Focusing on remote Androy and Anosy regions – some four hours’ drive from the capital, Antananarivo – WFP’s Rapid Rural Transformation initiative delivers solar-powered hubs, a sustainable water source and digital health check-ups, in partnership with the Government.
The benefits for communities are multiple and welcome: energy, water and digital platforms, all provided in an environmentally responsible and sustainable manner, the UN agency said.
Boosting empowerment
Equally important, the project seeks to stimulate grassroots development, while addressing rural communities’ most pressing needs. If successful, WFP plans to take the idea to other villages and regions.
“With this pilot project, we will facilitate rural transformation even in geographically isolated areas, through the provision of clean water for irrigation, the operation of healthcare facilities, the expansion of entrepreneurial opportunities, and the development of their agricultural value chains,” said Jocelyn Raharimbola, Governor of Anosy region.
“Following years of food insecurity, data on the ground shows an improvement in the nutritional situation thanks to emergency interventions and collaboration with agencies such as WFP.”
The initiative is managed by regional authorities and allows partners to offer additional services including entrepreneurial training for women and younger members of the community.
Classes are available online on sustainability, business skills and farming, which is enhanced by easily installed solar-powered drip irrigation and hydroponics systems. The programme’s environmentally responsible and sustainable approach is a “game-changer”, maintained Tomson Phiri, WFP Regional Communications Lead and Spokesperson for Southern Africa.
Abundant sun
“If there is anything that the people in the south have, it is the abundance sunlight; it is hot, it is dry…we are establishing solar powered hubs that will provide a sustainable water source to the sites that I visited, we’ve introduced ICT (Information Communications Technology) in these remote areas, allowing for the provision of essential services be it energy, green energy, be it water, and digital platforms to members of the community.”
Mr. Phiri, speaking via Zoom from the capital, Antananarivo, told journalists in Geneva that while it was cyclone season in the north, the south was experiencing near-drought conditions.
Food insecurity remains an ever-present threat, the WFP spokesperson continued, with 2.2 million people in the southern and southeastern regions of Madagascar facing high levels of food insecurity during the pre-harvest period between now and April 2023.
WFP/Tsiory Andriantsoarana
The combined effects of the drought, COVID-19 and the insecurity upsurge have undermined the already fragile food security and nutrition situation of the population of southern Madagascar.
Mr. Phiri said that the hubs were providing digital classrooms for learners: “I saw young people, we are nurturing dreams there, I met people, we are even sparking artisanal enterprises. I saw a welder just starting to use solar energy for his own enterprise, saw a barbershop, I saw a community that is being brought together by technology.”
Unenviable record
Madagascar is among the 10 countries most vulnerable to disasters in the world and is considered the most cyclone-exposed country in Africa, according to WFP.
The UN agency added that Androy and Anosy regions are at the sharp end of the climate crisis and have high rates of chronic malnutrition among children under five.
The Rapid Rural Transformation (RRT) initiative combines two climate risk mitigation strategies to assist people: better natural resource management through enhanced agricultural techniques to protect food production and diversifying their livelihoods to withstand climate shocks.
The UN WFP is the world’s largest humanitarian organization saving lives in emergencies and using food assistance to build a pathway to peace, stability and prosperity for people recovering from conflict, disasters, and the impact of climate change.
“Lawyers, judges, prosecutors and other actors involved with the legal system in Afghanistan face grave risks to their safety, and those still practicing must navigate a deeply challenging, non-independent legal system”, Special Rapporteurs Margaret Satterthwaite, on the independence of judges and lawyers, and Richard Bennett, on the situation of human rights in Afghanistan, said in a joint statement.
‘Brazen discrimination’
Lawyers in Afghanistan – especially women – are risking their lives in efforts to protect the rule of law, they said ahead of the International Day of the Endangered Lawyer, marked on 24 January.
“We are gravely concerned by the extreme exclusion of women from the legal system”, the UN experts underscored, calling on the international community for “urgent support”.
They said that in “an act of brazen discrimination”, the Taliban have attempted to effectively ban all women from participating in the legal system.
More than 250 women judges, and hundreds of female lawyers and prosecutors, have already been removed.
“Many women judges have fled the country or gone into hiding”, the Special Rapporteurs added.
At ‘grave risk’
Prosecutors have been “systematically side-lined”, the statement continued, noting that their previous work in investigating, and prosecuting Taliban members under democratically-elected Governments, have put them at “grave risk”.
“More than a dozen prosecutors, the majority men, reportedly have been killed by unknown individuals in Kabul and other provinces. Many remain in hiding”.
By suspending the 2004 Constitution, ousting all judges from the bench, and stripping the Attorney General’s office of its key role, the Taliban has “precipitated the collapse of the rule of law and judicial independence in Afghanistan”, the UN experts explained.
“Instead of an independent legal system, the country has an all-male regime implementing the Taliban’s version of Sharia law”.
De facto judicial positions have been filled primarily by Taliban members with a basic religious education and advised by Muslim legal experts empowered to rule on religious matters, called muftis.
Moreover, laws and rules concerning legal procedure have been suspended and women may appear only when they are a party to a dispute.
“Alleged perpetrators are often detained, sentenced and punished on the same day by the police and other security agencies, denying any semblance of due process or judicial review”, the Rapporteurs continued.
Call to action
They called for greater international support to lawyers, legal aid providers, and non-governmental organizations working to advance justice and human rights – and for special attention to be paid to the situation of women lawyers and those working to promote gender rights.
“International actors should provide protection and safe passage to lawyers, judges, prosecutors, and other actors involved with the legal system, especially women, who are at risk of reprisal and attacks by the Taliban and others”, the statement detailed.
Despite “unimaginable obstacles” since the de facto authorities took control, legal professionals have persisted in their efforts to meet the legal needs of Afghans.
“They deserve far more in the way of support”, argued the experts.
They called on the Taliban to “immediately reverse” their abusive practices excluding women from the legal system, protect the lives of everyone working for the administration of justice, and ensure the right to fair trial for all Afghans.
Special Rapporteurs are appointed by the Geneva-based UN Human Rights Council to examine and report back on a specific human rights theme or a country situation. The positions are honorary and the experts are not paid for their work.
Pablo González during a previous trip to Ukraine. Credit: Juan Teixeira/IPS
by Karlos Zurutuza (nabarniz, spain)
Inter Press Service
NABARNIZ, Spain, Jan 19 (IPS) – It’s 23 hours a day in a cell without natural light and just one to walk around in a 7×4-metre courtyard. For Pablo González, an independent Spanish-Russian journalist, it’s been almost a year spent in solitary confinement in Poland.
González was arrested on the night of February 27th in Przemysl, a Polish city bordering Ukraine. A journalist specializing in the post-Soviet space, the reporter had worked in Ukraine several times and he was planning to cross the border to cover the Russian invasion of the country launched a few days before.
Three days after his arrest, the Polish government released a statement that the Internal Security Agency (ABW) had arrested González “on suspicion of having carried out operations for the benefit of Russia, taking advantage of his status as a journalist.”
“They said they had ‘irrefutable proof’ that he is a spy, but no one has yet seen it. The secrecy around it is overwhelming,” Oihana Goiriena, González’s partner, told IPS from her residence in Nabarniz, in Spain’s Basque Country.
Following the latest three-month extension granted by the court handling the case, Polish authorities still have not made public the evidence they claim to have against the journalist. His lawyers in Poland are not allowed to speak publicly about the case, there is no date for the trial and not even a formal accusation against González.
“He has lost a lot of weight, but the worst thing for him is being in solitary confinement, not being able to talk to anyone all day,” explains 47-year-old Goiriena. She was able to visit him on November 21 of last year. A Polish security agent supervised the reunion, for which Goiriena travelled to Poland.
González is prevented from making telephone calls and has to rely on letters to communicate with the outside world. The letters need to be translated and filtered by Polish security first, however, and replies can take four months. “Two for the letters to reach him and another two to receive his,” says Goiriena. As for her three children, “they have not seen their father in all this time.”
Goiriena describes the Spanish Government’s response to the case as “tepid.”
“So far we have only had contact with the Spanish consul in Warsaw, no one else has reassured us or shared any hints,” she says.
The reason González has been dragged to the Polish cell remains vague, she says. Goiriena believes her partner’s two passports, Russian and Spanish, set off alarm bells in Warsaw.
The son of a Russian and the grandson of an exile from the Spanish Civil War, Pablo González was born in Moscow in 1982 as Pavel Rubtsov. When his parents split eight years later, the child was left in the custody of his mother -the granddaughter of another Spanish exile- who returned to Spain and registered her school-age son as Pablo, the Spanish translation of Pavel, and under her last name, González.
“He is an ‘uncomfortable’ journalist,” for Polish officials, she says. “I think they went too far and now they don’t know how to get out of this.”
The reporter during the siege of Nagorno Karabakh, in 2020 (Courtesy González family)
Administrative silence
A Polish lawyer was hired in April 2022, and Goiriena sought advice from a criminal justice panel in the country last October. González’s primary lawyer since he was arrested, though, has been Gonzalo Boye.
A Chilean based in Spain for over three decades, Boye is an expert in European International Law who has been involved in several high-profile cases including the March 11, 2004 jihadist bombing of Madrid’s Atocha train station, and Edward Snowden´s whistleblower case, among others.
Speaking to IPS by phone from Madrid, he said González’s arrest is “unprecedented” within the European Union. “It is an unsustainable case, one of those in which someone is arrested and later investigated.” Boye has not yet been allowed to visit his client.
