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President Donald Trump at a press conference. Credit: White House

By Farhang Jahanpour
OXFORD, Nov 23 2020 (IPS)

The 2020 election has revealed a deeply divided nation, perhaps at its most divided since the Civil War. Many Americans are still uncertain about how the transition to the new administration will be achieved with a minimum of disruption and perhaps even violence. However, the split between pro and anti-Trump voters is not based on two sets of facts, but on facts and “alternative facts” or falsehoods. 

By all accounts, it is clear that President Trump has lost his bid for re-election, but many of his supporters still continue to claim that he has won. More than two weeks after the election when courts have dismissed claims of vote rigging, and a majority of world leaders have congratulated the incoming President Biden, Trump’s attempts to undo the election result have been a farce. 

In recent days, the courts have again dealt a series of deadly blows to Trump’s claims of a stolen election. On November 20th, Georgia finished its statewide audit of the votes, confirming that President-elect Joe Biden had defeated President Trump by 12,284.

Trump introduced a new level of crudeness and vulgarity to US politics and made use of terms that belong in the gutter, not in a serious presidential campaign.

In an unusual move, Trump invited Republican Michigan lawmakers to the White House, presumably to influence the outcome of the certification of votes. On Saturday 21 Nov, the Michigan Republican Party and Republican National Committee sent a letter to the State Board of Canvassers asking them to delay certification for 14 days. But the Michigan Department of State said delays and audits were not permitted by law, and confirmed that Biden had won by more than 154,000 votes in the state.

In Pennsylvania, Trump’s lawyers sought to invalidate millions of mail-in votes where Biden has a margin of more than 81,000 votes in the state, but Federal Judge Matthew Brann of the US District Court in the Middle District of Pennsylvania, a well-known Republican, dismissed the lawsuit saying “like Frankenstein’s Monster” it had been “haphazardly stitched together”. Brann added: “… this Court has been presented with strained legal arguments without merit and speculative accusations, unpled in the operative complaint and unsupported by evidence.” 

In the face of compelling evidence that Trump has lost the election, many experts see his continued refusal to concede as setting a dangerous precedent and posing a threat to democracy. Some have argued that “Trump has never been more dangerous than he is now”.

“On his darkest day, Richard Nixon would never have attacked democracy the way Donald Trump has now done,” John Dean, who served as White House counsel for Nixon, told AP. “At the potential of losing, Trump has shamed himself and soiled the American presidency. God save us when he actually loses.”

The Republican Senator Mit Romney put it best in a tweet: “Having failed to make even a plausible case of widespread fraud or conspiracy before any court of law, the president has now resorted to overt pressure on state and local officials to subvert the will of the people and overturn the election. It is difficult to imagine a worse, more undemocratic action by any sitting American president.”

Before some members of Trump’s base start feeling nostalgic about Trump’s period in office, it is important to remind ourselves of some of the main characteristics of that era and what it represented domestically and internationally.

Trump conducted his 2016 presidential campaign by using very insulting terms in describing his rivals, something which he continued to do after being elected president. In fact, it can be argued that he never stopped campaigning, and his behavior in office was practically a long campaign for re-election. 

In the entire US history, no president has ever insulted his opponents, including the leading members of his own party, in the way that Trump has done. These are just some of the terms that he used frequently to refer to some leading US politicians: Sleepy Creepy Joe, Cheating Obama, Crooked Hillary, Nervous Nancy, Wild Bill, Crazy Bernie, Little Rubio, Lying Cruise, Little Bloomberg, Leaking Sneaky Dianne Feinstein, Wacko John Bolton, Low Energy Jeb, Jeff Flakey, Leaking Comey, Al Frankenstein, Pocahontas, Corrupt Kaine, etc. 

These were not meant as terms of endearment or jokes, but as deliberate insults to demean, belittle, bully and intimidate his opponents and incite violence against them. During his debates with 2016 Democratic Candidate Hillary Clinton the crowd often chanted “lock her up”, and Trump cheered them on.

I wonder if Trump has ever bothered to think what people in other countries might think of US politicians when a US president describes his colleagues in those unflattering ways. No wonder that the US reputation in the world has plummeted under Trump.

Trump repeated the same disgusting pattern of behavior during the 2020 election campaign towards former Vice-President Joe Biden and his running mate Senator Kamala Harris. Harris is the first black woman and the first South Asian American woman to be chosen as vice-president. She has had a distinguished career as a senator and Attorney General of California, and is highly educated. Yet, Trump insulted Harris’s intelligence by saying that her presidency would be “an insult to our country.”  

Not only did he attack her policies, but also used personal, racist and sexist insults against her. Apart from claiming that she would be “a big slasher of funds for our military”, Trump repeatedly accused her of being “disrespectful and nasty”. During an interview on 8 October 2020, Trump falsely said that Harris was a communist and twice referred to her as “a monster”.

He slammed Harris’s treatment of Brett Kavanaugh during his confirmation hearing for his nomination to the US Supreme Court, saying “That was a horrible event. I thought it was terrible for her. I thought it was terrible for our nation. I thought she was the meanest, the most horrible, most disrespectful of anybody in the US Senate.” During the election campaign he said of her: “Kamala Harris is really Bernie Sanders with a skirt”, describing her as “shameless” and “clearly willing to do anything for power.” This is reminiscent of the way that Trump often speaks of women and people of color.

At a rally in New Hampshire in late August, the President asserted that Harris wasn’t competent to be a US president in waiting, adding: “You know, I want to see the first woman president also, but I don’t want to see a woman president get into that position the way she’d do it — and she’s not competent. She’s not competent. They’re all saying, ‘We want Ivanka.’ I don’t blame you.”    

In fact, shortly after winning the presidency, Trump appointed his daughter and son-in-law to senior political positions without any obvious merit or qualifications on their part. This can only be regarded as an extreme act of nepotism, almost unprecedented under former administrations. 

It is remarkable that all his campaign speeches consisted mainly of slogans and insults and were almost totally lacking in any policies or visions for the future.

The language that Trump has adopted to refer to his rivals and even colleagues is not the kind of language that a US president or indeed any decent person should use in reference to distinguished people.

Trump introduced a new level of crudeness and vulgarity to US politics and made use of terms that belong in the gutter, not in a serious presidential campaign. He has demeaned the office of the US president, something that may take a long time to overcome.

 

Farhang Jahanpour is a former professor and dean of the Faculty of Languages at the University of Isfahan and a former Senior Research Scholar at Harvard. He has also taught at Cambridge and Oxford universities. He also served as Editor for Middle East and North Africa at the BBC Monitoring from 1979-2001.

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Wai Wai Nu continues her activism Rohingya, women and human rights.

By Mariya Salim
NEW DELHI, India, Nov 23 2020 (IPS)

Instead of being cowed by her seven-year imprisonment, Wai Wai Nu, emerged stronger and more determined to fight for the rights of all people, including the Rohingya in her native Myanmar.

In an exclusive interview with IPS, Wai Wai says her prison experience made her all the more aware of the need for human rights activism. What kept her going during her prison years was the desire to help other women inmates to ‘have a dream’.

“I feel I was privileged when I compare myself to the other young girls and women that I interacted with while I was in prison,” Wai Wai says.

“Most of them were unaware of how corrupt the political system was. I had a dream, a vision, whether or not I could achieve it because of my imprisonment was secondary. I felt I could help them have a dream.”

The youngest of three siblings, Wai Wai (33), spent seven years as a political prisoner with her family. Imprisoned at only 18, she was forced to give up her education, her everyday life. Still, she came out of prison undeterred and today is an inspiration to many women and activists fighting for human rights and dignity of their communities and beyond.

Her family is Rohingya, a Muslim minority in Myanmar which has been facing continued persecution and marginalisation by state and non-state actors alike.

It was her father’s activism that led to her imprisonment. Her father, who was elected to parliament in 1990, received a 47-year prison sentence, which was politically motivated. The family was released in 2012.

Wai Wai has received many awards for her activism including the N-Peace award in 2014. She was named as one of the Top 100 women by BBC the same year and the Time magazine named her one of the Next Generation Leaders in 2017.

However, she considers her most outstanding achievement to be the ability to emerge as a woman leader from her community and inspire many like her to be changemakers.

“I started my activism when I was 25-years-old. Apart from the many challenges, I was faced with patriarchy from within my community initially as there were close no women in leadership roles. Now I see an acceptance from the same community, and I am proud to have been able to break this stereotype”.

An achievement that Wai Wai sees as imperative though not tangible is being able to bridge the gap between the Rohingya in Myanmar, who are extremely marginalised and isolated from mainstream Myanmar, and the rest of Myanmar and society at large.

“I speak Burmese fluently, I grew up in the city, and I think, through my activism, I have been able to break the stereotypes created in part by the media and address the Islamophobia around my community, which is seen by so many as alien,” Wai Wai says.

“We (Rohingya) have played an important role in Burmese history, in its independence, and I want to remind the world of this too. Today a lot of young people see me as someone who did not give up and tell me how my story inspires them to continue to achieve. I value this more than any achievement or award that I have ever received.”

Wai Wai recalls that she realised she needed to help women prisoners because of the stigma they faced during and after their incarceration.

She says she needed to help these women because they suffered a double burden: they faced the direct consequences of being imprisoned, and beyond the prison walls, their suffering continued.

Once they had finished serving their prison time, most were not accepted back into their families, those married were abandoned by their husbands and had to start their lives all over again.

The fact that most came from impoverished economic backgrounds only worsened their situation.

“I felt I could help fix this.”’

Wai Wai founded the Women’s Peace Network in 2012.

She says her father continues to fight for human rights and draws inspiration from religion despite suffering and facing the consequences of his activism, Wai Wai says he feels “he has the duty towards helping those who need support.” He told her that he would have to face Allah when he dies and wants to walk on the path of justice “I draw inspiration from his strength and beliefs in justice and equality,” she says.

Wai Wai has been an open advocate for democracy and human rights for all.

While referring to Myanmar’s transition to democracy, she says that it concerns her that the world celebrates a flawed democracy like Myanmar for its own geopolitical or economic gains. Here millions of people still live in a Genocide-like situation, and the effect is to legitimise a flawed democracy and help prolong atrocities and crimes against the most marginalised in the country.

“When we talk of democracy, we need to ensure that human rights of all are protected, that there is political participation by all, freedom of expression and assembly are upheld,” Wai Wai says.

“When a state has marginalised an entire community and made them outsiders … Where the military has used this transition to democracy as a means to maintain its power: To accept and celebrate this as a successful transition to democracy is like rewarding a State that has not even met the benchmark of basic democratic criterion.”

Of the many challenges that Wai Wai has faced, one that she has to continue to fight is that of others stereotyping her and manipulating her into limiting her work and her activism.

‘There are many who only want me to talk about the human rights of my community and want to limit my ability to contribute to other issues. Yes, I have the responsibility towards my community and my people, but that does not stop me from advocating for universal principles like democracy, empowerment of youth and justice and peace in society.”

Wai Wai Nu is the founder and director of Women’s Peace Network and is currently serving as a fellow at the centre for the prevention of Genocide, US Holocaust Museum.

Mariya Salim is a fellow at IPS UN Bureau

 

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Despite global commitments from a growing number of governments, companies and financial institutions, the money and effort being directed towards damaging development far exceeds the efforts being made to support sustainable livelihoods. We have not, as a global community managed to put the brakes on the juggernaut of unsustainable economic development. Credit: United Nations

By Sarah Rogerson
OXFORD, UK, Nov 23 2020 (IPS)

At the beginning of 2020, there were hopes that this would be a ’super year for nature’. It has not turned out that way. Tropical forests, so crucial for biodiversity, the climate and the indigenous communities who live in them, have continued to be destroyed at alarming rates. In fact, despite the shutdown of large parts of the global economy, rates of deforestation globally have increased since last year.

The market forces driving deforestation are baked deep into the system of global trade. Agricultural expansion for commodities such as soy and palm oil accounts for two thirds of the problem worldwide. And forests are also being cleared to make way for mining, and for infrastructure to link once remote areas to the global markets they supply.

Coal mining is estimated to affect 1.74 million hectares of forest in Indonesia alone, with as much as nine percent of the country’s remaining forests at risk from permits for new mines. And the threat to forests from road building is significant, with 25 million kilometres of roads likely to be built by 2050, mainly in developing countries.

Underpinning these industries is over a trillion dollars a year in financing from financial institutions around the world. This investment and lending is the fuel that keeps the deforestation fires alight.

Six years ago, governments, companies and civil society signed the New York Declaration on Forests, setting a goal to end global deforestation by 2030. Each year, an independent civil society network led by Climate Focus and including Global Canopy provides a progress assessment. This year, it focuses on the NYDF goals of reducing deforestation from mining and infrastructure by 2020 (goal 3), and supporting alternatives to deforestation for subsistence needs (goal 4).

The findings are an urgent wake-up call. The threat to forests worldwide from these activities is growing, and indigenous people and local communities continue to bear a devastating cost.

But the report also highlights opportunities for progress. A growing number of governments are facing up to this issue and some companies are waking up to the risks of inaction. The same is true of the finance sector, which could become a driver of transformational change.

The opportunity for finance

Financial institutions do not, it must be recognised, have a great track record on these issues. Global Canopy’s annual Forest 500 assessment of the most influential financial institutions in agricultural and timber forest-risk supply chains has consistently found that the majority do not publicly recognise a need to engage on the issue of deforestation.

