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Secretary-General Antonio Guterres says he is “available” for a second five-year term as UN chief. Credit: United Nations

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Jan 12 2021 (IPS)

The United Nations has been one of the most vociferous advocates of gender empowerment and a persistent critic of gender discrimination worldwide.

But still, it has continued to fall far short of its own lofty ideals.

The UN has never had a female secretary-general (SG) in its 75-year history while only four women have been elected– amid 71 men– as Presidents of the General Assembly, the organization’s highest policy making body.

On January 11, Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, a former Prime Minister of Portugal, announced he will be “available” for a second term– perhaps upending the longstanding campaign for a female UN chief.

But that final decision, however, will depend not only on the 193 member states, but also, most importantly, on the five veto-wielding permanent members of the UN Security Council (UNSC) who will have the last word on who should, or who shouldn’t, be the next secretary-general, come January 2022.

Historically, Boutros Boutros-Ghali of Egypt (1992-1996) was denied a second term by a single veto by the US even though he garnered the votes of the remaining 14 members of the Security Council.

In 1981, Kurt Waldheim of Austria was denied an unprecedented third term when he was vetoed 16 times, apparently by China, paving the way for the election of Javier Perez de Cuellar of Peru as Secretary-General. (1982-1991).

Guterres has taken a key role in enhancing gender empowerment in the UN system with scores of women appointed to high-ranking positions.

He told delegates last year “we achieved gender parity – 90 women and 90 men – in the ranks of our full-time senior leadership, two years ahead of the target that I set at the start of my tenure, and we have a roadmap for parity at all levels in the coming years”.

The cynics, however, argue the unusually high gender representation may also be a subtle attempt– or a hidden agenda– to stall any campaign for a female Secretary-General since he has an outstanding track record in the field.

Purnima Mane, a former UN Assistant Secretary-General and Deputy Executive Director of the UN Population Fund (UNFPA) told IPS the call for a woman SG at the UN has been made repeatedly but in the 75-year history of the UN, this call has not met with success.

In the 1975 International Women’s Year, there were special efforts made by feminist groups to get women to be nominated for this position.

Since then, she pointed out, the call has only grown, with multiple groups including groups of Member States banding together to advocate for a woman to lead the prestigious organization.

At the end of his tenure, former Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon of South Korea, was quoted as saying it was “high time” for a woman leader of the UN.

But it was only in 2016, for the first time, there seemed to be some signs of change on the horizon. At one stage, 50% of the proposed candidates were women, she noted.

However, member states eventually endorsed Mr. Antonio Guterres unanimously, said Mane, a former President and Chief Executive Officer of Pathfinder International, a global leader in sexual and reproductive health.

Prisca Chaoui, Executive Secretary of the 3,500-strong Staff Coordinating Council of the UN Office in Geneva (UNOG), told IPS last year that in the past, despite the existence of competent women in the UN, it has largely been the reality that when women do achieve career progression, it tends to be mostly women belonging to certain geographical groups or regions.

“There are concerns that implementation of the UN’s Gender Parity Strategy may follow a similar pattern. It is crucial that this important initiative ensures a diverse gender parity that includes women from the global South, women of colour, and women from developing and underrepresented countries,” she noted.

Outlining some of the steps he plans to take in the future, Guterres said last year: “I have reminded the entire senior leadership team about the special measures we have in place to advance parity throughout the system”.

If a male candidate is hired in an office or department that has not yet achieved gender parity, and where an equally competent female candidate had been identified, an explanation must be sent to my office detailing the reasoning for the decision prior to final selection being made, he declared.

Antonia Kirkland, Global Lead on Legal Equality & Access to Justice at Equality Now, told IPS since the United Nations was founded in 1945, there have been nine male Secretaries-General but not one woman.

“This is unacceptable and needs to change. “Unfortunately, the campaign to select a woman as the next leader of the United Nations ended in disappointment in 2016, despite there being numerous highly qualified and eminent women candidates with impressive resumes in the running”.

She said this was abundantly clear for all to see thanks to an unprecedentedly more transparent new selection process that was actively supported by 1 for 7 Billion and others.

“It is high time that a woman Secretary-General is finally selected to lead the United Nations and we hope that 2022 heralds the election of a woman, one who adopts and implements a feminist agenda to advance women and girls rights globally.

Kul Gautam, a former UN Assistant Secretary-General and Deputy Executive Director of the UN children’s agency UNICEF told IPS: “I believe Antonio Guterres deserves a second term as Secretary-General of the United Nations”

He was unduly hampered from doing much during his first term, which sadly coincided with that of Donald Trump as President of the US. As the whole world knows now, Trump did not care much for international organizations and was an anti-UN unilateralist.

“In the absence of a more supportive US president, Guterres needed to be able to count on the strong support of at least 2 or 3 other Permanent Members of the Security Council and some of the more influential emerging powers and the G-77”.

Sadly, with leaders like Vladimir Putin, Boris Johnson, Jair Bolsonaro, Narendra Modi, Tayyip Erdogan and Mohammed bin Salman, Guterres was really hamstrung. And the COVID-19 crisis further diminished his scope of action.

Nevertheless, said Gautam, Guterres has been generally highly principled, consistent, eloquent and passionate in advocating for a bold agenda on climate change, Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), Universal Health Coverage (UHC), and gender equality. He has been highly successful in bringing more women in senior positions at the UN.

But still, said Gautam, “Guterres has been a bit too soft-spoken on human rights, and in more forcefully confronting the likes of Saudi Arabia, Hungary, Philippines, Egypt and China on human rights issues.”

But on balance, he has proven to be thoughtful, measured, wise, mature and diplomatically very deft. It will be hard to find another person who combines his qualities and commands the unanimous support of the P-5 in 2021, he added.

“The chances of getting someone worse are far higher than getting someone better, unless the whole election/selection system for the UN’s top leadership positions is completely overhauled, which is highly unlikely at present.”

After Guterres’ second term, in 2026, he said, “let’s hope we will have a revamped election/selection system and several shining female candidates”.

“Already, we should seek a commitment from the UNSC, as well as the UNGA, that they will make every effort to proactively search for a highly qualified female leader as the next UNSG”.

“The world has waited long enough and it is overdue for the UN to exemplify what it preaches about gender equality and women’s empowerment by appointing an outstanding female leader as the world’s top diplomat in 2026,” said Gautam.

Samir Sanbar, a former UN Assistant Secretary-General and head of the Department of Public Information, told IPS, in terms of geographical rotation, it will be the turn of Eastern Europe to field a candidate for Secretary-General.

He singled out Irina Bokova of Bulgaria, the former Director-General of the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) and Kristalina Georgieva, the Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), also from Bulgaria, as potential women candidates.

“A prominent female candidate with a proven record would present a credible challenge” to Guterres, he added.

Mane admitted that Guterres has made notable efforts to ensure that gender equality is a feature of the UN at all levels and has laid out an ambitious agenda to make this a reality. However, EQUALITY NOW, an action campaign focusing on the UN’s efforts in this area, still ranks his efforts at gender equality in the UN, relatively low in terms of success.

She said much work remains to be done at all levels of the UN on gender equality but starting at the top, would send out a strong signal to the world that the UN is taking its mission for gender equality seriously and that the glass ceiling (or the steel ceiling as it was referred to by some) will truly be shattered in the UN with the appointment of a woman SG.

“The chances of a woman being elected to lead the UN in 2022 are slim,” she predicted. “And the possibility that a first term SG would not be elected for his second term is remote”.

All SGs in the last fifty years of the UN have been successful in being elected to serve two terms, other than Boutros Boutros-Ghali, who was an exception.

It is unlikely that the UN would want to change its tradition in the coming election. However, these are unusual times which have altered geo-political priorities and understanding, and could cause a disruption in set patterns.

She said Guterres has encountered major challenges leading the UN through multiple crises these last five years, including as a result of Covid19 and dealing with a major contributor and Member State, the USA, distancing itself from multilateralism.

It is hard to imagine that UN Member States would want a change in leadership at this juncture, even if these specific challenges are expected to reduce markedly over a second term, should he get one, now that he has indicated his availability for it.

However, Mane argued, his success will depend considerably on the woman candidates who put their hat in the ring now, especially if the list includes some of the women heads of State who have manoeuvred their countries efficiently through the pandemic while coping with other challenges.

The call for women being at the helm of affairs in responding to crises have grown stronger since Covid19.

“Whichever way it goes, one can certainly envision that the current SG’s legacy would be a significantly more gender-equal environment in the UN, including a woman to lead the UN,” she declared.

  

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By Jomo Kwame Sundaram
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia, Jan 12 2021 (IPS)

The incoming Biden administration is under tremendous pressure to demonstrate better US economic management. Trade negotiations normally take years to conclude, if at all. Unsurprisingly, lobbyists are already urging the next US administration to quickly embrace and deliver a new version of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP).

Jomo Kwame Sundaram

Trump legacy
Repackaging and reselling a TPP avatar will not be easy. Well before Trump’s election, even the official mid-2016 International Trade Commission’s assessment doubted Peterson Institute of International Economics (PIIE) claims of significant benefits from the TPP for all.

Unsurprisingly, most major US presidential candidates in the 2016 election – even Hillary Clinton, Obama’s Secretary of State, credited with his ‘pivot to Asia’ to isolate China – opposed the TPP.

Trump’s campaigns and presidency have since changed US public sentiment. All too many Americans now blame globalisation and foreign threats – especially immigrants and China – for many major problems the US faces.

Most believe that better jobs have been lost to cheaper production abroad, due to globalisation. Downward social mobility for most Americans in recent decades has actually been due to technological changes, including mechanisation and automation.

Frankenstein-like TPP avatar
Uncomfortable with Trump’s unilateralism despite other affinities, those keenest on checking China – namely the Japanese, Australian and Singapore governments – have kept the TPP flame alive.

They succeeded in getting the ‘TPP11’ – minus the USA – to endorse a Comprehensive and Progressive TPP (CPTPP). But even the modest trade growth claims of all pro-TPP reports were premised on US market access.

With the US out, the CPTPP would mainly have bolstered Japanese and other transnational corporations (TNCs) and Singapore as a financial centre. But other governments have stayed on for their own reasons, rather than due to realistic expectations of significant economic gains.

With the TPP favouring foreign investments, investors may even go abroad as there is less advantage in being domestic. Thus, foreign direct investment (FDI) and even portfolio inflows could decline under the TPP avatar, while its onerous provisions undermine the national and public interest.

TNCs rule
The CPTPP did not even drop or revise the worse TPP chapters. It only suspended some obviously onerous intellectual property (IP) and other provisions, mainly of interest to US TNCs. These can easily be reincluded as successes by the new administration.

IP and investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) provisions are supposed to attract much FDI. ISDS has mainly been of interest to US TNCs, but was opposed by the jingoist Trump team for exposing the US to foreign TNC legal claims.

Under ISDS, TNCs can sue governments, e.g., for supposed loss of profits, including future projections, even if due to policy changes in the national or public interest, e.g., for contagion containment.

ISDS claims are typically referred to arbitration tribunals. This extrajudicial system supersedes national laws and judiciaries, with secret rulings not bound by precedent or subject to appeal. Regardless of who wins, these proceedings are very costly for governments, especially those with modest means.

Law firms have recently been urging foreign investors to use ISDS to sue governments for resorting to extraordinary COVID-19 measures. Meanwhile, COVID-19 vaccine companies have included indemnity clauses protecting them from lawsuits by governments and others.

If Trump had been re-elected instead, the ISDS chapter could have been removed to secure US acceptance during his second term. As with the North American Free Trade Area (NAFTA), citing other cosmetic changes, they would have been presented as major gains by him.

More IP ‘rent-gouging’
Strengthening IP monopolies would increase the value of trade by charging and paying higher prices for medicines, treatments, tests, vaccines as well as other patented and copyrighted products. COVID-19 has highlighted how IP rents impose avoidable costs and stymie progress by discouraging cooperation.

As ‘price-gouging’ is not unlawful in the US, its laws cannot be relied on to protect consumers elsewhere. Unsurprisingly, before the pandemic, Médecins Sans Frontieres warned that the TPP will go down in history as the worst “cause of needless suffering and death” in developing countries.

Having received massive government and other subsidies, pharmaceutical TNCs will profit immensely from the new vaccines, thus limiting access by poor countries and people. By contrast, free vaccinations have ensured effective campaigns against smallpox, polio, tuberculosis and other communicable diseases.

Enhanced IPRs thus undermine public health. Meanwhile, the popular justification – that stronger IP enhances innovation, research and development – is no longer deemed acceptable to most stakeholders, inter alia, due to lack of convincing supportive evidence.

FTAs strengthen TNC bullies
TPP trade gains have been greatly inflated by lobbyists. After all, the US already has free trade agreements (FTAs) with most other TPP countries. Trade barriers with the others were low in most cases, so real gains from further trade liberalisation were meagre, except for Vietnam, due to its US war legacy.

All twelve also belong to the World Trade Organization (WTO), which concluded the ‘single largest trade agreement ever’. As trade liberalisation guru Jagdish Bhagwati has noted, bilateral and plurilateral, including regional FTAs actually undermine gains from multilateral trade liberalisation.

Even the PIIE, the pre-eminent TPP and CPTPP advocate, mainly claimed gains from ‘non-trade issues’, especially additional FDI, attracted by more investor rights. Such incentives imply more concessions by host governments, and hence, less net gains for the countries.

Thus, the TPP mainly promoted more TNC-friendly rules, rather than trade. This is hardly surprising as the 6350-page document was drafted by various working groups, including hundreds of representatives of major US TNCs and other lobbyists.

Dubious gains, greater losses
The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted supply chains, especially across national borders. Such transborder disruptions were often due to contagion containment measures, but some were deliberate. For example, the US and Japan governments have urged TNCs to end investments in and outsourcing from China.

These policy actions have also hit suppliers, many from Southeast Asia. While some TNCs relocated to other developing countries, the CPTPP has not helped those hurt by such recent economic rivalry and conflict.

Having served as Obama’s loyal Vice-President, Biden is being told that the new administration can easily secure a quick win with a few revisions to the TPP agreement to address earlier criticisms, objections and concerns in the US. Thus, the CPTPP is being presented in Washington as a low-hanging fruit, almost ripe for plucking.

The new US administration must realise that corporate neoliberalism’s consequences has been responsible for the rise of finance and the erosion of social protections resulting in the social pathologies which have enabled Trump’s rise.

Corporate globalisation and COVID-19 should also have taught developing countries that they must reject FTAs strengthening IPRs, ISDS and TNCs in order to secure policy space to ‘build back better’.

 

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Credit: Heike Kuhn

By Heike Kuhn
BONN, Jan 11 2021 (IPS)

Once a year, on 9 August, the International Day of the World’s Indigenous Peoples is commemorated, celebrating their unique culture and knowledge. This is done mostly from a distance, from our homes in (nominally) developed countries. But are we as developed as we pretend to be? On this question, I reflected for a while, still remembering a special and personal experience of having spent several days with an indigenous Berber family in Morocco.

What was the reason for this special visit to Morocco ? I had the fortune and incredible opportunity to participate in a developmental training course, known as an exposure programme. At the heart of this program was a three day stay with a family belonging to a Berber tribe in Morocco, 40 km from Essaouira, the famous city located on the Atlantic Ocean.

What did I know about this tribe beforehand ? The Berber are famous for their carpets and argan oil, used in cosmetics and for cooking. I have to admit that I had little knowledge of their traditions and culture before visiting them, other than knowing that they live in the Atlas Mountains of Morocco and although I had seen their products in shops in Germany, I was an ignorant of their cultural life.

But all this changed last year. In this exposure programme, a female colleague and I had the rare and incredible experience of participating in the daily life of a Berber family of ten persons – an elderly couple, their two sons, both with young wives and small children. With the elderly couple was a little nine year old girl who stayed during the week in the traditional house of the grandparents in order to attend the nearby school. Though her home was located some 6 km away, bad roads and a lack of transport made this journey near impossible.

