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A child inspected in Fukushima prefecture, Japan

By Akio Matsumura
NEW YORK, Mar 7 2019 (IPS)

On March 11, we commemorate the 8th anniversary of the Fukushima nuclear disaster. To an outside observer, this anniversary passes as a technical progress report, a look at new robot, or a short story on how lives there are slowly returning to normal.

Yet in Japan, the government has not figured out how to touch or test the irradiated cores in the three crippled reactors, which continue to contaminate water around the site of the melt down. The government does not know where it will put that radioactive material once it can find a way to move it.

Meanwhile, the government and site operator are running out of room to store the contaminated water, which is filling up more and more tanks. The cleanup is estimated to take forty years and the cost is estimated at $195 billion.

The latest publicly released findings of radiation levels are from 2017, when Tokyo Electric Power Company had to use a remote-controlled robot to detect the levels in Reactor 2, since no human can approach the crippled reactor.

The rates read 530 sieverts per hour, the highest since the March 2011 meltdown. We have no reason to believe that they have fallen since then. Remote-control robots are being used in the other reactors as well, indicating that radiation levels are similarly high there.

Akio Matsumura

Even using the robot, work can only be carried out for very short times, since the robots can only stand 1000 sieverts of exposure – less than two hours in this case.

This is an extremely high amount of radiation. After TEPCO published the rate, the Asahi Shimbun reported that “an official of the National Institute of Radiological Sciences said medical professionals have never considered dealing with this level of radiation in their work.”

The Japan Times quoted Dr. Fumiya Tanabe, an expert on nuclear safety, who said that the “findings show that both the preparation for and the actual decommissioning process at the plant will likely prove much more difficult than expected.”

Fukushima’s Children Need International Attention

There have been many victims of this disaster. Thousands of people have been displaced from their homes. Local fishermen are worried that the government will proceed with its plan to dump the storage tanks of contaminated water into the ocean.

Others worry that the flow of the radioactive wind and contaminated water are reaching North America and will continue to do so for the next forty years.

Above all of these important issues, it is the children of Fukushima who most need our attention. They are at risk of higher rates of cancer because of their exposure to the contamination from the initial explosion. In Chernobyl, the only comparable case we have, more than 6,000 cases of thyroid cancer were found in children according to the UN through 2005.

There is evidence that thyroid cancer rates are higher among Fukushima’s children than the national population, but it is a latent disease: it is still too early to tell what the full impact will be. But it is clear the case needs action.

Scientists will always offer different opinions, swayed first by uncertainty, but also, sadly, by politics, money, and ambition.

Some will claim that the evidence has been exaggerated, underestimated, or that perhaps we’re at too early a stage to be certain. Or that we need more time to clarify the results. I have seen many instances of these arguments at the United Nations and international science conferences. Why do we wait and make another mistake?

Helen Caldicott, a medical doctor and founding president of Physicians for Social Responsibility, part of a larger umbrella group that was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1985, wrote: “The truth is that most politicians, businessmen, engineers and nuclear physicists have no innate understanding of radiobiology and the way radiation induces cancer, congenital malformations and genetic diseases which are passed generation to generation. Nor do they recognize that children are 20 times more radiosensitive than adults, girls twice as vulnerable as little boys and fetuses much more so.”

UNICEF Can Lead

We face many complex challenges of climate change, poverty alleviation, and national security. The health and welfare of children must always be our top priority. They are our future; our deepest purpose is to care and provide for them. By deciding not to fully investigate the effects of Fukushima, we fail them.

We all agree with that personally, but which institution is best positioned to carry out the mission? To me, UNICEF, the United Nations Children’s Fund, is the only answer. Indeed, putting children above national security is at UNICEF’s core.

Maurice Pate, an American humanitarian and businessman who joined UNICEF at its inception in 1947, agreed to serve as the Executive Director upon the condition that UNICEF serves the children of “ex-enemy countries, regardless of race or politics.” In 1965, at the end of Pate’s term, the organization won the Nobel Peace Prize.

To this day, its mission includes a commitment to “ensuring special protection for the most disadvantaged children – victims of war, disasters, extreme poverty, all forms of violence and exploitation and those with disabilities.” The children of Fukushima deserve the protection of UNICEF.

*Akio Matsumura is also the Secretary General of the Global Forum Moscow Conference hosted by President Gorbachev at the Kremlin in 1990 as well as of the Parliamentary Earth Summit Conference hosted by Brazil National Assembly in Rio de Janeiro in 1992

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Excerpt:

Akio Matsumura* is Founder of the Global Forum of Spiritual and Parliamentary Leaders on Human Survival.

The post Eight Years on, Fukushima Still Poses Health Risks for Children appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Tanzanian ICT entrepreneur, Rose Funja, shows off one of the drones she uses as a key tool in her data mapping business. Credit: Busani Bafana/IPS

By Ibrahim Thiaw
UNITED NATIONS, Mar 7 2019 (IPS)

Science and technology offer exciting pathways for rural women to tackle the challenges they face daily. Innovative solutions for rural women can, for example, reduce their workload, raise food production and increase their participation in the paid labour market. But even the very best innovative, gender-appropriate technology makes no sense without access to other critical resources, especially secure land rights, which women in rural areas need to flourish.

Land degradation and drought affect, at least, 169 countries. The poorest rural communities experience the severest impacts. For instance, women in areas affected by desertification, easily spend four times longer each day collecting water, fuelwood and fodder. Moreover, these impacts have very different effects on men and women. In the parts of Eritrea impacted most by desertification, for example, the working hours for women exceed those of men by up to 30 hours per week.

Clearly, poor rural women would benefit the most from new ways of working on the land. Therefore, technology and innovation must benefit women and men equally for it to work well for society. Even more so at a time when technology is becoming critical to manage the growing threats of desertification, land degradation and drought. In Turkey, for instance, farmers can get information on when to plant in real time, using an application installed on a mobile phone.1

However, in most part of the world, the adoption rates of technology are especially low among rural women, possibly because very often technologies are not developed with rural women land users in mind.2 For example, a wheelbarrow can reduce the time spent on water transport by 60 percent. But its weight and bulk makes it physically difficult for most African women to use.3

The demand for technology design that meets rural women’s specific needs is great. But developing appropriate technology is not enough, if the pre-requisites for technology uptake, in particular access to land, credit and education, are not in place.4 Today, a web of laws and customs in half the countries on the planet5 undermine women’s ability to own, manage, and inherit the land they farm.

In nearly many developing countries, laws do not guarantee the same inheritance rights for women and men.6 In many more countries, with gender equitable laws, local customs and practices that leave widows landless are tolerated. For instance, a 2011 study carried out in Zambia shows that when a male head of household dies, the widow only gets, on average, one-third of the area she farmed before. The impact of such changes on the world’s roughly 258 million widows and the 584 million children who depend on them is significant.8 It leaves us all worse off.

Globally, women own less land and have less secure rights over land than men.9 Secure access to land increases women’s economic security, but it has far greater benefits for society more generally. Women who own or inherit land also control the decisions that impact their land, such as the uptake of new technology.

A study in Rwanda shows that recipients of land certificates are twice as likely to increase their investment in soil conservation relative to others. And, if women got formal land rights, they were more likely to engage in soil conservation.10 Initiatives that benefit rural women do not stop at the household or local levels. At scale, such investments have a huge global impact.

If women all over the world had the same access as men to resources for agricultural production, they could increase yields on their farms by 20 to 30 percent. This could raise the total agricultural output in developing countries substantially at national scales, and reduce the number of undernourished people in the world by 12 to 17 percent.11

If we want to tackle the underlying causes of gender inequality, to build smart and innovate for change, then technology is good. Innovative, gender appropriate technology is better. But these will have little impact if the pre-requisites for its uptake by women, in particular access to land, credit and education, are non-existent.
—–

1 Reuters, 2015, article by Manipadma Jena. Turkey’s plan to help farmers adapt to climate change? Ask a tablet. https://www.reuters.com/article/turkey-climatechange-technology/turkeys-plan-to-help-farmers-adapt-to-climate-change-ask-a-tablet-idUSL8N12P08R20151026
2 Theis, Sophie et al. (2018): What happens after technology adoption? Gendered aspects of small-scale irrigation technologies in Ethiopia, Ghana and Tanzania. Agricultural and Human Values, https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10460-018-9862-8
3 Ashby, Jacqueline et al ( n.d.) Investing in Women as Drivers of Agricultural Growth, p.3, http://siteresources.worldbank.org/INTARD/Resources/webexecutivesummaryARD_GiA_InvstInWomen_8Pg_web.pdf
4 FAO/IFPRI (2014): Gender specific approaches, rural institutions, and technological innovations, p. 13 et seq, p. 41.
5 Huyer, Sophia, 2016: Closing the Gender Gap in Agriculture, Gender, Technology and Development 20(2) 105–116, p. 108.
6 Huyer, Sophia, 2016: Closing the Gender Gap in Agriculture, Gender, Technology and Development 20(2) 105–116, p. 108.
7 Chapoto, Antony et al. (2011): Widows’ Land Security in the Era of HIV/AIDS: Panel Survey Evidence from Zambia,” Economic Development and Cultural Change 59, no. 3 511-547, https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/pdfplus/10.1086/658346
8 Coughenour Betancourt Amy (2018): The Green Revolution reboot: Women’s land rights, https://www.devex.com/news/opinion-the-green-revolution-reboot-women-s-land-rights-93003
9 UN WOMEN, Facts & Figures, http://www.unwomen.org/en/news/in-focus/commission-on-the-status-of-women-2012/facts-and-figures.
10 Ali, D.A. et al (2011): Environmental and Gender Impacts of Land Tenure Regularization in Africa: Pilot Evidence from Rwanda. 28 pp. Sanjak, Jolyne (2018): Women’s Land Rights Can Help Grow Food Security, https://www.landesa.org/womens-land-rights-can-help-grow-food-security-blog/.
11 FAO (2011): Closing the gender gap in agriculture, http://www.fao.org/news/story/en/item/52011/icode/.

The post Smart Tech Will Only Work for Women When the Fundamentals for Its Uptake Are in Place appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Ibrahim Thiaw is Under-Secretary General of the United Nations and Executive Secretary of the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification.

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Urmila Bhoola, UN Special Rapporteur on Contemporary Forms of Slavery

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Mar 7 2019 (IPS)

The United Nations, which diligently monitors human rights violations worldwide, believes that centuries-old slavery still exists worldwide.

The UN mandate on “contemporary forms of slavery” includes, but is not limited to, issues such as: traditional slavery, forced labour, debt bondage, serfdom, children working in slavery or slavery-like conditions, domestic servitude, sexual slavery, and servile forms of marriage, according to Urmila Bhoola of South Africa, the UN Special Rapporteur on Contemporary Forms of Slavery.

In an interview with IPS, Bhoola pointed out that slavery was the first human rights issue to arouse wide international concern.
But it still continues today—“and slavery-like practices also remain a grave and persistent problem”.

She said “traditional forms of slavery have been criminalized and abolished in most countries, but contemporary forms of slavery are still prevalent in all regions of the world”.

Still, many UN member states who are suspected of such human rights violations refuse to permit international experts—designated as UN Special Rapporteurs — to either investigate allegations or even formally visit these countries, according to published reports.

Asked about these constraints, Bhoola said she he has so far visited Niger, Belgium, Nigeria, El Salvador, Mauritania, Paraguay and, lastly Italy, in October 2018.

Her mandate includes the implementation of Article 4 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), which states that ‘No one shall be held in slavery or servitude: slavery and the slave trade shall be prohibited in all their forms”.

She said “country visits’ are only conducted upon invitation from governments”.

“I have issued requests for country-visits to many countries but due to the mandate’s name and focus, member states are often reluctant to invite the mandate on contemporary forms of slavery, to conduct a visit,” said Bhoola, who was appointed Special Rapporteur by the UN Human Rights Council back in May 2014.

In this sense, she pointed out, member states may not openly refuse a visit but may not reply to country-visit requests.

“This is, in my view, a pity, as my aim is to engage constructively with governments, and to support them in their efforts to end contemporary forms of slavery”.

In fact, some of the countries that are afraid of being named and shamed, perhaps because they are listed as countries where slavery is prevalent in global reports, “have many good laws and practices that others can learn from.”

The findings obtained through the country visits are contained in the country visit reports, which are publicly available.

