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Tag: global issues

  • Australia: Reconciliation Back to Square One?

    Australia: Reconciliation Back to Square One?

    Credit: Jenny Evans/Getty Images
    • Opinion by Ines M Pousadela (montevideo, uruguay)
    • Inter Press Service

    MONTEVIDEO, Uruguay, Nov 20 (IPS) – Australia had the chance to take a step forward in redressing the exclusion of its Indigenous people – and chose not to. In a referendum held in October, voters rejected a constitutional amendment to establish an institution for Indigenous people to have a say on matters that concern them.

    On a 90 per cent turnout under mandatory voting, 60 per cent voted against. Supporters of the referendum were left pointing the finger at disinformation – and those who pushed it for political gain.

    A history of exclusion

    For a long time, Indigenous Australians – currently 3.8 per cent of the country’s population – lacked any recognition. European settlers didn’t see any need for a treaty with the people already there. Indigenous Australians only got the vote in 1962 and, following a referendum, were put on the census as late as 1972 – until then, they literally didn’t count. They remain unrecognised in the country’s constitution.

    For most of the 20th century, assimilation laws saw Indigenous children forcibly taken from their families on a mass scale. It’s estimated that between 1910 and 1970 10 to 30 per cent of Indigenous children were handed to childless white couples to be raised as white. The horror of the ‘stolen generations’ only began to be acknowledged in the mid-1990s.

    In 1997 the Australian Human Rights Commission issued a report with recommendations for healing and reconciliation. But a belated prime ministerial apology came only in 2008. That same year, the government issued a plan to reduce disadvantage among Indigenous people. After most of its targets expired unmet, a new approach was developed in partnership with an Indigenous coalition in 2020.

    But little progress has been made in overcoming exclusion. On almost any indicator, Indigenous people remain two to three times worse off than non-Indigenous Australians. Being dramatically underrepresented in decision-making bodies, they also lack the tools to change it.

    The Uluru Statement from the Heart

    The road towards the referendum started more than a decade ago, when an expert panel found that constitutional recognition was the way to go. But the call for a referendum was delayed. In 2016, a Referendum Council again concluded that constitutional reform should proceed.

    In 2017, the First Nations Dialogues issued the Uluru Statement from the Heart, which called for a Voice to Parliament for Indigenous people, a truth commission and a treaty. The Voice was viewed as the first step to open up a conversation and enable further progress.

    Then-Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, of the centre-right Liberal Party, rejected the Uluru Statement. But in 2018 another committee was set up to investigate options for constitutional change – and again, it endorsed a constitutionally enshrined Voice. The Labor opposition promised to put the proposal to a referendum if it won the next election.

    Political change: potential and limitations

    The Liberal/National coalition lost the May 2022 election, and Labor’s incoming prime minister Anthony Albanese promised progress on long-stalled policies to address Indigenous rights.

    The proposed constitutional amendment and text of the ballot question were made public in March 2023 and approved by parliament in June. The government endorsed a set of principles of representation, transparency and accountability that would be used to design the Voice. It was made clear that, as the name implied, this new body would give a voice to Indigenous people but not have decision-making authority or veto power. Any further decision on its composition, functions, powers and procedures would be in the hands of parliament.

    Foreshadowing what was to come, the Liberal and National opposition parties submitted dissenting reports, and the Nationals rejected the proposal entirely. By siding with the No campaign, the opposition doomed the referendum. No referendum has ever been carried without bipartisan support.

    For and against

    Given the legal requirement to distribute an official pamphlet presenting the case for both sides, members of parliament who’d voted for and against the amendment bill drafted and approved a text containing their side’s arguments. This meant that disinformation was inserted into the process from the start: as an independent fact-checking initiative showed, several claims in the No pamphlet were false or misleading.

    The Yes campaign focused its messaging on fairness, reconciliation and healing, seeking to sell the idea that Australia would be made better by the recognition of a space for Indigenous people to have a say in national politics.

    Indigenous people overwhelmingly supported the proposal, although some opposed it – because they thought it didn’t go far enough, saw it as whitewash or hoped not to see relationships they’d painstakingly developed sidelined. The No campaign made a point of foregrounding contrarian Indigenous voices, disproportionately boosted by supportive media.

    Different organisations in the No camp appealed to different groups. Advance, a conservative lobby group, went after young progressives with its ‘Not Enough’ campaign, suggesting that the Voice wasn’t what Indigenous Australians wanted and wouldn’t solve their problems. The Blak Sovereign Movement questioned the timing, arguing that a treaty should be negotiated first. Disinformation and racial abuse were rife.

    Two much-repeated claims were that the Voice would divide Australians and enshrine privileges for Indigenous people. No campaigners peddled a zero-sum idea: that non-Indigenous people would lose if Indigenous people won. They falsely claimed that people would lose their farms or that Indigenous people would charge them to access beaches.

    Another fear-stoking argument was that the Voice was only the beginning – after they secured this, Indigenous people would go for more, until they took everything from the rest. It could, for example, open up a conversation about land rights. That may have been a genuine fear for Australia’s powerful extractive industries, explaining why the right-wing think tanks that have consistently opposed climate action also lobbied against the Voice.

    Having sowed disinformation and confusion, the No campaign told voters that, if in doubt, they should play it safe and vote no. It worked.

    What next?

    The result could bring even greater backlash. Emboldened, some opposition politicians have since withdrawn their previously stated support for a treaty and suggested rolling back practices they now present as inadmissible concessions to identity politics. This could be a harbinger for the opposition pinning its comeback hopes on a culture war strategy.

    But while the referendum defeat has dealt a hard blow to hopes of challenging the exclusion of Indigenous Australians, it isn’t quite game over. A specific proposal has been defeated, but there’s plenty left to advocate for. Progress on the wider reconciliation agenda, including other forms of recognition and redress, could still be possible, particularly at state and local levels. The Uluru Statement from the Heart remains the compass, and civil society will keep urging politicians and the public to follow its path.

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


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

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  • For Every Child, Every RightDelivering Psychosocial Support for Crisis Impacted Children

    For Every Child, Every RightDelivering Psychosocial Support for Crisis Impacted Children

    Aya, a 5-year-old girl clutching her doll to ease her fear, gazes at Gaza’s sky filled with warplanes from inside an UNRWA school in the Gaza Strip. Credit: UNRWA
    • by Joyce Chimbi (nairobi)
    • Inter Press Service

    NAIROBI, Nov 20 (IPS) – As the global community marks World Children’s Day, every child should be guaranteed their rights, including those in the Gaza Strip, where heavy bombardment and military operations by Israel have killed more than 11,000 people, 40 percent of them children.

    “Under international humanitarian laws and the Safe Schools Declaration, civilians—in particular children, schools, and school personnel—must be protected. What we are seeing in this conflict are bombs pounding the most densely populated area on earth, schools and other civilian infrastructures being attacked, and an entire population being trapped in the most dire conditions, with no safe place to flee to. Surviving children are maimed, orphaned, or have lost close and extended family. Horrors of unimaginable proportion are unfolding before our eyes,” Yasmine Sherif, Executive Director of Education Cannot Wait, the UN global fund for education in emergencies and protracted crises, tells IPS.

    “No child can or should have to be prepared for what is happening in Gaza. Children and adolescents are hurting and traumatized. According to UNRWA, initial assessments in October showed that at least 91 percent of children are demonstrating signs of acute stress and trauma and are in need of Mental Health and Psychosocial Support (MHPSS).”

    According to the UN, children account for nearly half of the population in Gaza. More than 625,000 students and 22,564 teachers have been affected as attacks continue. At least 86 percent of school buildings are either being used as shelters for the displaced population, catering for up to four times their capacity, or have been destroyed.

    Camilla Lodi, Norwegian Refugee Council’s (NRC) Global Psychosocial Support Head of the Better Learning Programme, told IPS the impact of war on children was devastating.

    “When children experience conflict, war, and displacement, they go through personal, ongoing life threats—constantly witnessing violence and its effects. Prolonged exposure to such traumatic events increases the risk of complications in processing trauma. When the fighting stops, the journey to recovery starts for children and adults who have gone through high levels of stress and trauma. Mental Health and Psychosocial Support (MHPSS) is not a luxury but a necessity. It helps regain a sense of normalcy,” she said.

    “NRC works specifically on a psychosocial support program within broader education in emergency interventions. Simply, children cannot learn unless they feel well and safe. MHPSS is an essential, necessary, and mandatory intervention that should be embedded in every education in emergency programs. The Better Learning Programme (BLP) is NRC’s signature non-specialized classroom-based psychosocial support intervention that helps restore learning capacities for children that have gone through trauma and high levels of stress.”

    The program has been at the forefront of providing immediate and long-term critical care and psychosocial support for more than a decade, investing in children’s futures in 33 countries, such as Ukraine, Sudan, and Palestine. Lodi stresses that MHPSS is critical in crises and emergencies.

    Sherif stresses that as homes and schools lie in ruin in this high-level stress cycle, surviving children are at risk of severe lifelong mental health problems. A life of debilitating chronic anxiety, depression, and various degrees of trauma now beckons for more than 224 million children and adolescents in conflict and crises globally. She adds that Education Cannot Wait, which supports education programs for children in over 40 countries affected by emergencies and protracted crises, has included MHPSS as a core component of all its country-level investments since 2020. This includes support for the NRC’s Better Learning Programme.

    “ECW has prioritized MHPSS to protect and promote students’ and teachers’ well-being, as mental health is the foundation of learning. We have a target to invest at least 10 percent of our resources for mental health and psychosocial support services,” says Sherif.

    ECW recently announced a $10 million 12-month grant in support of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) and UNICEF to provide children in Gaza with life-saving mental health and psychosocial support.

    “For Gaza specifically, it is a humanitarian catastrophe defined by a relentless cycle of violence. Past research within the Better Learning Programme found that 1093 students (6–17 years of age) who sought help for nightmares and sleep disturbances reported recurrent traumatic nightmares on average 4.57 nights per week, with an average duration of 2.82 years,” Lodi says.

    “We always talk about the cost of inaction. Neglecting MHPSS can result in five significant risks, notably the perpetuation of cycles of violence and trauma. As a conflict concludes, the suffering and psychological impact on children commence and, if left unaddressed, can endure throughout their lives. This neglect also results in the loss of educational and developmental milestones, increasing susceptibility to mental health disorders. Additionally, the diminishing sense of community connectedness, a stabilizer for peace, is compromised. There is also an economic fallout, as increased healthcare costs and long-term productivity losses contribute to a substantial financial and economic impact.”

    Lodi stresses that no child should pay the price of adults’ conflict and that a ceasefire is urgent to help re-establish a sense of safety and predictability and for children to resume recreational play and education activities in a safe environment, which will allow a safe break for their body in “emergency, flight mode.”

    “The catastrophic humanitarian situation in Gaza cannot continue. All parties must respect the UN Charter, international humanitarian law, and universal human rights. I join my colleagues in the United Nations’ call for an immediate humanitarian ceasefire now,” says Sherif.

    If soul-shattering human suffering is not halted and safety restored, Sherif says our moral standing as an international community will be questioned by the young generation today and for generations to come. How can we make promises to children in crisis during this World Children’s Day, whose theme is For Every Child, Every Right? Children everywhere in the world, including more than 224 million crisis-affected children, deserve every right and promise delivered despite, and especially because, of their hardships.

    IPS UN Bureau Report


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

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  • Accelerating Change: Global Call to Action on World Toilet Day to Meet 2030 Sanitation Goals

    Accelerating Change: Global Call to Action on World Toilet Day to Meet 2030 Sanitation Goals

    Marking World Toilet Day on November 19th, the global community faces a pressing sanitation crisis affecting 3.5 billion people. Credit: Lova Rabary-Rakontondravony/IPS
    • Opinion by Thokozani Dlamini (pretoria, south africa)
    • Inter Press Service

    PRETORIA, South Africa, Nov 19 (IPS) – World Toilet Day 2023, on 19 November, focusing on ‘Accelerating Change’ – Toilets are a foundation stone of public health and play a critical role in protecting the environment”Celebrated annually on the 19th of November, World Toilet Day aims to inspire concerted efforts in addressing the pressing global sanitation crisis, which currently leaves approximately 3.5 billion people without access to safely managed sanitation.

    Even today, a staggering 3.5 billion individuals lack safely managed sanitation, and an appalling 419 million people continue to use ‘open defecation’, a condition that encourages the spread of diseases and claims the lives of 1,000 children under the age of five daily. This sanitation crisis, a hazard to human health and the environment, disproportionately affects women, girls, and other vulnerable groups.