During the day in this small Berber village near Essaouira, we were accompanied by Mohamed, a cousin of the sons, who worked as a teacher at a nearby school and spoke Arabic, French and Tamazight, the local language. Mohamed translated our conversations into French, facilitating better understanding by our hosts and for us to be understood. Earlier, we had an induction course over two days before we stayed with the family. This was so that we could get acquainted with the culture and the background of the family that had accepted to participate in the program, participation being allowed only once.

We arrived by car on a street for which you would really need a SUV. Shaken by the potholes on the road, a little bit nervous but excitedly nevertheless. What can we expect over the next three days and nights that we were to share the life of this unknown family? Our nervousness subsided when the family welcomed us warmly with open arms.

My first impression of the house was that it looked like a fortress – with thick walls, which you enter through a corridor and into an open atrium with all the rooms situated around it. In front of the entrance door were the family’s two dogs, who protected them and lived off leftovers. First, we had tea with honey, kneeling on the carpets, the children watching us curiously. Then some traditional sweets were served and the ice was immediately broken among us when we began talking to each other, although this took a little time due to the consecutive translation from Tamazight to French and French to Tamazight, all managed by Mohamed. Soon it was noon and we had a delicious lunch with the whole family, again in the living room on carpets, sitting or kneeling on the floor.

Over the next three days we got familiar with our host family. We were supposed to participate in their daily life and not be treated as guests coming around for a short visit. We were supposed to join this family, eating, working and sleeping in their home, and most importantly, talking with all of them. In a way, we were accepted as members of the family and took over tasks as any of their family members would.

What did we do during these days? First, we got to know all family members and the animals – cows, sheep, goats, chicken and ducks and a donkey. We also saw the beehive, visited some neighbors who later also came around to see us in our new short term home. Of course, we went to the nearby school and mosque. As only men were allowed inside the mosque, we did not have an opportunity to go in.

The cycle of the day was divided into three parts, morning, evening and night. Morning: We got up early, washing ourselves with some water in a bucket as there was no running water or bathroom; there was no mirror as we were used to; and a squat toilet with an electric light (working most of the time, but not always). The ritual then was to have a cup of local porridge and accompany the grandmother to the nearby stable where she milked the cow. During the day we worked in the fields, ploughing the land and sowing corn with the help of the donkey and a donkey of the neighbours, as both animals were needed. As the ground was very rocky, the largest stones had to be picked up and thrown to the side of the field. Some of those stones were very heavy.

The donkeys waited for clear commands. Our host used a whistle and a command word which we tried to imitate – the donkeys seemed to be quite amused. We visited the barn of the family next to the house, went to their fields, sitting on small benches on the rear of a motor-cycle pick up. We learned who owned the land, picking weeds but not throwing them away as they were useful for feeding the cow and its two calves.

Our driver, the eldest son of the family, explained to us that rain was scarce in the area due to climate change. His fields had no irrigation systems as there weren’t any in the region. He explained that they just pray for rain and that only the Prophet knows when it will come. We were accompanied by the four year old boy who copied everything his father did, being quite able to herd the sheep and to do many other things. He never asked for a toy, but enjoyed real life. When passing the house of their younger sister, we found that she felt quite ill and could barely look after her little baby, her husband being away in Casablanca for work. She immediately accepted to join us in going to her parents’ home, where her older daughter was really happy to see her.

Evening: At sunset, we returned to the house, trying to help the grandmother with the laundry or both young women in the kitchen, where they prepared dinner. There was no stool around and all work was done standing. The kitchen smelled of fresh mint and herbs. The young women were very skilled, one baking bread in the outdoor oven, another one was cutting meat or fish, dicing vegetables. Their combined efforts produced fresh and delicious dishes such as the famous Tajines or mint sardines which I still remember.

After dinner there was still work, especially for the women. Once the washing up for 12 people was finished, we were taught by the grandmother how to produce Argan oil. This is a long and intensive process as these little fruits, similar to almonds, are hard as stones. First you have to crack the shell, take out the nut, cook it and only then the oil can be extracted by the arduous task of pressing.

Women’s work also includes making carpets – which we did not do in our three days with the family. The evenings were very nice, however, as the whole family gathered and talked about what had happened during the day. One son shared stories from the nearby market where he sold home-made honey and Argan oil, met friends and customers.

All laughing and relaxing after a days’ work, the women were interested in education and told us that they hoped for more education for their children, as they had spent only a few years at school. The grandmother and grandfather were illiterate. Mohamed translated from Tamazight to French and back, but not always. Sometimes we just looked at each other and understood the essence of conversations, not needing any words at all. The four years old boy and the toddler fell asleep on the carpet when exhausted.

Night: The nights were cold outside, as it was in February . My colleague and I shared the same sleeping area in a small room with mattresses on the floor, covered by many blankets, just as the family did. After the day’s work, mostly in the fields, I was really tired and slept deeply. But if I woke up at night needing to go to the toilet, I crossed the atrium and could see the stars – cold, but quite romantic!

Coming to an end, these three days passed so quickly and the people impressed me very much. What I learned from this indigenous family near Essaouira was:
1. Being human has nothing to do with higher education. Deeds can be done by everyone, every day.
2. Respecting each other and relying on your respective tasks helps everyone to survive.
3. Do not use the word “Berber” for Tamazight people as they feel offended by it – and they are right to be if you check out the etymology.
4. If you need something, just ask your neighbor’s; they may have a donkey or whatever else you may need.
5. If your host asks you if you would like to eat chicken, a rooster or a hen has to be killed and you could be invited to look into the eyes of the animal before eating it !
6. Preparing fresh and healthy meals takes at least two hours a day.
7. Integrating children in the daily work of adults, when possible, can make them proud of their abilities and give them self-esteem. Being a role model for them
is of utmost importance.
8. If you have a family, support and health-care is always close.
9. Caring for the elderly can be a pleasure, if your cultural attitude helps you to
understand at an early age that you are part of this cycle of life.
10.Enjoy each other, with excellent food, drinks and music.

The author is Head of Division 412 – Human rights; gender equality; inclusion of persons with disabilities, BMZ, Federal Ministry of Economic Cooperation and Development, Federal Republic of Germany

 

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By Edgardo Ayala
SAN SALVADOR, Jan 11 2021 (IPS)

Throughout its history, San Salvador has faced the danger of landslides – mud and rocks that slide down the slopes of the volcano at whose feet the city was founded in 1525.

The soil on these extremely steep slopes fails to absorb all the rainwater and, as in a snowball effect, the water gradually loosens up sections of land until producing mudslides that wreak death and destruction in the capital of El Salvador and nearby cities and suburbs.

In September 1982, a landslide claimed 500 lives in the Montebello residential development, northwest of the capital.

The most recent incident occurred on Oct. 29, when a landslide from the top of the volcano buried a number of homes in poor communities near Nejapa, north of San Salvador, killing nine people.

Due to the ever-present danger, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), together with local organisations, is implementing the City Adapt project on the slopes of this 1,893-metre tall mountain.

 

 

The project seeks to reduce vulnerability in the area, which has increased as a result of climate change, with more intense and frequent rainfall.

So far 29 farms form part of the project, and have adopted measures to improve infiltration and prevent erosion, creating live and dead barriers, infiltration ditches between the coffee plants and catchment tanks that collect excess rainwater.

The excess water not only gives rise to landslides but also to flooding on the south side of San Salvador, whose metropolitan area is home to 1.8 million people – 27 percent of the 6.7 million inhabitants of this small Central American country.

The 29 farms represent a total of 423 hectares of land where measures have been carried out, and the restoration of 1,150 hectares of forests and coffee plantations is also planned, to turn San Salvador into a sponge city, according to UNEP.

The City Adapt project has reduced the risk of flooding for some 16,000 people and is expected to reach an estimated 115,000 by 2022.

In Latin America and the Caribbean, initiatives to turn vulnerable urban areas into sponge cities are also being implemented in Xalapa, Mexico and Kingston, Jamaica.

For more information, read this IPSNEWS article.

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Respondents being questioned for the United Nations global conversation on the world they want. Many called for universal healthcare in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. Courtesy: United Nations

By Nalisha Adams
BONN, Germany, Jan 11 2021 (IPS)

The peoples of the world are unanimous – access to basic services such as universal healthcare must become a priority going forward. So too should global solidarity, helping those hardest hit by the COVID-19 pandemic and addressing the climate change emergency.

The collective thoughts of the world’s future by some 1.5 million people, including those from various organisations and networks, from all countries across the globe has been been highlighted in a global initiative by the United Nations, which it called the world’s largest conversation on the future people want.

Last year, to mark the 75th anniversary of the UN, it conducted various townhall discussions, dialogues and an online survey from January until November, 2020.

The resultant report, Shaping Our Future Together, showed that people across the world were unified in their concerns, with the current coronavirus pandemic being the foremost in their minds.

“When you ask people about their fears and hopes for the future, when you ask people about their expectations of international cooperation about their priorities in the immediate, post-COVID, there is remarkable unity across generations, regions, income groups, education groups, and from people from different political direction,” Fabrizio Hochschild, Special Adviser to the Secretary-General on the commemoration of UN’s 75th anniversary, said during a virtual press conference on the findings on Friday, Jan. 8.

Indeed respondents of the UN conversation from all but two regions – sub-Saharan Africa and Eastern and South-eastern Asia – had listed access to universal healthcare as an immediate short-term priority, according to the report.

In the regions of sub-Saharan Africa and Eastern and South-eastern Asia the call for increased support to places hardest hit by the pandemic and greater global solidarity ranked top. Next was the need for universal healthcare.

“This reflects the grim reality reported by UNDP – that daily COVID-19 related deaths have exceeded other common causes of death throughout much of 2020. Emergency services, health systems and health workers are under enormous strain around the world, with indirect health impacts also expected to rise,” the report noted.

Yesterday, Jan. 10, UN Secretary-General, António Guterres marked the 75th anniversary of the first UN General Assembly held in London by giving a keynote address. He noted that the COVID-19 pandemic “has had a disproportionate and terrible impact on the poor and dispossessed, older people and children, those with disabilities and minorities of all kinds”.

“It has pushed an estimated 88 million people into poverty and put more than 270 million at risk at acute food insecurity,” Guterres said.

The second short-term priority was a call for greater global solidarity and increased support to places hardest hit by the pandemic. 

Indeed, Guterres said in his speech that the COVID-19 pandemic had highlighted serious gaps in global cooperation and solidarity.

“We have seen this most recently in vaccine nationalism, some rich countries compete to buy vaccines for their own people, with no consideration for the world’s poor,” he said.

But he went on to thank the government and people of the UK for supporting the COVAX facility, established by the World Health Organisation (WHO), which aims to guarantee that vaccines will become available to all.

COVAX is the global initiative to ensure rapid and equitable access to COVID-19 vaccines for all countries, regardless of income level. In December, COVAX announced that it had arrangements in place to access two billion doses of COVID-19 vaccine candidates on behalf of 190 participating nations. At the time, WHO said in a statement that this would ensure deliveries of the vaccine in the first quarter of 2021 to participating countries.  

Guterres said the pandemic has highlighted the “deep fragilities in our world” and in order to tackle them we need to reduce inequality and injustice and to strengthen the bonds of mutual support and trust.

He also said that the world needed “a networked multilateralism, so that global and regional organisations communicate and work together towards common goals”.

“And we need an inclusive multilateralism, based on the equal representation of women, and taking in young people, civil society, business and technology, cities and regions, science and academia,” he said.

People around the world also called for safe water and sanitation, and education.

Rethinking the global economy and making it more inclusive to tackle inequalities was another concern.

Meanwhile addressing climate change and destruction to the environment also remained top long-concerns for respondents.

“Respondents in all regions identified climate change and environmental issues as the number one long-term global challenge,” the report noted.

Guterres was pragmatic, admitting that while the UN was proud of its achievements over the last 75 years, including helping to boost global health, literacy, living standards and promoting human rights and gender equality, it was also aware of its failures. The biggest one being the inability to adequately address climate change.

“The climate emergency is already upon us and the global response has been utterly inadequate,” he stated.

“The past decade was the hottest in human history, carbon dioxide levels are at record highs, apocalyptic fires and floods, cyclones and hurricanes are becoming the new normal,” he stated.

“If we don’t change course,” Guterres warned, “we might be headed for a catastrophic temperature rise or more than 3 degrees this century.”

“Biodiversity is collapsing, one million species are at risk of extinction, and whole ecosystems are disappearing before our eyes.

“This is a war on nature and a war with no winners,” Guterres said.

He said that while the pandemic was a human tragedy – it can also be an opportunity.

“The past months have shown the huge transformations that are possible, when there is political will and consensus on the way forward,” Guterres said.

He said the Paris Agreement and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development already provide the blueprint for this.

“We now need increased ambition and action to deliver – beginning with the climate emergency. The central objective of the UN this year is to build a global coalition for carbon neutrality by the middle of the century,” he said, adding that meaningful cuts — reduction in global emissions by 45 percent by 2030 compared to 2010 levels – were needed.

“Every country, city, organisation, financial institution and company needs to adopt plans to reach net zero emissions by 2050 — and start executing them now, with clear short-term targets.”

Akosua Agyepong, a youth activist from Ghana, asked Guterres after his speech how the lessons learned from the current pandemic could be used in addressing climate change “so that we can achieve the [goals of the] Paris Agreement and the SDGs”.

Guterres replied saying that currently trillions of dollars were spent on supporting economics facing the impacts of COVID-19. “When spending those trillions, we are borrowing in relation to the future. We need to make sure those trillions are spent to address the recovery from COVID but also the challenge of climate change.”

“We can use the same money to build coal power plants or build renewable energy. We can use the same money to support industries that pollute or use the same money to create new jobs in the green economy. We can tax people and income or we can tax carbon and pollution. There are many ways in which we can organise our recovery to make it sustainable and inclusive, reducing at the same time inequalities and making peace with nature and our planet in order to make sure we are able to tame climate change, and in order to make sure we do not allow temperatures to rise by more than 1.5 degrees C at the end of the century and that we can get a net zero coalition in the middle of the century to make sure that we rescue our planet,” he said.

In his speech Guterres also highlighted the role of gender equality in development, saying that justice and equality, including gender equality, were prerequisites to transforming the challenges ahead.

“Women’s leadership and equal participation are key ways to address the global challenges we face.

“The past year has highlighted the effectiveness of women’s leadership, adding to evidence that gender-balanced decision-making leads to stronger climate agreements, greater investment in social protection, longer-lasting peace, and more innovation,” Guterres said, adding that achieving women’s equal representation required bold action.

Despite the challenges in the years ahead, the world’s people were optimistic about the future with many believing they will be better off in 2045, with respondents in sub-Saharan Africa — where the median age is just 18 — being the most optimistic about the future. 

Guterres was also optimistic, in turn praising the youth of the world.

“Today, it is often young people who are showing courage, and demanding courage from the rest of us. Let me be clear: I stand with you. You give me hope. Young people can and do change the world,” he said.

He said he was confident that working together the world can emerge from the pandemic “and lay the foundations for a cleaner, safer, fairer world for all, and for generations to come”.

 

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Shireen Huq

By Sania Farooqui
NEW DELHI, India, Jan 11 2021 (IPS)

In October 2020, Bangladeshi citizens took to the streets, outraged by the reports of gruesome gang rapes and sexual violence that were taking place in the country. According to Ain O Salish Kendra, a Bangladeshi human rights organization, 975 women were raped in the first nine months of 2020, 43 women were killed after being raped and 204 women were attempted to be raped by men in Bangladesh.

“There is a culture of impunity in the country and when it comes to accessing justice, corruption continues to be a major obstacle,” says Shireen Huq, women’s rights activist and founder Naripokkho, a non-profit organization that has been working on women’s rights and the impact of sexual violence in Bangladesh since 1983 to IPS News.

“Violence, male dominance and male aggression have existed for years, the tendency to glorify that these things didn’t happen in the past, and that it’s only happening now in our lifetime, is not true. Misogyny has been part of our culture, politics and society for centuries, especially across South Asia,” says Shireen.

