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Tag: global issues

  • Platitudes not Enough: Urgent Investment Needed in Health Workforce

    Platitudes not Enough: Urgent Investment Needed in Health Workforce

    A nurse walks into a hospital ward in Janakpur in Dhanusha District in southern Nepal. Credit: UNICEF/Rupadhayay
    • Opinion by Roopa Dhatt, Susannah Schaefer (washington dc / new york)
    • Inter Press Service

    WASHINGTON DC / NEW YORK, Apr 07 (IPS) – As World Health Worker Week draws to a close on April 7, health organizations from around the world have been celebrating women’s vital role in the health workforce and sharing stories about the enormous value they bring to all areas of health and care.

    But platitudes are not enough. It’s time for global health leaders to step up and turn these words into action.

    Globally, women make up almost 70% of the global health workforce and 90% of the frontline health workforce, contributing over $3 trillion to global health each year. The health systems in which they work play a significant role in remote and marginalized groups’ access to health, especially in times of crisis. Despite this, the challenges faced by community health workers (CHWs) are frequently overlooked.

    CHWs play a critical role in providing care to vulnerable populations, but they are undervalued and accorded lower status in the “informal” workforce. Upwards of six million women are estimated to be either unpaid or grossly underpaid despite working in core health systems roles and just 14% of CHWs in Africa are salaried.

    It is unjust that global health systems rely on the labor of unpaid women who are creating social and economic value that is uncounted and unrewarded. Unpaid work reduces women’s economic security and increases their lifetime poverty.

    It also weakens health systems. The pandemic has demonstrated the need for strong and resilient health systems, but there can be no global health security while health systems are subsidized by some of the world’s poorest women.

    Women health workers continue to make huge sacrifices to work on the frontlines. They went door-to-door educating households on the COVID-19 virus, tracing contacts, and delivering vaccines.

    At last year’s World Health Assembly, India’s one million women community health workers known as accredited social health activists (ASHAs) were honored for successfully protecting the health of millions of people during the pandemic.

    At the start of the pandemic, however, reports were coming out of India about the unacceptable risk faced by ASHA workers who were being sent into communities without lack of infection controls and facing stigma and abuse as perceived vectors of the virus.

    In 2020, they launched widespread street protests and strikes to demand better pay, protection, and working conditions. ASHA workers may have been acknowledged as global health leaders, but they continue to be underpaid with small performance-based honorariums. They are still fighting for a fair and regular salary and the benefits that come with formal sector roles.

    Pre-pandemic the World Health Organization (WHO) projected a global shortage of 10 million health workers by 2030, which COVID-19 now has deepened. Health workers lost their lives to the virus and significant numbers are unable to work, affected by ‘long-COVID’. There have been increased reports of violence towards women health workers during the pandemic–from colleagues as well as patients and their families.

    In a 2018 report on health policy and system support to optimize CHW programs, one of the primary WHO recommendations included fair remuneration for CHWs, but this is still far from the norm. When CHWs are compensated, it often fails to align with WHO recommendations, which call for financial packages that are commensurate with the demands of the job, the level of complexity, the training required, and the hours worked.

    This World Health Workers Week, we come together with our partners to call on global health leaders, governments and policy makers to disrupt the status quo. We believe that every person, regardless of gender, should have access to quality health and care and opportunities to thrive.

    We know a fairly-compensated health workforce–alongside training, supervision, and safe working environments–leads to improved productivity, wider access to healthcare, and better patient outcomes.

    The gender pay gap in health of 24% is one of the largest of any sector. We are calling on leaders to take measures to close that gap. We stand with our partners in calling for and focusing on transformative change, including gender-equal leadership in global health and a new social contract for women health workers centered on the need for fair and equal pay and safe and decent work.

    There is increasing urgency in both high-income and low- and-middle income countries to prioritize changes in guidelines, funding, and policies. After three years of COVID-19, women health workers, who have been the majority in patient-facing roles, are burned out and traumatized.

    Understandably, women are leaving the health sector at all levels in a ‘Great Resignation,’ which threatens to deepen the global health worker shortage crisis.

    Addressing these injustices is a moral obligation and an economic necessity. Investing in health workers is a win-win proposition and will send a message that we recognize and value them as professionals.

    Not only can we restore justice to neglected global health systems, but we can improve the working conditions and pay of health workers, unleashing broader economic benefits.

    We would like to send a clear message that as heads of global health organizations we are committed to building stronger health systems and a more equitable world. Achieving true health equity includes quality care for all–including health workers.

    Dr Roopa Dhatt is Executive Director and Co-Founder Women in Global Health, a fast- growing women-led movement with 47 chapters worldwide.

    Susannah (“Susie”) Schaefer is Executive Vice Chair, President, and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Smile Train, the world’s largest cleft-focused organization with a sustainable and local model of supporting surgery and other forms of comprehensive cleft care.

    IPS UN Bureau

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

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  • Cuba: Elections Without Choices

    Cuba: Elections Without Choices

    • Opinion by Ines M Pousadela (montevideo, uruguay)
    • Inter Press Service

    MONTEVIDEO, Uruguay, Apr 07 (IPS) – The uncertainty that’s the hallmark of a democratic election was absent on 26 March, the day Cubans were summoned to appoint members of the National Assembly of People’s Power, the country’s legislative body. A vote did take place that day – people went to the polls and put a ballot in a box. But was this really an election? Cubans weren’t able to choose their representatives – their only option was to ratify those selected to stand, or abstain.

    If each seat already had an assigned winner, why even bother to hold an election? Why would people waste their Sunday lining up to vote? And why would the government care so much if they didn’t?

    Voting, Cuban style

    According to its constitution, Cuba is a socialist republic in which all state leaders and members of representative bodies are elected and subjected to recall by ‘the masses’. Cuba regularly goes through the motions of elections, but it’s a one-party state: the Communist Party of Cuba (CPC) is constitutionally recognised as the ‘superior driving force of the society and the state’.

    The CPC is indistinguishable from the state, and the party and its ideology penetrate every corner of society. This means the nomination process for elections can be presented as ‘non-partisan’, with candidates nominated as individuals rather than party representatives – they are all party members anyway.

    Cubans vote in two kinds of elections: for municipal assemblies and the National Assembly. Candidates for municipal assemblies are nominated by a show of hands at local ‘nomination assemblies’. The most recent local elections took place on 27 November 2022, with a record-breaking abstention rate of 31.5 per cent – an embarrassment in a system that’s supposed to routinely deliver unanimous mass endorsement.

    According to the new constitution and electoral legislation, National Assembly candidates are nominated by municipal delegates alongside nominations commissions controlled by the CPC through its mass organisations, from whose ranks candidates are expected to emerge. The resulting slate includes as many names as there are parliamentary seats available. There are no competing candidates, and as most districts elect more than two representatives, options are limited to selecting all proposed candidates, some, one or none. But all a candidate needs to do is obtain over half of valid votes cast, so ratification is the only possible result. That’s exactly what happened on 26 March.

    At the minimum, democracy could be defined as a system where it’s possible to get rid of governments without bloodshed – where those in power could lose an election. In all of Cuba’s post-revolution history, no candidate has ever been defeated.

    A different kind of campaign

    Unsurprisingly, since there is no real competition, there are typically no election campaigns in Cuba. Instead, there’s a lot of political and social pressure to participate, while abstention is accordingly promoted by the political opposition and democracy activists.

    Eager to avoid the abstention rate seen in the November municipal elections, the government spared no effort. Against its own legal prohibitions of election campaigns, it ran a relentless propaganda assault.

    Eyewitness accounts abounded of a voting day characterised by apathy, with no evidence of lines forming at voting places. A number of irregularities were reported, including coercion and harassment, with people who hadn’t voted receiving summons or being picked up from their homes. The official statement published the following day – that lack of independent observation made impossible to verify – reported a 76 per cent turnout that the government presented as a ‘revolutionary victory’. It might have helped that the electoral rolls had been purged, with over half a million fewer voters than in the previous parliamentary election held in 2018.

    But a closer look suggests that abstention is becoming a regular feature of Cuban election rituals – this was the lowest turnout ever in a legislative election – and beyond this, other forms of dissent in the polls are growing, including spoilt ballots.

    What elections are for

    In Cuba, elections are neither the means to select governments nor a channel for citizens to communicate their views. Rather, they serve a legitimising purpose, both domestically and internationally, for an authoritarian regime that seeks to present itself as a superior form of democracy. They also serve to co-opt and mobilise supporters and demoralise opposition.

    Ritual elections just one of many tools the regime employs to maintain power. Determined to prevent a repetition of mobilisations like those of 11 July 2021, the government has criminalised protesters and activists and curtailed the expression of dissent online and offline.

    But all this, and the efforts to present a lacklustre election as a glittering victory, only reveal the cracks running through an old system of totalitarian power in decay. In Cuba, the fiction of a unanimous general will is a thing of the past.

    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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  • From The Field: A rare safe space for the LGBTI+ community in El Salvador

    From The Field: A rare safe space for the LGBTI+ community in El Salvador

    A visitor receives support at the Diké LGBTI+ community and health centre in El Salvador.

    The centre, run by the Diké organization, provides a host of services to the LBGTI+ community, including sexual healthcare, psychological care, human rights education, advocacy activities and safe shelter for those who need it, including migrants and displaced persons.

    It is supported by the Spotlight Initiative, a global partnership between the European Union and the United Nations to eliminate all forms of violence against women and girls.

    Find out more about the centre, and read the stories of some of those who see it as a safe space, here.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    IPS UN Bureau Report


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  • Türkiye quake aftermath: Funding needed to stave off risks to millions of children

    Türkiye quake aftermath: Funding needed to stave off risks to millions of children

    UNICEF Representative in Türkiye, Regina De Dominicis, said that while the humanitarian response to the disaster was swift, “immediate futures of millions of children remain uncertain”.

     

    Urgent health and protection needs

    To cover the most pressing needs, UNICEF has reached more than 390,000 people with hygiene kits, winter clothes, electrical heaters and blankets.