Excerpts from the interview

IPS: The ILO says over 40 million people – 71 percent of them women and girls – are subject to various forms of modern slavery, including human trafficking, child soldiers, forced and early child marriages, domestic servitude and migrant labour. Can these malpractices be criminalized by national legislation or by an international treaty? How feasible are these measures?

BHOOLA: Several international treaties prohibit slavery and related practices, such as the 1926 Slavery Convention and its Protocol; the 1956 Supplementary Convention on the Abolition of Slavery, the Slave Trade, and Institutions and Practices Similar to Slavery; the ILO Forced Labour Convention, 1930 (No. 29); the ILO Abolition of Forced Labour Convention, 1957 (No. 105); the ILO Protection of Wages Convention, 1949 (No.95); the ILO Domestic Workers Convention, 2011 (No. 189); the ILO Minimum Age Convention, 1973 (No. 138); the ILO Worst Forms of Child Labour Convention, 1999 (No. 182); the Convention for the Suppression of the Traffic in Persons and of the Exploitation of the Prostitution of Others (1949). A complete list can be found here.

International treaties can make an important difference in a country, as States need to periodically report on progress achieved in implementing the treaties’ provisions once they have ratified a treaty or convention. If a State does not have the means to effectively fulfil its obligations under a treaty or convention, it should seek international assistance.

However, slavery is considered to be a customary norm of international law that requires elimination by States irrespective of whether they have ratified the 1926 Slavery and 1956 Supplementary Conventions. All States are therefore required to prohibit slavery and its different forms, such as slavery like practices or servitudes, in domestic legislation.

In order to eradicate slavery effectively at the national level, States must also invest in sustainable development and in the protection and promotion of all human rights.

Many States have committed to achieving target 8.7 of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) because ending slavery and creating decent work for all requires a multifaceted approach.

This requires them to develop comprehensive national responses to contemporary forms of slavery, which should combine the effective rule of law, robust institutional and policy frameworks, ending discrimination and inequality, including gender inequality, protection of labour rights, oversight of the business sector and ensuring full and equitable access to justice where rights have been violated.

Ending contemporary forms of slavery is therefore an integral part of the broader struggle to combat poverty, underdevelopment and gender inequality and achieve human rights-based development and justice for all.

IPS: As a UN Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms of slavery, how far does your mandate extend? Can you name and shame countries? Or is that an action that can be taken only by the Human Rights Council?

BHOOLA: Special Rapporteurs are appointed by the Human Rights Council and they either have a thematic or a country-specific mandate. As Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms of slavery, I am mandated to address country-specific concerns either publicly or privately. All Special Rapporteurs are mandated to address confidential communications to States and/or to issue public statements and public thematic reports which are presented on an annual basis.

Also, I issue a public report on every country visit containing the findings of the mission as well as recommendations to the State visited and to other stakeholders. I report to both the Human Rights Council and the General Assembly and when these reports are presented governments engage with one another, including the government that has been the subject of a visit, and it is this constructive dialogue that is far more useful in my view in addressing gaps in compliance.

IPS: How many businesses comply with the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights? Since most forms of slavery occur in the private sector, how effective are these voluntary– not mandatory– guidelines in preventing modern forms of slavery in the work place?

BHOOLA: The Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights were developed to clarify the different roles and responsibilities that States and companies have to address business impact on human rights

The Guiding Principles do not constitute an international instrument that can be ratified by States, nor do they create new legal obligations. Instead, they clarify and elaborate on the implications of relevant provisions of existing international human rights standards, some of which are legally binding on States, and provide guidance on how to put them into operation.

National legislation will often exist or may be required to ensure that these obligations are effectively implemented and enforced. This, in turn, means that elements of the Guiding Principles may be reflected in domestic law regulating business activities.

Even though the Guiding Principles are not legally binding, protecting human rights against business-related abuse is expected of all States, and in most cases is a legal obligation through their ratification of legally binding international human rights treaties containing provisions to this effect.

The State duty to protect in the Guiding Principles is derived from these obligations. In many States it is reflected—fully or partly—in domestic law or regulations on companies. Companies are bound by such domestic law. The corporate responsibility to respect human rights exists above and beyond the need to comply with national laws and regulations protecting human rights. It applies equally where relevant domestic law is weak, absent or not enforced1.

The Guiding Principles also validate the duty of States to protect against and redress business-related human rights harms. In the context of contemporary forms of slavery, this duty to protect could translate into a smart mix of measures to ensure that businesses engage in their responsibility to respect human rights, including through undertaking human rights due diligence throughout their supply chains and remediating the adverse impact of their operations on human rights.

At the very minimum, States should ensure that businesses realize the implications of purchasing products or services that have in any way been linked to forced labour or other contemporary forms of slavery.

To date, States have adopted diverse approaches to addressing this issue, which include ensuring criminal, civil and tort liability for business related human rights violations, setting up mechanisms to regulate such compliance in trade and consumer protection and addressing it in government procurement.

Disclosure and transparency can also feature as legal obligations rather than being limited to voluntary corporate social responsibility initiatives2 .

Although it is not possible to measure compliance by all companies, there are some key initiatives that should be cited, such as the Corporate Human Rights Benchmark (CHRB), which aims to identify which companies perform best on human rights issues. More information on this initiative and its more recent results can be found here.

Another important initiative with a focus on slaver is KnowTheChain, which identifies and shares leading practices, enabling companies to improve their standards and procedures. This initiative also aims to help companies protect the wellbeing of workers by incentivizing companies and identifying gaps in each sector evaluated. KnowTheChain published its first set of benchmarks in 2016, and the second set, covering more than 120 companies, in 2018. For more information, visit their website.

IPS: With the spread of technology worldwide, more and more women and girls are lured into human trafficking through technology, including Facebook. Does the UN have the means to fight this? Or is there a remedy at all?

BHOOLA: The UN has various anti-trafficking conventions and mechanisms to address human trafficking. There is also a mandate on trafficking in persons, especially women and girls, which focuses on these issues specifically. In order to avoid overlaps between our mandates, my mandate focuses on one of the outcomes of human trafficking, which is labour exploitation specifically.

IPS: The UK has a “call to action to end forced labour, modern slavery and human trafficking”. How effective is this? And are there any other countries with such action or legislation?

BHOOLA: The Call to Action to End Forced Labour, Modern Slavery and Human Trafficking was launched on the 19th September 2017 during the 72nd Meeting of the UN General Assembly, and it has been endorsed by the 84 Member States and Observer States.3

The Call to Action outlines practical actions that countries can take to achieve Target 8.7 of the UN Sustainable Development Goals, including to ratify and ensure the effective implementation of relevant international conventions, protocols, and frameworks; to strengthen law enforcement and criminal justice responses in order to rapidly enhance capacity to identify, investigate, and disrupt criminal activity; to put victims first; and to eradicate forced labour, modern slavery, human trafficking, and the worst forms of child labour from [their] economies […] by developing regulatory or policy frameworks, as appropriate, and working with business to eliminate such practices from global supply chains4 .

Information regarding government’s action following the endorsement of the Call to Action can be found here. Despite the positive progress, more needs to be done.

We cannot treat these issues of forced labour, contemporary forms of slavery and human trafficking in isolation, as these are complex crimes, and we need to reach out across borders and across mandates. The Call to Action provides the framework for countries to join up to share best practice and work together, and highlights the need for private and wider public sector engagement to deliver real change.

The United Nations University, in partnership with Alliance 8.7, have developed a knowledge Platform with funding from the UK Government which will accelerate the scientific study of “what works” and host an online data base with information on country action to support research and best practice: www.delta87.org/call-to-action

Australia has followed by passing its Modern Slavery Act in December 2018. The law requires businesses above a certain turnover threshold to take steps to identify slavery in their operations and supply chains, and report on the actions they have taken to address those risks.

1 OHCHR ‘Frequently asked questions about the Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights’ https://www.ohchr.org/documents/publications/faq_principlesbussinesshr.pdf
2 A/HRC/30/35, https://undocs.org/en/A/HRC/30/35
3 A Call to Action to End Forced Labour, Modern Slavery and Human Trafficking https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/759332/End-Forced-Labour-Modern-Slavery1.pdf
4 https://delta87.org/call-to-action/

The writer can be contacted at thalifdeen@ips.org

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The post Was Slavery the World’s First Human Rights Violation? appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Women sell batons de manioc at a bus station in Yaoundé. Credit: Sarah Rayzl Lansky

By Sarah Rayzl Lansky
Medford, USA, Mar 7 2019 (IPS)

On March 8, women all over Cameroon will don custom-made dresses sewn of pagne, specially printed for International Women’s Day. They will parade through cities and towns, joining women around the world in celebration of the day.

International Women’s Day, which the United Nations officially recognized in 1977, seeks to promote women, women’s rights, and women’s inclusion. The 2019 theme is “A Balanced World is a Better World.” The International Women’s Day website urges participants to “Raise awareness against bias. Take action for equality.”

But this mission cannot be fulfilled if only some women in Cameroon are able to march. Cameroon’s English-speaking areas – home to about 20% of the population – are currently embroiled in a violent crisis. International Crisis Group recently ranked it #8 as part of their “10 Conflicts to Watch in 2019.” Many believe Cameroon is on the brink of civil war.

The women called on Cameroon’s President Biya, currently serving his 7th term, to address the Anglophone crisis. The government’s response? More than 100 women were arrested

Officially bilingual, Cameroon has long prioritized French speakers. In October 2016 teachers and lawyers in the Anglophone Northwest region protested the discrimination. The Francophone central government responded with violence, injuring and jailing protestors.

The crisis has only worsened. Following the arrests of the Anglophone movement’s leaders in early 2017, the power vacuum was filled by more radical actors. Calling themselves the Interim Government of the Republic of Ambazonia, they are now demanding the Northwest and Southwest regions secede. The separatist group’s rebel forces are known generally as Amba Boys and have attacked both government troops and civilians. Believing schools to be tools of the French central government, the separatists have called for a school boycott. This has only served to hurt teachers and children; 80% of kids in the regions have been out of school for more than two years and dozens of schools have been attacked.

As is typical in humanitarian crises, women and children have been disproportionately affected. The United Nation’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) reported at the end of 2018 that 4 million people had been affected. An estimated 437,500 people have been displaced by the crisis – an 82% increase from the past year. Many of the displaced are hiding in the bush, following attacks on their villages and indiscriminate killings. Aid agencies struggle to access these populations. OCHA reports that the gender-based violence response in the crisis has been weak.

 

A market in Bamenda, the capital of the NW and the location of the initial protests. Credit: Sarah Rayzl Lansky.

 

Media reporting on the crisis has tended to portray women as victims, or to exclude them all together. Of some 1,964 English articles written on the crisis from October 1, 2016 to today, only 309 (16%) mention women, whereas 1,204 (61%) discuss men. These patterns are all too common in conflict. But experts agree that in order to achieve a sustainable peace, women must be included. Women’s exclusion from the media can have a lasting effect; the Humanitarian Advisory Group writes that media “influences how women perceive themselves and their leadership aspirations.”

But their near invisibility in the media has not stopped the leadership aspirations of a growing group of female leaders. The South West/North West Women’s Task Force is working towards peace and demanding the inclusion of women. The Belinda Babila Foundation has focused on Cameroonian women taking refuge in Nigeria. Stand Up for Cameroon and Mothers of the Nation aim to unite all Cameroonian women in peaceful resistance. A local civil society organization, Pathways for Women’s Empowerment and Development recently tweeted, “The women of the North and South West regions of Cameroon are caught in between a crisis [about which] we were never consulted before it commencement [sic]. We bear the brunt though and call on the men to end hostilities.”

But speaking up in Cameroon is not easy. As part of the Women’s Day activities in 2018, Kah Walla, leader of the Cameroon People’s Party and a former presidential candidate, organized a protest march. The women called on Cameroon’s President Biya, currently serving his 7th term, to address the Anglophone crisis. The government’s response? More than 100 women were arrested. Kah Walla maintains some were tortured psychologically while held in detention.

Alleged human rights abuses have been committed by both the Anglophone separatists and the Cameroonian government forces. This violence must end.

This year, as Cameroonian women celebrate International Women’s Day, wearing matching cloth printed and sold by the central government, they should not only be calling for women’s promotion and equal treatment. Women across the country need to “raise awareness,” per the International Women’s Day Campaign, and stand together to demand dialogue and a resolution to the crisis.

