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Tag: Economy & Trade

  • Huge Increase in Transnational Crime in Asia ‘Golden Triangle

    Huge Increase in Transnational Crime in Asia ‘Golden Triangle

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    In the United States and Canada, overdose deaths, predominantly driven by an epidemic of the non-medical use of fentanyl, continue to break records. Credit: Shutterstock.
    • by Baher Kamal (madrid)
    • Inter Press Service

    MADRID, Jun 27 (IPS) – How come that in a world where technology is -or is about to be- able to detect an ant in a jungle, the traffickers of death continue to carry out their lucrative criminal activities everywhere and in all fields, from weapons to prostitution, enslavement and drugs, to deadly fake medicines, through oil, gas and poisoned food.

    In the specific case of Asia, a specialised organisation reports the Asian ‘Golden Triangle’ is where historically opium was grown to produce heroin for export, but where, in recent years, the trade of “even deadlier and more profitable synthetic drugs have taken over.”

    In its June 2023 report, the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) informs that East and Southeast Asian synthetic drug supply remains at ‘extreme levels’ and diversifies.

    The report, “Synthetic Drugs in East and Southeast Asia: latest developments and challenges 2023”, confirms an expansion and diversification of synthetic drug production and trafficking in the region, while trafficking routes have shifted significantly.

    “Thailand, Laos and Myanmar are at the frontlines of illicit trade in Asia dominated by transnational organised crime syndicates.”

    Methamphetamine, ketamine…

    ‘High volumes’ of methamphetamine continue to be produced and trafficked in and from the region while the production of ketamine and other synthetic drugs has expanded.

    “Transnational organised crime groups anticipate, adapt and try to circumvent what governments do, and in 2022 we saw them work around Thai borders in the Golden Triangle more than in the past,” said Jeremy Douglas, UNODC Regional Representative for Southeast Asia and the Pacific.

    ‘Unwanted’ to be seen

    “Traffickers have continued to ship large volumes through Laos and northern Thailand, but at the same time they have pushed significant supply through central Myanmar to the Andaman Sea where it seems few were looking.”

    Douglas added that criminal groups from across the region also started moving and reconnecting after lengthy pandemic border closures, with late 2022 and early 2023 patterns starting to look similar to 2019.

    Hidden in “legal products”

    Moreover, synthetic drugs containing a mixture of substances and sometimes “packaged alongside legal products” continue to be found throughout East and Southeast Asia, with serious health consequences for those who knowingly, or unknowingly, consume the products.

    Moreover, the world drug problem is a complex issue that affects millions of people worldwide.

    Many people who use drugs face stigma and discrimination, which can further harm their physical and mental health and prevent them from accessing the help they need, the UN warns on the occasion of the 2023 International Day Against Drug Abuse and Illicit Trafficking (26 June).

    “Unprecedented” increase

    The increase in the production of synthetic drugs in recent years has been “unprecedented” according to the UNODC Regional Representative.

    It is not just drugs which are being trafficked across the region: chemical precursors to manufacture synthetic drugs are being illegally transported into Myanmar in quantities far larger than the drugs that are trafficked out, UNODC further explains.

    Trafficking also in people, wildlife, timber…

    In fact, a myriad of cross-borders issues, including drug and precursor chemical trafficking, migrant smuggling, human trafficking, wildlife and forestry crime, and, in some locations, the movement of terrorist fighters alongside public health and pandemic-related matters.

    The impact of legalising the use of cocaine

    Cannabis legalisation in parts of the world appears to have accelerated daily use and related health impacts, according to the World Drug Report 2022, which also details record rises in the manufacturing of cocaine, the expansion of synthetic drugs to new markets, and continued gaps in the availability of drug treatments, especially for women.

    According to the report, around 284 million people aged 15-64 used drugs worldwide in 2020, a 26% increase over the previous decade.

    “In Africa and Latin America, people under 35 represent the majority of people being treated for drug use disorders.”

    Globally, the report estimates that 11.2 million people worldwide were injecting drugs. Around half of this number were living with hepatitis C, 1.4 million were living with HIV, and 1.2 million were living with both.

    Reacting to these findings, UNODC Executive Director, Ghada Waly stated: “Numbers for the manufacturing and seizures of many illicit drugs are hitting record highs, even as global emergencies are deepening vulnerabilities.”

    At the same time, mis-perceptions regarding the magnitude of the problem and the associated harms are depriving people of care and treatment and driving young people towards harmful behaviour, said Waly.

    Key trends by region

    In many countries in Africa and South and Central America, the largest proportion of people in treatment for drug use disorders are there primarily for cannabis use disorders. In Eastern and South-Eastern Europe and in Central Asia, people are most often in treatment for opioid use disorders.

    In the United States and Canada, overdose deaths, predominantly driven by an epidemic of the non-medical use of fentanyl, continue to break records. Preliminary estimates in the United States point to more than 107,000 drug overdose deaths in 2021, up from nearly 92,000 in 2020.

    Conflict zones magnets for synthetic drug production

    This year’s report also highlights that illicit drug economies can flourish in situations of conflict and where the rule of law is weak, and in turn can prolong or fuel conflict.

    Information from the Middle East and South-East Asia suggest that conflict situations can act as a magnet for the manufacture of synthetic drugs, which can be produced anywhere. This effect may be greater when the conflict area is close to large consumer markets.

    Historically, parties to conflict have used drugs to finance conflict and generate income. The 2022 World Drug Report also reveals that conflicts may also disrupt and shift drug trafficking routes, as has happened in the Balkans and more recently in Ukraine.

    A possible growing capacity to manufacture amphetamine in Ukraine

    According to the UNODC report, “there was a significant increase in the number of reported clandestine laboratories in Ukraine, skyrocketing from 17 dismantled laboratories in 2019 to 79 in 2020. 67 out of these laboratories were producing amphetamines, up from five in 2019 – the highest number of dismantled laboratories reported in any given country in 2020.”

    Gender treatment gap

    Women remain in the minority of drug users globally yet tend to increase their rate of drug consumption and progress to drug use disorders more rapidly than men do. Women now represent an estimated 45-49% of users of amphetamines and non-medical users of pharmaceutical stimulants, pharmaceutical opioids, sedatives, and tranquillisers.

    The treatment gap remains large for women globally. Although women represent almost one in two amphetamine users, they constitute only one in five people in treatment for amphetamine use disorders.

    The World Drug Report also spotlights the wide range of roles fulfilled by women in the global cocaine economy, including cultivating coca, transporting small quantities of drugs, selling to consumers, and smuggling into prisons.

    © Inter Press Service (2023) — All Rights ReservedOriginal source: Inter Press Service

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  • Biodigesters Boost Family Farming in Brazil

    Biodigesters Boost Family Farming in Brazil

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    Lucineide Cordeiro loads manure from her two oxen and two calves into the “sertanejo” biodigester that produces biogas for cooking and biofertilizer for her varied crops on the one-hectare agroecological farm she manages on her own in the rural municipality of Afogados da Ingazeira, in the semiarid ecoregion of northeastern Brazil. CREDIT: Mario Osava / IPS
    • by Mario Osava (afogados da ingazeira, brazil)
    • Inter Press Service

    AFOGADOS DA INGAZEIRA, Brazil, Jun 24 (IPS) – “The biodigester really gives a huge boost to those who have the courage to do things,” said Maria das Dores Alves da Silva, based on her own experience as a 63-year-old small farmer.

    She did not hesitate to accept the offer of Diaconia, a social organization of Protestant churches in Brazil, to acquire the equipment to produce biogas on her farm in the rural area of Afogados da Ingazeira, a municipality of 38,000 people in the state of Pernambuco in the Northeast region of Brazil.

    At first she did not have the cattle whose manure she needed to produce biogas, that enables her to save on liquefied petroleum gas, which costs 95 reais (20 dollars) for a 13-kg cylinder – a significant cost for poor families.

    She brought manure from a neighboring farm that gave it to her for free, in an hour-long trip with her wheelbarrow, until she was able to buy her first cow and then another with loans from the state-owned Banco del Nordeste.

    “Now I have more than enough manure,” she said happily as she welcomed IPS to her four-hectare farm where she and her husband have lived alone since their two children became independent.

    Das Dores, as she is known, is an example among the 163 families who have benefited from the “sertanejos biodigesters” distributed by Diaconia in the sertão of Pajeú, a semiarid micro-region of 17 municipalities and 13,350 square kilometers in the center-north of Pernambuco.

    Farmer Maria das Dores Alves da Silva stands between the manure pit and the "sertanejo" biodigester designed by Diaconia, a social organization of Protestant churches in Brazil, which has already installed 713 biogas production plants in eight of Brazil's 26 states. CREDIT: Mario Osava / IPS
    Farmer Maria das Dores Alves da Silva stands between the manure pit and the “sertanejo” biodigester designed by Diaconia, a social organization of Protestant churches in Brazil, which has already installed 713 biogas production plants in eight of Brazil’s 26 states. CREDIT: Mario Osava / IPS

    Biofertilizer

    In addition to using the biogas, she sells the manure after it has been subjected to anaerobic biodigestion that extracts the gases – the so-called digestate, a biofertilizer that she packages in one-kilo plastic bags, after drying and shredding it.

    Every Saturday, she sells 30 bags at the agroecological market in the town of Afogados da Ingazeira, the municipal seat. At two reais (40 cents) a bag, she earns an extra income of 60 reais (12.50 dollars), on top of her sales of the various sweet cakes she bakes at home, at a cost reduced by the biogas, and of the seedlings she also produces.

    The seedlings provided her with a new business opportunity. “The customers asked me if I didn’t also have fertilizer,” she said. The biodigester produces enough fertilizer to sell at the market and to fertilize the farm’s crops of beans, corn, fruit trees, flowers and different vegetables.

    This diversity is common in family farming in Brazil’s semiarid Northeast, but even more so in the agroecological techniques that have expanded in this territory of one million square kilometers in the northeastern interior of the country, which has an arid biome highly vulnerable to climate change, subject to frequent droughts, and where there are areas in the process of desertification.

    The Pajeú river basin is the micro-region chosen by Diaconia as a priority for its social and environmental actions.

    On Lucineide Cordeiro's small farm, cotton, corn, sesame, sunflower, cassava and fruit trees are alternated in the fields, as recommended by agroecology, which is on the rise on family farms in Brazil's semiarid Northeast, which is threatened by longer and more severe droughts due to the climate crisis. CREDIT: Mario Osava / IPS
    On Lucineide Cordeiro’s small farm, cotton, corn, sesame, sunflower, cassava and fruit trees are alternated in the fields, as recommended by agroecology, which is on the rise on family farms in Brazil’s semiarid Northeast, which is threatened by longer and more severe droughts due to the climate crisis. CREDIT: Mario Osava / IPS

    Energy and food security

    “We seek to promote energy, food and water autonomy to maintain more resilient agroecosystems, to coexist with climate change, strengthening community self-management with a special focus on the lives of women,” Ita Porto, Diaconia’s coordinator in the Pajeu ecoregion, told IPS.

    “The production of biogas on a rural family scale fulfills the needs of energy for cooking, sanitary disposal and treatment of animal waste and reduction of deforestation, in addition to increasing food productivity, with organic fertilizer, while bolstering human health,” said the 48-year-old agronomist.

    More than 713 units of the “sertanejo biodigester”, a model developed by Diaconia 15 years ago, have been installed in Brazil. In addition to the 163 in the sertão do Pajeú, there are 150 in the neighboring state of Rio Grande do Norte and another 400 distributed in six other Brazilian states, financed by the Caixa Econômica Federal, a government bank focused on social questions.

    “Hopefully the government will make it a public policy, as it has already done with the rainwater harvesting tanks in the semarid Northeast,” said Porto.

    More than 1.3 million rainwater harvesting tanks for drinking water have already been built, but some 350,000 are still needed to make them universal in rural areas, according to the Articulation of the Semi-Arid (Asa), a network of 3,000 social organizations that spearheaded the transformative program.

    Maria Das Dores examines the biofertilizer that comes out of the biodigester, without the gases from the animal manure. She sells this by-product at the agroecological market in the town of Afogados da Ingazeira, the seat of the municipality where her four-hectare farm is located, which earns her an average extra income of 12.5 dollars a week. CREDIT: Mario Osava / IPS

    The value of manure

    “One cow is enough to produce the biogas consumed in our stove,” said Lucineide Cordeiro, on her one-hectare farm where she grows cotton, corn, sesame seeds and fruit, in an interconnected agroecological system, along with chickens, pigs and fish in a pond.

    She also has two oxen and two calves, which she proudly showed to IPS during the visit to her farm.

    “Pig manure produces biogas more quickly, but I don’t like the stench,” the 37-year-old farmer who is the director of Women’s Policies at the Afogados da Ingazeira Rural Workers Union told IPS.

    The difference in the crops before and after fertilization by the biodigester by-product is remarkable, according to her and other farmers in the municipality.

    She tends to her many crops on her own, although she is sometimes helped by friends, and has several pieces of equipment such as a brushcutter and a micro-tractor.

    "It's the best invention," says Lucineide Cordeiro, as she shows IPS the seeder created by the Japanese for small-scale farming, which allows her to sow in half a day the land that used to take her two days to plant, on her one-hectare farm in Afogados da Ingazeira, in Brazil's semiarid Northeast. CREDIT: Mario Osava / IPS
    “It’s the best invention,” says Lucineide Cordeiro, as she shows IPS the seeder created by the Japanese for small-scale farming, which allows her to sow in half a day the land that used to take her two days to plant, on her one-hectare farm in Afogados da Ingazeira, in Brazil’s semiarid Northeast. CREDIT: Mario Osava / IPS

    “But the seeder is the best invention that changed my life, it was invented by the Japanese. Planting the seeds, which used to take me two days of work, I can now do in half a day,” Cordeiro said.

    The seeder is a small machine pushed by the farmer, with a wheel filled with seeds that has 12 nozzles that can be opened or closed, according to the distance needed to sow each seed.

    The emergence of appropriate equipment for family farming is recent, in a sector that has favored large farmers in Brazil.

    Female protagonism clashes with male chauvinist violence

    For the success of local family farming, the support of the Pajeú Agroecological Association (Asap), of which Cordeiro is a member and a “multiplier”, as the women farmers who are an example to others of good practices are called, is important.

    In family farming the empowerment of women stands out, which in many cases was a response to sexist violence or oppression.

    Blue flames emerge from the burners of Maria Das Dores' biogas stove at her home in Afogados da Ingazeira, in Brazil's semiarid Northeast region. A single ox or cow produces enough manure to generate more biogas than a family requires for its domestic needs. CREDIT: Mario Osava / IPS
    Blue flames emerge from the burners of Maria Das Dores’ biogas stove at her home in Afogados da Ingazeira, in Brazil’s semiarid Northeast region. A single ox or cow produces enough manure to generate more biogas than a family requires for its domestic needs. CREDIT: Mario Osava / IPS

    “The first violence I suffered was from my father who did not let me study. I only studied up to fourth grade of primary school, in the rural school. To continue, I would have had to go to the city, which my father did not allow. I got married to escape my father’s oppression,” said Cordeiro, who also separated from her first husband because he was violent.

    After living in a big city with the father of her two daughters, she separated and returned to the countryside in 2019. “I was reborn” by becoming a farmer, she said, faced with the challenge of taking on that activity against the idea, even from her family, that a woman on her own could not possibly manage the demands of agricultural production.

    Organic cotton, promoted and acquired in the region by Vert, a French-Brazilian company that produces footwear and clothing with organic inputs, has once again expanded in the Brazilian Northeast, after the crop was almost extinct due to the boll weevil plague in the 1990s.

    In the case of Das Dores, a small, energetic, active woman, she has a good relationship with her husband, but she runs her own business initiatives. Thanks to what she earns she was able to buy a small pickup truck, but it is driven by her husband, who has a job but helps her on the farm in his free time.