“Neither Brussels nor Madrid have lifted a finger, their only answer so far has been silence,” says Boye. Claiming institutional indifference to what he describes as “a kind of Guantánamo within the European Union,” he has already forwarded a protection request to the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detentions.
“Europe has sided squarely with Ukraine, and Poland is key in the conflict. Pablo González is just another victim of that war,” argues Boye, in an attempt to find a logic to González´s arrest in Poland.
Alongside a platform that struggles to make the case visible, several personalities and professionals in communication and law have requested Spain’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Spain for greater involvement in its resolution.
In a reply to repeated efforts at contact from IPS, Spain’s Ministry of External Affairs stated by email that Spain’s embassy in Warsaw “is up to date on the case and following it closely.”
The statement says González has been offered an opportunity for consular assistance, and received seven visits, with “the next expected soon.”
“At all times, the need to respect their rights has been stressed to Polish authorities. In addition, efforts have been made at different levels in relation to his case, conveying the same message,” the ministry said, in its statement.
The Damages
The war in Ukraine has turned Poland into a main hub for supplies of all sorts in Ukraine – from basic food items to hit-tech weaponry -, as well as the main exit point for millions of refugees fleeing the war. It is the focal country in a conflict whose consequences are felt globally.
Poland’s role in the conflict, however, has not prevented the progressive deterioration of its democracy.
In its 2022 report, the US NGO Freedom House claimed that Poland had the fastest decline in democracy among the 29 countries in Central and Eastern Europe and Central Asia monitored by the organization.
“I don’t recall a case similar to that of Pablo González in the European Union,” Alfonso Bauluz, the president of Reporters Without Borders in Spain told IPS over the phone from Madrid.
While he pointed to the “complicated scenario” posed by the war in Ukraine, he also highlighted that Poland is “one of those EU countries that have toughened measures against plurality of information.”
“For Poland, it´s already been eight years of consecutive decline in the World’s Press Freedom Index we release at RSF,” stresses Bauluz. The eastern European country ranks 66th (just behind Cyprus, Mauritius and Montenegro) on a list of 180 countries.
On January 10, RSF Spain called again for the “end of the prison cruelty inflicted on Pablo González,” that his presumption of innocence be respected and that “all the guarantees for a fair trial” are met.
“All I want is a trial as soon as possible, either public or private, but as soon as possible,” says Oihana Goiriena. Although the journalist’s partner is confident that his innocence will finally be proven and he will be released, she also stresses that the damage has already been done:
“In a few weeks, he will have served a year in prison. In addition, paying lawyers and costs has put us in debt for a long time, not to mention the professional damage it entails for a journalist specializing in the post-Soviet space”.
Opinion by Pauline Muchina, Emira Woods (nairobi, kenya)
Inter Press Service
NAIROBI, Kenya, Jan 19 (IPS) – United States Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen is traveling to South Africa, Zambia, and Senegal this week in the hopes of strengthening U.S.-Africa relations at a time of waning U.S. influence on the continent — the first in a series of Biden administration trips announced at last month’s U.S.-Africa Leaders Summit.
As African women leaders working for peace and climate justice, we welcome this renewed engagement with a region that is too often sidelined. But meetings and photo-ops are not enough.
If the United States wants the trust of the African people, we need more than words. We need tangible action to materially improve the lives of communities across the continent.
There are two steps the Biden administration could take today to do just that: supporting a new issuance of Special Drawing Rights (SDRs) for cost-free, debt-free crisis relief, and providing additional financial support for the Loss and Damage Fund agreed to at COP27, the most recent UN Climate Conference.
Three years since the COVID-19 outbreak, under one-third of Africans have received a single vaccination dose. Economic growth in Africa slowed “sharply” in 2022, due to a worldwide economic slump, inflation, and an ongoing series of shocks.
The World Bank is warning of a “sharp, long-lasting slowdown” in 2023 that will “hit developing countries hard.” One-fifth of Africa’s population faces chronic hunger—double the world average—and the climate crisis is only deepening these stark statistics.
For perspective: Driven by climate and conflict, half of Somalia’s population faces acute food insecurity. Trekking for weeks to refugee camps for food, many Somalis are forced to bury starved loved ones in shallow graves.
Against such challenges, the 2021 issuance of $650 billion in SDRs by the International Monetary Fund provided a lifeline for millions of Africans. SDRs are a reserve asset that can be issued in times of crisis at no cost to the U.S. or any other country. Developing countries can then use these SDRs to pay debts, stabilize currencies, or fund critical purchases like vaccines and food supplies.
Since the 2021 issuance, over 100 low- and middle-income countries have used their SDRs for often life-saving care for their citizens. African countries used SDRs more than any other region, with 47 of 54 African nations using some or all of their allocation.
Though last year’s SDR issuance was impactful, it was not enough. That’s why African leaders like African Union Chair Macky Sall and finance ministers across the continent are calling for a new SDR issuance of at least the same size.
Additionally, African countries must be compensated for the harms caused by a climate crisis for which they bear little responsibility. Despite having contributed the least of any continent to greenhouse gas emissions, Africa remains the most vulnerable to climate change.
Nineteen million Africans have been affected by extreme weather events in 2022 alone, and cyclones and droughts wrought havoc on infrastructure, agriculture, and domestic economies.
In the words of the Pan-African Climate Justice Alliance, “you cannot set fire on someone’s house and sell them the fire extinguisher, or worse still, loan them money to rebuild it.” The Loss and Damage Fund will provide climate reparations through financial support to nations most vulnerable to climate shocks.
The Fund’s impact, however, will only be as strong as the world’s commitment. While nations like Germany and Belgium have made symbolic pledges to the fund, current contributions fail to address the existential magnitude of the crisis. Increased U.S. financial backing will pave the way for additional support from other high-income countries.
Naysayers may balk at the cost of these proposals, or suggest they do not align with U.S. national interests. However, a new SDR issuance, while costing nothing to U.S. taxpayers, would foster global economic—and therefore political—stability, while proving U.S. responsiveness to African needs.
Instead of paying massive sums for weapons of war, often in the name of debunked strategies to counter terrorism, the U.S. should invest in measures that address the root causes of violent conflict in places like Somalia and the Sahel.
During last month’s U.S.-Africa Leaders Summit, 60 organizations, including Partners In Health, Africans Rising, and Friends of the Earth US, called on President Biden to support these two urgent proposals. At the time, he failed to do so.
As Secretary Yellen travels to our continent, the administration has another opportunity to move beyond rhetoric and toward action to improve the lives of Africa’s 1.2 billion people.
Supporting a new SDR issuance and contributing funding for the Loss and Damage Fund would go a long way toward salving the ever-present economic wounds of colonialism, addressing the climate crisis, and bolstering opportunities for Africans to chart their own course in the 21st century and beyond.
Pauline Muchina comes from the Rift Valley in Kenya, where her family still resides. She is the Policy, Education and Advocacy Coordinator for Africa for the American Friends Service Committee in Washington, DC, and the Chair of the COVID-19 Working Group of the Advocacy Network for Africa.
Emira Woods, originally from Liberia, is the Executive Director of Green Leadership Trust and an ambassador for Africans Rising for Justice, Peace, and Dignity, a network of African social movements on the continent and the diaspora.
Farmers in the southern state of Karnataka, India, during training sessions for multi-crop farming. The techniques have meant survival in the face of uncertain weather caused by climate change. Credit: Umar Manzoor Shah/IPS
by Umar Manzoor Shah (karnataka, india)
Inter Press Service
KARNATAKA, INDIA, Jan 19 (IPS) – The South Indian State of Karnataka has been reeling for the past three years—the late arrival of monsoons, the surging temperatures, and drastic changes in the weather patterns are putting the state’s farmers in dire straits.
Sugarcane and rice crops have died, causing considerable losses to the already perturbed farming community.
As per the government reports, climate change is affecting Karnataka’s water cycle and rainfall patterns, resulting in heavy rainfall and flooding in some areas and drought in others. Extreme weather events have been more frequent and intense in Karnataka over the past few years. The average annual rainfall in the state is 1,153 mm, with 74 percent falling during the Southwest monsoon, 16 percent during the Northeast monsoon, and 10 per cent during the pre-monsoon.
Between 2001 and 2020, the state was hit by a 15-year drought of variable intensity. Some areas have been drought-stricken for more than five years in a row. In addition to 2005, 2009, 2018, 2019, 2020, and 2021, Karnataka witnessed severe floods in 2005, 2009, 2018, 2019, 2020, and 2021. Flooding and landslides have been a problem for the fourth year since 2018. Flooding and landslides have become the new normal during the monsoon seasons in the southwest and northeast, which were previously the most vulnerable to drought, reflecting the impact of shifting climatological circumstances.
Farmers are concerned about the looming climate change menace.
A year ago, Kondaji Reddy deemed farming an “absolutely unfit” profession for survival.
“For months together, I toiled hard in the field growing sugar cane and rice. However, the late arrival of monsoons devastated everything. The hard work didn’t yield any outcome, and my family was on the verge of starvation,” Kondaji told IPS.
He added that for months together, his family survived on the little savings it had made over the years.
“Then I thought I should quit farming forever and go to the city and work as a laborer. At least my family wouldn’t starve,” lamented the farmer.
Another farmer, M. Rachappa, shared a similar predicament. He says he extensively used chemical fertilizers, hoping to improve his harvest.
“However, things didn’t turn out the way I had hoped. The land turned barren… The crops I had sowed for months were destroyed. All I could stare at was the dead leaves and the barren soil,” says Rachappa.