    Given the fact that only seven years remain to attain the 2030 target for Sustainable Development Goal 6 – ensuring safe water for all – the global community needs to accelerate its efforts to ensure that the 2030 agenda is realized.

    Our current pace, coupled with insufficient funds, escalating demand, deteriorating water quality, and the inadequacies of existing governance frameworks, gravely threatens the realization of this goal.

    In alignment with this year’s theme – ‘Accelerating Change’ – it’s imperative that we expedite our global efforts to achieve the UN’s 2030 target. Governments and major institutions must synergistically operate, take accountability for their promises, and timely deliver on them. Actually, every individual, regardless of their contributions’ scale, has a role in accelerating this progress.

    Implications of poor sanitation

    The implications of poor water and sanitation are widespread and deleterious, gravely affecting individuals who are forced to use unsanitary toilet facilities or consume and utilize contaminated water. Diseases linked to sanitation, like diarrheal diseases, cholera, typhoid fever, hepatitis A, and various parasitic infections, pose significant public health risks.

    These illnesses can result in extensive sickness, hospitalizations, and even fatalities, particularly in areas with sparse access to clean water and adequate sanitation facilities. Enhancements of sanitation infrastructure can decrease these disease burdens and elevate public health globally.

    Benefits of good sanitation

    Absolutely, having good sanitation facilities indeed has numerous benefits. They go beyond the improvement of public health. Proper sanitation infrastructure can reduce healthcare costs as there are fewer cases of sanitation-related diseases. It can also increase productivity as individuals are healthier and can devote more time to work. studies, or other activities.

    This results in a better quality of life for individuals and their communities. Furthermore, good sanitation infrastructure contributes to environmental sustainability. It aids in reducing pollution since waste is properly managed and does not end up contaminating water bodies and other natural environments. A safe and clean environment, in turn, helps protect vital natural resources, including clean water sources.

    Collaborative efforts

    Governments, donors, the private sector, and non-governmental organizations all play significant roles in advancing sanitation infrastructure. They need to cooperate and work cohesively towards delivering water and sanitation services effectively. Furthermore, research institutions can contribute by providing the necessary scientific understanding and technological innovations. This joint endeavour will not just help in achieving the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, specifically Goal 6, but also improve public health and well-being on a global scale.

    SADC-GMI’s efforts

    SADC-GMI has made commendable efforts by implementing various projects in SADC Member States to ensure everyone has access to water and sanitation as per the United Nations Agenda 2030. These initiatives have positively impacted local communities by ensuring a continuous water supply which ultimately leads to better hygiene. Beyond hygiene, these water supply projects have also brought about improved economic benefits for the communities. Indeed, the projects are transformative, aiding communities in gaining access to dependable water supply for both domestic and economic uses.

    These projects, despite the complications posed by climate change, continue to thrive and be sustainable. This resilience greatly benefits communities, offering steady water for various needs. This ties into reaching the sanitation goals defined by the United Nations Agenda 2030.

    Yes, with the 2030 deadline of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals approaching, fast progress is needed to ensure everyone has access to basic sanitation facilities and clean water. Sanitation and drinking water are human rights, and access to these services is crucial for people’s health and the integrity of the environment. To this end, cooperation between different sectors – governments, donors, the private sector, research institutions, and civil society will be critical in facilitating this progression.

    Thokozani Dlamini is SADC-GMI Communication and Knowledge Management Specialist

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

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  • From the Field: Transforming lives in Darién jungle

    From the Field: Transforming lives in Darién jungle

    © IOM/Gema Cortés

    Migrants come ashore from the Chucunaque River after crossing the Darién jungle.

    A rising number of migrants are attempting the dangerous journey across the Darién jungle spanning the Colombia-Panama border. For Etzaida Rios, 35, the impact of providing hope and help runs deep.

    She works as a Community Officer with the International Organization for Migration (IOM) in a temporary migrant reception centre in San Vicente, one of the first points of arrival for migrants, who are often exhausted, malnourished, dehydrated, or injured.

    “People arrive with pressing needs and many questions,” she said, after attending to Zuleybis, who fractured her leg while crossing the Darién with her husband José and four children. The Venezuelan family received treatment at the centre before continuing their path north.

    “The biggest challenge is witnessing suffering and hearing heartbreaking stories,” she said. “While we see terrible things on television or read about them, it is even harder and more frustrating to see it with your eyes as it unfolds before you.”

    Read more about Ms. Rios’ story here.

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  • Fuel restrictions curtail Gaza aid efforts amid attacks on UN schools and evacuation plans for Al-Shifa Hospital

    Fuel restrictions curtail Gaza aid efforts amid attacks on UN schools and evacuation plans for Al-Shifa Hospital

    Fuel deliveries for aid operations in the enclave, home to 2.3 million Palestinians, have been largely prohibited since Hamas’ attack on Israel on 7 October left at least 1,200 dead and 240 taken hostage. This has severely hampered aid efforts and services to provide water and electricity, UN agencies said.

    Al-Shifa Hospital

    In northern Gaza, WHO led a mission to the besieged Al-Shifa Hospital, where thousands of civilians were seeking shelter alongside medical crews who were scrambling to tend to patients.

    The mission was deconflicted with the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) to ensure safe passage along the agreed route, however, this was a “high-risk operation” in an active conflict zone, with heavy fighting ongoing in close proximity to the hospital, according to WHO.

    “The team saw a hospital no longer able to function: no water, no food, no electricity, no fuel, medical supplies depleted,” WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in a post on social media. “Given this deplorable situation and the condition of many patients, including babies, health workers requested support to evacuate patients who cannot receive lifesaving care there anymore.”

    There are 25 health workers and 291 patients remaining in Al-Shifa, with several patient deaths having occurred over the previous two to three days due to the shutting down of medical services, the UN agency said. Patients include 32 babies in extremely critical condition, two people in intensive care without ventilation and 22 dialysis patients whose access to life-saving treatment has been severely compromised. The vast majority of patients are victims of war trauma, WHO said.

    WHO and partners are swiftly developing plans for the immediate evacuation of the remaining patients, staff and their families. Over the next 24 to 72 hours, pending guarantees of safe passage by parties to the conflict, additional missions are being arranged to urgently transport patients to hospitals in southern Gaza, according to WHO.

    “We continue to call for protection of health and of civilians,” the WHO chief said. “The current situation is unbearable and unjustifiable.”

    ‘Tough decisions’

    Following weeks of delays, Israeli authorities just approved only half of the daily minimum fuel requirements for humanitarian operations in Gaza, Philippe Lazzarini, who heads the UN agency for Palestine refugees (UNRWA), said in a statement.

    “Humanitarian organizations should not be forced to make tough decisions between competing lifesaving activities,” he said.

    More than 11,000 Gazans have been killed and thousands others wounded since the conflict began, according to the latest situation report by the UN humanitarian agency (OCHA). The lack of fuel has led to communications shutdowns, shuttered water stations, hospital closures and reduced aid deliveries across Gaza.

    Authorized deliveries fall short of needs

    The situation has worsened since Israel closed all borders for aid deliveries into Gaza on 7 October and, through a deal with Egypt, allowed limited shipments two weeks later through the Rafah crossing.

    On Wednesday, Israel allowed about 23,000 litres, or half a tanker truck, of fuel to be delivered to UNRWA for humanitarian purposes.

    Israel authorized 120,000 litres to be delivered on Saturday, which will only cover half of daily critical needs. UNRWA was informed that the same amount would be delivered every two days.

    Current approved fuel deliveries into Gaza are not enough, UNRWA’s chief said.

    © Bisan Ouda for UNFPA

    Families shelter inside Al Shifa hospital. (file)

    ‘Major health hazard’

    “This is far from enough to cover the needs for desalination plants, sewage pumps, hospitals, water pumps in shelters, aid trucks, ambulances, bakeries and communications networks to work without interruption,” Mr. Lazzarini said. “Fuel should not be restricted for these activities.”

    Without the full amount of fuel, he said, people will have only two thirds of their daily needs of clean drinking water.

    Without adequate fuel supplies, large parts of Gaza will continue to be flooded with sewage further increasing risks of diseases, and 70 per cent of solid waste will not be removed, posing “a major health hazard”, Mr. Lazzarini said.

    OCHA reported that “with no fuel, public sewage pumping stations, 60 water wells in the south, a desalination plant in the middle area, the two main sewage pumps in the south, and the Rafah wastewater treatment plant have all ceased operations in the past few days.”

    75 per cent of Gaza’s hospitals not functioning

    According to the World Health Organization (WHO), as of Friday, almost 75 per cent of the hospitals in Gaza – 25 out of 36 – were not functional due to lack of fuel, damage, attacks and insecurity. Eleven hospitals across the Strip are currently partially operational and admitting patients with extremely limited services.

    Fuel shortages make it impossible to deliver lifesaving aid at a time when needs are soaring, UN agencies said.

    An eight-year-old boy from Rafah City sits amid the rubble of his family's destroyed home.

    © UNICEF/Eyad El Baba

    An eight-year-old boy from Rafah City sits amid the rubble of his family’s destroyed home.

    Aid ‘cannot be conditional’

    “We are forced to handle a reduced number of aid trucks crossing daily into Rafah,” he said. “The last few days have seen a drastic reduction in these services including water availability and sewage clearance with serious consequences on people in need.”

    Calling for “adequate, regular, and unconditional delivery of fuel to maintain all our critical lifesaving activities in the Gaza Strip”, he said “humanitarian aid cannot be conditional and must not be used for political or military agendas and gains”.

    Attacks on schools

    On Saturday morning, media reports indicated fresh attacks on schools.

    Adele Khodr, the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) regional director for the Middle East and North Africa, said in a social post that the scenes of carnage and death following attacks on Al-Fakhoura and Tal Al Zaatar schools in Gaza that killed many children and women are horrific and appalling.

    “These horrible attacks should cease immediately,” she wrote. “Children, schools and shelters are not a target. Immediate ceasefire needed now!”

    Echoing that call, Mr. Lazzarini reacted to reports of attacks on UNRWA schools that were sheltering thousands of displaced people.

    “These attacks cannot become commonplace, they must stop,” he said in a social media post on X. “A humanitarian ceasefire cannot wait any longer.”

    On Friday, the UN General Assembly held a meeting on the situation in Gaza, with many delegates and heads of UN agencies calling for a humanitarian ceasefire. Last week, the Security Council found unity after a month-long deadlock, calling for urgent, extended humanitarian pauses.

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  • COP28: Climate Summit in Closed Civic Space

    COP28: Climate Summit in Closed Civic Space

    Credit: Bryan Bedder/Getty Images for Bloomberg Philanthropies
    • Opinion by Andrew Firmin (london)
    • Inter Press Service

    LONDON, Nov 17 (IPS) – The need to act on the climate crisis has never been clearer. In 2023, heat records have been shattered around the world. Seemingly every day brings news of extreme weather, imperilling lives. In July, UN Secretary-General António Guterres grimly announced that ‘the era of global boiling has arrived’.

    In short, there’s a lot at stake as the world heads into its next climate summit.

    But there’s a big problem: COP28, the latest in the annual series of conferences of parties (COP) to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, will be held in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). This is a country with closed civic space, where dissent is criminalised and activists are routinely detained. It’s also a fossil fuel power bent on continuing extraction.

    At multilateral summits where climate change decisions are made, it’s vital that civil society is able to mobilise to demand greater ambition, hold states and fossil fuel companies and financiers to account and ensure the views of people most affected by climate change are heard. But that can’t happen in conditions of closed civic space.

    Concerning signs

    In September, the UAE was added to the CIVICUS Monitor Watchlist, which highlights countries experiencing significant declines in respect for civic freedoms. Civic space in the UAE has long been closed: no dissent against the government or advocacy for human rights is allowed, and those who try to speak out risk criminalisation. In 2022, a Cybercrime Law introduced even stronger restrictions on online expression.

    There’s widespread torture in jails and detention centres and at least 58 prisoners of conscience have been held in prison despite having completed their sentences. Many of them were part of a group known as the UAE 94, jailed for the crime of calling for democracy. Among the ranks of those incarcerated is Ahmed Mansoor, sentenced to 10 years in jail in 2018 for his work documenting the human rights situation, and held in solitary confinement for over five years and counting.

    Ahead of COP28, civil society has worked to highlight the absurdity of holding such a vital summit in closed civic space conditions. Domestic civil society is unable to influence COP28 and its preparatory process, and it’s hard to see how civil society, both domestic and international, will be able to express itself freely during the summit.

    Civil society is demanding that the UAE government demonstrate that it’s prepared to respect human rights, including by releasing political prisoners – something it’s so far failed to budge on.