    “He drives because he refuses to teach me how, so I can’t go out alone with the vehicle and drive around everywhere,” she joked.

    © Inter Press Service (2023) — All Rights ReservedOriginal source: Inter Press Service

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  • Forus Civil Society Network Urges that Respect for Human Rights, Climate Justice and Accountability should be at the core of the New Global Financing Pact

    Forus Civil Society Network Urges that Respect for Human Rights, Climate Justice and Accountability should be at the core of the New Global Financing Pact

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    • Opinion by Marianne Buenaventura (paris)
    • Inter Press Service

    PARIS, Jun 23 (IPS) – As the Summit for a New Global Financing Pact unfolds in Paris on 22-23 June, Forus, a global network representing over 22,000 civil society organisations across Africa, Latin America, Asia, Europe and the Pacific, calls for the respect of human rights and for meaningful inclusion of civil society in shaping financial systems and structures.

    The summit, co-hosted by India, could help find common ground on finance that drives progress at key events later in 2023 and in 2024 – the G20 summit in New Delhi, the COP28 climate talks in Dubai, and the Finance in Common summit with public development banks in Cartagena.

    As part of the summit, Sarah Strack, Forus Director, is amplifying civil society’s voices at the high-level Finance in Common event in the presence of French President Emmanuel Macron and other leaders, to discuss and leverage the role of Public Development Banks in financing the SDGs, scaling up sustainable finance, and supporting inclusion. Forus has been engaging in the Finance in Common initiative since its inception in 2020 with the aim to ensure that a people-based approach to development is pursued.

    “If we want to have a chance to tackle the most pressing challenges and the multiple crises of our time in a way that really puts first the interests and needs of people, then a shift of mindset and a new financial framework are absolutely necessary. It is essential that civil society plays a central role in shaping this new paradigm at every stage. Let us not forget the wealth of knowledge and leadership present at the local level. By actively engaging and collaborating with communities, we can genuinely measure our progress and honor the commitments we have made to those most in need,” says Sarah Strack.

    Harsh Jaitli, CEO of the Voluntary Action Network India (VANI), is representing Forus as an official respondent in the Summit Roundtable “Power Our Planet: Act today. Save tomorrow”, co-hosted by Global Citizen and CISCO. The event seeks to rally for immediate action on economic, social, and climate justice, engaging both public and private sectors to catalyze renewable energy investment in climate-vulnerable countries to reduce energy poverty and accelerate the low-carbon transition.

    Harsh Jaitli of VANI states that the New Global Financial Pact will require improved partnerships and the building of trust.

    “Double standards have negatively impacted our collective capacity to deliver on effective development and climate related programmes. In some countries, multinational corporations respect human rights, fiscal and climate regulations, but in other countries decisions are made to violate them. Not only does this send the wrong message that some countries and populations are more important than others, but also jeopardizes our collective efforts to affect change. Multinational corporations should commit to respecting human rights, fiscal and climate regulations in all countries and in a consistent manner. When no strong regulations exist, this is the opportunity for multinationals to be proactive and to apply strong rules, which are coherent with their policies,”says Harsh Jaitli.

    Julien Comlan Agbessi, Coordinator of the Regional Coalition of West Africa (REPAOC) emphasizes the importance of multi-stakeholder cooperation. Agbessi explains that cooperation between the private sector and the civil society organisations is possible, since the private sector could leverage hugely on the experience and outreach of civil society. “Many poverty alleviation programs and projects with significant funding implemented over the past decades have failed to deliver for communities. Transformative investments in low-income countries and climate impacted countries require putting the needs of people first,” says Julien Comlan Agbessi.

    Lina Paola Lara Negrette, Coordinator of the Confederación Colombiana de ONG (Ccong), states that the New Global Financial Pact must incorporate stronger and more meaningful engagement with civil society.

    “Civil society has an important role to play in ensuring the accountability and transparency of both government and private sector actors. Civil society can work closely with governments and the private sector to ensure the delivery of social and environmental needs in all investments, which includes respect of human rights”.

    Olivier Bruyeron, President of the French platform of CSOs Coordination SUD, equally emphasizes the importance of partnerships with the public and private sector, “CSOs hold valuable knowledge and expertise on international solidarity needed to construct sustainable global solutions and to link them with local development” adds Olivier Bruyeron.

    Marianne Buenaventura is project coordinator at Forus.

    IPS UN Bureau


    Follow IPS News UN Bureau on Instagram

    © Inter Press Service (2023) — All Rights ReservedOriginal source: Inter Press Service

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  • Mexico Needs to Step Up Treatment and Reuse of Water to Address Crisis

    Mexico Needs to Step Up Treatment and Reuse of Water to Address Crisis

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    The expansion towards the mountains of the coastal city of Ensenada, in the northwestern Mexican state of Baja California, stresses the water supply, which is scarce in this peninsular region due to its arid nature and deficiencies in water management. CREDIT: Emilio Godoy/IPS
    • by Emilio Godoy (ensenada, mexico)
    • Inter Press Service

    ENSENADA, Mexico, Jun 21 (IPS) – At the entrance to the coastal city of Ensenada in the northwestern Mexican state of Baja California a sign reads: “Every drop matters to us. Take care of the water.”

    The message is important, as the city faces shortages due to hoarding by agricultural producers and builders, as well as the drought that has become more severe because of the effects of the climate emergency.

    But cities such as Ensenada, which has a population of 443,000 and is located 2,883 kilometers from Mexico City, do not take sufficient advantage of the reuse of water, a technique that along with other measures can contribute to the fight against the water shortage at a time when Mexico is suffering from intense drought and an unusual heat wave.

    Independent expert Adrián González said a conventional focus on obtaining water that ignores improvements in its use continues to prevail.

    “There is enough water, but there is hoarding. We consume a lot. It is a question of management. Consumption can be moderated, there are experiences around the world in this regard,” he told IPS.

    Demand exceeds supply, and supply cuts and overexploited sources dry up the water supply. The delivery and sale of water in “pipas” or tanker trucks is a common sight in Ensenada, located in an arid region between the Pacific Ocean and the mountains.

    Due to the overexploitation of the aquifers and the growing demand, Ensenada is suffering from a deficit, so long-term solutions are urgently needed.

    Consumption stands at about 1,000 liters per second (l/s), which should increase to about 1,260 in 2030, while supply totals about 800 l/s, according to the State Water Commission, the government agency responsible for water resource management in Baja California, on the peninsula of the same name, bordering the United States.

    While installed capacity and treatment are on the rise, a widespread problem lies in the historical lack of efficiency and maintenance of facilities, which limits the scope of the available technologies.

    In 2021, coverage reached 67.5 percent of the wastewater generated and collected in the municipal sewage systems of this Latin American country, just a few tenths more than the previous year, according to data from the National Water Commission (Conagua).

    Treated water can be used for agricultural irrigation, gardening, domestic and industrial uses, and can help recharge aquifers.

    Local water agencies can undertake aquifer recharge projects, but incentives for doing so are needed. In fact, the legal framework does not stipulate recovery rights for reused water, which falls under the general jurisdiction of Conagua.

    The El Naranjo municipal treatment plant in the city of Ensenada, in the northwestern peninsular state of Baja California, is operating below its installed capacity, which is further affecting the distribution of scarce water in the city. CREDIT: Conagua
    The El Naranjo municipal treatment plant in the city of Ensenada, in the northwestern peninsular state of Baja California, is operating below its installed capacity, which is further affecting the distribution of scarce water in the city. CREDIT: Conagua

    Mexico, with a population of 128 million inhabitants spread over an area of 1.96 million square kilometers, is facing increasing water stress, ranking 24th among the countries in the world with this phenomenon, caused by overexploitation, pollution, scarcity and inequity in access to water.

    In 2021, 2,872 water reuse plants were operating in Mexico – three percent more than the previous year-, with an installed capacity of 198,603 l/s and a treated flow of 145,341 l/s, just 0.5 percent above the 2020 level.

    The northern state of Sinaloa has the largest number of plants (311), followed by Durango also in the north (241) and neighboring Chihuahua (195). Despite their water needs, those with the smallest number of plants are the southeastern state of Campeche and the northern state of Coahuila (27 each), which furthermore operate below capacity.

    There are 44 plants operating in Baja California, with an installed capacity of 7692 l/s and a performance of 6222. At the same time, 14 of the 48 groundwater reservoirs in the state, including the Ensenada reservoir, suffer shortages because annual extraction exceeds renewal.

    Regional and federal authorities have resorted to seawater desalination in the state, but it only refines about 130 l/s, out of a capacity of 250.

    Martín Zepeda, founder of the non-governmental Citizens’ Water Commission, criticized the measures applied so far in the reuse of water.

    “We have only achieved palliative measures. We have been suffering from the same problems for 30 years,” he stressed.

    The coastal city of Ensenada in the northwestern Mexican state of Baja California depends on aquifer extraction, seawater desalination and the transfer of water from the state of Tijuana, also on the U.S. border, as not enough water is reused. CREDIT: Emilio Godoy/IPS
    The coastal city of Ensenada in the northwestern Mexican state of Baja California depends on aquifer extraction, seawater desalination and the transfer of water from the state of Tijuana, also on the U.S. border, as not enough water is reused. CREDIT: Emilio Godoy/IPS

    Baby steps

    In another northern state, in the east, Nuevo León, reuse is showing signs of success, but more progress is needed.

    Antonio Hernández, a researcher with the non-governmental organization Pronatura Noreste, stressed to IPS the need for treated water infrastructure.

    “We don’t have a sufficient network to distribute the treated water available. In 2022, when the water shortage crisis began, the agency responsible instructed the municipalities to buy treated water and thus take pressure off the groundwater,” he told IPS from Monterrey, Nuevo León’s capital.

    “The transfer was to be by truck. But it did not happen, because the municipalities did not buy the water nor did the government build the distribution network. Availability does not mean accessibility,” he said.

    In 2022, Nuevo León, especially greater Monterrey with a population of more than five million people, faced a severe water crisis.

    As a result, the authorities resorted to supply cuts, rate hikes, anti-waste fines and awareness campaigns on water usage.

    In that state, 13 of the 24 aquifers are overexploited, including the one outside of Monterrey proper.

    The population of Monterrey drinks about 16,000 l/s, which results in a deficit of about 3,000 l/s. That means the 56 treatment plants are insufficient, managing 12,387 l/s, compared to an installed capacity of 16,162 l/s.

    Mexico does not take sufficient advantage of wastewater reuse, which can be used to recharge aquifers, for consumption in industrial facilities, for agricultural irrigation or for urban use. Pictured is a fountain in a park in a neighborhood in south-central Mexico City. CREDIT: Emilio Godoy/IPS
    Mexico does not take sufficient advantage of wastewater reuse, which can be used to recharge aquifers, for consumption in industrial facilities, for agricultural irrigation or for urban use. Pictured is a fountain in a park in a neighborhood in south-central Mexico City. CREDIT: Emilio Godoy/IPS

    Half-hearted measures

    Despite the problems faced by the plants, the Federal Attorney General’s Office for Environmental Protection (Profepa) only inspected four municipal facilities, most of them private, in 2016 in Baja California, where it found “minor irregularities” and charged fines in three, according to a public information request filed by IPS.

    In Mexico City, only two were inspected – in 2018 and in 2022 – and minor irregularities were found in one private municipal plant, although it was not fined. In 2018, Profepa visited four plants in Nuevo León in which it found minor irregularities.

    In total, Profepa inspected a total of 330 plants, including 50 in the western state of Jalisco and 33 in the northern state of Chihuahua. Of that total, it found minor irregularities in 234, and none in 69.

    Focus on pipes and little else

    The generalized view is the conventional one of promoting the construction of infrastructure to face the crisis, without addressing the scarcity of water resources.

    The current Mexican government boasts that it is promoting 15 water projects, such as the construction of dams, aqueducts and treatment plants, mainly in the north of the country to combat the crisis.

    In places like Ensenada, the outlook is no different.

    Over the next few years, the State Water Commission foresees the expansion of the desalination plant, the modernization of an aqueduct, the rehabilitation of five treatment plants, the delivery of treated water to the agricultural zone, and the rehabilitation of pumping plants and wells.

    Despite the situation, the Baja California state government is just now drafting its water plan for the 2022-2027 period.

    In Nuevo León, authorities announced the digging of more wells, the construction of the Libertad dam, the El Cuchillo II Aqueduct and four treatment plants, as well as the modulation of pressure to reduce waste.

    The Libertad dam will have a capacity of 1,500 l/s, at a cost of some 350 million dollars. Meanwhile, the aqueduct will transport 5,000 l/s, thanks to an investment of some 495 million dollars.

    Mexico has also benefited from international financing for water projects. Since 1997, the North American Development Bank has financed 27 water and sanitation projects in Baja

    The Norte treatment plant in the Mexican state of Nuevo León seeks to promote water reuse for automobile assembly, urban and agricultural activities in an area that experienced a severe water crisis in 2022. CREDIT: Conagua
    The Norte treatment plant in the Mexican state of Nuevo León seeks to promote water reuse for automobile assembly, urban and agricultural activities in an area that experienced a severe water crisis in 2022. CREDIT: Conagua

    , in addition to three in Nuevo León since 2001.

    Its financing of a 6.8 million dollar wastewater management initiative in the city of Mexicali is currently under public consultation.

    In addition, the U.S.-Mexico binational financial institution is backing the issue of a 150 million dollar green bond for water projects.

    The experts consulted proposed several measures, such as awareness campaigns, water reuse, and leak repair.

    González, the independent expert, said the combination of reuse and efficiency offers very low costs and promising results.

    “There is not going to be just one single solution. Fate is going to catch up with us. We can’t continue following strategies that have never worked and that have been exhausted,” he argued.

    Zepeda, the water activist, also suggested the creation of a citizen water commission to audit the operation of the system.

    “The situation is not going to improve until availability and uses are corrected. It is a combination of water sources and activities. We need long-term solutions,” he said.

    Meanwhile, Hernández the researcher proposed a revision of zoning and land use plans to address the construction of neighborhoods, golf courses and vehicle assembly plants, to promote the efficient use of water.

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  • Innovative Approach to Sustainable Development Policy and Investment for Public, Private Sectors

    Innovative Approach to Sustainable Development Policy and Investment for Public, Private Sectors

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    With one-fifth of farming households dependent on palm oil production, policy considerations that look after the environment, lives, and livelihoods were essential.
    • by Joyce Chimbi (nairobi)
    • Inter Press Service

    NAIROBI, Jun 20 (IPS) – Oil palm has brought significant benefits and prosperity to Liberia. The export of crude palm oil is a major source of foreign exchange earnings for the government. The palm oil crop covers more than 1 million hectares, hundreds of thousands are employed in the palm oil sector, and at least 21 percent of the farming households produce palm oil.

    Opportunities for the country’s palm oil and other palm products in the international markets are considerable—creating a temptation to prioritize development over environmental concerns.

    In 2020, policymakers in the Inter-Ministerial Commission on Palm Oil Concessions in Liberia faced a significant challenge: developing a policy path that pursued quick short-term profits and faced long-term negative consequences to the environment, lives, and livelihoods—or a beneficial approach for people and planet.

    Forests Belong to Humanity

    “When decisions are too short-term, narrow, and short-sighted, we do not take into account the long-term impact of our action. We need to recognize that some goods are common goods or public goods, such as forests. They do not belong to one person or one company; they belong to humanity as a whole,” says Francisco Alpizar, Wageningen University and Research.

    This was the case for Liberia’s palm oil sector, whose key stakeholders include government, the private sector, NGOs, business associations, smallholder associations, and households that directly or indirectly rely on it as their lifeline.