The farmer adds that he was on the brink of selling his ancestral land—spread across three acres—and buying some grocery stores in the town. “I had lost all hope in farming. I had cultivated a firm belief in my mind that farming would no longer provide me with a decent living. But at the same time, I was ridiculing myself for planning to sell the land where my forefathers have toiled for decades together.”
To end the crisis, the farmers of this small hamlet recently developed a unique strategy. They are adopting techniques that could help them deal with the climate change crises.
Multi-cropping is one method that these otherwise crisis-stricken farmers are now relying upon. It is a common land management method that aims to increase agricultural production while diversifying the crop mix for economic and environmental reasons. It lowers the cost of inputs, irrigation, and labor, among other things.
Umesh Kalolli, a farmer leading the practice and imparting the training of this technique to other farmers in the village, says he got to know about this farming method from a research institute.
“I was uncertain about my future due to frequent losses. I was about to shun farming forever, but a friend of mine encouraged me to seek help from the experts. He took me to an agricultural university, where I shared my predicament with the researchers. For about three weeks, I was trained for multi-crop farming. Upon my return to my village, I began encouraging other farmers to use this farming method,” Kalolli said.
He adds that besides multi-cropping, the farmers were encouraged to do away with using chemical fertilizers. Instead, they are asked to adopt an organic farming method that not only makes the produce profitable but also of high quality.
“There is a dire need to revolutionize farming practices with a natural system. This is going to be the greatest service for humankind. We need to focus on marginal and downtrodden farmers so that they can be empowered, and this way, we are going to build a prosperous world for ourselves and our future generations,” Kalolli added.
Rachappa, the farmer, says that soon after acquiring the training, he began adopting the multi-crop method on his land. He began cultivating various vegetables, fruits, sugarcane, and rice paddies at the same time. This, he says, not only saved him time, but it also didn’t need extensive irrigation facilities.
“I then subtly moved to the organic method of farming. I stopped the use of chemical fertilizers in the field. I got the cow dung from the livestock I had in my home. Today, I earn more than fifty thousand rupees (700 US dollars) every month. I did not even think once about selling off my land. I am content with the profit it is producing for me now,” M. Rachappa said.
Kondaji was also trained to grow organic vegetables and produce manure.
“My fellow farmers even helped me dig the pit in the backyard for the manure to decompose. It is a natural fertilizer. The vegetables I produce now require the least amount of water, so the late arrival of monsoons no longer bothers me. My produce is sold at higher prices because it is organic,” Reddy says with a smile.
The High Commissioner for Human Rights acknowledged on Thursday that addressing the violent legacy of intercommunal relations in Northern Ireland from the 1960s to the 1990s was “hugely complex and sensitive”.
‘Conditional immunity’
But he warned against plans to give conditional immunity from investigation and prosecution to those accused of serious human rights violations and other international crimes, other than sexual offences.
Such an amendment to the Northern Ireland Troubles (Legacy and Reconciliation) Bill would be incompatible with the UK’s international human rights obligations, which calls for accountability, Mr. Türk explained.
There are also concerns about whether the Independent Commission for Reconciliation and Information Recovery, which the Bill would establish, would be able to work independently and undertake human rights-compliant reviews and investigations.
Justice essential
In an appeal for the rights of victims, survivors and their families to be respected, the High Commissioner (OHCHR) insisted that their search for justice and reparations were “essential for reconciliation”.
The draft Bill risked obstructing these rights, he said, also noting that the text had only been made public one week before it was due to be examined in the Upper House of Parliament, the House of Lords.
“This gives the public and relevant stakeholders, including victims and survivors, insufficient time to scrutinize the amendments and participate meaningfully in this hugely significant legislative process,” the High Commissioner said.
Obstruction risk
“Concerns remain that the Bill would obstruct the rights of victims, survivors and their families to effective judicial remedy and reparations, including by prohibiting most criminal prosecutions and civil actions for Troubles-related offences,” he added.
The Bill is set for further review at the House of Lords committee stage on 24 and 31 January.
The OHCHR chief urged the UK to “reconsider its approach and engage in further meaningful and inclusive consultations on how best to advance a human rights-centred way to address the legacy of the Troubles”.
TOKYO, Japan, Jan 18 (IPS) – The Ukraine crisis that erupted in February last year continues with no prospect for cessation. The intensified hostilities have inflicted great suffering in population centers and destroyed infrastructure facilities, compelling large numbers of civilians, including many children and women, to live in a state of constant peril.
The history of the twentieth century, which witnessed the horrors caused by two global conflicts, should have brought home the lesson that nothing is more cruel or miserable than war.
During World War II, when I was in my teens, I experienced the firebombing of Tokyo. To this day, I remember with great vividness getting separated from family members as we fled desperately through a sea of flames, and not learning that they were safe until the following day.
How many people have lost their lives or livelihoods in the ongoing crisis, how many have found their own and their family’s ways of life suddenly and irrevocably altered?
Many other countries have also been seriously impacted in the form of constrained food supplies, spiking energy prices and disrupted financial markets.
It is crucial that we find a breakthrough in order to prevent any further worsening of the conditions facing people worldwide, to say nothing of the Ukrainian people who are compelled to live with inadequate and uncertain supplies of electricity amidst a deepening winter and intensifying military conflict.
I therefore call for the urgent holding of a meeting, under UN auspices, among the foreign ministers of Russia, Ukraine and other key countries in order to reach agreement on a cessation of hostilities. I also urge that earnest discussions be undertaken toward a summit that would bring together the heads of all concerned states in order to find a path to the restoration of peace.
Together with calling for the earliest possible resolution to the Ukraine crisis, I wish to stress the crucial importance of implementing measures to prevent the use or threat of use of nuclear weapons, both in the current crisis and all future conflicts.
Nuclear rhetoric has ratcheted up, and the risk that these weapons might actually be used stands today at its highest level since the end of the Cold War. Even if no party seeks nuclear war, the reality is that, with nuclear arsenals in a continuing state of high alert, there is a considerably heightened risk of unintentional nuclear weapon use as a result of data error, unforeseen accident or confusion provoked by a cyberattack.
Along with reducing tensions with the goal of resolving the Ukraine crisis, I feel it is of paramount importance that the nuclear-weapon states initiate action to reduce nuclear risks as a means of ensuring that situations do not arise—either now or in the future—in which the possibility of nuclear weapons use looms. It was with this in mind that in July last year I issued a statement to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) Review Conference in which I urged the five nuclear-weapon states to make prompt and unambiguous pledges that they would never be the first to launch a nuclear strike—the principle of “No First Use.”
Regrettably, the August NPT Review Conference was unable to reach consensus on a final document. But this in no way means that the nuclear disarmament obligations set out in Article VI of the treaty no longer pertain. As the various drafts of the final document indicate, there was widespread support for nuclear risk reduction measures such as the adoption of No First Use policies and extending negative security assurances, by which nuclear-weapon states pledge never to use nuclear weapons against states that do not possess them.
The pledge of No First Use is a measure that nuclear-weapon states can take even while maintaining for the present their current nuclear arsenals; nor does it mean that the threat of the some 13,000 nuclear warheads existing in the world today would quickly dissipate. However, what I would like to stress is that should this policy take root among nuclear-armed states, it will create an opening for removing the climate of mutual fear. This, in turn, can enable the world to change course—away from nuclear buildup premised on deterrence and toward nuclear disarmament to avert catastrophe.
Looking back, the global state of affairs during the Cold War era was characterized by a series of seemingly insoluble crises that rattled the world, spreading shockwaves of insecurity and dread. And yet humankind managed to find exit strategies and pull through.
One example of this is the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT) held between the United States and the Soviet Union. Intention to hold these was announced on the day of the 1968 signing ceremony for the NPT, which had been negotiated in response to the bitter lessons of the Cuban Missile Crisis. The SALT negotiations were the first steps taken by the US and the USSR to put the brakes on the nuclear arms race based on their nuclear disarmament obligations under Article VI of the NPT.
For those involved in these talks, to impose constraints on the nuclear policies that had been developed as the exclusive prerogative of the state could not have been easy. Nonetheless, this was a decision indispensable to the survival not only of the citizens of their respective nations, but of all humankind.
Having experienced first-hand the terror of teetering on the brink of nuclear war, the people of that time brought forth historic powers of imagination and creativity. Now is the time for all countries and peoples to come together to once again unleash those creative powers and bring into being a new chapter in human history.
Opinion by Ulrika Modeer, Tsegaye Lemma (united nations)
Inter Press Service
UNITED NATIONS, Jan 18 (IPS) – The multilateral system, even in the face of heightened geopolitical tension and big power rivalry, remains the uniquely inclusive vehicle for managing mutual interdependencies in ways that enhance national and global welfare. The complex challenges of a global pandemic, climate emergency, inequality and the risk of nuclear conflict cannot be dealt with by one country or one region alone. Coordinated collective action is required.
Without coordinated and timely collective global action in recent years to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic, global suffering would have been far greater.
Initiatives such as COVAX and the UN’s socio-economic response to COVID-19 not only helped mitigate the public health emergency, but also help decision-makers look beyond recovery towards 2030, managing complexity and uncertainty.
The devastating war in Ukraine has been a colossal blow to multilateral efforts by the international community to maintain peace and prevent major wars. However, multilateral cooperation cannot be declared obsolete – it is crucial in efforts to put human dignity and planetary health at the heart of cross-border cooperation.
The recent Black Sea Grain Initiative agreement represents a key testament to the value of multilateral cooperation working even in the most difficult circumstances, ensuring the protection of those that are most vulnerable to global shocks.
