to address development in a sustainable way.

Ambassador Lois M Young

Our partners and the international financial institutions must be bolder. The COVID-19 pandemic has led to an unprecedented economic crisis for islands. We need dedicated and predictable financing for SIDS. Now more than ever, the 65 million people across SIDS, the majority of whom live in 25 Commonwealth States, call upon our Commonwealth partners and the wider global community, to affirm the special case of SIDS and support a holistic approach to the criteria for all SIDS to access concessional or grant finance. Such an approach hinges upon much needed reform of the global economic and financial system to make it responsive to anticipated and unanticipated challenges associated with economic shocks and climate change. On behalf of the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS), the Prime Minister of Belize, Rt. Honourable Dean Oliver Barrow, has appealed to the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank to, inter alia, establish a special window for SIDS, expand eligibility for all SIDS irrespective of income classification to access immediate support for the health crisis, and support the call to bilateral creditors to suspend debt payments. As AOSIS Chair, I have also supported the call by the Secretary-General of the United Nations for debt relief to our countries. While these measures most immediately address the health crisis, they will also enable SIDS to focus on the climate crisis. As we have seen, debt relief can be turned into a positive incentive for ambitious action.

The Commonwealth family is invited to support islands in addressing the climate emergency by embracing the SIDS climate and oceans agendas. There is no scientific doubt that the climate emergency and ocean crisis are intricately linked. SIDS are custodians of 15 of the 50 largest Exclusive Economic Zones (EEZs), which account for nearly one-third of all oceans and seas. SIDS have a record of sustainable use and, as responsible stewards, are primed for direct engagement and support for the conservation and sustainable use of our Ocean. Emblematically, the United Nations Environment Programme found that SIDS are disproportionately more likely to enact bans on single-use plastics. Our strong connection and dependence upon the marine environment have inculcated in us a commitment to maintain equilibrium between economic and social progress and environmental sustainability. AOSIS, as a SIDS advocacy mechanism, has embarked on an ocean agenda that foregrounds and transcends conservation – we want the activities of SIDS to unleash economic growth and diversification. It is for this reason AOSIS strongly champions a “think blue’ strategy and amongst our members you find early pioneers of the blue economy.

The blue economy simultaneously promotes economic growth, environmental sustainability, social inclusion and the strengthening of ocean ecosystems. The value of sustainable fisheries can be seen in our artisanal fishers and in broader sectoral actions. One such instance is the declaration of no-catch or no-take zones, referred to as replenishment zones in Belize. This along with several other initiatives, in Belize and in many other SIDS, has led to historic levels of fish stock replenishment and continues to be a significant source of high value fisheries-based sport tourism and general exports. SIDS are also leading on balanced approaches to sustainable use of marine resources. My country, Belize, which chairs AOSIS, is the world’s first to ban offshore oil exploration. Belize achieved this feat with popular nationwide support and a bottom-up approach. Our actions are indicative of a trend across SIDS. Several SIDS have already adopted national blue economy strategies. In 2013, Mauritius launched its oceans’ economy road map to tap into the potential of its EEZ by consolidating existing sectors, such as tourism, seaports, and fishing, and developing emerging sectors such as aquaculture, marine biotechnology, and renewable energy. Similarly, in 2018, the Seychelles launched its blue economic roadmap using an integrated approach to the sustainable development of ocean resources. The strategy is complemented by a marine spatial plan (2014), which plans for the sustainable management and health of the Seychelles’ 1,374,000-square-kilometer EEZ. In addition to national plans, the Pacific Small Island Developing States(PSIDS) have also developed regional policies and plans, committing to sustainable ocean management, and building sustainable blue economies in the region.

Small island and low lying coastal developing states are resolutely leading the charge in innovative approaches on climate and oceans. We need innovative financial approaches to unleash SIDS’ blue economic potential and advantage. Dear partners, we welcome you. Please seize the opportunity to engage with us.

 

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Excerpt:

Ambassador Lois M Young, is Belize’s Permanent Representative at the United Nations and Chair of the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS).

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In this photo dated 2014, Buda Kirsani of the Bonda tribe tells IPS how he had to walk 12 kilometres across hill ranges, navigating steep hills to get to his classroom everyday. He dropped out in fifth grade and took admission in the local tribal residential school that the Odisha government opened for children like him. Current school closures because of coronavirus has sent thousands such disadvantaged children home uncertain if they will return to schooling anytime soon. Credit: Manipadma Jena/IPS

By Manipadma Jena
BHUBANESWAR, India, Jul 7 2020 (IPS)

High up at an altitude of between 1,500 to 4,000 feet in India’s eastern Odisha state, live the Bonda people — one of this country’s most ancient tribes, who have barely altered their lifestyle in over a thousand years.

Living isolated in these high forests, largely antagonistic to outsiders, this region has been the stronghold of left-wing extremists since the 1990s. Despite these challenges the Odisha government has provided education and opened schools for the present generation of Bonda students.

Bringing in a universal Right to Education law it established teaching in 21 dialects for the tribal communities that make up almost a quarter of its population. Painstakingly it had reached a state-wide 100 percent school enrolment with a dropout rate of merely 5 percent.

But years of progress risked being lost with the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic.

In mid-March schools had to close overnight across the state, and the country too. Unfortunately it coincided with that time of the year when Odisha’s six million school children were to sit for their examinations.

