Africa - INTER PRESS SERVICE

Official photograph captured during the proceedings of the 8th Summit of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) convened in Saint Vincent and the Grenadines. Credit: CELAC

By Mario Lubetkin
SANTIAGO, Mar 5 2024 (IPS)

The regional commitment to fight hunger and malnutrition in Latin America and the Caribbean has made significant progress thanks to the update of the Food Security, Nutrition and Hunger Eradication Plan of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) for the period 2024-2030, known as the CELAC FNS Plan.

This update was approved and ratified during the VIII Summit of Heads of State and Government of CELAC, held on March 1 in Saint Vincent and the Grenadines.

This commitment evidence Latin America and the Caribbean’s significant contribution to accelerating the fulfillment of the Sustainable Development Goals, aimed at achieving societies free of hunger, poverty, and inequality in the region.

Our latest estimates show that, in 2022, 6.5 percent of the population of Latin America and the Caribbean suffered from hunger; this represented 2.4 million fewer people than in 2021. But the situation remains critical; hunger continues to affect 43.2 million people in the region

Our latest estimates show that, in 2022, 6.5 percent of the population of Latin America and the Caribbean suffered from hunger; this represented 2.4 million fewer people than in 2021. But the situation remains critical; hunger continues to affect 43.2 million people in the region.

Likewise, limited access to resources and services, poverty, the aftermath of the pandemic, and conflicts as well as climate-related disasters, among other factors, are affecting the ecosystems on which food production and the livelihoods of farming communities depend and threaten efforts to ensure food security, nutrition and the sustainability of agrifood systems.

In this scenario, the CELAC FNS Plan 2024-2030 is a concrete initiative, reflected in a unanimous response from more than thirty countries, which, at a ministerial level, agreed to update this document to address the challenge of hunger and food insecurity in the region.

The new plan -developed in coordination with the Pro-Tempore Presidency, currently led by Saint Vincent and the Grenadines and the thirty-three CELAC countries, included broad participation and analysis with technical assistance from FAO, ECLAC, IICA, and ALADI- has become a benchmark for other regions of the world. Its implementation represents a milestone example of the consensus and political commitment of Latin America and the Caribbean.

This plan, structured into four pillars, includes a conceptual basis to guide the countries concerning legal frameworks, sustainable production, access to healthy diets, and agrifood systems resilient to climate change.

2024 could represent a decisive year for Latin America and the Caribbean to make progress in combating hunger and malnutrition and achieving more resilient and sustainable production systems. During 2023, we have consolidated a deep process of alliances, consensus, and dialogue that will soon be part of the FAO Regional Conference.

We are in the final stretch of preparation for our Regional Conference to be held in March in Georgetown, Guyana, where we will facilitate exchanges and discussions that will be essential to guide FAO’s technical cooperation in the design and implementation of plans and projects tailored to the needs of the countries, and in line with the priorities defined by governments at the highest political level.

In this regard, the reflections and resolutions arising from the updating and subsequent approval of the new CELAC FNS Plan also represent a significant contribution to the FAO Regional Conference.

The preparation of the Regional Conference includes an extensive consultation process involving different stakeholders, such as the private sector, academia, civil society, and parliamentary groups; and of course, the participation of government officials from the thirty-three FAO Member Countries; as well as the presence of Heads of State and Ministers of Agriculture and other sectors committed to the search for more efficient, inclusive, resilient and sustainable agrifood systems.

We hope that the results of the Conference, translated into FAO’s mandate, will be consolidated as a tangible response. The success of these efforts will depend on the collaboration of all to make the hope of a world without hunger a reality.

Excerpt:

Mario Lubetkin is FAO Assistant Director-General and FAO Regional Representative for Latin America and the Caribbean for Latin America and the Caribbean

Credit: ESCAP/Cindy Liu

By Cai Cai, Jonathan Wong, Channe Lindstrøm Oguzhan, Elena Mayer-Besting, Christina Morrison and Darshni Nagaria
BANGKOK, Thailand, Mar 5 2024 (IPS)

Ponny Lim runs a thriving aquaculture enterprise in Cambodia, growing her business with the support of a United Nations programme that guarantees loans to women entrepreneurs who are beyond microfinance but not yet ready for corporate finance.

Working in a largely male dominated sector, Ponny has used this additional capital to take her products to other markets, and is also now supporting other women in her community to tackle gender bias and run their own businesses.

Ponny’s example reminds us on this International Women’s Day that investing in women is not only a moral imperative to achieving a more just and equal world, but an economic necessity, crucial to fostering sustainable, inclusive and prosperous economies.

In Asia and the Pacific, an estimated $4.5 trillion would be added to the region’s GDP by tackling gender disparities in economic opportunities. Yet, globally, it is estimated that more than 1 billion women either do not use or lack access to the financial system.

This has far-reaching consequences for the well-being of women, not only impeding their ability to pay for household expenses and recover from economic shocks, but also constraining opportunities for women seeking to start and grow their own businesses.

While the role of women’s entrepreneurship in driving economic growth, job creation and innovation is well established, a $300 billion annual gap in financing has been identified for formal women-owned small and medium businesses. An estimated 70 per cent of women-owned MSMEs are either financially underserved or unserved.

Research by the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP) on a wide range of indicators related to women’s financial inclusion, asset control and ownership, financial resilience and entrepreneurship reveals a host of challenges faced by women and a resultant gender gap.

Where data is available, the upcoming report “Financial Resilience, Inclusion and Entrepreneurship: Is Asia and the Pacific close to Gender Parity?” shows that in most countries in the region, women have lower levels of bank account ownership, access to credit and access to pensions. Women also experience higher levels of stress related to their financial situation and women-owned MSMEs lack adequate access to financial services.

These gaps result from and contribute to entrenched discriminatory norms and practices that continue to hamper the use of financial services among women. Common obstacles include limited household decision-making power, time poverty and career interruption due to a higher burden of care responsibilities, lower incomes and lower participation in formal employment among women, digital exclusion, transportation barriers, a lack of demand driven financial products and discriminatory lending practices.

Notably, the broader structural challenge of women’s limited asset ownership and control, which is often both the result of financial inclusion and economic success and a prerequisite for access to finance and economic opportunities, is a significant obstacle that must be overcome to achieve women’s meaningful financial inclusion and economic participation in the region.

The fact remains that women are more likely than men to be living in poor households in the Asia-Pacific region, with deep-rooted discriminatory social norms preventing women from realizing their full potential. Women perform more than four times as much unpaid care and domestic work, which is one of the primary reasons why the female labour force participation rate continues to decline, to 44 per cent today from 52 per cent in 1995, and still well below the world average of 47 per cent.

Barriers to women’s integration into the labour market and overrepresentation in less profitable sectors of the economy are closely linked to women’s financial exclusion, which both contributes to and is perpetuated by women’s concentration in the informal sector and precarious forms of employment, without the assurance of social protection.

Yet financial inclusion alone will not automatically reduce poverty or promote economic empowerment or financial resilience, nor will it eliminate structural inequalities faced by women. However, it is a vital tool which can contribute to enabling women to manage financial risks, attain financial independence, overcome traditional roles assigned to them, increase their incomes, accumulate assets, pursue entrepreneurial aspirations and grow their businesses.

Gender-intentional approaches and active collaboration between policymakers, businesses, financial service providers and civil society stakeholders is key to ensuring that financial inclusion leads to positive outcomes for all women, provide equal rights to asset ownership and inheritance, improve financial resilience and create a conducive environment for women’s entrepreneurship.

Our work at ESCAP includes the Catalyzing Women’s Entrepreneurship Programme, funded by Global Affairs Canada. The project has been building momentum for the movement to create an enabling ecosystem for women entrepreneurs across the region and close the gap in access to finance.

Since 2018, the programme has unlocked more than $89.7 million in capital for women-owned and led businesses, and directly supported more than 176,000 women entrepreneurs.

This type of activity highlights the fact that when women have equal access to economic opportunities, education, healthcare, work and representation in political and economic decision-making processes they can drive strong and inclusive economic growth.

And when we value the unpaid care and domestic work carried out by women and girls and invest in the care economy, we see how the multiplier effects uplift entire communities, improving the health, education and well-being of future generations.

The transformative effect of women’s empowerment is also evident in fostering more resilient and solidarity-based communities and societies. Women’s unique perspectives and leadership are essential in sustainably managing natural resources and crafting effective climate change solutions. Their engagement ensures that development initiatives are equitable and reach those most in need.

The path ahead is clear: In order to accelerate gender equality and women’s empowerment we must end poverty in all its forms. We must strengthen institutions. And we must be intentional at every juncture to provide sufficient financial resources to integrate a wholesome gender perspective throughout the implementation of our policies and programmes.

• Cai Cai is Chief of Gender Equality and Social Inclusion Section, United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP)
• Jonathan Wong is Chief of Innovation, Enterprise and Investment Section, ESCAP
• Channe Lindstrøm Oguzhan is Social Affairs Officer, ESCAP
• Elena Mayer-Besting is Programme Management Officer, ESCAP
• Christina Morrison is Consultant (Catalyzing Women’s Entrepreneurship Programme), ESCAP
• Darshni Nagaria is Consultant (Catalyzing Women’s Entrepreneurship Programme), ESCAP

IPS UN Bureau

 

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Excerpt:

The following opinion piece is part of series to mark International Women’s Day, March 8.

By Azza Karam
NEW YORK, Mar 5 2024 (IPS)

One of the most fascinating aspects of International Women’s Day is an odd subtext. That this is all about and (only) for women. Really? Since when are the realities of one part of humanity – the part that gives birth to the rest by the way – only relevant to that one part?

Would we ever think that if we had an international man’s day (which would be practically every day of the years of our lives) is all about and only for men? No, we would not.

What international women’s day is, is an opportunity to see the world through the eyes of those who have been systematically, systemically and deliberately, marginalized, silenced, scorned – and sometimes violently hated. But it is also an opportunity to celebrate the resilience, the determination, and the remarkable rebirth, survival, and yes, the relief, if not the joy, of thriving.

Look deep into the eyes of the girls and women of DRC, CAR, Ukraine, Russia, Ethiopia, Eretria, Palestine, Israel, Afghanistan, of the Indigenous peoples in North America, Asia, Africa, Australia, New Zealand – and countless other survivors of violence, in every corner of today’s world. Those are the eyes into the spirit of this earth.

International women’s day is but one of the 365 days of a year, to, perhaps, ponder the fact that our very earth is referred to, in many languages, in feminine terms.

Our earth is our very survival. Even, if and when, some of us succeed in living in Mars or on the moon, the majority of us will still need this earth to bear us, as it has borne our ancestors, and as it continues to, in spite of the deliberate destructions we levy against it, from each household, community, nation and region, in every corner of the world.

Our earth sustains nuclear tests which shred its very fibers from deep inside it. Even as it revolts in floods and roars back through erupting volcanoes, our earth still sustains the unending destructions of war, the piling up of human and other life forms, buried in it – and burned on it.

Our earth carries us and nurtures us on its oceans and seas and rivers, many of which we have choked with our human detritus which is killing the very same remarkable ecosystems that keep our waters clean, and help the air to heal.

Our earth tries to keep its own lungs functioning through the trees and oceans which are staying connected to one another, and to life itself, in ways many of us have no idea about. Every grain of sand, dew drop, branch, leaf, cloud – all feminine.

Come to think of it, our earth is being treated by humans, as so many girls and women are still being treated: taken advantage of, beaten, (ab)used, considered replaceable or profitable (or both), and when they excel, they are resented, including by some of their own kind.

We dare not speak of the woman-on-woman violence, right? That is not done, not even by the most stalwart of our feminist leaders. All the while this is happening though, poetry, prizes, even laws, are being enacted to ‘save’, commemorate, and ‘honour’ earth.

All faith traditions actually have a secret embedded within them: that that which is feminine, always rises again, to love, as it serves and gives birth, and to fight for the very possibility of life itself. As we commemorate this day, we would do well to remember that it is not about girls and women per se, it is about the power of the feminine that is earth itself.

None of us is born to be alone forever. We need one another. In fact, we are completely dependent on one another.

Our earth demands justice for life itself to be sustained. International women’s day is every human’s day, every life on this planet day, every living thing day, every star in the cosmos of creation day.

Can we honour that?

Azza Karam is a member of the UN SG’s High Level Advisory Board on Effective Multilateralism, and is the founding President & CEO of Lead Integrity, an International Management Consulting business, focused on creating a Roster, and making available, the expertise of women inspired by diverse faiths and serving in all professions, committed to leadership, integrity and competence.

IPS UN Bureau

 

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Excerpt:

The following opinion piece is part of series to mark International Women’s Day, March 8.

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Mar 5 2024 (IPS)

The UN Ethics Office, established in 2006, has promoted an organizational culture in the world body, including integrity, professionalism, respect for diversity and protection for whistle-blowers.