Fewer still publish clear information about how they will deal with deforestation risks identified in their portfolios, and none of the 150 financial institutions assessed in 2019 had policies across all relevant human rights issues. As a result, investment and lending has largely continued to flow to companies linked to land grabs and deforestation.

Nearly 87% of indigenous territories in the Amazon are recognised in Brazilian law, yet government concessions for mining and oil extraction overlap nearly 24% of recognised territories. This infringement of the communities’ rights is being overlooked by the companies involved, and by the financial institutions that finance them.

Yet there are signs of change. In June this year a group of 29 investors requested meetings with the Brazilian government because of concerns about the fires raging in the Amazon. Some, including BlackRock, have said they will engage with the companies they finance on deforestation risks. And some have gone further, with Citigroup, Standard Chartered, and Rabobank disinvesting from Indonesian food giant Indofood following concerns about deforestation linked to palm oil, and Nordea Asset Management dropped investments in Brazilian meat giant, JBS.

There is also support for the Equator Principles, which provide a framework for banks and investors to assess and manage social and environmental risks in project finance. Companies in the mining and extractive sectors are among the 110 financial institutions to have signed up, although reporting on implementation is voluntary and patchy.

There is also growing recognition that biodiversity loss represents a risk to investments. More than 30 financial institutions have joined an informal working group to develop a Task Force for Nature-related Disclosure (TNFD), intended to help financial institutions shift finance away from destructive activities such as deforestation. Some within the sector are developing new impact investment products designed to support poverty alleviation and sustainable development.

And there are also signs of a shift in development banks – whose finance plays such a critical role in so many development projects in the Global South. Just this month, public development banks from around the world made a joint declaration to “support the transformation of the global economy and societies toward sustainable and resilient development”.

No silver bullets

It is of course one thing to recognise the problem, another to solve it. Transforming the finance sector so that money is moved away from mining or agricultural projects linked to deforestation, and invested in sustainable alternatives that benefit local communities is an enormous challenge – made all the more difficult by the lack of transparency that currently engulfs these sectors.

For while the banks and investors funding deforestation activities are all too often invisible to the local communities and indigenous groups on the ground, those communities, and the impacts of financial investments on their land and livelihoods are similarly invisible or ignored.

But these links are increasingly being brought into the light, and new tools and technologies are bringing a new level of transparency and accountability. The new Trase Finance tool is a great example, it maps the deforestation risks for investors linked to Brazilian soy and beef, and Indonesian palm oil, and aims to extend coverage to include half of major forest-risk commodities by next year. Bringing about a new era of radical transparency could be the key for moving beyond recognition and into real solutions.

Increased transparency brings with it greater accountability, creating an opportunity for local communities to identify the financial institutions involved, and a reputational risk for financial institutions linked to infringements of land rights.

Grassroots movements can play an important role in demanding accountability from the companies and financial institutions involved where land rights are affected. Campaigns can raise awareness with the wider public, creating a reputational risk for the companies involved, and for the financial institutions that finance them. Campaigners have targeted BlackRock for its investments in JBS, for example, pushing for greater action from the investor.

Governments in consumer countries are also increasingly looking at how they can reduce their exposure to deforestation in imported products, with both the European Union and UK proposing mandatory due diligence for companies, requiring far greater transparency from all involved. These measures should be strengthened to include due diligence on human rights.

A global problem

We are all implicated in tropical deforestation – as consumers, as pension-fund holders, as citizens. In the Global North, economies rely on commodities produced in developing and emerging economies, enabled by production practices linked with deforestation.

Despite global commitments from a growing number of governments, companies and financial institutions, the money and effort being directed towards damaging development far exceeds the efforts being made to support sustainable livelihoods. We have not, as a global community managed to put the brakes on the juggernaut of unsustainable economic development.

To meet the NYDF goal of ending deforestation by 2030, as well as climate goals under the Paris Agreement, this must change urgently, and the finance sector is crucial to making this happen.

 

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Excerpt:

Sarah Rogerson is a researcher at Global Canopy. Prior to Global Canopy, she has worked on corporate environmental transparency with both CDP and the Climate Disclosure Standards Board, and on domestic recycling and engagement with Keep Britain Tidy. She has a degree in Natural Sciences (Zoology) from the University of Cambridge

The post Could the Finance Sector Hold the Key to Ending Deforestation? appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Women farmers clearing farmland in Northern Bangladesh. Credit: Naimul Haq/IPS

By Danielle Nierenberg
NEW YORK, Nov 23 2020 (IPS)

Wealthier countries struggling to contain the widening COVID-19 pandemic amid protests over lockdowns and restrictions risk ignoring an even greater danger out there – a looming global food emergency.

Even before the virus surfaced nearly a year ago, an estimated 690 million people around the world were undernourished, 144 million or 21 per cent of children under five-years-old were stunted, and about 57 per cent of people in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia could not afford a healthy diet.

The ranks of the chronically food insecure are rising dramatically in 2020 as the pandemic adds to the miseries of communities already labouring under conflict, the climate crisis, economic slowdowns and, in east Africa, desert locusts. Every percentage drop in global GDP means 700,000 more stunted children, according to UN estimates.

All this means the world is dangerously off track in its efforts to meet the UN Sustainable Development Goals by 2030, with food systems underpinning all 17 of those targets.

Yet we do produce enough food for the world’s 7.8 billion people. It’s our food systems that are broken. Hunger is rising even as the world wastes and loses more than one billion tonnes of food every year.

About one third of all food produced for human consumption goes to waste, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, with consumers in rich countries wasting almost as much food as the entire net production of sub-Saharan Africa.

Danielle Nierenberg

With agriculture and the current food system responsible for around 21 to 37 per cent of total greenhouse gas emissions, our food choices matter not just for health and social justice, but also for their impact on the climate and bio-diversity. The true impact of food production and consumption needs a far better understanding and cost accounting.

Resetting the Food System from Farm to Fork, a virtual event hosted on December 1 by the Barilla Center for Food & Nutrition in partnership with Food Tank, will help set the stage for the UN 2021 Food Systems Summit.

Experts will present concrete, practical solutions to re-align food systems with human needs and planetary boundaries to become more resilient, inclusive and sustainable in the aftermath of the pandemic and beyond.

The conference will highlight the important role of smallholders and women who make up a sizeable proportion of the agricultural workforce – 43 percent on average in developing countries, according to FAO, the UN food agency.

Women are tending to bear the brunt of hunger, but as farmers, innovators and decision-makers, they need to be involved for real change to happen. They are the backbone of the rural economy, especially in poorer countries, but receive only a fraction of the land, credit, inputs such as improved seeds and fertilizers, agricultural training and information compared to men.

Africa is a huge net importer of food but 75 per cent of crops grown in sub-Saharan Africa are produced by smallholder farms, with family farms estimated to number over 100 million. Women do the bulk of weeding work while three-quarters of children aged 5 to 14 are forced to leave school and do farm labour at peak times.

Sixty percent of Africa’s total population are below 25 year, yet countries are struggling to keep young people involved in agriculture and agribusiness.

Our challenge is to transform food systems so that people are no longer food insecure and can afford a healthy diet while at the same time ensuring environmental sustainability. There is no one-size-fits-all solution for countries, and policy-makers lack reliable data on the whole spectrum of food production.

The Barilla Center for Food & Nutrition has a 10-point action plan for fixing the global food system, and improving standards, terminology and measurement are among those priorities. Its Food Sustainability Index, developed with the Economist Intelligence Unit, uses the three pillars of nutrition, sustainable agriculture, and food loss and waste to provide a tool that can shed light on the progress countries are making on the path to a more sustainable food system.

The COVID-19 pandemic may add between 83 and 132 million people to the total number of undernourished in the world this year alone, depending on the scale of the economic slowdown, according to preliminary assessments.

Disruptions have raised food costs, made it more difficult for farmers to access seeds, animal feed and fertilisers, and resulted in higher post-harvest losses as food rots uncollected on farms.

In the words of UN Special Envoy Agnes Kalibata: “Countries face an agonizing trade-off between saving lives or livelihoods or, in a worst-case scenario, saving people from COVID-19 to have them die from hunger.”

The problems facing our food systems for years have been highlighted by this crisis, as have the numerous frailties of global supply chains and the state of national health systems.

Let us seize this opportunity presented by the pandemic and shape a resilient food system that is sustainable, fairer, and healthier for all people and the planet.

Podcast: “Food Talk with Dani Nierenberg“ I chat with the most important folks in the food system about the most important food news.

 

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The post Farmers Will (Again) Feed the World appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Danielle Nierenberg is President and Founder Food Tank: Highlighting stories of hope and success in the food system

The post Farmers Will (Again) Feed the World appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Credit: United Nations

By Cecilia Russell
JOHANNESBURG, South Africa, Nov 20 2020 (IPS)

Japan should step up and play a role as a global facilitator for equitable access to COVID-19 vaccines, Dr Daisaku Higashi said at a recent Japan Parliamentarians Federation for Population (JPFP) study meeting.

The country should use the credibility developed in the post-Second World War era as a country with expertise in peacebuilding to ensure that developing countries are included in the vaccines’ rollout.

Higashi, a renowned commentator from Sophia University, warned that only an international effort could solve the problems caused by COVID-19

“Even if Japan succeeds in containing COVID-19 somehow, as long as the pandemic continues elsewhere in the world, there could always be a resurgence as soon as our border is opened to large numbers of foreign visitors,” he said. “The global economy overall will shrink if the global pandemic were to persist, dealing a major blow to corporate profitability and employment in Japan.”

“As close to half of Japan’s trading partners are developing countries, it is in Japan’s interest to contain the disease globally. Because the COVID-19 pandemic is a global threat that no one country can fend it off on its own – it is a human security issue,” Higashi said.

Dr Daisaku Higashi of Sophia University calls for Japan to play an increasing role in health international politics.

His comments are particularly pertinent because in November Pfizer and a German company, BioNTech, presented presenting preliminary data indicating that their coronavirus vaccine was over 90 percent effective. A week later Moderna reported similar findings that its vaccine was 94.5 percent effective.

Higashi said all countries should be encouraged to join COVAX – a facility for the pooled procurement of safe vaccines.

COVAX which operates under the auspicious of ACT Accelerator, which aims to accelerate the development and manufacture of COVID-19 vaccines and to guarantee fair and equitable access for every country in the world.

Higashi welcomed the Government of Japan’s decision to join the facilities and pledge as much as about $500 million in advance market contributions that will allow developing countries to have access to the vaccines under the COVAX Facility.

“This is truly the moment when Japan should play its role as a “global facilitator” to promote dialogue for the development of global solutions for COVID-19 with Japan as the host country and with ideas coming from participating member states, international organisations, experts, and NGOs,” he said.

Japan should use its influence to persuade the United States, China, and Russia, which are not participating in COVAX to join, Higashi said.

Dr Kayo Takuma of Tokyo Metropolitan University has called for Japanese support of COVAX aimed at ensuring an equitable access to COVID-19 vaccines.

International health and politics expert, Dr Kayo Takuma of Tokyo Metropolitan University, addressed the challenges of global health cooperation that were laid bare by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Takuma said while several other global health issues had resulted in international cooperation in the fields of health9 and infection control, this has floundered during the COVID-19 pandemic. Serious challenges emerged because the spread of the coronavirus had broad implications not only on health but also on the global economy and growing uncertainty brought about by poverty.

This created “greater room, for good or ill, for the politicisation of the pandemic,” Takuma said.

“The U.S.-China cooperation against SARS, World Health Organisation (WHO)-U.S. cooperation against H1N1 influenza, and U.S. leadership against AIDS and Ebola are some examples of good practices in international cooperation in the field of health, particularly infection control,” he said.

However, Trump against the backdrop of U.S.-China tensions criticised WHO for being China-centric and not fulfilling its basic responsibilities and withdrew from the WHO.

While President-elect Joe Biden has said he would return to the WHO, the continued concern is that the international health body could remain underfunded and in need of reform.

“As the history of the U.S. initiative in founding WHO and its leadership in global health shows, the loss from the U.S. withdrawal will be felt not only in funding. There is also a wide range of other areas (that will be affected), including human talent, medicines, and the U.S.’s standing in the world,” Takuma said. He reminded the audience that U.S. contributions accounted for 12% of WHO’s budget.

He said China played an increasing role in its promotion of global health as part of its Belt and Road Initiative. However, the realities are that “even though China is promoting its vaccine and mask diplomacy, it is not near replacing the U.S. either in terms of funding or ability to supply drugs, as evidenced by lack of trust in the quality of China’s vaccines and masks.”

There were also other calls for WHO reform – with Germany and France wishing to strengthen WHO’s authority in initial responses to health crises.

Takuma, like Higashi, called for Japan to actively promote in COVAX and other frameworks for fair distribution of vaccines around the world.

“The country could strengthen cooperation with the U.S. and China as Japan has good relations with both countries and focusing on cooperation with Asian countries through such initiatives as ASEAN Center for Infectious Diseases,” he concluded.

 

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Credit: United Nations

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Nov 20 2020 (IPS)

The world’s major military powers exercise their dominance largely because of their massive weapons arsenals, including sophisticated fighter planes, drones, ballistic missiles, warships, battle tanks, heavy artillery—and nuclear weapons of mass destruction (WMDs).

But the sudden surge in the coronavirus pandemic last week, particularly in the US and Europe, has resurrected the lingering question that cries out for an answer: Will overwhelming fire power and WMDs become obsolete if biological weapons, currently banned by a UN convention, are used in wars in a distant future?

According to the latest figures from Cable News Network (CNN), the grim statistics of the coronavirus pandemic include 56.4 million infections and 1.5 million deaths worldwide.