‘Social, income and digital divides have put the most disadvantaged at risk of learning losses and dropping out,’ warned the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation’s 2020 Global Education Monitoring Report.

At these times of soaring infection rates and mandatory social distancing, class lessons could only reach students through digital modes. But how prepared was Odisha for this crisis, with 3 out of 10 people living in poverty? IPS set out to find the answers.

Our results were disheartening.

We learned of the story of 13-year-old G. Lela Reddy, the eldest child of a single mother, who works as a rag-picker, in Bhubaneswar, Odisha State. Initially she had no education. But six years ago she was part of a bridging course that allowed her to integrate and attend mainstream schooling.

Before COVID-19, she had made it to eight grade. She had been fortunate that she was one of the pupils who benefited from a digital learning platform set up by social enterprise, Aveti Learning that she accessed from a rehab centre, Ashayen.

During the lockdown, however, things changed. Many of the children like her, who had received access through digital learning, were now at home. The centre couldn’t have them on the premises, neither did they have enough tablets to loan these to all their students.

Reddy’s chances of lifting herself out of a life of poverty was put on pause. So too was the life of millions of adolescent girls marginalised by the growing divide during the lockdown.

A day after IPS published our report E-learning Divide Places World’s Disadvantaged Children at Risk of Dropping Out, citing a range of local voices including those of the deprived, and backed by UNESCO’s authoritative data, the State’s School and Mass Education Minister Samir Ranjan Dash for the first time came out with the actual figures. 

This is what he said:  out of six million school students in Odisha, 3.8million students have no access to online education while the remaining 2.2 million students who had access, had access of varied quality.

Several media organisations took up this issue immediately after the IPS report came out. The issue was one waiting to be highlighted because there appeared to be no clarity even though the government announced classes would continue digitally.

Parents were largely confused and felt ill-equipped to guide their children with their digital studies. And public school teachers were not adequately trained to create digital content or even communicate this effectively on a screen inter-face.

Agitated by the minister’s figures that were skewed against students from disadvantaged economic backgrounds, within a week of the IPS report the largest Parents Association wrote to the Odisha Human Rights Commission to ensure all students had access to online classes.

The School and Mass Education Minister has had to assure that a committee is reviewing the situation so that classroom, course-related materials reach all students.

Schools, according to the latest government decision, will remain closed till Aug, 31. But uncertainty still dogs the August school reopening and digital studies may continue for longer than anticipated.

• India’s total COVID-19 positive cases have reached over 719,000 and deaths are around 20,000. Around 20,000 new cases are added every day. 

But Odisha’s education department is now scrambling, after getting caught on the backfoot, to get its online study material to students without further delay.

The Odisha School Education Programme Authority (OSEPA), a key government body, has now several committees in place to conceptualise and develop content for online education, according to Dash.

“Many students in the State are yet to come under the online education system due to lack of necessary infrastructure,” Dash told regional television channels. Over 21,000 tribal villages in Odisha are without electricity. For them teachers will physically mentor their students, while for those who have internet access and smart phones, WhatsApp groups are to be the main mode of online class work.

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Zigunchor in Senegal’s southern Casamence region has the highest literacy rate in the country but here gender-based violence such as such as Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) is still practiced. Credit: Stella Paul/IPS

By Stella Paul
HYDERABAD, India, Jul 7 2020 (IPS)

Growing up in Senegal’s southern Casamence region — a conflict zone —  Fatou Ndiaye, now 43, often heard gunfire and watched fearfully as she saw people flee their villages. But what she dreaded more than a flying bullet was Female Genital Mutilation (FGM).

In her Wolof community, village grandmothers or professional circumcisers cut off the genitals of girls as young as 7 with a sharp blade. Ndiaye wanted to speak out against this but did not have the courage. But one day 13 years ago, she met Aissatou Sall, a fellow Senegalese woman who used storytelling to raise awareness against FGM.

“Connecting with her and hearing her stories taught me a lot about cutting. I learnt how women’s rights were often violated under the disguise of religious norms and traditions. And it gave me the courage to tell my family that I would speak against FGM and every harmful practice from now on, with or without their support,” Ndiaye, who has since become a professional storyteller herself, tells IPS. Occasionally, she also makes documentary videos in order to raise social awareness in her community.

Like Ndiaye, thousands of Senegalese women and girls are learning to take a stand against gender-based violence like FGM, child marriage, stoning and menstrual taboos through communication platforms that include storytelling, community counselling, mobile apps, art, poetry and videos.

GBV and girls’ education in Senegal

Statistically, when compared to its closest neighbours, Senegal has a much lower rate of gender-based violence (GBV), especially FGM. The average education rate is also much higher that its neighbours.

According to data published by the United Nations Children’s Fund, eight percent of women 20-24 years were married or in union before age 15 and 29 percent of women 20-24 years were married or in union before age 18. In addition, 24 percent of Senegalese girls and women aged 15 to 49 years have undergone FGM, while in Mali, Gambia, Mauritania and Guinea Bissau its 89, 76, 67 and 45 percent respectively for the same age group. 

However, within ethnic minority communities the numbers are almost as high as they are across the border, says Molly Melching, the founder of Tostan — one of the longest-running and most influential NGOs in Senegal working to curb FMG through community awareness and non-formal education. 

Based in Dakar, Tostan works across Francophone Africa and also in Somalia and Djibouti.

According to Melching, more and more Senegalese have been rejecting FGM thanks to a coordinated ground movement focused on community awareness raising, which is spearheaded by several civil society movements.