Without this agreement, global food prices would have risen even further, and vulnerable countries pushed further into hunger and political unrest.
The multilateral system is faced with the ostensible imbalance in matching humanitarian and development needs with Official Development Assistance (ODA) commitments. Despite some donors’ efforts to maintain – and even increase – their ODA commitments, others are faced with increasing politicization of aid – and it is part of the political calculus.
With the war in Ukraine still raging, there is real possibility that several donors will tap into ODA budget to cover the partial or entire cost of hosting Ukrainian refugees and rebuilding the devastated Ukrainian infrastructure and economy.
The UN system, a core part of the rule-based international order, is funded dominantly by voluntary earmarked contributions. Ultimately, this gives donor countries influence over the objectives of global public good creation.
Funding patterns tend to be unpredictable, making it hard to strategize and plan for the long term. Although earmarked funding allows the system to deliver solutions to specific issues with scale, the system’s lack of quality funding support risks eroding its multilateral character, strategic independence, universal presence, and development effectiveness.
The recently launched report by the Dag Hammarskjöld Foundation and the UN’s Multi-Partner Trust Fund Office showed that more than 70 percent of funding to the UN development system is earmarked, compared to 24 percent for the World Bank Group and IMF, and only 3 percent for the EU.
As the world faces daunting development finance prospects in 2022-2023, investments should focus on protecting a strong and effective multilateral system; the system that remains trusted by countries and partners for its reliable delivery of services.
It has also proven to complement bilateral, south-south and other forms of cooperation – beyond the traditional development narrative. An ODI study showed that the multilateral channel, when compared with bilateral channel, remains less-politicized, more demand-driven, more selective in terms of poverty criteria and a good conduit for global public goods.
Notwithstanding the institutional and bureaucratic challenges that the multilateral system faces, which must be addressed head-on, a retreat from a shared system of rules and norms that has served the world for seven decades is the wrong response.
Those of us in the multilateral system, especially in the UN development system, must recognize the difficult work that lies ahead. We must continue to demonstrate that each tax dollar is spent judiciously and show traceable results, while upholding the highest standards set out in the UN charter.
Improved transparency on how and where we spend the funds entrusted to us by our key partners and the IATI standard have long been adopted as key requirement outlined in the funding compact.
The Multilateral Organisation Performance Assessment Network and other donor assessments have recognized the systems’ value for money and confirmed that partnerships with other UN entities improve programmes and effectively integrates multiple sources of expertise.
Of course, the system must continue to build on successes and lessons to prove to our partners that we remain worthy of their trust and drive our collective agenda.
However, the true value of multilateral cooperation can only be fully realized with strong political commitment by partners matched with the necessary financial investment.
Ulrika Modéer is UN Assistant Secretary-General and Director of the Bureau of External Relations and Advocacy, UNDP; Tsegaye Lemma is Team Leader, Strategic Analysis and Corporate Engagement, Bureau of External Relations and Advocacy, UNDP.
The Gabura union, a small island adjacent to the Sundarbans forest, is expected to be submerged in seawater by 2050. Credit: Mohammad Rakibul Hasan
by Mohammad Rakibul Hasan – and AI Artificial Intelligence (dhaka, bangladesh)
Inter Press Service
DHAKA, Bangladesh, Jan 18 (IPS) – Climate change is a global problem that requires a global solution. However, negotiating a solution has been challenging due to several factors. One of the main reasons that recent COP Climate summits and other international climate talks have not been able to resolve climate change is that there is a lack of consensus among countries on how to address the issue. Developed countries, which have historically been the largest emitters of greenhouse gases, are often unwilling to take on significant emissions reductions or to provide financial assistance to developing countries to help them adapt to the effects of climate change.
The Gabura union, a small island adjacent to the Sundarbans forest, is expected to be submerged in seawater by 2050. Credit: Mohammad Rakibul Hasan
Another significant barrier to progress on climate change is the need for more political will among leaders of countries. In some cases, leaders may not see climate change as a priority or may be reluctant to take on the economic and political costs of reducing emissions or investing in clean energy due to political reasons. Some countries may be influenced by powerful fossil fuel lobbies that push against climate action. Developed countries must be willing to take on more significant emissions reductions and provide financial assistance to developing countries to help them adapt to the effects of climate change. Developing countries, in turn, need to be willing to take on emissions reduction measures and invest in clean energy and other climate mitigation measures.This can happen through more effective multilateral negotiations such as United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), where all countries agree to set emissions reduction targets and support developing countries.
Bangladesh is located in the low-lying delta region of the Ganges, Brahmaputra, and Meghna rivers, making the country particularly susceptible to flooding and rising sea levels. Bangladesh is also prone to cyclones and other extreme weather events, which are becoming more frequent and severe due to climate change. The country has a long coastline, much of which is low-lying and vulnerable to flooding. As sea levels continue to rise, the risk of coastal flooding is increasing, devastatingly impacting the lives and livelihoods of the people in these areas. These events are causing widespread damage to homes and infrastructure and affecting the country’s agricultural sector, a significant source of income for many people in Bangladesh. Many people in the coastal areas have lost their homes and livelihoods due to sea level rise and coastal flooding. They face food and water insecurity due to increased soil and water salinity.
Globally, rich countries can assist Bangladesh cope with climate change in several ways. One crucial way is by providing financial assistance to help the country adapt to the impacts of climate change. This may include funding for building sea walls and other flood protection infrastructure and programs to help people in coastal areas relocate to higher ground. Another way rich countries can help is by providing technical assistance to Bangladesh to develop and implement clean energy and other climate mitigation measures. This could include funding and expertise to help the country develop renewable energy sources such as solar and wind power, as well as to improve energy efficiency and to reduce emissions from the industrial and transportation sectors.
The Sundarbans forests, located in the coastal belt of Bangladesh, is one of the most vulnerable areas in the country to the impacts of climate change. The forests span over 10,000 square kilometres and is home to various plant and animal species, including the Royal Bengal tiger. Sea level rise is one of the most significant threats to the Sundarbans forest making it particularly susceptible to flooding and rising sea levels. According to a study by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, sea levels in the Bay of Bengal are projected to increase by up to 1 meter by the end of the century. This would devastate the Sundarban forests, as seawater would submerge large areas.
The impacts of climate change on the Sundarban forests are also likely to have knock-on effects on the people living in the surrounding areas. The forests are a significant source of livelihood for many people in the region, who rely on it for fishing, agriculture, and other activities. As the forests are damaged by sea level rise and extreme weather events, these people will also be affected by food and water insecurity and the loss of their homes and livelihoods. Many people who lost their homes and land to flooding, were forced to relocate to higher grounds.
The health impacts of climate change on people living around the Sundarban are also significant. As a result of sea level rise and increased flooding, many are at risk of waterborne diseases such as cholera and diarrhea. Extreme weather events are accelerating salinity across the coastal belt of Bangladesh. Women are experiencing uterus cancers, infertility, and skin diseases, and men, too, are experiencing fertility problems and other health issues. Due to the loss of livelihoods and displacement, many people face food insecurity and malnutrition. In addition to these immediate impacts, climate change exacerbates the region’s existing social and economic inequalities. People living in poverty and marginalized communities are disproportionately affected by climate change, as they have fewer resources to cope with the impacts and less access to services and support.
Climate change has led to a growing number of people migrating from these areas, searching for better opportunities and escaping the impacts of climate change. Most climate migrants from coastal belt areas of Bangladesh are moving to urban areas, such as the capital city of Dhaka and other major cities. These migrants often seek better job opportunities and access to services and support. However, many migrants face challenges in their new locations, such as a lack of affordable housing, discrimination, and limited access to services and support. The future is uncertain for those still living in coastal areas of Bangladesh and fighting the climate crisis. Many of the people living in these areas are among the country’s most vulnerable and marginalized communities, making them particularly susceptible to the impacts of climate change. Climate conversations worldwide by world leaders and major organizations have been occurring every year. But they must see the severity of the situation for the people suffering and take concrete actions beyond being in a room to converse about the effects of climate change.
Climate conversations by world leaders are occurring worldwide but how much is changing ? Credit: Mohammad Rakibul Hasan Many indigenous communities across the Sundarbans forest have been experiencing extreme weather conditions. Credit: Mohammad Rakibul Hasan Fishing communities face extreme poverty due to the lack of fish available in the rivers. Credit: Mohammad Rakibul Hasan Women around coastline areas of Bangladesh face increased salinity, a major cause of uterus cancer. Credit: Mohammad Rakibul Hasan Due to climate change, extreme heat and salinity are declining birth rates across the coastal belt in Bangladesh. Credit: Mohammad Rakibul Hasan Climate change is accelerating the displacement of inhabitants across the coastal belt of Bangladesh. Credit: Mohammad Rakibul Hasan Four families are sitting with what remains in their food storage. Due to high salinity, agricultural products cannot grow well anymore. Credit: Mohammad Rakibul Hasan
A father and son remove their belonging from their flooded home in Taluka, Shujabad, District Mirpurkhas. Credit: RDF
by Zofeen Ebrahim (karachi)
Inter Press Service
KARACHI, Jan 18 (IPS) – Experts question Pakistan’s 10bn USD funding for flood rehabilitation, asking if it wouldn’t have been better to access climate change grants.
Terming the recent international donors’ conference held in Geneva a “success” after Pakistan was able to secure 10 billion US dollars, Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif has promised “every penny” of the pledges will be used towards rehabilitation of flood-hit people.
“It’s looking for an opportunity to take credit for something to try to win back some goodwill,” said Michael Kugelman, director of the Wilson Centre’s South Asia Institute, who found the self-congratulatory messaging purely “political” of a government, which he said, was “weak, unpopular and struggling to rein in a cascading economic crisis”.