As of last week, the US alone has been setting records: more than 11.5 million pandemic cases and over 250,500 deaths since last March, with more than 193,000 infections every day.

The New York Times quoted unnamed experts as predicting that the US will soon be reporting over 2,000 deaths a day and that 100,000 to 200,000 more Americans could die in the coming months. One forecast predicted a US death toll of 471,000 by next March—in the continued absence of an effective vaccine.

The pandemic has also destabilized the global economy with world poverty and hunger skyrocketing to new highs. And all this, without a single shot being fired in an eight-month long war against a spreading virus.

Dr. Natalie J. Goldring, a Senior Fellow and Adjunct Full Professor with the Security Studies Program in the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University, told IPS the world faces multiple crises “with the potential to devastate our communities, including the threat of climate change and the risk of nuclear war”

And UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, she said, has warned of another potential crisis, which is that terrorists could use biological weapons to produce disastrous results. He pointed out that this sort of weapon use could be even more harmful than COVID-19.

“If a terrorist group were able to carry out the complex tasks of creating and using biological weapons, an intentional release of a biological weapon could be even more deadly than COVID-19,” said Dr Goldring, who is also Visiting Professor of the Practice in Duke University’s Washington DC program and represents the Acronym Institute at the United Nations on conventional weapons and arms trade issues.

She said Guterres makes the important point that “we need to focus immediately on preventing this type of development. We also need to vastly increase the capacity of our communities to respond to infectious diseases.”

“Countries with large military forces often threaten to use those forces to achieve foreign policy and other goals. One question is whether the use of biological weapons could in effect make these conventional and nuclear forces obsolete?”, she asked.

“I’d argue that nuclear weapons are already obsolete and counterproductive. By continuing to develop and deploy these weapons, States increase the risk of nuclear theft and give other countries incentives to develop nuclear weapons in response,” Dr Goldring declared.

Providing a grim economic scenario of the devastation caused by the pandemic, Guterres warned last month of the possibility of an even worse disaster: the risks of bioterrorist attacks deploying deadly germs.

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

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

Meanwhile, if terrorist groups, as Guterres fears, acquire the knowledge to use biological weapons, suicide bombers and AK-47 assault rifles used in random killings, may also become obsolete in future attacks.

Professor Francis Boyle, professor of international law at the University of Illinois College of Law, told IPS “It is not the terrorist groups that are the problem here”.

“It is the terrorist governments like the USA, China, Russia, UK, Israel etc. that have the most advanced biological warfare facilities and biological weapons in the world that threaten the very existence of all humanity as Covid-19 is now doing,” said Professor Boyle who has advised numerous international bodies in the areas of human rights, war crimes, genocide, nuclear policy, and bio-warfare.

Dr Filippa Lentzos, Associate Senior Researcher, Armament and Disarmament Programme, at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), told IPS: “I don’t believe bioweapons will become the wave of the future”.

“Many might well pivot away from bombs, guns and other explosive weapons — we’re already seeing hybrid warfare and greater reliance on cyber, disinformation, etc — but adoption will be uneven across the globe”.

She said: “I suspect there would also be differences in uptake between state and non-state actors. The way I view potential future biological weapons is as an extreme niche form of weaponry, only potentially ‘suitable’ under very limited circumstances.”

Asked about the use of biological weapons as part of germ warfare during World War I, she said, in an interview with IPS last March, there was some covert use by Germany during World War I to infect horses with biological agents to block their use by Allied military forces.

“In World War II, there were substantial covert attacks on China by Japan, as well as some clandestine use in Europe against Germany. There has been very limited known use since 1945”, said Dr Lentzos, who is also an Associate Editor of the journal BioSocieties, and the NGO Coordinator for the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention.

According to the UN Office for Disarmament Affairs (UNODA), the Biological Weapons Convention (BWC), the first multilateral disarmament treaty banning the development, production and stockpiling of an entire category of weapons of mass destruction, was opened for signature on 10 April 1972 and entered into force on 26 March 1975.

Guterres said last week he could have never imagined that hunger would rise again during his time in office as Secretary-General.

And according to the Rome-based World Food Programme (WFP), 130 million more people risk being pushed to the brink of starvation by the end of the year.

“This is totally unacceptable,” said Guterres. The COVID-19 recovery must address inequalities and fragilities, and the question of food will be central to a sustainable and inclusive recovery

Meanwhile, David Beasley, WFP executive director, said the socio-economic impact of the pandemic is more devastating than the disease itself.

He pointed out that many people in low- and middle-income countries, who a few months ago were poor but just about getting by, now find their livelihoods have been destroyed.

Remittances sent from workers abroad to their families at home have also dried up, causing immense hardship. As a result, hunger rates are sky-rocketing around the world, he said.

Thalif Deen, is a former Director, Foreign Military Markets at Defense Marketing Services; Senior Defense Analyst at Forecast International; and military editor Middle East/Africa at Jane’s Information Group, US. He is also co-author of “How to Survive a Nuclear Disaster” (New Century).

 

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The post A Potential Weapon Kills Over 1.5 Million Worldwide –Without a Single Shot Being Fired appeared first on Inter Press Service.

By Jennie Lyn Reyes
BANGKOK, Thailand, Nov 20 2020 (IPS)

While the COVID-19 pandemic has elevated public health to a top priority in every country in the world, it has left many poorly resourced governments receptive to any and all aid that can provide immediate assistance to help their people.

The pandemic pandemonium has provided unprecedented opportunities for the tobacco industry to boost its corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities to get closer to health and senior government officials.

Using charity to gain access to senior officials, foster good ties, and gain political capital to influence and interfere with public policies is a prominent tobacco industry tactic revealed in the 2020 Asian Tobacco Industry Interference Index.

Because of the deceptive and powerful influence of CSR activities exploited by the tobacco industry, the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) calls on Parties to the treaty to denormalize these activities and even ban them. Nearly all Asian countries are parties to this treaty.

The Index is a civil society report card that ranks 18 Asian governments on their efforts to protect health policies from the influence and interference of commercial and other vested interests of the tobacco industry in line with Article 5.3 guidelines of the FCTC.

Japan, Indonesia, and China top the report’s list with the highest level of tobacco industry meddling. These countries also have the largest smoking populations in the world. Brunei, Pakistan, and Nepal made the best progress to protect public policies from industry influence.

Banning the tobacco industry at any level or stage of health policy development is one of the key recommendations of the 2020 Asian Tobacco Industry Interference Index. Credit: SEATCA

Key findings:

• Health policy is undermined when the tobacco industry is included in the policymaking process. Participation and influence in tobacco control policies are revealed to be the highest in China, Indonesia, Japan, and Philippines.

• Tobacco industry buys influence through CSR activities. Industry-sponsored CSR activities remain common even in countries where restrictions are in place. Funding social causes, such as sports and disaster relief, allows the industry to promote itself as a “good corporate citizen” in the eyes of governments as shown in Bangladesh, Indonesia, Japan, Korea, Pakistan and Vietnam.

• Governments give benefits to the industry. With the exception of Brunei and ignoring the devasting harms of tobacco, many governments have been persuaded by the tobacco industry on its importance for economic growth and grant it preferential treatment such as tax breaks, facilitation of trade agreements, and delayed and weakened implementation of tobacco control measures. These are detrimental to tobacco control and tend to drain national coffers of tax revenues.

• Unnecessary interactions with the industry foster government endorsement. High-level government representatives participate in events organized by the tobacco industry. Activities related to combating smuggling are common where the tobacco industry works side-by-side with governments.

• Lack of transparency in interaction with the tobacco industry. The lack of transparency in government interactions with the tobacco industry remains a problem in almost all countries. Most countries do not have a procedure for public disclosure.

• Protective measures are needed. Only half (nine) of the countries included in the report have adopted policies to prevent tobacco industry interference as part of good housekeeping and governance.

The global tobacco industry is dominated by five tobacco companies all having a foothold in Asia – China National Tobacco Corporation (CNTC), Philip Morris International (PMI), British American Tobacco (BAT), Japan Tobacco Inc. (JTI), and Imperial Tobacco Group (ITG).

These transnational companies have already ventured into e-cigarettes and heated tobacco products that they are misleadingly promoting as safer alternatives to cigarettes.

Tobacco products contribute to the deaths of over eight million people every year, with low-and-middle-income countries bearing the brunt of its toll on public health and the economy. Tobacco use places smokers at an even higher risk of severe COVID-19 disease.

The ASEAN bloc of countries, home to 125 million tobacco users, is targeted by the industry to grow its profits. These countries are moving slowly, and in some instances, even regressing in their efforts to ward off tobacco industry influence.

There is light at the end of the tunnel as countries that have successfully protected their policies, such as Brunei and Thailand, are showing a decline in numbers of smokers, without suffering economic losses, as the industry typically claims.

A whole-of-government-and-society approach is fundamental to address industry interference. Governments and civil society must keep ahead of the many insidious ways the tobacco industry works. Constant vigilance and pro-active countermeasures remain vital.

About SEATCA
SEATCA is a multi-sectoral non-governmental alliance promoting health and saving lives by assisting ASEAN countries to accelerate and effectively implement the tobacco control measures contained in the WHO FCTC. Acknowledged by governments, academic institutions, and civil society for its advancement of tobacco control in Southeast Asia, the WHO bestowed on SEATCA the World No Tobacco Day Award in 2004 and the WHO Director-General’s Special Recognition Award in 2014.

 

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The post Tobacco Use Places Smokers at an Even Higher Risk of Severe COVID-19 Disease appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Jennie Lyn Reyes is the author of the 2020 Asian Tobacco Industry Interference Index and the Monitoring and Evaluation Manager of SEATCA.

The post Tobacco Use Places Smokers at an Even Higher Risk of Severe COVID-19 Disease appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Black Lives Matter protest in London May 31. Credit: Tara Carey / Equality Now

By External Source
Nov 20 2020 (IPS)

I’m part of a research team that has been following more than 800 Black American families for almost 25 years. We found that people who had reported experiencing high levels of racial discrimination when they were young teenagers had significantly higher levels of depression in their 20s than those who hadn’t. This elevated depression, in turn, showed up in their blood samples, which revealed accelerated aging on a cellular level.

Our research is not the first to show Black Americans live sicker lives and die younger than other racial or ethnic groups. The experience of constant and accumulating stress due to racism throughout an individual’s lifetime can wear and tear down the body – literally “getting under the skin” to affect health.

Black Americans live sicker lives and die younger than other racial or ethnic groups. The experience of constant and accumulating stress due to racism throughout an individual’s lifetime can wear and tear down the body – literally “getting under the skin” to affect health

These findings highlight how stress from racism, particularly experienced early in life, can affect the mental and physical health disparities seen among Black Americans.

 

Why it matters

As news stories of Black American women, men and children being killed due to racial injustice persist, our research on the effects of racism continue to have significant implications.

COVID-19 has been labeled a “stress pandemic” for Black populations that are disproportionately affected due to factors like poverty, unemployment and lack of access to health care.

In 2019, the American Academy of Pediatrics identified racism as having a profound impact on the health of children, adolescents, emerging adults and their families. Our findings support this conclusion – and show the need for society to truly reflect on the lifelong impact racism can have on a Black child’s ability to prosper in the U.S.

 

How we do the work

The Family and Community Health Study, established in 1996 at Iowa State University and the University of Georgia, is looking at how stress, neighborhood characteristics and other factors affect Black American parents and their children over a lifetime. Participants were recruited from rural, suburban and metropolitan communities. Funded by the National Institutes of Health, this research is the largest study of African American families in the U.S., with 800 families participating.
Researchers collected data – including self-reported questionnaires on experiences of racial discrimination and depressive symptoms – every two to three years. In 2015, the team started taking blood samples, too, to assess participants’ risks for heart disease and diabetes, as well as test for biomarkers that predict the early onset of these diseases.

We utilized a technique that examines how old a person is at a cellular level compared with their chronological age. We found that some young people were older at a cellular level than would have been expected based on their chronological age. Racial discrimination accounted for much of this variation, suggesting that such experiences were accelerating aging.

Our study shows how vital it is to think about how mental and physical health difficulties are interconnected.

 

What’s next

Some of the next steps for our work include focusing more closely on the accelerated aging process. We also will look at resiliency and early life interventions that could possibly offset and prevent health decline among Black Americans.

Due to COVID-19, the next scheduled blood sample collection has been delayed until at least spring 2021. The original children from this study will be in their mid- to late 30s and might possibly be experiencing chronic illnesses at this age due, in part, to accelerated aging.

With continued research, my colleagues and I hope to identify ways to interrupt the harmful effects of racism so that Black lives matter and are able to thrive.

Sierra Carter, Assistant Professor of Psychology, Georgia State University

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

The post Racial Discrimination Ages Black Americans Faster, According to a 25-Year-Long Study of Families appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Sister Udaya, Mahila Shikshan Kendra, India – IDG 2020 South Asia Challenge Winner. Credit: UNICEF/UN061998/Vishwanathan

By Jean Gough and Yasmine Sherif
NEW YORK, Nov 20 2020 (IPS)

Girls are change makers and world shapers! When girls speak up, they are a powerful force to be reckoned with.

This International Day of the Girl 2020 we listened to girl-led and girl-centered organizations from across South Asia and heard about how they have been empowering girls in their communities and at the forefront of advocating for #GenerationEquality on #DayoftheGirl.