    An ominous sign came when the UAE hosted a climate and health summit in April. Participants were reportedly instructed not to criticise the government, corporations, individuals or Islam, and not to protest while in the UAE.

    Civic space restrictions aren’t the only indication the UAE isn’t taking COP28 seriously. The president of the summit, Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber, also happens to be head of the state’s fossil fuel corporation ADNOC, the world’s 11th-biggest oil and gas producer. It’s like putting an arms manufacturer in charge of peace talks. Multiple other ADNOC staff members have roles in the summit. ADNOC is currently talking up its investments in renewable energies, all while planning one of the biggest expansions of oil and gas extraction of any fossil fuel corporation.

    Instead of real action, all the signs are that the regime is instrumentalising its hosting of COP28 to try to launder its reputation, as indicated by its hiring of expensive international lobbying firms. An array of fake social media accounts were created to praise the UAE as host and defend it from criticism. A leaked list of key COP28 talking points prepared by the host made no mention of fossil fuels.

    A summit that should be about tackling the climate crisis – and quickly – is instead being used to greenwash the image of the host government – something easiest achieved if civil society is kept at arm’s length.

    Fossil fuel lobby to the fore

    With civil society excluded, the voices of those actively standing in the way of climate action will continue to dominate negotiations. That’s what happened at COP27, also held in the closed civic space of Egypt, where 636 fossil fuel lobbyists took part – and left happy. Like every summit before it, its final statement made no commitment to reduce oil and gas use.

    The only way to change this is to open the doors to civil society. Civil society has consistently sounded the alarm and raised public awareness of the need for climate action. It’s the source of practical solutions to cut emissions and adapt to climate impacts. It urges more ambitious commitments and more funding, including for the loss and damage caused by climate change. It defends communities against environmentally destructive impacts, resists extraction and promotes sustainability. It pressures states and the private sector to stop approving and financing further extraction and to transition more urgently to more renewable energies and more sustainable practices. These are the voices that must be heard if the cycle of runaway climate change is to be stopped.

    COPs should be held in countries that offer an enabling civic space that allows strong domestic mobilisation, and summit hosts should be expected to abide by high standards when it comes to domestic and international access and participation. That should be part of the deal hosts make in return for the global prestige that comes with hosting high-level events. Civil society’s exclusion mustn’t be allowed to happen again.

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


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  • US has Provided Over 130 Billion Dollars in Aid & Weapons to Israel – the Largest Ever

    US has Provided Over 130 Billion Dollars in Aid & Weapons to Israel – the Largest Ever

    Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II : a Fifth Generation Stealth Fighter aircraft- (Wikipedia)
    • by Thalif Deen (united nations)
    • Inter Press Service

    UNITED NATIONS, Nov 17 (IPS) – As one of America’s closest allies, Israel has remained heavily dependent on the US —politically, economically, and militarily—since its creation in 1948.

    US arms supplies, mostly provided gratis, are channeled via US Foreign Military Financing (FMF), Military Assistance Program (MAP) and Excess Defense Articles (EDA).

    According to the Congressional Research Service (CRS), the US has provided more foreign assistance to Israel since World War II than to any other country.

    The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) documented that the United States supplied 79 percent of all weapons transferred to Israel from 2018-2022.

    No one else was even close – the next closest suppliers were Germany with 20 percent and Italy with just 0.2 percent.

    A Fact Sheet released October 2023, by the US State Department’s Bureau of Political-Military Affairs, provides a detailed official breakdown on the unrestrained American security assistance to Israel.

    Steadfast support for Israel’s security has been a cornerstone of American foreign policy for every U.S. Administration since the presidency of Harry S. Truman.

    Since Israel’s founding in 1948, the State Department said, the United States has provided Israel with over $130 billion in bilateral assistance focused on addressing new and complex security threats, bridging Israel’s capability gaps through security assistance and cooperation, increasing interoperability through joint exercises, and helping Israel maintain its Qualitative Military Edge (QME).

    This assistance, says the State Department, has helped transform the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) into “one of the world’s most capable, effective militaries and turned the Israeli military industry and technology sector into one of the largest exporters of military capabilities worldwide.”

    In the current war, Israel’s overwhelming fire power has resulted in the killings of thousands of Palestinian civilians in Gaza and the destruction of entire cities—mostly with US supplied weapons.

    Dr. Natalie J. Goldring, a Visiting Professor of the Practice in the Sanford School of Public Policy at Duke University, told IPS the October 7 Hamas attacks were horrendous acts and should be condemned as such.

    “Even so, the Israeli responses to those attacks have been indiscriminate – intentionally so,” she said.

    Two days after the Hamas attacks, Israeli defense minister Yoav Gallant declared that Israel would carry out a “complete siege” of Gaza, including blocking the supply of water, food, and fuel, while also stopping the supply of electricity. And Israeli forces have done so, she pointed out.

    “The US government bears a special responsibility for the continuing Israeli attacks. It has supplied Israel with massive quantities of military aid and weaponry, and Israel has ignored US restrictions on the use of those weapons”.

    This supply of weapons and ammunition allows the Israeli military to continue its indiscriminate attacks in Gaza,” said Dr Goldring, who also represents the Acronym Institute at the United Nations, on conventional weapons and arms trade issues.

    “A key first step in reducing the human cost of this war is for the US government to call for an immediate ceasefire. The US government should also halt supplies of weapons and ammunition to Israel, whether from the US itself or from prepositioned stocks elsewhere.”

    Since 1983, the United States and Israel have met regularly via the Joint Political-Military Group (JPMG) to promote shared policies, address common threats and concerns, and identify new areas for security cooperation.

    According to the State Department, Israel is the leading global recipient of Title 22 U.S. security assistance under the Foreign Military Financing (FMF) program. This has been formalized by a 10-year (2019-2028) Memorandum of Understanding (MOU).

    Consistent with the MOU, the United States annually provides $3.3 billion in FMF and $500 million for cooperative programs for missile defense. Since FY 2009, the United States has provided Israel with $3.4 billion in funding for missile defense, including $1.3 billion for Iron Dome support starting in FY 2011.

    Through FMF, the United States provides Israel with access to some of the most advanced military equipment in the world, including the F-35 Stealth fighter aircraft.

    Israel is eligible for Cash Flow Financing and is authorized to use its annual FMF allocation to procure defense articles, services, and training through the Foreign Military Sales (FMS) system, Direct Commercial Contract agreements – which are FMF-funded Direct Commercial Sales procurements – and through Off Shore Procurement (OSP).

    Via OSP the current MOU allows Israel to spend a portion of its FMF on Israeli-origin rather than U.S.-origin defense articles. This was 25 percent in FY 2019 but is set to phase-out and decrease to zero in FY 2028.

    Elaborating further Dr Goldring said: “Unfortunately, the situation in Gaza bears similarities to the documented uses of US weapons by the Saudi-led coalition in attacks on civilians in Yemen”

    She said: “Our response should be the same in both cases. These countries have failed to honor the conditions of US weapons transfers, and should be ineligible for further transfers until they are in compliance.”

    “US arms transfer decision-making gives too much weight to the judgment of government officials and politicians who frequently fail to consider the full human costs of these transfers,” she argued.

    “Earlier this year, the Biden Administration released a new Conventional Arms Transfer policy. They claimed that arms transfers would not be approved when their analysis concluded that “it is more likely than not” that the arms transferred would be used to commit or facilitate the commission of serious violations of international humanitarian or human rights law.”

    The actions of the Israeli and Saudi militaries are examples of ways in which this standard is not being met, declared Dr Goldring.

    As of October 2023, the United States has 599 active Foreign Military Sales (FMS) cases, valued at $23.8 billion, with Israel. FMS cases notified to Congress are listed here; priority initiatives include: F-35 Joint Strike Fighter Aircraft; CH-53K Heavy Lift Helicopters; KC-46A Aerial Refueling Tankers; and precision-guided munitions.

    From FY 2018 through FY 2022, the U.S. has also authorized the permanent export of over $5.7billion in defense articles to Israel via the Direct Commercial Sales (DCS) process.

    The top categories of DCS to Israel were XIX-Toxicological Agents, including Chemical Agents, Biological Agents, and Associated Equipment (this includes detection equipment ((f)), vaccines ((g)-(h)) and modeling software ((i)); IV- Launch Vehicles, Guided Missiles, Ballistic Missiles, Rockets, Torpedoes, Bombs, and Mines; and VII- Aircraft.

    Since 1992, the United States has provided Israel with $6.6 billion worth of equipment under the Excess Defense Articles program, including weapons, spare parts, weapons, and simulators.

    U.S. European Command also maintains in Israel the U.S. War Reserve Stockpile, which can be used to boost Israeli defenses in the case of a significant military emergency.

    In addition to security assistance and arms sales, the United States participates in a variety of exchanges with Israel, including military exercises like Juniper Oak and Juniper Falcon, as well as joint research, and weapons development.

    The United States and Israel have signed multiple bilateral defense cooperation agreements, to include: a Mutual Defense Assistance Agreement (1952); a General Security of Information Agreement (1982); a Mutual Logistics Support Agreement (1991); and a Status of Forces Agreement (1994), according to the State Department.

    Since 2011, the United States has also invested more than $8 million in Conventional Weapons Destruction programs in the West Bank to improve regional and human security through the survey and clearance of undisputed minefields.

    Following years of negotiations with the Palestinians and Israelis, humanitarian mine action activities began in April 2014 – this represents the first humanitarian clearance of landmine contamination in nearly five decades.

    Israel has also been designated as a U.S. Major Non-NATO Ally under U.S. law. This status provides foreign partners with certain benefits in the areas of defense trade and security cooperation and is a powerful symbol of their close relationship with the United States.

    Thalif Deen was a former Senior Defense Analyst at Forecast International, Military Editor Middle East/Africa at Jane’s Information Group and Director, Foreign Military Markets at Defense Marketing Services.

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  • The Carnage in Gaza Cries Out for Repudiation & Opposition. Maybe Poetry Can Help.

    The Carnage in Gaza Cries Out for Repudiation & Opposition. Maybe Poetry Can Help.

    • Opinion by Norman Solomon (san francisco, usa)
    • Inter Press Service

    SAN FRANCISCO, USA, Nov 17 (IPS) – Two centuries ago, Percy Shelley wrote that “poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world.” Yet elite power has routinely vetoed their best measures. Still, the ability of poetry to inspire and nurture is precious, including when governments are on protracted killing sprees.

    In Gaza, more than 11,000 civilians have been killed since early October. Children are perishing at an average rate of 10 deaths per hour. The ongoing slaughter by Israeli forces — supported by huge military aid from the United States — follows Hamas’s atrocities on Oct. 7 in Israel, where the latest estimate of the death toll is 1,200 including at least 846 civilians in addition to some 200 hostages.

    But numbers don’t get us very far in human terms. And news accounts have limited capacities to connect with real emotions.

    That’s where poetry can go far beyond where journalism fails. A few words from a poet might chip away at the frozen blocks that support illegitimate power. And we might gain strength from the clarity that a few lines can bring.

    Stanley Kunitz wrote:

    In a murderous time
    the heart breaks and breaks
    and lives by breaking.
    It is necessary to go
    through dark and deeper dark
    and not to turn.

    “In a dark time,” Theodore Roethke wrote, “the eye begins to see.”

    Bob Dylan wrote lines that could now be heard as addressing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Biden:

    You fasten all the triggers
    For the others to fire
    Then you sit back and watch
    When the death count gets higher
    You hide in your mansion
    While the young people’s blood
    Flows out of their bodies
    And is buried in the mud

    June Jordan wrote:

    I was born a Black woman
    and now
    I am become a Palestinian
    against the relentless laughter of evil
    there is less and less living room
    and where are my loved ones?

    In the United States, far away from the carnage, viewers and listeners and readers can easily prefer not to truly see that “their” government is helping Israel to keep killing thousands upon thousands of Palestinian children and other civilians. “I call it cruel and maybe the root of all cruelty / to know what occurs but not recognize the fact,” a poem by William Stafford says.

    From Pink Floyd:Don’t accept that what’s happening
    Is just a case of others’ suffering
    Or you’ll find that you’re joining in
    The turning away
    . . . .
    Just a world that we all must share
    It’s not enough just to stand and stare
    Is it only a dream that there’ll be
    No more turning away?

    Franz Kafka wrote: “You can hold yourself back from the sufferings of the world, that is something you are free to do and it accords with your nature, but perhaps this very holding back is the one suffering you could avoid.”

    Norman Solomon is national director of RootsAction.org and executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy. He is the author of many books including War Made Easy. His latest book, War Made Invisible: How America Hides the Human Toll of Its Military Machine, was published in summer 2023 by The New Press.