    “From an economic perspective, the prices of goods and commodities should reflect the true cost to societies, not just the immediate cost of producing them but also the environmental impact the production of those goods and services carries for societies,” Alpizar says.

    The Liberian National Oil Palm Strategy and Action Plan (NOPSAP) was facilitated by the Global Environment Facility-funded Good Growth Partnership. Here policymakers in Liberia decided to use the Targeted Analysis Scenario (TSA) to design a mutually beneficial policy path for communities, sectoral government agencies, and palm oil concessionaires.
    The Liberian National Oil Palm Strategy and Action Plan (NOPSAP) was facilitated by the Global Environment Facility-funded Good Growth Partnership. Here policymakers in Liberia decided to use the Targeted Analysis Scenario (TSA) to design a mutually beneficial policy path for communities, sectoral government agencies, and palm oil concessionaires.

    Targeted Analysis Scenario Benefits All

    As they developed the National Oil Palm Strategy and Action Plan (NOPSAP) facilitated by the Global Environment Facility-funded Good Growth Partnership, policymakers in Liberia decided to use the Targeted Analysis Scenario (TSA) to design a mutually beneficial policy path for communities, sectoral government agencies, and palm oil concessionaires.

    UNDP developed the TSA to respond to the growing demand from decision-makers and stakeholders for more policy-relevant sustainable development analysis to support national SDG implementation facing diverse policy, management, and investment choices.

    As an innovative analytical approach, the TSA captures and presents the value of ecosystem services within decision-making to help make the business case for sustainable policy and investment choices. By doing so, the TSA allows policymakers to calculate these costs and make decisions that harmonize with the environment.

    In Liberia, policymakers needed economic data that compared the outcomes of continuing with conventional palm production with the results of taking a different route to make sound, informed decisions leading to sustainable palm concessions.

    At the time, the situation in the West African country was characterized by contradictory forest management and concessions policies. The Commission had to balance the eagerness of communities and smallholder producers to engage in palm oil concessions because they brought employment and socioeconomic benefits and concerns in the global market about the environmental risks of palm oil production.

    UNDP’s TSA provided an answer, enabling the Commission in Liberia to include all the relevant social, environmental, and economic impacts. TSA offered a systematic approach covering all aspects of the sector.

    The TSA improves the decision-making process by capturing and presenting the value of ecosystem services and sectoral production to make policy decision-making more holistic. The tool applies to any sector, scenario, context, or country.

    “TSA can, for instance, be applied for decision-making at the national level, when taking a national perspective, regional, company or even household level. For each and every one of those decisions, we need a careful analysis of what the current situation looks like and how it will look in the future and, what would be the alternative situation,” Alpizar explains.

    Business-as-Usual Versus Sustainable Ecosystem Management

    One is considered a business-as-usual scenario, and the other a sustainable ecosystem management scenario.

    “When you compare one against the other, with a long-term perspective and focusing on the relevant indicators for the decision makers or the things that the decision maker cares for, then you can provide a better picture of the decision that is in front of us, and that is what targeted scenario analysis is.”

    He says targeted scenario construction of business-as-usual versus sustainable ecosystem management outcomes is presented to the decision maker. When this is done, in principle, the decision maker will have a powerful decision-making tool to make informed decisions based on evidence.

    “If we put ourselves in the feet of a decision maker, that is, for example, deciding whether to implement a series of policies to make the agricultural sector more sustainable, the business-as-usual scenario means you continue with the current practices. A sustainable ecosystem management scenario would be one in which you change a series of practices or actions, and with that, in principle, you achieve a different outcome,” Alpizar explains.

    He gives an example of producing pineapples under a business-as-usual scenario with an impact on surrounding lands, agrochemicals, deforestation, land use change, competing diseases, or diseases that spread to the surrounding area, which might be viable but over a short period of time. The alternative scenario is to create and implement a more long-term, sustainable approach.

    “Through UNDP’s application of TSA methodology, you can carefully construct the two scenarios by first asking this question: As the decision maker, what do you really care about? Is it employment, taxes, production, or reducing social unrest? Based on the answer, the analyst can construct a targeted scenario,” Alpizar says.

    Returning to Liberia, the TSA was able to show that Smallholder Production (SPO) scenario and environmental sustainability were in the best interests of the concessionaire and the Liberian economy – with substantially greater benefits compared with the business-as-usual scenario (USD 333 million versus USD 188 million over 20 years).

    When these results were discussed with the multistakeholder National Oil Palm Platform of Liberia, it was accepted and paved the way toward sustainable palm oil development in Liberia.

    Across the world, TSAs have been conducted to assess the economic value of ecosystem services for various strategic economic sectors such as hydropower, agriculture, and tourism under the business-as-usual and sustainable ecosystem management scenarios to create a sustainable development path where humanity is in harmony with the environment.

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  • It’s Time to Ban Cigarette Filters

    It’s Time to Ban Cigarette Filters

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    Credit: WHO
    • Opinion by Mary Assunta (bangkok, thailand)
    • Inter Press Service

    BANGKOK, Thailand, Jun 09 (IPS) – The second session of the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee on plastic pollution (INC-2), held in Paris, France, from May 29 to June 02, 2023, concluded with optimism and the prospect of ending plastics pollution. Over 700 delegates from 169 Member States agreed to prepare a zero draft of agreement ahead of the third session in November this year.

    Among the more important and interesting debates, health advocates attending the negotiations reported that it was essential to discuss “how to categorize the thousands of types of plastics, chemical precursors and products in a way that allows for a coherent approach to ending plastic pollution.

    Some favoured focusing on the chemical precursors, eliminating the most toxic and polluting ones,” while others acknowledged that not every type of plastic could be recycled or reinvented, and certain plastics like cigarette filters need to disappear for good.

    Leonce Sessou, speaking on behalf of Action on Smoking and Health (ASH), Corporate Accountability (CA), African Tobacco Control Alliance (ATCA), and other members of the Stop Tobacco Pollution Alliance (STPA), urged Member States to align the future legally binding instrument on plastics with the public health objective of ending the tobacco epidemic, to which most have already committed via the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC).

    Tobacco control groups, for example, called for the elimination of cigarette filters. They drew attention to the fact that cigarette butts are some of the most prevalent forms of plastic pollution on the planet and harm land and marine ecosystems.

    They reminded delegates to align with human rights and health treaties, particularly the WHO FCTC, and make the tobacco industry pay for its pollution and legacy waste. The WHO FCTC health treaty seeks to reduce the supply and demand for tobacco and protect health policies by keeping the tobacco industry out of policy meetings.

    According to a WHO report which called for a ban on cigarette filters, about 4.5 trillion discarded filters (butts) from the almost six trillion cigarettes consumed globally find their way into the environment annually.

    They are the top waste item collected from coastlines and urban settings. Cigarette filters are small enough to be ingested by marine animals, and when these plastic filters break down, they release thousands of microplastic particles.

    Microplastics have been detected in commercial seafood, other food items, drinking water, and human tissue; this contamination is a threat to food safety and security.

    Research shows cigarette butts are a source of microplastic contamination that creates chemical pollution (due to the toxic chemicals found in tobacco products) that leach into the environment. Cigarette butt leachates are found to harm various forms of aquatic organisms, including key food sources for fish and shellfish.

    Experts agree that banning cigarette filters is the best solution to this plastic and toxic waste problem. Clean-ups, anti-littering legislation, and redesigning filters for recyclability or biodegradability have not worked and are not viable solutions.

    Government committees from Belgium, the Netherlands, and Denmark have recently called for a ban on filters and recommended the same for the rest of the European Union Member States.

    For at least five decades, the tobacco industry has known that cigarette filters provide no health benefits; instead, they make cigarettes burn hotter, deliver more nicotine, and increase addiction.

    Yet they have misled smokers into thinking filters make cigarettes “safer.” As awareness around smoking increased, the tobacco industry made advertisements for filtered cigarettes more appealing to pacify smokers’ concerns.

    Advocates participating in the INC-2 reported a lot of misunderstandings related to cigarette filters that are yet to be addressed. In its blog on day 5 of the negotiations, ASH stated, “Many people, not just people who smoke, assume filters make cigarettes safer rather than more dangerous.”

    Numerous countries already have a national policy banning single-use plastics such as plastic bags, straws, and cotton buds but have inadvertently not included cigarette filters. However, advocates speaking to government delegates found widespread support for a ban on cigarette filters.

    As the possibility of a cigarette filter ban gathers momentum, the tobacco industry’s public relations (PR) machinery is already in motion implementing beach cleans-ups and cigarette butt collection activities through its corporate social responsibility (CSR) programs across the globe.

    Before the third session of the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee on plastic pollution (INC-3) resumes in Nairobi in November, governments must remember that the tobacco industry is not a stakeholder but a polluter that must be held liable for the myriad harms it has caused as well as continues to cause to human health and the environment.

    Over 100 non-governmental health organizations of the STPA, along with other environmental groups such as Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives, Ecowaste Coalition, Break Free From Plastic (BFFP), Ban Toxics (Philippines), Our Sea of East Asia Network (OSEAN), Development Indian Ocean Network, Earthday.org (Earth Day Network), Green Africa Youth Organization, Vietnam Zero Waste Alliance, and Boomerang Alliance have called for the elimination of cigarette filters.

    Mary Assunta is Senior Policy Advisor, Southeast Asia Tobacco Control Alliance (SEATCA)

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  • US Ban on Smoking Undermined by Tobacco Industry

    US Ban on Smoking Undermined by Tobacco Industry

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    • by Thalif Deen (united nations)
    • Inter Press Service

    UNITED NATIONS, Jun 01 (IPS) – The US has some of the strictest laws against smoking in public, including a 1997 executive order which bans smoking in all government federal buildings.

    But still, the tobacco industry and its allies do not rest, says Dr. Jarbas Barbosa, Director of the Washington-based Pan American Health Organization (PAHO).

    Currently, they “spread a lot of misleading information that promotes, especially among young people, the use of e-cigarettes and heated tobacco products”, he said, on the eve of World No Tobacco Day May 31.

    According to PAHO, while the percentage of the population using tobacco in the Americas declined from 28% to 16.3% between 2000 and 2020, novel products and misleading information from the tobacco industry, especially targeting young people, threaten to undo those gains.

    “Although eight countries in the region have banned the marketing of e-cigarettes and four of heated tobacco products, we are concerned that 14 countries have not yet taken any regulatory action in this regard,” he pointed out.

    According to the latest statistics from PAHO, tobacco-use kills one million people per year in the Americas, one every 34 seconds.

    In addition, 15% of cardiovascular disease deaths, 24% deaths from cancer and 45% of deaths from chronic respiratory diseases are attributable to tobacco use. In the region, 11% of young people use tobacco.

    E-cigarettes are the most common form of electronic nicotine delivery. Their emissions contain nicotine and other toxic substances that are harmful to both users and those exposed to them.

    To address the growing health threat posed by these products, the PAHO Director has called on countries to implement policies to prevent their use, especially among young people, as they can become the gateway to regular tobacco consumption.

    Mary Assunta, Senior Policy Advisor, Southeast Asia Tobacco Control Alliance, told IPS about 40 countries in the world have banned e-cigarettes while 70 countries which allow them have instituted restrictions on sales. For example, 36 countries regulate the amount (concentration/volume) of nicotine in e-liquids.

    She said New Zealand, the Philippines and England, where e-cigarettes are sold more as recreational products, are facing a big problem with teenage vapers.

    The Australian government has just announced a slew of strong measures to strictly regulate e-cigarettes after misinformation on the health effects of vaping helped hook children and young people.

    E-cigarettes are meant to be sold by prescription only in Australia, said Assunta.

    Yolonda Richardson, Executive Vice President of the Washington-based, Global Programs of the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, said this World No Tobacco Day, the WHO is calling for action against the tobacco industry’s human and environmental toll.

    “Harming human and environmental health is pivotal to the business model of multinational tobacco companies like Philip Morris International and British American Tobacco. Millions of people die every year due to Big Tobacco’s profit-over-people model”.

    She said low- and middle-income countries increasingly feel this burden, with 80 percent of tobacco-related deaths from diseases such as cancer, lung disease and heart disease projected to be in such countries by 2030. And the tobacco industry traps farmers with unsustainable crops and appropriates arable land to grow tobacco used for deadly products.

    On this year’s World No Tobacco Day, the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids joins the WHO in calling on governments to stand up to the tobacco industry’s exploitative practices and the devastating impacts of its deadly products.

    One in 10 adult deaths around the globe are due to tobacco use. By holding the industry accountable and through the implementation of proven tobacco control measures, we have the power to protect future generations from tobacco-related death and disease, she noted.

    “It is critical that governments act with urgency to address tobacco’s burden by passing the proven tobacco control interventions contained in the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control,” said Richardson.

    Without urgent action, tobacco use will kill one billion people this century, lock tobacco farmers into a lifetime of poverty, and cause continued harm to the environment, she declared.

    The United Nations which banned smoking in its 38-storyed Secretariat building in New York, back in 2016, says smoking is one of the biggest public health threats in the world today, killing millions of people from lung cancer, heart disease and other diseases.

    All delegates, staffers and visitors to UN Headquarters are reminded of the strict no smoking policy mandated by the General Assembly in its resolution A/RES/63/8and stipulated inST/SGB/2003/9.?

    A designated exterior smoking area is available in the South Garden and signs showing the shortest route from the Secretariat lobby and the General Assembly and Conference Building main areas have been posted.?

    Since the entry into force of the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) in 2005, says PAHO, the region has made great strides in tobacco prevention and control. Currently, 96% of the population in 35 countries in the region is protected by at least one of the six recommended tobacco control measures.

    In 2020, South America became the first 100% smoke-free sub-region – where there is a total ban on smoking in enclosed public places and workplaces, and on public transport.

    Mexico also adopted the 100% smoke-free environment policy by the end of 2021 and banned all forms of tobacco advertising, promotion and sponsorship. As a result, 63% of the population of the Americas – or more than 600 million people – are now protected from exposure to tobacco smoke.

    In addition, in 2022, Paraguay ratified the Protocol to Eliminate the Illicit Trade in Tobacco Products, which will boost regional efforts in this area.

    “These achievements allow us to be confident that the region of the Americas will reach the target of a 30% reduction in the prevalence of tobacco use in those over 15 years of age by 2025, established in the WHO’s Global Action Plan for the Prevention and Control of Noncommunicable Diseases,” Dr. Barbosa said.

    But to expedite progress, the PAHO Director considered it “urgent to accelerate efforts to implement key measures that have fallen behind, including tax increases, a total ban on the advertising, promotion and sponsorship of tobacco-products, and the adoption of mechanisms to manage conflicts of interest.”

    LINKS:
    • World No Tobacco Day – May 31, 2023
    • WHO urges governments to stop subsidizing life-threatening tobacco crops
    • Tobacco Control – PAHO
    • Tobacco: E-cigarettes
    • WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control
    • Report on Tobacco Control in the Region of the Americas 2022 (In Spanish)

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  • Perus Agro-Export Boom Has not Boosted Human Development

    Perus Agro-Export Boom Has not Boosted Human Development

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    Her hands loaded with crates, Susan Quintanilla, a union leader of agro-export workers in the department of Ica in southwestern Peru, gets ready to collect different vegetables and fruits for foreign markets. She has witnessed many injustices, saying the companies “made you feel like they were doing you a favor by giving you work, they wanted you to keep your head down.” CREDIT: Courtesy of Susan Quintanilla
    • by Mariela Jara (lima)
    • Inter Press Service

    LIMA, May 31 (IPS) – Peru’s agro-export industry is growing steadily and reached record levels in 2022. But this has not had a favorable impact on human development in this South American country, where high levels of inequality, poverty, childhood anemia and malnutrition persist, as well as complaints about the poor quality of employment in the sector.