In 2011, on the 40th year of Bangladesh’s independence, Naripokkho took up the cause of women who were subjected to grave sexual violence during the 1971 Bangladesh war. “The Forgotten Women of ‘71” is an initiative to both support Birangonas not yet recognized as eligible for state support and to launch a campaign for reparation and the restoration of their honour.

“Countless women were subjected to sexual violence by members of the Pakistani army and their collaborators and little had been done to stand by these women. Although the then newly formed independent Bangladeshi government within 6 days of victory conferred on them the title “birangona”, meaning warrior woman, in order to ensure that they were not subjected to the usual degradation and abuse that victims of sexual violence were subjected to in our culture. But unfortunately, this title became their bane and source of misery as it quickly turned into an abusive term.

Many families refused to take back their daughters when they were rescued from Pakistan army bunkers. Villagers pointed fingers and children threw stones at them. One of our Birangona sisters said, “because of what was done to me by Pakistani soldiers in 1971 you have robbed me of my life for the next 40 years,” says Shireen.

Survivors of gang rape and sexual assault regularly face social and cultural stigma, there is already lack of adequate access to psychological services and most importantly, there is a fear of losing their “honour” and bringing shame to their families when they are raped, and that makes it more difficult for women to testify or report crimes of sexual violence and assault.

“To call someone a “birangona” is to actually dishonour that person, and this narrative needed to be countered, that honour does not lie in a woman’s genitalia, what is a war crime should not be referred to as an honour crime.

“At the root of sexual violence there is a culture of misogyny and toxic masculinity that drives it. Looking at the gang rapes that happened in 2020 which sparked off a huge movement in Bangladesh in October, they were all committed by the student wing or the youth wing of the ruling party.

“Sexual violence has to do with the sense of male entitlement that it’s alright to invade a woman’s body. This is increasing because there is no rule of law right now, people know that they can get away with it,” says Shireen.

In order to protect vulnerable witnesses and victims of crimes, in 2006, a Witness Protection Act was drafted by the Bangladesh Law Commission, which is yet to be passed by the government. Without this law, gender-based violence remains one of the most pressing issues for human rights defenders in the country.

Earlier in 2017, Naripokkho started the ‘Standing with Rohingya Women’ initiative, following the reports of grave sexual violence preceding the influx of over 700,000 Rohingya refugees who crossed the border amid the escalating crisis in Myanmar’s Rakhine State.

According to a UN report, brutal attacks and sexual violence against Rohingyas in northern Rakhine State were organised, coordinated and systematically implemented with the intent of not only driving the population out of Myanmar but preventing them from returning to their homes, and this instigated Naripokkho members to take up their cause and “not fail this time”.

“Naripokkho carries the pain and regret of what their Birangona sisters were subjected to post-Independence and the abusive treatment that continues until today. For Bangladeshi women, it took 40 years to break their silence, but the Rohingya women were ready to tell the whole world what had happened to them, how it happened and who did it. We felt Narripokkho’s role was to amplify their voices and to make sure we stood by these women now,” says Shireen.

In December 2020, authorities in Bangladesh began relocating thousands of Rohingya refugees to a remote flood prone island called Bhasan Char in the Bay of Bengal. About 1,600 refugees were transported by a ship, raising questions about their safety and consent.

“I doubt it is entirely voluntary, but I won’t be surprised if there are those willing to move to escape these sub-human, overcrowded makeshift camps in Cox’s Bazaar, it undoubtedly could be a better option, but the question is, is the Bhasan Char Island secure? Is it safe? Should people be living on that island? Why did the government choose that Island when everyone is saying it is precarious?” says Shireen.

International NGOs and UN agencies have been concerned about this shift and have opposed it all along. Sections of the media have also been critical of the Bangladesh government on the Bhashan Char issue.

“I wish the international community would also invest more energy and resources to make Myanmar accountable for the crimes against humanity it has committed in unleashing organised violence, arson, rape and forced deportation of the Rohingyas. Myanmar must be made to stop the genocide of Rohingyas and to immediately take steps for a safe return of the Rohingya population to their homeland, recognising them as citizens,” says Shireen.

Sania Farooqui is a journalist and filmmaker based out of New Delhi. She hosts a weekly online show called The Sania Farooqui Show where Muslim women from around the world are invited to share their views.

 

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By Roberto Savio
ROME, Jan 11 2021 (IPS)

For 2021, Italy has been given chairmanship of the Group of 20, which brings together the world’s 20 most important countries. On paper, they represent 60% of the world’s population and 80% of its Gross Domestic Product (GDP). While the shaky Italian government will somehow perform this task (in the general indifference of the political system), the fact remains that this apparently prestigious position is in fact very deceiving: the G20 is now a very weak institution that brings no kudos to the rotating chairman. Besides, it is actually the institution which bears the greatest part of responsibility for the decline of the UN as the body responsible for global governance, a task that the G20 has very seldom been able to face up to.

Roberto Savio

Let us reconstruct how we arrive at the creation of the G20. It is a long story, that begins in 1975, when France invited the representatives of Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States, leading to the name Group of Six, or G6. The idea was to create a space where to discuss the international situation, not for decision making. Then it became the Group of Seven, with the addition of Canada in 1997. Russia was added in 1998, so the summit became known as the G8. And then, in 1980, the European Union was invited as a “nonenumerated participant”. In 2005 the UK government initiated the practice of inviting five leading emergency markets – Brazil, China, India, Mexico and South Africa. Finally, in Washington, in 2005, the world leaders from the group recognized the growth of more emerging countries, and they decided that a meeting of the 20 most important countries of the world would replace the G8 and become the G20.

At the meetings the United Nations, the European Union, and the major international monetary and financial institutions are also invited. Spain is a permanent invitee, together with leaders of the Asian, African Union, of the New Partnership for Africa’s Development, the Financial Stability Board, the International Labor Organization, the International Monetary Fund, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the World Bank Group, and the World Trade Organization.

Plus. The host country can invite some countries that it feels particularly associated with its foreign policy, at its year of presidency. Until now, 38 countries have been invited, from Azerbaijan to Chad, from Denmark to Laos, from Sweden to Zimbabwe. To complete, it is important to mention that Russia was suspended by the G8 in 2014, because of its annexation of Crimea. And was never readmitted. Trump, in his inexplicable deference to Putin, asked for its readmission to the G8, and this was refused by the other countries. The G7 has kept meeting, as “a steering group of the West”. At the same time, the G20 meets regularly, with Russia as part of his members.

So, Italy has the task to invite all those different actors, establish the agenda and planning and hosting a series of ministerial-level meetings, leading up to summit of head of governments. Italy has decided as agenda “The three P”: People, Planet and Prosperity. This imaginative and original agenda will be structured in 10 specialized meetings, like Finance (Venice July 9-10th); Innovation and Research (Trieste Aug. 5-8th); Environment, Climate, Energy (Naples, July 22nd), just to give a few examples. Beside these 10 specialized meetings, there will be 8 “engagement’s groups”, which will go from business to civil society, youth, etc.

The G20 is formed by countries that are involved in different and often contradictory groups. For instance, after Trump killed the TTP, (the Transatlantic Pacific Partnership), that Obama was able to put together excluding China, with a vast range of counters going from Australia to Mexico, from Canada to Malaysia, China was able to reciprocate, and crate the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, which puts together the same countries plus some others and leave outside completely the United States. This commercial bloc is the largest ever created and has 30% of the world’s population, and 30% of the world GDP. But the European Union, (to which Italy belongs) has explicitly taken a path of European nationalism, to make the EU able to survive in the coming competition between China and the United States. European Union (and therefore Italy) are also members of NATO, where the United States is the indispensable and fundamental partner. And in the G20 China seats with India, which is the only country that has refused to join RCEP, and who is clearly taking an alternative path to China’s expansion in Asia. But this is also Japan’s policy, who is very active in G7, in the G20, and has entered RCEP, and considers, like South Korea, a priority to limit the Chinese expansionism.

Of course, there are a number of other pacts, agreements, treaties and alliances, that would be now boring and useless to enumerate. One country, like Italy, would therefore wear several hats at the same time. The point to make is, that since the arrival of Ronald Reagan as President of the United States in 1981, the multilateral system started to be under attack. Reagan, in Cancun’s Summit for the North-South dialogue, a few months after his election, questioned the idea of democracy and participation as the basis for international relations. Until then, the General Assembly resolutions were considered the basis for global governance. In 1973, the GA passed unanimously a resolution, calling for the reduction of the economic gap between the North and the South of the world, calling rich countries to their duties to establish a New International Economic Order, more just and based on the faster development of the poorer countries. Reagan denounced this as an anti-American maneuver. The US is not the same as Montecarlo, as he famously said (probably he intended Monaco, as Montecarlo is no state), and yet they have a vote each. So, this democracy coming from the UN, was in fact a straitjacket, and the US would proceed on the basis of bilateral relations, and not to be strained by multilateral mechanisms. Reagan was the first to talk of America first, He, together with Margaret Thatcher in Europe, dismantled all the social progress made in the world after the end of the Second World War. The market, with his invisible hand, would be the sole engine of society (that Thatcher said does not exist, only individuals). The State, that he called “the beast”, was the first enemy of the citizen. He declared: the most terrifying words in English are: I am from the Government, and I am here to help”. Any public or social cost was just a brake to the market. Reagan wanted to privatize even the ministry of Education: he and Thatcher left UNESCO, as a symbol of disengagement from the UN. Both he and Thatcher curtailed trade unions, privatized whatever possible, and started the era of neoliberal globalization, whose effect is now widely evident, and that Trump, Bolsonaro and Co. bless every day, because it has created a very large swath of disaffected citizens, who believe they will readdress their destiny.

Is important to note that Reagan did not have any real opposition, from the other rich countries. So, all this fragmentation of the world, with the creation of G7, G8, G20, and other exclusive clubs, was not an exclusive responsibility of Reagan and Thatcher. For forty years, the process of divesting the UN from its responsibility for the world’s peace, development, and democracy went on. Neoliberal globalization was based on finance and trade. Even before the end of the war, finance was delegated to the System of Bretton Wood, by the name of the site where it was founded. Let us just constate a fact: the Financial System was established in a such way, that Finance is the only sector of human activity that has no regulatory body. Today it has clearly separated by the general economy when its original function was to be at its service. And political institutions are not able to control its global structure.

The other engine of globalization was trading. United Nations had the UN Commission on Trade and Development, UNCTAD, which looked to trade as an instrument of development. The creation in 1995 of the World Trade Organization, as an independent organization, envisaging trade as an economic engine, divested the UN from trade too. And more the UN weakens, the easier is to decry its shortcomings.

The stroke of grace to multilateralism has been the arrival of Trump, the heir and an updated version of Ronald Reagan. But with a totally different agenda and vision. His basic idea is not “America First”, but “America Alone”. He pushes Regan’s idea of bilateralism versus multilateralism to the extreme of ignoring the concept of alliances. So, he declared, Europe is even worse than China. But there is a fundamental difference between them: Trump never pretended to be the President of all Americans. On the contrary, he tried immediately to divide and polarize the United States, and he leaves as a legacy the US that will take a very long time to become again a united and pacified country. And his strategy has been taken by several other leaders, from Bolsonaro to Orban, from Erdogan to Salvini.

It will be, therefore, difficult, for the UN to recover its function of the meeting place, to express plans of global governance, based on democracy and participation. It was a vision based on the lessons learned in the Second World War: let us avoid millions of deaths, terrible destruction, and to do so we need to work together. That lesson has been now forgotten. Just compare the kind of political leaders from that time, and the present one, to see the enormous change. Therefore, the expression of national egoisms will continue, with the richest countries in exclusives clubs, like OECD or the G20.

But there is a problem: those clubs are not efficient, because they gather together countries with very different agendas and priorities. Let us take a good example from the last G20, held last November under the very discredited chairmanship of Saudi Arabia. One of the points was the cancellation of the debt from poor countries, evidently urgent, because of the additional burden of the pandemic that is going to bring disproportionate damage. The Pope, the Secretary-General of the UN, Gutierres, pressed for that decision. All that the G20 was able to do, was to freeze the payment of the interest of the debt, for six months. And here, let us divagate for a useful learning exercise of the Third World Debt, and on the nobility of the rich countries.

If you take a loan that you repay over 20 years at 5%, or a mortgage, of 100, at the end you will have repaid 200. And during the first ten years, all you pay are the interest, and only in the second decade, you start to pay back, progressively, the capital. The result is that the poor countries several times renegotiated their debt and every time what they paid where the interest, to start again. And those interests were cumulative. During that process, they paid several times the amount of the capital that they received. But all that they paid went to the interests… At the university, you learn one good example of the perversity of cumulative interests. The old story is that a Dutch settler, Peter Minuit, bought the island of Manhattan from the Algonquin tribe. The price paid was $24 worth of beads, trinkets, a jar of Mayonnaise, two pairs of wooden clogs, a loaf of wonder bread and a carton of Quaker oats. If that amount was put in a loan at 5%with composite interest, it would be by now more than the estimated value of all of Manhattan, which exceeds three trillion dollars. So, the decision of the G20 to freeze interests for six months, amount to nothing. It is interesting to listen to insiders’ voices. The loans of the rich countries are computed in the DAC, Development Assistance Committee, established by OECD (the organizations that gathers all rich countries). The OECD engaged itself, in the old good day of multilateralism, to dedicated 1% of the members’ GDP to the development of the underdeveloped countries. This engagement was never kept, except for the Nordic Countries and Nederland. The US never went over 0,3%. Anyhow, any debt condonation goes into the official statistics of the DAC committee. But new loans are made, by countries that are not in the DAC committee, like China, which has made a very extensive number of loans, especially in Asia and Africa in not public conditions. For the OECD countries (basically the West), to cancel their loans could mean to unleash resources that could go to pay China loans, becoming so China funders. This is a good example of how competing interests, block the G20 from concerted actions.

Decisions on this issue are now expected from the next G20 Summit in Rome, in November. But before, the Global Health Summit, called from the G20 together with the EU in May, will be the occasion to verify what will happen. with vaccinations. But in the same month, Portugal has called for the very important Social Summit of the European Union. Portugal has taken the much more substantial chairmanship of the EU, and this is a very positive contribution to a positive 2021. Portugal is today probably the most civilized country of Europe, a place of tolerance, harmony and civic engagement, much like Sweden in the 80s. And is the only credible country on the issue of immigration. In the Social Summit Lisbon will push to strengthen social Europe, after so many decades of a solely economic Europe. The outgoing German chairmanship was fundamental in abandoning the austerity dogma and move to an unprecedented plan of solidarity and institutional strengthening, made also possible by the blessed departure of England, and its anti-European historical bias. The fact that vaccination is a European plan, and not a hotchpotch of national attempts, is great progress in term of vaccination. And if it will continue on the same path, on the issue of climate control, and technological development, it will recover much trust from the citizens, who felt Brussels an unaccountable institution, far from their priorities. Now the EU deals with unemployment, with the economic and social disaster brought by the virus. It is a tribute to the virtues of multilateralism, solidarity and development. And Portugal will try to complete what the German Presidency was unable to conclude.

But if we look to the obvious need for a world’s vaccination, the reality is much dimmer. Until now the rich countries have bought as many as possible vaccines. f. Europe, with 13% of the world population, has bought 51% of the total production. Israel is a case study. With a population of 9 million people, highly registered and organized in the health system, Netanyahu (who will do everything to stay in power), has bought the vaccines at an extra cost but is fast reaching all the population. Certainly, this cannot be the case of India, with nearly 1.4 billion people, and a very primitive system of health… Even the Pope has launched an appeal for distributing a free vaccine in the poor countries, and India and South Africa (which are a member of the G20), have asked the General Assembly of the World Health Organization for free distribution in poor countries. There has been strong opposition from the rich countries, that have financed at the tune of 10 billion dollars the development of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines, which now they buy at market prices, several times higher than those of AstraZeneca… And then those two vaccines use a new technology, whose side effects are still unknown, unlike AstraZeneca, which uses a well-experimented technique.