The potential of adolescent girls in South Asia is limitless, yet they are one of the most marginalized and under-served groups of children. During emergencies, either girls’ vulnerabilities can be exacerbated, or girls’ agency and opportunities can be promoted. Adolescent girls are a high priority group for Education Cannot Wait (ECW) and UNICEF. By investing, supporting, empowering, and listening to girls, we can build a more equal world.

Here are some of the ways we can take action to address the issues facing girls in South Asia and support girls in harnessing the power of their voices to make a difference.

Leaving no girl behind
Girls in South Asia continue to face barriers to accessing a quality education. The region has some of the highest rates of girls and young women who are not in education, employment or training (NEET). Even before COVID-19, nearly 1 in 3 adolescent girls from the poorest households had never been to school. At the secondary level in crisis-affected contexts in South Asia, there are significant disparities between boys and girl’s enrolment rates, with boys nearly three times more likely to enroll in school than girls.

It is essential we take decisive action, with intent, to reach and engage girls, in both crisis-affected situations and developing contexts where negative gender norms prevail. With strong affirmative action, we can break the status quo, and ensure that girls do not continue to be under-served and marginalized.

“Change is possible. We believe each girl is unique and has the potential to excel. We help girls improve their self-esteem to express their hopes to make decisions about their own lives. We are the voice for every girl, let’s create an equal future.”

Working together to build a more equal future
We cannot do this alone – girl-led and girl-centered cross-sectorial partners are key. When child protection, adolescent development and gender considerations are integrated into education and services they become holistic, safe, relevant and meaningful. Essential cross-sectorial work includes mitigating school safety risks; training all staff on gender responsive practices and gender-based violence; recruiting female teachers; providing unconditional cash transfers; offering life-skills groups tailored to adolescent girls; and, shifting the social norms that cause girls to be kept out of schools, which requires engaging with caregivers and religious and community leaders that have influence.

Building a versatile set of skills
Supporting adolescent girls to bridge the digital divide and gain 21st century skills is critical. This includes building life skills that can help girls to better navigate challenges and gain skills and support for employability. Transferable skills, such as stress reduction, emotional regulation, decision-making, goal setting, critical and creative thinking, conflict resolution and assertive communication help promote self-esteem and self-confidence that will last a lifetime.

In addition, adolescent girls must learn skills that match the demands of potential employers and the reality of the job market. Girls are far less likely to own digital devices, have access to internet or technology, and in turn have fewer opportunities to gain digital literacy skills. This also has significant implications for their employment prospects. For example, in the burgeoning ICT sector, which especially in South Asia is still dominated by men. In South Asia, young boys and men are five times more likely to access mobile technology than young girls and women.

Credit: UNICEF/UNI309817// Frank Dejongh

“The representation of women in technology is less, while there is a need for more professionals in the industry. Through some of our community education programmes such as career guidance, we received more support than expected which means there are interested young girls, who want to learn and build a career in this industry, and what they need is guidance and support.” Niuma, Women in Tech Maldives – IDG 2020 South Asia Challenge Winner

As we have seen during COVID-19 school closures, access to digital devices is crucial for accessing technology-based learning and online support services. While expanding access to low tech learning materials, more must be done to ensure that all children have access to the tools required to continue learning,

While getting girls online and ensuring access to technology is one goal, the work does not end there. We must ensure the technology they use is safe and the messages girls see online are enhancing and not harming their self-esteem or reinforcing negative gender stereotypes. We must ensure that adolescent girls have real life female mentors who can guide them through this.

We must make sure that while adolescent girls are learning skills, we are sending the message that they have the unlimited potential to do and be anything they want!

“72 per cent of girls [in our programme] have gotten their first jobs and are now earning more than the father and the brother of the family, combined. Now she has a say in the decisions, not just in her own life, but those of her entire family. This increase in self-worth and self-respect is what truly contributes to her healing.” Sonal, Protsahan Girls Champions, India – IDG 2020 South Asia Challenge Winner

Credit: UNICEF/UN0215358/Vishwanathan

Paving the way for a brighter future
Adolescent girls should be at the lead in making social change on efforts in returning to school post-COVID-19. To ensure their engagements are genuine and not tokenistic, they must be at the forefront of the design and monitoring of return to school efforts.

“Gender discrimination is embedded in my country, especially in terms of income, employment and politics. Though it is not highly prevalent, it does exist in a certain manner, where boys somehow take the lead by getting a social advantage. This is why, I am pitching my idea as a voice and representation of all Bhutanese women.” Pema, Cracking the code, Bhutan – IDG 2020 South Asia Challenge Winner

We must engage them in decision making and ask them questions: What do they want education to look like? What changes do they want to see in society? What do they want to learn — and how? We have the opportunity to build back more resilient education systems, and girls should be a part of the planning process.

COVID-19 has taught us that we must be flexible and offer alternative learning programmes that are tailored to the unique needs of marginalized and under-served groups. We must think outside of the box and use innovative tools and solutions to ensure that traditionally unreached children are offered new ways to engage in education.

Our commitment to listening and taking action!
Girls everywhere are breaking boundaries and challenging stereotypes. Whether she is leading the path as an entrepreneur or an innovator for a girls’ rights movement, girls are using the power of their voices to create a world that is unrestricted and inclusive for them and their future generations.

“We believe that every girl-led advocacy begins with listening. We believe that not only the future, but the present belongs to girls and they can take action now. This IDG 2020, let’s give girls a platform to share the causes that they are most passionate about, that they want to change, and to create a world and reimagine a future which is truly shaped by girls and for girls.” Riju, Nepal Scouts – IDG 2020 South Asia Challenge Winner

Adolescent girls should be at the lead in social change and COVID-19 return to school efforts. The International Day of the Girl 2020 South Asia Challenge provided inspiring examples of role models who are pioneering girl-led and girl-centered programming to change attitudes and stereotypes which prevent girls from achieving their dreams. It is time we listen and increase our actions by amplifying girls’ voices. We want you to know that at UNICEF and Education Cannot Wait we hear you and we are listening!

Joint opinion piece by UNICEF ROSA Regional Director Jean Gough and Education Cannot Wait Director Yasmine Sherif

 

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Ahead of a G20 that promises to address the pandemic’s impact on developing countries, Nobel Peace Laureate Kailash Satyarthi is calling on the nations which are spearheading the global response to be just in their treatment of the most at-risk communities, including the world’s poorest and most marginalised children. Credit: Mahmuddun Rashed Manik/IPS

By Alison Kentish
UNITED NATIONS, Nov 19 2020 (IPS)

Heads of youth movements and student unions are challenging the world’s richest nations to correct an ‘incredibly unequal’ global response to COVID-19, by considering the plight of the world’s most vulnerable children and young people.

The youth leaders gathered for a global forum ahead of the 2020 G20 Summit, which Saudi Arabia is hosting virtually from Nov. 21 to 22. The online youth event, ‘A Fair Share for our Future’, was organised by the 100 Million Campaign, an initiative of Nobel Peace Laureate Kailash Satyarthi, which empowers young people and tackles issues such as child labour, poverty, access to education and violence against children.

Satyarthi, a longtime child rights advocate, has been pleading with world leaders to be particularly attentive to the needs of children during the COVID-19 pandemic. In September, he urged governments to hold large corporations to account for child labour. Ahead of a G20 that promises to address the pandemic’s impact on developing countries, Satyarthi is calling on the nations which are spearheading the global response to be just in their treatment of the most at-risk communities.

“The richest governments have focused heavily on bailing out businesses and economies as part of the global COVID relief. While this must be done, it cannot be done at the expense of the world’s poorest and most marginalised children,” Satyarthi said. “Ensuring a Fair Share for Children by allocating 20 percent of the global COVID relief to the 20 percent most marginalised children and their families, along with the immediate release of $1 trillion (just a fraction of the global response), can save over 70 million lives. I call upon the G20 members to prioritise the most marginalised children this year and save losing an entire generation.”

According to the official agenda, G20 leaders will focus on three main areas; empowering people, safeguarding the planet and shaping new frontiers. Leandra Phiri, a youth activist from Malawi, urged young people to hold the leaders accountable to their promise of opportunities for all.

“Provide solutions and prepare the future generations not to face the things that we are facing right now. We are facing insecurities, imbalances and exclusions. On behalf of my fellow youth, if they won’t let us dream – we won’t let them sleep,” she said.

Ankit Tripathi, an Indian international student in Canada, addressed the detrimental impact of COVID-19 on inherently vulnerable migrant populations. His comments follow a recent landmark joint global report by the International Organisation for Migration and the World Food Programme, which warned that COVID-19 and measures taken to contain its spread have disrupted human mobility patterns, the consequences of which could been seen for years to come. Tripathi said leaders must ensure migrant access to health and social services.

“Migrants are often the exception to many public services in countries. Living everyday lives that are the same or harder than others, yet access to public services is severely diminished.  Some of the wealthiest nations in the world are competing to increase international student populations in their countries for both financial and social capital, but when it comes to providing support, we don’t even receive lip service let alone any real policy support,” he said.

Another area of concern for the youth involves domestic violence made worse by the economic blow of COVID-19 including unemployment. Johannah Reyes of Trinidad and Tobago’s feminist organisation WOMANTRA issued a passionate plea to leaders to protect women and children from abuse. She reminded the summit that women and youth are bearing the brunt of COVID-19 related job losses in the Americas and need help.

“This unemployment disparity means that there is a decrease in the capacity of women and young people to protect themselves from abuse and also decreases their ability to participate in political processes and organise,” she said. “My organisation WOMANTRA has documented 20 femicides for the year thus far in Trinidad and Tobago. This heart wrenching list includes Trinidadian women, Venezuelan migrant women and a child born with a disability,” Reyes said.

The young activists say the pandemic has severely derailed the education of at-risk children. In many parts of the world, COVID-19 restrictions have resulted in a transition to online instruction, but millions of students with no access to the required technology are falling behind. Brazilian student union leader Rozana Barroso said for many students in her country, as the digital divide widens, hunger increases.

“[Brazilian President Jair] Bolsonaro ignores the digital exclusion of young people who don’t have access to the internet,” she said. “It has now been 7 months since some students have been able to attend school. Democracy means having access to internet and the fight against hunger. Many students have also been suffering from more hunger because some of them were only able to have their daily meal at school.”

In Malawi, grassroots activists are worried about the toll that COVID-19 disruption in classroom instruction is taking on young girls, particularly in rural areas. According to the United Nations Children’s Fund and the U.N. Population Fund, the reality of life in pre-COVID Malawi included high rates of child marriage, teenage pregnancy and maternal mortality. The Malawi National Students Union has been tracking the numbers and the union’s president Japhet Nthala said they have been rising since COVID lockdowns.

“From the closure of school which happened on Mar. 28 this year up to around June we have witnessed rampant cases of teenage pregnancies and child marriages. In the eastern region of the country we have witnessed about 7,274 teenage pregnancies and this came into effect because of students being idle and schools being closed,” Nthala said.

The youth leaders say from hunger and abuse to unemployment and lack of access to health services, the problems faced by the world’s most marginalised continue to be exacerbated by COVID-19. They are demanding that world leaders deliver an equal, moral and fair internationalist response to COVID‐19, that national governments uphold the fundamental human rights of their citizens and that they give special protection for the most vulnerable children and young people during the pandemic.

They say the G20 leaders have assumed the reins of the COVID-response and now must also take the charge for responding to the needs of the world’s most vulnerable people.

Related Articles

• Save 70 million Lives Through #FairShare of COVID-19 Response Fund, Youth Urge Governments
• Hold Corporates Accountable for Using Child Labour, Nobel Laureates Urge World Leaders
• COVID-19 Pandemic an Opportunity to Re-evaluate How we Treat World’s Starving Children
• Nobel Laureate Kailash Satyarthi on Where to Find the $1 trillion Needed for Marginalised Children

The post Youth Demand a ‘Fair Share’ from World Leaders Ahead of G20 Summit appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Over 100 youth activists from around the globe met virtually ahead of the Nov. 21 summit of some of the world’s wealthiest nations. They called on the leaders to restructure the global response to COVID-19 and ensure aid reaches the world’s most marginalised people.

The post Youth Demand a ‘Fair Share’ from World Leaders Ahead of G20 Summit appeared first on Inter Press Service.

By Say Samal and Trần Hồng Hà
WASHINGTON DC, Nov 19 2020 (IPS)

The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted nearly every facet of our lives and delayed what was slated to be a landmark Conference of the Parties (COP26). This pivotal year marks the first due date for countries to submit revised national climate plans per the five-year cycle required by the Paris Agreement. Remarkably, countries are still moving forward with renewed urgency. And many countries are integrating green recovery into their COVID-19 responses, further contributing to climate action. While many countries have positive stories to tell, both of our nations, Vietnam and Cambodia, are sterling examples of nations taking strong, decisive action, particularly with support through the NDC Partnership. Just last month, the people of Vietnam submitted their updated national climate plan and, in short order, the people of Cambodia will do likewise.

Our success is a testament to our deep national commitment to climate action, which has been bolstered by support through the NDC Partnership and its Climate Action Enhancement Package (CAEP). CAEP is an enabling initiative that has helped to quickly match our climate ambitions to much needed support, at an especially difficult time for all countries and the global climate agenda. CAEP builds on and complements support from other development partners by delivering targeted, fast-track support to our countries, which enables us to enhance the quality, increase the ambition, and more effectively implement our nationally determined contributions (NDCs). Much like the current pandemic, CAEP’s strength is underpinned by its collaborative spirit and the need for multilateral cooperation. Through the technical and financial support of 46 partners, CAEP is currently supporting both our nations—and 61 others—to enhance NDCs in the lead up to COP26.