Still, he agreed, the Sharif government deserved credit for shoring up so much support in an “era of donor fatigue and global economic stress”.
But in his own country, Sharif’s words have met with much wariness.
Janib Gul Mohammad, a farmer from Fateh Ali Buledi village in Kamber Shahdadkot, one of the worst affected districts in Sindh province, doubted he would even “get a rupee out of the billions of dollars” received on his behalf.
“Our rulers are clueless about how hungry our kids are,” said Mohammad, whose family has had to ration and reduce their consumption of roti (flat bread) from “two to three to just one at every meal”. He and his family of 13 are among the more than 33 million Pakistanis affected by last year’s unprecedented floods caused by record monsoon rains and the melting of glaciers that killed more than 1700.
Seven months since the rains began, thousands continue to live in open areas, tents, and makeshift homes in Sindh and Balochistan, the two worst-hit provinces stalked by a cold spell, disease and food shortages making life even more perilous. According to the UN, an estimated 5 million people remain exposed to or living close to flooded areas. A post-disaster needs assessment (PDNA) has estimated the damage exceeded 30 bn USD—a tenth of Pakistan’s entire GDP.
The moot, attended by officials in Geneva on January 9, was from over 40 countries and included private donors and international financial institutions.
The top donors like the Islamic Development Bank pledged 4.2bn USD; the World Bank 2bn USD; the Asian Development Bank 1.5bn USD; the European Union 93million USD; Germany $90m USD; China 100m USD; Japan 77m USD; the United States announced another 100m USD on top of a similar amount already committed to Pakistan and Saudi Arabia 1 bn USD. In addition, Qatar pledged 25m USD, Canada 18.6m USD, Denmark 3.8m USD, France 386.5m USD, Italy 24m USD and Azerbaijan 2m USD had promised these funds over the next three years.
Reminding that pledges were not commitments, Kashmala Kakakhel, a climate finance expert, said she would like to get a clear distinction between the new money and one that is rebottled to address the impact of floods but doubted the government will “ever tell”.
Although the multilateral funders have been relatively generous, Kugelman said it could be stemming from, in part, “a desire to support the emerging global norm of climate justice”. But, by “only offering pledges, not actual aid, they have given themselves a safety net and a possible way out in case they decide they are not ready to commit to such large figures,” he said,
The pledges made by bilateral donors may seem smaller, said Kugelman, but this could be because they had helped earlier on. Giving the example of the United States, he said it made one of the smaller pledges at the donor’s conference but was one of the most generous bilateral donors since the floods struck.
However, of the 10bn USD pledges, 8.7 billion are loans that the government has “conveniently underplayed”, said Wilson Centre’s expert. And these may take several years to arrive, he added.
Ashafque Soomro, heading the Research and Development Foundation, a Sindh-based nongovernmental organization which had been at the forefront of assisting flood-affected communities, is not sure if getting more loans is a good idea at all. In this critical time of economic crunch, he said, the government should have “built a strong case for climate justice” to get grants instead.
“I am very concerned that the government is not only forcing us further into a debt trap but risks defaulting on repayment.” According to the former finance minister Miftah Ismail, Pakistan owes the world nearly 100 billion USD and has to repay 21bn USD to lenders during the current fiscal year. “We have no resources to repay our lenders. We will just have to try to borrow from one creditor to pay off another,” he wrote in Dawn.
Nevertheless, Soomro said, when the funds do arrive, maximum effort should be made for them to go into livelihood recovery and economic revival – like rehabilitating agricultural land and subsidizing agricultural inputs. This, he said, will generate employment and avert a looming food crisis. At the same time, Soomro said, the aid agencies should ensure their money is spent wisely and smartly to reduce climate disasters.
Kakakhel said she was struck by the finance minister’s statement that to turn pledges into an inflow of money, Pakistan needs to quickly prepare project feasibilities. “Why have an emergency donor conference at all if you are treading the same old traditional path of seeking loans?” she asked.
She further added that, “If 90 percent of the pledges are to be projectized anyway, that means the additional cost associated with climate resilience will also need to be built into the project budgets, inflating the loan amounts. Whether that will actually happen or not is anybody’s guess.”
But even if pledges become commitments, Ali Tauqeer Sheikh, a climate expert, was not sure if Pakistan would be able to put all of it to use, given its “track record on delayed implementation of development projects”. Pakistan, he pointed out, was littered with “more than 1,200 unfinished projects worth Rs1.6 trillion ”.
That is why, said Dr Fahad Saeed, a climate scientist, the government must come up with not only “well planned but out-of-the-box solutions, and quickly”. He suggested investing in models that streamlined philanthropy and involved the private sector and even startups. Decisions made today, he said, needed to be backed by research and science. “Drafting policies inside power corridors or in five-star hotels will not get the desired results; we need to go out, collect evidence and come up with robust solutions to battle climate change.”
Getting down to brass tacks, Lieutenant-General Nadeem Ahmed, former deputy chairman of the Earthquake Reconstruction and Rehabilitation Authority (ERRA), shared a formula that he said would be a sure-shot success if followed through. “All infrastructural projects may be handled through relevant lines departments whereas the more people-centred recovery programmes can be undertaken by a dedicated special management unit in the province with full autonomy so that it can bypass laborious bureaucratic processes, procedures, and approvals.
“Both systems need to be interactive and coordinate with each other for the sequencing and prioritisation of their respective project domains to ensure one is not causing harm to the other,” said the retired army officer, who was also a former chairman of the National Disaster Management Authority.
GWANGIU, South Korea, Jan 17 (IPS) – Given the tensions in the Indo-Pacific, a co-operation between South Korea, Japan and NATO sends a message of deterrence and shared liberal values.
The year 2022 was pivotal for the West and the NATO military alliance. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and China’s mounting military threats against Taiwan forced NATO to recalibrate its risk analysis.
The NATO summit in Madrid in June was, therefore, remarkable in that two far-eastern states, South Korea and Japan, were invited. While Japan already has the status of a Western actor within the framework of the G7, the invitation to South Korea to attend the summit was particularly surprising.
Although Seoul has been a global partner of NATO since 2006, co-operation to date has been essentially diplomatic. South Korea had already been invited to NATO meetings of foreign ministers several times before, but this had not led to any geopolitical commitment on its part to NATO or Europe.
But circumstances have changed. The invitation to the summit was driven by NATO’s most important member by far – the US, an ally of South Korea. Does this mean that Japan and South Korea will now take on new significance for Europe and the Far East in terms of security policy?
There was immediate praise for the Indo-Pacific strategy from Washington.
On 28 December, the South Korean government under new President Yoon Suk-yeol published a strategy for the Indo-Pacific region for the first time. It stated that the country’s focus should be on promoting freedom, peace and prosperity through the creation of a rules-based order and co-operation on the rule of law and human rights.
The 43-page document includes only one paragraph on China, Seoul’s largest trading partner and the rival of its most important ally, the US. On taking office in May, Yoon announced a hard line towards China and since then has intensified the security co-operation with the US.
The Indo-Pacific strategy indirectly addresses fears of military action by China against Taiwan and calls for a resumption of the summit meetings between South Korea, Japan and China, the last of which took place in 2019.
It states that co-operation with Japan is essential for promoting co-operation and solidarity between like-minded nations in the Indo-Pacific region – a clear indication that Yoon wants to improve relations between these neighbouring countries.
Seoul also wants to expand co-operation with the Quad – the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue between Australia, India, Japan and the US – which is seen as a counterweight to China’s ambitions in the region. There was immediate praise for the Indo-Pacific strategy from Washington.
Advantages of closer co-operation for NATO
Closer ties between South Korea and Japan and a security partnership with the two East Asian states would have strategic advantages for NATO. With South Korea, it can benefit immediately from the strength of the country’s armed forces, not least in light of China’s military build-up in the Indo-Pacific.
The South Korean military is well-equipped and combat-ready because of constant North Korean military provocations. Moreover, South Korea holds large-scale joint military exercises with the US every year. Secondly, South Korea can contribute to NATO through co-operation on armaments, and can supply high-quality weapons.
The competitiveness of its arms industry is demonstrated, for example, by Poland’s purchase of South Korean tanks and howitzers in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Third, as a leader in digital technology, South Korea can strengthen NATO’s cybersecurity against Russia and China (and North Korea).
Fourth, as a globally important microchip manufacturer, South Korea – along with Japan and Taiwan – is seen by the US as part of a microchip alliance whose task is to isolate China completely from the microchip supply chain. Conversely, South Korea thus serves as a reliable partner in the microchip supply chain for NATO countries.
The current Japanese government under Fumio Kishida wants to raise the country’s military spending to two per cent of GDP by 2027 and to acquire 500 Tomahawk cruise missiles. Such an enhancement of Japan’s military capabilities would provide NATO with further strategic options in the face of China’s military build-up in the Indo-Pacific.
Advantages for South Korea and Japan
From a Far Eastern perspective, a strategic partnership with NATO would help in managing the Chinese military threat.
As a first step, joint military exercises involving NATO and East Asian countries could be held in the Indo-Pacific (where the US, France, the UK and Germany already have a military presence) or in Europe, in order to enable, for instance, the defence of free and unfettered trade flows in the South China Sea.
As a second step, the Far Eastern countries and NATO could perhaps establish an intelligence alliance comparable to the ‘Five Eyes’ of the Anglo-Saxon powers. This would enable the two sides of the alliance to exchange military intelligence and facilitate the formulation of joint strategies towards China and Russia.