 

Sarah Rayzl Lansky is a Master’s candidate at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy where she is specializing in human security and humanitarian studies. Sarah Rayzl has lived, worked, and studied in Cameroon.

The post International Women’s Day in Cameroon: A Day for All Women? appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

This opinion piece is part of IPS coverage of International Women's Day on Mar. 8

The post International Women’s Day in Cameroon: A Day for All Women? appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Indigenous women sell handicrafts at a street market in the tourist city of Antigua, Guatemala. Due to the continuing lack of decent employment for women in the region, many of them become street vendors, swelling the ranks of the informal economy. Credit: Mariela Jara/IPS

By Mariela Jara
LIMA, Mar 7 2019 (IPS)

Women in Latin America earn one-fifth less than men for every hour worked, on average – one of the statistics that reflect the continuing inequality in the world of work that makes it unlikely for the region to meet the goal of equal pay by 2030.

Hugo Ñopo, a Peruvian economist with the International Labor Organisation (ILO), told IPS that the gender disparity in employment in the region is also seen in the lower level of participation by women in the workforce, higher unemployment rates and fewer hours of work per week.

“These are inequalities that are accumulating in such a way that when you look at the total labour income generated by society, two-thirds of the total are generated by men and only one-third by women,” he said at the headquarters of the organisation’s regional office in Lima."A large part of the labour gap is the result of variables that have to do with conditions such as discrimination, stereotypes, unconscious biases or the time that women and men devote to domestic tasks, which in the end turns out to be a limiting factor for job performance." -- Hugo Ñopo

The “Global Wage Report 2018/19: What lies behind gender pay gaps”, published by the ILO in late 2018, underscores that the gender pay gap is not only explained by variables such as education and experience, but also by cultural factors.

“A large part of the labour gap is the result of variables that have to do with conditions such as discrimination, stereotypes, unconscious biases or the time that women and men devote to domestic tasks, which in the end turns out to be a limiting factor for job performance,” explained Ñopo.

Clara Rivas, 46, is an accountant from Peru. She worked in the civil service until 2017, but difficulties in reconciling her work and family responsibilities forced her to resign.

“The boss in my section frequently assigned me to trips to the provinces,” she told IPS. “I told him I could travel once a month because I had two young daughters, but he said he would not let me off easy just because I was a woman. I asked him to rotate the transfers with my workmates, but he always assigned them to me.”

Eva Machado, spokesperson in Peru for the global grassroots movement International Women’s Strike (IWS), said that Latin American societies take advantage of the female workforce in unequal conditions, while failing to recognise the contribution they make to the economy through domestic tasks in their homes, their care work and community involvement.

“As a formal sector worker with labour benefits, you could say I’m in a privileged position, even though what I have are simply my rights, which unfortunately isn’t the case of the majority of women in Peru,” Machado, who represents a movement that emerged in late 2016, told IPS.

On average, at least 60 percent of employed women in Latin America work in the informal economy, according to data from U.N. Women – a proportion that rises to 70 percent in Peru, according to Machado.

Blanca Garcia, 50, sweeps the terrace of a middle-class home in Lima. She works as a housekeeper in several homes in Peru’s capital. Her main motivation is to ensure her 14-year-old daughter a good education, to make it possible for her to have a future job with full rights and opportunities. Credit: Mariela Jara/IPS

In addition, women workers in the region are also in charge of household tasks, which are largely their responsibility, as well as care work, and contributions to their communities or organisations in which they participate, to improve conditions for their family and community, amounting to a triple work load on their shoulders.

“We work more and earn less, so on this Mar. 8, International Women’s Day, we will continue to shout our slogan: ‘If our lives don’t matter to you, produce without us,” Machado said.

The IWS has issued a global call for women to stop working on Friday Mar. 8 for at least an hour to make the impact of their productive and unpaid domestic work felt in countries in both the industrial North and the developing South.

Laws improve but pay remains unequal

Latin American governments committed themselves to meeting the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of Agenda 2030. But in SDG8, on decent work, target 5 includes achieving equal pay for work of equal value, for men and women, by 2030 – still a distant goal for this region.

In this region of 646 million people, the ILO estimates that 117 million women are part of the economically active population. But they face a labour market with problems that cannot be solved only by laws aimed at equal employment.

The report “Women, Business and the Law 2019: A Decade of Reform”, published on Feb. 27 by the World Bank, highlights the importance of the changes in the world of labour that have taken place in 187 countries over the past decade to address gender discrimination.

An index established in the periodic report based on eight indicators – including wages, pensions, access to employment, resource management, and maternity – shows how Latin American countries have improved, going from an average of 75.4 to 79.09 out of a maximum of 100 in terms of reforms to promote gender parity in the workplace, with 39 legal modifications in this regard.

Measures against harassment at work, access to employment on equal terms, the prohibition of dismissal of pregnant workers or the extension of maternity leave mark the improvements, according to the study, but the problem is that the legislation is not properly enforced.

One key aspect has to do with women’s childbearing years.

Hugo Ñopo, a regional economist of the International Labour Organisation (ILO) for Latin America and the Caribbean, at the regional headquarters in Lima, where he analysed the reasons underlying the persistent labour inequality in the region and pointed out that overcoming the problem requires not only public policies, but also cultural changes. Credit: ILO

Ñopo, the ILO’s regional economist, points out that while job interviews are not allowed to include questions on pregnancy or maternity, they are still being asked.

“This goes beyond the legal realm,” he said. “It is a problem that lies at the root, because society puts the cost of motherhood, of our reproductive social function, on women, when given its importance it should be distributed in a more equitable way between men and women.”

So what should be done?

“Part of the task falls to governments in terms of public policies and legislation. But another important part lies in the households, in the equitable distribution of the tasks among the people who live under the same roof,” he said.

This, he stressed, is because “another part of the problem is cultural, and that can be modified, if you take an optimistic view; it just doesn’t happen overnight, it takes a while, but that’s where public policies come in, to sow the seeds of change.”

In sexist societies such as those of Latin America, the old-fashioned idea that household responsibilities are the exclusive realm of women – or domestic workers often hired in exploitative conditions – remains strong.

Blanca García, who migrated from a rural Andean area, is an example of this. She works as a maid in several different homes in Lima, with workdays that often exceed the eight-hour legal limit, in order to support her two children as the family’s only breadwinner.

“Sometimes you get lucky and find an employer who pays you fair wages and respects the eight-hour workday. But generally I start at seven in the morning and finish at seven at night. It’s hard, but I haven’t found any other way to make a living,” said the 50-year-old woman, who earns an average of 20 dollars a day.

On the unfair labour outlook for women in the region, Ñopo stresses that “existing inequalities are too wide for them to be ‘justifiable’. We need a more equitable world so that everyone, women and men, can develop to their full potential,” he concluded.

The post Decent Work Still a Distant Dream for Many Latin American Women appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

This article is part of IPS coverage of International Women's Day on Mar. 8.

The post Decent Work Still a Distant Dream for Many Latin American Women appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Credit: Raising Voices.

By Maureen Kangere
KAMPALA, Mar 6 2019 (IPS)

Bakera excelled in school. As a girl who grew up in a rural, poor community, she had, against all odds, realized her education goals and was elated to go to the capital city, Kampala where she would now work.

She had studied Statistics – a field where women were few. She knew many girls and women over the years who either didn’t have a chance at education or who dropped out. Bakera saw the common threads of women’s experience that limited them. In her small hilly village, she had seen many Aunties, physically abused by their husbands and resolved to get educated as she believed this was her way out.

At her first job, Bakera was excited to work for a Company where she would be their first female Statistician hire. Excited about this experience, Bakera worked with passion. At her company, she saw first-hand the sexual harassment that her female colleagues were experiencing. She realized that what she had experienced while at the university was happening at work now,.

In her Kampala neighborhood, Bakera regularly heard women scream for help; one morning the noise was so loud it startled Bakera out of her sleep. It was her next-door neighbor who was being beaten by her husband calling for “help”. Bakera couldn’t sit by, she went to their door, knocked loudly. Her neighbor was badly beaten and needed medical care. She took her to the hospital for medical attention where they spent the day nursing her to health.

Bakera had to explain her absence to her employer – but didn’t feel she could be honest without putting her job on the line. It was a turning point for Bakera – she felt that the violence was too much.  She thought about how so many women’s lives were interrupted by violence. She reflected on what it meant for women who were in intimate partner relationships and the constant fear they lived in — without control over their own bodies, sexuality or even to be able to feel safe at home – a most basic right every person should have.

When women as a group are at risk for violence because they are women, this means it is not just a result of an individual woman’s behavior or choices – it means that the violence is systemic. This means that the systems – social, legal, economic, educational – ignore, allow and perpetuate the inequality that allows violence against women to happen.
Bakera’s experience is one we can all identify with and relate to. When someone asks: Why should we care about equality? Why should we care about violence against women?

We must care because violence against women and girls is a profound symbol of gender inequality and social injustice. It hurts women and girls’ bodies, minds and hearts, prevents participation, hinders social and economic development and costs families, communities and nations. No one should have to live in fear.

While more women enter the workforce, let us think about whether they can enjoy their most basic human right of safety in both private and public spaces.

When women as a group are at risk for violence because they are women, this means it is not just a result of an individual woman’s behavior or choices – it means that the violence is systemic. This means that the systems – social, legal, economic, educational – ignore, allow and perpetuate the inequality that allows violence against women to happen.

These systems are upheld by norms – or our individual and collective beliefs and actions. Inequality and violence against women is the norm – but just like Bakera, we need to ask: is this normal?

Addressing negative norms through approaches like SASA! means helping communities identify and question unspoken barriers to women’s empowerment. Rather than focus on negative norms, we can encourage communities to explore how positive power can benefit both women and men in intimate partner relationships and enhance wellbeing.

#Metoo and #AidToo campaigns and other programmes are further breaking the silence, revealing that regardless of their location and achievements, women are still at risk.

According to World Health Organisation, 1 in 3 women is likely to experience physical or sexual violence, making this a public health issue that requires many voices and actions to create change so every girl and women live free of violence.

As the world reflects on gender equality this International Women’s Day, guided by the theme, “Think Equal, Build Smart, Innovate for Change” how can we challenge ourselves – as individuals and collectively – to question the norms and systems that keep women down. What do we need to question within ourselves? Within our workplaces? Within our communities? How can you speak out and start to create an environment that supports non-violence and equality?

How can we get more creative and innovate to advance gender equality? How about we each take more action to increase men’s accountability to women’s basic human rights? How can we commit, this Women’s Day to stop tolerating any form of violence.

Article by GBV Prevention Network coordinated by  Raising Voices

The post The Future Women Want: Free of Violence appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

This opinion piece is part of IPS coverage of International Women's Day on Mar. 8

The post The Future Women Want: Free of Violence appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Credit: UNDP Nepal

By Aaron Glantz
UNITED NATIONS, Mar 6 2019 (IPS)

Cultural and creative industries, which include arts and crafts, advertising, design, entertainment, architecture, books, media and software, have become a vital force in accelerating human development.

They empower people to take ownership of their own development and stimulate the innovation that can drive inclusive sustainable growth.

If well-nurtured, the creative economy can be a source of structural economic transformation, socio-economic progress, job creation and innovation while contributing to social inclusion and sustainable human development.

It is thus not by chance that the 2004 UNDP Human Development Report made a case for respecting diversity and building more inclusive societies through policies that recognize cultural differences and multicultural perspectives.

Cultural and creative industries (CCI) are generally inclusive. People from all social classes from the indigenous to the elite participate in this economy as producers and consumers. Work in the sector tends to favour youth and women compared with other sectors.

For example, a 2015 UNESCO publication highlighted that CCI sectors in Europe typically employed more youth than any other sector. The study also highlighted that though women account for only 47% of the active population, they accounted for more than 50% of people employed in the United Kingdom’s music industry in 2014.

A recent UNDP/HDRO paper also shows how women play a dominant role in making creative products in the developing world. In countries such as Rwanda and Uganda, for example, women sustain the practice of making baskets, mats and other craftwork.