    Exports of agricultural products such as blueberries, grapes, tangerines, artichokes and asparagus generated 9.8 billion dollars in revenue in 2022 – 12 percent higher than the 2021 total, as reported in February by the Ministry of Foreign Trade and Tourism.

    Agricultural exports represent four percent of GDP in this Andean nation, where mining and fishing are the main economic activities.

    “The increase in revenue from agricultural exports has not brought human development: anemia and tuberculosis are at worrying levels and now dengue fever is skyrocketing,” Rosario Huallanca, a representative of the non-governmental Ica Human Rights Commission (Codeh Ica), which has worked for 41 years in that department of southwestern Peru, told IPS.

    Ica and two other departments along the country’s Pacific coast, La Libertad and Piura, are leaders in the sector, accounting for nearly 50 percent of agricultural exports in this country of 33 million people, which despite this boom remains plagued by inequality, reflected by high levels of poverty and informality and precariousness in employment.

    Monetary poverty affected 27.5 percent of the country’s 33 million inhabitants in 2022, according to the National Institute of Statistics and Informatics. This is a seven percentage point increase over the pre-pandemic period. The number of poor people was estimated at 9,184,000 last year, 600,000 more than in 2021.

    Ica, which has a total of 850,765 inhabitants, is one of the departments with the lowest monetary poverty rates, five percent, because it has full employment, largely due to the agro-export boom of the last two decades.

    Huallanca said the number of agro-export companies is estimated at 320, with a total of 120,000 employees, who come from different parts of the country.

    What stands out, she said, is that 70 percent of the total number of workers in the sector are women, who are valued for their fine motor skills in handling fruits and vegetables.

    Although a portion of the workers of some companies are in the informal sector, there are no clear numbers, the expert pointed out.

    But there are alarming figures available: more than six percent of children under five suffer from chronic malnutrition, and anemia affects 33 percent of children between six and 35 months of age.

    “With the type of job we have, we cannot take our children to their growth checkups, we can’t miss work because they don’t pay you if you don’t show up, we cry in silence because of our anxiety,” 42-year-old Yanina Huamán, who has worked in the agro-export sector for 20 years to support her three children, told IPS.

    The two oldest are in middle and higher education and her youngest is still in primary school. “I am both mother and father to my children. With my work I am giving them an education and I have manged to secure a home of my own, but it’s precarious, the bedrooms don’t have roofs yet, for example,” she said.

    Huamán is secretary for women’s affairs in the union of the company where she works, a position she was appointed to in November 2022. From that post, she hopes to help bring about improvements in access to healthcare for female workers, who either postpone going to the doctor when they need to, or receive poor medical attention in the social security health system “where they only give us pills.”

    Ica currently has the highest number of deaths from dengue fever, a viral disease that led the government of Dina Boluarte to declare a 90-day health emergency in 13 of the country’s 24 departments a couple of weeks ago.

    Not only that, it has the history of being the department with the highest level of deaths from Covid-19: 901 deaths per 100,000 inhabitants, exceeding the national average of 630 per 100,000. “The health system here does not work,” trade unionist Huamán said bluntly.

    Yanina Huamán, a worker in the agro-export sector in the department of Ica in southwestern Peru, explains at a meeting in Lima the problems that affect labor rights in the sector, particularly for women who make up 70 percent of the workers. CREDIT: Mariela Jara/IPS
    Yanina Huamán, a worker in the agro-export sector in the department of Ica in southwestern Peru, explains at a meeting in Lima the problems that affect labor rights in the sector, particularly for women who make up 70 percent of the workers. CREDIT: Mariela Jara/IPS

    Working conditions more difficult for women

    The lack of quality employment and the deficient recognition of labor rights, exacerbated by the pandemic, prompted a strike in November 2020 that began in Ica and spread to the northern coastal area of ??La Libertad and Piura.

    Their demands included a minimum living wage of 70 soles (19 dollars) a day, social benefits such as compensation and raises for length of service, and recognition of the right to form unions.

    Grouped together in the recently created Ica Workers’ Union Agro-exports Struggle Committee, which represents casual and seasonal workers, they went to Congress in Lima to demand changes in the current legislation.

    Susan Quintanilla, 39, originally from the central Andean department of Ayacucho, is the general secretary of the union. She arrived in Ica in 2014 after separating from her husband. She came with her two children, a girl and a boy, for whom she hoped for a future with better opportunities.

    After working as a harvester in the fields, and cleaning and packing fruit at the plant, she decided to work on a piecework basis, because that way she could earn more and save up for times when the companies needed less labor.

    “It was incredibly hard,” she told IPS. “I would leave home at 10 in the morning and leave work at three or four in the wee hours of the next morning to be there to get my kids ready for school. I was 29 or 30 years old, I was young, but I saw older women with pain in their bodies, their arms and their feet due to the postures we had at work, but they continued because they had no other option.

    “I saw many injustices in the agro-export companies,” she added. “They made you feel that they were doing you a favor by giving you work, they wanted you to keep your head down, they shouted at and humiliated people, they made them feel miserable. I protested, raised my voice, and they didn’t fire me because I was a high performance worker and they needed me. The situation has changed a little because of our struggles, but it hasn’t come for free.”

    The late 2020 protests led to the approval on Dec. 31 of that year of Law No. 31110 on agricultural labor and incentives for the agricultural and irrigation sector, aimed at guaranteeing the rights of workers in the agro-export and agroindustrial sectors.

    But in Quintanilla’s view, the law discriminates against non-permanent workers who make up the largest part of the workforce in the sector, since the preferential right to hiring established in the fourth article of the law is not respected.

    “Nor have they recognized the differentiated payment of our social benefits and they include them in the daily wage that is calculated at 54 soles (a little more than 14 dollars): it’s not fair,” she complained.

    At the same time, she stressed that the agro-export work is harder on women because they are the ones responsible for raising their children. “We live in a sexist society that burdens us with all of the care work,” Quintanilla said.

    She also explained that because several of the companies are so far away, it takes workers longer to get to work, which means they are away from home for up to twelve hours a day. “We go to work with the anxiety that we are leaving our children at risk of the dangers of life, we cannot be with them as we would like, which damages us emotionally.”

    Added to this, she said, are the terrible working conditions, such as the fact that the toilets are far from the areas where they work, as much as three blocks away, or in unsanitary conditions, which leads women to avoid using them, to the detriment of their health.

    Workers sort avocados for export in Peru. Agro-exports account for four percent of the country's GDP, but the prosperity of the sector has not translated into better human development for its workers, and diseases such as anemia and tuberculosis are alarmingly prevalent in agroindustrial areas. CREDIT: Comexperu
    Workers sort avocados for export in Peru. Agro-exports account for four percent of the country’s GDP, but the prosperity of the sector has not translated into better human development for its workers, and diseases such as anemia and tuberculosis are alarmingly prevalent in agroindustrial areas. CREDIT: Comexperu

    Agro-export companies and human rights

    Huallanca said that Codeh Ica was promoting the creation of a space of diverse stakeholders so that the National Business and Human Rights Plan, a public policy aimed at ensuring that economic activities improve people’s quality of life, is fulfilled in the department. Five unions from Ica and the Chamber of Commerce, Industry and Tourism participate in this initiative.

    “We have made an enormous effort and we hope that on Jun. 16 it will be formally created by the Ministry of Justice and Human Rights, the governing body for this policy,” she said.

    In the meantime, she added, “we have helped bring together women involved in the agro-export sector, who have developed a rights agenda that has been given shape in this multi-stakeholder space and we hope it will be taken into account.”

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  • As Game of Thrones Rages in Sudan, the Neighbors Pay the Price

    As Game of Thrones Rages in Sudan, the Neighbors Pay the Price

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    Long wait at the border between Sudan and Egypt. Credit: Hisham Allam/IPS
    • by Hisham Allam (cairo)
    • Inter Press Service

    CAIRO, May 25 (IPS) – The conflict in Sudan is impacting the economy in Egypt, and those who make their living moving goods across the borders have spent weeks hoping the situation will normalize.

    Muhammad Saqr, a truck driver, left Cairo with a load of thinners on April 13, heading to Khartoum. By the time he had arrived at the border, the battle had flared up. Saqr remained, like dozens of trucks, waiting for the borders to be reopened.

    On April 15, 2023, clashes erupted in Sudan between the army led by Lieutenant General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and the Rapid Support Forces led by Lieutenant General Muhammad Hamdan Dagalo, known as “Hamidti.” According to the UN, the clashes have resulted in hundreds of deaths and displaced more than a million people, with 840,000 internally displaced while another 250,000 have crossed the borders.

    Saqr was stuck at the border for 28 days.

    “We began to run out of supplies, and we reassured ourselves that the situation would improve tomorrow. Twenty-eight days passed while we slept in the open. The information we received from the bus drivers transporting the displaced from Sudan to Egypt convinced us that there would be no immediate relief. We knew that if we entered Khartoum alive, we would leave in shrouds,” Saqr told IPS.

    “The merchant to whom we were transferring the goods asked us to wait and not return (home), particularly because he could not pay the customs duties due to the banks’ closure.”

    Muhammad Saqr at the border of Sudan and Egypt.
    Muhammad Saqr at the border of Sudan and Egypt.

    Eventually, they returned with the goods to Cairo, Saqr said.

    Mahmoud Asaad, a driver, was stuck on the Sudanese side of the border. Due to customs papers and permits, the livestock he was transporting had already been stuck in the customs barn in Wadi Halfa, Sudan, for thirty days. Then when the conflict broke out, the cows were trapped for another thirty days.

    “We used to transport shipments of animals from Sudan to Egypt regularly,” Asaad explains. The average daily transport of animals to Egypt was roughly 60 trucks laden with cows and camels. This trade has stopped, and many Sudanese importers have fled to Egypt while waiting for the conflict to end.

    “Sudan is regarded as a gateway for Egyptian exports to enter the markets of the Nile Basin countries and East Africa, and the continuation of war and insecurity will reduce the volume of trade exchange between the two countries, negatively impacting the Egyptian economy, which is currently experiencing some crises,” Matta Bishai, head of the Internal Trade and Supply Committee of the Importer’s Division of the General Federation of Chambers of Commerce, told IPS.

    According to Bishai, commodity prices have risen significantly in recent months as the Egyptian pound has fallen against the US dollar. He also stated that the current situation in Sudan would result in additional price increases in the coming months, particularly for commodities imported from Sudan, such as meat.

    Bishai explained that while Egypt had an ample domestic meat supply, it was nevertheless reliant on imports. Importing it from other countries such as Colombia, Brazil, and Chad would take longer and be more expensive than importing it from Sudan, as land transport is more convenient and cheaper than transporting the goods by sea.

    According to Bishai, Sudan is a major supplier of livestock and live meat to Egypt, supplying about 10 percent of Egypt’s requirements. Higher meat prices will put additional pressure on Egypt’s inflation rates.

    “Rising commodity prices, combined with the current situation in Sudan, are expected to result in higher inflation rates in Egypt in the coming months,” said Bishai.

    According to data from the General Authority for Export and Import Control on trade exchange between Egypt and the African continent during the first quarter of this year, Sudan ranked second among the top five markets receiving Egyptian exports, valued at USD 226 million.

    According to Ahmed Samir, the Egyptian Minister of Trade and Industry, the volume of trade exchange between Egypt and African markets amounted to about USD 2,12 billion in the first quarter of this year, with the value of Egyptian commodity exports to the continent totaling USD 1,61 billion and Egyptian imports from the continent totaling UD 506 million.

    Mohamed Al-Kilani, an economics professor and member of the Egyptian Society of Political Economy, said: “The negative consequences will be felt in the trade exchange, which has recently increased and reached USD2 billion. Egypt has attempted to expedite the import process from Sudan by expanding the road network and building a railway.”

    Credit rating agency Moody’s warned that should the conflict in Sudan continue for an extended period, it would have an adverse credit impact on neighboring countries and impact multilateral development banks. Moody’s added that if the clashes in Sudan turn into a long civil war, destroying infrastructure and worsening social conditions, there will be long-term economic consequences and a decline in the quality of Sudan’s multilateral banks’ assets, as well as an increase in non-performing loans and liquidity.

    As the conflict entered its sixth week, attempts at a ceasefire have failed – with both sides accusing each other of violating agreements.

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  • Governments Are Changing Fisheries Management for the Better, but More Action Is Still Needed

    Governments Are Changing Fisheries Management for the Better, but More Action Is Still Needed

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    Yellowfin tuna diving.
    • Opinion by Grantly Galland (washington dc)
    • Inter Press Service

    WASHINGTON DC, May 23 (IPS) – Global fisheries are worth more than US$140 billion each year, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations. But this hefty sum does not capture the true value of fish to ocean health, and to the food security and cultures of communities around the world.

    Unfortunately, many important populations were allowed to be overfished for decades by the same regional fisheries management organizations (RFMOs) charged with their conservation and sustainable use, and in some regions, this continues.

    At the same time, the demand for fish continues to grow— from consumers of high-end bluefin tuna sushi to coastal communities who depend on seafood as their primary source of protein. So, RFMOs and governments must do more to ensure sustainable fishing and long-term ocean health.

    More than 20 years ago, the United Nations Fish Stocks Agreement (UNFSA) entered into force as the only global, binding instrument holding governments accountable for managing the shared fish stocks of the high seas.

    Under the agreement, fish should be managed sustainably and consistent with the best available science. Governments that are party to this treaty—and to RFMOs—are supposed to follow its management obligations, and work towards greater sustainability of the transboundary species, including tunas and sharks, vital to the ocean and economies.

    Five of those RFMOs focus specifically on tuna management, one each in the Atlantic, eastern Pacific, western and central Pacific, Indian, and Southern oceans. They operate autonomously and, although there is some overlap among their constituent members, each sets its own rules for tuna fishing in its waters.

    This makes UNFSA critical to successful management of tuna fisheries. And because the tuna RFMOs manage some of the world’s most iconic species, they often set the tone for how other similar bodies operate.

    All of this is pertinent now because UNFSA member governments are meeting in New York May 22-26 to evaluate whether RFMOs are performing consistent with their commitments. A similar review was conducted in 2016, and although management has improved over time, some areas require more work, especially when it comes to ending overfishing and considering the health and biodiversity of the entire ecosystem.

    Since 2016, the share of highly migratory stocks that are overfished increased from 36% to 40%, making it all the more urgent for governments to act quickly.

    UNFSA calls on RFMOs to be precautionary in how they regulate fishing, although that guidance is not always followed. There are several examples of extensive overfishing of target species, such as bluefin tuna in the Atlantic and Pacific oceans; yellowfin tuna in the Indian Ocean; and mako, oceanic whitetip sharks and other species that are caught unintentionally.

    Although the RFMOs that manage these fisheries have stopped the overfishing in some cases, in others they have not. But there are signs of progress. Over the past decade, a new precautionary management approach known as harvest strategies has gained traction among RFMOs.

    These strategies (or management procedures) are science-based rules that automatically adjust catch limits based on several factors, such as population status. If widely implemented, they should end overfishing and prevent it from threatening these populations again.

    Harvest strategies have already been successful, particularly in the Southern and Atlantic oceans, where they’ve been adopted for several species, including bluefin tuna and cod, fish stocks for which precautionary management has historically been difficult, or even controversial.

    While this progress is important, UNFSA members are still falling short in an area they have agreed is critically important: taking an ecosystem approach to management. For generations, fisheries managers focused on individual fish stocks—adopting catch limits and other measures with little thought to the broader ecosystem.

    Science shows that maintaining ecosystem health is critical to sustainable fishing. Yet, to date, RFMOs largely have not consistently assessed or addressed the wider impacts of fishing on ecosystems, including predator-prey relationships, habitat for target and non-target species, and other factors.