But the UN Pension Fund, whose assets amount to a staggering $88.3 billion, is accused of firing four of its staffers, including senior investment officers, for challenging the wisdom of the Fund’s investment policies.

The firings have been criticized by two Staff Unions representing over 60,000 UN staffers worldwide.

In a letter to Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, the President of the Coordinating Committee of International Staff Unions and Associations, (CCISUA) Nathalie Meynet says the Unions are alarmed to learn about the recent dismissal of four senior investment officers, “with indications that more staff may be terminated.”

“As you know, during the tenure of the previous Representative of the Secretary-General (in the Pension Fund), a group of senior investment managers decided to blow the whistle on what the Office for Internal Oversight Services (OIOS) later found to be a “toxic work environment”. They first raised their concerns with their direct management.”

Feeling that the matter was not given the level of attention required, they also met with the Staff Union. Some, but not all, of those who are being dismissed, met with the US and Japan’s Permanent Missions.

This undoubtedly, the letter said, had an impact in terms of changing the leadership of The Office of Investment Management (OIM).

Subsequently these staff members were investigated, and their emails and WhatsApp messages scrutinized by OIOS, on the following charges:

• Meeting with the US and Japan’s missions, or being aware that some of the staff in the group were meeting with those missions, and that sensitive information would be disclosed.

• Raising concerns with the Staff Union and disclosing sensitive information.

“We are dismayed that staff should be formally disciplined for having raised alarm with their staff representatives. We are also very concerned that the Organisation has failed to uphold the Secretary-General’s Bulletin 2017/2/Rev.1 on Protection against retaliation for reporting misconduct and for cooperating with duly authorized audits or investigations,” the letter pointed out.

Under Section 4, such actions are permitted when the use of internal mechanisms is not possible because of either inaction, fear of retaliation or concealing of evidence. “We are further worried that your actions, in firing so many OIM staff at once and in preventing staff from raising genuine concerns, creates an unacceptable risk to the management of Pension Fund assets”.

The UN Principles for Responsible Investment states: “Effective whistleblowing mechanisms are a key feature of good governance and anti-corruption systems, as well as being reflective of a healthy corporate culture. They can help support companies to mitigate the risks associated with unethical or illegal conduct, which if left unchallenged can lead to significant corporate failures and loss of value.”

“We therefore ask that you reconsider your decision to terminate the Pension Fund’s senior investment officers on grounds of whistleblowing. “

At the time of going to press, the Pension Fund did not respond to our request for comments.

Meanwhile, in a letter to colleagues, Laura Johnson, Executive Secretary and Pablo Gonzalez Silva, Deputy Executive Secretary of the Staff Union of the UN Office at Geneva, share their concerns “regarding the recent firings of senior investment officers in the Pension Fund’s Office of Investment Management”.

As spelled in the letter sent by the staff union federation, CCISUA, to the Secretary-General, “these staff were fired for blowing the whistle. Their performance as investment managers is not in question”, the letter pointed out.

“We believe that these firings: go against the UN’s policy on whistleblower protection; lead to the loss of significant accumulated experience; and create a climate of fear among the pension fund’s investment managers that prevents them from voicing their own perspective on how investment policy is implemented.”

“The last point is especially important. The fund’s experienced investment managers must be able to voice their opinion, particularly when these contradict those of the head of the Office of Investment Management, a political appointment, known as the Representative of the Secretary-General. We strongly support this letter and will be discussing with other staff unions what further steps we can take.”

According to the Code of Conduct, the UN’s protection against retaliation policy is to ensure that the Organization functions in an open, transparent and fair manner and enhances protection for those who report misconduct (any violation of the Organization’s rules and regulations by staff members), wrongdoing (by any person that is harmful to the interests, operation or governance of the United Nations), or cooperate with duly authorized audits and investigations.

The reports and cooperation are considered “protected activities” under the policy. “In order to receive protection, any report should be made as soon as possible, in good faith and not later than six years since you became aware of the original misconduct.”

To be considered a protected activity, a report of misconduct must include information or evidence to support a reasonable belief that misconduct occurred. Under very specific and limited conditions, protection against retaliation may be extended to individuals who report misconduct through external mechanisms.

“Retaliation means any direct or indirect detrimental action that adversely affects your employment or working conditions, where such action has been recommended, threatened or taken for the purpose of punishing, intimidating or injuring you because you engaged in a protected activity. You must submit a request for protection to the Ethics Office within six months of becoming aware of the retaliation”.

Meanwhile, the Representative of the Secretary-General for the investment of the assets of the Fund (RSG), Pedro Guazo, reported on the progress made by the Office of Investment Management (OIM).

He informed the Board that as of 31 December 2023, the portfolio was valued at USD 88.18 billion, compared to USD 77.92 billion as of 31 December 2022. The Fund has been performing well with a real rate of return of 4.8 per cent over the 15-year long-term period ending December 31, 2023, and 5.2 per cent as of January 31, 2024, which is above the required minimum of real rate of return 3.5 per cent, according to the Pension Fund.

“It has also exceeded the market benchmark for the short-term (3 years) by 50 basis points as of December 31, 2023, and by 30 basis points as of January 31, 2024. In addition, the Fund demonstrated a 5-year return (2018-2022) of 4.2 per cent, outperforming both the global median of 3.3 per cent and the peer median of 2.7 per cent. The Fund’s assets-to-liabilities ratio, also known as the funding ratio, is greater than 110 per cent, indicating strong financial health,” the Fund said.

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

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Abigail Hernández (left) appears at a press conference with journalist Wendy Quintero, a member of Independent Journalists and Communicators of Nicaragua at the headquarters of the Nicaragua Nunca Más Rights Collective. CREDIT: José Mendieta / IPS

By José Mendieta
MANAGUA, Mar 5 2024 (IPS)

Almost six years after the outbreak of the April 2018 protests, there are no signs left in Nicaragua of the violence that reigned in those days. There is no graffiti on walls or banners with demands or opinions against the leftist regime that has ruled the country since 2007.

Nor are there newspapers or opinion programs or debates on radio and television, let alone press conferences or public rallies."The Ortega and Murillo regime's repressive mechanisms have escalated to dramatic and unimaginable levels. A simple opinion issued on social networks or a criticism of the regime could land you in jail or exile." -- Martha Irene Sánchez

The city of Managua, the capital, is always bustling and active, with markets and shopping malls open at all hours; traffic is usually disorderly and police patrols roam the streets and avenues at all times.

At noon every day, on all radio and television stations, the tired, quiet voice of Vice President Rosario Murillo is heard giving the government’s news, social achievements and propaganda messages such as phrases of love and praise to God.

The program, which has no specific name, is broadcast from Channel 4, the historical property of the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN), the ruling party, to which the other state media are linked. The private media outlets controlled by the presidential family are also connected, together with dozens of radio stations and portals on social networks.

It first emerged in 2007 as “a message from comrade Rosario, from the Communication and Citizenship Council of the People’s President.”

“Here we are, on Valentine’s Day, with love, friendship, and for us, love and peace, because it is with love and in peace that we can walk ahead, move forward, building the future of all, a fraternal future,” she said on Feb. 13.

Murillo has been Nicaragua’s vice president since she was appointed in 2016 by her husband, President Daniel Ortega, the veteran former guerrilla who has been in office since November 2006.

Murillo is also the regime’s spokesperson and the only authorized voice, among the population of 6.7 million inhabitants of this Central American country, who can speak publicly and freely about anything. No one else can do so.

Freedom of expression in Nicaragua is one of the most repressed and abused rights, said journalist Abigail Hernández, director of the Galería News platform.

Journalist and former political prisoner Lucía Pineda Úbau, together with Martha Sánchez, take part in a protest by Nicaraguan journalists exiled in Costa Rica. CREDIT: José Mendieta / IPS

Her opinion, tellingly sent via an encrypted messaging application, is based on experience: three years’ exile.

“The media and journalists are a good thermometer for measuring the quality of freedom of expression,” Hernández told IPS.

“When we have less and less access to sources of information, when they limit us from reporting from the streets, when we can’t take photos or videos freely, when we can’t do our work inside the country, it reveals that there is no freedom of expression,” she said.

She is part of a generation of 242 journalists who have had to go into exile since the 2018 protests, which began against Social Security reforms and ended in a bloodbath provoked by military and police forces, with more than 355 civilian deaths, according to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR).

Journalist Martha Irene Sánchez, director of the República 18 platform, holds similar views, also expressed from exile.

“The scenarios for exercising freedom of the press and freedom of expression in Nicaragua have not improved since 2018; on the contrary, we are encountering more and more hostility,” she told IPS.

She is also a member of Independent Journalists and Communicators of Nicaragua (PCIN), a union organization that emerged after the protests and all of whose members went into exile.

“The Ortega and Murillo regime’s repressive mechanisms have escalated to dramatic and unimaginable levels. A simple opinion issued on social networks or a criticism of the regime could land you in jail or exile,” Sánchez said.

A forum for the presentation of the report on freedom of expression and press freedom in Nicaragua, released in September 2023 in San José, Costa Rica. The panel included journalists from Nicaragua from the Connectas platform, including FLED director Guillermo Medrano, (second-right). CREDIT: José Mendieta / IPS

She cited the example of Victor Ticay, a local journalist in Nandaime, a municipality in the northwestern department of Granada, who went out one day to cover a procession during the Catholic Holy Week of 2023.

The event had not been authorized by the police, whose agents interrupted the religious ceremony and Ticay filmed the parishioners running away from the patrol cars through the streets of the town.

He was arrested, charged with treason and spreading false news and sentenced to eight years in prison.

Guillermo Medrano, director of the Foundation for Freedom of Expression and Democracy (FLED), explained to IPS that between 2020 and 2021, the Nicaraguan regime passed a series of laws criminalizing the practice of journalism and freedom of expression.

A study that FLED released in September 2023 in San José, Costa Rica, a country bordering Nicaragua and the center of the country’s exile community, documented 1329 press freedom violations, mostly perpetrated by state agents in the 2018-2023 five-year period.

The actions were taken against 338 Nicaraguan journalists and 78 media outlets, between April 2018 and April 2023.

They included the police intervention of several media outlets such as 100% Noticias, Confidencial, Trinchera de la Noticia, Radio Darío and La Prensa, the last newspaper circulating in Nicaragua until August 2022.

According to Medrano, the Special Law on Cybercrime, passed in October 2020, provides for prison sentences for the use of information “which in normal democracies should be freely accessible to citizens and the public.”

In theory, the main objective of this legislation is the prevention, investigation, prosecution and punishment of crimes committed by means of information and communication technologies to the detriment of natural or legal persons.

The press freedom advocate also pointed out that the Ortega-Murillo administration, which controls all state institutions and branches of power, as well as the security forces, established the Law for the Defense of the Rights of the People to Independence, Sovereignty and Self-Determination for Peace, effective since Dec. 22, 2020.

This law gives discretion to judges and prosecutors in terms of the crime of “treason”, which orders the banishment and denationalization of the accused, as well as life imprisonment through a reform of the penal system.

More than 180 people have already been prosecuted under these laws and at least 22 journalists were stripped of their citizenship and banished in 2023.

“Under these laws, freedom of speech and the press has become a high-risk constitutional right for those who exercise it within Nicaragua,” Medrano denounced.

A report by the regional organization Voces del Sur says that Nicaragua ended 2023 with new forms of repression and threats to press freedom applied through banishment, confiscations, illegal detentions and harassment and surveillance of the families of journalists working in exile.

The outlook, the report warns, is of greater silence about social issues.

Nicaraguan journalists conduct interviews under risk of persecution or criminalization, denounced several reporters in San José, Costa Rica, in August 2023. CREDIT: José Mendieta / IPS

According to the report, between 2018 and the end of 2022, 54 media outlets disappeared, including 31 radio stations, 15 television channels and eight print media outlets. Of that total, 16 media outlets were confiscated, including La Prensa, the country’s main daily newspaper.

“Sources, even under conditions of anonymity, are harder and harder to find, and the saddest thing is that the State, through its officials, continues to be the main victimizer of citizens’ rights of expression and journalists’ press rights,” Medrano complained.

The non-governmental Human Rights Collective Nicaragua Nunca Más, made up of human rights defenders and activists in exile, states that the Ortega-Murillo administration “has carried out an unprecedented attack on freedom of expression in this country.”

The organization reports that of 28 resolutions of precautionary measures for journalists in Latin America, which have been issued since 2018 by the IACHR on freedom of expression, 15 have been issued for Nicaragua.

However, it says that “none of the precautionary measures” have been complied with by the State and, on the contrary, harassment against the targets has increased.

“And that reveals to us the seriousness of the problem of a small country with disproportionate and unacceptable restrictions on fundamental freedoms,” said one of the agency’s advocates, on condition of anonymity for security reasons.

These complaints find no responses within Nicaragua, because with the exception of Murillo, no one is authorized to answer, but can simply repeat the official discourse: “Nicaragua lives in peace and security.”