    The UN agency has also delivered water to thousands while damaged supply networks are repaired.

    On the health front, UNICEF has been supporting Türkiye’s authorities with the provision of vaccines including for polio, diphtheria and tetanus, as well as medical equipment and supplies.

    As part of the emergency response, the agency has also been working with partners to assist with family reunification and has reached more than 149,000 children and caregivers with psychosocial support.

    UNICEF stressed that “these efforts must continue and child protection services must be maintained without interruption”.

    Education in jeopardy

    According to UNICEF, the earthquakes impacted nearly four million schoolchildren in Türkiye. While nearly 1.5 million have resumed their education in affected areas, and another 250,000 have been able to continue their education after relocating elsewhere in the country, many others risk being left behind.

    To ensure that learning can continue, UNICEF is financing the repair of more than 1,170 schools, which will benefit over 300,000 children, and supporting the Ministry of Education with temporary classrooms in prefabricated structures and tents.

    The agency is also providing catch-up classes and help with homework in 37 hubs dedicated to child, adolescent and family support across 10 provinces.

     

    Getting lives back on track

    UNICEF in Türkiye is appealing for an additional $138 million to continue assisting children affected by the earthquakes and calling on the international community to ensure their needs are prioritized.

    Over and above the emergency response, UNICEF reiterated that longer-term assistance to children and their families is urgently required, so that people can “recover and begin to rebuild their lives”.

    “More support is vital to ensure children are protected and their needs are met as a central part of the recovery,” Ms. De Dominicis said, so that the disaster does not continue impacting their lives for decades to come.

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  • Rights expert welcomes Vatican’s rejection of ‘Doctrine of Discovery’

    Rights expert welcomes Vatican’s rejection of ‘Doctrine of Discovery’

    José Francisco Calí Tzay, UN Special Rapporteur on the rights of Indigenous Peoples, expressed hope that governments will follow the Holy See’s lead, noting that its impact is still being felt today. 

    ‘Open wound’ 

    “The doctrine of discovery is still an open wound for many Indigenous Peoples around the world,” he said. “It must be addressed as part of a reconciliation process between Indigenous Peoples and colonial States.” 

    The papal doctrine was used to claim indigenous territories in the Americas, Africa and elsewhere in the world.  

    Mr. Calí Tzay commended the Vatican’s recognition of the harmful effects of colonisation, including the pain suffered by Indigenous Peoples.  He welcomed Pope Francis’s call to abandon the colonising mentality and promote mutual respect and dialogue. 

    ‘Important step’ 

    “The Holy See has taken an important step towards reconciliation and healing with Indigenous Peoples by rejecting all concepts that fail to recognise their inherent human rights,” he said.  

    “The doctrine was recognised as vesting a unilateral right of European colonial powers to claim superior sovereignty and rights over Indigenous Peoples’ lands and resources, based on their supposed lack of civilisation and religion.”  

    He added that it continues to have a negative impact on indigenous rights in some countries. 

    Tool of deprivation 

    He said the Doctrine of Discovery provides a legal basis to unilaterally deprive Indigenous Peoples of their rights to title and ownership of their traditional lands and territories by States that continue to use this legal theory as part of their national law, legislation, and jurisprudence, particularly in relation to land disputes. 

    The UN expert noted that this was among the root causes of intergenerational trauma suffered by Indigenous Peoples, as currently manifested in high rates of suicide among youth, over-representation in the criminal justice system, disproportionate violence against women and girls, and racial discrimination. 

    Review and repudiate 

    He urged all States that still uphold the ‘Doctrine of Discovery’ to follow the Vatican’s lead in formally repudiating the decree and reviewing all jurisprudence and legislation that relies on it. 

    Special Rapporteurs like Mr. Cali Tzay, and other UN Human Rights Council-appointed independent experts, are mandated to monitor and report on specific thematic issues or country situations, as part of the Council’s Special Procedures.  

    They are not UN staff and do not receive any compensation for their work. 

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  • Reflecting on genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda, Guterres urges all nations to stand firm against rising hate, intolerance

    Reflecting on genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda, Guterres urges all nations to stand firm against rising hate, intolerance

    “We mourn the more than one million children, women, and men who perished in one hundred days of horror 29 years ago,” António Guterres said in his annual commemorative message on the International Day of Reflection on the 1994 Genocide Against the Tutsi in Rwanda.

    He went on to say that: “We honour the memory of the victims – the overwhelming majority Tutsi, but also Hutu and others who opposed the genocide. We pay tribute to the resilience of the survivors. We recognize the journey of the Rwandan people towards healing, restoration, and reconciliation. And we remember – with shame – the failure of the international community.”

    From hate speech, to hate crime

    “A generation since the genocide, we must never forget what happened – and ensure future generations always remember,” said the UN chief, how easily hate speech – a key indicator of the risk of genocide – turns to hate crime and how “complacency in the face of atrocity is complicity.”

    No place, and no time is immune to danger – including our own.

    Stand firm against intolerance

    Mr. Guterres stressed that preventing genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes, and other serious violations of international law, is a shared responsibility and a “core duty” of every member of the United Nations.

    Calling for everyone, in all nations, to stand firm against rising intolerance, be ever vigilant – and always ready to act – he concluded: “And let us truly honour the memory of all Rwandans who perished by building a future of dignity, security, justice, and human rights for all.”

    The Memorial Ceremony to mark the 29th anniversary of the genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda will be held at UN Headquarters in NY on Friday, 14 April, featuring addresses by the Secretary-General, the President of the UN General Assembly, and other officials, as well as remarks from a survivor of the genocide.

    A wreath laying and lighting of candles, as well as a ceremony featuring statements from senior UN officials and testimonies from survivors, will be held at the UN Office in Geneva on Thursday, 13 April.

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  • Transforming Education With Equitable Financing

    Transforming Education With Equitable Financing

    Credit: UNICEF/UN0658410/But
    • Opinion by Robert Jenkins (new york)
    • Inter Press Service

    NEW YORK, Apr 06 (IPS) – With schools now reopened around the world, countries are called to take transformative action on education financing to recover and accelerate learning for all children, especially the poorest and most marginalized.

    Findings from our recent study, however, reveal that we have yet to overcome hurdles to equitable education financing: in far too many countries, the poorest children often benefit the least from public education funding.

    To transform education for every child, governments must address all three aspects of education financing: adequacy, efficiency, and equity. Our analysis covering 102 countries zeroed in on the equity challenge in education.

    Many dimensions of equity are important to address, as vulnerable children can face simultaneous disadvantages related to poverty, disability, gender, location and more.

    However, our study focuses on the poorest children, often hit the hardest by multiple, compounding barriers to quality education and learning.

    Unfortunately, children from the poorest households often benefit the least from public education spending. On average, the poorest learners receive only 16 per cent of public funding for education, while the richest learners receive 28 per cent.

    In 1 out of every 10 countries, learners from the richest 20 per cent of households receive four or more times the amount of public education spending than the poorest.

    In Guinea, Mali and Chad, the richest learners benefit from over six times the amount of public education spending compared to the poorest learners.

    Moreover, despite repeated commitments towards equitable financing – including the Incheon Declaration adopted at the World Education Forum 2015, the Paris Declaration of the 2021 Global Education Meeting, and most recently at the Transforming Education Summit in 2022 – data suggests that progress in delivering on these promises has been far too slow.

    Evidence from 46 countries indicates that public education spending has become more inequitable in 4 out of every 10 countries. The data speaks for itself: the poorest learners are not receiving their fair share of public education funding, and we must intensify efforts to address these inequities.

    Equitable education spending is critical and can reverse the effects of the global learning crisis before an entire generation loses its future. Our analysis shows that if public education spending stagnates, a one percentage point increase in the allocation of public education resources to the poorest 20 per cent is associated with a 2.6 to 4.7 percentage point reduction in learning poverty rates – translating to up to 35 million primary school-aged children that could be pulled out of learning poverty.

    How can we address the equity challenge and ensure education funding reaches the poorest? One way is to ensure public funding prioritises lower education levels.

    This financing principle refers to ‘progressive universalism’, by which resource allocation initially prioritises lower levels of education, where poor and marginalized children tend to be more represented. These first few years of learning lay the groundwork for children to acquire basic foundational skills. Then, when coverage at lower levels is near universal, resource allocation is gradually increased to higher levels, with a continued focus on the poorest and most marginalized.

    Finally, it is important to note that inequity issues exist not only in domestic education financing, but also in international aid to education.

    For instance, over the past decade, official development assistance (ODA) to education allocated to the least developed countries (LDCs) has never exceeded 30 per cent, far from the 50 per cent benchmark set forth by the Addis Ababa Action Agenda.

    Moreover, appeals for education in emergencies often receive just 10 to 30 per cent of the amounts needed, with significant disparities across countries and regions. On average, the education sector receives less than 3 per cent of humanitarian aid.

    The global community must come together to ensure that children living in the poorest countries and in emergencies can benefit from equitable education financing.

    To respond to the equity challenge in education, we call on governments and key stakeholders to take the following key actions:

    • Most critically, unlock pro-equity public financing to education through broader coverage and volume of decentralized allocations, resources to schools, resources to students of disadvantaged backgrounds (by education and social protection ministries), and strengthened resource allocation monitoring.
    • Prioritize public funding to foundational learning by securing funding for all in pre-primary and primary education and targeting the poor and marginalized at higher levels of education.
    • Monitor and ensure equitable education aid allocation in developmental and humanitarian contexts between and within countries, including sub-sector levels, when applicable.
    • Invest in innovative ways of delivering education to complement gaps in existing public funding through multiple and flexible pathways, including quality digital learning.

    We cannot hope to end the learning crisis if we invest the least in children who need it the most.

    We must act now to ensure education resources reach all learners and progress towards achieving the goal of inclusive and quality education for all – allowing every child and young person a fair chance to succeed.