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  • Gaza: ‘Endless needs’ reflect spiralling situation as hospitals shut down, WHO warns

    Gaza: ‘Endless needs’ reflect spiralling situation as hospitals shut down, WHO warns

    “What we do know is that the health system is on its knees,” said Dr. Richard Peeperkorn, World Health Organization Representative in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, in the wake of Hamas militants’ terror attack on Israel on 7 October that left 1,200 dead and the heavy bombardment of the enclave by the Israeli military in response.

    ‘Endless need’

    Speaking from Jerusalem to journalists in Geneva via Zoom, he explained that 47 out of 72 primary healthcare centres were no longer functioning and others were only partially functioning. Close to 75 per cent of hospitals (35 to 36) were no longer operational. “So there’s clearly not enough support for this endless need,” he said.

    The development comes after the UN agency for Palestine refugees, UNRWA, reported a communications blackout in Gaza on Thursday as telecoms firms ran out of fuel to run their generators. The shutdown threatened to disrupt the coordination of humanitarian aid convoys on Friday, the UN agency said.

    Rescue teams halted

    Dr.Peeperkorn said that before the conflict erupted, Gazans had access to some 3,500 hospital beds. Today, only an estimated 1,400 are available, although the actual requirement is likely closer to 5,000. He added that in Gaza City, meanwhile, “active ground operations” “along with the lack of fuel, had halted the movement of rescue teams and ambulances in many areas”.

    In its latest update on Thursday evening, the UN aid coordination office OCHA reported the previous24 hours had seen “heavy airstrikes, shelling and fighting”.

    The bulletin detailed an airstrike on 15 November at about 6pm “during the evening prayer time (in) the vicinity of the Ihya’ As Sunna Mosque in As Sabra neighbourhood” of Gaza City “reportedly killing 50 people and injuring others”.

    The OCHA bulletin also updated information about Israeli troops and tanks that have been continuing their raid on the vast Al-Shifa hospital compound, reportedly taking control of several sections.

    Citing the hospital’s director, the UN agency said that the southern section of the compound had been damaged “including the radiology department, and the forces took several corpses from within the hospital”.

    Some 807,000 Palestinians remain in the north of the enclave, which represents about two-thirds of the population there before the latest escalation, according to OCHA. The other third of the population, about 400,000, have been likely displaced to the south.

    “Hundreds of thousands” of those left in the north now shelter in public facilities, including schools, hospitals and with host families.

    Soaring needs

    As health needs soar, Dr.Peeperkorn said that a lack of fuel, water, food and medical supplies has made it harder for the hospitals and health facilities still “partially operational” to help them.

    “WHO is extremely concerned about the spread of diseases as the rainy season and winter arrive. Overcrowding in shelters and the overall lack of water and sanitation across Gaza could increase the risk of transmission,” he said.

    Citing data from the Gazan Ministry of Health, UNRWA and WHO, he added that there had been 71,224 recorded cases of acute respiratory infections, 44,202 cases of diarrhoea (22,554 in children under five), 808 cases of chickenpox, and more than 14,195 skin rashes, 10,952 cases of scabies and lice.

    Weaponizing water

    In a related development, a UN-appointed independent rights expert on Friday urged Israel to stop using water as a weapon of war.

    Clean water and fuel needs to be allowed into Gaza to activate the water supply network and desalination plants in the besieged enclave “before it is too late”, said Pedro Arrojo-Agudo, UN Special Rapporteur on the human rights to safe drinking water and sanitation.

    “Every hour that passes with Israel preventing the provision of safe drinking water in the Gaza strip, in brazen breach of international law, puts Gazans at risk of dying of thirst and diseases related to the lack of safe drinking water,” he said.

    Special Rapporteurs and other independent experts are appointed by the Human Rights Council and are neither UN staff nor paid for their work. They are independent of any government or organisation.

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  • Argentines Get Used to the Fact that Inflation Can Always Get Worse

    Argentines Get Used to the Fact that Inflation Can Always Get Worse

    José Lonardi stands in his tiny candy and beverage shop in downtown Buenos Aires. Customers, he says, have lost all reference points for the price of products in Argentina and so nothing surprises them anymore. CREDIT: Daniel Gutman / IPS
    • by Daniel Gutman (buenos aires)
    • Inter Press Service

    BUENOS AIRES, Nov 16 (IPS) – People in Argentina have become accustomed to the fact that nothing costs the same today as it did the week before and they take price hikes in stride with resignation, says Mariano Cohen. “Almost nobody gets angry or complains anymore. They just don’t buy something if they can’t afford it,” he explains in his disposable goods store in Villa Crespo, one of Buenos Aires’ most commercial neighborhoods.

    Mariano sells plastic cups, plates and bowls, cardboard packaging rolls and aluminum containers. He serves bars, restaurants and the public. He has a large sales room, about 80 square meters, and a mezzanine of the same size, which he uses as a warehouse and is a great asset for a merchant who sells non-perishable products.

    The business owner tells IPS that he buys and stocks as much merchandise as he can, to anticipate price hikes.

    “If I don’t have more, it’s because there’s no more coming in or because they don’t want to sell me large quantities. The other day a supplier suspended a very important delivery from one minute to the next and gave me back the money I had already paid him,” he comments, with the same gesture of resignation that, he says, his customers make when faced with the prices in his store.

    The economy of this South American country, with a long history of imbalances and inflation, has entered a spiral of permanent price increases that has already squelched the capacity for amazement of its 46 million inhabitants.

    In Argentina, the absurd has been normal for some time: here you can buy a pair of shoes in six installments without interest, with financing subsidized by the government or even by private banks, but to buy a house you must pay in cash, because mortgages are almost non-existent. Today, price rises are so common that people are surprised the few times that a price is the same from one week to the next.

    In 2021, there was concern when inflation climbed to 50 percent per year, partly attributed to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, which forced an increase in currency issuance to meet social assistance needs. However, people soon became nostalgic for this figure: in 2022 the index climbed to 95 percent, the highest since 1991.

    Even so, the economy of this nation – where more than 40 percent of the population is poor and practically no private sector employment has been created for the last 12 years – seems to be determined to prove that it can always get worse.

    This year inflation climbed again, to an accumulative 103 percent in the first nine months alone, reaching 138 percent in the interannual index (from September 2022 to September 2023), according to official data. Projections indicate that 2023 will end with an increase in consumer prices of around 150 percent.

    An employee uses a machine to count banknotes in a store in Patagonia in southern Argentina. The constant increase in prices has meant that many products must be paid for with dozens of bills of the devalued Argentine peso and has forced stores to buy counting machines to save time. CREDIT: Daniel Gutman / IPS
    An employee uses a machine to count banknotes in a store in Patagonia in southern Argentina. The constant increase in prices has meant that many products must be paid for with dozens of bills of the devalued Argentine peso and has forced stores to buy counting machines to save time. CREDIT: Daniel Gutman / IPS

    Emerging and drowning again

    “I feel that the day I get paid my salary is the best day of the month, but also the worst,” Ariel Machado tells IPS, laughing bitterly.

    “I’m happy when I get paid, but when I set aside the money for fixed expenses and calculate how much I’ll have left, I feel like I’m drowning again,” says Ariel, who has a son and is separated from his wife, and who is employed by a well-known public relations agency in Buenos Aires and also sells selected wines over the Internet to supplement his income.

    A typical member of the strong middle class of Buenos Aires, used to going on vacation to the beaches of Brazil and dining in restaurants a couple of times a week, Ariel says that those things are now just memories and that today he sometimes feels like he’s spinning “on a wheel of unhappiness, because of the amount of things I want to do and can’t.”

    He tries to forget about it, but doesn’t succeed. “Worrying about money consumes a lot of energy. Three years ago I couldn’t save either, but this didn’t happen to me. Now there are days when even having a cup of coffee outside the office seems like a wasteful luxury,” he says.

    By his own admission, Ariel is not even remotely among the most vulnerable segments of the population, who spend practically all their income on food, prices of which have been rising more than average.

    Latin America’s third largest economy is immersed in a process of stagnation and deterioration that began in 2012 and caused the governing parties to lose the last two presidential elections, in 2015 and 2019.

    On Sunday Nov. 19, the next president will be chosen in a runoff election in which the ruling party’s centrist candidate Sergio Massa will compete against the far-right opposition candidate Javier Milei.

    Only the extravagant proposals of Milei, who calls for the free carrying of arms and the creation of a market for the sale of organs, in addition to immediate dollarization and the elimination of the local peso from the Central Bank, have made Massa, who since 2022 is the Minister of Economy, competitive.

    Elections always generate even more instability in the economy and situations that are difficult for visitors to understand.

    Those who can afford to do so stock up on items in anticipation of what will happen to prices and consumption after the elections.

    Thus, September, the month prior to the first round of elections, showed a strong increase in consumption in supermarkets (eight percent above the previous month, according to private sector data), comparable only to March 2020, when the pandemic confinement began.

    In any case, the impact of inflation on the poorest is especially visible in the outskirts of the capital. Greater Buenos Aires is home to 15.5 million people, or one third of Argentina’s population, where more and more people sleep on the streets or wander around in search of something to eat.

    The poor suffer from a decline that is measured not only in terms of income but also with respect to access to basic services and to environmental conditions.

    A paper published in October by the Argentine Catholic University’s (UCA) well-respected Observatory of Social Debt found that since 2018 a process of reduction of the inequality gap began in Greater Buenos Aires, but due to the worsening living conditions of the middle class rather than to improvements in households in the most impoverished neighborhoods.

    Members of these vulnerable sectors of Buenos Aires told IPS that the escalation of inflation is more a problem of the middle class people living in the city, who have to lower their standard of living and who are becoming poorer, while in their case “we were and are so bad off that a jump in inflation of 100 to 150 percent does not change anything for us.”

    In addition, part of the poorest population of Buenos Aires and its outlying areas receives social assistance from the central or city governments, or from non-governmental organizations.

    A supermarket in Buenos Aires displays a sign from the "Fair Prices" program, which consists of an agreement between the Argentine government and companies to curb the prices of basic products. People frequently complain that the products are often not available, due to the reluctance of the companies to comply with this commitment. CREDIT: Daniel Gutman / IPS
    A supermarket in Buenos Aires displays a sign from the “Fair Prices” program, which consists of an agreement between the Argentine government and companies to curb the prices of basic products. People frequently complain that the products are often not available, due to the reluctance of the companies to comply with this commitment. CREDIT: Daniel Gutman / IPS

    No reference point

    José Lonardi owns a tiny shop selling candy, beverages and cigarettes on Paraguay Street, a few blocks from the Obelisk, an icon of downtown Buenos Aires. The prices of the merchandise, he tells IPS, increase almost every week, sometimes by three to five percent, and sometimes by 20 to 30 percent.

    “Two or three years ago, customers still complained when prices went up, because they had some point of reference. Today, inflation has picked up so fast that nobody knows how much things are worth and nobody says anything anymore,” he remarks.

    Against this backdrop, contradictory advice is rampant. The value of pesos is melting like ice cream under the sun and people want to get rid of them. On afternoon TV programs, a steady parade of economists advise people to buy large quantities of toilet paper to beat inflation.

    Many people, however, do not pay attention to them: in different neighborhoods of Buenos Aires restaurants are always full, even on weekdays. “In the Argentine economy nobody knows what might happen next week. So pesos are burning holes in people’s pockets, and people, as long as they have them, spend them,” says José.

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  • Good for Girls and Good for the Planet: Eco-Friendly Sanitary Towels

    Good for Girls and Good for the Planet: Eco-Friendly Sanitary Towels

    Stephany Musombi and engineers preparing the banana stems for processing at KIRDI. Credit: Wilson Odhiambo/IPS
    • by Wilson Odhiambo (nairobi)
    • Inter Press Service

    NAIROBI, Nov 16 (IPS) – ’Going Green’ seems to Dr Jacquline Kisato’s favorite catchphrase as she passionately explains her eco-friendly sanitary towel, a product she expects will help empower women and young girls while also putting money into farmers’ pockets.

    Kisato is a lecturer at the Kenyatta University (KU), Fashion Design and Marketing, currently working on a project to develop affordable and eco-friendly sanitary towels while also finding a solution for sustainable packaging materials.

    Kisato’s venture started out to help communities get a source of employment through the commercialization of banana stems – products that were considered useless by farmers and would usually be left to rot away on farms.

    After the Kenyan government enforced a ban on the use of plastic bags in 2018, there was a need to find immediate alternatives.

    Plastic bags were a necessity for grocers and fast-food vendors, an item that made it easy for customers to carry their goods home. Despite their advantage, however, their negative impact on the environment could no longer be overlooked.