By Anis Chowdhury
SYDNEY, Mar 4 2024 (IPS)

Israeli troops opened fire targeting the Palestinians, gathered around food aid trucks, killing at least 112 and injuring hundreds on 29 February. The massacre happened, about a month after the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ordered provisional measures for Israel to refrain from all acts under the Genocide convention. Ironically Israel was supposed to report to the Court, within one month, of all measures taken in line with its order. Israel has been emboldened by a beholden US.

Anis Chowdhury

Beholden US
The US rejected the South Africa’s genocide case against Israel before the ICJ as “counterproductive, meritless and without any evidence”. It continued to “believe that allegations of genocide are unfounded” even after the ICJ provisional orders and noted that the court did not call for a ceasefire.

President Joe Biden did not condemn the shootings, but said Washington was checking “two competing versions” of the killings. He only feared that the event would complicate the on-going efforts to broker a hostage exchange deal and a temporary so-called humanitarian pause. So, the US asked only for a clarification from the Israeli government while the rest of the world demanded an independent inquiry.

Unsurprisingly, Israel initially pinned “the blame on the crowd”, crushed and trampled in a stampede when aid trucks arrived; then the IDF inquiry found no wrongdoing by its soldiers “felt threatened” when hundreds of Palestinians approached them. It did not care to say how an army, equipped with most advanced weapons, could be threatened by hungry unarmed Palestinians, requiring indiscriminate firing.

Three days later, the US Vice-President, Kamala Harris, called for an immediate ceasefire. She called out Israel for not doing enough to ease a “humanitarian catastrophe”.

However, hypocritically, she ignored that it is her country that is allowing this to happen. The US repeatedly blocked all ceasefire attempts at the United Nations, continues to supply deadly weapons and unconditionally finance Israel’s war. It has urged the ICJ not to issue a ruling calling for Israel’s immediate withdrawal from the occupied Palestinian territories.

Worse, Kamala Harris now “urges” Hamas to accept a ceasefire deal even when Israel declined to send its negotiators to Cairo for the latest round of ceasefire talks, claiming without evidence that Hamas’s Gaza chief Yahya Sinwar has no intention of reaching an agreement and plans to escalate violence over Ramadan.

Hypocrisy galore
As the US provides diplomatic cover and signs blank cheques for Israel, Israel continues to block aid deliveries to Gaza. It knows very well that US calls for opening more entry points and accelerating aid deliveries are just lip-service.

The US and its Western allies were quick to defund the UNRWA, responding to unfounded Israeli allegations against it. This was despite repeated warnings by the United Nations and humanitarian organisations about the impending famine and on-going humanitarian disasters, and ICJ’s provisional order for all parties to take all measures to prevent plausible genocidal acts.

Having allowed this humanitarian catastrophe to occur, Harris now says, “People in Gaza are starving. The conditions are inhumane and our common humanity compels us to act”. This act now merely involves air dropping of food, simply a public relations move.

Dave Harden, former USAID director to the West Bank, told Al Jazeera “The airdrops are symbolic and designed in ways to appease the domestic base”.

Scott Paul, who leads Oxfam’s US government advocacy work, said on X, “Oxfam does not support US airdrops to Gaza, which would mostly serve to relieve the guilty consciences of senior US officials whose policies are contributing to the ongoing atrocities and risk of famine in Gaza”.

While Palestinians in Gaza have been pushed to the absolute brink, dropping a paltry, symbolic amount of aid into Gaza is deeply degrading to Palestinians. As Dave Harden said, “Really what needs to happen is more crossings [opening] and more trucks going in every day… The US has the ability to compel Israel to open up more aid and by not doing that we’re putting our assets and our people at risks and potentially creating more chaos in Gaza”.

Mahjoob Zweiri, the director of the Gulf Study Centre in Doha, agrees. He asked, “Why not send food in through Karem Abu Salem? There are 2,000 trucks waiting to get into Gaza” at border crossings, while food and medicines pile up for months past their expiry dates.

The number of trucks decreased by 40% since the ICJ ruling, according to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).

Israel continues killings
Israeli attacks have killed at least 3,523 Palestinians in Gaza in the month after the ICJ ordered Israel to prevent genocide. An average of 120 Palestinians were killed every day. At least 5,250 Palestinians were injured in Israeli attacks.

Since ICJ’s call for ensuring humanitarian aid deliveries, Israel successfully maimed UNRWA. It banned the UN rapporteur for the West Bank and Gaza and moved to boot out UNRWA from buildings on state lands. It stopped renewing visas to aid workers providing vital humanitarian support to Gaza. Israel claims, without evidence, that many of the humanitarian organisations have a hostile political agenda.

“The stark absence of humanitarian space and lack of supplies we’re witnessing in Gaza is truly horrific,” says Lisa Macheiner, Médecins Sans Frontières / Doctors Without Borders (MSF) project coordinator in Gaza.

“If people are not killed by bombs, they are suffering from food and water deprivation and dying from lack of medical care”, as Israel is using “humanitarian aid as a strategic weapon”.

Anis Chowdhury is Adjunct Professor, School of Business, Western Sydney University. He held senior United Nations positions in the area of Economic and Social Affairs in New York and Bangkok.

IPS UN Bureau

 

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By Joseph Chamie
NEW YORK, Mar 4 2024 (IPS)

A minority of the world‘s population appears to be misogynistic and continues to oppose efforts to achieve gender equality and empower women and girls. The misogynistic minority cannot be permitted to undermine gender equality policies supported by large majorities of the public worldwide.

National surveys across different regions of the world find large majorities of the public supporting gender equality and saying it is very important for women in their country to have the same rights as men.

The majorities supporting gender equality vary from highs of 90 percent or more in countries such as Canada, Sweden and the United Kingdom to lows of approximately 55 percent in Kenya, Russia and South Korea (Figure 1).

Source: Pew Research Center.

Among the misogynistic minority too many consider women as inferior to men, treat them as their personal property, deny them control over their lives and bodies, restrict their political, social and economic rights, and too often ridicule, intimidate and physically abuse them.

The misogynists also generally dismiss the fundamental principles of the equality of men and women enshrined in international documents, treaties, declarations and instruments, such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Misogynists also tend to oppose the gender equality laws and policies that are incorporated in many regional treaties and national instruments.

The current struggle for gender equality follows a lengthy history of oppression of women through men’s use of authority, law, physical force and violence. In many societies around the world, women and girls have been unjustly held back from achieving full equality and enjoying their basic human rights.

In nearly all societies in the past women were under the control of their fathers and husbands and held back from making personal decisions and achieving equality with men.

In general, women had few options or choices for supporting themselves outside of marriage and were wed or forced to marry typically at relatively young ages with the primary aims being to provide sexual relations, bear children and maintain or work in a family household.

It was only until around the beginning of the 20th century did countries begin passing legislation ensuring women the right to vote and stand for election. The first country to permit women to vote was New Zealand in 1893. About a decade later, it was followed by Australia, Finland, Denmark and Iceland.

A couple of decades later, women were granted the right to vote in the United States and the United Kingdom. Approximately a century later, the most recent countries allowing women to participate in elections are Bhutan, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

By around the middle of the 20th century, more than half of all countries had granted women the right to vote, although some initially had restrictions for women of certain backgrounds based on age, education, marital status or race. Today none of the world’s nearly 200 countries bar women from voting because of their sex (Figure 2).

Source: Inter-Parliamentary Union.

Various organizations have compiled rankings and indexes indicating the standing of countries on gender equality and the rights and well-being of women. Among the countries with some of the highest ratings on gender equality and the basic rights of women are Denmark, Finland, Iceland, New Zealand, Norway, the Netherlands, Switzerland and Sweden.

In contrast, some of the countries with the lowest ratings on women’s rights and equality also typically suffer from civil conflict, which undermines efforts aimed at gender equality and the well-being of women. Among those countries are Afghanistan, Chad, Democratic Republic of Congo, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan, Syria and Yemen.

Particularly noteworthy is the dire situation of gender equality in Afghanistan. It is the only country in the world with bans on female education and employment.

Sociocultural factors, traditional practices and beliefs in Afghanistan have contributed to the country’s dire situation of gender equality in both education and employment. Girls are banned from attending secondary school and women’s employment is all but prohibited with the exceptions being in the areas of health and education.

In addition to differences among countries, significant differences in gender equality and the status of women can also vary within countries. In the United States, for example, some of the states that have attained the highest levels on women’s well-being, health and safety are Connecticut, Maine and Massachusetts, while at the other end of the ranking are Alabama, Arkansas and Louisiana.

Although women make up 50 percent of the world’s population of 8 billion, their representation among governments and participation in politics is considerably less. At all levels of decision-making and policy formulation, especially in the areas of defense and the economy, women are underrepresented.

The education of girls and women is widely recognized to be one of the world’s best investments, providing a basic foundation for a lifetime of learning and advancing and empowering girls and women. Worldwide the rates of school enrollment at the primary, secondary and tertiary levels are getting closer to equal for girls and boys (Figure 3).

Source: Global Gender Gap Report.

About two-thirds of all countries have reached gender parity in primary school enrollment. However, the completion rates in many developing countries are lower for girls than boys. In addition, globally an estimated 129 million girls, 32 million at the primary level and 97 million at the secondary level, are not in school.

At the tertiary educational level, women’s enrolment has increased considerably with female students outnumbering male students. However, female students are heavily enrolled in the arts, social science and humanities rather than undertaking science, technology, engineering and math degrees.

With respect to participation in the formal labor force, a considerable gender gap exists with the rates for men and women being approximately 75 and 50 percent, respectively. However, most of the work done by women outside the formal labor force globally is unpaid.

The level of female participation in the labor force varies considerably across regions. While in most regions more than half of all women aged 15-64 years participate in the labor market, only a quarter or less do so in the regions of South Asia and the Middle East and North Africa.

Women are also more likely to spend double the amount of time than men caregiving, tackling domestic chores and doing housework. Among children aged 5 to 14 years, girls also spend considerably more time than boys on unpaid household chores.

Another major development that has influenced gender equality considerably was the introduction of women’s modern methods of contraception beginning in the 1960s. Those methods, especially oral contraceptive pills, intrauterine devices and implants, permitted women to choose the number, timing and spacing of their births.

That ability in turn reduced the fear of unintended pregnancy, reduced the incidence of abortion and provided women with the control over their reproductive lives similar to those of men. Women’s control over their reproduction also permitted them to pursue higher education, careers, employment, recreation, travel, decide on life styles and participate more fully in society.

Notable progress on the equality of women and men has been made during the recent past. However, the world is not on track to realize Goal 5 of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals to achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls by 2030.

At the current rate of progress, it is estimated that it will take hundreds of decades to achieve gender equality, in particular closing gaps in legal protection and removing discriminatory laws. Reducing that lengthy time frame will require making investments in policies and programs aimed at accelerating the progress.

In addition to those investments, the basic rights of women need to be protected and enforced. Practices that oppress women need to be removed and the personal decisions and life choices of women recognized and promoted.

Also, importantly, the attitudes, objections and behavior of the world’s misogynist minority cannot be permitted to undermine gender equality policies called for and supported by large majorities of the public worldwide.

Joseph Chamie is a consulting demographer, a former director of the United Nations Population Division and author of numerous publications on population issues, including his recent book, “Population Levels, Trends, and Differentials“.

IPS UN Bureau

 

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The following opinion piece is part of series to mark International Women’s Day, March 8.

By Lysa John
JOHANNESBURG, South Africa, Mar 4 2024 (IPS)

Investing in inclusion requires more than electing and initiating women leaders. It requires a coordinated effort to change mindsets and systematically increase investments. This will allow feminist leaders, individually and collectively, to fully exercise their agency and counter targeted attacks on their safety and legitimacy.

A great deal of attention has been paid to the accomplishments of women in politics and society in recent years. Joan Carling, Francia Marquez, Maria Ressa, Amira Osman Hamed, and Narges Mohammadi have received global accolades for their vision and fearless activism.

Amid the pandemic, women leaders like Jacinda Ardern, Sanna Marin, Tsai Ing-Wen, and Angela Merkel outpaced their strongman counterparts by leading complex responses. During this period, the UN achieved gender parity in its senior leadership, including its national missions and peace operations, for the first time in history.

The leadership of women has been visible not just in institutions but also on the streets. Across the world, women human rights defenders have acted boldly for change despite severe restrictions. Movements such as #MeToo, #FreeSaudiWomen, #NiUnaMenos and #AbortoLegalYa are examples of women advancing systemic change for equality and justice. Women led peaceful demonstrations and civil disobedience actions as part of the Sudan uprising in 2018.

In 2022, the killing of Mahsa Amini sparked a large-scale and intersectional uprising for democracy. Across borders, Iranians demonstrated for ‘Women, Life, Freedom.’ They hit home the point our societies are incomplete if women are denied the right to participate in political, economic, and societal activities fully.