    Source: UNICEF Blog

    The UNICEF Blog promotes children’s rights and well-being, and ideas about ways to improve their lives and the lives of their families. It brings insights and opinions from the world’s leading child rights experts and accounts from UNICEF’s staff on the ground in more than 190 countries and territories. The opinions expressed on the UNICEF Blog are those of the author(s) and may not necessarily reflect UNICEF’s official position.

    IPS UN Bureau


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  • Political Settlement First, Refugee Return Second

    Political Settlement First, Refugee Return Second

    • Opinion by Malik al-Abdeh, Lars Hauch (london)
    • Inter Press Service

    LONDON, Apr 05 (IPS) – Europe’s current approach to facilitating refugee returns and containing new arrivals from Syria is based on wishful thinking. Europeans have come to terms with the fact that a political settlement for Syria’s 12-year conflict is not on the horizon.

    In conversations with diplomats, one hears a reoccurring theme these days: Syria is not a priority anymore. Notoriously hesitant to lead and busy with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Europeans want to keep things as calm as possible.

    But what stands in the way of this old-fashioned wait-and-see approach is the issue of refugees. Not only are significant numbers not returning to Syria, but tens of thousands more continue to set out to the EU each year.

    Against this background, Europeans have indicated to president Bashar al-Assad that concessions on the ‘refugee issue’ could prompt them to re-think their policy of ostracising the Syrian dictator and his regime.

    Notably, discussions on refugee return have almost exclusively been about their return to regime-held Syria. Much of the official thinking on the matter, which includes that of the UN envoy, envisages Assad conceding to taking back refugees in return for the normalisation of relations with other Arab countries and Western political and financial inducements.

    Putting refugee return on the negotiating table with Assad makes sense from a diplomatic expediency angle. And it is certainly attractive: if voluntary and dignified returns can be realised, this would please the domestic audience in Europe and foreign ministries as well as EU institutions could sell it as an indicator that political progress is being achieved.

    However, Europe’s current approach to facilitating refugee returns and containing new arrivals is based on wishful thinking.

    Assad’s ‘population warfare’

    First of all, Europe falsely assumes that Assad wants his people back. Apart from the crippling pressures that any sizeable refugee return would place on resources in regime areas – water, electricity, fuel, food, etc. – there is the more important matter of security.

    The regime considers all Syrians who have fled to neighbouring countries to be at best cowards and at worst traitors. By placing themselves out of the reach of the regime’s military conscriptors, they are seen as having voted with their feet in Syria’s civil war.

    ‘We will never forgive or forget’ echoes a longstanding view among regime supporters of those perceived to have skipped the war but now want to return once the fighting is over.

    The testimonies of those who have returned only to see their loved ones arrested and killed suggest that it is not an empty threat. Those connected to rebels or their families by blood or marriage, or those that have been reported as having anti-Assad views by informants, immediately fail the regime’s security check for returning refugees, as will most that hail from former rebel strongholds.

    Additionally, living in a neighbouring country for many years and establishing roots there, as most refugees have done, enables the regime to brand them as ‘politically suspect’. Syria’s Foreign Minister claims that refugees can return ‘without any condition’, but this magnanimity is only voiced when around Western reporters.

    ‘Perhaps the most noteworthy aspect of the Syrian regime’s discourse on refugees is that there barely is one’, a study on the matter finds. This should not come at all as a surprise.

    Syria’s mass population displacement has for too long been seen as an unfortunate secondary effect of the war rather than an intended goal. But in civil wars that take on an ethnic or sectarian nature, de-population becomes a strategic goal in itself.

    According to one study, ‘combatants displace not only to expel undesirable populations but also to identify the undesirables in the first place by forcing people to send signals of loyalty and affiliation based on whether, and to where, they flee.’

    In Syria, population displacement was at the heart of Assad’s counter-insurgency strategy. Moreover, Assad’s use of chemical weapons and its wider war effort are inextricably linked – tactically, operationally and strategically.

    Whether it be artillery strikes, barrel bombs, or sarin gas, the overall war strategy was collective punishment of the population in opposition-held areas.

    Assad’s ‘population warfare’ doctrine aims to ensure the population balance of pre-war Syria – so nearly fatal to his family and clan – cannot be recreated. ‘Two-thirds of the population was Sunni and half of it has been scattered to the winds, as refugees or internal exiles’, writes one observer – a favourable outcome for the Alawite president.

    For Assad, the country has now gained a ‘healthier and more homogenous society’. With that in mind, it is understandable that most Syrians reject returning to areas under the control of his regime.

    Working with Turkey

    Does this mean that Europeans should remove the ‘refugee file’ from the negotiating table? Not quite. But they would be well advised to be sober about their goals. If they try to utilise the refugee file as an entry point for advancing a moribund political process, it would be ethically irresponsible.

    In fact, EU diplomats have already signalled that credible steps allowing refugee returns could pave the way for gradual engagement with the Assad regime. This is concerning given that turning refugees into a diplomatic currency to trade concessions with Assad hardly passes the ‘do no harm’ test.

    If the goal is to get results where refugees actually return to Syria in large numbers and fewer people leave the country, Europeans should be talking not with Damascus but with Ankara.

    The inconvenient truth about refugee return is that it will only work if enough refugees are willing to return voluntarily, given realistic conditions and a serious partner on the ground with an active interest in seeing returns happen.

    Right now, only Turkey and a share of its Syrian refugees can tick both boxes, given the connectivity between populations on both sides of the border and Turkey’s ability to assure relative security.

    According to UNHCR figures, about 800 Syrian refugees are returning to Syria from Turkey every week despite the UN agency’s assessment that conditions are not suitable for a large number of voluntary returns.

    Moreover, of the nearly 750,000 refugees that have returned to Syria since 2016, most of them (500,000) have returned from Turkey to opposition-controlled areas in the north and northwest of Syria. In contrast, only 10,766 refugees returned to regime-controlled areas between January and October 2022. A greater number have fled Assad’s Syria in the same period.

    The absence of security hurdles to return and compulsory military conscription (both major push factors in regime areas and those controlled by the US-allied Syrian Democratic Forces) and the fact that Sunni internally displaced people (IDPs) and refugees feel relatively safe under Turkey’s protection are solid foundations on which to build a realistic returns policy.

    Perhaps most important for European policymakers, Turkey controls the territory in northern Syria through which large numbers from regime and SDF areas are passing through to enter Turkey and continue to Europe, all for vast sums of money.

    Dealing with Ankara on a programme for voluntary refugee return would create a firebreak in the logistical chain of the people traffickers that ends in Berlin and Amsterdam but begins at the M4 Highway.

    In sum, Europeans should recognise that significant refugee returns to areas currently controlled by the Assad regime cannot precede a political settlement. Talk of ‘post-conflict reconstruction’ and investments in local development labelled as ‘Early Recovery assistance’ will not change that fact.

    This also applies to limiting new refugee movements. Any sort of minor concession from the regime has the purpose of maintaining the momentum of normalisation, but it cannot alter the calculus of Syrians who have no illusions about the regime’s unalterable nature.

    The facts support the case for European engagement with Turkey both on returns and border security. Europeans are of course entitled to take a critical stance on Ankara’s Syria policy. Notwithstanding their condemnation of Turkey’s incursions into Syria, new realities have emerged that require a nuanced position rather than blissful ignorance.

    Unless Europeans adapt to the reality that Syria is now a de facto divided country, their policy response will remain poor. If areas outside of the regime’s control continue to be seen as not being part of Syria proper, and therefore not integral to any credible nationwide refugee return programme, there will be much more talk but no delivery.

    Individual diplomats may be very much aware of this reality, but as long as this realisation does not translate into actual policy, the EU will continue to deceive itself.

    Malik al-Abdeh is a conflict resolution expert focused on Syria. He is managing director of Conflict Mediation Solutions, a consultancy specialized in Track II work.

    Lars Hauch works as a researcher and policy advisor for Conflict Mediation Solutions, a London-based consultancy specialising in Track II diplomacy.

    Source: International Politics and Society (IPS) Journal published by the International Political Analysis Unit of the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung, Hiroshimastrasse 28, D-10785 Berlin

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  • New WFP chief Cindy McCain warns of funding crunch in fight against hunger

    New WFP chief Cindy McCain warns of funding crunch in fight against hunger

    WFP estimates that more than 345 million people worldwide face crisis levels of food insecurity this year, an increase of almost 200 million since early 2020. Of these, 43 million are just one step away from famine.

    Ration cuts warning

    “Ration cuts are coming if we don’t have the money to get food to those who need it most,” warned Ms. McCain. “My priorities are clear: increase our resources, improve our effectiveness and scale up partnerships and innovation to bring modern solutions to those most in need.”

    Working in particular with the private sector to raise funds and identify new ideas will be particularly important to help the world’s most vulnerable stave off famine, the new WFP chief explained.

    Think outside the box

    “No organization can solve world hunger alone…Today we are asking new friends –especially from the private sector – to step up and join us,” said the new WFP Executive Director, who also announced a new taskforce on innovation “bringing together the best minds in both the public and private sectors” to source concrete ideas.

    WFP is known for its Innovation Accelerator, launched in 2015 to identify, pilot and scale up innovation projects which advance the fight against hunger using digital technology. One of these projects is the “Share the Meal” smartphone app, allowing individuals to easily donate money to help feed people in specific emergencies.

    Seasoned internationalist

    Ms. McCain – who takes over from former South Carolina state governor, David Beasley – is well placed to pull the levers of international humanitarianism, having served since 2021 as US Ambassador to WFP and the other Rome-based UN agencies: the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD).

    WFP says that in her role as US Ambassador to these UN bodies, Ms. McCain has seen its operations “up close”, travelling to Laos, Cambodia, Sri Lanka, Guatemala, Honduras, Kenya, Zambia, Tajikistan and Madagascar over the past year.

    In 2022, WFP delivered food assistance to a record 158 million people around the world. The agency works in over 120 countries and territories and its work fighting hunger was recognized with the Nobel Peace Prize in 2020.

    Apart from providing emergency food relief and logistics, including trucks, planes, ships and helicopters in some of the most complex humanitarian operations on the globe, WFP is also the world’s largest provider of school meals.