In Turkey and South Asia, women have been playing a major role in making carpets and other ancient crafts for millennia. Another UN report pointed out how creative industries offer eco-friendly solutions to sustainable development challenges, giving examples such as eco-friendly fashion, including jewelry, handicrafts and interior design products as well as protecting biodiversity by marketing natural health and cosmetic products that work in harmony with nature.

Though these examples show the cultural and creative sectors help achieve inclusive development, the intensification of the creative economy is also exacerbating existing income inequalities and marginalisation of certain population groups.

For example, Richard Florida in his new book, The New Urban Crisis: How Cities Are Increasing Inequality, Deepening Segregation, and Failing the Middle Class – and What We Can Do About It highlights how the cities that have the most innovative and creative economies are often associated with the worst social and economic inequality.

The book shows a strong correlation between the presence of the creative class in metropolitan areas and income inequality. This is because the creative industry generally employs skilled workers which led to a rise in the relative wages of more educated workers.

Yet, the creative industries have become an increasingly important contributor to GDP growth. Data show, over the past 15 years, that the creative economy is not only one of the most rapidly growing sectors of the world economy, but also transformative in generating income, jobs and exports.

According to UNESCO estimates, in 2013 CCI generated $2.3 trillion (3 percent of world GDP) and 29.5 million jobs (1 percent of the world’s active population). An Oxford Economics study estimated that CCI account for over 10 percent of GDP in Brazil and the United States.

Global trade in creative goods and services is also increasing rapidly. Globalization and new technologies have accelerated cultural interactions among countries and the export of creative goods has been growing at about 12 percent per annum in the developing world in the last 15 years or so.

However, these gains are not equality distributed across the globe. Asia and the Pacific, Europe and North America are seeing rapid and unprecedented growth in the creative economy.

These regions account for 93% of the global CCI revenue and 85% of jobs. By contrast Africa, the Middle-East, and Latin America and the Caribbean have not yet capitalised on their potential.

For these regions, the CCI represent untapped economic potential, and a chance to contribute to the innovation economy and other sectors through supply chain effects.

This is an opportunity for policies that accelerate and sustain a dynamic creative economy that contributes to human development progress. Growing a dynamic creative economy depends in part on how proactive countries are in grasping opportunities and tackling challenges across many areas—including technology, education, labour markets, macroeconomic policies, gender issues, urbanization, migration, and more.

Cultural and creative activities are usually diverse and multifaceted. And while no “one-size-fits-all” solution will work in this sector, we advocate some policy options as follows.

First, in line with the 2030 Agenda and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), countries need to integrate the opportunities and challenges related to CCI into their national development plans, strategies and budgets.

Second, greater effort needs to be devoted to protecting intellectual property rights. Failing to properly reward creators is holding back growth. Legal frameworks that protect the rights of creators and secure fair remuneration for them is key.

Third, culture often transcends borders. And so improved international, regional and South-South cooperation is important.

Fourth nurturing talent is vital for CCI. The cross-fertilization of ideas, leveraging new technologies and learning from mistakes are important for any economic sector, but these play a fundamental role in the cultural and creative sectors.

Governments and higher education institutions have an important role in attracting, developing and retaining talent.

Fifth, a sound understanding of the challenges and opportunities is vital for planning and policy making. Collecting and analysing CCI data should be a priority to support better policies.

The UN has made a concerted effort to promote the cultural and creative economy in the last decade, through a series of joint UNESCO, UN Convention on Trade and Development and UNDP knowledge products and meetings.

The United Nations will continue to provide a platform for governments, business and others to consider long-term goals and partnerships in an area that can make an important contribution towards achieving sustainable development for all.

The post How Cultural & Creative Industries Can Power Human Development in 21st Century appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Thangavel Palanivel is Deputy Director of the Human Development Report Office, UNDP

The post How Cultural & Creative Industries Can Power Human Development in 21st Century appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Arul Louis, a New York-based journalist who covers the United Nations, is a non-resident senior fellow of the Society for Policy Studies.

By Arul Louis
UNITED NATIONS, Mar 6 2019 (IPS)

A reexamination of the role of the United Nations and a tallying of its successes and failure get underway as it prepares for the 75th anniversary next year in the world of the 21st century while its core entity, the Security Council, is trapped in the time warp of 1945, its founding year.

Being both a critique and analysis of the Council’s role as well as a work of encyclopedic proportions about its history, the political philosophies girding it and its evolution, former Indian diplomat Dilip Sinha’s book is a valuable resource for these debates that are gaining urgency from the milestone anniversary.

The title may give the impression that it is about the legitimacy of the Council’s power, but it actually questions the Council’s legitimacy in the exercise of power as seen from the perspective of a diplomat with an insider’s view of its working, both when its members gather in its chamber around the circular desk under the painting of Phoenix rising, and when the real business takes place in negotiations far from public view.

Sinha handled United Nations affairs for India from New Delhi as a special secretary during its 2011-12 tenure on the Council and he has also served as New Delhi’s Permanent Representative to the UN in Geneva.

The main mission of the UN is maintaining international peace and security and UN Charter assigns that role to the Council, but in public perceptions its failures reflect on the entire UN.

While most of the other parts of the UN and other international organisations have been “developing processes of inclusive decision-making and modified their mandates,” he writes, “the Security Council remains mired in its archaic politics of power.”

When the UN Charter was adopted with 51 members in a world emerging from the trauma of World War II, its victors assumed the veto-wielding permanent seats on the Council as spoils of war and the veto powers of the five permanent members – the P-5 made up of Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States – is at the core of the Council’s functioning — and its consequent dysfunction.

In his critique of the veto powers, Sinha says that it either reduces the Council to “a dictatorship of the hegemons” or it functions as a “safety valve,” but concedes that “it is at best an unpleasant necessity.”

While the veto powers have made it impossible to take decisive action to end the multi-dimensional civil war in Syria or Yemen – as it has failed numerous times in its history – where vital interests of the P-5 clash, the Council is expanding its reach beyond the Charter-mandated primary role of maintaining international peace and security in a mission creep that now includes, among other things, human rights, women’s empowerment, climate change and terrorism, Sinha points out.

But beyond the dysfunction, “the permanent membership of the five violates a basic principle of democracy,” he says.

The non-representation of the developing counties, which make up more that two-thirds of the UN membership (unless one adds the economic superpower China to their number) in the ranks of the permanent members is at the heart of the imbalance in the power equations.

Meanwhile, the 28-member Group of Western European and Other States has two permanent members, Britain and France, (or three, if the group’s observer, the United States, is included). But Latin American, African and the Middle Eastern nations have none.

While there is near consensus that African countries – the largest group in the UN with 54 members or 28% of the 193 membership, and from the continent home to most peace operations mandated by the Security Council – deserve representation, the demands of other countries – notably Brazil, Germany, India and Japan that make up the Group of 4 or G-4 – are more controversial.

While these glaring inequalities may cry out for reform that changes the composition of the permanent membership, Sinha is not optimistic it can happen.

For the US and the European Union, “UN reform means giving more powers to the organisation to regulate the internal affairs of member states” on issues like human rights and good governance, he writes.

And on the other side, among the developing countries and others, there are differing interests and clashing opinions, as he points out.

As an illustration of the difficulties before G-4 and others in finding their way to a permanent membership, Sinha writes, “The permanent seat aspirants face the impossible challenge of satisfying the larger membership of the General Assembly without displeasing the permanent five.”

Sinha instead introduces the idea of weighted voting as a starting point for the reforms. The concepts of the equality of member states in the General Assembly and their inequality in the Council “are outdated,” he points out because “all countries are not equal” given the disparities in population and economic and military powers, among other things.

The P-5’s permanent veto power, moreover, “violates the principles of constitutionalism” and “has crippled it.”

As a remedy, he suggests, “Weighted voting can partially address the concerns of the permanent five and introducing the requirement of a super-majority for resolutions under Chapter VII (for taking military action) will allay the concerns of others.”

“A moderate increase in the size of the Council will improve regional representation,” he adds.

(Arul Louis can be contacted at arullouis@spsindia.in and followed on Twitter at @arulouis)

*Legitimacy of Power: The Permanence of Five in the Security Council;
Author: Dilip Sinha; Publishers: Vij Books India Pvt Ltd, New Delhi, and Indian Council of World Affairs, New Delhi; Price: On Amazon: Hardcover $65; Paperback $39.95; Rs.940

The post Veteran Diplomat Challenges Security Council’s Imbalance of Power, Offers Solutions for Reforms appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Arul Louis, a New York-based journalist who covers the United Nations, is a non-resident senior fellow of the Society for Policy Studies.

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By IPS World Desk
ROME, Mar 6 2019 (IPS)

In an increasingly connected world, innovation and technology should provide unprecedented opportunity. But the truth is alarming, as trends indicate a growing divide.

Every year, an estimated 15 million girls under the age of 18 are married worldwide, with little or no say in the matter.

Every year, at least 1000 honor killings occur in India and Pakistan each.

 

 

To this day, the barbarism of female genital mutilation affects more than 200 million girls and women in over 30 countries.

According to the UN Foundation, 62 million girls around the world are simply denied an education.

And a 2016 study by the UNDP found that approximately 95 Billion Dollars are lost in sub-Saharan Africa each year because women have lower participation in the paid labour force.

International Women’s Day is a time to reflect on progress made by women and to celebrate acts of courage and determination by ordinary women who have played an extraordinary role in the history of their countries and communities.

The 2019 theme Think equal, build smart, innovate for change focuses on innovative ways in which we can advance gender equality and the empowerment of women, particularly in the areas of social protection systems, access to public services and sustainable infrastructure.

On 8 March, join us as we celebrate a future in which innovation and technology creates opportunities for women and girls to play an active role in building an inclusive world.

The post INTERNATIONAL WOMEN’S DAY – Think Equal, Build Smart, Innovate for Change appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Even the Afar can be shy: Here a young Afar woman consents to be photographed, though only after covering part of her face. Afar women often have intricate frizzed and braided hairstyles, and wear bright coloured bead necklaces, heavy earrings and brass anklets. Many Afar women cover their heads in public. This helps ward off the relentless sun. At the same time, the vast majority of Afar are Muslim. Despite Afar’s ancient trade links with the Christian highlands to the west, Islam was widely practiced in the region as early as the 13th century. Credit: James Jeffrey/IPS

By James Jeffrey
ADDIS ABABA, Mar 6 2019 (IPS)

Once made infamous through explorers’ tales of old, Ethiopia’s remote northeast Afar region both conforms to and contradicts stereotypes.

Tough neighbourhood: Ethiopia’s remote northeast Afar region contains the Danakil Depression—the hottest place on earth where temperatures in the naked plains frequently soar above 50 degrees centigrade, exacerbated by the fierce blowing of the Gara, which translates as Fire Wind. Such inhospitable conditions haven’t stopped the Afar, who regard themselves as the oldest of Ethiopia’s ethnic groups having occupied their arid homeland for at least 2,000 years. Credit: James Jeffrey/IPS

 

Armed but amiable—fortunately: Here a young Afar man unsheathes the sword he carries attached to his waist. Historically, the Afar menfolk gained a reputation for ferocity and intolerance of outsiders, including the habit of cutting off the testicles of any foreigner found in their territory. The reality now is far removed from the stereotypes of travellers’ tales—the majority of Afar that the author met proved friendly, as well as patient about his photographic requests. Credit: James Jeffrey/IPS

Less on the move nowadays: A kite bird of prey rests on a rooftop in the town of Asaita overlooking the Awash River, beside which can be seen distinctive dome-shaped Afar homes. Traditionally the Afar are nomadic pastoralists, living in light, flimsy houses which they transport from one location to the next on camel back. Recent decades have seen a trend towards an increased dependence on agriculture in the fertile and well-watered areas around the likes of Asaita. Credit: James Jeffrey/IPS

Pastoralist past not forgotten: Here a woman weaves palm frond into the matting used to cover traditional Afar homes. Afar women are typically responsible for constructing a family’s nomadic home from the ground up when a family moves to another location. Despite a visitor encountering friendliness, you still sense a robust mentality among the Afar, shaped by that tough nomadic pastoralist past, and which still continues, evidenced by the camels continuing to plod across the desert, and the clusters of domed houses dotting the parched plains. Credit: James Jeffrey/IPS