 
While this support came at a critical time, we’re mindful of the need for even greater support to effectively act on our robust climate commitments. Both our nations, like many others, live with climate impacts on a daily basis. The real and projected impacts on our populations and economies underpins the urgency with which we have acted and continue to act.

Vietnam

Vietnam’s potential climate hazards are expected to increase significantly under the impacts of climate change, such as sea level rise and saltwater intrusion. In fact, the Mekong Delta is one of the most vulnerable to sea level rise among the world’s deltas. In addition, agriculture, natural ecosystems, biodiversity, water resources, public health, and infrastructure are all at-risk sectors. The most vulnerable groups of people are the poor, ethnic minorities, the elderly, women, children, and people with disabilities. All these factors make addressing climate change a priority of critical national importance.

To meet our current and future challenges, Vietnam’s updated NDC identifies economy-wide mitigation measures for the period 2021-2030, spanning the energy, agriculture, waste, land use, land use change and forestry, and industrial sectors. The plan is distinct because it tackles greenhouse gas emissions by optimizing industrial processes and increasing our unconditional emission reduction target to nine percent below by 2030, combined with a change in baseline, this results in a 34 percent drop in emissions compared to our previous target. Moreover, Vietnam’s conditional emissions reduction target is now 27 percent (250.8 million tCO2e)—52.6 million tons of CO2e more than the emissions target in our first NDC submitted in 2015.

Vietnam’s updated NDC also includes robust adaptation components, directly linking to the National Adaptation Plan, and issues such as loss and damage, health, gender equality, and child protection. Alongside these strengthened mitigation and adaptation components, the updated NDC features new elements and significantly improves the means of implementation. As a people deeply committed to climate action, Vietnam is working to mainstream its national climate plan with socioeconomic development plans and strategies and draws overarching and discrete linkages with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

Our climate achievements to-date were also strengthened by longstanding partners such as the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit GmbH (GIZ) and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), primarily on mitigation and adaptation, respectively. Although the updated NDC takes effect next year, it is already informing our actions. By leveraging support through the NDC Partnership’s CAEP, delivered by the World Bank, the World Resources Institute (WRI), and the SNV Dutch Development Organisation, Vietnam is translating its NDC at provincial levels by mainstreaming targets in socioeconomic development plans. As part of these efforts, SNV is developing model approaches and a gender-sensitive framework for mainstreaming NDC targets and actions in these provincial plans.

This broad support is welcomed, and we’re banking on the support of all our government agencies, the private sector, and Vietnamese across communities to deliver on our commitments. This includes our 2021 target for incorporating the long-term, low greenhouse gas (GHG) emission requirements encouraged under Article 4 of the Paris Agreement.

Cambodia

Like Vietnam, its neighbor to the east, Cambodia is highly vulnerable to the effects of climate change. Our most affected sectors are agriculture, infrastructure, forestry, human health, and coastal zones. Rising temperatures are leading to increased frequency and intensity of extreme weather events in an already fragile socioeconomic context.

While registering only a very small fraction of global GHG emissions, Cambodia’s emissions have been trending upwards in tandem with its development progress. At the same time, the impacts of climate change are expected to reduce Cambodia’s average GDP growth by 2.5 percent in 2030 and by 9.8% in 2050.

Cambodia is responding to this challenge. We have committed to lowering emissions and our updated NDC will reflect improved mitigation targets and adaptation actions. Our commitments will focus on a wide array of sectors, including agriculture, forestry and other land uses, transport and health, among others. Cross-cutting issues such as gender, youth engagement, and private sector involvement will be hallmarks of our strategy. Finally, an analysis on how the NDC can impact SDG achievement is also being undertaken.

CAEP support delivered through the Partnership by UNDP and the World Bank has ensured that Cambodia’s NDC update is robust and consistent with prevailing commitments. Our climate plan is now informed by progress made on current NDC targets, and reflect commitments made in national and sectoral strategies adopted since the approval of our initial NDC in 2015. We will also conduct additional analyses, including with the latest emissions data, and prepare cost estimates for proposed sectoral NDC targets and actions.

This truly Cambodian approach will also strengthen technical capacity for the Ministry of Environment, the National Council for Sustainable Development and other relevant ministries. This will provide critical support throughout the NDC updating process and help improve ministries’ understanding of how climate change can be better integrated into their work over the longer term.

The Cambodian people and government are proud to own this process, which helps secure our development goals. We will strengthen measurement, reporting, and verification arrangements to improve monitoring and reporting on NDC implementation, including by establishing an online portal. The online NDC tracking system spotlights information on mitigation, adaptation, GHG inventory, support received and needed, as well as baselines, targets, and indicators received from ministries. A similar online NDC portal is being set up by our neighbors, Vietnam.

As a unique country-driven initiative, the NDC Partnership’s work empowers countries like ours to meet our climate ambitions, which drives forward collective action. CAEP is one of our strongest sources of support to achieve our climate and development goals, and as we are seeing in both Vietnam and Cambodia, the program is producing strong impacts in helping our societies enhance climate ambition, going further than would otherwise be possible.

 

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The post Vietnam and Cambodia: Leveraging Support to Enhance Climate Ambition appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Say Samal, Minister of Environment, Cambodia

Trần Hồng Hà, Minister of Natural Resources and Environment, Vietnam

The post Vietnam and Cambodia: Leveraging Support to Enhance Climate Ambition appeared first on Inter Press Service.

By Education Cannot Wait
Nov 19 2020 (IPS-Partners)

“For 75M children & young people trapped in conflict zones, #EducationCannotWait. A lost generation is one where hope dies in those who live. It is our responsibility to rekindle hope.” ~ Gordon Brown.

The post Gordon Brown – Education Cannot Wait appeared first on Inter Press Service.

International Volunteers Day (IVD) December 5, is an international observance that was mandated by the UN General Assembly in 1985. The Day is an opportunity to promote volunteerism, encourage governments to support volunteer efforts and recognize volunteer contributions to the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) at local, national and international levels. Credit: UN Volunteers (UNV)

By Simone Galimberti
KATHMANDU, Nepal, Nov 19 2020 (IPS)

The International Volunteer Day will approach soon and the 5th of December will become a day to celebrate the actions of millions of volunteers from all over the world, in the south as well in the north of the world.

Paradoxically but also tragically there has never been a greater time for volunteerism than in the last six months of the pandemic.

In Canada, as elsewhere in the world, volunteers have been on the frontlines, providing essential services from health care in hospitals and nursing homes to support for the most marginalized members of the society, offering an indispensable contribution when the country needed it the most.

As highlighted by the UN Deputy Secretary General Amina J. Mohammed during the Global Technical Meeting on Volunteering, organized in July by the United Nations Volunteers, UNV and International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, “the efforts of 1 billion volunteers is an important foundation at a pivotal moment for development to enable us to recover from the COVID-19 pandemic”.

Interestingly, like nowhere else volunteerism in Canada has been under the spotlight recently but unfortunately it was all for the wrong reasons.

A scandal involving a now disbanded high profile not-for-profit called “WE” that was very closely connected to the Government of Prime Minister Trudeau hijacked the entire public debate, overlooking the many essential contributions provided by volunteers during the pandemic.

The ongoing controversy centered on an aborted attempt by the Government to set up a national volunteering scheme called the Canada Student Service Grant, CSSG that would have helped students earn some money to navigate throughout the pandemic.

UN Volunteers celebrating International Volunteer Day in South Sudan where they serve the United Nations in peace-keeping, midwifery and human rights. Credit: UNV, 2018

The ongoing inquiry risks not only to overshadow the essential contributions played by volunteers during the pandemic but could also jeopardize the future of the sector for generations to come.

That would be a shame not only for those nearly 13 million Canadians that, as per data of Volunteer Centers, the real backbones of civic engagement and solidarity in the country, have been contributing their time and energies every single year but also because of the economic contributions the sector provides to the national economy.

According to a paper prepared by Robin Wisener for Volunteer Canada, “the economic value of volunteering contribution are at around $14 billion dollars, equivalent to 1.4% of Canada’s GDP”.

With the Liberal Government hard pressed on resetting its agenda, it is paramount not to lose the focus on the importance of investing on volunteerism in Canada.

The concept of “building back batter” that has been espoused by the Liberal administration is central in rethinking the role volunteerism plays in the society, not only as a means to help disadvantaged groups but also as a platform to reinvigorate grassroots levels of community engagement,

Volunteerism, if properly promoted and supported could be so instrumental in cementing local civic engagement, breaking down the chain of disenchantment many citizens are experiencing with the system not only in Canada but also elsewhere.

This is the reason why the government should include provisions to leverage on the great work being delivered by the volunteerism sector across the country, helping local communities particularly hit by the pandemic and its economic fallout, to re-start functioning with the vibrancy and the dynamism that only volunteers can unleash.

To start with, the Canada Service Corps that initially Prime Minister Trudeau wanted to entrust with the administration of CSSG program should be greatly expanded and turned into a national flagship program with commensurate resources and adequate levels of accountability and transparency.

Because it is essentially based on partnerships with not-for-profit organizations across Canada, strengthening their work on the ground, the program has the potential to be a truly game changer in the way people perceive volunteerism, helping more citizens from all the age groups, rather than just only youth, to embrace service according to the diverse circumstances locally in place.

Expanding the Canada Service Corps will require broad consultations and this should happen as a part of a broader discussion aimed at re-launching and re-energizing volunteerism in Canada.

Surely any effort to build a stronger volunteering infrastructure across the nation should build on the existing endeavors, especially on the work being tirelessly carried out by the Volunteer Centers.

Indeed, one stronger centrally funded and locally delivered program should not come at the expenses of smaller initiatives that are already on the ground that, if provided with the right financial and technical support could expand their outreach and improve their effectiveness.

Partnering with and investing in Volunteer Canada, the not-for-profit national peak body of the sector, would be crucial not only in order to rebuild trust but also to draw on the invaluable expertise of those delivering volunteering programs since decades.

For example, an expanded Canada Service Corps could also thrive if aligned to a better equipped and much more visible and attractive Pan-Canadian Volunteer Management Platform currently managed by Volunteer Canada in partnership with the Volunteer Centers.

Importantly, as also indicated by the Global Technical Meeting on Volunteering, volunteerism should be promoted also in its more informal and part time forms where the vast majority of volunteers serve across the world without any organizational affiliation.

Therefore, the time is ripe for the Government of Canada to embark on a comprehensive, long term strategy formulation of the sector, an exercise that will engage not only the small and big not for profits but the Provinces and Territories as well as the Municipalities.

Very crucially, the representatives of the First Nations should have voice and resources to design locally suitable service programs that build on their ancient traditions of self-help.

In such strategy, schools and universities should be fully involved because they also have a key responsibility in helping creating the foundations of a more engaged society where volunteering, besides being a propeller for personal and professional development, becomes a habit, a truly Canadian way to foster locally owned development solutions and democracy at the same time.

Inclusion and flexible arrangements to fit a diverse constituency should be an essential feature of any new strategy.

For example, a “National Volunteering Mission” translated on the ground through a mix of interventions funded federally, full time as well as part time, could help many disadvantaged and disenfranchised youth, including many First Nations, to find a new meaning at life while learning new skills applicable to the job market.

Certainly, there is a great need.

A recent report released by UNICEF on the 3rd of September, as reported by The Philanthropist, confirms the urgency for the Federal Government to invest on youth wellbeing especially in view of the high number of suicides and the worrying mental health status experienced by many of them.

Easier and more accessible volunteering opportunities even through intergenerational partnerships with retirees could be one of the ingredients that could be offered to all Canadian youth so that they could be better prepared to deal with their emotions and their personal growth.

As a part of a national conversation on volunteerism, the Federal Government could even think of creating a body mandated to promote volunteerism similar to the Corporation for National and Community Service in the USA that works in partnerships with state levels volunteering commissions.

Options to reinvigorate the volunteering sector in Canada are as endless as are the opportunities provided by the transformative power of volunteering to regenerate interest in community engagement while helping solving local problems.

Moreover, Canadian organizations promoting volunteerism overseas like CECI and WUSC that for years have been successfully running the UNITERRA volunteering program in developing nations with federal money and others like CUSO could also contribute to the debate, bringing the expertise and know-how, sharing what they have learned from their local partners.

While volunteering is certainly not a panacea and should not be seen as a cheap alternative to other indispensable public policies interventions, there is more evidence, globally that it can be an effective tool for, as Secretary General of the United Nations António Guterres said, “making the world more inclusive for people left farthest behind.”

In Canada, the government and the opposition and civil society should unite in a new common cause that can bring Canadians closer towards a better, fairer and more sustainable future, one that puts the Agenda 2030 and the SDGs at the center of policy making.

The upcoming International Volunteer Day that will be celebrated under the banner “Together We Can through Volunteering” should be a day for some big announcement in Ottawa.

*The author can be contacted at: simone_engage@yahoo.com

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/simone-galimberti-4b899a3/

 

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The post The Importance of Investing in Volunteerism appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Simone Galimberti* is Co-Founder of ENGAGE, Inclusive Change Through Volunteering, a not- for-profit NGO based in Nepal. A close observer of Canadian affairs, he writes on volunteerism, social inclusion, youth development and regional integration as an engine to improve people’s lives.

The post The Importance of Investing in Volunteerism appeared first on Inter Press Service.