    Just last month the agency released a landmark report on the state of school meals, which provide a “critical safety net” for vulnerable children and households amid the global food crisis, at a time when over 150 million children and young people are going hungry.  

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  • Poland Abortion Laws: Repression of Reproductive Rights and Out of Sync Activists

    Poland Abortion Laws: Repression of Reproductive Rights and Out of Sync Activists

    The Abortion Dream Team (from left to right Natalia Broniarczyk, Justyna Wydrzynska, Kinga Jelinska) outside the Warsaw court after Wydrzynska’s conviction. Credit: Abortion Dream Team
    • by Ed Holt (bratislava)
    • Inter Press Service

    BRATISLAVA, Apr 05 (IPS) – “People want the abortion laws here liberalised. Society has changed; even the politicians can see it,” Kinga Jelinska, a Polish reproductive rights activist, says. “In four or five years, I believe, the abortion laws here will be liberalised, because it’s what the people support.”

    Jelinska, a member of the Abortion Dream Team (ADT) collective, which provides assistance to women in Poland who need an abortion, spoke to IPS not long after her fellow activist and ADT co-founder Justyna Wydrzynska had been sentenced to eight months community service for giving abortion pills to another woman.

    She is disappointed by the ruling but, like her colleague, remains defiant and determined to carry on her work.

    “We’re just going to keep going. The court claimed Justyna was ‘guilty of helping’ someone have an abortion. Well, we have to help each other in cases where people are being systematically denied access to care. Without people like Justyna, women are left to take their own decisions , and they may take an unsafe option,” Kinga says.

    Wydrzynska’s trial and conviction have, activists such as Jelinska say, highlighted problems connected with abortion access in Poland and the risks women needing the procedure – and those they turn to for advice – often face.

    Poland has some of the world’s strictest abortion laws – terminations are only permitted where the pregnancy threatens the mother’s life or health, or if it results from a criminal act, such as rape or incest – and while not illegal to have an abortion, it is illegal to help someone do so.

    Many women in Poland who want an abortion self-administer pills bought online from abroad or travel to neighbouring countries with less restrictive legislation, such as Germany and the Czech Republic, for terminations. Some contact groups like ADT for help. It is not illegal to give out information about abortions, including advice on how to buy pills online.

    In February 2020, at the start of the Covid pandemic in Poland, ADT had been contacted by a woman, named Anya*, who was 12 weeks pregnant and desperate. She said she was a victim of domestic violence and was considering going abroad to terminate her pregnancy as the pills she had ordered online were taking too long to arrive.

    Wydrzynska decided to give Anya her own pills, but the package she sent was intercepted by Anya’s partner, who reported what had happened to police. Anna later miscarried.

    Wydrzynska was convicted of “aiding an abortion” – a crime under Polish law which carries a maximum sentence of three years in prison – by a Warsaw court in March 2023 in what is believed to be the first time in Europe that a women’s health advocate has gone on trial for aiding an abortion.

    The conviction was immediately condemned by both local and international activists who said the case should never have been brought to court.

    “We were disappointed that Justyna was convicted. We are happy that she is not going to jail, but her trial has dragged on for a year, in which time a lot of international organisations, including gynaecologists, said the case should be dropped. It should never have come to trial, and this would never have happened in another country,“ Mara Clarke, co-founder of Supporting Abortions for Everyone, told IPS.

    Amnesty International described the court’s ruling as “a depressing low in the repression of reproductive rights in Poland”.

    “This ruling is going to have a chilling effect and we are already seeing women who are worried about what they should do if they found themselves in the situation that they need an abortion,” Mikolaj Czerwinski, Senior Campaigner at Amnesty International, told IPS.

    Others believe the trial was part of a wider campaign to crackdown on women’s rights and those of the minorities such as the LGBTQI community, by the right-wing government and its conservative religious allies.

    “The case against Justyna was politically motivated,” said Clarke, pointing out that the judge in the case was promoted on the same as she handed down the verdict, and that the Christian fundamentalist group Ordo Iuris was allowed a role in the trial helping the prosecution.

    “Who knows what will come up with next?” she added.

    The ruling Law and Justice (PiS) party has long been accused by critics in Poland and abroad of systematically suppressing women’s rights, and it was instrumental in pushing through a tightening of abortion laws in 2021 which banned abortions even in cases where the foetus was diagnosed with a severe birth defect.

    Meanwhile, the European Commission (EC) has raised serious concerns over judicial independence in the country under the PiS with some judicial bodies seen as being under the control of the ruling party.

    Czerwinski said that following the trial there were now “questions over the independence of the judiciary in Poland and what impact that might have on women’s rights, and human rights in general, in Poland”.

    But while anger remains at Wydrzynska’s conviction, activists such as Jelinska and Clarke believe that the trial has only highlighted how out of touch Poland’s government is with society on abortion laws.

    Since the abortion laws was tightened even further in 2021 – a move which was met with massive street protests – surveys have shown strong support for liberalisation of abortion laws. In one poll last November, 70% of respondents backed allowing terminations on demand up to 12 weeks.

    “People want access to abortions, public surveys have shown that. We see it too in the work we do every day,” she says, adding that during Wydrzynska’s trial “public opinion was overwhelmingly pro-Justyna.”

    In a public opinion poll carried out in February for Amnesty International, 47% of respondents said they would have done the same as Wydrzynska. The survey also found that people were overwhelmingly against punishment for helping to access an abortion in Poland.

    Meanwhile, some opposition politicians have suggested they would introduce legislation which would allow for abortion on demand if they get into power, pointing to public support for such a measure.

    It is this public support which, Kinga believes, may have stopped the court handing down a jail sentence to the activist.

    “This is an election year, and the government knows it would be political suicide to give her a harsher sentence with so many people in favour of liberalising access to abortion,” she explains.

    It may also be behind Polish parliament’s rejection in early March of a bill, proposed by an anti-abortion group as a citizen’s legislative initiative under a special parliamentary procedure, which would have criminalised even providing information about abortions. Government MPs voted against it with some reportedly saying they did back it for fear of fuelling protests just months away from elections.

    “Even they know that would have been going too far,” said Czerwisnki.

    The trial, which was reported extensively in Poland and widely in international media, has also helped raise awareness of the work of groups like ADT and others with some organisations, including the Abortions Without Borders network which has a Polish helpline reporting a three-fold rise in calls since the trial began.

    “Justyna’s case put even more focus on the issue and the ways women can access abortion services,” says Kinga.

    If the conviction was designed to put activists off their work, it seems to have backfired, said Czerwinski.

    “A lot of activists have been re-energised by this because they have seen Justyna and her response to the ruling,” he said. “They are aware of the risks, but at the same time will not stop helping women.”

    Wydrzynska has appealed her conviction and insists that she has done nothing wrong. She has also vowed to continue her activism.

    Speaking on public radio after her trial, she said: “Even if I should leave the country, I will never stop. In the same way, I know that there are thousands of people who’d do the same for me.”

    *NOT REAL NAME

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  • Planet Garbage

    Planet Garbage

    We’re spewing a torrent of waste and pollution that is affecting our environment, our economies, and our health, warns UN Secretary-General António Guterres. Credit: Athar Parvaiz/IPS
    • by Baher Kamal (madrid)
    • Inter Press Service

    MADRID, Apr 04 (IPS) – Straight to the point: the current system of voracious money-making production and the induced over-consumption patterns have turned Planet Earth into a giant garbage dump.

    And straight to the facts:

    • Every minute, the equivalent of one garbage truck of plastic is dumped into the ocean.
    • If food loss and waste were a country, it would be the third biggest source of greenhouse gas emissions.
    • More than 75% of all electronic waste is not safely managed.
    • Resource extraction is responsible for half of the world’s carbon emissions.
    • The amount of municipal solid waste generated globally could rise from around 2.24 billion tons to 3.88 billion tons by 2050.
    • 80% of marine pollution originates on land.

     

    One billion tons of food in the garbage

    The waste sector contributes significantly to the triple planetary crisis of climate change, biodiversity and nature loss, and pollution.

    Just take the shocking case of food. Every year, around 931 million tons of food is lost or wasted and up to 14 million tons of plastic waste enters aquatic ecosystems.

    Such an unimaginable waste of food in a world of one billion empty plates, is just to be added to the dumping of billions of tons of plastics, textiles, discarded electronics, and debris from mining and construction sites.

    ‘Trashing our only home’

    “The planet is literally drowning in garbage, and it is high time to clean up,” UN Secretary-General António Guterres warned, marking the first-ever International Day of Zero Waste (30 March 2023).

    “We are trashing our only home,” he said. “We’re spewing a torrent of waste and pollution that is affecting our environment, our economies, and our health.”

    Guterres said it was time for “a war on waste” on three fronts, calling on polluters themselves to take the lead.

    “Those who produce waste must design products and services that are less resource and material intensive, smartly manage any waste created across all stages of their products’ lifecycle, and find creative ways to extend the lives of the products they sell,” he said.

    “We need to find opportunities to reuse, recycle, repurpose, repair and recover the products we use. And we need to think twice before throwing these items in the garbage.”

    The case of Türkiye

    The Türkiye’s Zero Waste Project has so far managed to conserve some 650 million tonnes of raw material, and to eliminate four million tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions through recycling.

    “All life on earth is connected but industrialization has led to the over-consumption that is polluting the planet, said the Turkish First Lady, Emine Erdo?an, who spearheads the Project.

    “Humans have created this frightening landscape.”

    “We are obliged to establish a fair system and take on measures based on burden sharing where we look out for countries deeply impacted by the consequences of climate change which had no part to play in the first place,” she said.

    Be ‘waste wise’

    The head of the UN’s urban development agency, UN-Habitat, Maimunah Mohd Sharif, urged countries to be “waste wise”, including through finding value in reusing items before discarding them.

    “Zero Waste is the first step towards creating waste-wise societies,” she said. “The first step is to take responsibility and make a conscious effort to reduce our consumption of single-use plastics. Remember that everything we use and discard must go somewhere.”