There are other forms of GBV, such as child marriage, which have a high prevalence in the country.

UNICEF data shows “eight percent of women 20-24 years were married or in union before age 15, and 29 percent of women 20-24 years were married or in union before age 18”. 

“In Senegal, the national literacy average is 51 percent. But there is a disparity between boys and girls. 70.7 percent of boys go to school while for girls the number is 63 percent. Almost all the girls who drop out of school [do so] because of early marriage,” Fatou Gueye Seck, coordinator at Coalition des Organisations pour la Défense de l’éducation Publique (COSYDEP), a Dakar-based NGO promoting free and inclusive education, tells IPS.

Ending GBV with Non-formal Education

Melching, who has been working in Senegal for four decades, tells IPS that most families here have relatives across the border who share a common set of values and cultural practices. To address a contentious issue like FGM, which is embedded in the value system, it is important to educate the entire community so that the knowledge can also be shared.

Tostan has been educating communities, including smaller minority groups living in far-flung regions, using a rights-based approach and a diverse package of communication tools, including guidebooks in the local language and mobile-based learning modules.

“Let’s be honest: there is no social change unless the community is directly involved. Nobody likes it if you go to them and say ‘this is wrong about your culture and that is wrong about your tradition.’ So, you have to work in a way where the space is open for the community to freely involve and engage to think and act,” Melching tells IPS.

At Tostan’s human rights-based Community Empowerment Programme (CEP), community members attend classes on human rights. They also learn about their right to health and the right to be free from all forms of violence. They also discuss the responsibilities they share to protect these rights in their community.

In sessions on health, they learn about the potential, immediate, and long-term harmful consequences of the practice and discuss ways to prevent these health problems in the future.

Finally, instead of blaming or criticising, community members are encouraged to discuss practices like FGM that are harmful for them, which then leads to the decision to end the practice.

The impact has been impressive, reveals Melching. Over 8,000 communities from Senegal and seven other countries in sub-Saharan Africa have publicly declared to end FGM and child/forced marriage.

Micro credit to curb GBV

Queen Sheba Cisse was born in Alabama, United States, but returned to her roots in Senegal over a decade ago. For the past seven years, Cisse has been helping the women of M’bour, a town in the western Thies region, become financially independent.

Cisse’s NGO has set up a micro credit programme that assists women develop their own local businesses. Attendees are asked questions like “What do women want? What business will work? What will give them a higher say in the family? etc.”

“There is no denial that GBV, like cutting, is still a big challenge in our community. But instead of looking at it as an isolated issue, we took a holistic look and realised cutting is performed by women because they believe in the ritual.

“We also realised that where women were economically empowered, they had a voice and their voices were taken seriously. So, we decided to strengthen women’s voices and help them become financially independent, so they could decide on their own GBV,” Cisse tells IPS.

Continued investment – the need of the COVID hour

According to a recent report released by the U.N. Population Fund (UNFPA), titled “Against My Will: State of World Population 2020”, an additional two million cases of FGM will occur globally by 2030. An additional 5.6 million child marriages can also be expected globally because of the coronavirus pandemic.

A new U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation report, “All means All”, shows that exclusion in education has deepened during the COVID-19 pandemic and about 40 percent of low and lower-middle income countries have not supported disadvantaged such as the poor, linguistic minorities and learners with disabilities during school shutdowns.

The list includes Senegal where only 13 percent of schools are equipped with internet and 28 percent of schools have computers, severely limiting online education.

To bridge the gaps, the report makes a series of recommendations that include more consultation with communities, greater participation by NGOs and providing targeted financing for those who are currently lagging behind.

A similar call for continuing support to Senegalese girls and women affected by the pandemic was given by the Deliver for Good global campaign. In April, the campaign published an open letter urging all governments to “apply a gender lens and put girls, women, and gender equality at the center of COVID-19 preparedness, response, and recovery”.

Powered by Women Deliver and various partners, the campaign aims to make the Sustainable Development Goals, including goal four of education work best for girls and women.

Seck of COSYDEP, which is one of the Deliver for Good campaign partners in Senegal, describes how the campaign has continued to support girls and women’s education across Senegal.

“We have been working in different municipalities across the country, organising local meetings and field visits and have seen a lot of these municipal councils achieving great success,” she says. 

For example, in the Keur Massar municipality, the mayor was declared “Mayor Champion of Education” by his peers after he pledged to increase the budget allocated to the reproductive health of teenagers and young people.

In Guinchor, Casamence, where Nadiaye lives with her two young children, the pandemic has brought life to a standstill.

However, instead of suspending her awareness-raising work, Ndiaye is now exploring new areas like internet talk shows to continue her storytelling.

“The beauty of non-formal education is that we teach and learn in every possible way. So, I am now planning to start an audio show. Because of the shutdown I can’t travel, but with this show I can cross the borders and educate people living on the other side too.”

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By Anis Chowdhury and Jomo Kwame Sundaram
SYDNEY and KUALA LUMPUR, Jul 7 2020 (IPS)

In his early February annual State of the Union address, US President Donald Trump typically hailed his own policies for increasing wages and jobs to achieve record low US unemployment. Directly appealing to labour for a second term, Trump claimed exclusive credit for the US “blue-collar boom”.