    ‘’I started looking at this project from an entrepreneurship point of view on how I could commercialize banana stem fibers. The government had just banned single-use plastic bags, and market vendors needed alternatives to serve their customers,’’ Kisato told IPS.

    ‘’Poorly disposed sanitary towels also formed part of the pollution problem since they were composed of plastic,’’ she added.

    According to Kisato, however, her need to empower women and young girls through affordable sanitary towels was something that she always had in mind after noticing the struggles that school-going girls went through.

    ‘’While walking along the hallways one day, a student on campus stopped me and asked if I could help her with a packet of sanitary pads. This incident shocked me as for a long time, I had assumed ‘period poverty’ was only experienced amongst high school children,’’ Kisato said.

    Kisato and her research team interviewed 400 high school girls from Gatundi, Kibera, and Kawangware, where they found out that more than 50 percent of the girls in these low-income areas could hardly afford sanitary pads even when at home.

    This did not sit well with the don as she felt something needed to be done about it.

    It was while researching alternatives to plastic bags that she realized that she could solve two problems at the same time.

    Kisato, therefore, applied for the National Research Fund (NRF) in 2018 with the aim of developing eco-friendly plastic bags and sanitary towels. Her wish came through when NRF granted Kenyatta University Ksh.9 million (about US $ 61,623) in 2020, with her taking the lead as the principal investigator in the project.

    Her team is made up of scholars from different departments and institutions and also includes Ph.D. and master’s students, with each one of them playing a major role in seeing the project through.

    ‘’I lead a team of engineers from the Kenya Industrial Research and Development Institute (KIRDI), whose task is to reverse engineer machines that can extract fiber from banana stems and use them to create eco-friendly packaging and sanitary towels,’’ she explained. “I also have researchers from Moi University whose work was to turn the extracted fiber into soft materials for use.”

    Kisato’s aim was to produce quality sanitary towels that could compete with what was already in the market while still being eco-friendly, a fact that led her to seek the expertise of Edwin Madivoli, a chemistry lecturer at the Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology (JKUAT).

    According to Kisato, the towels on the market have a component in them called hydrogel, which enables them to retain fluids for longer, and were also lined with plastic sheets to prevent any leakage. Our intention is to replicate the same but use bioplastic materials, which can degrade as opposed to the normal plastic that is being used.

    From her research, Kisato also discovered that Africans, on average, wore sanitary towels for longer as compared to women and girls from developed countries and were thus at risk of getting bacterial infections. This was due to limited access and affordability in Africa.

    ‘’The recommended period for one to have on a sanitary pad is about three hours, which means that it should be changed at least three times a day to avoid any risk of infections. This is, however, not the case for many girls in Africa due to poverty,’’ Kisato explained to IPS.

    ‘’We thought adding anti-microbial properties to our product would therefore make it as good or even better than what was in the market,’’ said Kisato.

    The research team also found out that there were a lot of myths surrounding menstrual flow among young girls, a fact that led to a lot of stigmatization, which made it difficult for them to understand how to use sanitary towels properly.

    Some of the notable ideas that girls told each other concerning menstrual flow included:

    1. It is a curse from God
    2. Girls who had periods were considered dirty and impure
    3. Their faces would become pale from losing blood

    ‘’These are beliefs that need to be done away with by encouraging parents and the government to speak about monthly periods with young girls openly,’’ Kisato said.

    For the second phase of the project, Madivoli’s chemistry expertise came in handy, and the Research Scholarship and Innovation Fund (RSIF) was happy to add an additional Ksh.9 million (about USD 59,000) for Kisato to continue what she had started.

    ‘’My role is to ensure our sanitary pads are of the same quality as what is in the market while at the same time maintaining an eco-friendly nature, which is the main agenda of this whole project,’’ Madivoli told IPS.

    ‘’I am tasked with the development of hydrogels, production of bioplastics, and finding a way to incorporate anti-microbial properties into our products to protect the users from possible infections,’’ he said.

    JKUAT received funding of Ksh.800,000 (about US $ 5477) from the Kenya National Innovation Agency (KENIA) to further help Madivoli with this research.

    “As they are left to dry up on the farms, banana stems are known to produce large amounts of methane, which is a harmful greenhouse gas that contributes to the climate change problems that we are trying to tackle, added Madivoli. ‘”Having an alternative use for the stems therefore limits the greenhouse effect in the atmosphere.’’

    Madivoli said that most banana farmers usually do not know what to do with the stems once they have done their harvest, and this project gives them a way to earn some extra income as they expect to buy the stems from them at Ksh.35 per stem.

    “This project will not only be environmentally friendly but will also create jobs for the people who go to cut the stems from the farms while also finding use for the biomass that the farmers thought was useless,’’ he concluded.

    Once it is up and running, they expect to source banana stems from counties such as Kisii, Muranga, Embu, Meru, and parts of western Kenya.

    Stephany Musombi is one of Kisato’s students specializing in textiles whose task in the project is to come up with quality packaging materials.

    ‘’Apart from the banana fiber, I am also experimenting with other biomass such as pineapple and seaweed,’’ Musombi told IPS. If I can find a way to make this work, the project will open up a market for seaweed and pineapple biomass.

    Kisato’s project could not have picked a better time there is an international joint push for green solutions to help mitigate climate change. On September 4, 2023, Kenya also played host to the climate summit that attracted leaders from across Africa.

    Kenya’s president, William Ruto, drove himself in a tiny electric car to the Kenyatta International Convention Centre (KICC), where he challenged the African leaders and innovators to find sustainable solutions to their daily activities that can help them reduce the carbon print in the continent and globally.

    ‘’Africa can power all energy needs with renewable resources. The continent has enough potential to be entirely self-sufficient using wind, solar, geothermal, sustainable biomass, and hydropower energy. Africa can be a green industrial hub that helps other regions achieve their net zero strategies by 2050,’’ Ruto said at the summit.

    Kisato expects her product to hit the market later this year, where she plans to make it more affordable for all. Her intention is to team up with startups or established companies that deal with toiletries.

    ‘’The cheapest sanitary packet in the market costs Ksh.140. We expect ours to go as low as Ksh.100, Kisato,’’ concluded.

    Kenyatta University’s Vice Chancellor, Paul Wainaina, lauded the project, stating that it will enable the country to meet its industrial needs while conserving the environment.

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  • A Bigger and More Relevant Role for Youth Within the UN System – Part II

    A Bigger and More Relevant Role for Youth Within the UN System – Part II

    According to the UN, the world today is home to 1.9 billion young people, most of whom live in developing countries. Young people today continue to be disproportionately impacted by the multifaceted crises facing our world, ranging from COVID-19 to the climate crisis. Around the world, young people are taking ownership and initiating ideas and innovations to help achieve the 2030 Agenda and accelerate COVID-19 recovery efforts. Credit: United Nations
    • Opinion by Simone Galimberti (kathmandu, nepal)
    • Inter Press Service

    So far, initiatives have been fragmented with each agency and programs doing a bit on its own, mostly through symbolic and tokenistic ways.

    Dr. Felipe Paullier of Uruguay, the recently appointed first Assistant Secretary-General for Youth Affairs, instead, has an opportunity to significantly change this current situation.

    He could start from reviewing the role and functions of some existing mechanisms, proposing ways to strengthen them, bringing coherence, stopping overlapping and inefficiencies, revamping the way the UN works and making it more youth-centric as one of his major goals.

    Then, there is another area where the Assistant Secretary-General can make a difference: ensure that youths have a role and voice on the table when we talk about localizing the SDGs.

    This is a domain that could truly bring transformative changes in the way governments, at local and central level, works. Potentially this is where youths can take a role in how decisions are made.

    The ECOSOC Youth Forum

    Reflecting on the role and functions of the Economic and Social Council Youth Forum could help this brainstorming.

    One key question that must be addressed relates to the links between a future Townhall mechanism and the reinforcement and strengthening of the Forum. The potential of the Forum is also highlighted in the Policy Brief and surely there is wide scope to strengthen it.

    Certainly, the Forum could definitely be made more fit for its purpose as it only meets for few days every year and is just a consultation exercise without real power. Can it be turned into something truly permanent, a sort of parliament of youths with his own secretariat?

    Besides trying to reform the UN governance system and making it more youth centric, Mr. Paullier should focus on effective mainstreaming of meaningful youth engagement and youth centered activities throughout each UN entity.

    That’s why it is really indispensable assessing what each agency, program and department of the UN have been doing with and for youth.

    What about IANYD?

    On this part, a conundrum will be deciding on what to do with United Nations Inter-Agency Network on Youth Development (IANYD) that supposedly facilitates youth centered cooperation on youths.

    Does it make sense to maintain this mechanism? How effective has been so far? Which major outcomes were brought and joint initiatives forged and facilitated by the IANYD?

    Dr Paullier could initiate some consultation on the future the Network, possibly through an open process that would engage youths based civil society across the world. At minimum, the UN Youth Office should be leading this group that could be turned into a forum and knowledge creator on all matters related to young people.

    It will also be interesting how he will work with The Major Group for Children and Youth or MGCY. This is a mechanism that supposedly acts as “a bridge between young people and the UN system”.

    It has an extremely complex governance that lacks visibility and its levels of openness and inclusiveness should be analyzed. Related to this, Dr. Paullier should engage Children and Youth International, the legal entity behind the MGCY, towards a possible process of reform and organizational development.

    A Global Board of Advisors that trickles down

    I have no doubt that the new Assistant Secretary-General will prioritize the creation of a global board of advisors. This is a great idea but such mechanism should have linkages or spilled over effects and real implications on the ways the UN works with youths locally around the world.

    The focus should be especially on how youths can interact and engage with the Resident Coordinators and all agencies and programs at country level.

    The bottom line is that the value of any future work of the UN Youth Office is going to be judged in terms of how much transformational is going to be in changing the working paradigms of the UN around the world.

    The new UN Youth Office can make the UN at local level more inclusive, open, accessible by enabling youths to have a role to play locally. That’s why it is going to be paramount to closely engage the offices of UN Resident Coordinators that should be asked to better share their best practices and new ideas and proposals to have local youths’ voice heard and visible.

    Multilevel governance and localizing the SDGs

    Ultimately the agenda of localizing the SDGs could be the gamechanger for meaningful youth participation. It offers the best pathway to ensure real youth engagement all over the world.

    As far now the process of localizing the SDGS greatly highlighted the role of local governments, from cities to regional administrations.

    There is no doubt that cities and regional bodies must have a much stronger saying, a voice on the table when discussions on implementing the goals happen. It is also unquestionable that having a saying also implies much more resources.

    Yet, truly and effective localization won’t happen only with more budget allocation from the central governments and a better recognition of local governments.

    That’s why all the talks about “multilevel” governance that has been proposed, though still in vague terms, require a clear blueprint on how youths must be enabled to be part of the policy formulation process.

    Involving them in the NVRs and LVRs, the former used by central government and the latter by local governments, including municipalities, to report on their progress towards the SDGs is not enough.

    These two reporting mechanisms should become planning exercise to whom youths have not only easy access to but they are welcome to participate in. That’s why we need to make the discussions on multilevel governance tangible and concrete.

    Clear proposals, in collaborations with United Cities and Local Governments or UCLG and the Global Taskforce of Local and Regional Governments, must be tabled on forecasting how such multilevel governance can unfold in practice by involving and engaging youths.

    It is really about re-imagining the way local governments work and youth should not only be part of the discussions. This is also one of the recommendations of the latest progress report on implementing the UN Youth Strategy that was published over the summer.

    Any new template to make cities and local governments more effective and efficient policy making engines, must necessarily involve the citizens. It could start from finding new venues to bring on board the youth.

    The fact that, the Mayor of Montevideo, Carolina Cosse has tons of influence in the UCLG (after all, she is its outgoing President) could help, considering that Dr. Paullier had several high-level positions in the government of the capital of Uruguay.

    Conclusions

    There is no doubt that there is a lot on the plate of Dr. Paullier. Not all the proposals made in this piece can be made easily actionable.

    Mr. Guterres and the Ms. Amina J. Mohammed, the Deputy Secretary General, should become his most important allies. It will take time to build alliances but, one year from now, there will a unique opportunity: the Summit of the Future.

    There it is where the new Assistant Secretary-General will have to make his case for truly radical reforms to meaningfully engage and involve youths. This should happen, not only within the UN level and other international institutions like multilateral banks but also within local and national governments.

    Re-booting the governance systems around the world, making youth centric, is going to be one of the most consequential challenges we must tackle. That’s why the work of Dr. Paullier and his office could really be transformational.