As a third step, NATO and the Far Eastern countries could establish an informal military alliance similar to the Quad, which would strengthen collective security on both sides.
Co-operation between South Korea and NATO not only sends a clear message about deterrence but also represents a commitment to the defence across the world of the liberal values that both sides share.
For a successful strategic partnership between NATO and the Far East to develop, relations between South Korea and Japan must improve significantly. The smouldering conflict over how to address the issue of Japan’s colonial history stands in the way of close co-operation.
The enforced prostitution of Korean women during the colonial period, the visits of Japanese politicians to the Yasukuni Shrine, where Japanese war criminals are buried, and the border dispute over the Liancourt rocks (Dokdo in Korean, Takeshima in Japanese) are some of the unresolved historically controversial issues.
This is compounded by the Japanese trade sanctions imposed on South Korea in 2019, which aim to impede the further rise of the South Korean industry. Fortunately, the current South Korean government under Yoon Suk-yeol is keen on significantly improving relations with its neighbour in order to boost a security co-operation between the two sides vis-à-vis China and North Korea.
The Japanese government will now have to respond to the signals from Seoul, if necessary, also involving the US as a mediator.
NATO’s decision in August to accept South Korea’s request to designate an embassy to represent the country in dealings with the military alliance bodes well for the development of a close strategic partnership. Given the rising military tensions in the Indo-Pacific and China’s military threats against Taiwan, co-operation between South Korea and NATO not only sends a clear message about deterrence (and thus the prevention of war) but also represents a commitment to the defence across the world of the liberal values that both sides share.
Dr Taehun Lim, who works at the Institute for Eurasian Research and Humanities at Chonnam National University, South Korea, studied international politics at the University of Strasbourg and received his PhD in the same field from the University of Cologne. From 2011 to 2013, Dr Lim served as an artillery lieutenant in the South Korean army.
Source: International Politics and Society (IPS)-Journal published by the International Political Analysis Unit of the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung, Hiroshimastrasse 28, D-10785 Berlin
The UN’s empty corridors when the world body went into a lockdown mode because of the Covid-19 pandemic beginning March 2020. Credit: United Nations
by Thalif Deen (united nations)
Inter Press Service
UNITED NATIONS, Jan 17 (IPS) – A new variant of Covid-19, spreading across New York city, is forcing businesses, banks and high-powered financial institutions to re-introduce flexible working hours after a brief hiatus.
At the United Nations, the lockdown has reduced the 39-storeyed Secretariat building to a veritable ghost town since most staffers continue to work from home – at least two or three days per week.
The UN, which has office space, either on-rent or on long-term commercial leases outside the Secretariat, is looking for options to terminate some of these contracts– or have already done so.
When the issue of rented office space came up at a meeting of the UN’s Administrative and Budgetary Committee back in December 2015, it was revealed that over 5,300 staffers were in off-campus, leased-buildings at a cost of more than $56 million a year.
But since the pandemic shutdown, beginning March 2020, the UN has been downsizing its off-campus operations.
Asked for Secretary-General Antonio Guterres’ reaction to a “completely empty building at the moment”, his Spokesperson Stephane Dujarric told reporters: “We have experience with flexible working hours. I think it shows that it can be very productive in many cases. We continue to be also guided by recommendations from our health and safety experts.”
Asked about the rented properties for several UN departments and divisions, currently sporadically occupied, Dujarric said: “We’ve shrunk our footprint from rental properties that we have in Manhattan”.
This was in fact a trend before COVID with the “hot-desking” that has been put in place in many departments where people don’t have assigned spaces, but they will just take spaces as they come every day, given that– especially in a lot of departments — there is a lot of travel, Dujarric said.
“So, we’ve been able to shrink our real estate expenses,” he noted, while jokingly using a Hollywood metaphor: “Look Ma, I shrank the UN.”
Ian Richards, a development economist based in Geneva and a former President of the Coordinating Committee of International Staff Unions and Associations, told IPS through successive resolutions on what is called “flexible workplace strategies,” the General Assembly has been installing “hot-desking” at UN offices in New York, Geneva and elsewhere.
Hot-desking rules are premised on there being fewer desks than people (staff, consultants, interns) and therefore require staff to work part-time from home.
Further, and this is well documented in the scientific literature, hot-desking spaces do not allow staff to actually focus on their work, pushing more staff to work from home part of the week in order to be more productive, said Richards.
“Obviously, certain jobs lend themselves better to part-time telecommuting than others – and this is reflected in how the policy is implemented.”
However, he noted, the feedback from managers is that working from home part of the week improves productivity and motivation.
“It is also a non-negotiable requirement in the current job market if the UN wants to remain a competitive employer and keep attracting the cutting-edge skills it needs”.
In a light-hearted piece, the BBC last week focused on flashy new job titles resulting from flexible working hours: Chief Visionary Officer, Development Guru, Chief Innovation Evangelist and Chief Remote Officer.
Meanwhile, according to Cable News Network (CNN), virologists and epidemiologists say the new Omicron sub-lineage, the XBB 1.5, has features that give it the potential to drive a new surge of Covid-19 cases in the US, although it’s still unclear how large that wave will be and whether it could send many more people to the hospital.
Maria Van Kerkhove, technical lead on COVID-19 at the World Health Organization (WHO) is quoted as saying the XBB.1.5 is the “most transmissible subvariant detected yet”.
Speaking of flexibility at work, the Geneva-based International Labour Organization (ILO) last week released a report pointing out that flexible working hours can benefit productivity and also advance economies and businesses while helping employees and families achieve a better work-life balance.
The issues surrounding working hours and conditions are “at the heart of most labour market reforms and evolutions taking place in the world today”, Branch Chief Philippe Marcadent said in a foreword to ILO’s Working Time and Work-Life Balance Around the World.
“The number of hours worked, the way in which they are organized, and the availability of rest periods can significantly affect not only the quality of work, but also life outside the workplace”.
The study, described as the first to focus on work-life balance, examines the affects that working hours and time schedules have on the performance of businesses and their employees.
Covering the periods before and during COVID-19, the report reveals that more than a third of all employees are regularly working more than 48 hours per week, while a fifth of the global workforce is labouring fewer than 35 hours per week, on a part-time basis.
“The so-called ‘Great Resignation’ phenomenon has placed work-life balance at the forefront of social and labour market issues in the post-pandemic world”, said lead author Jon Messenger.
The study analyses different work schedules and their effects on work-life balance, including shifts, arrangements for being on call, compressed hours, and hours-averaging schemes.
Innovative working-time arrangements, such as those introduced during the COVID-19 crisis, can bring great benefits, including greater productivity and improved work-life balance, said Messenger.
“This report shows that if we apply some of the lessons of the COVID-19 crisis and look very carefully at the way working hours are structured, as well as their overall length, we can create a win-win, improving both business performance and work-life balance”, he added.
However, the report cautioned that the benefits of some flexible arrangements, such as spending more time with the family, may also be accompanied by greater gender imbalances and health risks.
SYDNEY, Jan 17 (IPS) – Inflation worries topped Ipsos’s What Worries the World survey in 2022 overtaking COVID concerns. The return of inflation caught major central banks, e.g., the US Federal Reserve (Fed), Bank of England, European Central Bank “off guard”. The persistence of inflation also surprised the International Monetary Fund (IMF). The return of inflation and its persistence exposed the poverty of the economics profession, unable to agree on its causes and required policy responses. It also exposed the profession’s anti-working class biases.
Anis Chowdhury
Inflation goof
Almost all major central banks as well as the IMF dismally failed to see the coming of inflation. In December 2020, the US Fed forecast that prices would rise by less than 2% in 2021 and 2022. It failed spectacularly when in December 2021, it estimated that inflation in 2022 would be just 2.6% even though prices were already rising by more than 5% a year.
The US Fed was not alone in failing to see inflation coming. The Governor of Australia’s central bank – the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) – was so confident of low inflation that he declared in March 2021 that the interest rate would remain at a historic low until at least 2024. Inflation in advanced economies during 2021 exceeded the average of forecasters’ expectations by around 5–8 percentage points. The IMF’s forecasts have badly and repeatedly undershot inflation.
There was a widespread view among most central bankers and leading economists that the price increases (or inflation) that began in mid-2021 were temporary, and price increases would slow or inflation would drift downwards in 2022. Some, of course, insisted otherwise, and wanted immediate anti-inflationary measures. Thus, policy confusion ruled.
Inflation phobia and dogma
Soon inflation phobia overtook and central banks were advised to act decisively with interest rate hikes even if it meant slowing the economy or a rise in unemployment. Exaggerated claims were made without evidence that not acting now would be more costly later.
The dogmatic inflation hawks ignored the fact that, in most cases, inflation does not accelerate to become harmful hyperinflation, but remains moderate. They also ignored their own neo-classical macroeconomic model, which suggests small welfare loss from moderate inflation.
Notwithstanding the IMF’s Article IV preamble which provides that economic policies should aim to foster “orderly economic growth with reasonable price stability, with due regard to circumstances”, a one-size-fits-all policy of steep interest rate hikes became the only medicine to be applied to achieve a universal inflation target of 2%, a figure plucked from thin air. Yet, central bankers and mainstream economists boast their credibility!
Inflation excuse for class war
Inflation is primarily an expression and outcome of conflicting claims over the distribution of national output and income, e.g., firms’ profit mark-ups vis-à-vis workers’ wages. Thus, no sooner inflation spiked early in the year due to slow adjustment of COVID-induced supply shortages to pent-up demand, exacerbated by war and sanctions, leading central bankers and mainstream economists found an excuse to weaponise economic policies against the working class.