What’s that shimmering in the heat haze?: In the plains surrounding Asaita an enormous sugar factory towers over surrounding Afar homes, evidence that there appears to no longer be any part of Ethiopia immune to the country’s ambitions to develop. In recent years the government has made a concerted effort to establish sugar factories to meet growing local demand, create jobs and boost economic growth. This has included locating factories in remote areas instead of being concentrated in one region. Credit: James Jeffrey/IPS

Even the Afar can be shy: Here a young Afar woman consents to be photographed, though only after covering part of her face. Afar women often have intricate frizzed and braided hairstyles, and wear bright coloured bead necklaces, heavy earrings and brass anklets. Many Afar women cover their heads in public. This helps ward off the relentless sun. At the same time, the vast majority of Afar are Muslim. Despite Afar’s ancient trade links with the Christian highlands to the west, Islam was widely practiced in the region as early as the 13th century. Credit: James Jeffrey/IPS

Renowned for distinctive hairstyles: It’s not just Afar women who embrace eye-catching hairstyles. Afar men often wear their hair in thick Afro style or equally distinctive long curls, and dress in a light cotton toga. While these two men aren’t armed, Afar men rarely venture far without a sword or dagger, and these days the traditional knife can be supplemented or replaced by an AK-47 slung casually over the shoulder. Such weapons are still frequently put to fatal use in disputes between local clans. Credit: James Jeffrey/IPS

Trading salt and more: The main thoroughfare through the city of Logiya sees a constant stream of trucks on the way to and from ports across the nearby border in Djibouti. At the same time more modern goods are being taken into Ethiopia to sustain the growing needs of its developing population, the Afar continue to load up camels with bars of salt, cut out of the desiccated ground, to transport to the region of Tigray along the ancient caravan routes. Until modern times, the Afar region effectively served as Ethiopia’s Mint, producing the amoles—salt bars—that served as the main currency in the highlands. Credit: James Jeffrey/IPS

Beguiling mix: At Asaita the Awash River cuts a green swathe through the desert, evoking images of Egyptian pastures watered by the Nile. As the sun begins to set over Asaita, the muezzin can be heard calling the faithful to prayer, while electric lights start appearing in the sugar factory in the distance. It’s a striking impression of old and new, tradition and modernisation co-existing together. “Things are simpler here,” Yohannes, a young man in Logiya, says about the local way of life. Credit: James Jeffrey/IPS

Still embracing the low-tech way of life:
Despite Ethiopia undergoing great changes as it rapidly develops, the nomadic lifestyle lives on in Afar away from its urban centres. Afar men can be seen driving their precious camel herds alongside roads, or as small specks in the distance stretching out across the sands before finally disappearing in the hot horizon. Traveling around Ethiopia and the likes of the Afar can leave a visitor pondering what countries in the Global South might teach more developed countries rushing headlong into a high-tech-focused future about better balancing tradition and modernisation. Credit: James Jeffrey/IPS

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A young boy runs with his tyre past buildings damaged by airstrikes in Saada Old Town; Yemen. Credit: Giles Clarke/OCHA

By Jim Lobe
WASHINGTON DC, Mar 5 2019 (IPS)

The ongoing war in Yemen, called the world’s “worst humanitarian disaster” by the United Nations and independent aid agencies since early last year, received a grand combined total of 20 minutes of coverage on the ABC, NBC, and CBS weekday evening news programs in 2018.

That compared to a total of 71 minutes that the three major networks devoted to the British royal wedding and a combined total of 100 minutes dedicated to the rescue of a dozen young cave explorers from flooding in Thailand, according to the latest annual compilation by the authoritative Tyndall Report.

By contrast, the brutal murder of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul in September received a total of 116 minutes of coverage by the three networks, making it one of the very few foreign-based stories to make it into the top 20 most-covered network news events in 2018.

Although the Thai cave rescue was clearly a dramatic, emotional, and easily accessible story of the kind that lends itself very well to television news, the number of lives at stake were a tiny fraction of those estimated to have been killed in Yemen (50,000-80,000 combatants and non-combatants), not to mention the deaths of well over 100,000 more civilians, including at least 80,000 children under the age of five who have succumbed to malnutrition or disease.

The lack of coverage of the Yemen disaster is symptomatic of negative trends regarding foreign news coverage by the major networks, which together remain the biggest single source of international news in the United States
Some 360,000 children there are currently suffering from severe acute malnutrition, while some 20 million Yemenis are unable to “reliably feed themselves or their families [and] almost 10 million are just one step away from famine,” UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said this week. The latter figure amounts to nearly half the population of the Arab world’s poorest nation.

 

Falling Foreign Coverage

Overall, the lack of coverage of the Yemen disaster is symptomatic of negative trends regarding foreign news coverage by the major networks, which together remain the biggest single source of international news in the United States. An average of more than 22 million households tune into the nightly newscasts, or about four times the number of those that watch any of the three major cable channels—Fox News, MSNBC, and CNN—on a given evening.

Indeed, this year’s Tyndall Report found that network coverage from overseas fell to the lowest point since its publisher, Andrew Tyndall, began systematically tracking and coding the three weeknight newscasts in 1988. Altogether, foreign datelines accounted for only 7.5% of all the news generated by those programs (1,092 minutes out of 14,354 minutes) in 2018. (Each half-hour newscast contains an average of roughly 22 minutes of news content.)

“Foreign bureaus have never been so little used,” noted Tyndall in his latest report. “2018 marked a general abdication of the traditional role of the nightly newscasts, which used to provide a daily summary of major national and international news developments,” he told LobeLog in an email.

“Of particular note,” he added, “the top 30 foreign news stories [covered by the three networks’ newscasts] contained no mention of the two major western hemisphere elections—in Brazil and Mexico—and none of the major crisis in Europe; namely Brexit.”

Moreover, he wrote in his email,

the overarching international crisis facing the globe as a whole—climate change—was little covered as such, although its symptoms such as wildfires and hurricanes were presented prominently. These symptoms were confined to their domestic occurrence, however, rather than the manifestations of climate change on a global scale.

I am very pessimistic about the nightly newscasts reforming themselves and ever reverting to their traditional global mission.

Precisely because of its unparalleled reach and the influence of its major sponsors (compared to cable news advertisers), network news has always been designed to appeal to the greatest number of viewers. In important ways, the network news agenda—as shallow, superficial, sensationalistic, and increasingly inward as it is—reveals how Americans see and understand events and trends overseas.

 

What Did and Didn’t Get Attention

The single most network-covered story of the year, according to Tyndall’s tally was the nomination and confirmation of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh at 426 minutes, followed by the ongoing probes into alleged Russian meddling in the 2016 election (332 minutes).

Three of the next four biggest stories involved extreme weather and its consequences—the California wildfires (242), severe winter weather (234), and Hurricane Florence in the Carolinas (203). Hurricane Michael in Florida was the eleventh biggest story (134 minutes). But, as in past years, these reports, totaling over 800 minutes, were focused almost exclusively on the anticipation and immediate impact of these events rather than the possible relationship between them and climate change.

Aside from the Russian investigations, North Korean-U.S. summitry was the top foreign-policy story, clocking in at 212 minutes, making it the year’s fifth-biggest story overall. The detention of migrant children (189) ranked seventh, tied with the Parkland High School mass shooting in Florida, which was followed in turn by coverage of school safety and violence prevention more generally (184). The prosecution of President Trump’s lawyer, Michael Cohen, (164) ranked tenth, the winding down of the campaign against the Islamic State in Syria (133) ranked twelfth, followed by coverage of the flu season (130) and accusations of partisan bias by the FBI and Khashoggi’s assassination (116 minutes each). Police killings of civilians and the federal budget and deficit (112 each), followed by the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics (111), the Facebook controversy (107), and coverage of the Christmas holiday season (105), rounded out the top 20.

As for foreign stories, all things Russia-related—including the alleged election interference (332), U.S.-Russia diplomacy including the Helsinki summit (92); Russian-British diplomacy and the poisoning of the Russian ex-spy (54); and US-Russian spy-related events (23)—led the pack with a total of 501 minutes, or a little over three percent of total nightly newscasts.

Immigration-related coverage accounted for nearly the same amount of coverage (493 minutes). It included the detention of migrant children (189), border restrictions and “the wall” (96), immigration reform more generally (75), Central American migrants and caravans (50), DACA Dreamers seeking permanent status (36), crackdowns on undocumented immigrants and deportations (27), and asylum-seekers (20).

The Koreas were the top foreign-policy story: In addition to the 212 minutes devoted to the summit between Trump and Kim, inter-Korean diplomacy accounted for 48 minutes, and North Korea’s nuclear weapons and missile programs for another 42 minutes, bringing the total to just over 300 minutes (or about two percent of total programming), not counting the 111 minutes on the Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang.

The Syrian civil war and Trump’s (now-modified) decision to withdraw U.S. troops were the next most-covered foreign-related stories (133), followed by Khashoggi’s assassination (116), the cave rescue in Thailand (100), the royal wedding (71), ongoing fighting in Afghanistan (54), U.S.-China trade frictions (52), and steel and aluminum import tariffs (37).

The Israel-Palestinian conflict, NATO-US diplomacy (notably Trump’s trip to Brussels), and the Iran nuclear deal, including Washington’s withdrawal from it, each earned a grand total of 29 minutes of coverage by the three networks, while the earthquake in Indonesia (26) and the eruption of the volcano in Guatemala (23) gained more than Yemen’s 20 minutes in the network spotlight, one minute more than was devoted to Trump’s quick visit to London and the Lion Air jet crash (19 minutes each).

Hopes among various humanitarian, human-rights, and peace groups that the media’s strong focus on Khashoggi’s killing would draw greater public attention to the catastrophic toll suffered by the civilian population during the four-year-old Saudi-led campaign against Houthi rebels and their allies in Yemen seem to have been disappointed, according to Tyndall’s findings. Of the total 20 minutes devoted to Yemen in 2018, 13 minutes preceded the Saudi journalist’s death and only seven minutes followed it. The relatively greater (but still pathetic) amount of attention before the September assassination came mostly as a result of dire warnings issued by the UN earlier in the spring. (Of the 20 minutes, CBS accounted for 11, while NBC and ABC split the remainder.)

The lack of media attention to Yemen post-Khashoggi, however, did not translate into congressional indifference. Motivated in major part by a campaign led by the Post itself (as well as other print media), Congress expressed its anger by taking up a series of resolutions that have gained momentum this year to curb U.S. support for the Saudi-led campaign in Yemen.

 

America’s Worldview

If the network evening news provides as good a measure as any of how Americans perceive the world outside U.S. borders, it’s not a great picture. As noted by Tyndall himself, South America and sub-Saharan Africa, with a combined population of nearly two billion, simply failed to register in the news. The rise of authoritarian movements in Europe also appeared to draw a blank, as did South and Southeast Asia (apart from the cave rescue).

And, despite the multi-trillion-dollar commitment by the United States to stabilizing and securing the Middle East region over the last two decades, there wasn’t much evidence of its existence on network television besides the last throes of the campaign against the Islamic State in Syria and the Khashoggi killing. Iraq, to which Washington has sent well over a million troops since the 2003 invasion, didn’t even make the top 30 foreign stories in 2018.

Both Israel and Iran can probably take some satisfaction from their relatively small media footprint last year. The increasingly bellicose fulminations from Trump, Bolton, and Pompeo against Tehran are unlikely to get much popular backing—let alone public enthusiasm for a new military conflict in the Middle East—in the absence of far more intense (and negative) coverage of the kind that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has been getting since the Khashoggi murder.

Israel, too, can be happy with its relative obscurity. Despite the hundreds of casualties inflicted by Israeli bullets on Palestinian demonstrators along the Gaza border last year, coverage of Israel-Palestine actually fell by nearly 50 percent, from the 42 minutes the networks devoted to the conflict in 2017, which was already a record low, to a mere 29, according to Tyndall’s calculations over the previous 30 years.

This piece was originally published in Jim Lobe’s blog on U.S. foreign policy Lobelog.com

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Credit: Shafiqul Alam Kiron/IPS

By Nana Darkoa Sekyiamah and Ana Ines Abelenda
ACCRA/MONTEVIDEO, Mar 5 2019 (IPS)

The theme for International Women’s Day this year doesn’t resonate with us. #BalanceForBetter brings to mind slow gradual change, and assumes that if you provide women and girls with equal access then the society will automatically be better. We know that’s false.