    This is the second and final piece on a series of op-ed essays focused on the recent appointment of Dr. Felipe Paullier of Uruguay as the first Assistant Secretary-General for Youth Affairs. The series offers some ideas and advice on how this new position within the UN System can truly be transformative.

    Simone Galimberti, based in Kathmandu, is the Co-Founder of ENGAGE and The Good Leadership. He writes about reforming the UN, the role of youth, volunteerism, regional integration and human rights in the Asia Pacific region.

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  • Forced Labor: Exposing Dark Web of Fisheries Labour Abuses

    Forced Labor: Exposing Dark Web of Fisheries Labour Abuses

    The Indonesian Migrant Workers Union (SBMI), with Greenpeace, Indonesia, conducted a peaceful action in front of the Presidential Palace in Jakarta to encourage the President to immediately ratify the Government Regulation draft on the Protection of Indonesian migrant fishers. Credit: Adhi Wicaksono / Greenpeace
    • by Joyce Chimbi (nairobi)
    • Inter Press Service

    NAIROBI, Nov 15 (IPS) – It is a terrifying life experience, cut off from the world and trapped in forced labour aboard fishing vessels, often in high seas or seas beyond the territorial waters of any state. The fishers are isolated under hazardous and horrific working conditions under limited regulatory oversight. More than 128,000 fishers were trapped in forced labour aboard fishing vessels in 2021 alone.

    A new report by the Financial Transparency Coalition – a group of 11 NGOs from across the world, including Transparency International and Tax Justice Network has taken a deep dive into distant waters, exposing a web of ruthless players behind fisheries labour abuses in total disregard of labour and human rights. One in four fishing vessels accused of forced labour is owned by European companies, a quarter of them flagged to China, while one-fifth carried flags of convenience with lax controls, financial secrecy, and low or non-existent taxes.

    “Forced labor aboard commercial fishing vessels is a human rights crisis, affecting more than 100,000 fishers every year, leading to horrific abuses and even deaths among fishers who mainly come from global South regions like south-east Asia and Africa. Yet those owning these vessels mostly hide behind complex, cross-jurisdictional corporate structures ranging from shell companies to opaque joint ventures,” says Matti Kohonen, executive director of the Financial Transparency Coalition.

    Titled Dark webs: uncovering those behind forced labour on fishing fleets – the report is the most extensive analysis of forced labour abuses in commercial fishing vessels to date. It found companies from just five countries – China, Taiwan, Thailand, South Korea, and Spain – own almost two-thirds of accused vessels for which legal ownership data is available.

    An estimated 22.5 percent of industrial and semi-industrial fishing vessels accused of forced labour were owned by European companies, topped by Spain, Russia, and UK firms. The report warns that beneficial ownership information is rarely if ever, requested by most countries when registering vessels or requesting fishing licenses, meaning that those ultimately responsible for the abuses are not detected and punished.

    “Forced abuse in commercial fishing vessels is widespread and is often linked to other violations such as illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing, which generates more than USD 11.4 billion a year in illicit financial flows from Africa alone every year. Yet financial secrecy still surrounds the fishing sector, and there’s little political will to improve financial transparency that’s needed to target those ultimately responsible for these crimes,” says Alfonso Daniels, the lead author of the report.

    The report’s highlights include revelations that more than 40 percent of commercial vessels accused of forced labour operated in Asia, followed by Africa with 21 percent, 14 percent in Europe and 11 percent in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC). Additionally, 475 commercial vessels accused of being involved in labour and human rights violations between January 2010 and May 2023 were identified. The geographical location of these vessels where they operated was identified for 63 percent of the cases, totalling 298 vessels.

    Of these, 42.28 percent or 128 vessels for which location data for the offences is available, were found in Asia, followed by Africa with 63 vessels or 21.14 percent of the total, and Europe has 13.76 percent of the total or 41 vessels. LAC has 11.07 percent or 33 vessels, and Oceania has 7.72 percent or 23 vessels, with additional vessels identified in other regions such as the United States.

    Overall, the top 10 companies own one in nine vessels accused of forced labour. Of these, seven are from China – some partly owned by the Chinese government, two from South Korea and one from Russia. Indonesia emerged as the global hotspot for forced labour cases, with nearly one-fourth of detected vessels operating in its waters. In addition, 45 percent of accused vessels operated or were detected in just five countries: Indonesia, Ireland, Uruguay, Somalia, and Thailand.

    “Forced labour is a serious concern for fishers around the world who frequently suffer abuse and exploitation. European companies and consumers aren’t immune from this, as global seafood supply chains being long and opaque. We call on all companies to conduct proper and meaningful human rights due diligence. The EU Commission current proposal to ban products of forced labour from entering the European market also needs to be urgently approved and put into practice,” says Rossen Karavatchev, Fisheries Coordinator of the International Transport Workers’ Federation (ITF), which supported this report.

    Against this backdrop, the Financial Transparency Coalition calls for five key measures to protect fishers and enhance transparency in the sector, including an urgent need to improve publicly available vessel information. Stressing that, before awarding a fishing license or authorisation, flag and coastal States should require information on the managers, operators and beneficial owners of the vessel. In addition, unified and publicly available lists of vessels accused of forced labour and IUU fishing should be created.

    Further highlighting the need to “create publicly accessible beneficial ownership registries: Unless there is publicly available beneficial ownership information, states will only end up sanctioning or fining the vessel’s captain, crew or the vessel itself, without being able to pursue the legal and beneficial owners who are profiting from these crimes.”

    Additionally, identify forced labour and IUU fishing as predicate offences for money laundering purposes and that fisheries-related crimes should also be considered “predicate offences” for money laundering as it is an illegal activity that generates proceeds of crime that are then laundered and therefore treated as illicit financial flows.

    Importantly, the Coalition emphasizes that States should ratify key international fisheries treaties and conventions to prevent forced labour and IUU fishing. This includes the International Labor Organization (ILO) Work in Fishing Convention of 2007, whose objective is to ensure that fishers have decent conditions of work on board fishing vessels and has only been ratified by 21 countries, and the Cape Town Agreement of 2012.

    Further calling for the expansion of extractive industry reporting to include fisheries so that fisheries are included as an extractive industry in key initiatives, including the Extractives Industry Transparency Initiative (EITI) and other global as well as regional initiatives concerning regulation and transparency of extractive industries.

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  • Deaths in the Israel-Hamas Conflict

    Deaths in the Israel-Hamas Conflict

    Source: Reported estimates from various sources with links provided in text.
    • Opinion by Joseph Chamie (portland, usa)
    • Inter Press Service

    PORTLAND, USA, Nov 14 (IPS) – Tragically, the numbers of deaths of men, women and children in Israel and the Gaza Strip have surged to unprecedented levels following the Hamas attack on Israel on 7 October 2023.

    After more than a month of fighting, the reported numbers of deaths are evolving and being constantly revised and updated as the war has continued.

    The estimated numbers of deaths between 7 October and 13 November provide a preliminary assessment of the extent of the death toll for Israelis and Palestinians in the Gaza Strip as well as for others (Table 1).

    Source: Reported estimates from various sources with links provided in text.

    According to the Israeli officials, the revised number of Israeli deaths – with about 70 percent of them having been identified as civilians – resulting from the Hamas attack in southern Israel is estimated at approximately 1,200.

    Those killed in Israel on 7 October also include some foreigners and dual nationals. At least 31 U.S. citizens, 39 French citizens and 34 Thai citizens were killed during the attacks, according to authorities in those countries. The Israeli military has also reported that 1,500 Hamas fighters were killed during the 7 October attack.

    On the 7 October attack, Israeli authorities have reported that more than 240 individuals from more than 40 countries, including young children and the elderly, were taken hostage and believed to be held by Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups in Gaza.

    An estimated 20 hostages are reported to have subsequently died as a result of the conflict. In addition to those estimated deaths, at least 46 Israeli soldiers are reported to have been killed in combat since the ground invasion began.

    With a total population of approximately 9.8 million, the Israeli death rate resulting from the current Israel-Hamas conflict is approximately 13 deaths per 100,000 population.

    In response to the 7 October Hamas attack, the death toll in the Gaza Strip from Israeli military operations is estimated as of 13 November at 11,240 Palestinians with an estimated 4,630 being children, according to health officials in Gaza.

    However, the number of deaths in the Gaza Strip could even be higher than being cited, given its dense confines and with approximately 2,700 people reported missing.

    With an estimated total population of 2.2 million in the Gaza Strip, the Palestinian death rate for the population of Gaza due to the Israeli-Hamas conflict is approximately 510 deaths per 100,000 population.

    Besides the Israeli and Palestinian deaths in Israel and Gaza since 7 October, others have been killed. Nearly 200 Palestinians in the West Bank are reported to have been killed amid an increase in Israeli military raids and incursions.

    Also, 101 employees of the United Nations have been killed since the Israeli-Hamas war began, according to the United Nations Palestinian refugee agency (UNRWA). The agency stressed that it is the deadliest conflict ever for the United Nations in such a short period of time.

    In addition, at least 42 journalists and media workers reporting on the conflict have been killed.

    The various estimated numbers of deaths resulting from the Israel-Hamas conflict that are presented above continue to be revised and updated. After the current Israel-Hamas hostilities have concluded, a comprehensive assessment will be necessary to provide a more accurate and detailed picture of those who have died as a result of the conflict.

    Tragically, the death toll resulting from the Israel-Hamas conflict is already too high. As some have remarked, far too many have been killed and far too many have suffered from this current round of fighting. Also importantly, as many around the world are urging, the time for Israelis and Palestinians to negotiate “???????“ ,“????”, or a “peace” solution is now.

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

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  • New Robotic-Assisted Surgery Offers Inspiring Hope for Rwanda

    New Robotic-Assisted Surgery Offers Inspiring Hope for Rwanda

    An artist’s impression of the completed Centre of Excellence in Kigali. The center supported by IRCAD is expected to assist with the training of surgeons throughout the continent with minimally invasive surgery training. Credit: Supplied
    • by Aimable Twahirwa (kigali)
    • Inter Press Service

    KIGALI, Nov 13 (IPS) – In a newly established Centre of Excellence located in Masaka, a suburb of the Rwandan capital city, Kigali, an expanded lab, complete with innovative facilities and specialized instruments, is now giving surgeons a conducive environment to simulate how to perform minimally invasive surgeries.

    French-based Institute for Research into Cancer of the Digestive System (IRCAD) played a major part in this initiative, the first ever on the African continent.

    According to medical experts, in comparison to traditional open surgery, often requiring the patient to incur invasive large incisions, minimally invasive surgery procedures allow doctors to insert a camera through a small incision, or sometimes no incision at all.

    Dr Alexandre Hostettler, head of the Surgical Data Science Team at IRCAD, pointed out that harnessing robotic and artificial intelligence is critical to enhance the capability of surgical treatment in Africa.

    Robot-assisted minimally invasive surgery denotes the surgical technique where the robot-applied laparoscopic tools are remotely controlled by a human operator at a console.

    “Performing surgeries using robotic assistance can be more comfortable for surgeons, as they can sit at a console rather than standing for extended periods, reducing physical strain,” he told IPS.

    The center also aims to train medical doctors from across Africa about how to perform surgery using very small incisions, allowing the introduction of an endoscope connected to a camera with a magnified image leading to a very precise dissection of the operated organs.

    Prof Jacques Marescaux, President and Founder of IRCAD, is convinced that the new center represents a turning point in surgical education and practice in Rwanda and sub-Saharan Africa. “The center is a catalyst for all African surgeons and computer scientists,” he said in an exclusive interview with IPS.

    At the same time, Rwanda is striving to build an integrated medical service system that provides high-quality services and is efficient in medical facility management. Rwandan President Paul Kagame believes the key task is to keep investing significantly in public health infrastructure.

    “The Centre of Excellence is not serving Rwanda alone. It is serving Africa. It is also improving and taking beyond the talent we have in Africa to a much higher level,” Kagame said at the inauguration of the new facility, for which operations and running costs will be fully funded by the Government of Rwanda and IRCAD France.

    Some medical experts observe that despite its numerous advantages over traditional surgery, especially the shorter hospital stay and less blood loss with lower overall costs, the new robotic surgery is not widespread in low- and middle-income countries, especially in Sub-Saharan Africa.

    In addition, some researchers argue that computer-assisted navigation and robotics are sometimes challenging to use by perioperative nurses when caring for patients undergoing these procedures.

    Dr Christine Mutegaraba, a surgeon from one of the private clinics in Kigali, told IPS that providing appropriate training remains critical for specialized medical practitioners to rely on these robotic surgery systems.

    “Huge investment is also needed to ensure that clinics and other specialized referral hospitals are equipped with devices needed to perform these kind of surgical techniques,” Mutegaraba said.