President Donald Trump at the UN Security Council (UNSC) when the US held the rotating Presidency of the Council. Credit: UN Photo/Cia Pak

By Farhang Jahanpour
OXFORD, Nov 18 2020 (IPS)

American democracy has survived a dangerous virus, and it has even come off the ventilator, but whether it will be restored to full health or will suffer for a long time (like a long Covid) from the negative effects of the virus of personality cult, chauvinism, populism, racism, militarism and, yes let’s say it, fascism, remains to be seen.

So far, President Trump has refused to accept that he has lost the election, and instead of conceding he has alleged massive fraud and vote rigging. Instead of conceding, on November 17the he fired Christopher Krebs, the director of the federal agency that vouched for the reliability of the 2020 election.

Trump continues to claim that the election was stolen from him. His personal lawyer Rudi Giuliani has been engaged in desperate efforts in the courts to prove his boss’s unsubstantiated claims, so far without success. As late as November 15th, Trump tweeted: “He [Biden] only won in the eyes of FAKE NEWS MEDIA. I concede NOTHING! We have a long way to go. This was a RIGGED ELECTION!” [Caps as in the original].

Whether ultimately Trump will be forced to concede and move on, his repeated claims of vote rigging and a stolen election have discredited US democracy and have undermined the US reputation as a law-abiding country with a smooth transition of power


In the midst of a deadly pandemic which so far has infected more than 11 million and killed nearly a quarter of a million Americans, the largest number in the world by far, Trump’s refusal to cooperate with the incoming administration to stem the tide of the infections and the resulting economic recession is highly irresponsible.

However, whether ultimately Trump will be forced to concede and move on, his repeated claims of vote rigging and a stolen election have discredited US democracy and have undermined the US reputation as a law-abiding country with a smooth transition of power. There have already been many clashes between Trump’s supporters and opponents, and tension may increase and result in violence before he leaves office.

Four years ago, when the reality TV star and property developer Donald Trump, who had never held any elected office, pushed all his competitors aside and elbowed himself into the White House, despite all the predictions and despite having received three million votes fewer than his opponent, many people were wondering whether the US Constitution’s famed checks and balances would work.

As he broke every rule in the book, blasted the media, sidelined Congress, appointed partisan justices to the Supreme Court, openly criticized the US security services, pulled out of many international treaties, alienated many democratic allies and cozied up with a bunch of authoritarian rulers, it seemed that checks and balances had failed.

The longstanding fear of Trump’s use of force to stay in power, his constant belittling and insulting of his opponent, his encouragement of his base to stick by him, and various attempts to outlaw or at least delegitimize postal votes had caused a great deal of concern among ordinary citizens and even politicians and pundits about a peaceful transition of power.

However, American voters took the matter into their own hands and by voting him out of office as one of only five one-term presidents over the past 100 years they have restored grounds for hope and optimism, but whether the next administration can repair all the damage that has been done to democracy and the rule of law will remains to be seen.

President Trump’s efforts to hold on to power have been unlike anything that Americans have experienced in recent memory, and they resemble the efforts of some rulers in third-world banana republics where the defeated candidates resort to force to subvert the will of the people. “What we have seen in the last week from the president more closely resembles the tactics of the kind of authoritarian leaders we follow,” Michael Abramowitz, the president of Freedom House, which tracks democracy, told the Times. “I never would have imagined seeing something like this in America.”

Apart from undermining democracy at home, Trump and his aides may also engage in some catastrophic adventures abroad before leaving office. According to a New York Times’s scoop, in a meeting with his senior advisors on November 12th, Trump asked them if there were options for a US strike on Iran’s civilian nuclear enrichment facilities.

Apparently, they opposed Trump’s course of action because it could kick off a major war in the last weeks of his presidency. The fact is that Iran has not engaged in an illegal activity and has carried out civilian uranium enrichment under the IAEA supervision in keeping with the Iran nuclear deal (the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action) which Trump violated, and as a part of his “Maximum Pressure”, imposed crippling illegal sanctions on Iran.

Therefore, not only would an attack on those facilities have constituted a war crime, it would also have resulted in massive casualties among civilians living near those installations. A 2012 study found that a strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities would kill between 5,000 and 70,000 people from the release of 1%-20% of the uranium hexafluoride gas at the Isfahan facility. However, if 50% or more of the gas were released the radioactive fallout would be proportionately larger. Even contemplating such an attack shows the extent of his irresponsibility and even criminality.

Another cause for concern is that even if there is a peaceful transition, the long-term effects of the election are still unpredictable. The vote was not a clear, one-sided repudiation of Trump’s authoritarian tendencies and a return to the rule of law. Although the Biden-Harris ticket prevailed by an almost five million votes margin, Trump too received more votes than he did in 2016.

He continues to have a devoted base, and even after seeing the disastrous record of his rule during the past four years, nearly half of the voters voted for him again. This shows that although Trump was defeated by a small margin, Trumpism is still alive and well, and may pose a serious threat to democratic governance during the next four years.

The Democrats lost seats in the House and, contrary to predictions, failed to gain a majority in the Senate. The runoff elections in Georgia on January 5th may reduce the Republican majority in the Senate but the situation is far from ideal. So, it is still premature to predict the end of Trumpism and a return to political health.

The recent election has highlighted some flaws in the US’s electoral system. Although both Al Gore in 2,000 and Hillary Clinton in 2016 received more popular votes than their rivals they failed to be declared president on the basis of the number of Electoral College votes. This clearly goes against the principle of one-person one vote, and the majority vote deciding the outcome.

The Electoral College is a remnant of the debates in the summer of 1787. The Constitutional Convention debated three options about how to elect a president, election by Congress, selection by state legislatures and a popular election. It should be remembered that at that time the right to vote was generally restricted to white, landowning men.

The choice of the Electoral College was to provide a buffer from what Thomas Jefferson referred to as the “well-meaning, but uninformed people” who “could have no knowledge of eminent characters and qualifications and the actual selection decision.”

Surely, in the age of universal education and mass communication, those condescending arguments are no longer valid. The return to the principle of the majority vote will put an end to this anomaly among democratic countries.

 

Drop box outside the Maricopa County Recorder’s office in Phoenix, Arizona. Credit: Peter Costantini.

 

The whole system of voting also needs changing. At the moment, there is no uniform pattern of voting and different states have their own rules. As a result, there have been unnecessary disputes about postal votes, votes received too late, etc. In most other democratic countries there are clear rules of voting and the results are often announced shortly after the end of the election.

The third problem is the duration of transition from one administration to the next with the possibility of mischief by an irresponsible incumbent. In Britain, for instance, the outcome of the election is usually known by the following day when the transfer of power takes place, and the new prime minister moves into 10 Downing Street as the previous one leaves.

These are surely issues for consideration before the next presidential election. However, whatever happens, the fact remains that American democracy has been dealt a major blow as the result of Trump’s populist and authoritarian rule, and it will need a great deal of hard work, national unity and determination to reverse the trend. Sadly, the raging pandemic, the worsening economic recession and a divided society will make that task very difficult.

 

Farhang Jahanpour is a former professor and dean of the Faculty of Languages at the University of Isfahan and a former Senior Research Scholar at Harvard. He has also taught at Cambridge and Oxford universities. He also served as Editor for Middle East and North Africa at the BBC Monitoring from 1979-2001.

The post The Unprecedented US Presidential Election and its Consequences appeared first on Inter Press Service.

By Saul Escobar Toledo
MEXICO CITY, Nov 18 2020 (IPS)

As many have observed worldwide, the outcome of the US presidential elections has been, as expected – full of hope and fear. Many people had the bad feeling that if Trump were to be re-elected, the uncertainty, already enormous due to the pandemic and its effects, would jeopardize the economic recovery worldwide. The triumph of Democrat Biden does not guarantee great solutions, but at the least offers a little more of transparency, certainty, and stability.

Saul Escobar Toledo

For Mexico, the result could impact in different senses: the policy towards Latin America; pressures to stop undocumented migration; and the economic and commercial ties between both nations. There is, however, a special issue that deserves more attention because it has been less well known: labor relations in Mexico.

To understand the issue, it is worth remembering that to renegotiate NAFTA and the signature of the T-MEC or USMC (United States, Mexico, and Canada Agreement) anew labor chapter was introduced. It is Annex 23-A which is entitled “The representation of workers in collective bargaining in Mexico”. There is no doubt that this annex was agreed to try to prevent in Mexico the existence of “contratos de protección patronal” or protection labor contracts which favor employers as they are signed without the knowledge and of course the acceptance of the workers. In short, labor agreements are legally valid but fraudulent because there was no bargaining at all between employers and employees. This kind of contracts have made easier the permanent fall of wages of Mexican workers. The purpose for this has been to attract investments and companies from the US to Mexico.

As a result of the labor chapter agreed in USMC, Mexico had to reform its labor legislation, which happened in April 2019. The new administration headed by President Lopez Obrador was keen to these changes as he was convinced that companies have abused Mexican workers too much and too long.

The constitutional and law amendments gave light to a new labor model. The one that was in force for more than a hundred years was based on tripartite justice (government, employers, and workers); it is now supported by judicial courts. The old order gave the government the power to recognize and control the unions; the new is based on a broad freedom of association. For the first time in many years, Mexican workers will have a real chance to choose by secret, personal and direct vote their leaders and representatives; and join the organization of their choice.

Despite these reforms, the vote of the (new) Agreement in the Congress of the United States was a complicated matter. It was finally resolved when the bill HR- 5430 was adopted on January 3, 2020 by US lawmakers. In Title VII there is a “labor monitoring and enforcement “chapter. It includes an Interagency Labor Committee designed to monitor the implementation and maintenance of Mexico’s labor reform. The Committee will also have the task of establishing a web-based hotline, monitored by the Department of Labor, to receive confidential information regarding labor issues directly from Mexican workers.

The bill authorizes hiring of up to 5 additional full-time officers of the Department of Labor and assign them to the United States Embassy in Mexico. Their duty is: “Submitting to the Interagency Labor Committee on a quarterly basis, reports on the efforts undertaken by Mexicoto comply with its labor obligations”. The bill also established an ‘‘Independent Mexico Labor Expert Board’’, to be responsible for monitoring and evaluating the implementation of Mexico’s labor reform and compliance with its labor obligations. The Board will be composed of 12 members appointed by the government and both parties represented in Congress (Democrats and Republicans).

In summary, the Treaty contemplates a heavy bureaucratic apparatus that will monitor the conditions of Mexican workers , especially in industries such as: automobile assembly; auto part; aerospace; electronics; call centers ; mining and steel and aluminum. In case of finding violations and if they are not corrected, the goods produced in these companies would be detained at the border unable to enter the US and Canada, or rather receive a special tariff. This legal and institutional machinery is going to remain despite the political changes that take place in Washington due to the November 3 elections.

Meanwhile, in Mexico, things changed in more ways than one: the effects of the pandemic and the economic slowdown had a response from the government that consisted of maintaining its original program , planned since last year and, in addition , carrying out an adjustment to public spending . This austerity policy was confirmed in the draft budget sent to Congress for 2021.

Thus, the collapse of the employment, formal and informal, and the income of families have had no compensation, causing a huge social debt that is reflected in an increase of poverty and extreme poverty. It is also expected that the economic recovery will be much slower for the rest of the year and 2021. All this will undoubtedly make more difficult collective bargaining as companies will seek to cut staff, provide fewer benefits or freeze wages. In addition, while the health problem is resolved, the resumption of economic activities may cause more infections and deaths among industrial workers, as seems to be happening in the maquiladora industry along the northern border of the country.

Under these conditions, the implementation of the labor reform, with surveillance and in some cases direct inspection of US personnel could be the cause of disputes and controversies. Biden´s victory will probably put more pressure on Mexico. Labor unions in the US and Canada will support the “monitoring” is carried out effectively and on time.

The president and the Congress of Mexico cannot be indifferent and wait to see what happens. A decisive set of actions to curb poverty and unemployment, protect workers and revive the economy with lower risks is necessary and urgent. Only in this way can workers’ bargaining capacity be strengthened.

The future of the labor reform cannot depend on US pressure on Mexico. Even if we admit that the intentions are laudable,Mexican workers cannot become pieces of a mechanism at the service of a foreign country: nothing more and nothing less than the most powerful nation in the world.

saulescobar.blogspot.com

 

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Technical experts measure the salinity of groundwater wells on Vaitupu Island, Tuvalu. This month work will begin on building the network of tanks and pipes which will eventually convey clean water from the north of Vaitupu Island to the 1,500 people who live in the villages of Tumaseu and Asau in the south. Courtesy: Pacific Community

By Catherine Wilson
CANBERRA, Nov 18 2020 (IPS)

Rural communities on one of the nine islands that make up the Polynesian nation of Tuvalu are anticipating how life will change when they are connected to piped clean water for the first time.

Despite being surrounded by millions of square kilometres of ocean, just over half of the 12 million people who live in the Pacific Islands region have access to clean water, the lowest of any region in the world. In remote island communities in Tuvalu, and across the region, the deficit of clean water is a major obstacle to disease prevention, lifelong health and development progress.

Pisi Seleganiu, whose family live in villages on Vaitupu Island, which is located about 120 kilometres northwest of Tuvalu’s main Funafuti Atoll, told IPS: “It very much affects their daily lives. The only source is rainwater; the issue is when it becomes dry there is no supplementary water supply. People use a lot of fuel to drive to the far end of the island to get water and bring it back to the villages.”

This month work will begin on building the network of tanks and pipes which will eventually convey groundwater from wells in the north of Vaitupu Island to the 1,500 people who live in the villages of Tumaseu and Asau in the south. It’s the culmination of years of consultation between the island’s customary leaders and the regional development organisation, Pacific Community, which is headquartered in New Caledonia, about traditional knowledge of water resources.