But even if we take the cheaper vaccines, there is a very basic issue: under which ethical and human logic, patents and money can be made over public goods, as the Pope has repeatedly asked? The patent industry has been patenting seeds, rice, plants, which have been existing for hundreds of years, and those new peasants cannot use them without paying a royalty to the company who patented them. And then the pharmaceuticals tried to patent, parts of the human body… Citizens from several parts of the world have been setting up an association, Agorà for Humankind, that is conducting a campaign, for the elimination of patents and profits over public goods, as they belong to humankind. Also, an international alliance has been set up between the public and private sectors, the General Alliance for Vaccine Initiative, GAVI, which has the task to finance vaccination in 93 middle and poor countries. But funding is still far from coming. As things are now, at the end of 2021, only 30% of humankind will be vaccinated, basically from rich countries.

Yet, if there is something that should make all of us aware that we are in the same boat, is this pandemic. Until at least 70% of all humans will be vaccinated, the virus will continue to strike and kill. The British mutation, much more contagious, is a good example. The country with more cases is now Spain, which has no physical contact with the UK. But it went to Gibraltar, the British colony since 1713 in the South of Spain. And from there spread to the surrounding Spanish villages and towns. Did the realization that viruses does not know borders help to make the new treaty for relations between Gibraltar and Spain? The answer is not really: it is trade. Yet, it does not require a virologist to assume that trade spreads the virus…

So, after this long ride among different subjects, its thread should be clear. We have gone from an era when the lessons of the Second World War created a generation of politicians who made of peace and development the common ground for international relations, even during a very dangerous Cold War. Would Trump, Johnson and Putin be at Yalta, instead of Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin, the outcome would have been very different. Most probably, we would have had no United Nations, no international organizations. Just think that the US, to push for the creation of the UN, agreed in its founding engagement, to pay 25% of its costs.

Then, beginning with Reagan and Thatcher, a profound change came. The interests of my country are more important than international cooperation, and the stronger I am, the more so. Multilateralism, cooperation, went under attack, and so the role of the State, its function of guarantor of social progress, equity and participation. Other organizations started to sprout, and weaken the UN, and the instruments of a social pact, like trade unions. From the spirit of the fall if the Berlin’ Wall, in 1989, a number of clubs of rich countries, like the G7, the G8, the G20, started to substitute the UN, and private clubs, like the World Economic Forum of Davos, attracted more important personalities than the General Assembly of the United Nations.

We are now in a third phase, whose symbol abounds: nationalism, xenophobia, and the illusion that sovereignty is more important than cooperation. Brexit is a notable example. But Trump sets up an unprecedented level of legitimacy to what was once considered the betrayal of civism and democracy: exploit and exasperate the divides of a country, racial, cultural, gender, and run without any compliance to rules and traditions. He is accompanied by a variegated assortment of autocratic, populist, and narcists kind of new political generation: Bolsonaro, Orban, Kacynski, Putin, Modi, Sissi, Nehayanu, Duterte, just to cite the most known, while others, like Salvini, are poised to take the power. The virus, instead of uniting citizens, has further divided them. To wear the mask, is a left-wing declaration, like to worry about the climate, which is a survival’ concern. Military expenses are on a continuous increase. In 2019 they have reached an unprecedented amount of 1917 billion dollars. Enough to solve all problems of food, health and education worldwide. The UN is still the only organization able to provide the world with plans of global significance. Its Agenda 2030 gives a plan for the solution of our most significant problems. It costs a fraction of the military expenses. The G20 has paid some lip services, to Agenda 30, but never anything significant. The new generations of politicians are under general scrutiny, and it is not positive at all… I would say that is representative of our crisis, books still get published on a world of conspiracy, like that the virus is used by Bill Gates to inoculate nanoparticles that will make it possible to control all human bodies, Or myths like the one on Bilderberg Club, one of the private’s clubs meeting, as the place where decisions are taken by a small elite on how to run the world. This, when more than ever is clear that the system has lost its compass, and even the tragedy of climate and soon two million deaths are not able to bring back cooperation and multilateralism… but the explosions of conspiracies is a good sign of the decline of democracy…

So, Italy enters now the chairmanship of the G20. It is a position without any significant weight, with the task to realize a coming Summit, of the head of States, from which nobody expects much. If Trump’s defeat has any significant meaning, by November the political situation could have improved, but we will have a Germany without Merkel, probably more nationalist, and the miraculous social engagement of the European Union, could come to a halt. Italy has a very fragile government, and the dubious distinction of having a very young minister of Foreign Affairs, whose only working experience was to be a steward at Naples’ stadium. On the Health Summit, he does not look particularly commanding respect and authority. This will be Italy’s first test. In May, it will be clear that without vaccination in the world, rich countries will not be out of danger. It should be easy to rally the 20 most important countries of the world, which include India and South Africa, to such obvious actions. But in those times, where interests and selfishness are the reality, it is legitimate to nourish many doubts… Anyhow, if 2021 will not be a year of regeneration and creation, we will be on an irreversible slipping decline… time is running out…

But it looks now like the solution to the problems is beyond the reach of the system…

Publisher of OtherNews, Italian-Argentine Roberto Savio is an economist, journalist, communication expert, political commentator, activist for social and climate justice and advocate of an anti-neoliberal global governance. Director for international relations of the European Center for Peace and Development. Adviser to INPS-IDN and to the Global Cooperation Council. He is co-founder of Inter Press Service (IPS) news agency and its President Emeritus.

 

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By Saul Escobar Toledo
MEXICO CITY, Jan 11 2021 (IPS)

The new year has arrived, but the situation is worse than in the last months of 2020. The pandemic is still unleashed: the end of the year holidays, the official permissiveness, and the slowness of the distribution of vaccines seem to announce that the disease will continue to wreak havoc for several months in most of the world, particularly in America, Europe, and parts of Asia like India. It has therefore been required to redouble preventive measures: a new lockdown and the disruption of almost all economic and school activities. Therefore, the recovery looks still uncertain and distant.

Saul Escobar Toledo

On the health front, we can expect that infections will decrease thanks to the confinements and a greater number of vaccinated people, but the economic recovery will need more energetic action from governments. There is hardly any room for optimism, especially if you trust that things will be fixed by the inertia of the market forces.

On the one hand, it will be necessary to substantially expand the funds earmarked for programs already launched last year to support the neediest individuals and companies. In addition, it is urgent to design new measures that can ensure a faster recovery and prevent new crises.

Among the latter, various institutions and specialists (e.g., the Nobel Prize Joseph Stiglitz), have pointed out how enormously helpful would be the issuance of at least 500 billion dollars of Special Drawing Rights (SDRs) by the IMF to launch an aid program for the poorest and developing countries. This program would not overwhelm the existing sovereign debts and would serve to finance the balance of payments and imports necessary for food, health, and improvement of the environment.

There can be no room for confusion. The recovery must be measured based on these indicators: reduction of sick people; increase in the number and quality of employment; and a greener production system.

Everything else, such as debt, parity of currencies, stock markets, the public deficits and even percentage points of GDP, should be understood as secondary issues or mere instruments to achieve the desired recovery.

Otherwise, there may be a simulated retorn to normality, apparently recovering what has been lost when in fact we will go backwards because there will be more poverty, inequality, pollution, and a decreased ability to prevent and face new catastrophes.

In the case of Mexico, the foregoing translates into the need to design a recovery program that does not exist today. The announced vaccination campaign is not enough if hospital capacity and first-rate health care are not improved. A new economy must lead us to the production of cleaner energy and other measures that reduce pollution and inject vitality into new economic branches. You cannot trust the United States–Mexico–Canada Agreement (USMCA) and infrastructure works in progress as the only drivers to recover the jobs lost. A new legislation on unemployment insurance, outsourcing, digital platforms, and programs to support families, especially those who live in the informal economy, is necessary. A progressive salary policy, like the one that has been implemented, is not enough if regional, gender and age gaps are not reduced.

To elaborate on the issue of employment, fundamental for a true recovery, we have consulted the report that the ILO and ECLAC published at the end of last year. The paper recognizes that the pandemic will “lead to the worst GDP contraction in the region’s history (a projected downturn of 9.1% in 2020), which has already had and will continue to have profound labor and social consequences” (available at https://www.cepal.org).

According to this study, the existence of a large informal sector, without access to social security and therefore very vulnerable, has had and will have a strong regressive impact on the income and quality of life of millions of people. Formal jobs were also affected as many people were laid off; others kept their jobs, but suffered a significant decrease in their income, due to the reduction of hours worked or to the fact that they were sent home with unpaid vacations or leave with lower wages. The effect of these measures was more severe in our country due to the absence of unemployment insurance.

A remarkable phenomenon that this crisis produced was the enormous number of people who were left without work and stopped looking for it. Technically they ceased to be part of the EAP (Economically Active Population) and joined the Economically Inactive Population (PEI). Women were particularly harmed due to their stronger presence in the sectors most heavily affected by the health crisis (domestic service, restaurants and hotels, commercial activities) but, also, to the prevalence of a macho culture that confined them to take care of the sick, children without school, the elderly and household chores.

The crises caused also that wage employment contracted less than own-account work. The reason is that the latter involve, for many of the activities, face-to-face contact, especially in the informal sector. In Mexico salaried workers fell by almost 14% in the second quarter of 2020 but self – employed accounted for a 30.9% drop. This decline has been reversed, but at the cost of a greater exposure of the informal workers to contagion, which would partly explain the growth in the number of sick and dead persons.

On the other hand, the study emphasizes the devastating consequences among young people: job losses affected them more than other workers. This situation, says the report, has been a factor that has accentuated “fatigue and loneliness… So, “feelings of sadness, fear and distress are also more common among young men and women.” The paper warns that: “the more time spent out of school and out of work, the greater the risks of precarious work and exclusion from the labor market throughout one’s working life”

To avoid these tragedies, programs aimed at improving their training are required; and maintain and improve income transfer policies for young people who study, the workers adults, and households. Otherwise, it is highly likely that young people will be pressured to look for an income mainly in the informal activities. It would also restrict the possibilities of investing in improving their labor capacities.

The latest data, offered by the Mexican government, show the slowness of the recovery: in November 2020, the employed population was 52.93% (in relation to the total of working age population), a little lower than in October and, of course in March (55.76%). Furthermore, most of the people who returned to work did so in informal activities. With respect to formal jobs, the loss in eleven months, from January to November, was 369, 890 posts. Nearly 278 thousand more were missed in December, as the president of the republic told in his morning press conference.

With this scenario, the recovery does not look so close or certain. The ECLAC-ILO study underlines that: “The health crisis has highlighted the importance of a solid and efficient public sector with the capacity to react quickly to shocks with strong economic and social impacts.” The situation that we are observing at the beginning of the year requires that the institutions of the Mexican state redouble their efforts, do it as soon as possible and with a comprehensive project.

Saul Escobar Toledo, Economist, Professor at Department of Contemporary Studies in INAH (National Institute oh Anthropology and History, México) and President of the Board of the Institute of Workers Studies “Rafael Galvan”, a non-profit organization. His recent work : “Subcontracting: a study of change in labor relations” will be published soon by Friedrich Ebert Stiftung, Mexico City.
saulescobar.blogspot.com

 

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Credit: US government

By Bishop Bill Swing and Jonathan Granoff
NEW YORK, Jan 11 2021 (IPS)

Between now and January 20,2021, the President of the United States has almost run out of arenas in which to impose his will. His reelection has soured in infamy. His concern for the COVID-19 pandemic faded long ago. There is only one last pursuit available to him to demonstrate that he is the most powerful man on earth, i.e. using the nuclear weapons at his disposal.

What if? This man who once suggested dropping a nuclear bomb on the eye of a hurricane, what if he decided to drop a nuclear warhead on Iran? What if Iran retaliated and sent rockets into Israel? What if Israel nuked Iran? What if the Middle East exploded and other nuclear nations chose sides and piled on expanded targets with their nukes?

Right now, the citizens of the United States and the people of the world need to be protected from the “what if” of an unhinged President armed with nuclear weapons.

Two questions quickly arise: 1) is this President, with nuclear weapons at his fingertips, sound of mind with a healthy moral compass? 2) Why should any President be given “sole authority” to order the launch of a nuclear arsenal? To launch in five minutes without the counsel of anyone else?

The entire enterprise of having weapons capable of destroying most all life on this planet – in five minutes – is morally absurd. Like dropping a nuke capriciously on a hurricane or giving a dangerously flawed President 5,800 nuclear weapons to play with in his last delusional days in office?

The President has “sole authority” to destroy without having “soul authority” to understand the moral gravity of this decisions. He has to be denuded of his nukes for all of our sakes.

And the nine countries with nuclear weapons merely mirror, over time, Donald Trump in his last days of reign. Trump is our nuclear problem immediately. But in the longer run, every one of these nations is deranged in thinking that nuclear weapons make us secure and solve problems.

With the weapons hanging over us, we are anything but secure. As for solving problems, nuclear weapons did nothing to stop the damage of COVID-19 or lessen the effects of climate change. What most ails the world is not addressed by a nuclear arsenal.

The United States of America has to sweat out these last days of President Trump, but the world has to sweat out the years ahead until we blow ourselves up or whittle our stockpiles of nuclear weapons down, eventually, to zero. We are all unhinged with nuclear weapons at our fingertips.

https://www.sfchronicle.com/opinion/openforum/article/The-danger-of-nukes-with-an-unhinged-Trump-15856851.php

 

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Excerpt:

Bishop Bill Swing, Founder and President United Religions Initiative in collaboration with Jonathan Granoff, President Global Security Institute

The post Unhinged with 5,800 Nuclear Warheads at his Fingertips appeared first on Inter Press Service.

By Mohammad Rakibul Hasan
DHAKA, Bangladesh, Jan 8 2021 (IPS)

Mohammad Rakibul Hasan is a Bangladeshi documentary photographer, photojournalist, filmmaker and visual artist who has been visiting the camps in Cox’s Bazaar to document the Rohingya refugee crisis.

Rakibul Hasan is a recipient of the Lucie Awards Discovery of the Year 2018. He also received the 23rd Human Rights Press Awards from The Foreign Correspondents’ Club Hong Kong, Amnesty International and the Hong Kong Journalists Association, for his series “The Looted Honor” which documents Rohingya refugee rape survivors.

Rakibul Hasan has shared with IPS a selection of images document life in the Rohingya refugee camps.

At a COVID-19 sample collection centre in a Rohingya refugee camp, a healthcare professional takes a swab from a Rohingya refugee child. During the pandemic, refugees are receiving information about COVID-19 protection but at the same time many COVID-19 myths have spread across the camp. Although the number of positive cases and the fatality rate is low, many people are asymptomatic as noted by healthcare providers. In addition, many refugees experiencing flu-like symptoms are said to be hiding in their make-shift homes and hoping to recover without medical intervention.

In the world’s largest refugee camp, Cox’s Bazar, many aren’t wearing masks. This is despite the fact that many non-profit organisations as well as the Bangladesh government are providing basic protective kits and conducting awareness programmes educating those living here on how to protect themselves from COVID-19. Though the number of COVID-19 cases are low as per the data from healthcare centres in the camps, many refugees are flocking to medical centres and local pharmacies to collect medicine for fevers and coughs.

A healthcare professional checks a COVID-19 sample in a lab in Cox’s Bazar. A number of COVID-19 samples have been collected in the Rohingya refugee camps and all samples are sent to a designated testing lab operated by the Bangladesh government.

Drug trafficking and robbery by Rohingya refugees and local Bangladeshi smugglers around Teknaf, Cox’s Bazar, has become a difficult problem to solve.

More than one million Muslim minority Rohingya’s fled Myanmar in 2017 due to ethnic cleansing, which has been condemned internationally as genocide. They now live in refugee camps in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh. Many are uneducated as the Myanmar government never allowed them to study in their country and currently many in the refugee camps still do not have access to education. It is a life of uncertainty. And the COVID-19 pandemic has pushed them to the edge.

A Rohingya refugee boy holding an umbrella as the cyclonic storm Amphan hit the coastal region of Bangladesh, causing excessive rainfall in the Rohingya refugee camps.