    Instead, most action has been limited to reducing the impact of bycatch on individual shark species. Better data collection and sharing, and more monitoring of fishing activities, could help integrate stronger ecosystem considerations into management. The more RFMOs can build the whole ecosystem into their decisions, the better it will be for their fisheries.

    For example, in the western and central Pacific, the $10 billion skipjack tuna fishery is an enormous economic driver for island nations that are threatened by climate change. But the harvest strategy in place there is nonbinding and unimplemented.

    For a fishery facing changes in stock distribution due to warming waters, as well as increased market pressures, delayed action on implementation—and a lack of an ecosystem approach—may make matters worse.

    At this week’s UNFSA meeting, RFMOs should be commended for the work they have done in the seven years since the last review. Good progress has been made, including improvements to compliance efforts, and monitoring and enforcement to fight illegal fishing.

    But many of the legal obligations of the treaty remain unfulfilled. As such, sustainability is still out of reach for some critically important stocks, and almost no ecosystem-based protections are in place.

    As governments convene this week, they should look to the lessons of the past—when poor decision-making threatened the future of some fisheries—and seize the opportunity to modernize management and adhere to the promises they have made on conservation. The biodiversity in the world’s ocean shouldn’t have to wait another seven years for action.

    Grantly Galland leads policy work related to regional fisheries management organizations for The Pew Charitable Trusts’ international fisheries project.

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  • Chile: New Constitution in the Hands of the Far Right

    Chile: New Constitution in the Hands of the Far Right

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    Credit: Martín Bernetti/AFP via Getty Images
    • Opinion by Ines M Pousadela (montevideo, uruguay)
    • Inter Press Service

    MONTEVIDEO, Uruguay, May 19 (IPS) – On 7 May, Chileans went to the polls to choose a Constitutional Council that will produce a new constitution to replace the one bequeathed by the Pinochet dictatorship – and handed control to a far-right party that never wanted a constitution-making process in the first place.

    This is the second attempt at constitutional change in two years. The first process was the most open and inclusive in Chile’s history. The resulting constitutional text, ambitious and progressive, was widely rejected in a referendum. It’s now far from certain that this latest, far less inclusive process will result in a new constitution that is accepted and adopted – and there’s a possibility that any new constitution could be worse than the one it replaces.

    A long and winding road

    Chile’s constitution-making process was born out of mass protests that erupted in October 2019, under the neoliberal administration of Sebastián Piñera. Protests only subsided when the leaders of major parties agreed to hold a referendum to ask people whether they wanted a new constitution and, if so, how it should be drafted.

    In the vote in October 2020, almost 80 per cent of voters backed constitutional change, with a new constitution to be drafted by a directly elected Constitutional Assembly. In May 2021, the Constitutional Assembly was elected, with an innovative mechanism to ensure gender parity and reserved seats for Indigenous peoples. Amid great expectations, the plural and diverse body started a one-year journey towards a new constitution.

    Pushed by the same winds of change, in December 2021 Chile elected its youngest and most unconventional president ever: former student protester Gabriel Boric. But things soon turned sideways, and support for the Constitutional Assembly – often criticised as made up of unskilled amateurs – declined steadily along with support for the new government.

    In September 2022, a referendum resulted in an overwhelming rejection of the draft constitution. Although very progressive in its focus on gender and Indigenous rights, a common criticism was that the proposed constitution failed to offer much to advance basic social rights in a country characterised by heavy economic inequality and poor public services. Disinformation was also rife during the campaign.

    The second attempt kicked off in January 2023, with Congress passing a law laying out a new process with a much more traditional format. Instead of the large number of independent representatives involved before, this handed control back to political parties. The timeframe was shortened, the assembly made smaller and the previous blank slate replaced by a series of agreed principles. The task of producing the first draft is in the hands of a Commission of Experts, with a technical body, the Technical Admissibility Committee, guarding compliance with a series of agreed principles. One of the few things that remained from the previous process was gender parity.

    Starting in March, the Commission of Experts was given three months to produce a new draft, to be submitted to the Constitutional Council for debate and approval. A referendum will be held in December to either ratify or reject the new constitution.

    Rise of the far right

    Compared with the 2021 election for the Constitutional Convention, the election for the Constitutional Council was characterised by low levels of public engagement. A survey published in mid-April found that 48 per cent of respondents had little or no interest in the election and 62 per cent had little or no confidence in the constitution-making process. Polls also showed increasing dissatisfaction with the government: in late 2022, approval rates had plummeted to 27 per cent. This made an anti-government protest vote likely.

    While the 2021 campaign focused on inequality, this time the focus was on rising crime, economic hardship and irregular migration, pivoting to security issues. The party that most strongly reflected and instrumentalised these concerns came out the winner.

    The far-right Republican Party, led by defeated presidential candidate José Antonio Kast, received 35.4 per cent of the votes, winning 23 seats on the 50-member council. The government-backed Unity for Chile came second, with 28.6 per cent and 16 seats. The traditional right-wing alliance Safe Chile took 21 per cent of the vote and got 11 seats. No seats were won by the populist People’s Party and the centrist All for Chile alliance, led by the Christian Democratic Party. The political centre has vanished, with polarisation on the rise.

    What to expect

    The Expert Commission will deliver its draft proposal on 6 June and the Constitutional Council will then have five months to work on it, approving decisions with the votes of three-fifths of its members – meaning 31 votes will be needed to make decisions, and 21 will be enough to block them. This gives veto power to the Republican Party – and if it manages to work with the traditional right wing, they will be able to define the new constitution’s contents.

    The chances of the new draft constitution being better than the old one are slim. In the best-case scenario, only cosmetic changes will be introduced. In the worst, an even more regressive text will result.

    People will have the final say on 17 December. If they ratify the proposed text, Chile will adopt a constitution that is, at best, not much different from the existing one. If they reject it, Chileans will be stuck with the old constitution that many rose up against in 2019. Either way, a once-in-a-generation opportunity to expand the recognition of rights will have been lost, and it will fall on civil society to keep pushing for the recognition and protection of human rights.

    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.

    © Inter Press Service (2023) — All Rights ReservedOriginal source: Inter Press Service

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  • Europe Sells to Africa and Asia 90% of Its Used Clothes, Textiles Waste

    Europe Sells to Africa and Asia 90% of Its Used Clothes, Textiles Waste

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    “As reuse and recycling capacities in Europe are limited, a large share of used textiles collected in the EU is traded and exported to Africa and Asia, and their fate is highly uncertain,” says the European Environmental Agency. Credit: Shutterstock.
    • by Baher Kamal (rome)
    • Inter Press Service

    ROME, May 18 (IPS) – Once the money-making businesses have turned Asia and Africa into their low-cost factories, to produce and market at higher prices their clothes and footwear, obtaining more profits by selling to these two continents around 90% of all their used and textiles waste.

    Not only: such a business alleviates the harsh environmental impacts of the lucrative clothing and fashion industry, and the cost of recycling and eliminating the leftovers of these products.

    Just know that textiles are on average “the fourth-highest source of pressure on the environment and climate change from a European consumption perspective,” the European Environment Agency (EEA) on 26 April 2023 reported.

    Consequently, “Europe faces major challenges managing used textiles, including textiles waste.”

    Europe exports much more than textile waste

    Lars Mortensen, EEA expert on circular economy, confirms that textile production and consumption in the European Union have significant impacts on the environment and climate.

    “Textile consumption causes the third largest land use and water use in the value chain, and the fifth largest material resource use and greenhouse gas emissions. Also, textiles cause pressures and impacts from their chemicals on the environment and climate”.

    The poisoning plastic

    A 27 January 2023 EEA briefing focusses on another big problem: plastic.

    “Plastic-based — or ‘synthetic’— textiles are woven into daily lives in Europe, in the clothes we wear, the towels and the bed sheets, in the carpets, curtains and cushions. And they are in safety belts, car tyres, workwear and sportswear.”

    Synthetic textile fibres are produced from fossil fuel resources, such as oil and natural gas, the briefing goes on, adding that their production, consumption and related waste handling generate greenhouse gas emissions, use non-renewable resources and can release microplastics.

    EU consumers discard about 5.8 million tonnes of textiles annually – around 11 kg per person – of which about two-thirds consist of synthetic fibres, according to the briefing.

    “In Europe, about one-third of textile waste is collected separately, and a large part is exported.”

    Africa and Asia are therefore the largest destinations of these toxic fibres.

    Simply put: by exporting European used clothes and textiles waste, their impacts necessarily fall on the shoulders of Africans and Asians.

    A highly uncertain fate

    Indeed, “as reuse and recycling capacities in Europe are limited, a large share of used textiles collected in the EU is traded and exported to Africa and Asia, and their fate is highly uncertain,” says the European Environmental Agency.

    In fact, throughout the past two decades, Africa has been the main continent receiving used textiles from the European Union (EU), importing more than 60% of EU exports.

    But while in 2000 Asia received only 26% of EU exports, by 2019 it had significantly increased its share to 41% of EU imports. This is almost equal to Africa, which still imported 46% of EU exports.

    Where do second-hand clothes end up?

    In the African countries studied, the EEA report says that the import of used textiles seems to be mainly meant for local reuse. This is because there is a demand for cheap, used clothes from Europe, which seem to be preferred to new items.

    “What is not fit for reuse mostly ends up in open landfills and informal waste streams.”

    In Asia, however, most of the used textiles are imported to so-called economic zones where they are sorted and processed. In the countries studied for this briefing, import for local reuse is restricted.

    Instead, used textiles seem to be recycled locally, mostly downcycled into industrial rags or filling, or re-exported either for recycling in other Asian countries or reuse in Africa.

    “Textiles that cannot be recycled or re-exported are likely to end up in the general waste management system, most of which is landfilling.”

    The big figures…

    According to this European Union (EU)’s agency that ‘delivers knowledge and data to support Europe’s environment and climate goals’:

    • The amount of used textiles exported from the EU has tripled over the last two decades from slightly over 550,000 tonnes in 2000 to almost 1.7 million tonnes in 2019.
    • The fate of used textiles exported from the EU is highly uncertain. The perception of used clothing donations as generous gifts to people in need does not fully match reality,
    • Used clothing is increasingly part of a specialised and traded global commodity value chain,
    • In 2019, 46% of used textiles ended up in Africa: Imported, used textiles on this continent primarily go towards local reuse as there is a demand for cheap, used clothes from Europe. What is not fit for reuse mostly ends up in open landfills and informal waste streams,
    • In 2019, 41% of used textiles ended up in Asia. Most used textiles on this continent are imported to dedicated economic zones where they are sorted and processed,
    • The used textiles are mostly downcycled into industrial rags or filling, or re-exported for recycling in other Asian countries or for reuse in Africa. Textiles that cannot be recycled or re-exported are likely to end up in landfills.

     

    … The big exporting hubs

    “Some EU countries, such as Germany, Poland and the Netherlands, have exported more than others and seem to have acted as import-export hubs for used textiles from the EU.”

    There is no clear reason explaining why five out of 27 EU Member States and the United Kingdom account for around 75% of all EU used textile exports, adds the EEA.

    Therefore, it is likely that the largest exporters have been sending used textiles abroad, collected locally and from other EU countries, says the European agency.

    Thus, another reason for the concentration of exports in a few EU countries could be that these large exporting countries are acting as export hubs.

    “In other words, they are importing used textiles from other EU Member States for re-export beyond the EU. Ports/harbours for international shipment in some of these countries make them logical export hubs.”

    Belgium, Italy and the Netherlands have large export harbours.

    … and the big increase

    EU used textile exports have grown significantly over the last two decades, the EEA reports, explaining that exports of textile waste outside the EU have been steadily increasing to reach 1.4 million tonnes in 2020.

    Still, another problem appears: how to avoid that waste streams are falsely labelled as second-hand goods when exported from the EU and in this way escape the waste regime?

    EU used textile exports are characterised by a lot of uncertainty, adds the EEA. First, there is uncertainty around the types of textiles exported as well as their quality.

    In other words, it says, if used textiles exported from the EU are of too low quality to be reused, or are not reused for very long or do not replace new clothing purchases, they may not really replace new production or benefit the environment.

    “Instead, the exports will only lead to more textiles ending up in landfills.”

    © Inter Press Service (2023) — All Rights ReservedOriginal source: Inter Press Service

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  • The End of Dollar Supremacy

    The End of Dollar Supremacy

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    The US dollar’s supremacy in the international financial system has long been beyond question. But countries like Brazil are attempting to break away.
    • Opinion by Monica Hirst, Juan Gabriel Tokatlian (rio de janeiro, brazil / buenos aires, argentina)
    • Inter Press Service

    RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil / BUENOS AIRES, Argentina, May 17 (IPS) – Half a century ago, the dominance of the United States dollar in the international finance and trade system was indisputable.

    By 1977, the US dollar reached a peak of 85 per cent as the prevailing currency in foreign exchange reserves; in 2001, this position was still around 73 per cent. But today, it is at approximately 58 per cent.

    The dominance of the dollar and the hegemonic position of the United States have for long been intertwined. And the recent global transformations are affecting American’s ability to sustain this: the gradual movement of the centre of gravity from the West to the East, the unravelling complexities of US domestic politics, the growing muscle of the international projection of China and an international assertiveness among the countries of the Global South have restrained the American dollar’s supremacy and status.

    And yet, the currency still holds by far the largest share of global trade, foreign exchange transactions, SWIFT payments and debt issued outside the United States. In fact, Western financial agents, government officials and renowned experts tend to downplay the so-called de-dollarization arguing that a relatively debilitated dollar doesn’t necessarily mean its demise.

    Notwithstanding controversial standpoints, it is undeniable that the world system faces more complex, diverse and plural challenges that involve currency competition and new inventive financial pathways.

    Resistance against the US Dollar

    The so-called de-dollarization in global finance has its landmarks. The launch of the Euro in 1999 was crucial since the European currency, by now, represents 20 per cent of the global foreign exchange reserves. By the dawn of the 21st century, an Asian Currency Unit came to life as well: it represented a salad bowl of 13 currencies from East Asian nations (ASEAN 10 plus Japan, China and South Korea).

    Along with the successful spill overs of economic regionalisation, Western-led geopolitics also came to be a source of global financial novelties that affected the US dollar’s pre-eminence.

    The growing recourse to a sanction regime against countries such as Iran, especially since 2006, and Russia after the 2014 annexation of Crimea, encouraged alternative currency arrangements. As of today, Washington’s sanctions policy punishes 22 nations.

    The invasion of Ukraine by Russia in 2022 and the extension of sanctions hampering the use of the US dollar encouraged even more de-dollarized practices. In response to the decision to disconnect Russia from SWIFT, Moscow advanced bilateral fuel transactions with partial payment in Rubles.

    Simultaneously, Russia and a group of African countries initiated talks to establish settlements in national currencies, discontinuing both the US dollar and the Euro. Meanwhile, China is trying to insulate itself from the West and is attempting to internationalise the Renminbi, even though it represents less than 3 per cent of the official reserves worldwide.

    Moscow and Beijing are coming closer in terms of financial cooperation, France and Saudi Arabia agreed to use the Renminbi in certain oil and gas deals, while Bangladesh became the 19th country to commerce with India in Rupees.

    Last but not least, a gold rush is also picking up. As Ruchir Sharma has recently observed, key buyers are now central banks, which are procuring ‘more tons of gold now than at any time since data begins in 1950 and currently account for a record 33 per cent of monthly global demand for gold and 9 of the top 10 are in the developing world.’

    Besides, some African nations seem willing to trade in currencies backed by rare-earth metals. In the Global South, in fact, there is a growing perception that de-dollarization is a step towards a multipolar world in which new actors, interests and rules interplay. In that sense, it is becoming evident that a multi-currency trading regime is slowly emerging.