Located in the Central Pacific Ocean between Kiribati to the northeast and Fiji to the south, Tuvalu’s estimated population of 10,580 people reside on low lying islands; the highest elevation is 4.6 metres. Surface sources of freshwater are very scarce. There are no rivers, for instance, and islanders are overwhelmingly reliant on capturing rainwater for drinking, cooking and hygiene.

“Tuvalu is blessed to have plenty of rain annually…rainwater harvesting with adequate storage is the only sustainable means to maintain supply for the population,” Uatea Salesa, project manager at the Pacific Community for the Vaitupu Water Security Project, told IPS. But he added that, during times of drought, even the rainwater wasn’t enough.

The atoll nation is highly vulnerable to the El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) climate phenomenon, an alternating pattern of changes in the water temperature of the tropical Pacific Ocean, known as El Niño and La Niña, that, in turn, drive warm and cool atmospheric changes and fluctuating periods of rainfall. In 2011 Tuvalu experienced a severe drought, attributed to La Niña, following months without rain, which led to the government announcing a state of emergency and supplies of freshwater being airlifted into the country by international donors.

Population growth has also increased pressures on the country’s water resources. Tuvalu has a total land area of only 26 square kilometres and a population density of 408 people per square kilometre, resulting in a huge demand for consumption of a fragile natural resource.

Boosting the country’s water security is a major priority for the Tuvalu government and, to this end, desalination has been explored.

“Desalination was installed to supplement the water supply by the government on Funafuti Island [where the capital is located] and on some of the northern islands as a backup during periods of low rainfall and during drought,” Salesa said. “But desalination is an expensive technology and will not be sustainable if it becomes an alternative source of water supply.”

Staff of Tuvalu’s Public Works Dept conduct geophysical surveys to identify the thickness of underlying freshwater lens to determine the potential for groundwater development. Courtesy: Pacific Community

Soseala Tinilau, the Tuvalu government’s director of the Department of Environment, told IPS that the challenges of managing and supplying water also included the low capacity of households to store clean water and continually maintain guttering and water tanks.

The importance of clean water for life and human, as well as national development, was stressed by Dr Stuart Minchin, director general of the Pacific Community, on World Water Day, Mar. 22, this year.

“Lack of access to safe drinking water and sanitation poses a serious health risk, particularly to children, and a fundamental development constraint for Pacific nations….While access to potable water and sanitation is a basic human right that many of us take for granted, it is a right currently denied to over two thirds of Pacific Islanders, especially those in rural areas, informal communities on the fringes of the region’s growing urban areas and on the hundreds of small islands scattered across the Pacific,” Minchin stated.

Clean freshwater is an essential agent, at the moment, in the battle against COVID-19, but also in reducing the prevalence of waterborne diseases in the Pacific Islands, such as diarrhoea and cholera, which are fatal illnesses for young children. And, in an island state, such as Tuvalu, which is increasingly linked to the fortunes of climate change, it’s an imperative for continued human habitation.

“Water is an issue of survival for people in Tuvalu, water is life,” Tinilau told IPS.

And in the Pacific, it’s an issue of greater magnitude in rural communities, where only 44 percent of people have access to water, compared to 92 percent in towns and cities. In Tumaseu and Asau on Vaitupu Island, villagers whose livelihoods are mostly associated with fishing, have access to health clinics and sanitation, but life is challenging without a consistently reliable source of water in the communities.

This is now set to change after technical experts from the Pacific Community drew on the traditional knowledge held by village elders of where sources of well water were located and carried out scientific investigations in 2014. It resulted in the groundwater potential on Vaitupu Island being mapped and quantified for the first time.

“We checked out where they said the location would be, the possible sites. We used technology where we passed electrical signals down to the ground and then we knew exactly where the water was, the level of the water….it was great to see the science behind the assessment actually proving the local knowledge,” Salesa told IPS.

As the elders had said, the most expansive groundwater lens was in the far north of the island, near the coast. The island council then led successful applications to secure funding from the New Zealand Government’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade for the construction of overhead tanks at the well site and pipes to convey water direct to the villages. Clean water is expected to be on tap in Tumaseu and Asau by June 2022.

“It will be so beneficial to implement this project. It will help to improve the status of living of people in both communities. It will make a big difference to health issues,” Seleganiu said, adding that villagers will also have more time to devote to income earning and community development activities, without the time-consuming labour of transporting supplies of water by road.

 

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For every dollar earned by a man in manufacturing, services and trade, women earn just 70 cents. Credit: UNDP

By Odette Kabaya and Angela Lusigi
ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia, Nov 18 2020 (IPS)

Africa has over 700 companies with an annual revenue of more than $500 million, including 400 with revenue above $1 billion. The ability of these companies to thrive rests on building and retaining talented women and men.

Empowering both women and men employees, suppliers, distributors, and customers and ensuring they succeed is not only a human rights obligation, it is good business and increasingly a core part of their mission and values.

Private sector engagement is key to gender equality
Deepening engagement with the private sector, both large and small is key to achieving the global 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development (SDGs). Achieving targets related to full and productive employment and decent work for all women and men, and equal pay for work of equal value (SDG 8) and gender equality and empowering all women and girls (SDG 5) among others is possible.

Growing jobs in retail, food and agri-processing, health care, financial services, light manufacturing, and construction are already impacting communities. Companies can advance sustainable development and women’s economic empowerment by choosing to do business in ways that ensure women and men can contribute and benefit equally.

By making gender equality central to business practices, the private sector can be a driver of economic and social progress that benefits all.

Gaps remain
Despite progress, gender gaps remain and women’s prospects in the world of work are far from being equal to men’s. Today, more women are both educated and participate in the labour market and there is greater awareness that more gender equality reduces poverty and boosts economic development.

Yet, six out of ten women participate in the labour force compared to seven out of ten men and the unemployment rate for women (8.2%) is higher than men’s (6.4%). For every dollar earned by a man in manufacturing, services and trade, women earn just 70 cents.

Opportunities exist
Globally, advancing gender equality could grow GDP by 12% by 2025, this translates to 300 million more economic output in Sub-Saharan Africa. UNDP’s report on closing gender gaps in labour and productive resource in Africa finds that if women participated in the workforce at the same rate as men, an additional 74.4 million women would enter the workforce and economic output would increase by USD 962 billion.

Closing gender gaps in women’s labour force participation, paid work, employment and productivity could increase economic output by 3% to 16%.

The Government of Nigeria and UN Women last week launched the Generation Equality campaign in Nigeria. The Minister of Women Affairs, Dame Pauline Tallen declared the campaign officially launched in the presence of a high-level UN delegation including UN Deputy Secretary-General, Amina J. Mohammed. November 11, 2020. Credit: UN Women Nigeria

Barriers to overcome
Deep rooted obstacles to achieving women’s full potential at work include low-paying jobs, few channels to voice their concerns and structural and cultural barriers to career advancement. These include education gaps, stereotypes, lack of female role models, the absence of good childcare options and decent maternity leave, as well as risks to their personal safety and security.

Only 22 countries in sub-Saharan Africa meet or exceed the ILO standard of 14 weeks paid maternity leave.

Women in male dominated sectors such as mining risk harassment and gender-based violence and limited inclusion in mining value chains. Social norms assign women and girls the primary responsibility for care and domestic work, hence, on average they spend twice as much time as men.

Empowering women is good for business and livelihoods
Unilever is lifting profits through a Sustainable Living Plan with gender equality in its business model. As women represent over 70% of Unilever’s consumers, increasing their incomes allows increased consumption and empowering women as micro-entrepreneurs selling Unilever products brings in new customers, many in poor and rural areas.

Fifty companies in Uganda and Rwanda are empowering women and achieving the SDGs through UNDP’s Gender Seal Certification Programme for Private Sector (Gender Seal). The Gender Seal initiative certifies that a company promotes and integrates measures for gender equality as an integral part of corporate governance and “good business”.

This programme was pioneered by UNDP in Latin America in 2009 to provide tools, guidance and assessments towards eliminating gender-based pay gaps; increasing women’s roles in decision-making; enhancing work-life balance; enhancing women’s access to non-traditional jobs; eradicating sexual harassment at work; and using inclusive, non-sexist communication.

Participating companies are changing organisation culture, shifting cultural norms and societal expectations and providing more equal opportunities for women and men in the workplace by implementing a Gender Equality Management System (GEMS).

This creates career advancement for women, more participation in leadership, and improved human resource management, strategic planning and communication.

As more public and private organisations in Gambia, South Africa and Gambia partner with UNDP to advance gender equality, UNDP in Africa is developing a cadre of African Gender Seal experts.

Cross regional collaboration with Latin America includes training and customisation of tools taking place in November 2018 in Kampala, Uganda for experts from 20 countries.

 

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Excerpt:

Odette Kabaya is Regional Programme Advisor at the UN Development Programme’s (UNDP) Regional Service Center for Africa (RSCA) and Angela Lusigi is Strategic Advisor, UNDP Africa

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Civil-military operational meeting in the middle of the street in Chile, as part of the actions to contain the covid-19 pandemic. Credit: Ministry of Defense of Chile

By Maurizio Guerrero
NEW YORK, Nov 17 2020 (IPS)

During the Covid-19 pandemic, armed forces in Latin America have been taking on essential tasks: manufacturing protective equipment, delivering food and treating civilians in hospitals. In at least a dozen countries, soldiers have been deployed to enforce containment measures, often using brute force, on populations made up of largely poor informal workers.

In Venezuela and Bolivia, the armed forces have also been used to repress political opposition and to shore up governments with questionable democratic legitimacy.

Disillusionment with democracy in the era of neoliberal austerity has led to a steady decline in satisfaction with this model of government in Latin America

Observers of the situation in Latin America fear that permanent militarisation will become the new normal, and that, in the absence of adequate civilian institutions, many governments will use their armed forces to provide basic services and to clamp down on their critics at the same time. Democracy in Latin America, they warn, may be reduced to no more than a façade once the pandemic is over.

“It will take Latin America a long time to recover from the pandemic. People will feel more insecure and will probably have less confidence in governments. In a great many countries, we will see a strengthening of ‘tutelary democracy’,” says Adam Isacson director of the Defense Oversight programme at the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA), a research and advocacy organisation advancing human rights in the Americas.

In ‘tutelary democracies’, according to the Polish-American theorist Adam Przeworski, civilian authorities run governments in which the military has the final say.

In the context of Latin America, these pseudo-democracies could take hold as a form of government. Isacson is particularly concerned about Honduras and Guatemala, where the presidents recently dismantled international anti-corruption commissions with the backing of the army, and El Salvador, where the president attempted to intimidate parliamentarians by calling the military into the Legislative Assembly earlier this year.

The region, beset with high rates of violence andpoor justice and accountability systems, is forecast to see a 9.1 per cent fall in GDP this year, according to the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC).

The deployment of armies in response to natural disasters and health emergencies is standard practice, across the globe. No civilian institution is able to mobilise on such a scale. Analysts, however, agree that the worry in the Latin American context is that, in the absence of competent civilian institutions, the military will continue to play a central role once the current emergency is over.

Since the beginning of the pandemic, military units have been stationed in urban areas of Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, El Salvador, Honduras, Mexico, Peru and Venezuela to carry out patrols, man checkpoints, temporarily close borders and, in some cases, to detain citizens for violating health regulations. During the first few weeks of lockdown, armed forces arrested over 18,000 people in Peru and hundreds in El Salvador.

Although this backdrop may bring to mind the Latin American military dictatorships of the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s, the prominence of the armed forces today does not necessarily presage new military coups, according to Kristina Mani, director of Latin American studies at Oberlin College in Ohio and author of the 2011 book Democratization and Military Transformation in Argentina and Chile: Rethinking Rivalry. She is, however, in no doubt that the military’s growing role in civilian tasks cuts into the space usually controlled by democratically elected governments.

“The armed forces will undertake the tasks they are called on to do by civilian authorities, which is likely to mean that they will require more resources and have a greater ability to question civilian leaders,” says Mani. “The military will have more influence in the countries where it is being deployed most widely.”

The security forces in Venezuela have arbitrarily detained and prosecuted journalists, health workers, human rights defenders and political opponents since mid-March 2020 as part of a state of “emergency and alarm” declared in response to the pandemic, Human Rights Watch reports.

In Bolivia, the restrictions have been used as a pretext for suppressing political demonstrations against the interim government of Jeanine Áñez, who illegally assumed the presidency in November 2019 and postponed the presidential elections on two occasions. In spite of the political repression, Luis Arce, the socialist candidate running for the party of the ousted president, Evo Morales, won the elections on 18 October.

During Áñez’s government, “the military in Bolivia played a dual role by forcing people to stay at home and silencing them as a result. It was also used to clamp down on protests and demonstrations,” says Mani. “This dual role, which politicians can use to their advantage, is a serious cause for concern.”

 

In the ruins of neoliberalism

Many Latin American countries began their current democratic journey in the 1980s and 1990s, at a time when they were forced to implement so-called structural adjustments– severe cuts in government spending – imposed by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. Poverty levels in the region remained largely unchanged, while income inequality rose sharply.

Urban violence linked to organised crime and drug trafficking escalated and the region became one of the most violent in the world. Corruption scandals involving political leaders have been the rule rather than the exception: more than half the countries in the subcontinent are embroiled in a single case, that of the Brazilian industrial conglomerate Odebrecht.