While the United States made headlines with its Supreme Court ruling restricting abortion rights in 2022, other countries like Ireland, San Marino, Colombia, and Mexico have turned the tide. They legalized abortion following years of struggling for their right to choose.

An uphill battle

Despite these achievements, there has been no respite in the attacks targeting women’s rights and their leadership. Civic space has never been worse since the launch of CIVICUS Monitor in 2018. 118 countries now face serious civic space restrictions. Only 2.1 percent of the world’s population lives in countries with open civic space. Intimidation, protest disruption, and detentions of protesters were the top violations documented in 2023.

These repressive strategies are extensively used to push back against women’s and LGBTQI+ people’s rights. Gender and sexuality remain at the centre of a culture war waged by a well-organised and funded international network of anti-rights forces leveraging these issues for political advantage.

South Korea’s national election in 2022 stands out as an example of how disinformation distorted the public and policy discourse against women’s rights. In his campaign, South Korea’s president-elect, Yoon Suk Yeol, actively legitimized the notion that moderate advances in gender equality were responsible for young men’s struggles in the current labour market. He pledged to abolish the Ministry for Gender Equality and Family and promised to increase punishments for the offence of making a false claim of sexual assault, a move likely aimed at making it harder for women to report real crimes.

But women are fighting back, in South Korea and elsewhere. Despite relentless anti-rights disinformation campaigns and owing to multi-year advocacy efforts, Indonesians passed a Sexual Violence Bill to criminalise forced marriage and sexual abuse and enhance protections for victims. In Spain, a new Law on the Guarantee of Sexual Freedom, based on the principle of consent, was passed to challenge widespread impunity for sexual and gender-based violence.

Women made up less than 34 percent of country negotiating teams at the COP27 climate conference, and only seven of the 110 world leaders were present. In response, gender equality was featured as a key theme during the COP28 climate conference last year.

A ‘Decision on Gender and Climate Change’, which lays the basis for future advancement of gender equality and women’s rights in future COP processes was adopted and 68 parties endorsed a Gender-Responsive Just Transitions & Climate Action Partnership, which includes a package of commitments on finance, data and equal opportunities.

Feminist leaders

In the recent past, several countries have elected or inaugurated their first-ever female political leaders. This includes Tanzania’s Samia Suluhu Hassan, Honduras’s Xiomara Castro, Slovenia’s Natasa Pirc Musar, and Peru’s Dina Boluarte. In Australia, a newly elected progressive government included a record number of women and brought the welcome promise of a U-turn on its predecessor’s policies of climate denial.

And yet, other contexts have provided a stark reminder that female leadership isn’t necessarily a victory for women, especially when feminist leadership principles aren’t at the fore. Examples include Hungary’s first female President, Katalin Novak, a close ally of authoritarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and a staunch supporter of his anti-gender policies. Italy’s first woman Prime Minister, Giorgia Meloni, has also, unfortunately, loudly touted anti-feminist values.

For generations, women have been subjected to rules they’ve had no role in making. Women’s movements all over the world have experienced the frustration of unsuccessfully calling for laws that benefit women. They have been struck down by the countries’ legislative bodies, made up mostly of men. Globally, women still have only three-quarters of the legal rights afforded to men. They continue to be grossly underrepresented in the places where decisions are made on issues that deeply affect them.

Invest in a feminist future

According to UN data, feminist organizations receive only 0.13% of official development assistance. Only five percent of government aid is focused on tackling violence against women and girls, with no country on track to eradicate intimate partner violence by 2030. If current trends continue, more than 340 million women and girls will still live in extreme poverty by 2030.

Close to one in four will experience moderate or severe food insecurity and as many as 236 million more women and girls will be food-insecure under a worst-case climate scenario. While progress has been made in girls’ education, women’s share of workplace management positions is estimated to remain below parity, even by 2050.

When CIVICUS interviewed Terry Ince from the CEDAW Committee of Trinidad and Tobago, she highlighted, “Women are running but not necessarily winning. To win, they would need financial and coordination support. It is not just about being in the room, but at the table, contributing, being listened to and having their ideas examined, pushed forward and implemented.”

There is a lot left to do to ensure greater representation at all levels. Only four women have been elected as president of the UN General Assembly in its 76-year history. The UN has never had a woman Secretary-General.

The 2024 International Women’s Day arrives with women heavily impacted by conflicts, crises, democratic erosion, and anti-rights regression. On the 8th of March, women will take to the streets in solidarity with those experiencing the brunt of regression. We collectively resist and take action and celebrate victories scored thanks to longstanding struggles.

The struggle for justice and progress will continue until we realize the dream of a healthier, safer and equitable world for all. To make this reality come true, we must invest in women and feminist future.

Lysa John is Secretary-General of CIVICUS, a global alliance of over 15,000 members working to strengthen citizen participation and defend civic freedoms. She has championed human rights and international mobilisation for over twenty-five years, starting her journey with grassroots organisations in India and subsequently spearheading trans-national campaigns for governance accountability. Her former roles include working as Global Campaign Director for Save the Children and Head of Outreach for the UN panel that drafted the blueprint for the Sustainable Development Goals. She can be reached through her LinkedIn page or X handle: @lysajohnSA.

IPS UN Bureau

 

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Excerpt:

The following opinion piece is part of series to mark International Women’s Day, March 8.

Children at a dried community borehole in Turkana, Kenya. Climate change, a subject of discussion at UNEA-6, has been blamed for droughts in the region. Credit: Maina Waruru/IPS

By Maina Waruru
NAIROBI, Mar 4 2024 (IPS)

The  Sixth United Nations Environmental Assembly (UNEA-6)  ended with delegates calling for firm actions to address the triple planetary crisis of climate change, nature loss, and pollution.

The assembly also reaffirmed its call for “environmental multilateralism” in seeking solutions to the threats, noting that time was running out fast before the threats could besiege the planet and make life a bigger nightmare, especially for the underprivileged.

The concept has been part of the main messages amplified by United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP) Executive Director Inger Andersen and part of its clarion call as well.

Also topping their calls is the plea for countries to remain on course in implementing the principles of the Paris Agreement, with many noting that the pact provided an ambitious roadmap to boldly ‘tame the climate crisis” by cutting greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.

While delegates at the five-day assembly at the UNEP headquarters in Nairobi, Kenya, which ended on Friday, March 1, 2024, observed with satisfaction that efforts at curbing plastic pollution could soon become a reality, some expressed concern that a Ministerial Declaration issued at the end of the event was not explicit on the urgency of actions needed to end the plastic crisis, nor did it mention the legally binding agreement on ending plastic pollution.

The agreement is currently under negotiation, and parties meet in Montreal, Canada, in April, where a deal could be reached.

“We emphasize the importance of advancing integrated, science-based approaches, informed by the best available science and the traditional knowledge of Indigenous Peoples as well as local communities, in order to strengthen resilience to current, emerging, and future challenges and promote global solidarity.”

United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP) Executive Director Inger Andersen. Credit: UNEP

“We recall General Assembly resolution 76/300 of July 28, 2022, on the human right to a clean, healthy, and sustainable environment,” the five-page ministerial statement read.

The 21-point document issued at the closing of the event was also emphatic on the need for effective, inclusive, and sustainable multilateral actions to tackle climate change, biodiversity loss, and pollution, reaffirming “all the principles of the Rio Declaration on Environment and Development, as well as the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and its Sustainable Development Goals.”

The ministers of environment from 182 member states acknowledged the threats posed to sustainable development by global environmental challenges and crises, including climate change, biodiversity loss, and pollution, as well as desertification, land and soil degradation, drought, and deforestation.

The gathering passed a record 15 resolutions and two decisions, as proposed by various delegations, with some being hailed as very critical, while others were viewed as crucial and timely.

Raising the most curiosity is a resolution by Ukraine, calling for “environmental assistance and recovery in areas affected by armed conflicts,” which was endorsed despite being introduced on Thursday. The country is involved in armed conflict with Russia, and has been exposed to risks, including nuclear accidents, by the fighting.

On its part, Saudi Arabia sponsored one calling for “strengthening international efforts to combat desertification and land degradation, restore degraded land, promote land conservation and sustainable land management, contribute to land degradation neutrality and enhance drought resilience.”

Others included resolutions on considering environmental aspects of minerals and metals, the call for circularity of a resilient and low-carbon sugar cane agro-industry, promoting sustainable lifestyles, an appeal for action on sound management of chemicals and waste, action on highly hazardous pesticides fronted by Ethiopia, and a call for action on combating sand and dust storms by Iran.

“I am proud to say this was a successful Assembly, where we advanced on our core mandate: the legitimate human right to a clean, healthy, and sustainable environment, everywhere,” said Leila Benali, UNEA-6 President and the Minister of Energy Transition and Sustainable Development of Morocco. “As governments, we need to push for more partnerships with stakeholders to implement these mandates. We need to continue to partner with civil society, continue to guide and empower our creative youth, and also with the private sector and philanthropies,” the minister added.

UNEA-6 elected Abdullah Bin Ali Amri as president to preside over UNEA-7. Credit: UNEA

Decisions arrived at the assembly are “most often” followed by actions and UNEP and member states will initiate actions based on the resolutions, assured Andersen, UNEP’s Executive Director.

At the same time, the assembly was told that more than a third of the world’s population is drowning in garbage, with over 2.7 billion people not having their waste collected, largely in the developing regions of the world.

Out of the number, 2 billion people are living in rural areas, while 700,000 of them are in urban areas, a new United Nations report launched at the assembly revealed.

The report, Turning rubbish into a resource: Global Waste Management Outlook 2024 (GWMO 2024)  revealed that an estimated 540 million metric tons of municipal solid waste, an equivalent of 27% of the global total waste, was not being collected, with only 36% and 37% of the refuse generated in Sub-Saharan Africa and Central and South Asia regions, respectively, being collected.

This was in sharp contrast to the situation in developed and upper-middle-income countries, where almost all of the waste was collected, at admirable rates of between 83% for the Caribbean, and 99% for North America. This is against a global average waste collection rate of 75%, the report, further revealed.

It predicts that the waste generated is set to grow in volume from 2.3 billion metric tons in 2023, to 3.8 billion metric tons by 2050, worsening the burden of managing it.

“In 2020, the global direct cost of waste management was estimated at USD 252 billion. When factoring in the hidden costs of pollution, poor health, and climate change from poor waste disposal practices, the cost rises to USD 361  billion,” it notes.

“Without urgent action on waste management, by 2050, this global annual cost could almost double to a staggering USD 640.3 billion,” it adds.

So far, no country in the world, including the developed ones, has managed to ‘decouple’ development from waste generation, with the two going hand-in-hand as they always have, noted lead author Zoë Lenkiewicz.

“We recommend that the world needs to integrate the principles of just transition and circularity to better manage waste. Note with concern that many countries need to build their national expertise in waste management,” she said.

At the same time, the global production and consumption of material resources have grown more than three times over the last 50 years, growing at an average of more than 2.3 percent a year, despite the increase being the main driver of the triple planetary crisis.

The consumption and use of the resources are largely driven by demand in upper-income countries, with the extraction and processing of material resources including fossil fuels, minerals, non-metallic minerals, and biomass accounting for over 55 percent of GHC emissions, and 40  percent of particulate matter health poisoning in the environment.

Their extraction and processing, including that of agricultural crops and forestry products, accounts for 90 percent of land-related biodiversity loss and water stress, and for a third of GHC, while the extraction and processing of fossil fuels, metals, and non-metallic minerals, including sand, gravel, and clay, account for 35 percent of global emissions.

Despite this, resource exploitation could increase by almost 60% from 2020 levels by 2060-from 100 to 160 billion metric tons—far exceeding what is required to meet essential human needs, according to the UNEP report,  Global Resources Outlook 2024 – Bend the trend: Pathways to a Liveable Planet as Resource Use Spikes tabled at the event.

Meanwhile, UNEA-6 has elected a new president to preside over UNEA-7, Abdullah Bin Ali Amri, Chairman of the Environment Authority of Oman, who takes over from Benali.

Over 5,600 people from 190 countries participated in the proceedings held between February 26 and March 1.

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

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An armed forces helicopter flies over the area of La Corona, which will be covered by a plastic blanket, on the Humboldt Peak in the Andes. It is the last glacier in Venezuela and will possibly disappear in less than two years. CREDIT: Harrison Ruiz / Minec

By Humberto Márquez
MÉRIDA, Venezuela, Mar 4 2024 (IPS)

Venezuela has undertaken the task of covering the remains of its last glacier, La Corona, on Humboldt Peak at 4,900 meters above sea level in the Andes mountains in the southwest of the country, with plastic “blankets” to slow the inevitable end of this icy patch of its mountain landscape and source of legends.