 

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US President Donald Trump at a meeting of the Security Council. Credit: United Nations

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Jan 8 2021 (IPS)

The storming of Capitol Hill in Washington DC by an unruly mob is reminiscent of an insurrection in a “banana republic” –as hilariously portrayed in the 1971 Woody Allen comedy “Bananas” spoofing a revolt in a fictional Latin American country.

But judged by the disastrous four-year administration of President Trump such a description is an insult to all banana republics.

Trump’s presidency has been characterized by misgovernment, corruption, lies, xenophobia, nepotism, arrogance, and ultimately, contempt for the country’s democratic electoral process.

For long, America has been the world’s self-appointed cop ousting dictatorships and overthrowing authoritarian regimes (read: Iraq, Libya and Afghanistan), upholding human rights and preaching peace – even while selling millions of dollars in weapons to conflict-ridden countries.

As the New York Times pointed out what unfolded in Washington DC, however, was “one of the most severe intrusions of the Capitol” since the British invasion during the war of 1812 when it was burnt down.

Senator Mitt Romney, a Republican who was a longtime critic of Trump inside the bowels of his own political party, expressed his denunciation in a single sentence: “What happened here today was an insurrection incited by the President of the United States.”

As Cable News Network (CNN) pointed out, a growing number of Republican leaders and Cabinet officials believe Trump should be removed from office before President-elect Joe Biden’s January 20 inauguration, even if it means invoking the 25th Amendment or disqualifying Trump from ever holding office again.

The 25th Amendment to the US constitution provides procedures for replacing a president or vice president in the event of death, removal, resignation or incapacitation.

Stephen Zunes, Professor of Politics at the University of San Francisco, told IPS the shocking spectacle from the mob attack on the seat of American government with the apparent encouragement of the president, along with efforts by some Republican members of Congress to block the certification of the Electoral College, demonstrates that a significant faction of the conservative movement in the United States has become explicitly anti-democratic.

“While Wednesday’s events will likely backfire politically, it serves a warning that there are real authoritarian tendencies in this country led by people who are willing to use violence to seize power.”

Despite clear signs that there would be a serious attempt to storm the Capitol, security was minimal and the Capitol Police were quickly overrun, he added.

This contrasts with the massive and intimidating troop presence around the Capitol and other government buildings during the largely nonviolent protests for racial justice this past spring despite the absence of any such realistic threats.

This raises serious issues regarding racism and ideological biases in policy and related security measures in Washington, said Zunes.

He pointed out that the shock and dismay around Trump’s support for a de facto coup and his overall authoritarian tendencies are well-founded.

“At the same time, it must be acknowledged that presidential administrations and Congressional leaders of both parties have long supported autocratic regimes and occupation armies elsewhere through arms transfers and other security assistance. Indeed, the United States is the world’s number one backer of such anti-democratic governments”.

Support for democracy, he argued, must not stop at the water’s edge. “If Americans are serious about defending democratic institutions, we must apply such principles to our foreign policy as well.”

The demonstrators on Capitol Hill have been described mostly as right-wing extremists and white supremacists who are ardent supporters of Trump. At least four died in the melee.

Meanwhile, some of the US allies in Europe, including France, Germany and UK have expressed shock and revulsion at the insurrection in one of the world’s “model democracies”.

Dr. Alon Ben-Meir, professor of international relations at the Center for Global Affairs at New York University (NYU), told IPS that Wednesday, January 6, is a day that will live on in infamy; a day in which the president of the United States incited a mob to storm the nation’s capital, in which Trump perpetuated lies and falsehoods about the election to justify his betrayal of the country, the Constitution, his office, and the very foundations of this democratic republic.

He said the world watched in horror as the far-right mob managed to breach security and enter the Capitol building successfully. Clearly, the violent protestors were not repelled with adequate force or they would never had made their way in.

“Had the mob consisted of left-wing agitators instead, of black and brown bodies rather than white bodies, the news would be quite different — indeed, it is more than likely that had that been the case, the protesters would never had made it inside at all, let alone allowed to remain there for over four hours”.

What is perhaps most disgraceful, over and above Trump’s cynical and self-serving incitement, is his silence while the mob roamed through the Capitol, while senators and representatives hid themselves away until it was safe to return to complete the business of the day, said Ben-Meir.

“When he finally did make a statement, it was anything but a full-throated condemnation of the chaos and violence that had consumed the nation’s temple of democracy. Rather he told the rioters to return home, and added “We love you” – after reiterating his false claim that the election was stolen”.

In a word, said Ben-Meir, Trump sought to justify the insurrectionists, and the reason for that is plain: he wants to sow as much violence and discord as he possibly can between now and the inauguration.

That way he can point to the civil unrest and say “see, that is what happens when you steal an election.” Never mind that it has only been Trump and his fringe followers who have sought to steal an election, and to the credit of this still great nation, failed completely and utterly, he declared.

UN Spokesman Stephane Dujarric said the Secretary-General “is saddened by the events at the US Capitol in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday.”

In such circumstances, he said, “it is important that political leaders impress on their followers the need to refrain from violence, as well as to respect democratic processes and the rule of law. “

In a statement from Geneva, UN Human Rights Commissioner Michelle Bachelet said: “We are deeply troubled by Wednesday’s attack on the US Capitol, which demonstrated clearly the destructive impact of sustained, deliberate distortion of facts, and incitement to violence and hatred by political leaders”.

She said allegations of electoral fraud have been invoked to try to undermine the right to political participation. We are encouraged to see that the process has continued in spite of serious attempts to disrupt it.

“We call on leaders from across the political spectrum, including the President of the United States, to disavow false and dangerous narratives, and encourage their supporters to do so as well,” she added.

“We note with dismay the serious threats and destruction of property faced by media professionals yesterday. We support calls from many quarters for a thorough investigation into Wednesday’s events,” declared Bachelet

In a summing up, Ben-Meir said Trump used the power of his office to dismantle everything that President Obama has achieved, and he stopped short of nothing to delegitimize President-elect Biden’s victory.

“All I can say is eat your heart out, Mr. Trump. Obama left the presidency after serving two terms with honor and dignity and with the Nobel Peace Prize under his belt. And Trump will leave his office as an impeached one-term president who will live in infamy.”

The Democratic leadership, with the few Republicans who stood for the rule of law and did not submit to Trump’s whims, should immediately push for either impeachment or the invocation of the 25th Amendment to oust Trump from his office and bar him from ever holding a formal position again, he declared.

  

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Photo by Andy Feliciotti on Unsplash

By External Source
Jan 7 2021 (IPS)

Supporters of President Donald Trump, following his encouragement, stormed the US Capitol building on Jan. 6, disrupting the certification of Joe Biden’s election victory. Waving Trump banners, hundreds of people broke through barricades and smashed windows to enter the building where Congress convenes. One rioter died and several police officers were hospitalized in the clash. Congress went on lockdown.

While violent and shocking, what happened on Jan. 6 wasn’t a coup.

This Trumpist insurrection was election violence, much like the election violence that plagues many fragile democracies.

 

What is a coup?

While coups do not have a single definition, researchers who study them – like ourselves – agree on the key attributes of what academics call a “coup event.”

Coup experts Jonathan Powell and Clayton Thyne define a coup d’etat as “an overt attempt by the military or other elites within the state apparatus to unseat the sitting head of state using unconstitutional means.”

The U.S. didn’t have a coup, but this Trump-encouraged insurrection is likely to send the country down a politically and socially turbulent road

Essentially, three parameters are used to judge whether an insurrection is a coup event:

1) Are the perpetrators agents of the state, such as military officials or rogue governmental officials?

2) Is the target of the insurrection the chief executive of the government?

3) Do the plotters use illegal and unconstitutional methods to seize executive power?

 

Coups and coup attempts

A successful coup occurred in Egypt on July 3, 2013, when army chief Abdel Fattah al-Sisi forcefully removed the country’s unpopular president, Mohamed Morsi. Morsi, Egypt’s first democratically elected leader, had recently overseen the writing of a new constitution. Al-Sisi suspended that, too. This qualifies as a coup because al-Sisi seized power illegally and introduced his own rule of law in the ashes of the elected government.

Coups don’t always succeed in overthrowing the government.

In 2016, members of the Turkish military attempted to remove Turkey’s strongman president, Reçep Erdogan, from power. Soldiers seized key areas in Ankara, the capital, and Istanbul, including the Bosphorus Bridge and two airports. But the coup lacked coordination and widespread support, and it failed quickly after President Erdogan called on his supporters to confront the plotters. Erdogan remains in power today.

 

What happened at the US Capitol?

The uprising at the Capitol building does not meet all three criteria of a coup.

Trump’s rioting supporters targeted a branch of executive authority – Congress – and they did so illegally, through trespassing and property destruction. Categories #2 and #3, check.

As for category #1, the rioters appeared to be civilians operating of their own volition, not state actors. President Trump did incite his followers to march on the Capitol building less than an hour before the crowd invaded the grounds, insisting the election had been stolen and saying “We will not take it anymore.” This comes after months of spreading unfounded electoral lies and conspiracies that created a perception of government malfeasance in the mind of many Trump supporters.

Whether the president’s motivation in inflaming the anger of his supporters was to assault Congress is not clear, and he tepidly told them to go home as the violence escalated. For now it seems the riot in Washington, D.C., was enacted without the approval, aid or active leadership of government actors like the military, police or sympathetic GOP officials.

American political elites are hardly blameless, though.

By spreading conspiracy theories about election fraud, numerous Republican senators, including Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz, created the conditions for political violence in the United States, and specifically electoral-related violence.

Academics have documented that contentious political rhetoric fuels the risk of election-related violence. Elections are high-stakes; they represent a transfer of political power. When government officials demean and discredit democratic institutions as a simmering political conflict is underway, contested elections can trigger political violence and mob rule.

 

So what did happen?

The shocking events of Jan. 6 were political violence of the sort that too often mars elections in young or unstable democracies.

Bangladeshi elections suffer from perennial mob violence and political insurrections due to years of government violence and opposition anger. Its 2015 and 2018 elections looked more like war zones than democratic transitions.

In Cameroon, armed dissidents perpetrated violence in the 2020 election, targeting government buildings, opposition figures and innocent bystanders alike. Their aim was to delegitimize the vote in response to sectarian violence and government overreach.

The United States’ electoral violence differs in cause and context from that seen in Bangladesh and Cameroon, but the action was similar. The U.S. didn’t have a coup, but this Trump-encouraged insurrection is likely to send the country down a politically and socially turbulent road.

 

Clayton Besaw, Research Affiliate and Senior Analyst, University of Central Florida and Matthew Frank, Master’s student, International Security, University of Denver

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

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People walking in public space with medical masks on to protect themselves from coronavirus infection. Credit: iStock / DragonImages

By Sudip Ranjan Basu
BANGKOK, Thailand, Jan 7 2021 (IPS)

As the people of Kiribati, Samoa and Tonga gear up as the first nations to welcome 2021, communities around the Asia-Pacific region and beyond look forward to bidding farewell to the most tumultuous year in recent decades.

2020 brought unparalleled human suffering that continued to devastatingly impact on the daily lives of people across all corners of the region. With the emergency authorization and distribution of COVID-19 vaccines, people are hoping for a ‘new normal’ recovery from the summer of 2021 onwards.

Sudip Ranjan Basu

Yet, over the past year, the health crisis has produced a synchronized economic downturn that resulted in technical recession episodes in the majority of countries, along with heightened vulnerability of the most marginalized groups.

Commentators and experts are making every effort to better diagnose the underlying symptoms and root causes of fault lines in our societies, which are leading to widespread discrimination, distress and destitution. Simply put, economic growth paradigms and development models, strategic policymaking guidelines and prioritization of implementation roadmaps are all at a variety of inflection points.

Faced with multiple challenges and uncertainties, policymakers are consulting and learning from past policy experiences that could provide practical guidance to the art of policymaking, especially in times of multifaceted crises. Not surprisingly, policymaking continues to remain the crucial tool in building resilience in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Enlarging people’s choices

Since the early days of the Keynesian revolution in the 1930s, decision-making has emphasized the importance of the equilibrium values of output and employment through well-coordinated and sequenced policies. However, the differential outcomes in GDP growth and other development yardsticks, including health and education have led to the concept of going beyond GDP, with a broader and deeper focus on socio-economic well-being, quality of life, and standard of living dimensions.

In the post-second world war rebuilding era, the inadequacy of a trickle-down approach shifted the focus on poverty alleviation, along with non-economic factors such as governance, decentralization, and trans-boundary cooperation, when economic globalization flourished. In fact, through the development decades of the 1960s to the 1990s, policymaking focused on enlarging people’s choices and capabilities, not only on the expansion of income and wealth.

Rediscovering development vision

In the 2000 autumn gathering at the UN Headquarters in New York, world leaders established the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), a set of clear time-bound objectives to achieve eight goals, and commit to substantial reductions in income poverty and other human development benchmarks through sustained economic growth by 2015.

From 2000 to 2015, the Asia-Pacific region made remarkable progress to reduce extreme poverty and other development gaps through calibrated policies to bolster trade openness and regional value chains; industry and technology-led structural transformation; policy coordination on regional public goods, and institution-driven subregional partnerships. Although communities were significantly impacted by the Great Recession of 2007/2008 and the Asian Financial Crisis of 1997/1998.

Additionally, in this period of great convergence, policymaking focused on translating productive investment into building skills development in developing and least developed countries, pushing the envelope of ‘policy space’ in the broader context of trade and finance-technology interlinkages with human development. The shifting of the development paradigm underscored the importance of a robust and conducive international development framework, including expanding opportunities for South-South cooperation. Yet, the MDGs needed another push towards more sustainable development for all.

Integrating sustainability

In a landmark gathering of world leaders in September 2015 at the UN, the adoption of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development offered a new lease of life to an integrated approach to development thinking – synergizing the social, economic and environmental pillars of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) for transforming our world.

This formulation of ideas helped drive development practice and encouraged forward-looking policymaking to address new and emerging challenges and opportunities across beliefs, ideologies and institutional foundations.

Though at the regional level—a variety of development outcomes stimulated public discourse on diversity, trust and governance—progress towards the SDGs has remained largely uneven. It is, however, not hard to argue that the 2030 Agenda has inspired inclusive development to intersect with structural transformation, and accelerated energy transition and technology-driven industrialization to offer lasting solutions to the growing climate emergencies.

Building back better

Today, over 4.6 billion people of the Asia-Pacific region are confronting hardship and hindrance due to the COVID-19 pandemic. There are good reasons to believe that the weak health care systems, lack of social protection mechanisms, growing number of informal sector workers, limited diversification, and increased threats of climate change are opening up possibilities of a multi-speed recovery outlook in 2021 and beyond.

As communities gather steam to building back better, governments are recognizing the vital role of reimagining public policymaking to fit within the principle of value-based cooperation and multilateralism. Raising the ambitions of SDGs-centred policymaking is poised to define success in the next Decade of Action for all.

Sudip Ranjan Basu is Programme Officer (Partnerships), Office of the Executive Secretary, United Nations Economic ans Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP)

 

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A lockdown closer home. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres walking the empty corridors of the UN Secretariat building in New York in 2020. Credit: United Nations

By Darini Rajasingham-Senanayake
COLOMBO, Sri Lanka, Jan 7 2021 (IPS)

The currently available Covid-19 vaccines have been authorized for ‘emergency use ‘in Europe and North America. This is due to an apparent spike in Covid-19 flu cases in the northern hemisphere as winter advances. Highly advertised vaccines are being produced and rolled out at ‘warped speed’ by powerful pharmaceutical and bio-technology companies headquartered in Euro-America although their efficacy including how long their immunity lasts is not clear.

Global media and news channels like Al Jazeera, BBC, CNN and India’s NDTV have been marketing vaccines to the world with images of Prime Ministers, Vice President elects, and a Crown Prince in the Middle East taking the jab live on television– seemingly to encourage vaccine skeptics. Vaccine nationalism is growing with is intense competition among Pharmaceutical Corporations and countries that manufacture vaccines and their local partners.