Anis Chowdhury

‘Blue-collar boom’
During his previous two State of the Union speeches, Trump also directly appealed to blue-collar Americans who put him in the White House in November 2016. As Trump claims manufacturing workers have been the main beneficiaries of his economic policies, including his trade and other policies, this seemed likely to dominate his re-election campaign.

In fact, US manufacturing growth had slowed to its lowest level in August 2019 when the purchasing managers’ index fell for the first time since September 2009. Despite his bombast, Trump has failed to reverse the continuing decline in manufacturing’s share of GDP.

Nominal wages have risen by an average of 2.2% since Trump took office, but real wages fell 3.9% after adjusting for inflation. Real labour compensation, including fringe benefits, has declined 4.3%! Meanwhile, more than 53 million Americans, or 44% of all workers aged 18-64, earn low hourly wages, getting barely enough to survive.

US unemployment fell to 3.5% in December 2019, its lowest level since 1969, before rising again. However, the story behind the headline unemployment figure is less impressive.

For example, in January 2020, 1.3 million individuals who wanted work, were not counted as unemployed because they had not actively sought work in the preceding four weeks. This figure shot up to 9.4 million in May 2020, declining to over 8.6 million in June.

Of these, ‘discouraged’ unemployed, who believed that no jobs were available for them, more than doubled from 337,000 in January 2020 to 681,000 in June.

Trump himself had ridiculed official unemployment data in 2015, describing them as “phony”, lambasting the practice of excluding people who have given up looking for a job from unemployment statistics. The headline unemployment figure also does not include those working part-time who want to work full-time.

Jomo Kwame Sundaram

The high US incarceration rate lowers its jobless rate by about 1%. The US has the world’s highest incarceration rate, with more than two million in prisons. Many are discouraged African-American and Hispanic unemployed workers, jailed for minor crimes, often petty drug offences.

US workers better off?
Three-fourths of the post-Second World War (WW2) decline in the labour share of GDP (i.e., paid as wages, salaries or employment benefits) has happened since 2000, after little change in the second half of the 20th century!

Overall US labour share of nonfarm business income fell from 65.4% of GDP in 1947-50 to 61.1% in 1994-98, before rising to 63.3% in 2000, and falling thereafter. After recovering from a nadir of 52.4% in 2013 to around 57% during Obama’s second term, labour’s share fell to 53% in 2018.

Low unemployment has undoubtedly raised nominal wages, but after adjusting for inflation, the median household income was roughly the same as two decades before, while the average real wage has barely changed, rising just 0.42% from December 2016 to September 2019.

Meanwhile, the value of fringe benefits – including health insurance, retirement and bonuses – declined by 1.7% during Trump’s first three years. 1.9 million more Americans lack health insurance coverage, raising the total to 27.5 million, i.e., 8.5% of the US population in 2018.

Thus, despite declining joblessness before the pandemic, aggregate real compensation fell 0.22% under Trump. Average real hourly earnings of US$23.24 in March 2019 were not higher than at its peak in March 1974.

With the pandemic, real (seasonally adjusted) average hourly earnings for all employees dropped 0.9% from April to May 2020, while nominal earnings of private nonfarm payroll employees fell 66 cents to US$29.37 in June 2020 from US$30.03 in April.

Meanwhile, labour income inequality has increased, with declining real incomes for the unskilled and poorly skilled, as remuneration gains have mostly and increasingly gone to the highest-paid, mainly executives.

Infecting the numbers
Following policy responses to the Covid-19 pandemic, the US labour force participation rate (share of civilian population aged 16 and older working or looking for work) fell from 63.4% in January 2020 to 61.5% in June, well below the pre-financial crisis peak of 66.4% in January 2007, and the post-WW2 high of 67.3% in early 2000.

Job growth has slowed with Trump’s trade wars, with significant job losses in electorally key states. While 2018 saw 223,000 new jobs created monthly, this average fell to 184,000 in the last quarter of 2019. The 1.2 million ‘long-term unemployed’ (jobless for at least 27 weeks) accounted for 19.9% of the unemployed in January 2020, rising to 1.4 million in June.

Apparently, the US jobs survey mistakenly counted 4.9 million unemployed as employed! If corrected, the unemployment rate would have risen to 16.1% in May, and the rate for April would have been more than 19.5% – instead of 14.7%.

According to the Peterson Institute for International Economics (PIIE), even the very large increase in official unemployment since March is underestimated. Adjusting for the extra 4.9 million unemployed, and 6.3 million who have left the labour force since February, the PIIE’s more ‘realistic unemployment rate’ was 17.1% in May, the highest in over seven decades!

However, despite admitting the error, the US Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) has not corrected the official numbers “to maintain data integrity”. As the BLS regularly updates its estimates, its decision not to do so in this case has triggered calls for investigation.

As part of the US$2 trillion stimulus package, US$350 billion in ‘forgivable’ loans have gone to small businesses to retain staff. Businesses could access the funds if they retained or rehired laid off workers by the end of June, raising the month’s job numbers. Many employers acknowledge they will lay off these workers once the subsidies run out.

Nevertheless, the job retention programme may be extended beyond October to cover the early November polls. Meanwhile, the Becker Friedman Institute at the University of Chicago estimates that 42% of people “furloughed” will never get their old jobs back, while only 30% of those laid off will land new jobs later this year.

Spinning for a second term
Unsurprisingly, Trump is elated with the latest BLS unemployment figures released on 2 July, showing declines for a second consecutive month from 13.3% in May to 11.1% in June. Trump greeted the news, bragging, “Today’s announcement proves that our economy is roaring back”.