“We are not going to change the rhythm of nature, but we’re trying to curb the loss of the strip of glacier that we have left, for research and contributions that can be useful for other Andean countries where glaciers are also receding,” Toro Belisario, director of the Ministry of Ecosocialism (Minec) in the southwestern Andean state of Mérida, told IPS."A couple of dying hectares is all that remains of the nearly 1,000 hectares of glaciers that Venezuela had in the Sierra Nevada de Mérida at the beginning of the 20th century. They are the first victims of global warming." -- Julio César Centeno

The 1.8-hectare remains of the glacier will be covered with 80-meter-long polypropylene geotextile “blankets” brought from Italy in 35 rolls weighing 80 kilos each, which will be lifted by armed forces helicopters to the camp on the Humboldt Peak.

Some academics are opposed to the project, claiming that it has not been properly studied and that it is a vain effort to resist climate change and poses environmental risks for mountain species and rural and urban communities that could be polluted by plastic waste.

Belisario acknowledged that at the rate at which the glacier is retreating, one hectare per year, it has little life left, under the burden of climate change and the impact of the El Niño weather phenomenon blowing warm winds over the Pacific Ocean that alter the temperature in the region.

On the other hand, he defended the usefulness of the data that the initiative and its monitoring can provide month after month, for Venezuela and neighbors such as Peru, where numerous communities depend on glaciers as a source of water.

Perpetual snow disappeared decades ago from Bolívar Peak, Venezuela’s highest mountain at 4978 meters above sea level. Other glaciers in the Venezuelan Andes also melted during the 20th century. CREDIT: JC Centeno Chair

Environmental expert Julio César Centeno, a professor at the University of the Andes (ULA) in Mérida, told IPS that “the most that can be expected from the initiative is to prolong for a couple more years the final ordeal of the tiny, dying portion of the glacier that remains.”

Centeno and other ULA researchers warned in a press release that “it could cause environmental and ecological damage to the glacier and surrounding areas of the Andes highlands, as well as potentially affecting neighboring populations, due to air and water pollution from micro and nano plastics.”

The criticism asserts that Minec has failed to comply with current legislation, in terms of broad and informed consultation with local communities, presentation of an environmental impact study available to the public, and working together with concerned institutions, such as the university.

A century of retreat

“A couple of dying hectares is all that remains of the nearly 1,000 hectares of glaciers that Venezuela had in the Sierra Nevada de Mérida at the beginning of the 20th century. They are the first victims of global warming,” Centeno said.

This mountain range is in the center of the Venezuelan Andes – a 450 kilometer mountainous strip – with “perpetual snow” on its high peaks, Bolivar – 4978 meters above sea level, the highest in the country – La Concha, Toro, Humboldt and Bonpland.

La Corona glacier, between the Humboldt and Bonpland peaks, once covered 400 hectares, and even hosted a national ski championship. It has lost more than 99 percent of its original size, largely due to global warming. CREDIT: JC Centeno Chair

All of them have shrunk over the years, but in 1956 a national ski championship was held in the mountains. However, at the end of the last century only the La Corona glacier remained, on the Humboldt Peak, which with 400 hectares had also covered part of the Bonpland mountain, before losing 99.7 percent of its original extension.

Centeno explained that in countries such as Germany, Austria, France, Italy and Switzerland, glaciers are being covered with plastic blankets to reflect solar radiation and reduce energy absorption, but only during the summer months and especially in ski resorts. The costs are charged to the users.

There are also cases in Chile, China and Russia, and in most cases the glaciers to be covered are not only in latitudes far from the tropics but at lower altitudes than in Mérida, with more exposure to wind, sun and rain, which provide harsher conditions for the geotextile coverings.

This led ULA experts to warn of greater risks of deterioration of the tarps, and ruptures or tears leading to the spread of micro and nano plastics that the air and water would carry to agricultural and urban communities, such as the city of Mérida at the foot of the Sierra, with a population of around 300,000 people.

View of the city of Mérida, at the foot of the Sierra Nevada. For centuries the regional capital has had an intense mythical, utilitarian and artistic link with its mountains. CREDIT: Espasa Mérida

Five white eagles

Since its foundation in 1558, the city has had a close relationship with its snow-capped mountains, ranging from enraptured contemplation to the utilitarian source of income provided by the highest cable car in the world, reaching from the city to 4765 meters above sea level in the Sierra.

In literature, the best-known reference is “The Five White Eagles”, which dates back to 1895, in which the humanist Tulio Febres Cordero (1860-1938) wrote down a legend of the Mirripuyes Indians, one of the groups that lived in the area when the Spaniards arrived in the sixteenth century.

The legend has it that five huge white eagles with silver wings flew over the mountains and Caribay, the first woman, daughter of the sun and the moon, fell in love with them and wanted the birds’ feathers to adorn her head.

Caribay ran along the ridges chasing the shadows of the birds but, when she was about to reach them, the eagles dug their talons into the cliffs and turned to stone, forming the five masses of ice that crowned the Sierra.

Since then, according to the legend, the occasional snowfalls are simply the awakening of the eagles, and the whistling of the wind in the highlands is an echo of the sad, monotonous song of Caribay as she fails to reach her silver trophy.

The governor of the state of Mérida, Jehyson Guzmán (R) receives the rolls of polystyrene, purchased in Italy, with which the La Corona glacier will be partially covered. Environmental academics are alert to the risk of eventual deterioration becoming a source of plastic pollution. CREDIT: Harrison Ruiz / Minec

Political presence

In justifying the plastic blanket project, Belisario said that “because of what this legend represents for the cosmovision of people from Mérida, we must not allow the glacier to disappear without contributing what we can to its study, and to the mitigation and adaptation to climate change.”

Centeno lamented that the eagles “no longer flap their wings, and their feathers no longer glitter. We all believed that because of their grandeur they were indestructible. They were swallowed by human indifference.”

In conversation with IPS, Ana Medina, a high school teacher in Mérida, and Yajaira Méndez, a shopkeeper in the municipal market, agreed that at home young people “must have once studied the legend of the white eagles” but that they are hardly aware of the end of the glacier.

“The people of Mérida love their mountains but have no information, and the glacier covering is not a topic that is talked about on a daily basis,” Euro Lobo, a veteran journalist in the city, told IPS.

Centeno said there may be political interest, in this year in which the country will hold a presidential election and it is expected that the current President Nicolás Maduro will seek reelection for a third six-year term.

“Perhaps the government wants to show that it is interested in saving as much as possible of the jewel that represents the last glacier for the city and the country,” said Centeno.

This monument to the Five White Eagles is on the outskirts of the city of Mérida. A legend written down in the late 19th century by writer Tulio Febres Cordero is a cultural icon. CREDIT: Samuel Hurtado / IAM Venezuela

Operation Protection

The governor of the state of Mérida, Jehyson Guzmán, of the ruling United Socialist Party of Venezuela, and General Ruben Belzares, the area’s military chief, announced on Feb. 21 that the new phase of the “Operation Protection of the Humboldt Peak Glacier” began.

“This is about rescuing the last glacier in Venezuela, the last stretch of ice that nature donated in its landscapes to the Mérida territory. We are involved in the struggle to rescue, preserve and maintain it as far as possible,” said Belzares.

He pointed out that a helicopter has been prepared to transport material and equipment, and reconnaissance flights have been carried out near the summit.

Guzmán said that the first camp has been set up and its 26 members are ready to begin work as soon as weather conditions permit, since there was unusual snowfall for the end of February.

Since December the region has had high temperatures, “generating higher pressure on the glacier. That is why the deployment is important, because at this accelerated rate of heat at the end of the year we may not have any glacier left,” said Guzmán.

He reported that in the Sierra Nevada all types of burning and logging have been prohibited, as well as climbing with spiked shoes.

He also specified that the geotextile blankets will not be placed directly on the entire glacier, but in the surrounding areas where the ice sheet is weakening, where melting has been the most accelerated.

The final flapping of the wings of the last of the eagles will occur under a polystyrene blanket.

By Winnie Byanyima
GENEVA, Switzerland, Mar 1 2024 (IPS)

This International Women’s Day (March 8) comes at a fiercely challenging moment. We can find inspiration, and hope, however, in the women and girls around the world who, often at great risk, are leading the fight for rights for everyone.

Today, more than ever, we need to put our energies and resources in support of their courage. We are facing an unprecedented and well-funded global attack on human rights and especially on the rights of women. Hard-won progress is in peril. It is not just the commitments made in the Sustainable Development Goals for 2030 that are under threat. It is everything we have gained since 1945.

How do we push back against the pushback? How do we make sure our daughters can live in a kinder, safer, world, in which their rights are upheld and respected? How do we make sure women and girls are included in policy making that affects their lives?

Firstly, we need to deepen our understanding of this pushback on human rights and democracy.

Democracy is threatened when inequalities deepen. Today, more and more wealth is being concentrated in the hands a few men. The world’s five richest billionaires have doubled their fortunes since 2020 – while five billion people became poorer.

Globally, men own US$105 trillion more wealth than women. And the world’s poorest countries are being forced to cut public spending because of the debt crisis, which particularly impacts women and girls from poor communities.

The world is very far off track to meet the gender targets set in the Sustainable Development Goals because, as UN Women concludes, of “deeply rooted biases against women, manifesting in unequal access to sexual and reproductive health, unequal political representation, economic disparities and a lack of legal protection.” As the UN Secretary-General has urged, there is a need for a “dismantling and transformation of power structures that discriminate against women and girls”.

We need to tackle unequal access to education and information. When 122 million of our girls are still out of school, and even millions who attend school are denied lifesaving information on how to protect themselves from HIV, everyone loses.

We need to challenge the lie that women’s rights undermine culture and tradition.

And we need to resolutely confront the globally coordinated ruthless campaign to punish people for who they are and who they love. We need to put the human rights of every person at the centre of all our development efforts, just as we have been doing in the AIDS movement for decades. Because to protect the wellbeing of everyone, the health of everyone, we have to protect the rights of everyone.

Progress requires a deepening of multilateralism and a deepening of support for civil society. So it is concerning when countries, including in the West, retreat from their international commitments to development and human rights. And it is concerning when only 1% of all the aid going to gender equality reaches women’s and girls’ organizations.

We are not mourning, however, we are organizing. We can be hopeful because we have won before and we can again. To do so, we need to remember that hope is not idle optimism. It is active. We will win together, through determined collaborative action.

That is how we won the right to vote. That is how we opened the doors of parliaments and corporate board rooms. That is how we closed the gap between boys and girls in basic education. That is how won progress in moving away from the old colonial punitive laws that criminalised LGBTQ people, so that today two-thirds of countries no longer criminalize. That is how we won progress on the rights of people living with HIV, with three quarters of people living with HIV now on treatment.

We cannot give up or slow down on this unfinished journey of progress, or retreat because opponents of progress are well-organised. The stakes are too high, the risks if we act with a lack or courage are too great, the costs of insufficient action are unaffordable.

This is a moment that calls for unwavering support for women and girls on the frontlines, and for intersectional alliances in defence of everyone’s human rights. We need to strengthen the hand of those whose lives are most impacted by the denial of rights. The United Nations is clear: we are not only on the side of the frontline defenders of rights; we are by their side.

IPS UN Bureau

 

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Excerpt:

The writer is UNAIDS Executive Director and United Nations Under-Secretary-General
 
The following opinion piece is part of series to mark International Women’s Day, March 8.

Nigerian women returning from the forest with firewood. Credit: Peace Oladipo/IPS

By Peace Oladipo
KWARA, Nigeria, Mar 1 2024 (IPS)

One sunny mid-morning in Omu-Aran village, a community in Kwara State, North Central Nigeria, Iyabo Sunday sat beside a firewood stand observing her pot of beans with rice (a combination enjoyed by many in Nigeria).

The 52-year-old widow used her plastic dirt parker to fan the flames, occasionally blowing air through her mouth for speed and frantically shielding her face from the wisps of smoke that curled from the firewood.

After a hike in electricity tariffs, Sunday told IPS that she abandoned her electric-powered stove for cooking gas. But instability in the “economy has successfully caused me to move back to the firewood since my children and I must eat.”

Oyedele Christiana, a 41-year-old restaurateur who specializes in making fufu, a local delicacy made from cassava, expressed her wish to stop using firewood and charcoal but was constrained by finances. “The smoke enters my eyes and makes me cough a lot.  I usually use firewood for my canteen business, while I use charcoal at home for household cooking.”

Like Iyabo, Christiana made use of cooking gas. The sporadic increase in the price of domestic gas has since pushed her to the traditional cooking method, with its attendant havoc on her eyes and lungs. “I am not as old as I look, but cooking has done this,” Oyedele sighed.

The price of cooking gas in Nigeria has soared wildly amid the country’s inflation woes. The removal of subsidy on petrol products, together with a depreciation of the naira, has resulted in a steep increase in the cost of food and transportation. This hike in the cost of living comes amid a minimum wage of N30,000 ($18), ranked among the lowest in the world, according to Picodi.

The price of 12.5 kg of cooking gas increased from N7,413. ($4) in 2022 to N16,875 ($10) in February 2024 across the country, a price just half the national minimum wage.