    According to the data from Rwanda’s Ministry of Health, laparoscopic was the sole type of minimally invasive surgical technique used by few medical practitioners across the country, and there wasn’t any formal training in place to develop the technical skills for additional doctors.

    With the inauguration of the new center, both officials and health experts see hope in developing and advancing this technology, where specialized medical doctors will now be able to perform various kinds of surgeries.

    While the introduction of innovative solutions in the health sector remains exciting for health officials, Marescaux points out that the new robotic technology is set to provide patients with high-quality medical services.

    “We are working on building the largest team combined with computer scientists and surgeons in Africa,” he said.

    Estimates by IRCAD show that access to surgical care in Low- and Middle-Income Countries (LMICs), such as countries in Sub-Saharan Africa, is still extremely limited, which causes a burden on the health care systems.

    It said thanks to the center, African surgeons will not have to travel across the continent to receive the best training in surgery since it will be available right at home.

    The 2022 World Health Organization’s study shows that strong measures are also needed to boost the training and recruitment of health workers in Africa.

    Whereas the UN agency recommends that African countries significantly increase investments in building the health workforce to meet their current and future needs, new findings show that that the region has a ratio of 1.55 health workers (physicians, nurses, and midwives) per 1000 people.

    Experts now believe that robotic technology will also lessen surgeon’s workload by efficiently managing the patient flow.

    “As technology evolves, robotic systems are likely to incorporate more advanced features, integrating AI, augmented reality, and other technologies to aid the surgical process,” Hostettler said.

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  • What Is Israel’s End-Game in Gaza?

    What Is Israel’s End-Game in Gaza?

    Missile strikes on Gaza are continuing. Credit: UNICEF/Eyad El Baba
    • Opinion by Alon Ben-Meir (new york)
    • Inter Press Service

    NEW YORK, Nov 13 (IPS) – Unless Israel establishes an exit strategy and an end-game that will lead to a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in full coordination with the US and Saudi Arabia, the war against Hamas will only be another brutal violent episode that will prepare the ground for the next conflagration that will engulf the West Bank and potentially set the entire region on fire.

    What Is Israel’s End-Game in Gaza?

    As the Israel-Hamas war grinds on, the international call for a ceasefire or at a minimum a pause in the fighting for a couple of days to allow for the delivery of badly needed necessities is absolutely essential at this juncture. It is glaringly evident that there is growing international sympathy towards the Palestinians, given the magnitude of destruction and loss of life.

    This humanitarian crisis of such incredible scale is overshadowing the unconscionable slaughter of 1,400 people in Israel and the kidnapping of 248 others. Sadly though, although Israel has the right to self-defense, the campaign to eradicate Hamas is increasingly resembling a war of revenge and retribution. It has caused tremendous destruction and human suffering.

    After only four weeks, nearly 11,000 in Gaza are dead, one-third of them children under the age of 18, there is a horrifying scarcity of food, medicine, water, and fuel, and nearly half the population is now internally displaced.

    This calamity is unfolding in front of our eyes and must stop, even temporarily, to help save the lives of many of the tens of thousands who are wounded, bury the dead, and avert wide-spread starvation. And even though a temporary cessation of hostilities benefits Hamas, it is still worth undertaking not only to alleviate the horrifying suffering of the entire population in Gaza, but also to open a window for negotiating the release of as many hostages as possible, especially all women and children, in exchange for the pause in fighting.

    Whereas Israel’s stated goal from the onset was and still justifiably is the destruction of Hamas, Israel has not offered as yet any clear exit strategy nor endgame. Once Hamas is completely defeated, which is still a tall order, Israel with the support of the US and Saudi Arabia in particular will have to offer a sound alternative that meets the Palestinians’ aspiration and render Hamas irrelevant.

    President Biden should demand that Prime Minister Netanyahu and his military brass develop, in coordination with the US, a clear exit strategy and an end-game consistent with Israel’s, the Palestinians’, and the US’ national interests.

    The protests that have taken place across major cities in the US over the weekend, including Washington, DC, are arguably some of the biggest that we’ve seen in a long time. These calls for a ceasefire or a pause in the fighting for humanitarian reasons are exerting pressure on Biden to change his near-unconditional support of Israel’s war efforts, which he can no longer ignore. This is particularly important because the US’ unwavering support of Israel makes the Biden administration complicit to the unfolding tragedy, which is intensely criticized from the ranks of leading Democrats as well.

    What should be the end game? I believe there are three possible scenarios, two of which are impractical in a sense that they will not lead to a permanent solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

    Israeli control over Gaza

    First, Netanyahu is claiming that he wants to maintain security over Gaza, but he’s not saying who will govern and administer the Strip. Does he want to reoccupy all of Gaza or just the northern half, which may explain why he wanted the Palestinians to head south. President Biden is very correct to suggest that the reoccupation of Gaza, be that in part or in full, will be nothing short of a disaster for Israel and will only guarantee the prolongation of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

    Moreover, it should be emphasized here that given Israel’s experience in the occupied West Bank, maintaining security was only marginally successful at best as evidenced by the continuing violence between Israeli forces and Palestinians, which has been increasingly escalating.

    Netanyahu is a fool to assume that he can maintain control over Gaza by establishing a security apparatus when the Hamas-affiliated militants in Gaza will subject the Israeli forces to terrorist attacks that will exact a heavy toll in blood and treasure. The violence in the West Bank will pale in comparison to what Hamas’ militants in Gaza will still be capable of doing against Israeli forces without an end in sight.

    Resettling Palestinians in Egypt

    The second option, which Netanyahu has been exploring with Egypt, would allow the settling of a few hundred thousand Palestinians in the Sinai; Egypt would assume administrative responsibility in Gaza while Israel maintains security. Egyptian President Sisi flatly rejected any future involvement with the Palestinians in Gaza, other than facilitating through the Rafah crossing the passage of people for justifiable reasons as well as the transfer of goods.

    The Egyptian government considers Hamas a branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, which is outlawed in Egypt. For this reason, Egypt has also blockaded Gaza to prevent the infiltration of Hamas militants into the country.

    Moreover, Egypt has troubles of its own. The economy is in a dire situation, and its concerns over security are mounting. Egypt simply does not want to add more to its domestic problems. Thus, they are not interested in any solution that will burden them with the Palestinians. That said, President Sisi was clear that regardless of how this war ends, a framework for a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict must be established, otherwise it will be only a question of time when this war will invite another.

    Transitional period for Gaza with UN supervision

    The third option may well be more viable as it would entail a transitional period whereby the United Nations would assume responsibility. Administratively, as is well known, UNWRA has been on the ground for decades, providing aid and development services, including education, healthcare, microfinance, and job training.

    Although it has not been involved in the running of Gaza itself, UNWRA is very familiar with the scene in Gaza. It is familiar with the population’s needs, the prevailing socio-economic conditions, and the day-to-day problems Gazans face. UNWRA is in the best possible position to assume greater responsibility under a modified and expanded mandate, provided that it receives the manpower and the funding necessary.

    In conjunction with UNWRA’s added administrative responsibilities, it will be necessary to establish a peacekeeping force to be in charge of security. This force ought to be comprised exclusively of the Arab states that are at peace with Israel, namely the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Bahrain, and Morocco, as well as Egypt.

    It should be made clear that although post-Hamas the West Bank and Gaza should be governed by the Palestinian Authority (PA), this should not and in fact cannot happen for at least a year to 18 months following the establishment of a UN administrative authority in Gaza.

    During this period, the Palestinians in both the West Bank and Gaza would prepare themselves politically for a new election. The current PA is corrupt to the bone; President Abbas is rejected and despised by the majority of Palestinians and must go. Only a new, fresh, and uncorrupt newly-elected leadership that enjoys the confidence of the people can succeed.

    On the Israeli side, no one should hold their breath waiting for Netanyahu and his gang of zealous coalition partners to agree on anything that even resembles an independent Palestinian state. Once the war ends, Netanyahu will face an inquiry about the unprecedented disaster that took place under his watch and he will have to resign or be ousted. Here too, a new government will have to be established in Israel which must commit itself from the onset to a two-state solution.

    Once the above two prerequisites are in place, the UN administrative authority will then relinquish its role and responsibility to the PA.

    The Arab states should condition their commitment to provide a peacekeeping force upon Israel’s acceptance of a two-state solution. That is, once such a peacekeeping force is created, the process of peacebuilding ought to commence in earnest toward that end. Any interim solution must be used only as a vehicle toward a final resolution, otherwise it would serve as nothing less than a respite from waiting for another disaster to unfold.

    The role of the US and Saudi Arabia

    Saudi Arabia and the US can play a major, in fact indispensable, role in this regard: The US has and continues to be the ultimate guarantor of Israel’s national security, and President Biden has done more than any of his predecessors in this regard and demonstrated that in the most unambiguous way by his unflagging support of Israel.

    He must make it very clear (and is in a position to do so) to Netanyahu or his successor that the US’ unwavering support bears considerable political cost to America both domestically as well as internationally. Many countries around the world view the US as complicit to the unfolding horror in Gaza. President Biden must put in place a framework for a two-state solution, which he has been advocating for many decades.

    The negotiating peace process will certainly take more than year to complete. 2024 is an election year in the US, but regardless of who the next president might be, Biden will have to stick to the plans because another Israeli-Palestinian conflagration will inescapably involve the US. It’s time for the US to put its foot down, no longer give Israel carte blanche to do as it pleases, and condition further support, financial and military, to genuine efforts to negotiate in good faith and reach a peace agreement.

    Saudi Arabia can complement the US initiative with its own most significant role by seizing on the breakdown in the Israeli-Palestinian relations and offering an unprecedented breakthrough to bring an end to the conflict. The Saudis should make it clear that once the war ends, they will be ready to normalize relations with Israel on the condition that a new Israeli government agree to a two-state solution and negotiate continuously until an agreement is reached.

    This war must end, leaving Hamas dramatically weakened and in disarray. But Hamas’ ultimate defeat will not be on the battlefield, it will be by creating an alternative to Hamas’ governance from which the Palestinians will greatly benefit. That contrast ought to be made clearly and immediately to demonstrate to the Palestinians that Hamas was not only the enemy of Israel but the enemy of ordinary Palestinians. Yes, all Palestinians in Gaza want to live in peace and prosper but were deprived of living a normal life because of Hamas’ violent resistance to Israel, squandering every resource to fight Israel while leaving the people despairing and hopeless.

    Israel should not prolong this tragic war by even one unnecessary day. Indeed, if this war lasts another month or two, it is almost certain that 20,000 to 30,000 Palestinians, mostly innocent civilians, and scores of Israeli soldiers will be killed. The continuation of the terrifying death and destruction in Gaza along with Israeli losses will only deepen the hate, enmity, and distrust between Israel and the Palestinians and make a solution to the conflict ever more intractable.

    Every Israeli should ask him/herself the painful question: do we want to memorialize the death of 1,400 innocent Israelis butchered by Hamas by killing, however inadvertently, 20,000 Palestinians? Is that how the Israeli victims should be commemorated? This is something that every Israeli needs to think about.

    Yes, Israel can and will win every battle against Hamas, but it will lose the war unless a peace process between Israel and the Palestinians begins once the war comes to an end, under the auspices of the US and Saudi Arabia, which must lead to a two-state solution.

    For more information on how a sustainable peace agreement based on a two-state solution can be reached, please refer to my essay in World Affairs https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/00438200211066350
    “The Case for an Israeli-Palestinian-Jordanian Confederation: Why Now and How?”

    Dr Alon Ben-Meir is a professor of international relations at the Center for Global Affairs at NYU. He teaches courses on international negotiation and Middle Eastern studies. [email protected]

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  • ‘Taking Palestine Back to 2005’ — UN Warns of Socioeconomic Impacts of Gaza War

    ‘Taking Palestine Back to 2005’ — UN Warns of Socioeconomic Impacts of Gaza War

    Girl stands among the ruins in Gaza. The UNDP warns that the continued war with its loss of life and infrastructure could take years to recover from. Credit: UNICEF/UNI448902/Ajjour
    • by Naureen Hossain (united nations)
    • Inter Press Service

    UNITED NATIONS, Nov 13 (IPS) – One month into the war in Gaza, Palestine has already seen major setbacks in development that will have severe ramifications for the people of Palestine that will impact any future efforts toward its economic recovery.

    A new report from UNDP and the UN Economic and Social Commission for West Asia (ESCWA) has projected the fallout of Palestine’s socioeconomic development as the conflict in Gaza enters its second month. Titled The Gaza War: Expected Socioeconomic Impacts on the State of Palestine, the joint report warns that the loss of life and infrastructure because of the conflict and military siege will have long- and short-term consequences on the entire state and will see a serious regression in development that would take years for the state to recover from. 