Stoking the fear of wage-price spirals, they advocate the use of an interest rate sledgehammer to create unemployment and, in turn, discipline labour. This is despite research within the IMF and the Reserve Bank of Australia which found no evidence of wage-price spirals since the 1980s due to declines in labour’s bargaining power. Thus, Bloomberg headlined, “Fattest Profits Since 1950 Debunk Wage-Inflation Story of CEOs”.
Research conducted by the IMF also found increases in firms’ or corporations’ market power, resulting in higher prices and profit margins. Yet, the IMF does not think such factors “are contributing in any sizeable way to the current inflationary environment”. Instead, it justifies such fattening of profits on the ground that “they provide flexible buffers between general wage and general price increases” and that it is only a catching-up “after taking a hit in 2020”!
Labour is a clear loser. Labour’s income share in the GDP has been in decline since the early 1970s. Casualisation, off-shoring, anti-union legislation and technological progress have greatly reduced labour’s bargaining power, while privatisation and dilution of anti-monopoly legislation hugely strengthened corporate power and their collusive anti-competitive behaviour. Meanwhile, CEO compensation packages swelled to obnoxious levels, rising 940% since 1978 in the US as opposed to a 12% rise for workers during that period. Profiting from the pandemic, CEO pay increased by 16% in 2020 when workers suffered, and to a record level in 2021.
Leading central bankers and mainstream economists conveniently created a dogma around a 2% inflation target to justify their anti-labour stance. The 2% inflation target has become a global norm akin to the law of gravity, even though it has no theoretical or empirical basis. The law of gravity differs depending on altitude, but the 2% target is said to be universal regardless of circumstances!
Collateral damage
Meanwhile, the advanced countries’ inflation fight is causing adverse spillover into developing countries. Higher interest rates have slowed the world economy, and triggered capital outflows from developing countries, thereby depreciating their currencies and lowering their export earnings.
Together, these are causing devastating debt crises in many developing countries, similar to what happened in the 1980s. The rating agency S&P estimates that central bank rate rises could land global borrowers with US$8.6t in extra debt servicing costs in the coming years.
Meanwhile, the chiefs of the World Bank and the BIS urged “supply-side” policies professed to increase labour force participation and investment. These are code words for further labour market deregulation, privatisation and liberalisation.
The median ages of populations are expected to continue rising over the coming decades. East Nanjing Road, Shanghai, China. Credit: Shutterstock.
Opinion by Joseph Chamie (portland, usa)
Inter Press Service
PORTLAND, USA, Jan 16 (IPS) – Demography doesn’t care about such things as national strikes over pension retirement ages, public protests about contraception and abortion rights, sexual orientation, habits and preferences, political ideology and party affiliation, dress codes and head coverings, and religious identity, beliefs and practices.
Demography is basically about the mathematics of human populations, i.e., births, deaths, migrations, ageing, morbidity, sex ratios, mobility, size, change, growth, distribution, density, structure, composition, life expectancies, biological, social and economic characteristics, etc.
Demography is relatively straightforward, visible and equitable. For example, in every human population a person is born an infant at age zero, ages one year every twelve months, and eventually over time faces death, too often earlier rather than later unfortunately.
Between birth and death, a wide variety of demographic phenomena or transitions typically occur in human populations. Among them are surviving infancy and childhood, passing through puberty, finding a mate, having offspring, migrating to another place, falling ill or becoming disabled, and experiencing ageing.
Over the many centuries of human history, the interactions of those various demographic phenomena and transitions have resulted in today’s world population of 8,000,000,000. That extraordinary number of human beings now inhabiting planet Earth is due in large part to the record-breaking rapid growth of world population during the 20th century.
World population reached the one billion milestone at the start of the 19th century in 1804. The 20th century then ushered in what turned out to be the century of rapid demographic growth. World population nearly quadrupled from 1.6 billion at the start of the 20th century to 6.1 billion by the century’s close (Figure 1).
Source: United Nations.
In addition to that unprecedented rapid demographic growth, the world’s annual rate of population growth peaked at 2.3 percent in 1963. Also, by 1990 the world’s annual population increase reached a record high of 93 million.
The unprecedented growth of world population that took place during the 20th century was simply the result of births greatly outnumbering deaths with mortality rates dropping rapidly, especially during the second half of the past century.
The world’s fertility rate in the 1960s, for example, was about five births per woman and births outnumbered deaths by nearly three to one in the 1980s. Life expectancy at birth increased dramatically, increasing from about 45 years in the middle of the 20th century to about 65 years by the end of the century.
The current demographic situation for the world is different from the exceptional rates, levels and changes of the past century. For example, the growth rate of world population in 2021 was about 0.8 percent, or nearly one-third the peak level in 1963.
In addition, the annual increase of world population in 2021 was about 68 million, or about three-fourths the level in 1990. Also, the median age of the world’s population, which was about 20 years in 1970, has increased by 50 percent, reaching 30 years in 2022.
The world’s fertility rate is now about 2.3 births per woman, or about half the level 60 years ago. In addition, approximately 100 countries have a total fertility rate below the replacement level of 2.1 births per woman.
Furthermore, the fertility rates of some thirty countries in 2021 were less than 1.5 births per woman. Several of those countries had fertility rates that were approximately half or less than the replacement level, including China at 1.16, Singapore at 1.12 and South Korea at 0.81 (Chart 1).
Source: United Nations.
As a result of below replacement fertility rates, the current populations of some 60 countries are expected to be smaller by 2070. The total population decline of those countries over the next 50 years is projected to be more than a half a billion. Among the countries with the largest declines in their populations are China (-340 million), Japan (-35 million), Russia (-22 million), South Korea (-16 million) and Italy (-15 million).
In addition, many countries are expected to experience substantial declines in the relative size of their populations. Many of those countries are projected to have population declines of 10 percent or more over the coming four decades. For example, the relative decline in population size is expected to be 22 percent for Japan, 21 percent for South Korea and 18 percent for Italy (Figure 2).
Source: United Nations.
At the other extreme, the populations of two dozen countries, accounting for nearly 10 percent of the world’s population, are expected to more than double by 2060. Those projected population increases by 2060 include 106 percent in Afghanistan, 109 percent in Sudan, 113 percent in Uganda, 136 percent in Tanzania, 142 percent in Angola, 147 percent in Somalia, 167 percent in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and 227 percent in Niger (Figure 3).
Source: United Nations.
In addition to the projected decline and growth of national populations, the age structures of countries worldwide are expected to become substantially older. Many countries have attained median ages in 2020 above 40 years, such as France at 41 years, South Korea at 43 years, Italy at 46 years and Japan at 48 years.
The median ages of populations are expected to continue rising over the coming decades. The median age for the world, for example, is expected to increase from 30 years today to close to 40 years by 2070. In some countries, including China, Italy, Japan and South Korea, the median ages of their populations by 2070 are projected to be 55 years or older.
Demographic ageing in the 21st century constitutes a major challenge for societies and economies. The consequences of the demographic realities of older population age structures and increasing human longevity are likely unavoidable.
In particular, the ageing of populations is contributing to strains on fiscal revenues and spending on pensions and healthcare for the elderly. Despite the ageing of populations and increases in human longevity, official retirement ages for government pension benefits have remained largely unchanged at comparatively low ages.
In France, for example, the official pension retirement age is 62 years, which is well below the retirement ages of many other developed countries. Despite criticisms, protests and a scheduled national strike from worker unions and leftist opponents, the French government has unveiled a pension overhaul that proposes gradually raise the retirement age to 64 years by 2030.
Also, a mounting crisis for a growing number of countries worldwide is illegal immigration. Neither governments nor international agencies have been able to come up with sensible policies and effective programs to address the mounting illegal immigration crisis.
A major factor behind the rise of illegal immigration is the large and growing supply of men, women and children in sending countries who want to migrate to another country and by any means possible, including illegal immigration. The number of people in the world wanting to migrate to another country is estimated at nearly 1.2 billion.
In conclusion, too often many choose to ignore, deny or dismiss today’s demographic realities, such as population growth and decline, demographic aging, declining fertility, rising life expectancy and increasing illegal immigration.
Rather than acknowledging, addressing and adjusting to the challenging consequences of the demographic realities of the 21st century, many are turning to protests, strikes, demonstrations, and balderdash. Demography, however, simply doesn’t care about such things.
Joseph Chamie is a consulting demographer, a former director of the United Nations Population Division and author of numerous publications on population issues, including his recent book, “Births, Deaths, Migrations and Other Important Population Matters.”
A new conversation is needed about food production in Africa. Credit: Joyce Chimbi/IPS
by Joyce Chimbi (nairobi)
Inter Press Service
NAIROBI, Jan 16 (IPS) – Concerns are rife that while Africa is growing more crops, these are not for food and that on the current trajectory, present food import costs into Africa, now estimated at 55 billion US dollars a year, could double by 2030.
Three crop species-maize, wheat and rice meet an estimated 50 percent of the global requirements for proteins and calories, according to the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).
Yet despite Africa’s expensive agricultural sector, the continent’s maize, rice, and wheat account for 7, 5, and 4 percent of the world’s production, respectively. But experts say pitting food crops against cash crops is not the right conversation to have.
“The most productive conversation should be firmly centered on how to support farmers to produce more food for everyone and to export even more as this will improve the farmer’s quality of life and get themselves out of poverty,” says Hafez Ghanem, former regional Vice President of the World Bank Group and a current nonresident senior fellow in the Global Economy and Development Program at the Brookings Institution.