    Food systems

    The global population is on track to reach 10 billion by 2050, and demand for food and non-food agricultural products is also expected to rise by up to 56%, according to the UN Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO).

    Meeting this demand will require healthier and more sustainable food production and consumption, FAO Director-General Qu Dongyu said.

    “We need to urgently address the inefficiencies and inequalities in our agri-food systems to make them more efficient, more inclusive, more resilient and more sustainable.”

    For this, it would be of great help to implement the world’s Global Strategy for Sustainable Consumption and Production, which calls for the adoption of sustainable consumption and production objectives across all sectors by 2030.

    Another available tool is the “End plastic pollution: towards an internationally legally binding instrument”, which was adopted at the United Nations Environment Assembly on 2 March 2022.

    Zero waste?

    A zero-waste approach entails responsible production, consumption and disposal of products in a closed, circular system. This means that resources are reused or recovered as much as possible and that we minimise the pollution of air, land or water.

    Products should be designed to be durable and require fewer and low-impact materials. By opting for less resource-intensive production and transport methods, manufacturers can further limit pollution and waste.

    Consumers can also play a pivotal role in enabling zero waste by changing habits and reusing and repairing products as much as possible before properly disposing of them.

    ‘The world is bigger than five’

    Turkish President, Recep Tayyip Erdo?an, has suggested that “the world is bigger than five” – a reference to the five permanent members of the UN Security Council: China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States.”

    Sounds good. But the fact is that those five are the world’s major producers and their corporations are dominating the global markets, making astonishing profits from destruction, being all of them the greater polluters.

    For example, alongside oil and gas corporations, food companies more than doubled their profits in 2022 at a time when more than 800 million people were going hungry and 1.7 billion workers live in countries where inflation is outpacing wages, as reported by Oxfam International.

    Meanwhile, the food industry continues to intensively use toxic chemicals in their products, some of them provoking heart diseases and death. Trans fat is just one of them, adding to contaminating fertilisers, pesticides, microplastics and a long etcetera, that end up in land, water and the air.

    Shouldn’t such deadly practices be classified as “crimes against humanity”? And their perpetrators be taken to International Criminal Courts?

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  • Food Shortages Deepen in Cyclone-Devastated Vanuatu

    Food Shortages Deepen in Cyclone-Devastated Vanuatu

    Most vendor tables are empty in the large fresh produce market in Vanuatu’s capital, Port Vila, due to the widespread devastation of food gardens and crops by Cyclones Judy and Kevin in early March. Photo credit: Catherine Wilson/IPS
    • by Catherine Wilson (port vila, vanuatu)
    • Inter Press Service

    PORT VILA, Vanuatu, Apr 04 (IPS) – One month after the Pacific Island nation of Vanuatu was hit by two Category 4 cyclones within three days, food scarcity and prices are rising in the country following widespread devastation of the agriculture sector.

    In the worst affected provinces of Shefa and Tafea, the “scale of damage ranges from 90 percent to 100 percent of crops, such as root crops, fruit and forest trees, vegetables, coffee, coconut and small livestock,” Antoine Ravo, Director of Vanuatu’s Department of Agriculture and Rural Development told IPS.

    Vanuatu is an archipelago nation of more than 80 islands located east of Australia and southeast of Papua New Guinea. More than 80 percent of the population of more than 300,000 people were impacted by Cyclones Judy and Kevin, which unleashed gale-force winds, torrential rain and flooding across the nation on the 1 March and 3 March. Properties and homes were destroyed, power and water services cut, seawalls damaged and roads and bridges blocked.

    In the aftermath, many households turned to their existing stores of food and any fresh produce that could be salvaged from their food gardens. But these have rapidly depleted.

    In the large undercover fresh produce market in the centre of the capital, Port Vila, about 75-80 percent of market tables, which are usually heaving with abundant displays of root crops, vegetables and fruits, are now empty. Many of the regular vendors have seen their household harvests decimated by wind and flooding.

    Susan, who lives in the rural community of Rentapao not far from Port Vila on Efate Island, commutes

    Regular market vendor, Susan, lost much of her garden produce during the two cyclone disasters and is selling dry packaged food, such as banana chips, instead. Central Market, Port Vila, Vanuatu. Photo credit: Catherine Wilson/IPS
    Regular market vendor, Susan, lost much of her garden produce during the two cyclone disasters and is selling dry packaged food, such as banana chips, instead. Central Market, Port Vila, Vanuatu. Photo credit: Catherine Wilson/IPS

    daily to the market. “The cyclones destroyed our crops and our homes. We lost a lot of root crops and bananas. Today, I only have half the amount of produce I usually sell,” Susan told IPS. But, faced with the crisis, she quickly diversified and, alongside a small pile of green vegetables, the greater part of her market table is laden with packets of dried food, such as banana and manioc or cassava chips.

    Agriculture is the main source of people’s income and food in Vanuatu, with 78 percent and 86 percent of households in the country relying on their own growing of vegetables and root crops, respectively, for food security and livelihoods.

    But, as families grapple with increasing food scarcity, they have also been hit by a steep rise in prices for basic staples that are the core of their daily consumption. A cucumber, which sold for about 30 vatu (US$0.25) prior to the disasters, is now priced from 200 vatu (US$1.69), while pineapples and green coconuts, which could be bought for 50 vatu (US$0.42) each, also sell for 200 vatu (US$1.69).

    Leias Cullwick, Executive Director of the Vanuatu National Council of Women, said that, in the wake of the cyclones, children were experiencing deprivation and anxiety. “Water is the number one concern and, also, food. And children, when they want water and food, and their mother has none to give, become traumatised,” she told IPS.

    Lack of clean water and contamination by the storms of water sources, such as rivers and streams, in peri-urban and rural areas is also causing illnesses in children, such as dehydration and diarrhoea. Meanwhile, the current wet season in Vanuatu is increasing the risks of mosquito-borne diseases, including malaria and dengue fever, Cullwick added.

    It will take months for some households to regain their crop yields. “Root crops have been damaged, and these are not crops that you plant today and harvest tomorrow. It takes three months, it takes six months, it will take a while for communities to get their harvests going, so it’s a concern,” Soneel Ram, Communications Manager for the Pacific Country Cluster Delegation from the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies told IPS in Port Vila. Although, he added that access to food at this time is easier in Pacific cities and towns.

    “In urban areas, the main difference is access to supermarkets. People can readily access supermarkets and get food off the shelf. For rural communities, they rely on subsistence farming as a source of food. Now they have to look for extra funds to buy food,” Ram said. In response, the government is organising the distribution of dry food rations to affected communities, along with seeds, planting materials and farming tools.

    The Pacific Island nation faces a very high risk of climate and other natural disasters. Every year islanders prepare for cyclones during the wet season from November to April. And being situated on the ‘Pacific Ring of Fire’, it is also prone to earthquakes, volcanic eruptions and tsunamis.

    The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) forecasts that Vanuatu will experience increasingly extreme climate events, such as hotter temperatures and more severe tropical storms, droughts and floods, in the future. And, on current trends, global temperatures could exceed 1.5 degrees Celsius of warming as early as 2030, reports the IPCC.

    The impacts of Cyclones Judy and Kevin in the country follow damages wrought by other cyclones in recent years, including Cyclone Pam in 2015, which is estimated to have driven 4,000 more people into poverty, and Cyclone Harold in 2020. And the impacts of the pandemic on the country’s economy and local incomes, especially from agriculture and tourism, since early 2020. Agriculture and tourism are the main industries in Vanuatu, and agriculture, forestry and fisheries account for 15 percent of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP). The most important cash crops are copra, cocoa and kava, with copra alone accounting for more than 35 percent of the Pacific nation’s exports. Now the environmental havoc and the sudden decline in international tourist arrivals following the cyclones threaten to hinder the building of recovery in the country.

    The government reports that this month’s disasters will leave the country with a recovery bill of USD 50 million. And it predicts that the rescue of the agricultural sector will take years.

    “It will take three months for immediate recovery of short-term food production, and six to nine months for mid-term crops, such as cassava, taro, yam and bananas. But it will take three to five years for coconut, coffee, pepper, vanilla and cocoa,” Ravo said.

    With climate losses predicted to continue accumulating in the coming decades, the Vanuatu Government remains determined to pursue its ‘ICJ Initiative’, now supported by 133 other nations worldwide. The initiative aims to investigate through the International Court of Justice how international law can be used to protect vulnerable countries from climate change impacts to the environment and human rights.

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  • Rethinking Public Debt as Positive Investment in Sustainable Development

    Rethinking Public Debt as Positive Investment in Sustainable Development

    Financing is vital for growth. Credit: Unsplash / Towfiqu Barbhuiya
    • Opinion by Armida Salsiah Alisjahbana (bangkok, thailand)
    • Inter Press Service
    • The writer is UN Under-Secretary-General and Executive Secretary of the Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP)

    BANGKOK, Thailand, Apr 04 (IPS) – The unprecedented fiscal firepower used to protect the vulnerable from the harsh socio-economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and the resulting economic contraction have pushed the average government debt level in the Asia-Pacific region to its highest since 2008.

    Public debt distress is expected to worsen amid the global economic slowdown, record high inflation and rising interest rates, and uncertainty induced by the war in Ukraine.

    And surging debt service payments are expected to put public debt sustainability of several developing Asia-Pacific economies at risk. Most concerning, debt distress risk is highest for countries with the highest development finance needs, including small island developing States.

    Public debt is a powerful development tool in need of a major rethink

    Yet, a higher debt level is not necessarily a bad thing, according to this year’s edition of the Economic and Social Survey of Asia and the Pacific. Current policy debates on public debt sustainability do not take into account the long-term positive socio-economic and environmental impact of public investments in laying the foundations of inclusive, resilient and sustainable prosperity.

    Indeed, left unaddressed, development deficits and climate risks hurt economic prospects and public debt sustainability itself. Our analysis shows that social spending cuts increase poverty and inequality and undermine economic productivity in the long term.

    Conversely, investing in healthcare, education, social protection and climate action is good economics.