Access to a broken capitalist system that privileges the richest 1% over the rest of the world means that the most marginalised communities (including women, girls, trans and gender non conforming people) exist in unjust, precarious and fragile societies. This coupled with the increasing privatisation of what should be common resources for everyone (including the basics of land and water), as well as the corporate takeover of many public services endangers the lives and wellbeing of poor people.

In a recent submission to the United Nations Secretary General, the African Women’s Development Network for Communications (FEMNET) and the Association for Women’s Rights in Development (AWID) stated:

“Neoliberal economic policies promoted around the globe by a growing majority of governments with the support and pressure of international financial institutions (including through conditional loans), have intensified the commodification of life through privatization of basic public services and natural resources.”

On this International Women’s Day we call for a return to its radical roots centred on workers rights and justice. This doesn’t call for balance. It calls for a radical transformation of society based on the twin principles of equity and justice

This corporate takeover of services meant to benefit everyone, of the health and education sectors in particular, primarily affect women and girls. In a 2017 report, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Right to Education, stated:

“Women and girls are frequently excluded from education. Families often favour boys when investing in education.”

The rights of girls to quality education, particularly those from the most underprivileged communities, are negatively affected when public schools are privatised. Research by feminist and women’s rights organisations has demonstrated the ways in which gender biases affects the choices parents make when they need to pay for education, and have to choose which children to send to school.

It’s in this light that one must view with great concern the increasing trend of handing over the education sector to the private sector.

The Government of Ghana for example, recently announced that it was seeking to privatise the management of some basic schools on a private basis. This decision is being disputed by a number of Teacher Unions including the Teachers & Educational Workers Union of Ghana, the Coalition of Concerned Teachers the National Association of Graduate Teachers, and the Ghana National Association of Teachers.

The General Secretary of the Ghana National Association of Teachers described the move “… as subtle and eventual privatization, commercialization and commodification of public education in Ghana.” This trend of Government reaching out to the private sector to manage the education sector has also been witnessed in other parts of West Africa including Liberia.

There is no doubt that significant investments in the education sectors are required. Sadly, governments in the Global South are looking for these resources in the wrong places. The landmark report by the High Level Panel on Illicit Financial Flows from Africa (also known as the Mbeki report) indicated that Africa is losing more than US$50 billion per year in Illicit Financial Flows (IFFs).

As highlighted in a report by AWID, IFFs have a severe impact on the development of the continent. These resources that are lost to the continent should rather be harnessed and invested into the social sector, including education and health.

Privatization of social services and reduced social protection is at the heart of South America’s wave of neoliberal governments promoting austerity policies that deepen structural gender inequalities. Coupled with the rise of the conservative right in South America -including Brazil’s fascist new government-, feminist movements from the South understand this is no time for moderate calls for equality and balance.

In Uruguay, the #8M call to action states: “Ante el fascismo, más feminismo” (In front of fascism, we need more feminism!). It is a call for international feminist solidarity to resist daily threats that aim to bring us back centuries when it comes to social and gender justice and rights. It is also a warning that feminist movements are forging new realities not only about equality, but about radical change.

So on this International Women’s Day we call for a return to its radical roots centred on workers rights and justice. This doesn’t call for balance. It calls for a radical transformation of society based on the twin principles of equity and justice.

 

Nana  Darkoa Sekyiamah is Director of Information, Communications and Media,  Association for Women’s Rights in Development (AWID)

Ana Inés Abelenda is Economic Justice Coordinator, Association for Women’s Rights in Development (AWID)

 

The post International Women’s Day Needs to Return to its Radical Roots appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

This opinion piece is part of IPS coverage of International Women's Day on Mar. 8

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Excerpt:

This article is part of IPS coverage of International Women's Day on Mar. 8.

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Credit: Bigstock

By Linda Flood
STOCKHOLM, Mar 5 2019 (IPS)

The trade unions’ solution for a greener world is new jobs with good working conditions. The critics argue that there’s not enough time. ”We can either protect industrial jobs in the global north or save the climate”, says political scientist Tadzio Müller.

Politicians, businesses, and unions all agree: there are no jobs on a dead planet. But the road to fewer emissions is full of opinions.

While the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere is expected to reach record levels this year, the work towards a “just transition” continues. The aim is to secure workers’ interests when countries and employers convert to more climate friendly ways of doing business.

“It is extremely urgent and I’m worried. But if employers, governments, and big financial interests had been more interested in the carbonization two decades ago we would have been in a great position,” says Samantha Smith.

What is “just transition”?

The term has origins from the 1980s but it took until 2013 for the United Nations’ agency ILO to put its foot down and create guidelines for “a Just Transition towards environmentally-sustainable economies and societies for all”.

The Paris agreement from 2015 also includes mentions of “just transition”. Through the Paris agreement, governments commit to making sure that workers continue to have fair conditions during the climate adaption. The International Trade Union Confederation ITUC founded the Just Transition Centre in 2016, in order to bring more attention to the matter.

***

These are the 25 biggest carbon emitters in the world. These companies produced a fifth of the global carbon emissions, according to a review by Swedish newspaper Dagens Industri.

1. Coal India
2. PJSC Gazprom
3. Exxon Mobil Corporation
4. Cummins Inc.
5. Thyssenkrupp AG
6. Rosneft OAO
7. Royal Dutch Shell
8. China Petroleum & Chemical Corporation
9. China Shenhua Energy
10. Rio Tinto
11. Petrochina Company Limited
12. BHP Billiton
13. Petróleo Brasileiro SA – Petrobras
14. Korea Electric Power Corp
15. BP
16. Total
17. Valero Energy Corporation
18. Chevron Corporation
19. Toyota Motor Corporation
20. Wistron Corp
21. United Technologies Corporation
22. Peabody Energy Corporation
23. YTL Corp
24. Phillips 66
25. Volkswagen AG
She’s the director of the Just Transition Centre, created three years ago by the International Trade Union Confederation, the ITUC, to gather unions, organisations, businesses, and countries in a social dialogue.

The UN climate change conference COP 24 took place in December 2018 in Katowice, Poland, and “just transition” was high on the agenda. 53 states, including Sweden, signed the ”The Solidarity and Just Transition Silesia Declaration”, which states that the countries must consider workers’ perspectives while shifting to climate friendly policies.

In Sweden, issues on this matter are being discussed regularly at the Swedish Trade Union Confederation, LO, and Sida, the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency, among others. Sida recently donated 1,5 million euros to the organisation Bankwatch, to support the transition towards a coal free Eastern Europe.

Samantha Smith points out that every sector in every country will be affected in order to reach the 1,5 degree global warming target.

”We wanted to start with rich countries because they have the wealth and capacity. In some poor countries you have a number of issues going on at the same time, one is recognizing basic labor rights which is also human rights.”

Tadzio Müller, political scientist and senior advisor on climate justice for the leftist foundation Rosa Luxembourg, agrees. He, on the other hand, is even more drastic.

”If Sweden, Germany and Great Britain want to do their bit to save the climate they have to shut down old industrial infrastructure within the next 10-15 years so that the rest of the world can still emit some carbon emissions.”

Tadzio Müller is critical of the trade union movement. The concept of “just transition” was first used by union activists in the U.S. in the 1980s.

”We have to be honest that it was, at least in part, the same industrial trade unions that called for a just transition that were fighting against ambitious climate politics and policies to save jobs,” he says. He mentions Germany’s mining unions as an example.

Tadzio Müller points out that he is in no way interested in limiting workers’ interests.

”I am absolutely for giving workers every social protection that we can manage. I would even argue that a universal guaranteed income would be a great way to transition in heavy industrial regions, like western Germany or the north of France. I don’t oppose just transition, but the fact that the function of just transition has been to slow down ambitious climate action.”

Samantha Smith at the Just Transition Centre says to her critics:

”What is your alternative? Especially in a democracy, like for example Germany. How are you going to shut down coal mines if local government and all the people working in the mines don’t agree to it? ”

She points out that it’s better to do something than nothing.
”And it’s better to do something that will support social justice and strengthen the labor movement and democracy to get down emissions.”

Translation: Cecilia Uder 

***

JUST TRANSITION – COUNTRIES AND FACTS

Canada

The government has decided to phase out coal as a source of energy by 2030 while making investments in natural gas instead. This is a part of Canada’s ”Pan-Canadian Framework on Clean Growth and Climate Change”.

Catherine McKenna, Minister of Environment and Climate Change, announced that a task force has been created, with representatives from unions, councils, and businesses working together to make the transition from coal to natural gas as fair as possible for the workers in the sector. The President of the Canadian Labour Congress has been put in charge of the project.

 

Spain

In 2016, the government launched a plan worth almost 2 billion euros to aid the closure of 26 coal mines. The mines were closed by the end of 2018 and approximately 2,000 workers were affected. The transition plan included early retirement for workers over 48 years of age and education in green industries for the rest.

The Spanish trade unions celebrated the agreement but one group of 800 workers, employed by subcontractors of the mining industry, were not included in the transition. They formed the network ”Plataforma de Santa Bárbara” and gathered to protest that they had been abandoned by the unions and the political parties.

Kenya

The transport system in Kenya’s capital Nairobi is overly chaotic and spews out huge amounts of pollution each year. To tackle this, the government of Kenya has begun the transition towards a new system called “Bus Rapid Transit”, with fewer but larger buses.

This means fewer jobs, so now the Kenyan unions are working together with the International Transport Workers’ Federation, the ITF, to ensure a fair transition that provides new “green” jobs for the workers.

USA

A massive transition is taking place in the state of New York, with 1,5 billion euro projects that include investments in renewable energy. Governor Andrew Cuomo started the initiative “The Clean Climate Careers initiative” in 2017, with the goal of creating 40,000 new climate friendly jobs by 2020.

The jobs will be in major renewable energy projects, including wind and solar. Big money is being invested to redirect personnel to create a more climate friendly workforce.

 

This story was originally published by Arbetet Global

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Pamela Phillipose, who edited the Women’s Feature Service in New Delhi for almost six years. She stepped down in 2014.

By Shiwani Neupane
NEW DELHI, Mar 5 2019 (IPS)

Pamela Phillipose was editor of the Women’s Feature Service, the only syndicated news service in India with a gender perspective, for nearly six years, until she stepped down this year as editor in chief and director. She wore other hats for the publication as well, writing and photographing.

The service began operating in India when Anita Anand, the manager, moved its headquarters to New Delhi in 1991 to ensure that its focus stay on the developing world and that it become autonomous.

The service had gotten its start in 1978 as a UNESCO initiative in reporting on development issues and written by women journalists, based with the Inter Press Service (IPS) global news agency in Rome. www.ipsnews.net

Once it moved to India, it opened several bureaus around the world, publishing articles by Indian journalists and others for syndication about women’s issues on social, economic, political and health developments, but the bureaus eventually shut down because they could not raise enough money to keep going.

The service (www.wfsnews.org) now syndicates 250 to 300 articles a year and offers programs like international conferences on women-related topics to be self-sustaining. (Anand left in 2000.)

Phillipose started her journalism career in Bombay (now Mumbai) with The Times of India in the 1970s and later was associate editor for The Indian Express. She was awarded the Chameli Devi Jain prize for outstanding woman journalist in 1999 and the Zee-Astitva Award for Constructive Journalism in 2007.

She was an editor of a book, “Across the Crossfire: Women and Conflict in India” and has contributed to various anthologies, including “Memoirs From the Women’s Movement in India: Making a Difference.”

This interview, which touches on Phillipose’s career as a journalist and advocate as well as the increasingly precarious state of many women in India, was held last year by email and by Skype from New York to Phillipose in Delhi.

Q. Why did you leave mainstream media to join the Women’s Feature Service in 2008?

A. The Indian media had increasingly moved away from issues concerning a large section of population, which did not have a presence in the market, after the country began to liberalize its economy — a process that began in the mid-1980s but which peaked in the early ’90s. Dictated by the market, and the advertising sector in particular, the mainstream media began to shift their focus to consumers during the liberalization years.

This meant that many important tropes fell off the media map, including that of gender. This was one of the major reasons for me to consider making the move from The Indian Express, where I was in charge of the editorial pages, to the Women’s Feature Service, a features agency mandated to highlight gender concerns.

Q. You moved from The Times of India to The Indian Express and then to Women’s Feature Service, or WFS. How has the life of Indian women changed during your career?