Implications on Women, Environment

Women living in grassroots communities who can no longer afford cooking gas have no choice but to bear the harsh method of cooking with firewood. Many, like Ajayi Omole, an octogenarian living in Akungba, a town in Ondo State, have made cooking with firewood a delight due to the lack of alternatives.

“We usually go into the forest, get the trees, sun dry (them), and prepare them for cooking.” However, she said, “I have a stove inside my room but I can’t use it because I don’t have enough to purchase kerosene.”

The nation’s alarming poverty circle, where Iyabo and Oyedele belong, speaks loudly about the reality of clean cooking. Statistics indicate that 63 percent of the entire population mostly relies on traditional method cooking, usually described as ‘dirty’.

The National Council on Climate Change (NCCC) has stated that, aside from the dangers of deforestation and climate destruction, the use of firewood and charcoal for cooking directly affects women’s health. This is in agreement with figures from the Federal Ministry of Environment about how more than 98,000 Nigerian women die annually from smoke inhaled while cooking with firewood.

Aisha Sulaiman, a renewable energy and green hydrogen technologist, said that rising prices of cooking gas have caused many to transition back to the use of firewood and charcoal, leading many women to multiple health issues. She emphasized that women suffer stronger health issues as secondhand smokers.

She said, “In an African setting, women belong to the kitchen; that’s how the narrative is, even if that is not supposed to be. In rural communities, the main source of energy in terms of cooking is the traditional method, which is unsustainable and harmful.

“The traditional methods of cooking involve charcoal and firewood. These are materials that lead to the release of greenhouse gases, particularly CO2, into our environment, and this in turn contributes to global warming, which brings about climate change.”

Speaking on women’s health, Sulaiman mentioned that respiratory diseases could stem from inhaling smoke from charcoal and firewood. “These methods are a source of air pollution, which can cause serious health issues. Overexposure to the smoke also leads to a disease called chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, which is very endemic to women,’’ she said. Sulaiman added that the Nigerian government should prioritize making clean energy accessible and cost-competitive to procure its acceptance by the people in low-income communities.

Ibrahim Muhammad, an energy consultant and team lead at Climate Alaramma Sustainable Development Initiative, a youth-led environmental organization in northern Nigeria, argued that the transition back to the traditional method of cooking would increase deforestation. He said the increase in LPG’s price is connected to the nation’s economic downturn.

In his words, “There is extensive research demonstrating the significant impact of traditional cooking methods on women and children. These methods contribute to deforestation and air pollution, particularly through the emission of smoke.”

Muhammad noted that women’s transition to traditional cooking was a setback in Nigeria’s transition plan to energy, especially in the area of clean cooking.

The Nigerian government and international development partners must find avenues for cleaning cooking infrastructure to be subsidized so that rural communities, mostly affected, can be able to afford it. According to him, “Considering the nature of some communities that are into agriculture, they are expected to be supported with infrastructure that can help them use this agricultural waste to cook.  Additionally, the prices of these clean cooking stoves that are being developed are subsidized.”

Speaking further on alternatives, he added, “Briquettes, produced from agricultural waste, typically resemble charcoal and can perform all the functions of charcoal. They are energy-efficient and made from various agricultural waste materials, thus not promoting deforestation.”

Muhammad added that harmless solutions should be created to fit in Nigeria’s context; electric stoves may be considered impossible due to unstable electricity.

“Solar cookers are typically used when it is sunny, but many people hardly have lunch, they mostly focus on breakfast and dinner. Many women cook early in the morning or evening, so we need to tailor solutions to our specific circumstances,’’ he said.

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

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By Inés M. Pousadela
MONTEVIDEO, Uruguay, Mar 1 2024 (IPS)

After almost two decades of civil society campaigning, Greece’s parliament has passed a law enabling same-sex couples to marry and adopt children. It’s the first majority-Orthodox Christian country to realise marriage equality.

Equal marriage is now recognised in 36 countries, with Estonia last year becoming the first post-Soviet state to join the ranks. These notable firsts have however been accompanied by regression elsewhere, including in the country with the world’s biggest Orthodox Christian population, Russia.

SAME-SEX MARRIAGE AROUND THE WORLD

A long campaign

Debate on the rights of Greek same-sex couples dates back to 2006. That year and again in 2008, the centre-left PASOK party submitted bills to recognise unmarried couples, including same-sex ones. Neither made it through parliament, and a cohabitation law was eventually passed that didn’t include same-sex couples.

In 2008, LGBTQI+ rights activists exploited a loophole in a law that didn’t specify that marriage must involve a man and a woman. Despite instant backlash and legal threats, the mayor of the island of Tilos, a gay tourist destination, held a civil wedding ceremony for two same-sex couples. Courts soon annulled these weddings, but they helped put the issue on the agenda.

In the run-up to the 2009 election, the Lesbian and Gay Community of Greece sent candidates a questionnaire on LGBTQI+ rights. PASOK, which won the election, said it supported same-sex registered partnerships. But in office it dragged its heels.

LGBTQI+ activists took to regional and international human rights systems. They submitted shadow reports to the UN Human Rights Council’s review of Greece’s human rights record. In 2009, four gay couples brought two cases to the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), stating that the restriction of civil unions to heterosexual couples amounted to unjustified discrimination.

In November 2013, the ECHR ruled that there was indeed discrimination, ordering the state to provide compensation. Within days, the PASOK-led government announced it would introduce a bill to extend civil unions to same-sex couples.

But time dragged. A year on, the government again said it was considering the change, but soon after, parliament was dissolved and snap elections were called for early 2015. Amid public anger at economic austerity measures imposed in response to Greece’s debt crisis, left-wing party Syriza won power.

Political change

The pace quickened under the Syriza-led government, and after a long and contentious December 2015 parliamentary debate, same-sex couples gained civil partnership rights. They still weren’t able to adopt or exercise parental rights over non-biological children, but the change was a vital first step. A year on, parliament further amended the law to extend some of the same rights as marriage, including labour rights.

LGBTQI+ rights activists made more gains during Syriza’s four years in power. In 2017, parliament passed a gender identity law enabling people to change gender on official documents without undergoing any medical procedure and allowing trans people to affirm their gender from 15 years onwards. Almost the entire political opposition voted against, including Kyriakos Mitsotakis, leader of the centre-right New Democracy party and current prime minister.

In June 2019, Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras promised his government would legalise same-sex marriage if it won the upcoming election. But he was defeated by New Democracy and its bill was shelved. It renewed its promise ahead of the 2023 election, but again New Democracy won.

In a surprise move, an unlikely champion introduced a same-sex marriage bill in January 2024: Prime Minister Mitsotakis, having consolidated his hold over the political right, now sought to make inroads into socially progressive territory.

On 15 February, several prominent New Democracy parliamentarians abstained or voted against the bill but opposition parties on the left compensated. Syriza lawmakers voted overwhelmingly for.

The religious factor

But powerful forces still oppose equality. According to a 2018 survey, Greece is Europe’s fourth most religious country. Around half of adults consider themselves ‘highly religious’ and 59 per cent say they believe in God with ‘absolute certainty’. Up to 98 per cent identify as Greek Orthodox Christians. For many, belonging to the church goes beyond religion – it’s bound up in Greek identity.

The church has fiercely resisted every victory of the women’s and LGBTQI+ rights movements. It’s been particularly belligerent towards the gender identity law. Church authorities condemned it as ‘a satanic deed’ and shared the same conspiracy theories as far-right groups.

With public opinion evenly divided, the debate on same-sex marriage was deeply polarising. Parliamentary debates saw a barrage of abusive language and hate speech. Far-right politicians claimed the bill was ‘anti-Christian’ and warned it would enable paedophiles. Church representatives insisted homosexuality was a ‘mortal sin’. The church insisted the bill would destroy the family. Priests propagated disinformation and threatened excommunication.

What – and where – next

As Equaldex’s Equality Index shows, the new law is way ahead of prevailing public attitudes. Activists will need to do much more work to shift public opinion to prevent regression and keep moving forward. But they’re optimistic this latest victory will help further normalise the presence of LGBTQI+ people and bring more social acceptance of diversity.

It matters too outside Greece, which is ahead of the curve among Orthodox-majority states – and could offer an example to follow.

Belarus, Russia and Moldova are the Orthodox-majority countries with the most hostile environments for LGBTQI+ people. Belarus and Russia have closed civic space, making it next to impossible to advocate for rights, and Russia has further intensified its repression of LGBTQI+ people as a matter of national identity during its full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

But Moldova, along with several other of Greece’s Orthodox-majority neighbours – Bulgaria, Montenegro and Romania – have relatively enabling civic space and active LGBTQI+ movements seeking change.

Activists in Greece will keep pushing for social change to match legal progress. And activists in neighbouring states will keep campaigning, knowing that, sustained advocacy can pay off even in hostile contexts. They’ll keep trying to force open political windows of opportunity so decades-sought change can finally materialise.

Inés M. Pousadela is CIVICUS Senior Research Specialist, co-director and writer for CIVICUS Lens and co-author of the State of Civil Society Report.

 

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Two huge biodigesters process around 40,000 tons of organic waste produced by Grupo Campestre's poultry farms and other companies in El Salvador each year. This material is used to generate biogas to produce electricity that is injected into the national grid. CREDIT: Edgardo Ayala / IPS

By Edgardo Ayala
SAN MIGUEL, El Salvador, Mar 1 2024 (IPS)

In a win-win relationship, a segment of El Salvador’s agribusiness industry is taking steps to ease the tension of the historic socio-environmental conflict caused by poultry and pig farms, whose waste has caused concern and anger in nearby communities.

Today, some companies in the sector are converting the waste into biogas to produce electricity for their own consumption and to inject the rest into the national grid.

“People no longer say that the chicken manure is contaminating our water or land. That is very important for the community, now we don’t have to deal with that pollution anymore,” small farmer Elizabeth Méndez, who welcomes the investments made by Grupo Campestre to process the waste and generate biogas, told IPS."Things used to be different, there was a bad stench. But now we are living in a more favorable environment." -- Elizabeth Méndez

Méndez, 44, lives in the San Carlos El Amate canton, in the municipality of San Miguel in eastern El Salvador. Near her community is located one of the four poultry farms of Grupo Campestre, which owns several companies in the agribusiness sector and fried chicken restaurant chains.

“Things used to be different, there was a bad stench. But now we are living in a more favorable environment,” stressed Méndez, after a hard day working as a farm laborer, during an IPS tour of rural localities in San Miguel near poultry farms.

El Salvador, the smallest country in Central America, with 6.7 million inhabitants and a territory of 21,000 square kilometers, is the scene of disputes between poultry and pig farms and the rural families that live near them, as the industry has generally failed to manage its biowaste properly.

Elizabeth Méndez (left), who lives in the San Carlos El Amate canton, in the municipality of San Miguel in eastern El Salvador, says the biogas plant that processes waste has significantly reduced the pollution produced by a poultry farm installed in her community. CREDIT: Edgardo Ayala / IPS

 

Circular economy: biogas from manure

Grupo Campestre took a key step about four years ago when it decided to invest around seven million dollars to tackle the thorny issue of biowaste head-on, and acquired state-of-the-art technology to produce biogas, to generate electricity for consumption and injection into the national grid.

The company’s biogas plant is located in the El Brazo canton, also in San Miguel, near the area where the farms are located, which produce eight million chickens per year, whose manure is the main component to produce biogas.

All biowaste from the company’s various business activities, such as chicken manure from the farms and liquid and solid waste from the poultry processing plant, as well as biodegradable material from the fried chicken restaurants, are processed here.

“As part of the sustainability of operations, the need arises to move towards a circular economy model, to reincorporate waste into its life cycle, through reuse, recycling, or producing energy,” Jimmy Gómez, environmental compliance manager for Grupo Campestre, told IPS at the facility.

The biogas plant, in operation since 2021, processes some 40,000 tons per year of biological waste with energy potential, which is fed into two huge biodigesters where bacteria decompose the waste to generate gases such as methane, the main fuel that drives a generator with 850 kilowatts of installed power.

The biodigesters generate around 10,000 cubic meters of biogas per day, producing 17 megawatt hours a day of electricity.

A photo of one of Grupo Campestre’s four poultry farms, which raise 200,000 chickens each. It is located on the outskirts of El Brazo, in the eastern Salvadoran municipality of San Miguel. Thanks to its biogas plant, the surrounding villages no longer have to put up with the foul odors emanating from the farms. CREDIT: Edgardo Ayala / IPS

“Today chicken manure is the main waste product that is given new value at the biogas plant, generating about 80 percent of all the energy we produce and sell,” said Gómez, a chemical engineer.

Grupo Campestre has entered into an energy sales contract with Empresa de Electricidad de Oriente, one of the four electric power distribution companies in El Salvador, owned by AES El Salvador, a subsidiary of the U.S. transnational AES Corporation.

“We resolved a socio-environmental issue, which brought complaints from nearby communities about bad odors and flies, and we turned it into an opportunity, which has also helped us to provide support to the other companies in the group,” said Gómez.