In his ‘victory lap’, Trump described the June jobs report as “affirmation of all the work we’ve been doing”, probably hoping it is the ‘good news’ he has been desperately seeking since his ratings started slipping due to his pandemic mismanagement.

He specifically highlighted the “historic” sharp drop in Black unemployment, falling from 16.8% in May to 15.4% in June. Trump also cheered the soaring stock market, largely fuelled by US Fed monetary policy, claiming the economy was on “a rocketship”.

Yet, if enough low-wage workers do not buy into Trump’s story, he will be in trouble come November. But it is not yet clear how US workers view their situation and options, who they will blame, how far Trump will go to secure re-election, and how the electorate will vote.

 

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In Bangladesh, Oxfam’s partner Shushilan has helped ensure that people receiving distributions of food and clean water are not put at risk of COVID-19 transmission. Credit: Fabeha Monir/Oxfam

By Fionna Smyth
NAIROBI, Kenya, Jul 7 2020 (IPS)

More than three months after UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres made an urgent appeal for a global ceasefire in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the UN Security Council has finally passed a resolution supporting his call.

As Oxfam stated in its report Conflict in the Time of Coronavirus, the virus is exposing and exacerbating existing issues in conflict-affected and fragile countries, further complicating efforts to help those in need. In Yemen, airstrikes have destroyed hospitals and other infrastructure, with now barely half of health centers fully functional and only a small number equipped to treat COVID-19 cases.

Displaced Rohingya people who have risked everything to flee conflict and persecution in their home country have been blocked from ports due to fear of the virus spreading.

In Colombia, one of the countries which initially endorsed the UN Secretary-General’s call for a global ceasefire, armed groups have ignored the risks of the pandemic and used the heightened insecurity to target human rights defenders, many of whom are indigenous and Afro-Colombian women.

While the resolution is welcomed, it is long overdue and highlights a remarkable situation where some non-state armed groups – like the Southern Cameroons Defense Forces, an armed wing of the African People’s Liberation Movement – responded to the UNSG’s call for peace before the UN Security Council did.

The resolution also falls far short of what civil society and the humanitarian community had called for. For one, the resolution only reinforces the global ceasefire call in “situations on the UN Security Council’s agenda,” leaving out many States.

In addition, it exempts “counter-terrorism efforts”. This is a notoriously vague term which can be used by some countries to quelle legitimate dissent and close civil society space. Too often civilians are caught in the crossfire and it is fueling humanitarian crises where COVID-19 cases are on the rise.

Finally, the process was so delayed that many fear the impact will be minimal. The difficulties in reaching consensus revealed the deficiencies of the Council, and calls into question how seriously the Council will take implementation.

It took 100 days and numerous initiatives from Member States, religious leaders, as well as international and national organizations for UN Security Council members to overcome their geopolitical tantrums.

In Yemen, families that have fled fighting in Hudaydah are living in this camp for displaced people. Oxfam and the Ability Foundation have provided cash to 500 of the 3,000 people in this area. Credit: Pablo Tosco/Oxfam

Despite these shortcomings, the resolution offers a key to not only responding to the virus, but also addressing ongoing conflict: civil society’s meaningful participation. This recognition of the need for civil society in efforts to curb the pandemic’s impact reinforces Oxfam’s experience of responding to disease outbreaks and our work across the world where we have found that the public health response is only effective if communities are actively involved.

From our experience with the Ebola outbreaks in West Africa and the Democratic Republic of Congo, we know that building and maintaining people’s trust – in themselves, their families, their communities and public health systems – is vital for reducing the spread of disease.

Women and young people’s meaningful participation are particularly important, as acknowledged in the resolution. We have found that when given prompt funding and a platform, women’s rights organizations and youth networks are key to maintaining the links with communities that are needed more than ever in these times of isolation.

They are also better placed to address gender-based violence and domestic violence which have been acknowledged as a “second pandemic” across the globe.

In Honduras, the Oxfam-supported Women’s Voice and Leadership project provides emotional and legal care to women survivors of violence, uses digital technologies for campaigns, and carries out social audits to monitor the inclusion of women in the government’s coronavirus response.

In West Africa – where 76% of West Africans are under 25, making it the youngest population in the world – young people are raising awareness of coronavirus, distributing hygiene supplies, and holding their governments accountable for spending public financial resources.

The impact of meaningful participation of civil society – and especially of women and young people – also extends to the design and implementation of national ceasefires and the 90-day “humanitarian pause” recommended in the Council’s resolution.

While their inclusion was not explicitly called for in the resolution, ceasefires or “pauses” will remain of little value for people trapped in conflict zones if they are just elite bargains negotiated between those who are otherwise spoilers of peace.

To truly impact people’s lives, ceasefires must be from the ground up, born of inclusive negotiations that involve local peacebuilders and the people most affected by the conflict – especially women and young women who are disproportionately impacted.

In numerous conflict-affected contexts, civil society has already been hard at work to secure local ceasefires despite the Council’s delay. In Yemen, 59 national civil society organizations called on all conflict parties to halt fighting, release detainees, and restart peace negotiations.

Women’s groups like Peace Track Initiative have taken these efforts a step further, holding consultations with Yemeni women in-country and in the diaspora to better understand what an effective ceasefire would look like.