A. I began my career in the mid-1970s with The Times of India in Bombay. In those days, newspapers were driven largely by politics. The Mathura rape case of the late 1970s and the mobilizations around it helped to make visible the larger theme of violence against women.

This, in turn, impacted positively on media coverage of women’s concerns, and the trend continued into the 1980s, which saw many legislative changes taking place.

After the economic restructuring of the 1990s, there was an unprecedented burgeoning of media presence and institutions — first within the print, then within television and over the last decade or so within the ICT [information and communications technology] and social media space.

All of this has impacted both the representation of women in the media and their presence within the media. In the 1990s, for instance, because women were the prime audiences for television, television serials attempted to consciously link women with the models of hyperconsumption and a neo-conservatism being promoted on television.

However, through it all, larger issues like societal biases — reflected in skewed sex ratios — and sexual violence, remained deeply entrenched within society.

The extent to which such violence, for instance, existed at the subterranean level was evident in the regular recurrence of violence, as evidenced in the murder and rape of Thangjam Manorama in Manipur [2004] or in the Delhi gang rape [2012].

So, while many positive changes, vis-à-vis women, did take place, including universal primary education, rising legal literacy and reservations for women at the level of local government, women in India continue to face serious challenges, including those determined by their caste and religious backgrounds.

Q. India has received a lot of news coverage in at least the last year for the occurrence of multiple gang rapes in the country. This has led to multifaceted conversations worldwide about the state of women in India. Have these conversations helped shed light on women’s rights and concerns, a mission of the Women’s Feature Service, or have the rapes complicated the situation for women further?

A. These are complex issues that require comprehensive answers. Quickly, though, I would like to point out that the Justice Verma Committee Report was a positive outcome of the mobilizations around the Delhi gang rape of December 2012 because it put on the table many issues like marital rape and assaults on women in conflict situations.

Those mobilizations also saw the enactment of the Criminal Law (Amendment) Act 2013, which mandated the compulsory filing of First Information Reports in police stations, something that was neglected earlier, and the criminalization of various kinds of attacks on women, including stalking, acid attacks and stripping.

Q. How do you balance your advocacy work on women’s rights in India with journalism?

A. I believe an important part of journalism is advocacy. In a country like India, where the well-being of an increasing number of people is being threatened, directly and indirectly, by reversals of all kinds, ranging from the food and environmental crises to global recessions, there is space for a more people-centric definition of journalism.

We need more than ever media practitioners who travel beyond the confines of privileged enclaves, leaving behind the “big spenders” of metropolitan India, to tell their stories. We need media practitioners who have the knowledge, capacity and technological ability to communicate on the real issues of our times and speak truth to power in compelling ways.

It is important for journalists to use their abilities of description, their sense of empathy, their access to information and their understanding of the power of words, to tell their stories.

Q. What advice would you give to the prime minister of India, Narendra Modi, about effective legislation to protect women’s rights? Do you think, for example, that a separate coach for women in a train is necessary?

A. It is imperative that the Modi government ensures that the rising tide of intolerance and communalism in the country is addressed urgently. Communalism and communal violence adversely affects women disproportionately, as we saw in the Gujarat riots of 2002.

One piece of legislation — the Women’s Reservation Bill, providing for a 33 percent quota for women in Parliament and the state legislatures — has been pending since 1996 because of opposition from male Parliamentarians.

The Modi government would do well to pass that law urgently. We also need other laws presently considered too radical for Indian society — like a matrimonial law and a law to outlaw marital rape.

Q. The Women’s Feature Service has reported on women in conflict zones. You also co-edited a book reporting on conflict, titled “Across the Crossfire: Women and Conflict in India.” What is it about women in conflict zones interests you? Why is it important to focus on women in these circumstances?

A. Women and children, as we know, are the worst affected when conflict-driven violence breaks out, since the responsibility of keeping families going falls on them. However, they hardly matter in peace negotiations and their concerns are not adequately reflected in the drawing up of the architecture of the post-conflict scenario.

Another major concern is that they are extremely vulnerable to sexual attack and assault in times of conflict. This is why I would also advocate the striking down of a repressive law like the Armed Forces Special Powers Act, presently in the statute books, which gives the military sweeping powers to treat citizens in disturbed areas with complete impunity.

* Founded in 2011, PassBlue is a project of the New School’s Graduate Program in International Affairs in New York and not tied financially or otherwise to the UN. PassBlue is a member of the Institute for Nonprofit News.

The post Women’s Feature Service: Mapping the Struggles of Feminism in India appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Shiwani Neupane is a writer for PassBlue*, which provides in-depth coverage of the UN and women’s issues.

The post Women’s Feature Service: Mapping the Struggles of Feminism in India appeared first on Inter Press Service.

By Jomo Kwame Sundaram and Anis Chowdhury
KUALA LUMPUR & SYDNEY, Mar 5 2019 (IPS)

As the possible implications of Britain’s self-imposed ‘no-deal’ exit from the European Union loom larger, a new round of imperial nostalgia has come alive.

After turning its back on the Commonwealth since the Thatcherite 1980s, some British Conservative Party leaders are seeking to revive colonial connections in increasingly desperate efforts to avoid self-inflicted marginalization following divorce from its European Union neighbours across the Channel.

Jomo Kwame Sundaram

Imperial nostalgia
Part of the new Brexit induced neo-imperial mythology is that its colonies did not provide any significant economic benefit to Britain itself. Instead, it is suggested that colonial administrations were run at great cost to Britain itself.

The empire, it is even claimed, was long maintained due to a benevolent imperial sense of responsibility. To revive patron-client relations neglected with the turn to Europe in the 1980s, the new mantra is that British rule helped ‘develop’ the empire.

As the sun never set on Britain’s far flung empire, acquired by diverse means for different reasons at various points in time, few generalizations are appropriate. Nevertheless, there is already significant research indicating otherwise for many colonies, but India, of course, was the jewel in the crown.

Empire strikes back
Former Indian foreign minister Shashi Tharoor has debunked many imperial apologetic claims, including those made by former Oxford and Harvard historian Niall Ferguson. Probably the most prominent, Ferguson famously insisted decades ago that countries progressed thanks to imperialism in an influential TV series and coffee table book sponsored by the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), Empire.

Anis Chowdhury

Malaysian Sultan Nazrin Shah’s Oxford University Press book has underscored the crucial contribution of colonial Malayan commodity exports in the first four decades of the 20th century, while other scholarship has shown that post-war British recovery depended crucially on the export earnings’ contribution of its Southeast Asian colony.

Less well known is Utsa Patnaik’s painstaking work on nearly two centuries of tax and trade data. She estimates that Britain ‘drained’ nearly US$45 trillion from the Indian subcontinent between 1765 and 1938, equivalent to 17 times the United Kingdom’s current gross domestic product.

Colonial surplus
After the English East India Company (EIC) gained control of and monopolized Indian external trade, EIC traders ‘bought’ Indian goods with tax revenue collected from them. After the British crown displaced the EIC in 1847, its monopoly broke down, and traders had to pay London in gold to get rupees to pay Indian producers.

Under imperial monetary arrangements, the colonies’ export earnings were considered British, and hence booked as a deficit in their own ‘national’ accounts despite their often large trade surpluses with the rest of the world until the Great Depression.

Thus, the empire has been depicted by imperial apologists as liabilities to Britain, with India having to borrow from Britain to finance its own imports. Thus, India remained in debt to and thus ‘bonded’ by debt to Britain.

Not surprisingly, two centuries of British rule did not raise Indian per capita income significantly. In fact, income fell by half in the last half of the 19th century while average life expectancy dropped by a fifth between 1870 and 1920! Infamously, tens of millions died due to avoidable famines induced by colonial policy decisions, including the two Bengal famines.

Slavery too
Britain used such fraudulent gains for many purposes, including further colonial expansion, first in Asia and later in Africa. Taxpayers in the colonies thus paid not only for the administration of their own exploitation, but also for imperial expansion elsewhere, including Britain’s wars.

Early accumulation for Britain’s Industrial Revolution depended significantly on such colonial arrangements. Imperial tribute financed the expansion of colonialism and investments abroad, including the European settler colonies.

Not unlike Eduardo Galeano’s magnum opus, Open Veins of Latin America, Walter Rodney’s 1972 classic, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa showed how slavery and other imperial economic policies transformed, exploited and brutalized Africa.

In The Empire Pays Back, Robert Beckford estimated that Britain should pay a whopping £7.5 trillion in reparations for its role in the transatlantic slave trade, breaking it down as follows: £4 trillion in unpaid wages, £2.5 trillion for unjust enrichment and £1 trillion for pain and suffering.

Britain has made no apology for slavery or colonialism, as it has done for the Irish potato famine. There has been no public acknowledgement of how wealth extracted through imperialism made possible the finance, investment, manufacturing, trade and prosperity of modern Britain.

Neo-colonialism
With Brexit imminent, a renewed narrative and discourse of imperial nostalgia has emerged, articulated, inter alia, in terms of a return to the Commonwealth, long abandoned by Maggie Thatcher. Hence, well over half of those surveyed in UK actually believe that British imperialism was beneficial to the colonies.

This belief is not only clearly self-deluding, but also obscures Britain’s neo-colonial scramble for energy and mineral resources, enhanced role as tax haven for opportunistic finance, as well as its continued global imperial leadership, albeit only in a fading, supporting role to the US as part of its ‘special relationship’.

Anis Chowdhury, Adjunct Professor at Western Sydney University & University of New South Wales (Australia), held senior United Nations positions in New York and Bangkok.
Jomo Kwame Sundaram, a former economics professor, was Assistant Director-General for Economic and Social Development, Food and Agriculture Organization, and received the Wassily Leontief Prize for Advancing the Frontiers of Economic Thought in 2007.

The post Ignorance-Inspired Brexit Imperial Nostalgia appeared first on Inter Press Service.

By Nalisha Adams
MANILA, Mar 5 2019 (IPS)

As the Executive Director of Sasakawa Memorial Health Foundation (SMHF), Takahiro Nanri has been working on the issue of leprosy since 2014. Over the past few years, he has traveled across the world visiting the large number of leprosy projects that SMHF has been supporting and meeting dozens of organisations led by leprosy-affected people.
In the past few decades the global fight against leprosy intensified which brought down the number of active cases drastically. As a result, leprosy is now officially eliminated in most countries, but its is still not completely eradicated. So, the word is now at ‘last mile’ to a leprosy-free world which is often described as the hardest part of the journey.

The reasons are many: hidden cases that are unreported and untreated and remain at risk of transmitting to others, insufficient budget allocated by the governments as they feel leprosy no longer needs to be a priority, lack of coordination among organisations working on leprosy and so on.

In this video, Nanri shares his views on how can this last mile journey can be overcome.
There is an urgent need for a coordinated effort to acknowledge that leprosy is still a reality, he says, before promising that SMHF and its parent organisation the Nippon Foundation, are ready to play the role of catalyst to this new, heightened level of co-ordination.

The post A Disease as Old as Time – Eliminated but Not Eradicated appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Alice Cruz is the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the elimination of discrimination against persons affected by leprosy and their family members, says divorce on the grounds of leprosy, allowed by laws or not, is a prevailing reality. Credit: U.N. Photo / Jean-Marc Ferré

By Stella Paul
MANILA, Mar 5 2019 (IPS)

Discrimination against women who are affected by leprosy or Hansen’s Disease is a harsh reality, says Alice Cruz is the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the elimination of discrimination against persons affected by leprosy and their family members.

“Divorce on the grounds of leprosy, allowed by laws or not, is a prevailing reality. In settings where women are not economically independent, it can lead to the feminisation of poverty, throwing too many women affected by leprosy into begging or even prostituting,” says Cruz, who was speaking via audio link at Regional Assembly of Organisations of People Affected by Leprosy in Asia that was held in Manila, Philippines. The Sasakawa Memorial  Health Foundation/the Nippon Foundation (TNF) which supports leprosy projects across the world sponsored the meeting.

A professor at the Law School of University Andina Simon Boliver in Ecuador, Cruz has extensive knowledge of the social stigma and discrimination faced by the people who are affected by leprosy which also amount to the violation of their human rights.

In an interview to IPS, Cruz speaks of the layers and levels of stigma that men, women and children of leprosy-affected people face and how the U.N. has been trying to end it. Finally, she lists the simple ways that every ordinary person can contribute to end the stigma that people living with leprosy face and how to help them become integral to society. Excerpts of the interview follow:

Inter Press Service (IPS): What is the link between human rights violation and the leprosy-affected people? 