    Multilateral lenders and credit rating agencies focus excessively on keeping debt sustainable in the short term. Such perceived optimal debt levels are too low and lead to suboptimal development outcomes.

    Revisiting current debt sustainability norms has also become necessary with the emergence of major non-traditional bilateral creditors and a drastic fall in concessional development lending to Asian and Pacific countries over the past decade.

    It is time for a bold shift in thinking about public debt sustainability. We propose an augmented approach that assesses public debt viability that takes into account a country’s SDG investment needs, government structural development policies aiming to boost economic competitiveness, and national SDG financing strategies.

    It is time for creditors, international financial institutions and credit rating agencies to consider the positive long-term economic, social and environmental outcomes of investing in the SDGs, while assessing public debt sustainability.

    Our research finds that public debt is found to decline over the long term when the socio-economic and environmental benefits of public investments are incorporated.

    Rather than penalizing bold fiscal support for people and the environment, international creditors should consider if such spending would boost economic productivity.

    Lenders and credit rating agencies should see debt relief as helping support the fiscal outlook, rather than as a sign of an upcoming debt default.

    Developing countries should also strive to balance investing in the SDGs with ensuring debt sustainability. Governments should not feel deterred from borrowing for essential, high-impact sustainable development spending; rather, funds should be used efficiently and effectively.

    Public coffers should also be boosted by resource mobilization strategies designed to generate social and/or environmental benefits, such as through progressive taxation.

    Effective public debt management reduces fiscal risks and borrowing costs, with several examples of good public debt management practices in the Asia-Pacific region. At the same time, countries with high debt distress levels may need pre-emptive, swift and adequate sovereign debt restructuring, while efforts towards common international debt resolution mechanisms and restructuring frameworks needs to be accelerated.

    We are in the fourth year of the Decade of Action to accelerate progress towards the SDGs with not much to show in gains. It is time for Asia and the Pacific to rise to the challenge of mobilizing the financial resources to realise the dream of resilient and sustainable prosperity for all.

    The Economic and Social Survey of Asia and the Pacific 2023 will be launched on 5 April 2023.https://www.unescap.org/events/2023/launch-survey-2023-rethinking-public-debt

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  • Ending Discrimination Against Women in Family Law is Vital for Economic Progress

    Ending Discrimination Against Women in Family Law is Vital for Economic Progress

    • Opinion by Hyshyama Hamin (colombo, sri lanka)
    • Inter Press Service

    COLOMBO, Sri Lanka, Apr 03 (IPS) – Discriminatory family laws and policies that restrict women’s access to educational opportunities, employment, inheritance, property ownership and equal pay, are making women disproportionately vulnerable to the impacts of the global economic downturn.

    Not only is it unjust to deny women equal economic rights, but it is also significantly hampering socio-economic progress of nation states. Governments urgently need to reform discriminatory family laws that privilege men over women because countries cannot afford to sideline half their population.

    Women shoulder a greater burden of unpaid labor

    Many countries are currently mired in financial crisis, soaring inflation, and debilitating debt. The backdrop to this is a global economic slowdown triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic, Russia’s war on Ukraine, and extreme weather fuelled by climate change. Research shows that gender inequality at home is exacerbated by such economic slumps, with women more likely than men to be saddled with increases in unpaid domestic work like cooking, cleaning, and caring for family members.

    According to the International Labour Organisation, up to 76% of unpaid care work is done by women and girls. The unequal division of informal labor requires women to forgo paid employment, work more hours, and can curtail their financial and career prospects.

    Unpaid care work can account for anywhere between 10% and 39% of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and a potential tenth of the world’s economic output. It contributes hugely to a society’s economic well-being, but is excluded from official GDP figures that measure the economic performance of countries. This is because many people, including some economists and policymakers, view unpaid domestic labor as women and girls “fulfilling their family duty.”

    Discriminatory gender stereotypes of this kind are embedded within patriarchal family structures and are both encoded in and perpetuated by sex-discriminatory family laws that limit women’s ability to participate in the economic sphere.

    Legally prohibiting women from equal education and economic involvement limits their earning potential, reduces their decision-making power, and widens the gender pay gap.

    All this traps women in a cycle of poverty and forces many to remain financially dependent on male relatives, thus putting them at greater risk of a range of human rights violations, including sexual and gender-based violence and exploitation.

    Around half of countries have economic status laws that treat women unequally

    Equality Now’s policy brief, Words & Deeds: Holding Governments Accountable to the Beijing +30 Review Process – Sex Discrimination in Economic Status Laws, highlights how around half of countries still have economic status laws that treat women unequally, making them more vulnerable to exploitation in real life and online.

    Recent data from the World Bank’s Women, Business and the Law 2023 report shockingly shows that only 14 out of 190 economies surveyed have achieved full legal equality, and a typical economy only grants women 75% of the same rights as men.

    According to the same report, women face restrictions in marriage and divorce matters in 89 economies. Lamentably, 43 economies do not grant equal inheritance rights to male and female surviving spouses and 41 economies still favor sons in the division of property.

    One factor highly corresponds with these statistics – family laws that discriminate against women and girls. In Gender-Discriminatory Laws and Women’s Economic Agency, Mala Htun, Francesca R. Jensenius, and Jami Nelson Nunez analyzed World Bank data. They found a strong correlation between restrictions on women’s economic agency and gender-discriminatory legislation relating to family laws and personal status laws that regulate relationships between individuals, such as in marriage, divorce, child custody, and inheritance.

    Religious and legal discrimination entwines

    Sri Lanka is one of many countries with sex-discriminatory family laws. It has also recently been experiencing a severe economic crisis and public demands for political change.

    Lawyer and activist Ermiza Tegal highlights how this upheaval tallies with an uptick in domestic violence and sexual abuse.

    Tegal is calling for legal reform, citing mounting evidence of the “direct relationship between discriminatory family laws and women’s physical and mental health, and vulnerability to exploitation and violence,” with unjust legal provisions and practices driving women and children to destitution and excluding them from education and development.

    Examples of Sri Lanka’s discriminatory laws include the Muslim Intestate Succession Law, which stipulates that daughters can only inherit half of parental property compared to sons, and the Jaffna Matrimonial Rights and Inheritance Ordinance (or Thesawalamai) that applies specifically to Jaffna Tamils and prevents a married woman from disposing of real estate without her husband’s consent.

    Another example is the Muslim Marriage and Divorce Act (MMDA), which allows child marriage, denies women the ability to sign their own marriage documents, and does not recognize the concepts of matrimonial property or alimony.

    Currently, Sri Lanka is in the process of reforming the MMDA following widespread public demand for reform, led by Muslim women’s rights groups.

    In Tunisia too, women do not have equal inheritance rights, despite a very progressive Personal Status Code enacted in 1956 that promoted equality between spouses and abolished polygamy.

    Samia Fessi is President of Kadirat, an NGO working to repeal discriminatory laws, and she is part of a vibrant women’s rights movement that has campaigned for decades for equal inheritance.

    According to Fessi, “Women rights activists argue rightfully that equality in the inheritance will benefit economically marginalized women as half is better than nothing. We believe that discriminatory laws should be abolished if we want women’s conditions to improve.”

    In 2017, there were hopes that equal inheritance would be granted as part of progressive amendments to Tunisia’s Personal Status Code announced by former president Beji Caid Essebsi.

    Despite opposition from conservatives arguing that equal inheritance is a violation of Islamic Shari’a law, he succeeded in getting the reform Bill approved by the Ministerial Council.

    Unfortunately, Essebsi’s death in 2019 meant the loss of presidential support, and the Bill has not passed. The likelihood of imminent reform has faltered under the new president, Kais Saeid. He holds conservative views on inheritance and other social issues, and has overseen the passing of a new Constitution that declares Tunisia is an Islamic nation and the state must work to achieve “the goals of pure Islam in preserving life, honour, money, religion and freedom.”

    Reforming family laws benefits everyone

    Equality Now’s report summarizes that “women’s legal capacity – their ability to act and make choices independently of the men in their lives about money, travel, work, property, and children – by far is the strongest predictor of the share of women with bank accounts, the share of women who participate in firm ownership, and female labor force participation.”

    Mala Htun et al.’s study concurs, concluding that egalitarian reform of family laws “may be the most crucial precondition to empower women economically,” and this should be everyone’s priority because it would “unleash massive economic potential.”

    Global data demonstrates that accelerated progress toward gender equality can result in huge economic gains for a country, and compelling evidence shows that nations have more diverse, dynamic, and resilient economies when they foster environments that enable women to enter and thrive in labor markets.

    Employment and property rights can grant women access to loans, insurance, and social protection schemes like pensions and provident funds, reducing the likelihood of old-age poverty, and making women and their families more resilient during economic crises.

    Women with full legal capacity and agency are more likely to pursue education, fund skills and income-building, and contribute to the national economy. Women are also more likely to invest in their family’s welfare, such as by prioritizing their children’s education, nutrition, and healthcare.

    To advocate for much needed legal change, the Global Campaign for Equality in Famly Law was launched by eight leading women’s rights and faith-inspired organizations, alongside UN Women.

    The campaign calls on governments to prioritize equality in family law, policy, and practice, especially in light of severe economic crises that affect women and girls disproportionately. Sexist family and related laws need to be repealed or reformed and attempts to introduce new discriminatory laws should be blocked.

    Ensuring that laws which govern the family and personal status protect and promote women’s economic and legal rights must be a prerequisite for every country striving to overcome economic challenges. This must also be a priority for multi-lateral and bilateral agencies supporting countries. Economic equality in the family culminates in economic equality in society. The time for family law reform is now!

    Hyshyama Hamin is Campaign Manager, Global Campaign for Equality in Family Law, Equality Now

    IPS UN Bureau


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  • US Legislators Strip China of Developing Nation Status

    US Legislators Strip China of Developing Nation Status

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

    UNITED NATIONS, Apr 03 (IPS) – As signs of a new Cold War are fast emerging at the United Nations, the US continues its war of words with the People’s Republic of China (PRC).