When the plant began to operate, it was also necessary to address the noise pollution caused by the generator that produces the biogas. The solution was to enclose it in a metal container so that the sound now does not exceed 50 decibels and cannot be heard from 20 meters away.

Part of the energy generated, around 50 kilowatts, is used for the plant’s own consumption, production manager Rubén Membreño told IPS. In addition, hundreds of solar panels, placed on the roof of a large shed containing thousands of chickens, generate 5.5 megawatts per hour per day.

This energy efficiency provides the company with the capacity to even provide waste processing services to other companies in the agroindustrial sector that have not yet made the necessary investments to carry out the transition.

“We are taking advantage of all the waste from our own companies, and also from other companies. For them it is waste but for us it is our raw material” to generate electricity, Membreño pointed out.

The technology used in the plant was provided by European companies, mainly from Germany, Italy and the Netherlands, he said.

Jimmy Gómez (left), environmental compliance manager, and Rubén Membreño, production manager of Grupo Campestre, inspect the 850 kilowatt generator that produces electricity from biogas generated by the company’s activities. CREDIT: Edgardo Ayala / IPS

 

Relief for the climate

Methane, the main gas produced in the bacterial decomposition process in the biodigester, is one of the major pollutants and causes of the greenhouse effect. But using it in the production of electricity prevents it from being released into the atmosphere, thus alleviating the effects of climate change.

According to company estimates, methane makes up 60 percent of the plant’s biogas production process, thereby “capturing” around 24,000 tons of CO2 or carbon dioxide per year, which damages the atmosphere and impacts life on the planet through climate change that produces extreme rainfall and droughts.

If that methane were not “burned” at the plant, “it would remain on the ground, in the open and would go into the atmosphere,” said Gómez.

Another agroindustrial company that has included new technologies to process its waste and generate biogas is Avícola El Granjero, which produces eggs from farms with more than one million hens.

Its 5,000 cubic meter biodigester produces the biogas that drives two 360 kilowatt generators, and the resulting electricity is fed into the national grid.

Granja San José, in the poultry and swine industry, also has a biodigester that processes the manure from 13,000 hogs and 75,000 hens.

One of the first phases of biogas production at the Grupo Campestre plant in central El Salvador consists of depositing biological material in huge underground tanks to begin the decomposition process. CREDIT: Edgardo Ayala / IPS

Pending disputes

But despite these strides, the poultry and swine farming sector has not completely reconverted and socio-environmental conflicts are still simmering in several parts of the country.

In May 2023, IPS reported on the struggle of rural villages near the municipality of Suchitoto, in the central Salvadoran department of Cuscatlán, to defend their community water system, built in 2002, which will be affected by Avícola Salvadoreña, a company that is building an agribusiness farm nearby.

“The work has continued, trucks with construction materials are passing by all the time,” Blanca Portillo, a resident of Nueva Consolación, one of the seven rural settlements affected by the project, told IPS in a conversation on Feb. 28.

Portillo said local residents have learned that a court, which is handling the conflict, has requested that the poultry company carry out a new environmental impact study and citizen input consultation, due to apparent violations committed previously.

Many of the nearby villages are not supplied by the national grid, and have worked hard to set up their own community water projects, which are now at risk of being contaminated with waste from the farm.

“The authorities have told us that they will not give water exploitation permits to the company if there is a risk of contamination. But we don’t know if they are just saying that to keep us quiet,” said Portillo, a member of the Haciendita Rural Water and Sanitation Association, which serves some 1,000 families in seven communities, including Nueva Consolación.

An oil production field near Rumilan, in Syria´s northeast, shortly after being hit by Turkish drones. Oil is one of the main sources of income for the entire Kurdish region. Credit: Jewan Abdi/IPS

By Jewan Abdi and Arkan Sloo
QAMISHLI, Syria, Feb 29 2024 (IPS)

The Ramsys, a farming couple from northeast Syria, never thought they’d spend almost all their savings on solar panels. “We’ve paid 1,700 USD. We simply couldn’t cope with darkness and being disconnected from the outside world,” Najma Ramsy tells IPS from her residence in Keshka, a small Kurdish village 70 km east of Qamishli.

Ramsy admits she still needs to familiarise herself with the new device, mirroring the sky from the house roof. It’s also a reminder of an ongoing threat.

Those in the region already facing a severe water crisis, now also bear the brunt of increased bombardment, exacerbating their struggle to get essential water supplies

Human Rights Watch
“It’s devastating. The Turks are shelling us almost daily. I will never forget how our house trembled when the oil pump station nearby was hit,” she recalls.

Although under-reported in the international media, bombing raids have been common currency in this region over the last few years.

A report released last January by the Rojava Information Centre —an independent and volunteer-staffed organisation— points to a “periodic airstrikes campaign” conducted by Turkey against civilian infrastructures in Syria’s northeast. Moreover, hundreds of civilians have been killed.

The RIC says the bombing campaign started when Ankara launched a cross-border attack against the Syrian Kurdish region of Serekaniye in 2019, giving air support to Islamist militias on the ground.

After the Istanbul attack on 13 November 2022 which killed six and wounded dozens, Turkish airstrikes and bombing intensified in the region. Ankara blamed the Kurds for the attack. Both the Kurdish Workers Party (PKK) and the predominantly Kurdish Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) denied any involvement in it.

However, the bombing continued, and even gained momentum.

In October 2023, electricity, gas, and oil facilities were hit by airstrikes, causing extensive infrastructure and economic damage and worsening the already fragile humanitarian situation in Northeast Syria.

Najma Ramsy stands next to the newly installed solar panel on the roof of her house. The family spent a month in the dark after the power plant was attacked by a Turkish airstrike. Credit: Arkan Sloo/IPS

One month later, Turkey conducted new airstrikes following operations of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) against Turkish military bases in the mountains of the Iraqi Kurdistan Region, where several Turkish soldiers were killed.

In retaliation, medical facilities, construction material factories, industrial sites and agricultural complexes which included grain silos and mills were targeted in Syria´s northeast.

“For the last five months, we had no access to clean water, and our only source of electricity is to subscribe to community generators. We can only afford 3 hours of electricity every day,” 50-year-old Gulsin Malla told IPS from her residence on the outskirts of the city of Qamishli, 700 km northeast of Damascus.

Unlike the Ramsys, Malla hasn’t got the money needed for a solar panel. “It would be like three year’s worth of salary, you know?” she explains. Besides, gas has also become too expensive.

In mid-January, at least seven employees were seriously injured in an attack on the Suwadiyah gas extraction plant, 85 kilometres southeast of Qamishli. The infrastructure which serves almost one million people has been constantly targeted by Turkish attacks in the last twelve months.

“We have been cooking on wood. We haven’t had any gas for over a month,” explains Malla. The gas shortage, she adds, has increased its price tenfold.

“Add to the list the difficulties to get medical supplies and you´ll understand why we say it’s like a `slow death´ for us,” she says.

A day at the market in downtown Qamishli. The airstrike campaign targeting civilian infrastructures is pushing many to leave the region. Credit: Jewan Abdi/IPS

 

Jihadist threat

A Human Rights Watch report published last October confirmed that Turkish drone strikes on Kurdish-held areas of northeast Syria had damaged critical infrastructure and resulted in water and electricity disruption for millions of people.

“Those in the region already facing a severe water crisis, now also bear the brunt of increased bombardment, exacerbating their struggle to get essential water supplies. Turkey should urgently stop targeting critical infrastructure necessary for residents’ rights and well-being, including power and water stations,” HRW stressed.

IPS spoke to Kurdish Red Crescent officials who pointed to “war crimes”. They described the situation as “unbearable” and accused Turkey of “vandalising” the region. “The loss of vital infrastructures is leading to an increase in displacement from the region. Many are trying to find their way out, especially to Europe,” KRC officials disclosed.

But Ankara has a completely different approach.

In a televised address following a Cabinet meeting on January 16, Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan vowed to “widen military operations against groups linked to Kurdish militants in Iraq and Syria”. Turkish officials have repeatedly claimed the airstrike campaign is targeting Kurdish “terror groups.”

“Those claims by Ankara have no credibility,” YPG (“People’s Protection Units”) —the main Syrian-Kurdish armed contingent— media officer, Siyamend Ali, told IPS from his office in downtown Qamishli.

“Most of the casualties were plain civilians, and most of the targets were civilian infrastructures. Nearly two million have been left without electricity, not to mention water and healthcare,” added the official.

He also warned about other risks.

”By targeting our infrastructures they’re suffocating our people, but they’re also giving oxygen to IS to increase their activities again,” he stressed.

The Kurds in Syria have been the main allies of the international coalition led by the United States in the war against IS. Over 10,000 Kurdish fighters were killed.

 

Massive destruction at the Suwadiyah oil, gas and electricity plant in northeastern Syria. The only station supplying cooking gas to the entire region has been hit by Turkish airstrikes at least four times in the past two years. Credit: RIC

 

In a phone conversation with IPS, Abdulkarim Omar, the representative of the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria to Europe claimed that Ankara’s main goal is “to destabilize the Kurdish region and change its demography.”

The Brussels-based Kurdish official also highlighted that two Syrian-Kurdish districts — Afrin and Serekaniye— are still under occupation by Turkey-backed Islamist groups in 2018 and 2019 respectively.

“Ours is not only a Kurdish administration as there are also Arabs, Syriacs, Armenians and Chechens living among us. We cater for nearly five million people in northeast Syria. One million of them are Syrian war internally displaced people,” Karim recalled.

The threats are seemingly piling up for all of them.

Fahad Fatta, a 43-year-old businessman from Qamishli, thought about moving with his wife and their three kids to a small farm they own close to the Turkish border. But they don’t dare go there any more after they were shot at from Turkish territory.

“The security situation is worsening by the day. We’re always worried about our three children, especially when they are away at school or playing outside with their friends,” Fatta tells IPS from his flat in Qamishli.

That police security checkpoints have moved from their positions on the main road due to the airstrikes is far from reassuring. IS is still active, and Fatta fears the Jihadists might take advantage of the security gap.

“We have neither electricity nor gas at home” he says. “We can barely afford a few amperes of the community generator but I’m afraid these could be the least of our concerns.”

Deborah Adhiambo (43) has been battling mild asthma since 2022, a condition she describes as “both a health and economic burden.’’ The mother of three lives within Dandora Estate, nine miles east of Kenya’s capital, Nairobi. Dandora is home to Kenya’s largest open landfill, which receives more than 2,000 metric tonnes of waste daily. For […]

Children look at their destroyed homes in Rafah city, in the southern Gaza Strip. Credit: UNICEF/Eyad El Baba

By James Elder
GAZA STRIP, Feb 29 2024 (IPS)

Nothing could prepare me for my recently concluded mission into the Gaza Strip, where children face catastrophic conditions.

In my twenty years with UNICEF, traveling from one humanitarian crisis to the next – from famines to floods and war zones to refugee camps – I’ve simply never seen such devastation and despair as is happening in Gaza.

The intensity of the attacks, the massive number of child casualties, the desperation and panic of the people on the move – people who already have nothing – is palpable. It is humanitarian disaster on top of humanitarian disaster.

Near the start of the recent brief pause in fighting, we set out early in the morning at Rafah on the border with Egypt. Our convoy of trucks carrying vital humanitarian aid made its way slowly in a punishing journey north to Gaza City, which hadn’t seen aid in weeks.

The two cities are just 35 kilometres apart, but travelling through a war zone always makes distances seem more daunting. Along the way, I saw apartment building after apartment building, home after home, flattened by the bombings, a dystopian scene that stretched for miles.

In Gaza City I got out to look more closely at a building that had been reduced to rubble. Inside, I noticed bloodstains, but it’s impossible to know whether the people who were pulled out of this mass of concrete survived.

I will never forget how a man in his 60s walked out from the ruins of a recently bombed apartment building. At first, I thought he was indicating the number 10, as in 10 people had been killed. But he corrected this, using a stick to write in the dirt: 30. It wasn’t the number of people killed. It was the number of his extended family members killed in the blast.

This man had lost everyone, his whole extended family, everyone he loved. At the start of this war, UNICEF said Gaza was a “graveyard for children and a living hell for everyone else.” It has only gotten worse as the bombing and fighting have continued.

There was a hope that the devastation seen before the pause would not be repeated should the fighting resume. But after hearing hundreds and hundreds of rounds of artillery and more explosions, I could tell that it’s happening.

Within hours, the humanitarian pause felt too long ago.

I walked across the wreckage of what I was told was once a tight-knit community that is now broken glass, rubble and steel crunching under my feet. Homes sliced open, their contents exposed like doll houses, the inside of lives laid bare.

Against the grey rubble, eerie remnants of normalcy cropped up, like a sofa on a third-floor apartment with no walls, or a painting on the only wall left standing after a blast.