Alice Cruz (AC): Throughout history leprosy has become much more than a disease: it became a label, mainly used to exclude. Leprosy came to embody what was socially prescribed as shameful and disrupting. It became a symbol, a powerful metaphor, for everything that should be kept apart, whether it was attributed to punishment for sinful conduct, unregulated behaviour, past offences and socially constructed ideas of racial inferiority, among others harmful myths and stereotypes, which led to massive human rights violations of persons affected by leprosy, but also their family members.

IPS: Can you describe some of the ways the rights of leprosy affected people are violated?

AC: Women, men and children affected by leprosy were, and continue to be in many contexts, denied not only their dignity, but also an acknowledgement of their humanity. It is not a coincidence that it is commonly said that persons affected by leprosy experience a civil death.

They have been consistently subjected to: stigmatising language; segregation; separation from their families and within the household; separation from their children; denial of care; denial of the means of subsistence; denial of a place to live; denial of education; denial of the right to own property; impediments to marry; impediments to have children; restrictions on their freedom of movement; denial of their right to participate in community, public and political life; physical and psychological abuse and violence; compulsory internment; forced sterilisation; institutionalised silencing and invisibility.
There are still more than 50 countries in the world with discriminatory laws against persons affected by leprosy in force.

IPS: What is the UN doing to prevent and end these violations?

AC: In 2010, the General Assembly, in a landmark move, adopted resolution 65/215 and took note of the principles and guidelines on the elimination of discrimination against persons affected by leprosy and their family members. In so doing, it established leprosy as a human rights issue and stressed that persons affected by leprosy and their family members should be treated as individuals with dignity and entitled to all human rights and fundamental freedoms under customary international law, the relevant conventions and national constitutions and laws. In June 2017, the Council adopted resolution 35/9, establishing the mandate of the Special Rapporteur on the elimination of discrimination against persons affected by leprosy and their family members. It called on States and all relevant stakeholders to cooperate with the Special Rapporteur in the discharge of the mandate. I assumed this role on Nov. 1, 2017.

IPS: How far have we come in achieving the 2020 target leprosy eradication?

AC: I am afraid we are very far from such a scenario. By the one hand, eradication of leprosy is not on the horizon given the lack of a vaccine. By the other hand, official reports of around 150 countries to the [World Health Organisation] WHO in 2016 registered more than new 210 000 cases of leprosy, with high incidence among children, which means ongoing transmission.

IPS: How can every ordinary person contribute to eradication of leprosy and ending stigma towards leprosy affected people? 

AC: Acknowledging that persons affected by leprosy are the same as everyone else and fighting harmful stereotypes in daily life. Remembering that anyone, including you and me, can come to suffer from any disease or disability and that diversity and dignity in diversity is what makes us humans.

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Culion Sanitarium and General Hospital Medical Director Dr. Arturo Cunanan urged delegates to the Regional Assembly of Organisations of People Affected by Leprosy in Asia to "put our partnership beyond these walls" and act on the strategies discussed at the three-day conference. Credit: Ben Kritz/IPS

By Ben Kritz
MANILA, Mar 5 2019 (IPS)

Organisations of people affected by leprosy in Asia have agreed to form a regional-level secretariat to support national advocacies and represent their collective agenda at a world conference to be held later this year.

This was the most significant development to emerge from the Regional Assembly of Organisations of People Affected by Leprosy in Asia held in Manila from Mar. 3 to 5. The Coalition of Leprosy Advocates of the Philippines (CLAP) was selected by the delegates to serve as the first regional secretariat.

Sasakawa Memorial Health Foundation (SMHF) Executive Director Dr. Takahiro Nanri requested that the first major initiative of the secretariat be the formulation by June of a “road map” encompassing the Assembly’s consensus agenda, which would then be used by the SMHF and it’s parent body the Nippon Foundation (TNF) to help develop the programme for the world leprosy conference to be held in September.

SMHF and TNF convened the regional assembly in partnership with CLAP and the Culion Sanitarium and General Hospital (CSGH).

From theory to practise

CSGH chief Dr. Arturo C. Cunanan told the delegates assembled for the final day of the conference that, “putting our partnerships beyond these walls, putting it into action, is the big challenge” faced by the national organisations, who represented the Philippines, Indonesia, Nepal, China, and Kiribati.

Cunanan, who is considered the Philippines’ foremost leprosy expert, was particularly upbeat about the conference’s focus on improving communications to stakeholders.

“One of the most valuable things to come out of this conference is the learning about social marketing, and what interventions we can use,” Cunanan stressed to the attendees.

Another key takeaway from the conference, Cunanan said, was the recognition of economic opportunity as a vital component of social inclusion strategies for people affected by leprosy.

“I think an important thing that has emerged here is the idea that poverty is really the root of stigmatisation and prejudice,” Cunanan told IPS. “When people have financial resources, the discrimination goes away. Obviously, providing economic opportunity should be a priority for the various national organisations.”

Cunanan pointed out that priority complemented the focus on organisational sustainability, which was an emergent theme at the conference. “It is very similar to the same thinking that organisations need to find income-generating programmes to be sustainable,” Cunanan said. Reiterating the point he made to the assembly, he added that the goal for the organisations should be to put “theory into practise” and develop practical actions from what they learned.

Representatives of participating organisations discussed various national and regional objectives for leprosy advocacy in Asia. A significant outcome of the conference was the formation of a regional secretariat to coordinate and represent the Asian agenda at an upcoming world leprosy congress. Credit: Ben Kritz/IPS

Clear consensus

Starting with an overall theme of “improving social inclusion,” the Regional Assembly of Organisations of People Affected by Leprosy in Asia at the outset identified four areas for discussion: Preserving the history of leprosy and its treatment; defending human rights and eliminating the stigma associated with leprosy; improving the delivery of public health services; and sustainability of the organisations.

The consensus among the participating organisations was that sustainability was indeed a critical priority, and perhaps the most significant challenge faced by leprosy advocacies at the national level.

Another key national-level agenda item agreed by the conference attendees was the need to improve networking with their respective governments, as well as other key organisations. In line with this, developing strategies to improve organisations’ public image, branding, and their marketing efforts was also acknowledged as an important objective for national organisations. During the conference, the importance of understanding and developing effective social marketing was stressed, both through the use of social media and more conventional practises.

The development of a regional secretariat was considered the most important objective at a collective level. The conference participants echoed the sentiments of CSGH’s Cunanan that the shared ideas developed over the three days of talks should not be allowed to “dissolve” when the organisations return to their home countries.

Conference attendees also agreed that creating a “sustainable development strategy” on a regional basis should be prioritised going forward, taking into account the need to strengthen national organisations as well as the regional group. Just what that strategy would entail, however, is still subject to discussion among the various groups. 

Capacity building, improving the organisational and managerial capabilities of national organisations, also emerged as a regional agenda. During the conference, capacity building was expressed as a significant concern for many organisations, since many of their members lack relevant work experience or education. A regional strategy could help pool talent resources among the Asian organisations, at least until some of their own people could gain more experience.

The development of a regional framework and individual national agendas made the first Regional Assembly of Organisations of People Affected by Leprosy in Asia a success, conference facilitator Joseph “Boyet” Ongkiko told IPS.

“What excites me is to see the coming together of different groups, and their coming away with unity of heart and purpose,” Ongkiko said. “With leprosy, there is a commonality in the stories, but what we saw and heard are people moving from victims to victors.”

Nanri told IPS that much still needs to be done.

“There’s a big difference between elimination and eradication. As of today, most countries have eliminated leprosy, but it has not been eradicated yet as new cases continue to appear. To eradicate, what we need is one last big push – or re-activate public attention to leprosy,” he said, adding that until now the information around leprosy has not been well presented.

“If we can better package it, forge better partnership with media and if we can get greater political commitment, we can make that reactivation of people’s attention can happen.”

*Additional reporting by Stella Paul in Manila 

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Takahiro Nanri (left - black jacket), Executive Director of Sasakawa Memorial Health Foundation, joins hands with a leprosy survivor (right). Credit: Stella Paul/IPS

By Stella Paul
MANILA, Mar 5 2019 (IPS)

Takahiro Nanri is the Executive Director of Sasakawa Memorial Health Foundation which has been supporting the global fight against leprosy for almost five decades. Since 2014, Nanri has been leading the foundation’s leprosy projects across the world and has deep insights into the challenges faced by the people affected by leprosy as well as the organisations that work with them.

He also shares the dream of Yohei Sasakawa – the chairman of Nippon Foundation – to see a leprosy-free world and believes that despite several challenges and roadblocks, this dream is indeed possible to realise.

In an exclusive interview with IPS, Nanri talks about the idea behind the regional assembly of leprosy-affected people in Asia that was held in Manila.

He also tells how people who are affected by leprosy  are treated as social outcasts and why they must be integrated with the rest of the society. Finally, Nanri shares his views on how and why leprosy-affected people’s organisations should become sustainable.  Excerpts of the interview follow:

Takahiro Nanri is the Executive Director of the Sasakawa Memorial Health Foundation which has been supporting the global fight against leprosy for five decades. Credit: Stella Paul/IPS

Inter Press Service (IPS): Is there a reason behind Mr Sasakawa’s personal interest in leprosy? Why has the foundation continued even when it is not a big global threat anymore?

Takahiro Nanri (TN): As far as I know it was in the 1960s [when the Sasakawa family] visited leprosariums in some countries like Korea, South Korea, Nepal and at that time there was no Multidrug Therapy ( MDT) and the situation in the sanatoriums was very severe. So they had decided to fight against leprosy and launched the leprosy elimination programme and even established the Sasakawa Memorial Health Foundation.

I am very proud of the fact that this foundation has continued to work on the same issue for 50 years because, although compared to other diseases, this may have decreased, but there is still no end to leprosy.

IPS: How long have you been working on leprosy and what has been your biggest observation?

TN: I have been working on leprosy since 2014. But I have been working on poverty issues for the past 25 years. People affected by leprosy are really poor. So, working for leprosy is in a way working on poverty too.
Several years ago, there was the concept of the bottom of the pyramid; and we talked of the people living at the bottom of the pyramid and how to uplift them. We talked of using microfinance, social business approach etc. But I have realised that the people living with leprosy are actually living outside of the pyramid. That is why I feel integration is very, very important.

IPS: How did you come up with the idea of the Regional Assembly of Organisations of Leprosy- Affected People in Asia?

TN: Last September, we had a small meeting. We invited and had a discussion with some of the people’s organisations from India, Indonesia, Brazil and Ethiopia on what could be done. This September, there will be the World Congress on Leprosy where there will be academics, experts, governments. The congress is a crucial event but often organisations of the affected people are left behind. So, we came up with the idea of organising a pre-congress event where the affected people’s organisations so that it can also be a way for preparing themselves for the congress.

IPS: Why is sustainability still such a big issue for organisations of leprosy–affected people?

TN: Sustainability is not only an issue of leprosy affected people, but also for all the NGOs of the world. I don’t really have an answer here. It depends on each organisation, each leader. Every NGO, every organisation has to find its own way and its own strategy to sustain itself. Should they approach foundations, survive on external grants, seek membership fees, donations , do social business—it’s up to them. As foundations we can provide financial grant, but not forever. What we can do, however, is think together on what could be the next step.

IPS: There are many hidden cases in the world of leprosy. Can you share an example of a good action by a government that tried to act on this.

TN: In India, the government made a very brave decision. In 2016 they started a campaign to identify the endemic leprosy cases all over the country. And since then, every year, they do case detection camps. It has brought in the open many new cases that were previously hidden. It also resulted in an increase in the number of leprosy cases in the country, but after that it started to decrease as the cases were treated . So, this is an example I feel other governments can also follow.

IPS: How are you feeling now that the assembly has concluded?

TN: My expectation is very simple: this venue is for the people affected by leprosy. They should be able to discuss whatever they want to and decide whatever they want to decide.
Here, we saw is they are trying to be more pro-active, opening up,coming up with some issues, some ideas on how they can strengthen their partnership, soI am happy.

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The post Q&A: Leprosy-affected People Live Not at the Bottom, but Outside the Social Pyramid appeared first on Inter Press Service.