In the Democratic Republic of Congo, 139 national civil society organizations signed onto a letter pressing for a national ceasefire. The group presented their call to Congolese armed groups as well as the UN Special Envoy to the Great Lakes.

As we work to build back better and address the root causes of conflict, civil society – and especially those most marginalized – must be recognized as the critical leaders they are.

While supporting peace is essential both to enable us to face the Coronavirus crisis now, and as a long-term investment to save lives and create a more stable future for all, the “how” is equally critical.

We cannot afford to wait another three months for the implementation of ceasefires and “humanitarian pauses” to happen, nor to address conflict and pandemics in the same ways as before.

Now is the time for governments to invest in women and young people’s meaningful participation in sustainable and inclusive peace processes, and in the design and implementation of COVID-19 responses.

We must do more than survive this pandemic – we can and must do better. This crisis has shown us that we are able to radically shift our systems to protect ourselves and each other – centering these voices must be a priority if we wish to come out of this global crisis with a more inclusive, healthy and peaceful world.

 

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Excerpt:

Fionna Smyth is Oxfam’s Head of Humanitarian Campaigns and Advocacy, based in Nairobi

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Raghbendra Jha is Professor of Economics, and Executive Director Australian National University.

By Raghbendra Jha
CANBERRA, Australia, Jul 6 2020 (IPS)

The onset of the coronavirus pandemic in early 2020 set off a series of health and economic crises that feed upon each other. The health crisis exacerbates the economic crisis by disrupting supply chains, throwing large number of people (particularly those working in the informal sector) out of work and closing down large numbers of enterprises – particularly micro, small and medium enterprises (MSME). The economic crisis, in turn, exacerbates the health crisis for a number of reasons – not the least of which is the fact that the economic slowdown reduces the resources needed to combat the health crisis. Furthermore, the needs of both the health recovery and the economic recovery are competing for the same resources. The fact that this virus has had a global impact and some of the richest countries in the world (e.g. the US and Western Europe) are among the worst affected implies that the short-run effect of the crisis does not impact less developed countries (LDCs) unduly. However, the longer-term effects of the crisis may have deleterious effects on LDCs (particularly women and children in these countries) more than in richer countries.

Raghbendra Jha

This essay analyses some of the short-run and medium-terms impacts of the corona crisis in South Asia, particularly on the women and children of the region.1 As unemployment rose sharply in the wake of the onset of the crisis the household budget was thrown off-gear, particularly because a large proportion of workers in the region are in the informal sector.. Preliminary estimates indicate that job losses for this category of workers ranged from 25 % to 56%. . Even in the formal sector, there was substantial job loss as long lockdowns and social distancing norms took their toll. Consequently, large numbers of migrant workers left their places of work to return to their villages of origin. At this point, two good shock absorbers were introduced in India. First, the allocation to the National Rural Employment Guarantee Program was enhanced by ₹ 400 billion over budgeted amounts in order to boost employment opportunities in the villages. Furthermore, the Prime Minister announced an allocation of ₹ 500 billion for the specific purpose of providing employment to returning migrant workers.2

Another safety net in operation in India was free allocation of food for the poor. Even under normal conditions within household allocation of food in the region sometimes discriminate against women and (particularly female) children.3 Against this background the government of India extended free rations of basic grains for the poor until end November 2020.4 It is fortuitous that the winter (rabi) crop in India was abundant and the summer (kharif) crops is likely also to be good across the region. Thus, widespread hunger should not be an issue, at least in India.

There is evidence to suggest that in Bangladesh and Pakistan women are less likely to receive information about COVID-19 than men.5 This is particularly worrying because traditionally women have had primary responsibility for household hygiene and care for family members. In addition, women in Bangladesh and Pakistan are less likely to be covered by health insurance. This problem is likely to be less acute in India because of the PM-JAY health insurance scheme.6 Although women have a genetic advantage in immunity from COVID7 their emotional health may be adversely affected as compared to men for the above reasons.

It has been observed, however, that with the lockdown men and children are helping more with the housework than before. This should alleviate some pressures on women, although women continue to provide most of the services at home.

However, over the longer term there are some deep concerns. First, if the pandemic induced economic crisis becomes long drawn out there might be a substantial rise in poverty, particularly chronic poverty. The efforts of many decades of poverty reduction through economic growth and supportive measures may be wiped off. Government budgets are already under considerable stress because of various fiscal stimuli in the countries. The possibilities of enhanced economic aid are also remote since most developed countries are running huge budget deficits. If the increased poverty spells get protracted there will be serious consequences for households, particularly women and children in these households.

Also, the education of children in South Asia is facing considerable challenge in the COVID era. Sources note that even before the COVID crisis more than 95 million children were out of school in South Asia and it is likely that some more of the total of 430 million children in South Asia may face difficulties in continuing their education.8 Although the well known digital divide between rural and urban sectors has been bridged somewhat with rural India having more internet users than urban India speed and reliability of internet connections are still a concern. Whether existing internet platforms can provide enough opportunities for on line education of all children and adults is still an open question at best and more likely a serious challenge.

To conclude, while the short-term impacts of the corona crisis are still playing out, there is apprehension that a long drawn out crisis may exacerbate poverty, health and education challenges in South Asia. History suggests that women and children will be particularly vulnerable in such situations.