I looked at what was once a child’s bedroom, with pink blankets, a cupboard, shelves full of books, fluffy stuffed toys. It looked like the room of any 12-year-old girl, from any middle-class family, anywhere in the world. It was largely untouched. The little girl would have been safe if she wasn’t in another room with her family when the home was struck.

Driving through Gaza there’s never much time for reflection. The aid convoy needs to keep moving.

Along the route we saw the same theme repeated in neighborhood after neighborhood: basic needs are not being met. People need water and nourishment. Hospitals need medicine. This convoy has all those things. But despite our efforts and those of our UN colleagues, I know it’s not enough. It’s not nearly enough.

As one of my UNICEF colleagues noted just a couple of weeks into the war, the killing and maiming of children, abduction of children, attacks on hospitals and schools, and the denial of humanitarian access are a stain on our collective conscience. It was true then, it remains true now.

From Gaza City we pushed further north, to Jabaliya. The first thing I noticed were the piles of rotting garbage outside hospitals, offices and schools. Sanitation and rubbish collection services have broken down completely, of course, as trucks have no fuel to collect it and the conflict has displaced most of the workers who do these jobs anyway.

One hospital we visited, Al-Ahli Arab Hospital, was utterly chaotic. It was overcrowded, loud, intense. Our trucks were delivering medical supplies while wounded people were being rushed in bleeding.

We eventually made it back to the south of Gaza, to what we call the Joint Operation Centre. That’s where dozens of UN workers meet to discuss the next mission. The mood was sombre. We all know what Palestinian families need: they need more of everything, especially medicines, water, fuel, food.

But genuine safety for Gaza’s children depends on parties to the conflict ensuring that humanitarians have unimpeded access to civilians wherever they are… on our ability to bring water, essential food, nutrition supplements, fuel and other humanitarian supplies into the territory… and on parties implementing an immediate humanitarian ceasefire.

Unless those conditions are met, children in Gaza are now in danger from the sky, disease on the ground, and death from hunger and thirst. Nowhere is safe.

The children of Gaza have suffered enough. We need a humanitarian ceasefire, and peace, now.

James Elder is UNICEF’s spokesperson. Follow him @1james_elder

Source: UNICEF BLOG

IPS UN Bureau

 

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By External Source
Feb 28 2024 (IPS-Partners)

At the tenth session of the IPBES Plenary, held in Bonn, Germany from 28 August – 2 September 2023, the IPBES Thematic Assessment of Invasive Alien Species and their Control was accepted and its summary for policymakers was approved. The Report is the result of four years of work by 86 experts from 49 countries, and synthesizes information from over 13,000 references into a comprehensive scientific assessment and concise summary document for policy makers.

Invasive Alien Species are one of the five main direct drivers of biodiversity loss globally. In conducting this assessment, experts assessed the current status and trends of invasive alien species, their impacts, their drivers, their management, and policy options to address the challenges they pose. The assessment takes into account various knowledge and value systems including Indigenous and local knowledge.

 

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A mobile money stand in Accra, Ghana. Credit: IMF/Andrew Caballero-Reynolds

By Danny Bradlow
PRETORIA, South Africa, Feb 28 2024 (IPS)

It hasn’t been easy for African states to finance their developmental and environmental policy objectives over the past few years.
Recent events suggest that the situation may be improving. For the first time in two years, three African states have been able to access international financial markets, albeit at high interest rates. Kenya, for example, is now paying over 10% compared to about 7% in 2014.

Many African countries continue to face challenging sovereign debt situations. Total external debts as a share of Africa’s export earnings increased from 74.5% in 2010 to 140% in 2022.

In 2022, African governments had to allocate about 12% of their revenues to servicing their debt. Between 2019 and 2022, 25 African governments allocated more resources to servicing their total debts than to the health of their citizens.

And in late 2023 the International Monetary Fund estimated that over half the low income African countries were either potentially or actually experiencing difficulties paying their debts.

This suggests that it will be very difficult for Africa to raise the US$1.6 trillion that the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) estimates it needs to reach the sustainable development goals (SDGs) by 2030.

One of the lessons of the COVID pandemic and the climate negotiations is that Africa can’t count on the global community to provide it with sufficient new funds or with debt relief to deal with either its development needs or the consequences of crises such as pandemics or extreme weather events.

Its official bilateral creditors appear more focused on their own needs and on other parts of the world than on Africa. Commercial creditors are happy to provide financing when conditions are favourable and African debt can help them satisfy their investment mandates.

But they are less forthcoming when the going gets tough and the risks associated with the transaction – and for which they have been compensated – actually materialise.

This suggests that Africa needs to advocate more aggressively for its own interests. This year offers some good opportunities to promote a more effective approach to African debt.

Careful planning needed

There are two international conferences where global economic governance will be on the agenda. This is also the first year that the African Union participates as a full member in the G20. In addition, South Africa, the G20 chair in 2025, currently serves on the troika that manages the G20 process. (G20 Finance Ministers are scheduled to meet in Brazil 28-29 February).

Debt and development finance will be an important topic in all these forums. African representatives can use their participation to advocate for a new approach to sovereign debt that is more responsive to African needs and concerns. They can also lobby other participating states and non-state actors for their support.

But African states will need to plan carefully. Their starting point should be the well recognised fact that the current sovereign debt restructuring process is not working for anyone. The G20 agreed a Common Framework that was supposed to help resolve the sovereign debt crises in low income countries.

Four African countries applied to have their debts restructured through the framework. Despite years of negotiations, it has failed to fully resolve the debt crisis in three of them.

Countries outside the Common Framework, such as Sri Lanka, have not managed to fully resolve their debt crises either. This is costly for both debtors and creditors. It is therefore in everyone’s interest to look for a new approach.

This requires all parties to be willing to entertain new ideas and to experiment with new approaches to old problems. African states should offer their own innovative proposals. They should also state that they are willing to take on new responsibilities if their creditors are willing to do the same.

They can remind their creditors that these experiments would not be taking place in a vacuum. They can be guided by the many existing, but under-utilised, international norms and standards applicable to responsible sovereign debt transactions, for example the Unctad principles on responsible sovereign debt transactions. Some of these relate to the conduct of sovereign borrowers.

Others focus on responsible lending behaviour and are often cited by creditors in their own policies dealing with environmental and social issues, social responsibility or human rights.

By basing any new approach on these international norms and standards, both debtors and creditors will merely be agreeing to implement principles that they have already accepted.

Working from this starting point, African states should make three specific proposals.

Concrete proposals

First, they should commit to making both the process for incurring debts and the terms of all their public debt transactions transparent.

This will ensure that their own citizens understand what obligations their governments are assuming on their behalf. It will encourage governments to adopt responsible borrowing and debt management practices.

They should also agree that they can be held accountable for their failure to comply with these transparent and responsible sovereign debt practices and procedures.

Second, African states should point out that there is a fundamental problem with a sovereign debt restructuring process that only focuses on the contractual obligations that the debtor state owes its creditors.

This focus means, in effect, that servicing its debt obligations will trump the debtor state’s efforts to deal with the country’s vulnerability to climate change and the loss of biodiversity, and with its poverty, inequality and unemployment challenges.

This follows from the fact that their creditors can use the restructuring process to force sovereign borrowers in difficulty, unlike corporations in bankruptcy, to pay those who lend them money without regard, for example, to the impact on their obligations to pensioners, public sector employees or the welfare of their citizens.

This exclusive focus on debt contracts is inconsistent with the international community’s interest in addressing global challenges like climate and inequality.

This problem can be resolved if both creditors and debtors agree that they will adopt an approach to debt negotiations that incorporates the financial, economic, social, environmental, human rights and governance dimensions of sovereign debt crises.

Third, African states should propose that their creditors publicly commit to base the new approach to sovereign debt on an agreed list of international norms and standards relevant to responsible international financial practices.

These will include those dealing with transparency, climate and environmental issues, and social matters, including human rights.

Source: The Conversation

Danny Bradlow is Professor/Senior Research Fellow, Centre for Advancement of Scholarship, University of Pretoria.

University of Pretoria provides funding as a partner of The Conversation AFRICA.

IPS UN Bureau

 

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Yvonne Pinto, the incoming Director General of the International Rice Research Institute, at the 5th All Africa Horticulture Conference in Marrakesh, Morocco, February 26 to March 1, 2024. Credit: Supplied by Yvonne Pinto

By Neena Bhandari
SYDNEY, Feb 28 2024 (IPS)

Growing up on a small farming station in Holetta (Ethiopia), Yvonne Pinto would accompany her agriculturist father to the farm, where she would spend her time cross-fertilizing plants. Her tiny fingers making the task easier, as she would marvel at the end product of a prospective new and higher yielding variety. These formative years laid the foundation for her career in agricultural science.

Ethiopia in the late 1970s and 1980s was ravaged by a terrible famine, drought, civil war, and international conflict. It became clear to Pinto from the outset that such exigencies could rapidly deteriorate everyday life and the absence of food could decimate a population. These events instilled in her a deep appreciation for the role agriculture and food systems play in human survival.

“I haven’t forgotten where I came from,” says Pinto, the incoming Director General of the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI). A second-generation Kenyan by birth, she feels privileged to have been brought up in Ethiopia, a country that was never colonized and where she felt fortunate to grow up as an equal, a rare experience then.

The small farming station in Holetta, about an hour’s drive from the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa, is now the National Agricultural Biotechnology Research Centre. She says, “My father was its first director. From the mid-1960s, he was instrumental in the establishment of the Ethiopian Institute of Agricultural Research and the creation of the Ethiopian Seed Corporation in 1978. I’m undoubtedly a product of those institutions and influences. My father has been my champion.”

She has continued to work with people from those institutions, and while it’s important for her to add value and make a contribution where she can, Pinto affirms, “It is also very important to enhance the contribution of others because having bright and capable people contribute to ideas, approaches, and solutions is often the difference between success and failure.”

On April 22, 2024, she will take over as the Director General of IRRI, where she started her working life as a visiting research scholar in 1985, when eminent agricultural scientist and geneticist Dr M S Swaminathan was the institute’s director general.

“My time at IRRI, which is referred to as the jewel in the crown of the CGIAR system, and encouragement from my supervisors clearly influenced my decision later in life to do a PhD in rice,” adds Pinto, who will be the first woman to lead the institute, which is dedicated to abolishing poverty and hunger among people and populations that depend on rice-based agri-food systems.

She says, “There are opportunities now for girls and women that weren’t present in the past. There’s an interesting societal transition happening in the world, gaining momentum through the COVID-19 pandemic and the Black Lives Matter movement to the growing focus on equity, inclusion, and diversity. I’m actually a product of that change and thinking.”

Out of the hundreds of congratulatory messages she received on her appointment, “One-third of them were girls and women. All I can say to them is that if I can do it, you can do it,” says Pinto, who also drew inspiration from her mother, a medical surgeon.

In Africa, where rice cultivation is the principal source of income for more than 35 million smallholder rice farmers, women provide the bulk of the labour, from sowing to weeding, harvesting, processing, and marketing, according to the Africa Rice Centre.

Acknowledging the challenges faced by small and middle-income rice farmers, she emphasizes the need to ensure that farmers receive fair returns on their investment.

“Smallholder farmers are reliant upon the private sector or non-governmental organizations to receive the material, such as seeds and other agriculture inputs. In rice and rice seed systems, for example, there are a number of private sector players who are involved. We have to have very intelligent Intellectual Property (IP) arrangements with the private sector to ensure that our farmers have affordable access to these materials and they are not disadvantaged in the process,”  says Pinto, who will also serve as the CGIAR Regional Director for South-East Asia and the Pacific and Country Representative for the Philippines.

Unlike in most Asian countries, where economic growth and increasing urbanization have led to a decline in rice consumption, in African countries, consumption has significantly increased. Demand for rice is growing at more than 6 percent per year, which is faster than for any other food staple in sub-Saharan Africa, according to the Africa Rice Centre.

Looking ahead, Pinto envisions IRRI playing a pivotal role in promoting circular agricultural practices in rice production and underpinning the importance of rice in human health and nutrition.

She says, “We have tremendous opportunities to create more nutritious and resilient rice varieties capable of withstanding climate change, benefiting both farmers and consumers alike. There is an opportunity to enable IRRI’s germplasm, not only to influence and impact the Asia-Pacific region but to support other rice producing and consuming countries, notably in Africa”.

Rice is now the second-most important source of calories after corn in many sub-Saharan African countries. The region’s total rice consumption is projected to grow to around 36 million tons by the end of 2026, and the region is expected to import over 32 percent of globally traded rice by 2026, mainly from India, Pakistan, Thailand, and Vietnam, according to a United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) report.

Reflecting on her extensive experience chairing boards and committees worldwide, she says effective leadership hinges on “fostering connections, building trust, and nurturing partnerships and collaboration, as leadership is a collective responsibility within an interconnected ecosystem.”

Pinto is poised to drive impactful change in agricultural research, advancing food security and sustainability.

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

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