However, the country-specific quantitative and qualitative data now available for many hot and humid tropical South East Asian and African countries for the year 2020, indicate that there is NO Covid-19 emergency in a vast majority of countries in the Global South, and hence little need to rush to buy vaccines.

In Laos, Cambodia, Thailand, Vietnam, Sri Lanka and Tanzania there is a very low incidence of Covid-19 mortality when compared to average annual rates of influenza related deaths.1 In Cambodia and Laos there was not a single Covid-19 death in 2020, while Vietnam had 34 deaths and Thailand a country of 70 million there were 26 deaths due to the virus in the year 2020 according to the Johns Hopkins University official Covid-19 Data base.

Nor have doctors, nurses, PHIs, frontline health workers in quarantine centers lost lives in these Southeast Asian countries, indicating low severity of the disease when compared to Euro-America where lockdowns and curfews did not limit high mortality rates. Nor have industrial, manufacturing or agriculture sector workers died in numbers due to Covid-19 in Southeast Asian countries. Nor were hospitals and intensive care units (ICU), overwhelmed in these countries, where there have been fewer patients in hospitals in 2020 than previous years.

While the Covid-19 virus has spread to all parts of the Global South, it clearly has far less traction in tropical countries than in the so-called ‘first world’ (Euro-America): In Sri Lanka, a country of 22 million there were 204 Covid-19 comorbidities deaths recorded with 35,300 Covid-19 positive tests, although in a normal year between 4,000 and 6000 people die of influenza co-morbidities

The luxury 14 floor Asiri Central Hospital in the capital Colombo was closed for weeks during the first Covid-19 lockdown. In India according to WHO data published in 2018, Influenza and Pneumonia Deaths reached 616,531 or 6.99% of total deaths, while lung Disease Deaths were 819,570 or 9.30% of total deaths in 2018, but there were fewer than 150,000 Covid-19 deaths in India in 2020. 2

Given significant differences in health infrastructure between tropical countries in Global South and Euro-America, the 2020 qualitative and quantitative data clearly shows that Covid-19 is mild in the Global South, since the ‘metric that matters’ to determine the severity of an illness and make effective, targeted policy, national policy is the infection fatality rate (IFC).

However, economically, socially and politically devastating curfews, lockdowns and isolation policies were introduced in these tropical countries on the ‘advice’ of the WHO, resulting in fear, isolation, stigmatization of patients living in crowded and poor neighborhoods, and increasing poverty and inequality.

Many low income and poor countries fell into bigger debt traps and Governments were urged to sell off strategic assets while giving ‘tax relief’ to various international corporations, investors and airlines.

Low Severity of virus but a deadly policy response

The relatively low severity of Covid-19 flu in tropical Asian and African countries compared to Euro-America where the disease is severe is arguably due to several interrelated, region and country-specific contextual factors such as year round hot and humid tropical weather (above 20 degrees Celsius), that degrades the virus and its transmission; more or less universal BCG vaccination that confers innate and trained immunity against respiratory illnesses in tropical countries; national health infrastructure including BCG monitoring; and local diet and food habits.

In the temperate regions of the industrialized world, larger volumes of processed food are consumed and non-communicable diseases that constitute the co-morbidities profile for Covid-19 are more widespread than in tropical countries, especially those where rice is a staple food.

The WHO appears to have used questionable epidemiology models, metrics and as several scientists have showed flawed PCR tests that inflate the numbers and create fear psychosis while recommending lockdown in countries in the Global South rather than use country-specific data and the tried and tested Infection Fatality Rate (IFR). The WHO’s Covid-19 global pandemic narrative has been crafted on the Case Fatality Rate (CFR), rather than the IFR which is much less by orders of magnitude as the authors of the Great Barrington Declaration note.

Treat Covid 19 like a health issue and not a disaster, wrote Jay Battacharya and Sanjiv Agarwal, in July 2020. 3 Many international scientists have exposed the fact that high numbers of false positive PCR tests account for high rates of supposedly asymptomatic cases and question the Covid-19 data presented by the WHO and the Johns Hopkins University (JHU) data base.

In India highly flawed PCR tests gave up to 80 per cent false positives and a community survey was abandoned 4 Sri Lanka and many other impoverished countries in the South have been locked down and economically devastated based on false positive tests and a global media narrative that exaggerated the number of Covid-19 cases. This is in a nutshell is the Covid-19 scam.

‘Test, test and trace’ using flawed tests has been the mantra for a global policy of economically, socially and politically devastating lockdowns and isolation, implemented by government and military in many countries. However, these policies were not based on country specific, quantitative and qualitative Covid-19 data analysis and were counter-productive to the mental and physical health and well-being of the population.

In many countries in Southeast Asia, constantly shifting announcements of Covid-19 cases without context or comparison with new lockdowns keeps up the fear psychosis, confuses workers who worry about their and their family’s safety if they return to work. Constant uncertainty and unavailability of public transport has devastated economies, social and political activity, while distracting from analysis of the relevant data.

Hunger Virus: The deadly policy response in the Global South

It is not Covid-19 virus, but the Covid-19 infodemic, as well as, WHO-led international policy that has triggered a deep economic, social and political crisis in the Global South at this time. The call for lockdowns, curfews and stoppage of public transport systems, often implemented by militaries based on the “Global pandemic” narrative and infodemic of Covid-19 infection figures form the John’s Hopkins University data base with contradictory messages resulted in creation of Covid-19 fear psychosis and anxiety in many tropical countries where the Corona virus is mild. As a result, millions have not been able to go to work and have lost jobs and livelihoods in countries like Sri Lanka and Thailand.

As OXFAM’s ’Hunger Virus” Report noted: COVID-19 is deepening the hunger crisis in the world’s hunger hotspots and creating new epicentres of hunger across the globe. By the end of the year 12,000 people per day could die from hunger linked to COVID-19, potentially more than will die from the disease itself.

The pandemic is the final straw for millions of people already struggling with the impacts of conflict, climate change, inequality and a broken food system that has impoverished millions of food producers and workers.

The Covid-19 narrative and WHO led global policy response has increased poverty and inequality across the world and widened disparities between the Global South and north, while eroding democratic space and practices, and militarizing public life and health systems: In Sri Lanka a punishing military curfew with just 4-hours prior notice was imposed in March 2020, after which the WHO head, Tederos, called the President of Sri Lanka to congratulate him. This same policy was implemented in India a few weeks later in India, where millions of migrant workers lost jobs and many died walking hundreds of miles to get home.

Meanwhile, as OXFAM noted “those at the top are continuing to make profits: eight of the biggest food and drink companies paid out over $18 billion to shareholders since January even as the pandemic was spreading across the globe – ten times more than has been requested in the UN COVID-19 appeal to stop people going hungry.” 56 new billionaires were created in 2020.

Covid-19 reveals a deep crisis in the International Aid and Governance System

Economically, socially and politically devastating lockdowns in 2020 have wiped out development and poverty reduction gains in some of the poorest countries in the world where Covid-19 is demonstrably milder than seasonal flu. Meanwhile, all the plastic and sanitary sprays and disposable masks further contribute to the global plastic garbage and toxicity environmental crisis.

Fundamental questions arise about the integrity of data, analysis and policy “advice’ provided by WHO, the John’s Hopkins University Covid-19 Global Data base and other UN agencies. It is increasingly apparent that many of the WHO’s recommendations and policy response on Covid-19 has marginalized data, perspectives and voices from the Global South.

As Debapriya Bhattacharya and Sara Khan noted in a recent paper: “the narrative on the post-COVID world seems to be once again characterised by the usual dearth of inputs from the global South. “Even though it has been accepted time and again that actors from the Global South will be critical in shaping the emerging international development landscape, gatekeepers are yet to come out of their comfort zones and make credible space for more Southern perspectives and initiatives. The current discourse continues to have a top-down view of issues that demand more local level contextualisation and substantiation…”. 5

The international development policy response to Covid-19 in the global south has exposed a deep crisis in the UN led international Development Aid system dominated by OECD DAC countries and continuing structures of colonial domination in the UN system. The deliberately hyped “global pandemic” media narrative coupled with the WHO’s and JHU’s daily ‘infodemic’ of Covid-19 numbers of infections, has distracted from the metrics that matter to determine the severity of a disease in a particular county.

Science has been turned on its head, as Scientific Principles like regional Context and Comparison, and country-specific data analysis are important for evidence-based policy making, seem to have been be dis-regarded amidst the JHU infodmeic, enabling hi-jacking of national and local level policy processes in countries in the Global South, by so-called international development agencies and related Corporate actors and interest. The quarantining of healthy people in counties where data shows that there is no Covid-19 health emergency is counter to science and common sense!

Low Covid-19 rates and vaccine Colonialism: BCG versus mRNA

The WHO has promised to provide 20 percent of vaccines free to the Government of Sri Lanka, but questions are now being raised as to why national health authorities in many Southeast Asian and African countries where there is NO Covid-19 health emergency, are being urged by the WHO and UNICEF, with the World Bank and Asian Development Bank (ADB), providing loans to buy vaccines at this time, especially when it is claimed that there may not be sufficient doses for populations in North America and Europe where there appears to be a Covid-19 emergency?

As these vaccines have not gone through an adequate trials process and their long term impacts on populations in the Global South (where the health and nutrition statuses of people are different than in the northern hemisphere), are unknown, would it not be prudent for governments in countries where the 2020 data shows that there is no Covid-19 health emergency to await non-emergency authorization of use of these vaccines? Moreover, would not the WB and ADB loans be better spent to build back livelihoods lost due to Covid-19 curfews and lockdown policy?

On average, it takes over 5 to 10 years to systematically trial vaccines. The ultra-costly Pfizer and Biontech and Moderna mRNA vaccines, that use brand new, never before used technology, were the first to be authorized in the UK and US. The WHO’s subsequent first authorization of the Pfizer vaccine for use throughout the world has conferred ‘first mover advantage” or strong brand recognition and product loyalty on the US Govt. allied Pfizer Pharmaceutical company before other cheaper vaccine come to the market.

However, there are questions about these mRNA vaccines and suggestions that the anti-bodies they trigger may last less than 10 months, while a US nurse tested Covid-19 positive after receiving a vaccine, and another nurse in Portugal died a week after taking the vaccine.

At the beginning of the Covid-19 epidemic in Euro-America in March 2020, the WHO, contrary to many scientific studies denied outright the hypothesis that the 100-year-old BCG vaccine may be protecting populations in tropical countries with universal BCG vaccination where there were low rates of Covid-19 infections and death.

This despite the fact that numerous studies had shown that the COST-EFFECTIVE tried and tested Bacillus Calmette-Guerin (BCG), may be useful against Covid-19 as a bridging vaccine as it protects against a broad range of respiratory tract illness in many parts of the Global South. Early BCG trials for Covid-19 adaptation seem to have disappeared from radar screens to be trumped by mRNA vaccines, as WHO contrary to many scientists had affirmed that there was ‘no evidence’ the BCG could fight Covid-19?

Are we not seeing what Naomi Klein termed “Disaster Capitalism” in her book titled “The Shock Doctrine” unfolding in Real Time? Klein uses the terms to describe the “brutal tactic of using the public’s fear and disorientation following a collective shock, be it, bio-terrorism, war, coups, market crashes or natural disasters to push through radical pro-corporate measures often called “shock therapy”. Thus, by accident or design, a disaster occurs and then the “humanitarian” business solution or cure is provided, as a total solution and complete business and profit cycle.

The WHO’s Covid-19 vaccine authorization process may reveal its cozy relationship with some big Pharmaceutical companies like Pfizer that are also backed by vaccine Czar, Microsoft’s Bill Gates. Gates Foundation is now WHO’s second largest funder, after China, since Donald Trump withdrew US funding from WHO. Gates is also promoting a shift to the digital economy and surveillance that enable gaming data analytics the world over — in competition with China’s Huawei.

The WHO-led Covid-19 policy response reveals a deep crisis in the UN and International “Aid” system that is increasingly captive to Corporate interests and great power rivalry. This issue is not new as a Transparency International’s British Branch Report has noted some years ago: “Within the health sector, pharmaceuticals stands out as sub-sector that is particularly prone to corruption.”

“There are abundant examples globally that display how corruption in the pharmaceutical sector endangers positive health outcomes. Whether it is a pharmaceutical company bribing a doctor for prescribing its medicines irrespective of a health need or a government employee facilitating the infiltration of substandard medicines into the distribution system, public resources can be wasted and patient health put at risk.”

Finally, it is highly likely that in many Tropical Asian countries may have achieved a degree of ‘herd immunity’ as the flu season at the end of 2019 had all the signs of Covid-19, also given high levels of travel and tourism to and from China in the region, but since there is no systematic anti-body testing, we do not know if this is the case.

Rather than buying vaccines it would be appropriate to conduct anti-body tests to assess how many in the population have immunities and if herd immunity has been achieved as the country-level data and statistics seem to indicate. Those who would like a vaccine may take a BCG booster.

1 Source: https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/#countries and also Johns Hopkins University CSSE COVID-19 Country-specific Data.
2 https://www.worldlifeexpectancy.com/india-lung-disease
3 https://theprint.in/health/lift-lockdowns-protect-the-vulnerable-treat-covid-like-a-health-issue-and-not-a-disaster/466786/
4 The COVID-19 RT-PCR Test: How to Mislead All Humanity. Using a “Test” To Lock Down Society by Dr. Pascal Sacre https://www.globalresearch.ca/covid-19-rt-pcr-how-to-mislead-all-humanity-using-a-test-to-lock-down-society/5728483
5 COVID-19: A game changer for the Global South and international co-operation? https://oecd-development-matters.org/2020/09/02/covid-19-a-game-changer-for-the-global-south-and-international-co-operation/

 

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The post If Covid-19 is Primarily a ‘First World’ Virus, Why is the Global South in Lockdown? appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Dr. Darini Rajasingham-Senanayake is a Social and Medical Anthropologist, at the International Center for Ethnic Studies, based in Colombo. Sri Lanka.

The post If Covid-19 is Primarily a ‘First World’ Virus, Why is the Global South in Lockdown? appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Patients arrive at a health centre in Gaza. Credit: UNRWA

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Jan 7 2021 (IPS)

If the coronavirus is not deemed a biological weapon, is the heavily-publicized Covid-19 vaccine in danger of being weaponized when over 159,000 Palestinians who have tested positive in Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT) are being denied treatment during a deadly pandemic?

The London-based human rights organization Amnesty International (AI) says Israel’s vaccine roll-out plan excludes the nearly 5 million Palestinians who live in the West Bank and Gaza Strip under Israeli military occupation.

Since the beginning of the pandemic last March, nearly 1,600 Palestinians in the OPT have died of the virus.

AI says the Israeli government must stop ignoring its international obligations as an occupying power and immediately act to ensure that COVID-19 vaccines are equally and fairly provided to Palestinians living under its occupation in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip,

Saleh Higazi, AI’s Deputy Regional Director for the Middle East and North Africa points out that Israel’s COVID-19 vaccine programme highlights the institutionalized discrimination that defines the Israeli government’s policy towards Palestinians.

“While Israel celebrates a record-setting vaccination drive, millions of Palestinians living under Israeli control in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip will receive no vaccine or have to wait much longer – there could hardly be a better illustration of how Israeli lives are valued above Palestinian ones.”

Dr Ramzy Baroud, a journalist and Editor of The Palestine Chronicle, told IPS Israel’s exclusion of the occupied Palestinian people from having access to vaccines is entirely consistent with Israel’s trajectory of racism, where Palestinians are exploited for their land, water and cheap labor, while never factoring in as an item on Israel’s list of priorities, even during the time of a deadly pandemic.

“Frequently we speak of Israel’s apartheid, often illustrating that in terms of giant walls, fences and military checkpoints that cage in Palestinians. But in Israel, apartheid runs much deeper as it reaches almost every facet of society where Israeli Jews, including settlers, are treated far better than Palestinians, whether those living in Israel or in the occupied territories,” he pointed out.

“Excluding Palestinians from a vaccine that is necessary to save the lives of thousands is part of protracted and systemic Israeli apartheid and racial discrimination”, said Baroud, a Non-resident Senior Research Fellow at the Center for Islam and Global Affairs (CIGA) and also at the Afro-Middle East Center (AMEC).