1 https://www.unicef.org/rosa/stories/gender-equality-during-covid-19
2 https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/economy/policy/pm-modi-to-launch-rs-50000-cr-job-guarantee-scheme-for-migrant-workers/articleshow/76447151.cms?from=mdr
3 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/mcn.12739
4 https://indianexpress.com/article/india/pm-modi-coronavirus-lockdown-free-ration-scheme-6483474/
5 https://data.unwomen.org/resources/surveys-show-covid-19-has-gendered-effects-asia-and-pacific
6 https://pmjay.gov.in/about/pmjay
7 https://www.mysciencework.com/omniscience/covid-19-women-genetic-advantage
8 https://thelogicalindian.com/news/internet-usage-rural-urban-india-20946

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Excerpt:

Raghbendra Jha is Professor of Economics, and Executive Director Australian National University.

The post Impact of COVID-19 on Women and Children in South Asia appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Credit: United Nations

By External Source
Jul 6 2020 (IPS)

All people belong to one biological species and there are no human “races”. So why does belief in race persist? It may be a scientific misconception, but it is real. It defines the lived experience of many people and determines how governments act and how people treat one another. How did race come to have this power and this durability?

A project was undertaken to address these very questions and to get at the heart of the “everydayness” of race in South Africa and elsewhere. Called the Effects of Race Project, it was started at the Stellenbosch Institute for Advanced Study in South Africa in 2013 as part of a broader project at the institute called Being Human Today.

One of us (Jablonski) along with political sociologist Gerhard Maré organised and convened the project. Our goal was to create new scholarship that could eventually inform outlooks and policy on “race thinking”.

Seven years later, we wanted to present a brief summary of some of the outcomes of the project and why they matter. When we began the project, we couldn’t see exactly what the future held in store, but we knew that the poisons of race-thinking and racism were killing people. Temporary antidotes were no longer going to work. Soon, the toxic nature of race thinking and racism would be exposed and fully understood so that they could be expelled from the body of humanity.

 

Act of discussion

We gathered together scholars from South Africa, the US and Europe who had years of experience in thinking about race. They came from sociology, anthropology, geography, law, the humanities, and education. Some of them were anti-apartheid leaders and are still engaged in efforts to raise South Africans out of that chasm of injustice.

The group met for about two weeks each year from 2015 to 2017, in the cold of the winter in the Western Cape. At the beginning of our work we had little more than hope. We fully appreciated that race-thinking and racism were big and powerful topics that had defied and defeated many previous expectations. We also recognised that we needed to inspect common misconceptions about race and understand how these continued to exist in public policy ecosystems.

The perspectives on race and racism that each of us brought to the group were never the same, but we listened carefully and responded thoughtfully. Through successive discussions, we cultivated the mutual respect and trust that made it possible to venture into the most difficult and sensitive subjects at length without fear of judgment or reprisal. As one of our members, Njabulo Ndebele, put it one afternoon:

The elephant is in the room, and we are petting it.

We mused over whether we were not just being indulgent academics, failing to respond practically to matters that affect the lives of ordinary people. But we then realised that much of what we accomplished was the act of discussion itself. Significant insights and realisations emerged from honest, probing discussions among trusted parties. The process was as important as the subject matter.

We realised people of all ages and sorts, and especially children and youth, who had long been segregated by the weight of the built environment, needed more opportunities to mix in formal and informal settings, and share their experiences, dreams, and aspirations. This was not a new insight, but the fact that all of us felt its impact, to our bones, made it profound.

Constructive discussion could disable the reflexivity that paralyses much of the discourse about race and racism in South Africa and make it possible for us to grow in our appreciation of common humanity.

 

The questions that need to be asked

Through our many discussions, we did not solve many problems, but the exercise of discussing the roots and manifestations of race-thinking gave us such discomfort about the status quo that we are obliged to look for transcendent and transformational alternatives. We cannot in all honesty claim that we met our goal of creating “new scholarship” that will inform public policy as we had stated at the beginning of this project.

The more we examined this age-old matter the more we realised that race-thinking in South Africa and elsewhere was embedded in the consciousness of societies, even more so those societies that are racially mixed. South Africa’s constitution does not command us to live in a race-neutral or colour-blind society. All that it does in the preamble to the constitution is to enjoin us to

heal the divisions of the past and establish a society based on democratic values, social justice and fundamental human rights.

While our work does not provide solutions, it raises the questions that need to be asked, and provides some conceptual tools for understanding the complex dynamics of race in our society. We believe that we can be spared the absurdity of Sisyphus in Albert Camus’s essay The Myth of Sisyphus and instead be imbued with the determination to revolt and to overcome dependence on the futility of race. We hope that the sampling of our work will lead you to the same conclusion.

Nina G. Jablonski, Evan Pugh University Professor of Anthropology, Pennsylvania State University and Barney Pityana, Professor Emeritus of Law, University of South Africa

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

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Asha Abdi, a former member of Nairobi County assembly, says progress for the increased participation of women in politics in Kenya has been painfully slow. Credit: Miriam Gathigah/IPS

By Miriam Gathigah
NAIROBI, Jul 6 2020 (IPS)

In 2013, Alice Wahome ran in her third attempt to win the hotly-contested Kandara constituency parliamentary seat in Murang’a County, Central Kenya. As is typical of rural politics, the field was male-dominated, with the stakes being high for all candidates but more especially so for Wahome — no woman had ever occupied the Kandara constituency parliamentary seat.

“It was a very brutal campaign. I was harassed, verbally abused, threatened with physical violence and many unprintable things were [said to me] even in public,” Wahome tells IPS.