    Since October 7, military operations in the Gaza Strip have caused dramatic downward trajectories in the state’s economy, public infrastructure, and development.

    Rola Dashti, the Executive Secretary for UN-ESCWA, remarked on the “unprecedented deprivation of resources” since the conflict escalated. In a press briefing, she warned that this deprivation of resources, including public services, health, utilities, and freedom of movement, are emblematic of multidimensional poverty.

    Over 45 percent of housing has been destroyed by bombardments; 35,000 housing units have been totally destroyed, and 212,000 units have been partially damaged. Over 40 percent of education facilities have been destroyed, which has left over 625,000 students with no access to education.

    The report estimates that Palestine’s GDP is expected to decline by 4.2 percent within the first month of the war. A further loss of GDP is expected by 8-12 percent if the war continues into the second and third months. The poverty level is also expected to rise to 20-45 percent. These projections were predicted for the duration of the war, going on up to three months. As the economic value is largely centralized in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, it will have a ripple effect across the region. Unemployment in Gaza was already an issue, with a rate of 46 percent, compared to 13 percent at the West Bank. Yet, since the start of the war, around 390,000 jobs have been lost. The continued military involvement has already caused disruptions to trade and the agriculture and tourism sectors.

    Other effects of the war, such as a reduction in trade and investments, will only further add to the overall insecurity of the State. There is also the risk that investors will take a more cautious approach when the region displays such volatility. The impact on neighboring countries would be to redirect resources from development to expanding security.

    Hospitals have been contending with repeated attacks since the start of the war while keeping operations going as supplies dwindle. Sixteen out of the 35 hospitals in Gaza have been forced to suspend their operations due to fuel shortages. This included Al-Awda Hospital in northern Gaza, the only hospital that was providing maternal health services, where 80 percent of its patients were women and children. On Wednesday night, a spokesperson announced that the hospital would be forced to close down operations due to fuel shortages.

    The threat to their safety and disruptions to education, healthcare, housing, and employment have already forcibly displaced over 1.5 million people in Palestine in just one month. The number of fatalities in this current conflict has now exceeded 10,000, including 4,104 children. It stands in stark contrast to the death toll during the major conflict in 2014, which capped at 2251. As Dashti told reporters, “There are faces behind these staggering numbers.”

    Assistant Secretary-General and Director of the Regional Bureau for the Arab States for UNDP Abdallah Al Dadari mourns the loss in overall human development. These compounding losses and setbacks will “bring back to 2005, in terms of development”, he said.

    Should a ceasefire be put into effect, even immediately, the time for recovery will be long and complex. Al Dadari remarked that rebuilding the lost infrastructure would be a challenge. He added that efforts toward a “top-down reconstruction” that did not include the participation and consideration of the Palestinian people would have “structural deformities” shortly thereafter. Many of the facilities, including hospitals, support centers, and schools, were established and supported by humanitarian organizations, such as UNRWA. Palestine is dependent on these facilities and on humanitarian assistance.

    The UN report concludes that post-war recovery efforts should take a different approach, one that will not only deal with the immediate humanitarian and economic needs of the affected civilians through funding. The root causes of the conflict and the tensions in the region must be addressed, Dashti said. With a guarantee from all involved parties, is there a possibility for what the UN calls sustainable peace?

    IPS UN Bureau Report


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

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  • Gaza: UN agencies make plea for international action to end hospital attacks

    Gaza: UN agencies make plea for international action to end hospital attacks

    The regional directors of the UN sexual and reproductive health agency (UNFPA), children’s agency UNICEF and health agency WHO, said they were “horrified” at latest reports which indicate many have been killed – including children – in facilities across Gaza city and other northern areas of the Strip.

    The Palestinian Red Crescent Society is reporting that the second largest hospital in Gaza, Al-Quds, is in effect out of service due to fuel shortages with the NGO saying it has only been able to make sporadic contact with the facility.

    Al Shifa ‘not functioning’: Tedros

    Writing on social media platform X, the head of the World Health Organization, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said having managed to establish contact with the largest hospital, Al Shifa, in the past few hours, “the situation is dire and perilous.”

    He said medics had been three days without electricity and water “and with very poor internet which has severely impacted our ability to provide essential care.

    “The constant gunfire and bombings in the area have exacerbated the already critical circumstances. Tragically, the number of patient fatalities has increased significantly“, he added.

    He said the hospital “is not functioning as a hospital anymore”, concurring with the regional directors that there must be international intervention.

    Communications down

    News reports quoting the health ministry, said earlier on Saturday that five wounded patients have died because they could not be operated on due to a lack of fuel.

    Two babies in the intensive care unit there were reported to have died on Saturday, with water, food and electricity cut off.

    Tedros expressed grave concern for the safety of staff and patients caught in crossfire late on Saturday noting that Israeli tanks were reportedly surrounding Al Shifa.

    The Israeli military has repeatedly denied its forces are targeting hospitals, claiming that Hamas and other militants are using the facilities as shields with their headquarters located beneath Al Shifa.

    “Intense hostilities surrounding several hospitals in northern Gaza are preventing safe access for health staff, the injured, and other patients”, said the statement released by Laila Baker of UNFPA, UNICEF Regional Director Adele Khodr, and Dr. Ahmed Al-Mandhari, of WHO.

    Babies dying

    “Premature and new-born babies on life support are reportedly dying due to power, oxygen, and water cuts at Al-Shifa Hospital, while others are at risk. Staff across a number of hospitals are reporting lack of fuel, water and basic medical supplies, putting the lives of all patients at immediate risk.”

    Over the past 36 days, WHO has recorded at least 137 attacks on healthcare in Gaza, resulting in 521 deaths and 686 injuries, including 16 deaths and 38 injuries of health workers, the regional directors said.

    The world cannot stand silent while hospitals which should be safe havens, are transformed into scenes of death, devastation and despair

    Attacks on medical facilities and civilians are unacceptable and are a violation of international law, they continued.

    Right to medical assistance

    “They cannot be condoned. The right to seek medical assistance, especially in times of crisis, should never be denied”, the statement said.

    More than half of the hospitals in the Gaza Strip are closed while those remaining “are under massive strain”.

    Shortages of water, food, and fuel are also threatening the wellbeing of thousands of displaced people, including women and children, who are sheltering in hospitals.

    Death and despair

    “The world cannot stand silent while hospitals, which should be safe havens, are transformed into scenes of death, devastation, and despair.

    “Decisive international action is needed now to secure an immediate humanitarian ceasefire and prevent further loss of life, and preserve what’s left of the health care system in Gaza”, the directors said.

    “Unimpeded, safe and sustained access is needed now to provide fuel, medical supplies and water for these lifesaving services. The violence must end now.”

    The Humanitarian Coordinator for the Occupied Palestinian Territory, Lynn Hastings, warned that fuel is not only putting lives at risk in hospital, but water pumps, desalination plants and wastewater treatment centres are all “grinding to a halt.”

    She tweeted that public health crises are emerging and “humanitarian operations will be next.”

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  • ‘Genuine prospect of Palestinian statehood is critical’, UNRWA chief tells emergency summit in Saudi Arabia

    ‘Genuine prospect of Palestinian statehood is critical’, UNRWA chief tells emergency summit in Saudi Arabia

    Philippe Lazzarini was addressing an emergency summit convened by the League of Arab States and Organisation of Islamic Cooperation where he called for urgent support for civilians in the Occupied Palestinian Territory on three fronts.

    He called on leaders at the Arab-Islamic summit to “act now to change the trajectory” of the crisis that began with the Hamas terror attacks of 7 October.

    According to news reports, The Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman in his opening remarks called for an immediate end to Israel’s military operations in Gaza and the release of all hostages and prisoners being held by all parties to the conflict.

    The “humanitarian catastrophe” in Gaza has underlined the failure of the international community and UN Security Council to end Israel’s “gross violations of international humanitarian laws”, he said, adding that Palestinians were victims of double standards.

    ‘Dehumanized and abandoned’

    The UNRWA chief told ministers assembled in the Saudi capital from across the Islamic world that Gazans “feel dehumanized and abandoned”, yearning for reassurance that their plight is being recognized by “Arab and Muslim brothers and sisters”.

    He said beyond Gaza, the West Bank is also at “boiling point” while the Lebanon-Israel border is “simmering with tension”.

    Mr. Lazzarini highlighted the desperation he had seen for himself in Gaza last week: “Every little girl and boy I met in an UNRWA shelter asked me for bread and water. Children used to learn and laugh in the school I visited.

    “Now, the school is an overcrowded shelter that lacks the minimum standards for a dignified life.”

    He mourned the loss of 101 UNRWA colleagues during the Israeli bombardment, noting that UN flags will be lowered to half-mast worldwide on Monday to honour them.

    Ceasefire paramount

    The UNRWA chief said his first urgent request for support was to achieve a humanitarian ceasefire “with strict adherence to international humanitarian law” that would prevent further loss of civilian life, including UN facilities and hospitals.

    “I am sure that many of you can influence action on the ground. No effort should be spared”, he told the summit.

    Secondly, he said there must be a meaningful and continuous flow of humanitarian aid which can match “the immense humanitarian needs.”

    Third he said UNRWA urgently needs both funds, and strong advocates from across the Arab and African Islamic world.

    “UNRWA is not only the largest UN agency in Gaza but also the last remaining lifeline for 2.2 million people”, he said. “We can offer much more if we have the means.”

    Finally, he called on leaders to “firmly defend the agency against false and insidious claims that its schools teach hatred or that it has let the civilians in Gaza down. These accusations come from those who want us to fail.”

    ‘We must step back from the brink’

    A lasting political solution, he said, was the only way to prevent future cycles of violence:

    “A genuine prospect of Palestinian statehood is critical.”

    “We must step back from the brink before it’s too late. I urge you, members of the Arab League and the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation to act now to change the trajectory of this crisis.”

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  • Attacks on or near Gaza hospitals ‘unconscionable, reprehensible and must stop’: Relief chief

    Attacks on or near Gaza hospitals ‘unconscionable, reprehensible and must stop’: Relief chief

    In a statement, the Israeli military denied that it had targeted Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, which they claim is above a Hamas command post, but have acknowledged that fighting is happening “around” the facility.

    UN relief and humanitarian affairs chief, Martin Griffiths, tweeted that in light of “horrific reports of attacks”, there could be “no justification for acts of war in healthcare facilities leaving them with no power, food or water and shooting at patients and civilians trying to flee.

    “This is unconscionable, reprehensible and must stop.

    “Hospitals much be places of greater safety and those who need them must trust that they are places of shelter and not of war.”

    Principle of proportionality

    The UN’s Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator for the Occupied Palestinian Territory, Lynn Hastings, reinforced the call for an immediate humanitarian ceasefire, stressing that civilian infrastructure “cannot be used for military operations.”

    “Patients, medical staff as well as displaced people taking shelter must be protected”, she tweeted.

    “Principles of proportionality, distinction must be respected.”

    News reports quoting a non-governmental organisation representing doctors, said that two premature babies have died in the last few hours at Al-Shifa, after the last working generator was damaged during airstrikes.

    The hospital has reportedly now run out of water, food and electricity.

    Latest figures from OCHA, sourcing the health ministry in Gaza – which the UN regards as reliable – report that more than 10,800 have been killed in the enclave since the 7 October attacks and more than 26,900 injured.

    Israel on Friday revised the number of fatalities stemming from the Hamas terror attacks down to 1,200.

    Lives ‘hanging by a thread’

    Earlier on Saturday, the UN Children’s Fund UNICEFsaid that the “near total breakdown and attacks on medical and healthcare services”, particularly in northern Gaza, had left lives “hanging by a thread.”

    Noting that medical care at the Al-Rantisi and Al-Nasr children’s hospitals in the Strip had “reportedly almost ceased” they said only a small generator remained to power the intensive care unit.

    “Children’s right to life and health is being denied,” said Adele Khodr, UNICEF Middle East and North Africa Regional Director. “The protection of hospitals and delivery of lifesaving medical supplies is an obligation under the laws of war, and both are needed now.”

    Meanwhile, medical facilities in the middle and southern areas of the Gaza Strip, already overwhelmed by the sheer number of injuries that need treatment, are now having to also cope with treating the needs of an influx of hundreds of thousands of people into even more densely packed spaces, UNICEF noted.

    “These existing services must be supported and strengthened to deal with the increasing challenges they face”, the agency said.

    Children’s lives are “hanging by a thread” said Mr. Khodr. Children in the north have “nowhere to go and are extreme risk.”

    More to come…

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