    How Brazil ‘de-dollarizes’

    De-dollarization has been included in Brazil’s foreign policy strategy. Since the inauguration of his third mandate, President Lula da Silva rapidly disclosed the intention of overcoming his discrepancies with Western rule-setting. An adjourned narrative that contests the Global North’s preponderance in the World Order has resurfaced.

    Demands for inclusive reforms in global governance, the condemnation of geopolitical worldviews leading to securitised methods and military escalation, and the questioning of the Dollar’s dominance in international trade and finance have arisen. In the present context of tensions and rivalries between the Great Powers, Brazil strives to speak of an autonomous voice of the Global South.

    And thus, Lula has tried to promote peace in Ukraine on the basis of negotiations that recognise the voices of all parties involved in the war.

    Lula’s de-dollarization standing has been stimulated by Brazil’s association with the BRICS, as well as its expanded bilateralism with China. The continuously record-breaking Brazilian-Chinese trade relationship reached a peak of $150,5 bn in 2022 (while the Russia-China trade relationship for the same year was $190,2 bn).

    As bilateral ties are expanding further, during Lula’s recent state visit to China, novel settlements are being negotiated, aiming to put trade and financial operations on track directly with Chinese Renminbi and Brazilian Reais.

    Concurrently, the Brazilian government has decided to use the New Development Bank (NDB), the BRICS’ multilateral bank, as a platform to defend a de-dollarized trade system among its members and with the countries that benefit from NDB credit lines.

    By positioning former Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff as the head of the bank, Lula has upgraded the Brazilian political commitment to this frontline. Most certainly, this will become a reiterated pledge in Brazil’s performance in global governance arenas, with mention to its 2024 presidency of the G20.

    It is remarkable how the Lula government has sought a prudent strategy balancing its anti-dollar hegemony signals among its BRICS partners with a constructive presence in a dollar-dominating terrain such as the Interamerican Development Bank (IDB).

    By holding the presidency of the IDB since last December, supporting the candidacy of Brazilian ex-IMF official Illan Goldfajn, Brazil has stretched its footprint in international finance from Washington to Shanghai.

    Beyond Brazil

    Brazil has made a first attempt to bring in the de-dollarization card to its South American neighbourhood, particularly together with Argentina. Last February, bilateral talks took off to begin working on a common currency project that could reduce reliance on the US dollar. This could mean ingraining de-dollarization within the MERCOSUR area.

    Following Brazil’s example, Argentina has started to consider the use of the Renminbi in its trade with Beijing. For Brazil, these are moves that could, step-by-step, lead to a regional financial terrain with relative distance from US dollar dominance. However, ongoing macroeconomic turbulences in Argentina, together with an extremely low level of foreign exchange reserves, will surely obstruct these plans in the short term.

    Besides, more than two will be needed to tango. If a sustained economic recovery of Argentina takes place, Brazil will need to assure the support of extra-regional, heavyweight, non-Western actors, particularly China and India, in investment and trade flows to trigger a renewed insertion of MERCOSUR into the world economy.

    De-dollarization could become a part, among others, of a dynamic reconfiguration of financial and productive intersections of Brazil and its neighbours with other regions and economic powerhouses of the global economy. Needless to say, this is a long-term strategy. The key consideration is the role of South America, that, in the near future, may play into the promotion of a multi-currency trading regime.

    For now, while a strident flag of Lula’s presidential diplomacy, Brazilian ties with the US Dollar can be reduced but remain of unquestionable relevance. Decision-making in Brazil is conducted by a complex inter-ministerial web responsible for the states’ international sector that cannot avoid the influence of key production segments in the private sector.

    Thus, transforming the Brazilian international financial modus operandi will depend on major accommodations that cannot overlook a broad domestic negotiation process, particularly if conjoined with the strengthening of democracy.

    Monica Hirst is a research fellow at the National Institute for Science and Technology Studies in Brazil; Juan Gabriel Tokatlian is Provost at the Torcuato Di Tella University, Buenos Aires, Argentina.

    Source: International Politics and Society (IPS), published by the Global and European Policy Unit of the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung, Hiroshimastrasse 28, D-10785 Berlin.

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  • Reserve Bank of Australia Review Fails Ordinary Australians

    Reserve Bank of Australia Review Fails Ordinary Australians

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    • Opinion by Anis Chowdhury (sydney)
    • Inter Press Service

    SYDNEY, May 15 (IPS) – The Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA)’s latest interest rate hike comes before the ink of the much-awaited review of the RBA, released on 20 April, has dried. The threat of more increases to come is a clear sign of an emboldened RBA as the government accepts all of the panel’s utterly disappointing 51 recommendations.

    Anis ChowdhuryRBA Review
    The Treasurer, Hon Dr Jim Chalmers, announced the Review in July 2022, designed to ensure that Australia’s monetary policy arrangements and the operations of the RBA continue to support strong macroeconomic outcomes for Australia in a complex and continuously evolving landscape.

    The recommendations of the three-person panel, charged with reviewing the structure, governance, and effectiveness of the RBA, range from creating a separate board to make decisions on interest rates, to giving the Bank a simpler dual mandate to pursue both price stability and full employment.

    Utter disappointment
    The Review report fails to question the long-held taboos about inflation and Central Bank’s role in a social democracy. While the Review panel leaves the RBA’s 2-3% inflation target unchanged, it outrageously recommends dropping from the RBA’s mandate “economic prosperity and welfare of the people of Australia” and the removal of government’s power to intervene in the RBA’s decisions.

    This will make the RBA more inflation hawkish, and more aggressive in its use of the blunt interest rate tool without much regard for the consequences on jobs, especially when the RBA’s full employment mandate is left vague.

    Without the power to intervene in the RBA’s decisions, such hawkish interest rate hikes will force the government to cut its expenditure as it has to pay more on interest for its debts while its tax revenue shrinks when the economy slows.

    Thus, the well-being of ordinary citizens, especially those who will lose jobs, will worsen as the government struggles to find money for targeted budget support. No wonder the Treasurer termed the latest RBA interest rate decision as “Pretty brutal”.

    Voodoo of 2-3% inflation target
    In accepting the RBA’s current 2-3% inflation target, the Review panel ignores the fact that the 2-3% inflation target has become a “global economic gospel” without any empirical or theoretical basis.

    The 2-3% target was plucked out of the air and it became a universal mantra after a chance remark by the then Finance Minister of New Zealand in a television interview followed by relentless preaching.

    The recommendation ignores the changed circumstance since the 2-3% inflation target was first adopted. In the wake of the 2008-2009 Global Financial Crisis, many, including the then IMF’s Chief Economist, Olivier Blanchard suggested a 4% inflation target would be more appropriate.

    The inflation-unemployment trade-off relationship (i.e., the Phillips curve) has become flatter over the years due to labour market deregulations, off-shoring and other developments. This means trying to dogmatically achieve such a low inflation target would require a much higher unemployment rate as recognised by the former Fed Chair and current US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen. That is, the interest rate must rise more steeply inflicting serious damages to the business finances, household spending and government budget.

    Full employment, a poor cousin
    The Review panel recommends “full employment” mandate along with inflation target. However, while the inflation target has a numerical figure (2-3%), there is no such specific target mentioned for unemployment that may be consistent with the concept of full employment. When asked during a press conference, the Treasurer said, “It’s a contested concept”.

    The report mentions full employment 100 times! But does not say what it means; instead, the panel accepts the current RBA’s definition and measure of full employment based on a contestable concept of a “non-accelerating inflation rate of unemployment” (NAIRU). That is, full employment is consistent with an unemployment rate below which inflation will accelerate.

    There is general consensus that models based on NAIRU are basically wrong. An article in the RBA Bulletin acknowledged, “Model estimates of the NAIRU are highly uncertain and can change quite a bit as new data become available”. Thus, James Galbraith argued for ditching the NAIRU. And an op-ed in The Financial Times concluded, “The sooner NAIRU is buried and forgotten, the better”.

    Social democracy sacrificed
    The panel thinks, there are too many factors that affect prosperity and welfare. So, it recommends removal of the RBA’s third mandate “economic prosperity and welfare of the people of Australia”, enshrined in the 1959 RBA Act.

    Furthermore, the panel seeks to remove the government’s ability to overrule an RBA decision because it “undermines the independent operation of monetary policy”.

    With these recommendations implemented, the RBA will not be bound to the commitment to build a fairer society, although economic prosperity and people’s welfare can remain as an “overarching purpose”.

    The Winner
    A super independent RBA will have all the power it needs to use its sole weapon, interest rate rises, to keep inflation at 2-3%. The emboldened RBA will declare the consequences to its actions on the job markets as consistent with a vaguely defined full employment, and economic prosperity and welfare of the people.

    It can simply assert that job and income losses are short-term pains for long-term gains, without having to provide any evidence. There are no such things as short-term pains.

    For many, job loss may cause permanent damages to their mental health, self-esteem and social life often leading to suicides. IMF research shows that the scarring effects of recessions can be permanent.

    Thus, the clear winner of the recommended reforms, is the RBA, not the ordinary people struggling to find decent jobs to enable them to put a roof over their heads and two square meals on their tables.

    Meanwhile, the RBA’s ideological anti-inflationary fight with a blunt interest rate tool benefits the big four banks. They are “tipped to rake in record $33 billion” in profits from rising interest rates when everyday Aussies and small businesses battle rising bankruptcies and job losses.

    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.

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  • The New Development Bank in the Asian 21st Century: A Golden Opportunity for the Global South

    The New Development Bank in the Asian 21st Century: A Golden Opportunity for the Global South

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    • Opinion by Darini Rajasingham-Senanayake (colombo, sri lanka)
    • Inter Press Service

    COLOMBO, Sri Lanka, May 15 (IPS) – Asia is the fastest growing and most dynamic region of the world according to a recent IMF Report; “Recovery Unabated Amid Uncertainty”. 1

    Asia and the Pacific will contribute around 70 percent of global growth this year as expansion accelerates after Covid-19 supply chain disruptions, with ongoing geopolitical turmoil and war in Europe, as well as, various hybrid over the horizon cyber and kinetic attacks targeting Indian Ocean ports and shipping.

    Global economic expansion would be significantly powered by the BRICS countries: Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, as well as the Association for Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), group that includes Indonesia.

    A series of Exogenous Economic Shocks over the past four years, from terror attacks to Covid-19, and ‘climate catastrophe’ policy-mistakes, such as an overnight switch to organic fertilizer, temporarily set back the rise of these ‘emerging economies’ of the Global South on the world stage.

    They are now increasingly set to lead a rebound in a Multipolar ‘Asian 21st Century’ as Euro-American hegemony wanes.

    Asian Giants, China and India, have huge populations, domestic markets, resources and the civilizational weight to lead global expansion. In the West, growth is poised to decelerate as rising interest rates, trillion-dollar deficits and military budgets weigh, with Inflation high, and banking strains in the United States and Europe.

    Asia Pacific growth would increase to 4.6 percent despite the somber backdrop of war and economic weakness elsewhere in the world according to the IMF report.

    Strategic Sri Lanka, which staged its first sovereign Default, loosing economic policy autonomy to the Washington Twins (IMF and World Bank), ironically on the eve of 75 years of Independence, clearly needs to look to Asia and the BRICS as Cold War and Colonialism once again roil the Indian Ocean World with nuclear submarines and military bases popping up a dime a dozen these days.

    Four new US bases in the Philippines were announce just last month. The country after all is a bell weather for more than fifty other Global South countries caught in post-Covid-19 Eurobond debt traps, and the Washington Twins (World Bank and IMF) ‘bailout business’.

    BRICS back on Track as Empires Rise and Fall

    The BRICS was strengthened with the return of President Lula da Silva to the helm in Brazil in January. These powerhouse economies are increasingly trading in their own national currencies, promoting a trend to de-dollarization that has gathered steam in the context of US debt of $ 31 trillion and sanctions on Russia last year.

    The search is on for alternatives to the US dollar as the global reserve currency as the BRICS economies had outstripped the traditional economic heavyweights – the G-7.

    The New Development Bank (NDB) or BRICS bank which is a multilateral development bank established by the BRICS in 2014 to finance infrastructure and sustainable development projects in the developing world is expanding at this time with Iran and Saudi Arabia set to join amid a recent China brokered peace deal to stabilize Yemen and the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region.

    The NDB launched with $50 billion in seed money as an alternative to the IMF and WB. Additionally, a liquidity mechanism called the Contingent Reserve Arrangement to support members struggling with payments was created. In 2021, Egypt the United Arab Emirates, Uruguay and Bangladesh took up shares and membership of NDB while Egypt, Algeria, and Argentina, as well as, Mexico and Nigeria are in the pipeline. 2

    Nineteen countries including Indonesia had expressed an interest in joining the BRICS group of nations as it prepares to hold an annual summit in June in South Africa, which is now struck by sabotage and power-cuts

    De-dollarize to decolonize

    Saudi Arabia’s petro-dollar linked oil reserves had stabilized the US dollar as the Global Reserve currency for decades, but this is changing with talk of the Petro Yuan and related geopolitical developments. In the wake of the Iran-Saudi peace agreement, Syria rejoined the Arab League after a 12-year long US led regime change operation failed against Bashar al Assad.

    These movements perhaps explain some of the new Cold War proxy wars and turmoil in MENA and South Asia–from Sudan, to Palestine/Israel, to Afghanistan and Pakistan as the Euro-American empire wanes at this time.

    Remarkably Argentina, South America’s 2nd largest economy after Brazil, seeking alternatives to the IMF has applied for membership of the NDB. Argentina, victim of the Monroe doctrine for decades is on its 22nd IMF bailout and 9th default, as Buenos Aires was again rocked by anti-IMF protests last month.

    The NDB along with the Asia Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), increasingly constitute a Global South alternative to the Washington Consensus and colonial Club de Paris dominated Bretton Woods International development and finance architecture.

    Bankrupt by what metric? Beyond The myth of TINA to the IMF

    Sri Lanka as an Asian country would best leverage the Asian 21st Century and the NDB, but Colombo’s Washington-backed Ranil Rajapakse regime that is responsible for the country’s first sovereign default had promoted two myths, that “Sri Lanka is Bankrupt” and “there is no alternative” (TINA) to the IMF agenda, of austerity and a Firesale of strategic assets!

    Last year upon assuming office the President promised Famine and 15-hour power cuts, in a psychological operation to spread fear, and prepare the people for an IMF Firesale and the country’s asset stripping.

    However, the famine and 15-hour power cuts did not materialize also given plentiful monsoon rains for hydro-power generation as the weather gods miffed the Cold War gods.

    The question is: by what metric and on whose Data was the strategic county that sits on major energy, trade and undersea data cable routes deemed ‘bankrupt’? As one of South Asia’s (SAARC) wealthiest countries in terms of GDP per capita with the best social and human development indicators, Former US Ass. Secretary of South and Central Asia Alice G. Wells termed the lush and fertile tropical island, blessed with two monsoons and extensive marine and mineral resources “valuable real estate”! Others have called it an ‘unsinkable aircraft carrier.’

    Whether a shortage of exorbitantly privileged US dollars is adequate to measure the ‘wealth of nations’ also given America’s 31 trillion debt is not a rhetorical or philosophical question to elicit yet another theory of value.

    Rather, it flags here the failure by the Washington Consensus to make an elementary distinction between ‘illiquidity’ and ‘insolvency’ in determining the purported bankruptcy of Global South countries caught in the World Bank’s Middle Income Country (MIC) trap, to enable a Firesale of strategic assets. Does this not rather reflect great moral and intellectual bankruptcy?

    Re-Orient to de-colonize in a Multipolar World

    As the Asian 21st Century becomes a reality in a multipolar world where the BRICS economies have overtaken the traditional G-7 countries as the world’s engine of growth, Sri Lanka caught in a Eurobond US dollar denominated debt trap clearly needs to ReOrient as German sociologist and world systems theorist Andre Gunder Frank wrote in his acclaimed book; “ReORIENT: Global Economy in the Asian Age” (1998).