She says that attributes that are considered admirable and desirable in male politicians were weaponised against her and other women in politics.

“When we vocalised our opinions they said we talk too much and the underlying message is that decent women do not talk too much. When you have a stand, and are firm in your political beliefs and values, they say you are combative, intolerant and aggressive. The same qualities in men are acceptable,” Wahome says.

So vicious was the contest for the hearts of Kandara’s voters that on the morning of the 2013 general elections, the community woke to find packets of condoms branded with Wahome’s name. On the packets were messages, purportedly from Wahome, encouraging voters to embrace family planning.

“This was a smear campaign to show my people that I was not fit to be their leader. There are many things that politicians give to voters, such as food items. Distributing condoms in a rural, conservative society on the day of the elections is political suicide,” Wahome, a lawyer, says.

Fortunately, she had spent years interacting with the community, promoting health initiatives, education and the empowerment of women and girls. So despite the smear campaign, Wahome became the first woman to win the Kandara seat and is currently serving her second term in the national assembly after her 2017 re-election.

Propaganda, threats of violence and especially sexual and physical violence, public humiliation and unrelenting vicious social media smear campaigns are a few of the challenges that women in politics, like Wahome, have to overcome to win and sustain political leadership.

This is in addition to overall campaign challenges such as limited financial and human resources and vicious internal politics. But even at the political party level, the system is still skewed in favour of men who own and finance these parties.

“The political arena is very hostile towards women. The campaign trail is littered with lived experiences of women who have been brutalised for seeking leadership,” Wangechi Wachira, the executive director of the Centre for Rights, Education and Awareness (CREAW), tells IPS.

CREAW is a local partner for Deliver For Good global campaign that applies a gender lens to the Sustainable Development Goals and is powered by global advocacy organisation Women Deliver. The Deliver For Good campaign partners advocate to drive action in 12 critical investment areas, including strengthening women’s political participation and decision-making power.

Wangechi has been at the forefront of holding the government accountable for gender equality and equity, as provided for by Kenya’s 2010 gender-progressive constitution, which demands that all appointed and elected bodies constitute one-third women.

Article 27 (8) of the Constitution’s Bill of Rights says: “The State shall take legislative and other measures to implement the principle that no more than two thirds of the members of elective or appointive bodies shall be of the same gender.” 

The national assembly is obligated to enact the Constitution of Kenya (Amendment) Bill 2018, also known as the Gender Bill, to realise this provision. But 10 years down the line, this obligation remains unfulfilled. In 2019, parliament did not even have the required two thirds of members present in the house — the requisite quorum for a constitutional amendment — to vote on the bill.

“The national assembly has failed the women of Kenya. We have gone to court to push for the national assembly to enact legislation to correct blatant gender inequalities. There is too much resistance and push back from a patriarchal system,” Wangechi says.

It is this resistance that women in politics find themselves up against in their quest for leadership. Women account for just 9.2 percent of the 1,835 elected individuals in 2017, a marginal increase from 7.7 percent in 2013, according to a report by National Democratic Institute and the Federation of Women Lawyers-Kenya, the latter being another Deliver For Good local partner. 

This report shows that in the 2017 elections, 29 percent more women ran for office than in the 2013 general elections and there are now more women in elected positions across all levels of government. But Asha Abdi, a former member of the Nairobi County Assembly, tells IPS that progress has been painfully slow.

Overall, there are now 172 women in elective positions — up from 145 in 2013. In the 2017 general elections, 23 women were elected to the national assembly compared to 16 in 2013, and another 96 were elected to the county assemblies compared to the 82 women in 2013.

As such, women account for 23 percent of the national assembly and senate, with this figure including the 47 seats reserved exclusively for county women representatives. 

Human rights campaigners say that the momentum to hold the national assembly accountable had picked but as the COVID-19 pandemic rages on, concerns are rife that the gender agenda is no longer a priority.

“COVID-19 has not slowed down political activities in this country. In fact, leaders are behaving as if we are going into elections tomorrow and not 2022. We have serious political re-alignments and nobody is speaking for women,” Grace Gakii, a Nairobi-based gender and political activist, tells IPS.

“Ordinary Kenyans are more concerned with staying safe from the virus and feeding their families. So some of the small gains we have made could be lost during this pandemic because there is no one to hold political parties and powers that be accountable,” she says.

Recognised as East Africa’s economic powerhouse by the World Bank, this economic giant lags behind its neighbours in as far as women representation across government bodies is concerned.

In South Sudan, the figures for women in politics are higher, with 28.9 percent in elected positions. Uganda has 34 percent, Tanzania and Burundi 36 percent, and Rwanda 61 percent.

“Political campaigns and the intense lobbying that goes with it are very difficult for women. There are many meetings at night and exclusive meetings in ‘boys’ clubs’. Society is warming up to women but too slowly. When you vie against men, all the male opponents gang up against you, because it is considered a big insult to be defeated by a woman,” Abdi says.

While the 2017 general elections showed a small shift in the political landscape, resulting in the election of the first three female governors and the first three female senators, Wahome says that the road ahead remains long and winding.

She says that women in politics should and can successfully rise to the challenge.

Wahome encourages women to draw strength from others who have tried and succeeded, saying that with time, patriarchal attitudes and customs will shift. She particularly encourages women to engage in grassroots transformative projects with their communities.

“There are many areas to choose from including education and community health. Let the people see what you can do and later, they will back you all the way to the top.”

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