According to Brett Kyle, assistant professor of political science and faculty member in the Office of Latino/Latin American Studies (OLLAS) at the University of Nebraska and author of the soon to be published book Military Courts, Civil-Military Relations, and the Legal Battle for Democracy: The Politics of Military Justice, civilian institutions in Latin America have a long history of failure, especially in relation to public security and the workings of the justice system. Rather than investing resources into institutional structures for security and justice, Kyle explains, Latin American governments have used their militaries to deliver “quick fixes”.

This militarisation was already visible prior to the pandemic.

The last 20 months offer numerous examples: Guatemala’s president, Jimmy Morales, surrounded himself with military personnel on announcing his decision to shut down the UN-sponsored International Commission against Impunity (CICIG); Mexico formed a National Guard largely made up of military personnel; Brazil’s president, Jair Bolsonaro, encouraged celebrations of the 1964 military coup; Honduras created a new police force that quashed the protests in December 2019; El Salvador’s president, Nayib Bukele, brought the army into the National Assembly to intimidate parliamentarians; and the presidents of Ecuador, Peru and Chile, accompanied by uniformed generals, announced crackdowns on demonstrations.

Mexico, a country that has never endured a military dictatorship, is a singular case. The party that governed the country for 71 years kept the armed forces out of civilian matters. Since 2006, however, the military has been undertaking public security tasks under the pretext of contributing to the fight against organised crime. President Andrés Manuel López Obrador has conferred even wider responsibilities on the military.

Despite his government having cut current public spending by 75 per cent this year, the military is building the next major airport and a tourist train. It has also been placed in charge of customs operations. The Mexican military is taking on an increasing number of tasks, despite being the national institution most widely denounced for its role in extrajudicial killings and forced disappearances.

According to a Latinobarómetro opinion poll, satisfaction with democracy fell from 44 per cent in 2008 to 24 per cent in 2018. There is not a country in the region where the majority of citizens are satisfied with this form of government, and in Brazil the level of satisfaction was as low as nine per cent. Confidence in the military is also falling, though the level is still high compared to other institutions: 44 per cent in 2018. And the pandemic appears to have exacerbated the lack of trust in civilian governments.

“We shouldn’t see these trends as a reason for the military to suddenly try to take over civilian governments in the region,” argues Kyle. “What we may see, however, are scenarios in which military leaders view civilian governments as incompetent and try to assume a more prominent role in decision-making.”

Although the United States has directly or indirectly intervened at least 41 times to change governments in Latin America, often supporting military coups, experts agree that the role of the US in this increased militarisation is minimal.

If anything, the impact of President Donald Trump’s government on this wave of militarisation in Latin America has been by omission: its disinterest in supporting democratic initiatives made it easier, for instance, for Guatemala and Honduras to shut down their anti-corruption commissions.

Alongside the growing militarisation in the region, Latin America is seeing the emergence of vigorous social movements . In 2019, millions of citizens in Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Peru and Venezuela took to the streets to denounce corrupt leaders, to call for an end to austerity measures and to fight for free and truly democratic elections.

“The waves of protest we saw in 2019 are going to return and will be bigger still, especially among populations that will find themselves unemployed or underemployed in the midst of a deep economic recession,” says Isacson, warning that mass demonstrations in an increasingly militarised region are “a recipe for social unrest and conflict”.

This story was originally published by Equal Times

The post On the Back of the Pandemic, the Militarisation of Latin America is Gathering Momentum, Analysts Warn appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Journalists at an event in Kabul, to mark the Afghan National Journalists Day (March 2019), in support of media freedom and solidarity with journalists. Reporters have frequently been targeted during the Afghan conflict. Credit: UNAMA/Fardin Waezi

By External Source
Nov 17 2020 (IPS-Partners)

Reporters and other media workers in warzones across the world, are reliable witnesses who contribute to forging peace, and must be better-protected under international humanitarian law, said the UN chief on Wednesday.

António Guterres said in the statement issued by his Spokesperson that he remains deeply concerned, and condemned attacks against journalists and media workers in general, calling for “concerted efforts to tackle widespread impunity for such crimes.”

In 2018-2019, UNESCO – the UN cultural agency which speaks up for journalist safety and protection – documented 67 killings of journalists in countries experiencing armed conflict, among which, 23 were directly involved in covering battlefield hostilities.

“Apart from fatal attacks, journalists covering conflicts face a range of other threats including violence leading to injuries, arbitrary detention, denial of visas and restrictions to movement in, across or out of conflict zones”, said the Secretary-General’s statement.

Majority of deaths unsolved

Even though 2020 saw a “slight decrease” in the rate of impunity for crimes against journalists overall, 87 per cent of such cases worldwide were still not resolved, UNESCO reported earlier this month.

According to the Safety of Journalists and the Danger of Impunity, a report by UNESCO’s Director-General, only 13 per cent of cases globally involving crimes against journalists were reported “as resolved”, in comparison to 12 per cent in 2019, and 11 per cent in 2018.

The biennial report also said that in 2018-19, a total of 156 killings of journalists were recorded worldwide, and over the past decade, a journalist was killed – on average – every four days.

As of the end of September, 39 journalists had been killed in 2020, the report added.

War reporting essential

The UN chief’s stated that “the fundamental role of journalists in ensuring access to reliable information is essential to achieving durable peace, sustainable development and human rights”, and recalled that all civilians, “including civilian journalists engaged in professional missions in areas of armed conflict, must be respected and protected under international humanitarian law.”

He called on all parties to conflict and combatants – as well as “the international community as a whole, to protect journalists and enable conditions for the exercise of their profession.”

‘A dangerous profession’

“Journalism remains a dangerous profession: the threats faced by journalists are many and wide-ranging”, said UNESCO’s report last week, which coincided with the International Day to End Impunity for Crimes against Journalists.

“While casualties related to countries experiencing armed conflict have declined, fatal attacks against journalists covering stories related to corruption, human rights violations, environmental crimes, trafficking, and political wrongdoing have risen in other countries.”

The report is submitted every two years to UNESCO’s International Programme for the Development of Communication (IPDC) Intergovernmental Council, and opportunity for States to take stock of global developments and discuss challenges linked to promoting the safety of journalists and combatting impunity.

Palestinian journalist, Mohammad Awad, reporting from the field. Credit: UNESCO

Television journalists constitute the largest group among the victims, according to the report.

Over 2018 and 2019, TV journalists constitute 30 per cent of the journalists killed with 47 fatalities, followed by radio with 24 per cent, and print media with 21 per cent of the killings.

Furthermore, as with previous years, a majority of victims were local journalists covering local stories, with 95 local journalists killed in 2018 and 56 local journalists lost their lives in 2019, representing 96 per cent and 98 per cent of the fatalities for the two years, respectively.

Mexican death toll rises

Only this week, a Mexican reporter who was about to go live on air for a digital news outlet, with a story reportedly involving the grisly discovery of human remains, was shot multiple times and died of his wounds soon after.

Israel Vazquez of the El Salmantino outlet, was in the city of Salamanca, according to news reports, and a special team is said to be investigating the journalist’s death although no arrests have been made so far.

He is the third journalist killed in Mexico within the last month, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists, and nine have been killed in the past year, according to Reporters Without Borders.

Many of those killed over many years have been reporting on corruption, or the influential drugs cartels who often act with virtual impunity.

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Director of Meteorology at the Ministry of Tourism and Environmental Affairs (MTEA), Duduzile Nheengethwa-Masina, said while Eswatini was able to implement many projects in the different sectors of the NDCs, some targets were not met. Credit: Mantoe Phakathi/IPS

By Mantoe Phakathi
MBABANE, Nov 17 2020 (IPS)

Barry de Maine, the director of Green Cross Pharmacy, lost about $ 7,675 worth of stock when The Mall, the largest shopping centre in Mbabane, was flooded back in 2003. But when the flash floods hit again this year, he had already installed a flange to stop water from coming in.

“This is the best I could do under the circumstances,” De Maine told IPS, adding: “Otherwise since we started experiencing floods at The Mall (17 years ago) nothing has been done.”

Besides damage to shops at The Mall, customers’ cars had to be towed away because they were floating in water.

While De Maine attributes the floods to climate change, he said no one has engaged him to discuss a long-term solution to what has become a frequent event in the capital city.

“I hear people talking about the floods but no one has ever proposed anything. I’m willing to listen but I’m more interested in action,” said De Maine.

He is likely to see action because the southern African nation is determined to leave no one behind, as it renews its commitment to the Paris Agreement. The country made its first commitment to the Agreement in 2015 when it submitted its Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. 

But the first NDCs had no implementation plan, costing or monitoring tool, which presented a challenge, the director of Meteorology at the Ministry of Tourism and Environmental Affairs (MTEA), Duduzile Nhlengethwa-Masina, told IPS.

“We’re trying to build in all these elements as part of the review process to ensure that we know who is supposed to do what and how much is needed,” she said.

Under the Paris Agreement, countries revise their NDCs to cut greenhouse gas emissions to limit global temperature rise and implement solutions to adapt to the effects of climate change, every five years.

Although Eswatini is one of the developing countries whose contribution to greenhouse gases is minimal, at 0.002 percent of global emissions by 2010, it is experiencing severe climate impacts such as droughts, hailstorms and floods. About 26 percent of Eswatini’s population was projected to face acute food insecurity between December 2018 and March 2019. According to the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, poor rainfall, late onset of the agricultural season and prolonged dry spells are some of the reasons households could not meet their needs over the projected period.

Through support from Climate Action Enhancement Package (CAEP), an initiative of the NDC Partnership, 63 countries are given financial and technical assistance to submit enhanced NDCs and fast-track their implementation. Eswatini is one of them.

According to Dr Deepa Pullanikkatil, the NDCs coordinator for Eswatini, eight partners – NDC Partnership, U.N. Development Programme’s Climate Promise, Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa, U.N. Environment, the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the U.N., the Commonwealth, International Renewable Energy Agency and the World Resources Institute – are supporting different activities in Eswatini’s NDCs review process.

“The process of NDCs Revision began in May 2020 and the country expects to submit the revised NDC by June 2021,” Pullanikkatil told IPS.

The NDC Partnership has engaged 40 implementing partners as part of its Climate Action Enhancement Package (CAEP) which has provided 63 countries with financial and technical assistance to submit enhanced NDCs and fast-track their implementation. Courtesy: NDC Partnership

MTEA and the Ministry of Economic Planning and Development (MEPD) are spearheading the process.

In its 2015 NDCs, the country had committed to producing the National Adaptation Plan (NAP) by 2020, which will focus on building resilience in different sectors including agriculture, water and, biodiversity and ecosystems, among others.  

For mitigation, the country committed to focusing on the energy sector – by doubling the share of renewable energy in the national energy mix by 2030 relative to 2010 levels. Emphasis was also been placed on the transport sector to introduce commercial use of 10 percent ethanol blend by 2030. The country made bigger strides in its commitment to substitute ozone-depleting substances by phasing out HFCs, PFCs and SF6 gases.

Nhlengethwa-Masina said while the country was able to implement many projects in the different sectors of the NDCs, some targets were not met. For example, the country could not complete the NAP by 2020 but she was hopeful that it will be ready by 2021.

“As we submitted the NDCs, we also had statements of conditionality,” she said, adding: “This was relating to the fact that while we commit but we can only achieve the targets on condition that we’re receiving the financial and technological support we need, including capacity building.”

Among the challenges of implementing the 2015 NDC, she cited inadequate investments, limited awareness about the NDCs, policy incoherence and limited involvement of non-state actors.

Rex Brown, a climate change advocate, noted that the private sector – sugarcane, livestock and timber industries – is not engaged in the NDCs process yet climate change has a huge impact on it. 

“We can’t allow the private sector to fail but if it continues to bury its head in the sand, then it faces a stuck future,” Brown told IPS, adding: “It’s not only NGOs and parastatals who need to engage with this process.”

Nhlengethwa-Masina acknowledged to IPS the poor participation of the private sector, adding that when invited to meetings only a handful attend and it was usually the same business people time and again.

She said the NDCs process will come up with strategies to stimulate interest from the private sector because it is critical as the climate finance component focuses on it.

Speaking at the launch of the first review of the NDCs last month, the Principal Secretary at MTEA, John Hlophe, said it was everyone’s duty to take climate action, regardless of what sector people came from. 

Hlophe, who was addressing experts from the private sector, government and civil society organisations, said the NDCs should be owned by the “whole of government” and the “whole of society”. 

“We have to think deeply on how best to implement the NDCs once it is revised,” said Hlophe

Hlophe reiterated the call for renewed efforts made by Moses Vilakati, the Minister of MTEA, a week earlier to political leaders.

Vilakati said, when addressing complex challenges such as climate change, the country needed to bring together the best minds, technical and financial resources that support pragmatic action.

“We can only do this if we join forces,” said Vilakati.

Vilakati said coming up with viable climate adaptation and mitigation strategies in the NDCs will help Eswatini to achieve its national goals such as Vision 2022, its National Development Strategy and the COVID-19 Economic Recovery Strategy because all these goals were threatened by climate change.

“Enhancing NDCs also signals investment opportunities for public finance institutions and private investors to support,” said Vilakati.

The principal secretary at MEPD, Bheki Bhembe, said the National Development Plan 2019/20 – 2021/22 recognises the climate change challenge and is presented as a crucial focus for development planning.

“It is for this reason that the Ministry requested an economic advisor who will work closely with MTEA to strengthen the capacity of central agencies in integrating climate change into national development processes,” said Bhembe. 

Bhembe thanked the NDC Partnership for the technical and financial support in the NDCs revision adding that, this time around, the process has improved compared to 2015.

 

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