    The rivalry, which extends from Russia and Taiwan to Iran and Myanmar – where the UN’s two permanent members are on opposite sides of ongoing political or military conflicts– has now triggered a battle on semantics.

    Is China, described as the world’s second largest economy ranking next to the US, really a “developing nation”?

    The US House of Representative unanimously passed a bill March 27 directing the Secretary of State Antony Blinken to strip the PRC of its “developing country” status in international organizations

    Titled “PRC Is Not a Developing Country Act” — the bill cleared the House in an overwhelming 415-0 vote. The legislation reads: “It should be the policy of the United States—

    (1) to oppose the labeling or treatment of the People’s Republic of China as a developing country in any treaty or other international agreement to which the United States is a party;

    (2) to oppose the labeling or treatment of the People’s Republic of China as a developing country in each international organization of which the United States is a member; and

    (3) to pursue the labeling or treatment of the People’s Republic of China as an upper middle-income country, high income country, or developed country in each international organization of which the United States is a member”.

    At the United Nations, China is closely allied with the 137-member Group of 77 (G77), the largest single coalition of “developing countries” (a group created in 1964 with 77 members).

    Since China is not a formal member of the G77, the group describes itself either as “The G77 and China” or “The G77 plus China.”

    Ambassador Anwarul K. Chowdhury, a former Permanent Representative of Bangladesh to the UN and a former UN Under-Secretary-General, told IPS the defining of a developing country is a complex challenge.

    “There is no established framework or charter for defining a “developing country,” he noted

    According to well-respected economist Jeffrey Sachs, the current divide between the developed and developing world is largely a phenomenon of the 20th century. Some economists emphasize that the binary labeling of countries is “neither descriptive nor explanatory”.

    For the UN system, the G77, which provides the collective negotiating platform of the countries of the South, is in reality synonymous with nations which are identified as “developing countries, least developed countries (LDCs), landlocked developing countries and small island developing states” (SIDS).

    “They are all sub-groupings of developing countries and belong to the G-77, he pointed out.

    Outlining the group’s history, he said, the G-77 was established in 1964 by seventy-seven developing countries, signatories of the “Joint Declaration” issued at the end of the first session of the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) in Geneva.

    Although members of the G-77 have increased to 134 countries, the original name was retained due to its historic significance. Developing countries tend to have some characteristics in common, often due to their histories or geographies, said Ambassador Chowdhury, Chairman of the Administrative and Budgetary Committee (Fifth Committee) of the UN General Assembly in 1997-98 and Chair of the Group of 27, working group of G-77, in 1982-83.

    In October 1997, he said, China joined the G-77 while keeping its special identity by proposing the nomenclature as “G-77 and China”. China aligns its positions on the global economic and social issues with G-77 positions for negotiating purposes.

    Being the largest negotiating group in the United Nations, and in view of the mutuality of their common concerns, G-77 is not expected to agree to separate China from the current collaborative arrangements.

    “And more so, if the pressure comes from the US delegation, in view of the recent resolution of the House of Representatives of the US Congress, to take away the categorization of China as a developing country”, declared Ambassador Chowdhury.

    In a World Bank Data Blog, Tariq Khokhar, Global Data Editor & Senior Data Scientist and Umar Serajuddin, Manager, Development Data Group, at the World Bank, point out that the IMF, in the “World Economic Outlook (WEO)” currently classify 37 countries as “Advanced Economies” and all others are considered “Emerging Market and Developing Economies” according to the WEO Statistical Annex.”

    The institution notes that “this classification is not based on strict criteria, economic or otherwise” and that it’s done in order to “facilitate analysis by providing a reasonably meaningful method of organizing data.”

    The United Nations has no formal definition of developing countries, but still uses the term for monitoring purposes and classifies as many as 159 countries as developing, the authors argue.

    Under the UN’s current classification, all of Europe and Northern America along with Japan, Australia and New Zealand are classified as developed regions, and all other regions are developing.

    The UN maintains a list of “Least Developed Countries” which are defined by accounting for GNI per capita as well as measures of human capital and economic vulnerability.

    “While we can’t find the first instance of “developing world” being used, what it colloquially refers to — the group of countries that fare relatively and similarly poorly in social and economic measures — hasn’t been consistently or precisely defined, and this “definition” hasn’t been updated.”

    “The World Bank has for many years referred to “low and middle income countries” as “developing countries” for convenience in publications, but even if this definition was reasonable in the past, it’s worth asking if it has remained so and if a more granular definition is warranted.”

    In its legislation, the US House of Representatives says “not later than 180 days after the date of the enactment of this Act, the Secretary of State shall submit to the appropriate committees of Congress a report identifying all current treaty negotiations in which—

    (a) Any international organization of which the United States and the People’s Republic of China are both current member states, the Secretary, in coordination with the heads of other Federal agencies and departments as needed, shall pursue—

    (1) changing the status of the People’s Republic of China from developing country to upper middle income country, high income country, or developed country if a mechanism exists in such organization to make such a change in status;

    (2) proposing the development of a mechanism described in paragraph (1) to change the status of the People’s Republic of China in such organization from developing country to developed country; or

    (3) regardless of efforts made pursuant to paragraphs (1) and (2), working to ensure that the People’s Republic of China does not receive preferential treatment or assistance within the organization as a result of it having the status of a developing country.

    (b) The President may waive the application of subsection (a) with respect to any international organization if the President notifies the appropriate committees of Congress, not later than 10 days before the date on which the waiver shall take effect, that such a waiver is in the national interests of the United States.

    Speaking during the debate, Representative Young Kim (Republican of California) said: “The People’s Republic of China is the world’s second largest economy, accounting for 18.6 percent of the global economy.”

    “Their economy is second only to that of the United States. The United States is treated as a developed country, so should PRC,” Kim said. “And is also treated as a high-income country in treaties and international organizations, so China should also be treated as a developed country.”

    “However, the PRC is classified as a developing country, and they’re using this status to game the system and hurt countries that are truly in need,” she added.

    Elaborating further, Ambassador Chowdhury said the World Bank, as a part of the Bretton Woods institutions, classifies the world’s economies into four groups, based on gross national income per capita: high, upper-middle, lower-middle, and low income countries.

    In 2015, the World Bank declared that the “developing/developed world categorization” had become less relevant and that they will phase out the use of that descriptor.

    Instead, their reports will present data aggregations for regions and income groups.

    The World Trade Organisation (WTO) accepts any country’s claim of itself being “developing”.

    He said certain countries that have become “developed” in the last 20 years by almost all economic metrics, still wants to be classified as “developing country”, as it entitles them to a preferential treatment at the WTO – countries such as Brunei, Kuwait, Qatar, Singapore, and the United Arab Emirates.

    The term “Global South“, used by some as an alternative term to developing countries, began to be mentioned more widely since about 2004.

    The Global South refers to these countries’ interconnected histories of colonialism, neo-imperialism, and differential economic and social change through which large inequalities in living standards, life expectancy, and access to resources are maintained.

    “Most of humanity resides in the Global South,” declared Ambassador Chowdhury.

    IPS UN Bureau Report


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

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  • The deadly legacy of landmines

    The deadly legacy of landmines

    Born into peace but maimed by a weapon of war

    UN Photo/Martine Perret

    Two deminers work to decontaminate the land in Bunia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

    “Minga had never owned a toy. In her village, in Angola, children often made do with sticks or broken wheels – but this was something different. It was green, metal and shaped like a small tin. She wanted to show her brothers and sisters, so she picked it up to take home.”

    Documentary photographer, landmine survivor and UN Global Advocate for persons with disabilities in conflict and peacebuilding situations, Giles Duley, has many heartbreaking stories to tell, mostly about children maimed by landmines on their way to school, home or at play.

    Six-year-old Minga lost her sight and her left arm in 2009, seven years after the end of the war in Angola. She was one of the many children who was born into peace but harmed by a war that she never knew.

    Daily danger of death

    The latest estimates show that in 2021, more than 5,500 people were killed or maimed by landmines, most of them were civilians, half of whom were children. More than two decades after the adoption of the Mine Ban Treaty, about sixty million people in nearly 70 countries and territories still live with the risk of landmines on a daily basis.

    The UN Mine Action Service, launched the campaign “Mine Action Cannot Wait ” to mark the International Day, as countries like Angola, Cambodia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the Lao People’s Democratic Republic and Viet Nam, continue to suffer from decades of landmine contamination.

    Landmines can lie dormant for years or even decades until they are triggered.

    “Even after the fighting stops, conflicts often leave behind a terrifying legacy: landmines and explosive ordnance that litter communities,” says UN Secretary-General António Guterres in his message for the International Day.

    “Peace brings no assurance of safety when roads and fields are mined, when unexploded ordnance threatens the return of displaced populations, and when children find and play with shiny objects that explode.”

    Landmines, which can be produced for as little as $1, do not distinguish between combatants and civilians. Their use violates international human rights and humanitarian laws.

    They not only cost lives and limbs, but also prevent communities from accessing land that could be used for farming or building hospitals and schools as well as essential services such as food, water, health care and humanitarian aid.  

    Landmines in Ukraine

    A deminer for the State Emergency Service of Ukraine sweeps the ground for unexploded ordnance and landmines.

    UNDP Ukraine/Oleksandr Simonenko

    A deminer for the State Emergency Service of Ukraine sweeps the ground for unexploded ordnance and landmines.

    Despite international efforts to prevent the use of landmines they continue to be laid in conflict situations including in Ukraine following Russia’s invasion in February 2022. UNICEF and the State Emergency Service of Ukraine recently warned that around 30 per cent of the country may potentially be mined as a result of the hostilities.

    In Myanmar, the Landmine and Cluster Munition Monitor, a UN-supported civil society group which reports on landmine use has observed“new and greatly expanded” use of mines by government forces. Militia groups in countries like the Central African Republic and the Democratic Republic of the Congo also use landmines to attack and frighten people, keeping them off their lands and away from their homes.