    Much of Frank’s analysis finds resonance in a more recent book by Kishore Mahbubani, Former President of the United Nations Security Council, titled the Asian 21st Century.

    In the context, Sri Lanka would best ban further borrowing on Eurobond markets, and engage bi-lateral lenders India and China to join hand with NDB, also to renew its Independence and sovereignty in its 75th year, and ensure calibrated exit from US dollar denominated Eurobond debt bondage.

    Other countries may aid Sri Lanka’s, but only if the county leads in the search for alternatives to the IMF’s bankruptcy narratives– as Dr. Yanis Varoufakis, former Finance Minister of Greece who has extensive experience with IMF debt negotiations had noted.

    Debt trapped countries the Global South and humanity are clearly at a turning point in an age of Artificial Intelligence (AI), big data mining, deep fakes, and drone surveillance by those with the technologies for global governance and control of populations.

    Hence, following Elon Musk, Warren Buffet recently warned that ‘AI is a nuclear bomb’. As a genuinely multipolar world re-emerges after two hundred years of Euro-American hegemony, on the cusp of another World War, it is up to debt-trapped countries of the Global South to promote multi-polarity and respect for genuine cultural diversity.

    Dr Darini Rajasingham-Senanayake is a Cultural Anthropologist with expertise in international development and political economic analysis. She was a member of the International Steering Group of the North-South Institute project “Southern Perspectives on Reform of the International Development Architecture.’ She had authored and co-edited several books, the most recent being “Multi-religiosity in Contemporary Sri Lanka: Innovation, Shared Spaces, Contestation’ Routledge (2022).

    1https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/REO/APAC/Issues/2023/04/11/regional-economic-outlook-for-asia-and-pacific-april-20232https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fm_y3w7x1qkhttps://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-04-24/brics-draws-membership-requests-from-19-nations-before-summit#xj4y7vzkg

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  • The Workweek Is Still Long in Latin America

    The Workweek Is Still Long in Latin America

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    Construction workers in Chile are among those who will benefit from the gradual reduction of the workweek from the current 45 hours to 40, within five years. A 40-hour workweek already exists in countries such as Ecuador and Venezuela, but in most of the region the workweek is longer. CREDIT: Camila Lasalle/Sintec
    • by Humberto Marquez (caracas)
    • Inter Press Service

    CARACAS, May 04 (IPS) – The reduction in the workweek recently approved by the Chilean Congress forms part of a trend of working fewer hours and days that is spreading in today’s modern economies, but also highlights how far behind other countries in Latin America are in this regard.

    Latin America “has legislation that is lagging in terms of working hours and it is imperative that this be reviewed,” said the director of the International Labor Organization (ILO) for the Southern Cone of the Americas, Fabio Bertranou, after Chile’s new law was passed.

    The workweek in Chile will be gradually reduced from 45 to 40 hours, by one hour a year over the next five years, according to the bill that a jubilant President Gabriel Boric signed into law on Apr. 14.

    “After many years of dialogue and gathering support, today we can finally celebrate the passage of this bill that reduces working hours, a pro-family law aimed at improving quality of life for all,” said Boric.

    The law provides for the possibility of working four days and taking three off a week, of working a maximum of five overtime hours per week, while granting exceptions in sectors such as mining and transportation, where up to 52 hours per week can be worked, if the worker is compensated with fewer hours in another work week.

    Chile is thus aligning itself with its partners in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), in some of which, such as Australia, Denmark and France, the workweek is less than 40 hours, while in others, such as Germany, Colombia, Mexico or the United Kingdom, the workweek is longer.

    Chilean President Gabriel Boric celebrates the modification of the labor law by the Chilean Congress to reduce the workweek, as an achievement aimed at “improving quality of life for all,” with the understanding that workers will have more time to rest and for family life. CREDIT: Presidency of Chile
    Chilean President Gabriel Boric (L) celebrates the modification of the labor law by the Chilean Congress to reduce the workweek, as an achievement aimed at “improving quality of life for all,” with the understanding that workers will have more time to rest and for family life. CREDIT: Presidency of Chile

    The range in Latin America

    According to ILO data, until the past decade two countries in the region, Ecuador and Venezuela, had a legal workweek of 40 hours, while, like Chile up to now, Brazil, the Dominican Republic, El Salvador and Guatemala were in the range between 42 and 45 hours.

    Argentina, Bolivia, Colombia, Costa Rica, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru and Uruguay had a workweek of 48 hours.

    According to national laws, the maximum number of hours that people can legally work per week under extraordinary circumstances for specific reasons is 48 in Brazil and Venezuela, and between 49 and 59 in Argentina, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay and Uruguay.

    In Bolivia, Colombia, Costa Rica, Guatemala and Honduras the maximum is 60 or more hours, and in El Salvador and Peru there is simply no limit.

    But in practice people work less than that, since the regional average is 39.9 hours, more than in Western Europe, North America and Africa (which range between 37.2 and 38.8 hours), but less than in the Arab world, the Pacific region and Asia, where the average ranges between 44 and 49 hours per week.

    ILO figures showed that in 2016 in Latin America, male workers worked an average of 44.9 hours a week and women 36.3, 1.7 hours less than in 2005 in the case of men and half an hour less in the case of women.

    Among domestic workers, the decrease was 3.3 hours among men and more than five hours among women (from 38.1 to 32.9 hours a week), which is partly attributed to the fact that after 2005 legislation to equate the workweeks of domestic workers with other workers made headway.

    A teacher connects from her home with her students in an online class. This trend expanded in different sectors in Latin America during the COVID-19 pandemic and allows workers more freedom to organize their time, although sometimes it leads to longer working days. CREDIT: Marcel Crozet/ILO
    A teacher connects from her home with her students in an online class. This trend expanded in different sectors in Latin America during the COVID-19 pandemic and allows workers more freedom to organize their time, although sometimes it leads to longer working days. CREDIT: Marcel Crozet/ILO

    Health and telework

    A study by the World Health Organization (WHO) and the ILO attributes the death of some 750,000 workers each year to long working hours – especially people who work more than 55 hours a week.

    The study showed that in 2016, 398,000 workers died worldwide from stroke and 347,000 from ischemic heart disease – ailments that are triggered by prolonged stress associated with long hours, or by risky behaviors such as smoking, drinking alcohol and eating an unhealthy diet.

    María Neira, director of the WHO’s Department of Environment, Climate Change and Health, said in this regard that “working 55 hours or more per week poses a serious danger to health. It is time for all of us – governments, employers and employees – to realize that long working hours can lead to premature death.”

    On the other hand, the telework trend boomed worldwide during the COVID-19 pandemic, reaching 23 million workers in Latin America and the Caribbean, mainly formal wage- earners with a high level of education, stable jobs and in professional and administrative occupations.

    Access to telework has been much more limited for informal sector and self-employed workers, young people, less skilled and lower-income workers, and women, who have more family responsibilities.

    ILO Latin America expert Andrés Marinakis acknowledged in an analysis that “in general, teleworkers have some autonomy in deciding how to organize their workday and their performance is evaluated mainly through the results of their work rather than by the hours it took them to do it.”

    But “several studies have found that in many cases those who telework work a little longer than usual; the limits between regular and overtime hours are less clear,” and this situation is reinforced by the available electronic devices and technology, explained Marinakis from the ILO office in Santiago de Chile.

    This means that “contact with colleagues and supervisors is possible at any time and place, extending the workday beyond what is usual,” which raises “the need to clearly establish a period of disconnection that gives workers an effective rest,” added the analyst.

    Artificial intelligence, for example with robots that work with great precision and speed, favors the technological development of countries and increases productivity by reducing costs in the production of goods or services, but it can lead to significant reductions in employment. CREDIT: IDB
    Artificial intelligence, for example with robots that work with great precision and speed, favors the technological development of countries and increases productivity by reducing costs in the production of goods or services, but it can lead to significant reductions in employment. CREDIT: IDB

    The other face

    Argentine labor activist Francisco Iturraspe told IPS by telephone that on the other hand, in the future it appears that “non-human work, that of artificial intelligence, can massively reduce employment and make 40 hours a week seem like an immense amount of work.”

    Iturraspe, a professor at the National University of Rosario in southeastern Argentina and a researcher at the country’s National Scientific and Technical Research Council, said from Rosario that the reduction in working hours “responds to criteria typical of the 19th century, while in the 21st century there is the challenge of meeting the need for technological development and its impact on our countries.”

    He argued that “to the extent that abundant and cheap labor is available, and people have to work longer hours, business owners need less investment in technology, which curbs development.”

    But, on the other hand, Iturraspe stressed that investment in technologies such as artificial intelligence reduces the cost of producing goods and services, evoking the thesis of zero marginal cost set out by U.S. economist Jeremy Rifkin, author of “The End of Work” and other books.

    This translates into a reduction in the workforce needed to produce and distribute goods and services, “perhaps by half according to some economists, a Copernican shift that would lead us to a situation of mass unemployment.”

    The quest to reduce the workday walks along that razor’s edge, “with the hope that the reduction of working time can give working human beings new ways of coping with life,” Iturraspe said.

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  • A Letter from Kabul

    A Letter from Kabul

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    • Opinion by Jean-Francois Cautain (kabul, afghanistan)
    • Inter Press Service

    KABUL, Afghanistan, May 04 (IPS) – I am writing from Kabul where I have been living for this past 11 months. I consider myself a friend of Afghanistan, a country full of contrasts that I know since 1986; I have lived here for a little over 12 years.

    My return to Afghanistan was motivated by the desire, which I share with my wife who runs a medical NGO in Kabul, to help the Afghan population that is once again hostage to a modern “Great Game”, bringing violence and misery.

    I was in Afghanistan when the Taliban first took Kabul in September 1996 after four years of armed conflict between various Afghan warlords that vied for supremacy after the departure of the Soviets in 1989. Heading a rural rehabilitation programme, I worked for 3 years under the first Taliban regime.

    I was again present during the early years of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan between 2001 and 2005, working for the European Union. I remember the enthusiasm of the Afghan people. But I also remember the doubts that very quickly emerged about the viability of the project to “build a new Afghanistan”.

    Today, I am extremely concerned about the isolation of Afghanistan on the international scene. It will lead to more suffering for the Afghan people and pose an increased risk to regional and international security.

    In isolating Afghanistan, we are repeating mistakes made during the first Islamic Emirate, between 1996 – 2001, with the same well known dire consequences. Today, we must collectively, the international community and the Afghans, learn from past mistakes.

    I do not consider myself an “expert” on Afghanistan, but the historical perspective I have on the country and the fact that I am currently living in Kabul mean that I probably have a different point of view to many of those currently being expressed from Europe and the United States.

    The confrontation with Afghan poverty that I experience daily is no stranger to this discrepancy that I perceive between my vision of the situation and most of the analyses and positions expressed outside Afghanistan’s borders.

    We all have to draw lessons

    On 15 August 2021, 20 years of foreign military presence in Afghanistan came to an end. The US-led intervention raised great hopes in the early years. Unfortunately, this turned into a fiasco.

    The international community and Afghanistan must analyse the many causes such as: the original sin of denying the defeated Taliban a seat in the first meeting aimed at the stability and reconstruction of the country (Bonn Conference 2001); too much aid leading to massive corruption, especially of certain political elites; a confusion of objectives between military operations aimed at eradicating terrorism and the (re)construction of a state.

    We are just at the beginning of this necessary self-criticism from which we will have to draw lessons, but it is currently put on the backburner, or even forgotten, because of the recent developments in the country.

    Since the Taliban took power, we have witnessed a widening chasm between the West and the new masters of Afghanistan. Both sides are clearly responsible for the current situation. At first, the Taliban displayed moderation when reaching out to the international community. They spoke of general amnesty, freedom of work for women, education for all, and the fight against terrorism.

    The West refused to seize this extended hand. On the contrary, thanks to its dominant position on the international scene and taking advantage of the disarray caused by the return of the Taliban and the chaotic evacuation scenes at Kabul airport, the West responded by imposing conditions on the recognition of the Taliban government, the halt of development aid (40% of GNP), the freezing of the Central Bank of Afghanistan’s assets and the de facto extension of sanctions on financial transactions to the whole country.

    These decisions brought the Afghan economy to its knees in a few weeks, precipitating this already poor country (48% of the population lived below the poverty line before the arrival of the Taliban – despite billions of dollars and euros poured into the country over 20 years) into an unprecedented economic crisis with unprecedented humanitarian consequences.

    Today 28.3 million Afghans out of a population of around 40 million depend on humanitarian aid for their survival. And the poverty rate has reached 97%, according to the United Nations.

    The Taliban also bear a great responsibility for this stalemate with decisions compromising the political and societal gains made over the past 20 years. The failure of their initial diplomatic approach with the West opened the door to the return of coercive policies that are unacceptable to the international community and to a large majority of Afghans.

    Today, it is widely known that girls cannot study in secondary schools and universities, women cannot work in UN agencies and NGOs, and cannot go to parks and hammams. Political life is also minimal, with very few opportunities for dissenting voices to be heard and the media often having to censor themself.

    There is a total lack of trust between the West and the Taliban. Western countries blame the Taliban for not respecting the Doha agreement by taking power by force and of having failed to keep their words by taking unacceptable decisions drastically reducing human rights, especially those of women and girls. This sad reality leads many educated Afghan families to leave the country for the sake of their daughters’ future.

    For their part, many Taliban feel that the West is not sincere when it talks about peace in Afghanistan. They suspect the West, and especially the United States, of working to overthrow their government.

    They point to the refusal to recognise their government, the sanctions, the freezing of the Central Bank’s assets and the military drones’ flying over the country, daily, for months. For them, the war with the West is not over, but has taken another form.

    Confrontation cannot last

    At a time when Western opinions are rightly outraged by the restrictions imposed on Afghan women and girls, one must also accept that the Taliban are proud to have liberated their country from an occupation led by the world’s greatest military power.

    As a result, many do not understand why they have been ostracised for over 20 months. They feel that they should be “treated as equals” within the international community – which is more or less what some countries in the region are doing.

    It is also important to realise, even if it is difficult to accept in some Western chancelleries, that this feeling of “liberation” is shared by a very significant percentage of the Afghan population, especially in rural areas, even if they are not all unconditional supporters of the Taliban regime.

    Having driven the British out of Afghanistan in the 19th century, the Soviets in the 20th century, and now NATO in the 21st century, is part of the collective psyche of Afghans and makes many of them proud.

    Yet, despite this incredibly complicated and terribly polarized context, it is imperative to continue and strengthen a direct dialogue between Western countries and the Taliban. The participants to the recent meeting convened by the UN Secretary General in Doha “agreed on the need for a strategy of engagement that allows for the stabilization of Afghanistan but also allows for addressing important concerns.”

    It is only through frequent face-to-face meetings – I do not believe in e-diplomacy – driven by a constructive spirit of understanding on both sides, that progress can be made for the Afghan people.

    How could dialogue start?

    Increasing interaction with the Taliban does not mean recognising their government, but rather creating spaces for discussion to dispel misunderstandings, pass on messages and build relationships that go beyond mere posturing.

    It means putting the human element and pragmatism back into a relationship that is essentially conflictual today, opposing great international principles against “Afghan” values.

    Dialogue must start by talking about subjects where there is a possible convergence of interests between the Western countries and the Taliban. Why not the fight against international terrorism and the fight against opium production, two scourges that affect both Afghanistan and Western countries?

    The Taliban, who until now have never had any agenda other than a national one, are fighting the Islamic State, which remains a real threat in many countries. They also eliminated poppy cultivation in 2001 and have been tackling it again this year.

    Keeping in mind the common goal of the wellbeing of the Afghan people, positive signals must also be sent from both sides. For example, on education on the one hand, on sanctions and/or asset freezes on the other.