As of 3 January 2021, according to the World Health Organization (WHO), 159,034 Palestinians in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT), including East Jerusalem, have so far tested positive for coronavirus since the first confirmed case was reported in March 2020.

As the Palestinian authorities in the West Bank and de facto Hamas administration in the Gaza Strip cannot independently fund vaccines and their distribution among the Palestinian population, they depend on global co-operation mechanisms such as COVAX, which still has not begun distributing vaccines, said Amnesty International.

“Israel must provide full financial support to ensure that the vaccine is promptly distributed to the Palestinian population without discrimination. Israel must also lift the blockade on the Gaza Strip to enable the proper functioning of its health system in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic”.

Gaza’s health care system –- subjected to half a century of occupation and more than a decade of blockade -– is already unable to meet the needs of its population. The COVID-19 pandemic and lack of fair access to vaccines have only magnified the discrimination and inequality faced by the Palestinian population, said Amnesty International.

Meanwhile, 10 human rights and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) are urging the Israeli authorities to live up to their legal obligations and ensure that quality vaccines be provided to Palestinians living under Israeli occupation and control in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip as well.

The 10 organizations include Adalah – The Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel, Al Mezan Center for Human Rights, Amnesty International Israel, B’Tselem – the Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories, Gisha – Legal Center for Freedom of Movement, Lawyers for Palestinian Human Rights, Medical Human Rights Network IFHHRO, MEDACT, Physicians for Human Rights, Israel and the Palestinian Center for Human Rights.

Dr Baroud said even before the vaccines arrived in Israel, Tel Aviv has greatly mishandled the crisis from the onset.

In the West Bank, Israeli soldiers repeatedly demolished Palestinian makeshift clinics, which aimed at testing people for COVID-19, confiscated equipment and restricted movement essential to making testing kits available to hard-hit areas, he added.

In Gaza, which has been under Israeli siege for many years, he noted, the problem was much more severe, as the population of two million people had to cope with the ravages of the disease without any tools to test for the virus, let alone to contain it.

“While Israel’s behavior is expected, it is also self-defeating, as Israelis and Palestinians are constantly in contact through the military occupation, the prison system and other forms of such repugnant interactions”.

There can be no containing the pandemic in Israel if it continues to spread in Palestine. The Coronavirus doesn’t respect Israel’s matrix of control, of walls, checkpoints and the likes, said Dr Baroud, author of five books, including “These Chains Will Be Broken: Palestinian Stories of Struggle and Defiance in Israeli Prisons” (Clarity Press). www.ramzybaroud.net

“The views of marginalized groups must be at the forefront of any decision-making to ensure that national vaccine policies aren’t exclusionary or discriminatory. All states must confront existing inequalities to ensure everyone has access to vaccines,” said AI’s Higazi.

In early December, Israel reached an agreement with Pfizer pharmaceutical company to supply 8 million doses of its newly approved COVID-19 vaccine – enough to cover almost half of Israel’s population of nearly 9 million since each person requires two doses.

Israel also reached a separate agreement with Moderna to buy 6 million doses of its vaccine – enough for another 3 million Israelis, according to AI.

As the race to distribute COVID-19 vaccines gathers pace, Amnesty International calls on states and companies to ensure that no one is denied access to health care, including vaccines, because of where they live, who they are or what they earn.

 

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The post Is the COVID-19 Vaccine a Potential Biological Weapon in Reverse? appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Meanwhile,” the COVID-19 pandemic has worsened the already dire humanitarian and socio-economic situation” Secretary-General António Guterres said at a meeting online last November, marking the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People.

The post Is the COVID-19 Vaccine a Potential Biological Weapon in Reverse? appeared first on Inter Press Service.

By Jan Lundius
STOCKHOLM / ROME, Jan 6 2021 (IPS)

 

Oh, Lord won’t you buy me a Mercedes Benz.
My friends all drive Porsches, I must make amends.
Worked hard all my lifetime, no help from my friends.
So, oh Lord, won’t you buy me a Mercedes Benz.
                                             Janis Joplin, 1970

COVID-19 has made several of us aware of the frailty of our bodies, the certainty of death and how valuable health, companionship and compassion are. Such insights are not uncommon in poor societies where a person’s main and perhaps only asset is her/his body and what s/he is able to do with her/his hands. However, wealthy and privileged people are surrounded by, dependent on, and even integrated with an ever more sophisticated technology, which increasingly, for better or worse, is separating us from what human existence has been for thousands of years.

James Dean accident.

Once technology has made its entry into the human sphere; from fire and wheels, to printing presses, trains, radio, aircraft, TV, the Intranet, sophisticated weaponry and … cars, everyone’s life, even unprivileged ones, has changed to an extent that it is difficult to fathom. For example, cars were invented as an effective and comfortable means of transport, but they soon became so much more.

Our cities, the entire landscape, has utterly been changed to accommodate motor vehicles. An ongoing change that has been far from accomplished. I have been stuck in endless traffic jams in places as different as Kinshasa and Bangkok. Traveling by car through Europe has become a nightmare with hordes of enormous trucks clogging traffic everywhere and menacing lives and limbs of other road users, whose lives already are at risk by the behaviour of reckless drivers. Each year approximately 1.35 million people are killed on roadways around the world, meaning that each day more than 3,700 people are killed in clashes involving cars, buses, motorcycles, bicycles and trucks. Traffic accidents are currently the leading cause of death for children and young people 5–29 years of age. Not counting the millions of persons becoming seriously maimed for life.

Motor vehicles fill the atmosphere with smog, carbon monoxide, and other toxins, something that on top of the damage wrecked to the entire biosphere is especially troubling since this poisonous air leave tailpipes at street level, where humans and animals breathe the polluted air directly into their lungs.

Don’t get me wrong – I own a car and it has given me an unprecedented freedom and brought me to places and experiences I would neither had the time, nor the possibility to reach without my car. Nevertheless, advancing age and the COVID-19 pandemic, which I assume is to a great extent caused by our manipulated natural environment and advanced communication means, have made me think of how amazingly fast, mind changing and even dangerous technological change has become.

In my youth, a telephone was a device with a round number dial, which through landlines was hooked up to switchboards. An interurban call could be both cumbersome and expensive. Nowadays a telephone combines cellular and mobile computing into one, small unit that takes photos, shows the person you are talking to, stores and provides a wealth of information, tells you were you find yourself and within a second, and at a low cost, connects you with people anywhere in the world. How could I even dream about this in the 1990s when I first encountered a mobile phone?

It all started 1957, when an Egyptian engineer named Mohamed Atalla proposed a metal-oxide-semiconductor (MOS) process, based on the use of silicon. In 1983, the first commercially available handheld mobile phone was introduced and in 2014, worldwide mobile phone subscriptions had grown to over seven billion; enough to provide one for every person on Earth. In 2019, the majority of smartphones released have more than one camera, are waterproof and unlock using facial recognition, or fingerprint scanners. I own a much simpler device, but it has become an integrated part of my life. Friends and family become upset if I don’t carry it with me.

The car took longer time to become what it is now, approximately a hundred years. However, like the smart phone it has in many parts of the wold become an integrated part of an individual’s life and personality. When I more than twenty years ago visited a relative in Miami I found there were no sidewalks and how I during my morning strolls felt how her neighbours suspiciously watched me, brooding behind their curtains, or while mowing their implacable lawns. A pedestrian! It must be a shady character, even if he is reasonably well-dressed.

A friend of mine living in the USA once told me he was going to invest his hard-earned money in a new, luxurious car, even if he actually could not afford one. When I asked why he made such a stupid investment, he replied: “I have to be able to look my children straight into their eyes. I do not want them to be ashamed of having a loser as a dad. A bastard who cannot even afford a proper car.”

There is no way of avoiding the fact that the car has become part of “Western mentality”. Pixar Animation Studios have made highly successful films, Cars 1, 2 and 3, about humanized motor vehicles, and horror book writer Stephen King has written several captivating novels about demon cars possessing their owners. The UK author J.G. Ballard wrote a disgusting novel, Crash, about symphorophilia, a form of pathological car-crash fetishism where humans and cars intermingle in an inseparable manner.

A comfortable, beautiful car may envelop us in soothing comfort and impart a sense of well-being and confidence, as in Bruce Springsteen’s Pink Cadillac:

I love you for your pink Cadillac.
Crushed velvet seats.
Riding in the back,
Oozing down the street.
Waving to the girls,
Feeling out of sight.
Spending all my money
On a Saturday night.

Quite a number of American songs pay homage to the freedom of Open Higways, rides into the wilderness and freedom of the unknown. However, this does not prevent such rides from being journeys mixed up with anxiety, and perhaps even fear. Springsteen again – Stolen car:

And I’m driving a stolen car
On a pitch black night.
And I’m telling myself I’m gonna be alright
But I ride by night and I travel in fear
That in this darkness I will disappear.

Accordingly, cars have for many become incarnations of more or less hidden desires, as well as part of their personality. The main technological surrogate and an easy manner for obtaining life-affirming adrenaline rushes and endorphin kicks might still be car driving, preferably in luxury vehicles and at a high speed. A pleasure that for commercial reasons often has become associated with sex. Advertisements and popular culture tell us that luxury vehicles attract sexual partners and enhance our personal prestige.

In 2019, almost 92 million motor vehicles were produced worldwide, with China, Japan, and Germany as the largest producers of private cars and commercial vehicles. An estimated 1.4 billion cars and trucks are currently moving on the roads of the world, every year consuming more than a thousand billion litres of fossil fuel.

However, a paradigm shift might lie ahead. Self-driving and electrical cars will with all probability take over the roads and consumers may be inclined to chose more environmentally friendly means of transportation than expensive and prestigious luxury cars. European car manufacturers have discerned a trend among young consumers indicating that several of them like to purchase small, eco-friendly vehicles, or prefer to use common means of transport instead of owning a car of their own.

However, this does not mean that humanity will be liberated from its possibly fatal dependence on technology. In order to survive we have to be aware of the dangers this mentality implicates for the survival of our biosphere and thus human life. If we had been better intellectually equipped, more morally oriented, we might have been able to use our sophisticated technology for better purposes. Now it seems to threaten us instead, as though we were stuck in a car while traveling at high speed towards a final accident, a crash. A dangerous and incomprehensible world.

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

 

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The post Is High Tech a Danger to Humanity? appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Women producing facemasks in Ghana. Credit: World Bank

By Angela Lusigi
Jan 6 2021 (IPS)

On 1st January 2021, trading under the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) Agreement commenced after months of delays caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.

The AfCFTA aims to bring together 1.3 billion people in a $3.4 trillion economic bloc, making it the largest free trade area since the establishment of the World Trade Organization. Ghana is hosting the AfCFTA Secretariat in its capital city, Accra.

A pathway to achieving development goals

If African countries enhance competitiveness through trade and create more efficient regional value chains and labour markets, as envisaged in the AfCFTA Agreement, they would increase momentum towards implementing the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. Poverty and inequality would be greatly reduced through sustainable structural transformation that prioritizes reaching those farthest behind.

In addition, the expansion of choices and capabilities for women and youth through intra-Africa trade and interconnectivity would help to achieve several goals under the Agenda 2063 of the African Union, including Goal 4 on transformed economies through sustainable and inclusive economic growth, Goal 17 on full gender equality in all spheres of life and Goal 18 on engaged and empowered youth and children.

The AfCFTA as a driver of structural transformation and job creation

The AfCFTA could transform Africa’s economic landscape and create productive opportunities. The potential increase in manufacturing jobs, commercial enterprises and agribusinesses could change the lives of millions of women and youth who often face higher levels of unemployment and are overrepresented in vulnerable jobs.

According to the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (ECA), the AfCFTA could become the largest regional free trade zone in the world, with a combined business and consumer spending of US$6.7 trillion by 2030.

The Commission also estimates that intra-African trade would increase by 15 to 25 percent, or US$50 billion to US$70 billion, by 2040. The United Nations Conference on Trade and Development has estimated an increase of up to 33 percent.

The extreme vulnerability of women’s enterprises

The coronavirus disease (COVID-19) has disrupted the movement of goods, services and people, which has most impacted the poorest and most vulnerable. Workers and entrepreneurs in the informal sector, comprising 85.8 percent of Africa’s workforce, were particularly affected by social distancing and stay-at-home orders that saved lives but decimated livelihoods. In addition, 9 of 10 African working women are in the informal sector, and most are self-employed or contributing to a family business.

Strengthening women’s enterprises through stronger trade and value chains creates opportunities for wealth and empowerment that could lift millions out of poverty. These entrepreneurs are often engaged in services, agriculture and natural resource-based sectors, for which there is significant potential to increase productivity by enhancing skills, increasing investment and promoting innovation.

Women and youth in decision-making

Current estimates of intra-African trade undervalue the contribution of informal traders in border regions and small enterprises run primarily by women and youth. Estimates of intra-African trade are quite low—approximately 16 percent of imports and exports in 2018; however, between 50 and 60 percent of total intra-African trade is carried out by unregistered traders or firms. Women are the face of informal cross-border trade in Africa and account for up to 70 percent of informal cross-border traders.

Angela Lusigi, UNDP Resident Representative in Ghana

Workers and entrepreneurs in the informal sector, comprising 85.8 percent of Africa’s workforce, were particularly affected by social distancing and stay-at-home orders that saved lives but devastated livelihoods.

And yet, women traders and their organizations are often excluded from programmes and decision-making on trade issues. Furthermore, research shows that women are not reached by development interventions to facilitate trade, increase productivity and improve competitiveness in export-oriented sectors.

Many women traders and entrepreneurs do not have access to the information and training opportunities available through trade networks. Their voices and needs, particularly those of women in the informal sector, are absent in AfCFTA negotiations, policymaking and decision-making.

Prioritizing women and youth for prosperity for all

Only resilient, prosperous and sustainable livelihoods can withstand future crises in a post-COVID-19 world. More equitable access to the opportunities arising from the implementation of AfCFTA could create shared prosperity and reduce vulnerability to future shocks.

This includes increasing the participation of women and youth-led enterprises in agricultural and food trade, which is expected to increase by 20 to 35 percent (US$10 billion to US$17 billion).

These opportunities are not gender or scale neutral. Overlooking the specific challenges faced by women and youth in business may result in many being left behind. African women who work as informal traders often face harassment, violence, confiscation of goods and even imprisonment.

The operationalization of the AfCFTA and the development of institutional mechanisms and support infrastructure must be guided by their potential impact on women and youth, as well as the potential contributions these groups can make.

In order to leverage Africa’s rich human assets in the AfCFTA, the needs and priorities of women and youth must be reflected in the legal and technical frameworks currently being established. Including their voices will ensure more equitable and sustainable opportunities, which is critical to the effectiveness of the ongoing liberalization of the services trade.

This includes facilitating cross-border investment, protecting intellectual property rights, collaborating on customs and taxation, and implementing trade facilitation measures. In particular, innovative solutions and new technologies must be applied to offset the uneven distribution of benefits from liberalization, which stems from differences in resource availability and levels of industrialization.

Moving forward, women must drive the agenda

Women in business should be fully engaged in the implementation of the AfCFTA in order to improve the distribution of benefits and accelerate the Agreement’s impact on jobs, livelihoods and economies. Boosting productivity and closing the gap in resources between women and men in trade could change the trajectory of the AfCFTA, leading to faster implementation and shared prosperity.

Governments, regional institutions and trade associations and networks must take three bold policy actions to ensure that micro and small enterprises owned primarily by women and youth are not left behind.

First, Governments should support real citizen engagement in the design and implementation of legislation and the development of hard and soft infrastructure for the free movement of goods and services. They must promote advocacy, raise awareness and create space for consultations. This includes engaging with empowered and capable women’s business associations and networks.

Second, regional institutions should help countries to collect and share trade-related data that captures the informal sector. Realtime monitoring of the Agreement’s impacts on economic, social and environmental indicators is essential for compensating losers and convincing late adopters.