    Butterfly wings which attract curious children

    There are more than 600 different types of landmines grouped into two broad categories – anti-personnel (AP) and anti-tank landmines. AP mines come in different shapes and can be found buried or above ground. A common type, known as the “butterfly” mine – comes in bright colours, making it attractive to curious children.

    Landmines are also a major problem in many countries that rely on agriculture. In Viet Nam’s Binh Dinh province, where many people live off rice farming, 40 per cent of the land remained contaminated by landmines more than four decades after the war ended.  

    In Afghanistan, where landmines have maimed or killed more people than anywhere else, more than 18 million landmines have been cleared since 1989, freeing over 3,011 km2 of land that has benefited more than 3,000 mostly rural communities across the country.

    Promise of a mine-free world

    UNMAS and its partners have made progress on various aspects of achieving a mine-free world, including clearance, educating people, especially children, about the risks of mines, victim assistance advocacy and the destruction of stockpiles.

    Since the late 90s, more than 55 million landmines have been destroyed, over 30 countries have become mine-free, casualties have been dramatically reduced and mechanisms, including the UN Voluntary Trust Fund for Assistance in Mine Action, have been established to support victims and communities in need.  

    Today, 164 countries are parties to the Mine Ban Treaty which is considered one of the most ratified disarmament conventions to date. However, despite the progress, broader global efforts are needed to safeguard people from landmines, according to the UN Secretary-General.

    “Let’s take action to end the threat of these devices of death, support communities as they heal, and help people return and rebuild their lives in safety and security.”

    Learn more about the work of UNMAS here.

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  • Celebrate diverse contributions of persons with autism, UN chief says

    Celebrate diverse contributions of persons with autism, UN chief says

    “Today and every day, let us fully recognize the active and diverse contributions of persons with autism to our societies,” UN Secretary-General António Guterres said. “Let us work together with persons with autism to build an inclusive and accessible world for all.”

    ‘We must do better’

    Despite important progress, he said, persons with autism continue to face social and environmental barriers to the full exercise of their rights and fundamental freedoms, in line with the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

    “We must do better, by promoting inclusive education, equal employment opportunities, self-determination, and an environment where every person is respected,” he said.

    “As we do so, we also recognize the role of families, caregivers, and support networks in the lives of persons with autism.”

    Global event

    A UN-hosted global virtual event, Transformation: Toward a Neuro-Inclusive World for All, will feature autistic people from around the world discussing how the transformation in the narrative around neurodiversity can continue to be furthered in order to overcome barriers and improve the lives of autistic people.

    The event will also address the contributions that autistic people make – and can make – to society, and to the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals.

    The event, to be held on Sunday, can be streamed here.

    Aniket Kadam was one of the panelists at the pre-recorded UN event for World Autism Awareness Day, held on 2 April, on the subject of work within the global theme “Transformation: Toward a Neuro-Inclusive World for All”.

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  • Republic of Korea: Breaking barriers, one brushstroke at a time

    Republic of Korea: Breaking barriers, one brushstroke at a time

    “There is no such thing as disability in the world of art,” said Soomi Jeon, Director of the Vichae Art Museum.

    “We often think the persons with disabilities are the receivers of charity, and we are the givers,” she explained. “This belief actually divides us. It is not sharing. I planned this exhibition to break that common misconception.”

    Breaking misconceptions

    One of the featured artists is Hansol Kwon, who uses bold lines and dots in vivid colours to express himself.

    His mother, Kyunghee Kim, recalled that Hansol, who lives with autism, started painting with colours, then he would cover them over in black.

    “The black disappeared, and pretty colours reappeared,” she said. “I witnessed how he blossomed in his paintings. When I look at my son’s paintings since his younger years, I am able to see his growth and psychological development.”

    The prestigious venue, one of the Republic of Korea’s leading arts institutions, first exhibited the works of artists with developmental disabilities in 2020. Hansol was among the 43 artists who collectively contributed more than 100 different paintings in 2022.

    Beyond the art world

    The significance reverberates far beyond the art world. The World Health Organization (WHO) has estimated that 15 per cent of the global population, or about one billion people, have a disability.

    Reena Lee, the former Secretary-General of the Korean Disability Forum, noted that despite the strong representation, such persons are often hidden. This means one in seven people around me must have a disability, she said.

    “In my school classroom, in my neighbourhood and in the workplace, is there one person with disabilities out of seven people I know? No, there isn’t,” she said. “Just for the comfort of the majority and economic benefit, society decided to separate persons with disabilities from those without them.”

    Promoting dignity

    The exhibition offers an invaluable opportunity to raise visibility and promote dignity in tangible ways, Ms. Jeon said.

    “People think that the exhibitions of the artists with disabilities are just free events, but these proud artists gave their imagination to us with so much sweat and passion, so in fact, it is only right to pay to see their work and establish it as a commercial exhibition,” she said. “That way, they can become financially independent someday.”

    In her view, persons with disabilities should never be viewed as an economic drain.

    “Breaking those misunderstandings is one of the important goals of this exhibition,” she added.

    Artworks in their own right

    Visitors to the exhibition shared that observation. Yunhee Park said she had visited to admire the artworks in their own right.

    “If our society is open and ready to accept them, then we would be able to provide many opportunities for persons without disabilities to contribute with their amazing talents,” she said. “It will also be beneficial to persons without disabilities, and I hope more opportunities like this one can be made available.”

    Equality promotes stability

    Equality promotes stability, said Yejin Ha, who works as a programme officer at UN Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP).

    “Throughout history, social exclusion and social injustices and inequality – they all lead to conflict and social discord,” she said. “In order to prevent conflict, it is absolutely critical to make sure that everybody is included in these efforts to build an harmonious and just society.”

    ‘Receive their uniqueness’

    Humanity is more than transactional; it can generate mutually beneficially synergies among those with disabilities and others in society, said Myunghee Kim, who is the mother of featured artist Hyeshin Park.

    “All we have to do is foster a natural exchange,” she said. “We could share the health we have and receive the uniqueness they have. It will make such a wonderful world.”

     

     

     

     

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  • First Person: ‘Simple dreams’ of Syrians following earthquake

    First Person: ‘Simple dreams’ of Syrians following earthquake

    Shirin Yaseen from the Office of the Spokesperson for the UN Secretary-General visited northwestern Syria as part of an interagency mission to assess the situation there.

    “On the day we visited Jindairis in northern Syria, one of the areas most affected by the February earthquake, the weather conditions were very bad. A mobile medical clinic housed in a tent was lifted off the ground by high winds scattering supplies and medical instruments.

    UN News/Shirin Yaseen

    Young girls play at a reception center for displaced people in Jindairis, Aleppo governorate.

    The dreams of the children in this camp are simple. One told me that she needs glasses, another decent shoes so she can walk the camp’s unpaved roads. A young girl, Ahlam, told me all she just wanted was to go back to school. A mother asked for a wheelchair for her 20-year-old daughter. 

    Earthquake experience

    In another camp, in Idleb, called Kammonah I met Yazi Khaled Al-Abdullah whose suffering reflects the experience of hundreds of thousands of people who were made homeless as a result of the earthquake. 

    She told me how at four o’clock in the morning she felt shaking but didn’t know what was happening. Her children told her not to be afraid and after they all left their house it collapsed. It was rainy and they were shivering from cold, but didn’t know what to do or where to go.

    Yazi Khaled Al-Abdullah has been living in a tent following the earthquake.

    UN News/Shirin Yaseen

    Yazi Khaled Al-Abdullah has been living in a tent following the earthquake.

    They ended up at Kammonah camp and were advised to sign up for a shelter. A month after the quake they are still living in a tent with two other families. 

    Yazi Khaled Al-Abdullah told me that she loves to cook but doesn’t have pots or a gas stove. Sometimes prepared food, usually rice, is provided, but she has diabetes, so is not getting the nutrition that she needs.

    She and her family are desperate to return home even if that means living a very basic life. She used an Arabic expression which says that even if they have only dirt to eat, they still want to go back to their hometown.

    Her family left Sinjar eight years ago because of the war in Syria and spent time here and there. She told me her son and husband were working their land and tending sheep when they were killed by a plane. In her words, they have become martyrs.

    I also met Mazyad Abdul Majeed Al-Zayed, who runs the Ajnadayn camp in Jindairis and who himself is a victim of the earthquake. 

    He explained the difficult conditions in which the camp residents live, due to a shortage of everything, including tents. Mobile clinics operate in the area, but they lack medicine and come only sporadically. 

    Mazyad Abdel-Majeed Al-Zayed, manages Ajnadayn camp in Jindairis.

    UN News/Shireen Yaseen

    Mazyad Abdel-Majeed Al-Zayed, manages Ajnadayn camp in Jindairis.

    He said the camp is miserable and that he did not bring his family here as he could not bear to see them live in such conditions.

    Later I visited tents set up opposite the Al-Rafa Specialized Hospital in Jindairis, which housed mobile clinics, including one for children and one for women.

    Patients and visitors are received daily in these clinics, which were established several days after the earthquake. 

    The hospital is surrounded by destroyed buildings, and the medical staff live and work in the same conditions as the people they are treating.

    The medical system in this part of Syria was overburdened even before the earthquake, and now the medical staff is exhausted and equipment is almost completely broken. 

    Countless people affected by the earthquake have sought refuge in this area in northwestern Syria. Many did so to escape the war which has been raging for 12 years now. 

    The UN launched a $400 million humanitarian appeal to support displaced families.

    UN News/Shirin Yaseen

    The UN launched a $400 million humanitarian appeal to support displaced families.

    A woman I spoke to said she had no idea what her future would hold having fled over a period of five years from Saraqib to Afrin, which was bombed, and then to Jindairis.

    I met and spoke to so many people including young unaccompanied children who had been separated from their parents, whose lives had been upended by the war and then the earthquake.

    But I also met people who had hope and optimism for a brighter future. I met diligent and caring aid workers who partner the UN and who try every day to improve the lives of those affected. 

    Meanwhile, the UN has launched a $400 million humanitarian appeal, and continues to work with its partners to ensure that relief supplies reach the most vulnerable people.

    Find more here about the work of the UN in Syria.

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