    This sustained dialogue needs to start even if it will surely be essentially transactional at first. This will probably not be satisfactory for both parties: the first steps will be modest, but it will have the merit of unblocking a stalemate situation whose victims are primarily Afghan women and girls and the Afghan population in general.

    It is also urgent to give oxygen to the local economy to allow Afghans to have their minds free of the daily, haunting, and exclusive constraint of feeding their families. Humanitarian aid is essential and must continue to be delivered whatever the obstacles.

    But even more humanitarian aid will never be a substitute for a revitalised economy. The obstacles on the Afghan economy are largely in the hands of Western countries. The latter could use the lifting of sanctions on financial transactions and the gradual restitution of the assets of the Central Bank of Afghanistan as positive vectors in a dialogue with the Taliban. Only then can the Afghan people regain their voice and influence the future of their country.

    The road to an Afghanistan at peace with itself, and in tune with the international community, will be long and complicated. It can only be achieved through a sincere and sustained dialogue. It is the responsibility of the Taliban, other members of Afghan society and Western countries to take the first step in this direction, for the greater benefit of Afghans.

    Jean-François Cautain is a former Ambassador of the European Union.

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  • Sudan Conflict Marks Failure of Transition Plan

    Sudan Conflict Marks Failure of Transition Plan

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    • Opinion by Andrew Firmin (london)
    • Inter Press Service

    LONDON, Apr 21 (IPS) – The current fighting in Sudan marks the failure of supposed processes for transition to democratic rule. The international community needs to learn the lessons of this catastrophe and work with civil society.

    Democracy betrayed

    On one side is the army, headed by Sudan’s current leader, General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan. On the other are the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), a paramilitary group led by General Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, commonly known as Hemedti. Both sides blame the other and say they will refuse to negotiate.

    The two worked together in the October 2021 coup that overthrew a transitional government, put in place in August 2019 after long-time dictator Omar al-Bashir was ousted following a popular uprising. They were never committed to democracy. Military forces initially tried to suppress democracy protests with lethal violence. The grimmest day came on 3 June 2019, when the RSF ended a sit-in with indiscriminate gunfire, killing over 100 people. There has been no accountability for the violence.

    The October 2021 military coup, which brought mass protests and civil disobedience, was followed by a short-lived and palpably insincere attempt at a civilian-military power-sharing deal that only lasted from November 2021 to January 2022. Protests, and military violence against them, continued. December 2022 saw the signing of a deal between the military and some civilian groups.

    This deal was supposed to kickstart a two-year transition to democracy. Some pro-democracy groups and political parties rejected the plan, but the international community urged all sides to get behind it.

    The army was already seeking to backtrack on its commitments before the fighting began. Now those who doubted the sincerity of the two forces’ intentions and willingness to hand over power have been proved right.

    Civilians in the firing line

    Relations between the two military leaders had become increasingly strained, and fighting finally broke out on 15 April. Attempts at a humanitarian ceasefire have so far come to nothing.

    Civilians are in the firing line. There’s much confusion on the ground, making it hard to get accurate numbers of casualties, but currently over 300 civilians are reported killed, with thousands injured.

    Khartoum’s major sites of contestation, such as the airport and military bases, nestle side by side with civilian housing, leaving people vulnerable to airstrikes. People are stuck in their homes and at workplaces with limited supplies of food, and water and electricity have been cut. Some have had their homes seized by RSF soldiers. Thousands have fled.

    Many hospitals have been forced to evacuate or are running out of vital supplies, and there are reports of attacks on health facilities. There are also reports that UN staff and other aid workers are being targeted and offices of humanitarian organisations have been looted.

    A battle for power

    The origins of the current crisis lie in al-Bashir’s deployment of paramilitary forces, the Janjaweed, to brutally crush a rebellion in Darfur in 2003. The violence was such that al-Bashir remains subject to an International Criminal Court arrest warrant on charges of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes.

    In recognition of its brutal effectiveness, al-Bashir formally reorganised the Janjaweed into the RSF. It suited him to have two forces he could play off against each other, although ultimately they worked together to oust him. The tensions that have built since partly reflect a clash of cultures between the two leaders and Hemedti’s evident ambition for the top job.

    But mostly it’s a competition for political and economic supremacy. The army has always been the power behind the presidency, and it’s said to control major companies, having taken over many businesses once owned by al-Bashir and his inner circle.

    Hemedti has his own sources of wealth, including illegal gold mining – something that connects him with Russia, with mercenary forces from the shadowy Wagner Group reportedly guarding goldmines in return for gold exports to Russia. Now Wagner is allegedly supplying the RSF with missiles.

    Hemedti had positioned himself as supportive of transitional processes, a ruse that enabled him to dispute the army’s power. Al-Burhan was always a compromised figure, supposedly leading Sudan through transition while also defending the army’s extensive interests. Proposals to integrate the two forces appear to have been the final straw, threatening to erode Hemedti’s power base, making this an existential struggle.

    International failure

    Democratic states that backed the transition plan wanted to believe in it and basically hoped for the best.

    Self-interest has never been far away from the calculations of outside forces either. In recent years, EU funding indirectly found its way to the RSF for its border control role, helping prevent people making their way to Europe; the EU’s preoccupation with controlling migration trumped democracy and human rights concerns.

    The Egyptian government, an influential player in Sudan, is meanwhile squarely behind al-Burhan: it wants its domestic model of repressive government by a military strongman applied in its southern neighbour. Russia strongly backs Hemedti, while Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates might have no strong preference between the two as long as the outcome isn’t democracy.

    What all the approaches taken have in common is that they’re largely top-down, investing faith in leaders while failing to address the tensions that led to violence. Now the limitations of that approach should be evident.

    Sudan’s democracy movement has been consistently ignored. But people don’t want their futures to come down to a dismal choice of two warlords. This conflict must put an end to any notion that either military head can be expected to lead a transition to democracy.

    Democratic states need to hold a stronger line on demanding not only that the conflict ends but that a genuine, civilian-led transition follows. With this must come accountability for violence.

    From now on, the outside world must listen to and be guided by Sudanese civil society voices – in restoring peace, and in bringing about democracy.

    Andrew Firmin is CIVICUS Editor-in-Chief, co-director and writer for CIVICUS Lens and co-author of the State of Civil Society Report.

    © Inter Press Service (2023) — All Rights ReservedOriginal source: Inter Press Service

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  • Afghan Tailors Flee to Pakistan After Ban on Stitching Womens Clothing

    Afghan Tailors Flee to Pakistan After Ban on Stitching Womens Clothing

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    Afghan Women refugees undergoing sewing and embroidery training in Peshawar, Pakistan. Credit: Ashfaq Yusufzai/IPS
    • by Ashfaq Yusufzai (peshawar)
    • Inter Press Service

    PESHAWAR, Apr 10 (IPS) – “I had my shop in Afghanistan but came here after the Taliban’s warning against stitching women’s clothes. Now, I am working on daily wages in a shop owned by a local tailor master,” Noor Wali, 32, told IPS.

    Wali, a resident of Jalalabad province, said that a new order by the Taliban’s vice and virtue authority, male tailors, have been barred from making garments for women in Kabul.

    “The order has landed the majority of the male tailors, who have no other option except to leave the country or stay idle and resort to begging,” Wali, a father of three, said.

    Before the Taliban takeover in August 2021, he said it was common practice all over Afghanistan that males stitched women’s garments. The male tailors who used to make only women’s garments are the worst hit as the order has made them virtually jobless.

    Sharif Gul’s story is no different from Wali’s. Gul, 41, arrived in Peshawar, located close to the Afghan border, and started work at Rs1,500 (about USD 6) per day with a local tailor. “I used to earn at least Rs6,000 (about USD 21) back home and over Rs15,000 a day (about USD 52) in Ramzan (Ramadan) because the people wear new clothes on Eid al-Fitr,” he said.

    Eid al-Fitr is celebrated at the end of Ramzan-one month of fasting, and all people stitch new clothes for the festivity.

    “A great loss to us. We have been appealing to the Taliban to take pity on us, but they were not receptive to our requests,” Gul said.

    Tailor said the order would have a major impact on them financially as many tailor shops cater only to female customers.

    Naseer Shah is another Afghan hit hard by the Taliban’s ban on sewing women’s garments. Shah, 39, who migrated to Peshawar last month along with his wife, three sons, and daughter, works as a daily wager with a Pakistani tailor.

    “I earn Rs3,000 (about USD 10) a day. My income used to be around Rs10,000 (about UDS 35) during this month of Ramzan. I have been making women’s garments for more than 15 years,” he explains. Most Kabul-based workers have stopped stitching female dresses and started dealing in men’s clothing, but they receive fewer customers.

    So he didn’t have to resort to begging; they moved to Pakistan, he said.

    Taliban government has already banned women’s education after coming to power. A week ago, they asked women to stop working in UN offices, likely impacting women’s development, healthcare, and population control in the militia-ruled violence-stricken country.

    Hussain Ahmad, 50, an Afghan tailor who migrated to Pakistan 30 years ago, told IPS that the influx of Afghan tailors has been problematic because they don’t find lucrative work here.

    “We have hired three tailors who came recently after the Taliban’s ban. We have workload in Ramzan, but after Eid al-Fitr, we wouldn’t need their services, and they will be unemployed,” said Hussain, who owns a shop in Muhajir (refugee) Bazaar, in Peshawar, the capital of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, located near the Afghan border.

    Hussain said the people feared the Taliban for their harsh punishments. “Those arriving here recall how Taliban’s police warned them if they didn’t stop taking women’s garments,” he said.

    Ikramullah Shah, an economics teacher, who taught at Kabul University, told IPS that he quit his job because of the ban on women’s education.

    “We are here, and my two daughters are studying in private schools here. I want to educate my daughters at any cost,” Shah said. “I have been teaching in two Afghan schools as a part-timer to earn for my family.”

    Most of the women who owned dressmaking shops have stopped working after the Taliban’s instructions, he said. Some women tailors had very big shops where they had recruited male and female tailors, but now all have to close shops and work from home.

    Among the refugees is Naseema Shah, an Afghan woman who says she will soon start stitching women’s dresses for women in Peshawar. Naseema, 30, is one of 20 Afghan women nearing completion of month-long training in Peshawar, supported by the German Agency for International Cooperation (GIZ).

    Dr Samir Khan, a political analyst, told IPS that the Taliban have been facing tremendous pressure from the international community, including the UN, to change their attitude towards women, but the situation remained unchanged.

    “We have been listening to news about the ban of women students, workers, and tailors sewing female dresses, which is unacceptable in a civilized society,” he said.

    Taliban should do some soul-searching and try to become part of the global efforts and work for women’s development, he said.

    “How can the Taliban put the war-devastated country on the path of progress when they disallow women (half of the country’s population) to work,” he said.

    Pakistan is an Islamic country where women enjoy equal rights, he said.

    He said that women are neither taking part in social activities nor allowed to go to school and work, which is regrettable. The past 16 months since the Taliban came to power have been tough on women.

    Sajida Babi, an Afghan teacher in Peshawar that women have been at the receiving end of the Taliban’s ruthlessness. “There are strict dress codes for women who are required to wear an all-encompassing veil while in the market,” Bibi, 55, said. “In my country, women cannot go to schools or parks for entertainment, and they cannot travel without being accompanied by a man, which reminds one of the Stone Age.”

    IPS UN Bureau Report


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    © Inter Press Service (2023) — All Rights ReservedOriginal source: Inter Press Service

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  • Privatization: Egypts Only Weapon To Survive the Repercussions of the War in Ukraine

    Privatization: Egypts Only Weapon To Survive the Repercussions of the War in Ukraine

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    Egypt plans to sell shares in 32 state-owned businesses, including three banks. Credit: Hisham Allam/IPS
    • by Hisham Allam (cairo)
    • Inter Press Service

    Cairo, Apr 06 (IPS) – Egypt intends to sell shares in 32 state-owned businesses within a year, including three banks, two military-owned businesses, and numerous businesses in the energy and transportation sectors. This is part of the administration’s efforts to reduce the role of the state in the economy and attract foreign capital.

    That also follows the government’s December USD 3 billion deal with the IMF to resume privatization initiatives.

    The IMF approved the USD 3 billion loan to strengthen the private sector and reduce the state’s footprint in the economy.

    Egypt planned to sell 23 state-owned enterprises in 2018, but the plan was postponed due to the worldwide crisis.

    The Russia-Ukraine conflict has put pressure on the Egyptian economy and currency, making the proposal more urgent.

    According to Rashad Abdo, head of the Egyptian Forum for Economic Studies, Egypt had already received sovereign loans from many donors, including international institutions, such as the International Monetary Fund and Gulf countries, and these parties either set harsh lending conditions or would be reluctant to lend due to increased risks.

    The State Ownership Policy Plan, adopted by President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi in December, outlines how the government would participate in the economy and how it would increase private sector involvement in public investments. Egypt wants to increase the contribution of the private sector to the nation’s economic activity from 30 percent to 65 percent within the next three years. One-quarter of these enterprises will be listed by the government within six months.

    Egypt announced the offering of these companies, intending to sell them to strategic investors, specifically Gulf sovereign funds. Egypt is expected to sell enterprises worth USD 40 billion within three years, including those held by the army.

    Attracting foreign investment requires strengthening the investment climate, lowering inflation rates, and expanding anti-corruption efforts, Abdo told IPS.

    The State Ownership document states that 32 Egyptian state companies will be listed on the Egypt Exchange (EGX) or sold to strategic investors within a year, beginning with the current quarter and ending in the first quarter of 2024. Stakes in three significant banks, Banco du Caire, United Bank of Egypt, and Arab African International Bank, are among the scheduled transactions. Insurance, electricity, and energy companies, as well as hotels and industrial and agricultural concerns, will also be on the market. Prime Minister Moustafa Madbouly announced that the first stakes would be offered in March and a quarter by June, and more businesses could be added over the next year.

    Abdo pointed out that the Monetary Fund affirmed the Egyptian government’s commitment to implementing the State Ownership Document when it agreed to grant it this loan and the Egyptian government saw it as a favorable opportunity to implement the terms of the document set by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

    Mohamed Al-Kilani, professor of economics and member of the Egyptian Society for Political Economy, said the privatization effort seeks to eliminate the dollar gap in Egypt and thus provide indirect compensation in the form of services and benefits from the International Monetary Fund’s debt.

    The state would also send a message to foreign investors that it responds to the private sector and is willing to withdraw from certain sectors to benefit the private sector.

    “The state is attempting to exploit this proposal to stimulate and revitalize the Egyptian Stock Exchange while taking into account the fair valuation of these companies in comparison to the global market. However, the state was unclear about the details of this offering and whether it is a long-term or short-term investment, and it has not clarified the size of employment or the percentages offered in terms of ownership and management,” Al-Kilani told IPS.

    “The state is trying to create new types of foreign investment to attract foreign currency due to the fluctuation in exchange rates and high-interest rates,” Al-Kilani added.

    According to external debt data published on the central bank’s website in mid-February, Egypt’s external debt fell by USD 728 million to USD 154.9 billion at the end of last September, but its foreign exchange reserves remain low, prompting renewed demand for state assets. The Russia-Ukraine conflict has further pressured the economy and local currency, prompting the proposal for new urgency.

    Despite its relatively modest improvement in the latest data from the central bank at the beginning of February (USD 34.2 billion), it lost about 20 percent of the level of USD 41 billion at the end of February last year.

    Last January, the IMF suggested that the volume of the financing gap in Egypt would reach about USD 17 billion over the next 46 months in light of its decline in foreign exchange resources and the high cost of its imports as one of the largest countries in the world to import its food and the first importer of wheat in the world.

    IPS UN Bureau Report


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    © Inter Press Service (2023) — All Rights ReservedOriginal source: Inter Press Service

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