Mapping and connecting trade observatories across countries and employing digital technology could provide real-time, disaggregated data to aid in negotiations and dispute settlements, as well as promote transparency and accountability.

Third, more public and private partnerships are needed to support gender-sensitive financing and business development services. It is necessary to scale up and sustain investment in women’s enterprises and provide skills business development services in order to grow viable women’s businesses and value chains that transition from the informal sector and respond to opportunities emerging from the AfCFTA.

 

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Excerpt:

Angela Lusigi is, UNDP Resident Representative in Ghana

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Only a united Africa can defeat COVID-19. Credit: WHO

By Sam Otieno
NAIROBI, Kenya, Jan 5 2021 (IPS)

The ANTICOV COVID-19 clinical trial, aimed at identifying treatments that prevent mild cases from progressing to severe forms of the disease, is crucial to Africa, researchers say. The trial will investigate home-based treatments to help prevent local health systems from being overwhelmed.

Borna Nyaoke-Anoke, Senior Clinical Project Manager & Medical Manager for DNDi, says that the studies target mild and moderate cases of COVID-19 and are important to Africa because lower-income countries remain under-represented in COVID-19 studies. The vast majority of COVID-19 clinical trials are being conducted in Europe, the US, and East Asia – testing treatments in contexts with considerable access to equipment and trained staff.

Launched late last year, the coalition comprises clinical experts, policymakers, and others from institutions such as ministries of health, universities, not-for-profit development research and development organisations, donor agencies and international organisations.

The ANTICOV trial will treat patients with mild to moderate symptoms through home-based care across Africa. This will prevent congestion of healthcare facilities with patients with mild symptoms who do not require respiratory support or critical care management.

He adds it will also prevent progression of mild to moderate disease-preventing healthcare facilities from being overwhelmed.

Nyaoke-Anoke says that while all eyes are on vaccines as the panacea, vaccines alone won’t be enough to stop the pandemic. Treatments are just as crucial, especially as they could prevent transmission to household contacts of infected patients required to self-isolate – something that may not be possible in many African communities.

“We hope that conducting these studies locally will facilitate prompt adoption of new evidence into medical treatment guidelines, enabling faster access to new medical tools and the trust of affected communities,” Nyaoke-Anoke tells IPS.

Nyaoke-Anoke says that the ANTICOV study will mobilise a collaboration of African and global science and public health leaders to respond to the urgent unmet medical needs on the continent. It will provide much-needed answers to enable countries in Africa and beyond to adopt effective therapeutic strategies adapted to resource-constrained settings.

“ANTICOV clinical trial, which is currently being rolled out in 13 African countries, will test multiple COVID-19 early treatment options identifying treatments adapted to Africa’s specific needs,” says Nyaoke-Anoke.

Hence, it will position the continent as a critical player in providing quality data on effective therapeutics, immunology, and epidemiology of mild to moderate COVID-19 disease, invaluable to the ongoing pandemic.

Babatunde Salako, director-general of the Nigerian Institute of Medical Research, welcomed the development. It provides an opportunity for Africans and African researchers to be part of this crucial trial, yielding specific information for African patients in terms of treatment and disease progression.

Salako, in an interview with IPS, says that it creates an opportunity for the continent to be involved in clinical trial targeted at African populations when they are often left out of such large trials. Experience in clinical trials would be enriched through participation with the opportunity to form new networks and collaborators.

“African researchers will be contributing data and scientific information for global decision making concerning COVID-19 and may provide an opportunity for the world to examine the peculiarity of Africa’s response to COVID-19 infection and control,” says Salako.

Benjamin Kagina, senior research officer at the Vaccines for Africa Initiative, University of Cape Town, South Africa, says the clinical trials were a great initiative. The clinical trial would generate locally relevant evidence that can be used together with other promising interventions, such as vaccines, to mitigate the pandemic’s negative impacts.

He explained that collaborations were critical in strengthening research capacity in Africa. More importantly, the trial will generate context-specific data that can inform practices and policies in Africa.

“It will enhance research collaboration and networking among African researchers. This will advance medical research in the continent that addresses the needs of Africans,” says Kagina.

 

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By Trevor Page
LETHBRIDGE, Canada, Jan 5 2021 (IPS)

Most people around the world were glad to see the back of 2020: From the devastating bushfires in Australia to the plagues of locusts through East Africa stretching across Arabia to Pakistan, extreme weather, melting ice sheets at the poles, and Covid-19 that still engulfs the globe.

Trevor Page

But 2021 threatens to be even worse than 2020: The economic impact of lockdowns, inward-looking, wall-building governments with self-interest trumping internationally agreed values. And then to quote David Beasley, Executive Director of the World Food Programme: “We could be facing multiple famines of Biblical proportions” and “We’re on the Titanic and the iceberg is ahead”. He was referring, of course, to the world’s hotspots in Africa and Asia. But like the pandemic, we’re all in this together. No one is safe till everybody’s safe. We live in a totally interdependent world.

But how prepared is the world for the year ahead? Not very well, is the short answer. The change of the Administration in the U.S. will not close the gaping hole it has torn in world order. Despite a last-minute Brexit trade deal, Europe is still unravelling. Russia is no longer a major actor on the international stage. But China marches on relentlessly, implementing its traditionally long-term plans.

And what of the United Nations: the UN Charter to which nations subscribed after World War II to preserve peace, as well as the organizations they created to make the world a better place for all? Don’t expect any change from recent years in the Security Council, the UN’s principal organ to prevent war and armed conflict. Governments are preoccupied with domestic issues. 2021 is not the time they will want to see a shift in world order, nor start tackling the fundamental change required to bring that about.

On the humanitarian front, the Norwegian Nobel Committee seemed to be pushing the envelope in awarding its 2020 Peace Prize to the World Food Programme. For more than 50 years, WFP has been combatting global hunger. And it has certainly contributed to bettering conditions for peace in conflict areas. But to declare that it has it been acting as the “driving force in efforts to prevent the use of hunger as a weapon of war and conflict” is a bit of a stretch. Yes, it was the “driving force” in the 90s with Operation Lifeline Sudan, before South Sudan became independent. And it has been the “driving force” in Yemen since the outbreak of civil war in 2014. But what about the numerous other armed conflicts that are raging in Africa, Asia and Latin America?

And what about the other parts of the UN System that were established to deal directly with war and armed conflict, including its cause and effect: the Department of Political and Peacebuilding Affairs, the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights and the Office of the High Commissioner for Refugees? And then there’s the UN Special Rapporteurs and the army of Special Representatives of the Secretary General who are assigned to conflict countries to lead UN action. Well, nothing has happened to that part of the UN System to suggest that any significant change is on the horizon. But each conflict situation is different and so are the actors involved. Individuals are always the ones that can make a difference, so surprises are always possible.

What is largely misunderstood by the general public is that whatever the UN and its agencies are involved in, be it conflict resolution or famine relief, they are never fully in the driving seat. They’re the foot soldiers, given their marching orders by the member states. And for the work that they do, they’re funded by and are accountable to the member states. So, at a time when governments don’t want to shift the goalposts, major forward momentum by the UN System would not normally be in the cards.

But there are other significant forces at play here. First, in a growing number of countries, the general public are ahead of their governments. People do not want to see a child dying of starvation, no matter where that child is from. Public opinion can quickly be mobilized to cause cash-strapped donor governments to increase contributions to help deal with the effects of natural disasters in a stricken country. Second, the media play a vital role, not just in sensitizing the general public to the problem, but also in exposing overly stingy donor governments and inept aid organizations in addressing it adequately. Government representatives in developing countries are often reluctant to admit the seriousness of a natural disaster or the risk a civilian population face by armed conflict. A free press remains the world’s best watchdog.

Third, it’s disquieting that there seems to be a growing number of UN officials that are reluctant to speak up, and sound the alarm when danger signals appear. “Why are some such scaredy-cats?”, a colleague who just returned for a famine-struck area asked me recently? He knew exactly what he’d seen and what it meant for the population in the months ahead. But his seniors were nervous to admit it, lest it upset the government officials with whom they worked. It can be dangerous when well-paid senior UN humanitarian officials are unwilling to speak up and sound the alarm to prevent insipient situations from turning into disasters. The underlying problem may be the proliferation of short-term Uber-style contracts that UN staff are hired on these days. Many don’t want to run the risk of offending anyone for fear of losing their job. For the UN to work effectivly, its staff must be able to stand up for UN principles, speak up when need be and do their jobs with impunity. They need to be playing a supportive role right at the forefront of the action. UN humanitarians must stand tall.

So, in 2021 the humanitarian agencies may well take the lead in upholding the reputation the UN System still enjoys in some parts of the world. David Beasley and his World Food Programme will certainly be in the spotlight. On preventing hunger from being used as a weapon of war, WFP’s progress will be slow and uneven. The dynamics of each conflict are different and so are the actors involved. Don’t expect widespread results soon. But WFP has been rising to the challenge and delivering the goods for over 50 years. Forging a closer relationship with the UN’s political, peacebuilding, human rights and refugee agencies will be crucial to the new challenge. But in the difficult years ahead, the Norwegian Nobel Committee’s decision to award the 2020 Peace Prize to WFP may be just what the UN System needs to make life more tolerable for the millions still caught in the crossfire of war.

Trevor Page, resident in Lethbridge, Canada, is a former Director of the World Food Programme. He also served with the UN refugee agency, UNHCR and what is now the UN Department of Political and Peace Building Affairs

 

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Expressing his deep sadness over Sir Brian’s passing, Secretary-General Antonio Guterres offered his condolences to the family of the “legendary long-time United Nations official” as well as to his “legions of admirers within and beyond” the UN. Credit: UN Photo/Mark Garten

By James A. Paul
NEW YORK, Jan 5 2021 (IPS)

Sir Brian Urquhart, who died on January 2 at the age of 101, served the United Nations in high posts for four decades, beginning in the organization’s earliest days.

Celebrated for his diplomatic skills and his creative organizing abilities, he has often been seen as the embodiment of the UN and its most respected civil servant. After his retirement he lived in New York City, advising Secretaries-General, giving lectures, and writing articles and books. He often appeared at UN-related functions, well into an advanced age.

I heard him quip once, when he had reached the age of eighty-five, that he had become a holy relic, brought out on occasion to add gravity to the proceedings. In reflecting on his death, we should learn from his self-awareness and his skepticism about relics – and we should take his words to heart. The uncritical worship of Urquhart is not a useful activity, even in such a moment.

The UN is understandably seeking to spotlight him, to treat him precisely as a relic in hard times, as a way to celebrate the organization’s history and rally support for its work. But we should see Urquhart as he really was, shortcomings as well as achievements, not as some invented icon from a falsely idealized past.

Urquhart was born in England and trained in two of the most prestigious institutions of the British education system – Winchester school and Oxford University. His was a recruitment path of those who were expected to take important positions in finance and government and to act as managers of the British Empire.

He left university early and enlisted in the army in 1939 at the outset of World War II, joining British intelligence and apparently serving in various secret service capacities throughout the conflict. Late in the war, at the age of just twenty-five, he participated in postwar planning operations at the highest levels of government, including plans for the newly-created United Nations.

Urquhart’s talents were recognized. He was soon brought into the small cadre of top British civil servants assigned to staff the upper echelons of the UN. He is credited with working diligently and effectively to establish the new organization, aided by a keen intellect and a self-effacing humor. When the UN got under way in 1945, he was only 26 and already in a high and influential position.

However “internationalist” Urquhart’s work may have been, his perspective on the world was very different than how we might see things today. He was deeply influenced by conservative British values about the international order and Britain’s place in it.

This included a strong anti-Communist commitment, skepticism about calls for colonial independence, and a determination that the world would be safer in the hands of the great Anglo-Saxon partnership. At the top of the world body, he worked closely with hard-nosed US nationals, including Ralph Bunche, and he shared much with them, including quite likely an ongoing secret service connection.

Though Urquhart was working in a global political context, he had little sense of the personality and geography of the colonial world – “cultural ignorance” says one definitive book on the Congo conflict. Urquhart later confessed that he didn’t know where Congo was located when he first arrived as a key representative of the Secretary General.

“I didn’t even know which side of Africa it was on,” he said later, “I thought it was on the Indian Ocean and I was much surprised to learn that it was on the Atlantic.” Though responsibility for the Congo crisis is shared by many others, Urquhart participated in the dangerous mindset of decision-makers in Washington, London and New York that led to tragedy. He was an influential voice and he helped shape policy that produced awful results.

The Congo crisis saw the first, step towards the militarization of UN peacekeeping. Urquhart is often credited with setting up the earliest peacekeeping missions in the 1940s and 50s, operations that involved interposition of very lightly-armed UN forces between two sides in a conflict. He deserves praise for this.

But in the early 60’s, under pressure of the crisis in the Belgian Congo, peacekeeping went off the rails, setting a dangerous precedent that continues to this day. Urquhart must be held partly accountable for this negative development.

In Congo, the Western powers sought to rein in the country’s first Prime Minister, Patrice Lumumba. A militarized UN peacekeeping force was formed and deployed into the resource-rich territory in response to Lumumba’s own pleas for assistance.

As it turned out, the UN proconsuls showed little respect for the elected government. Urquhart was part of the inner circle around Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjold that promoted the ouster of Lumumba, the one leader who might have held the country together.

Urquhart and the UN top brass knew almost certainly that the CIA was working all-out in this regime-change operation, bribing Congolese politicians and even (we now know) seeking to poison Lumumba. Sadly, the UN failed to prevent the nightmare outcome. Congolese army leader Joseph Mobutu seized power with US backing and long ruled over a broken land.

Lumumba was brutally assassinated by Congolese enemies not long after his ouster, a process for which the UN also bears indirect responsibility. Tragically, the bloodshed did not stop there. Secretary General Hammarskjold himself was later to die in an attack on his airplane, while he sought to broker a Congo peace.

Urquhart, who was an admirer and friend of Hammarskjold, later played the loyal guardian of the secrets. He constantly rejected substantial evidence that the Secretary General had been assassinated – not killed in an unfortunate air accident as the official story insisted.

In his noted biography of Hammarskjold and his many lectures and articles on the subject, Urquhart (more than anyone) closed off serious discussion and investigation of the crime for nearly six decades. The hand of the Western secret services in this infamous murder is now increasingly clear. Did Urquhart know the truth?

Urquhart was a tenacious player in the game of survival at the top of the UN. While Secretaries-General came and went and other top staff faded away, he continued his grip on the top posts. That meant that he had to please the most powerful countries, of course, but it also meant that he had to know how to work diplomatically with all the member states and to keep his friendships among the senior staff too. His wit and his understatement helped him survive in the UN’s complex personal and national rivalries and to maintain friends in every quarter.

During Urquhart’s many active years of retirement he wrote widely on the reform of the UN. The Ford Foundation gave him a special post to carry out this work and to burnish his image. He was certainly extremely knowledgeable on the UN’s inner workings, as was his principal collaborator, the radical Irishman Erskine Childers.

Many observers like to point to these writings, especially the three books they wrote together, as a sign of Urquhart’s more enlightened, “multilateral” and democratic views when free from the constraints of UN office. While he did mellow in later years, it should be said that he never abandoned his basic conservative persona.

The progressive current in the books, their bid for a more “democratic” UN, is due almost entirely to the influence of Childers, who complained bitterly in private at the brakes that Urquhart put on their work and the traditionalism that Urquhart brought to the project. Urquhart deserves our thanks, though, for allowing Childers, here and there, to propose inventive and far-sighted ideas.

Much will of course be said about Urquhart’s intelligence, his diplomatic skill, and his many positive accomplishments. We would do UN history a disservice, however, if we do not see him (and the early UN) as they really were – not as relics of an idealized past but as real, often-flawed actors in a contested and still unfinished drama.

 

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Excerpt:

James A. Paul served as Global Policy Forum Executive Director, from its foundation in late 1993 through the end of 2012. As Executive Director, he was a prominent figure in the NGO advocacy community at the United Nations and a well-known speaker and writer on the UN and global policy issues. He is the author of “Of Foxes and Chickens”—Oligarchy and Global Power in the UN Security Council.

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