He tells IPS the mistake many countries made after independence was to try to ensure cheap food for people in the cities by keeping farmgate prices low and by trying to coerce farmers into producing certain food crops. The result was that the farmer became poor. If the farmer is poor, they cannot produce, and in the long run, everybody becomes poor and hungry.
“No country can produce all the foods that it needs. We will have to export some and produce some. If we start increasing yields for cereals, for instance, through increased use of quality seeds, fertilizer, and irrigation, farmers can produce more food crops without interfering with cash crops production, and the farmer will be richer.”
According to the Africa Agriculture Status Report 2022, “for Africa, accelerating the transformation of our food systems is more vital than ever. Africa has a few other incentives for transforming its food system; with one of the most degraded agricultural soils in the world and increasing droughts, Africa will face significant exposure to water-related climate risks in the future.
At least 90 percent of sub-Saharan Africa’s rural population depends on agriculture as its primary source of income. More than 95 percent of agriculture is reliant on rainfall, according to the report.
The report finds that the consequences of unpredictable rainfall, rising temperatures, extreme drought, and low soil carbon will further lower crop yields exposing Africa’s poorest communities to increasingly intense climate- and water-related hazards with disastrous results.
Ghanem does not believe that the issue of food security in Africa is a consequence of producing too many cash crops. The real issue, he says, is two-fold.
“The first part of the issue is that, in general, the productivity of land under cultivation for both cash and food crops is low. We need to increase land yields for both cash and food crops. The solution, I do not believe, is to stop exporting cash crops to produce more food,” he explains.
The second part of the issue, he says, is the challenge presented by climate change, and “we need to do much more to make agriculture more resilient to climate change.”
He says that concerns that there is the prioritization of cash crops over food crops are misplaced, “think about the profile of farmers in Africa. We are talking about very smallholder farmers. In countries such as Cote d’Ivoire and Ghana, farmers are making much more profits producing cocoa or coffee than producing rice, for example.“We cannot ask our farmers to produce crops that are lower yielding and therefore less profitable.”
Any solution that we propose for food security, he cautions, has to bear in mind that the most food insecure and poorest people in Africa are in the rural areas.
Against this backdrop, experts such as Ghanem see no conflict between the production of food and cash crops, saying that Africa has vast lands to produce both. Outside of countries such as Egypt and other countries in North Africa, he says the rest of the continent has vast and available arable land.
Data by FAO shows Africa is home to an estimated 60 percent of the world’s uncultivated arable land. Ghanem, therefore, says the solution is to facilitate farmers to irrigate their lands and access high-quality seeds and fertilizer.
Africa needs about $40 to $70 billion in investment from the public sector and another $80 billion from the private sector annually to sustain food production on the continent, according to Africa Agriculture Status Report.
Ghanem says investing in technology that can produce critical inputs such as fertilizer and climate-resilient high-quality seeds will prove highly productive in the future.
Take, for instance, fertilizer which is expensive because it is imported. He lauds the establishment of some of the world’s largest fertilizer-producing companies in Nigeria and Morocco, calling for such investments in other parts of the continent.
Ghanem says subsidies for farm inputs such as fertilizer are not the solution and that producing inputs that farmers need in-country or at least on the continent will set the agricultural sector on a resilience path to greater productivity, enough food for all, and profitability.
Environment reporting is expenseiv; it needs a lot of traveling and risk-taking. Journalists reporting at COP27 in Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt, last year. Credit: Africa Renewal
Opinion by Kingsley Ighobor (united nations)
Inter Press Service
UNITED NATIONS, Jan 16 (IPS) – At the end of a five-minute newscast from a makeshift studio in Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt, the venue of COP27, Cotonou-based journalist Ghyslaine Florida Zossoungbo was able to provide real-time information to her compatriots back home in the Republic of Benin.
On this day, she had found a small corner in one of the pavilions at COP27 sat on a high stool behind a laptop while a camera perched on a tripod a few feet away.
At the conference, Zossoungbo and other journalists, even those from big established media institutions such as CNN or bloggers clutching an iPhone but with a large social media following, ran briskly after celebrities and world leaders or just about anyone who had anything significant to say about climate change.
And at the end of each day, they immediately churned out climate change content to audiences globally.
Kingsley Ighobor
Yet, despite Zossoungbo’s best effort to report on the climate crisis, buoyed by new public information technology, she says climate change reporting in her country—perhaps also in rest of Africa— is fraught with challenges.
“We are the only media institution that regularly reports on the climate crisis because we are focused on SDGs,” Zossoungbo says. “Other media concentrate on politics and other issues.”
She adds: “People can see that there is something happening to the weather because of the floods and drought, but they don’t yet understand what it is in its full context. So we keep talking and talking about it.”
In Cameroon, explains Killian Chimton Ngala, a journalist with multiple accreditations, “Climate change doesn’t often make the front pages of newspapers or lead in television or radio news.”
Reporting context
Ngala’s experience is that “Climate reporting often lacks context. When journalists report on flooding, for example, they don’t necessarily link it to climate change. They usually focus on the event and the impact.”
Without a perspective, climate change reporting becomes a complex concept for many, particularly the grassroots population.
Ngala provides an example of such reporting: “Not long ago, fighting broke out in communities in Cameroon’s far North Region, between Choa-Arab cattle herders and Mousgoum farmers, over dwindling water resources.
Many people died in the conflict, and a top government official decided to visit the area.
“Do you know how journalists reported the story?” Ngala asks rhetorically. “They all reported that the minister had admonished the communities and asked them to be peaceful.
“Yet, when you look at it, why were the communities fighting? It’s because the village stream was drying up, and community dwellers and cattle herders had to fight for the limited water, a consequence of changing weather patterns.
“If you ask many people in Africa why their lake is drying up or why they are experiencing frequent droughts, some will not even know, let alone advocate for solutions.
“Take the drying up of Lake Chad, which is forcing herders in northern Nigeria and Cameroon to migrate down south. The farmers in the south believe the herders are coming to take over their lands. The resulting fight has claimed many lives,” he laments.
Why then is the media not robustly telling the climate story as it should be?
Need for training
Ngala blames it on lack of resources and training.
“Environment reporting is expensive; it needs a lot of traveling and risk-taking. It does not come cheap. Many media organisations in Africa find it unaffordable. For instance, they cannot afford to spend thousands of dollars to sponsor reporters to cover COP27,” says Ngala.
There are very few trained environment reporters in newsrooms, he says. As a result, climate change reporting does not yet receive the attention it deserves.
“Media managers would rather send reporters to cover politics, which drive sales, than to report on issues related to the environment, unless it is a major disaster. They would rather send reporters to cover our President’s trip to Addis Ababa than to COP27,” she says.
External sponsors
Ngala was one of several African journalists sponsored to cover COP27 by climate-focused organisations particularly in Europe and North America.
For example, the Climate Change Media Partnership (CCMP) fellowship programme, an Earth Journalism Network (EJN) project managed by Internews and the Stanley Center for Peace and Security, brought Ngala and five other African journalists to Sharm El Sheikh to cover COP27.
They were among 20 journalists (out of over 500 who applied) from low and middle-income countries sponsored under the fellowship.
The fellowship package comes with training on “quality reporting on developments at COP27,” according to an EJN announcement, adding that Africa accounts for 2-3 per cent of global emissions but bears the brunt of the climate crisis. Therefore, African journalists must continue to report on the impact of the crisis and hold governments accountable.
“It was a rigorous application process,” says Evelyn Kpadeh Seagbeh of the Liberia-based Power FM and Television, also a fellow.
“But for the fellowship, I would not be here . I applied for the fellowship because coming here for two weeks would have cost thousands of dollars, which my organization may not afford.”
Climate content
The symbiotic relationship between media content producers and content consumers is complex.
The perceived interest of the audience may influence content production even as the agenda-setting role of the media involves guiding audiences to focus on particular issues.
It leads to the point that African journalists have not yet effectively linked climate change issues to citizens’ socioeconomic well-being.
“That’s the point,” retorts Ngala. “Journalists report on the environment in isolation of other economic development sectors. You can see why, in many countries, the economic affairs ministries do not consider the climate crisis a part of their portfolio. It is often the preserve of underfunded environment ministries.”
“There is a lack of appreciation of the seriousness of the climate crisis,” explains Mwika Bennet Simbeye, acting Managing Editor of the Times of Zambia.
“Journalists tend to instinctively focus on day-to-day problems—all the political drama and bread and butter issues,” says Simbeye.
Agreeing that training and increased financing resources will boost climate reporting, Paul Omorogbe, the Chief Correspondent of the Tribune of Nigeria, is optimistic.
“I believe the situation is gradually changing. In Nigeria, climate crisis reporting is slowly but steadily gaining prominence in the media. We are getting there.”
Before he died, Johanna Devico Ohana’s father asked her to promise him one thing: “if I ever die when I’m in France”, he insisted, “bring me to Fez”.
He also asked her to take care of the Jewish cemetery, a role that was his responsibility before he passed away. His daughter agreed to both requests, and her father is laid to rest in the cemetery she now maintains.
‘We lived in harmony’
“My father was a lover of Morocco and a lover of Fez”, says Ms. Ohana, who was born and raised in the city. “We lived in harmony. There was no tension. We all knew we were Jews, Muslims, or Catholics, and we never had any problems on that side”.
Located in northern Morocco, on the Wadi Fez, the city was founded in the ninth century, and was the ancient capital of Morocco for hundreds of years. In the year 809, King Idris II encouraged Jews to move to Fez, so the city could benefit from their skills.
Today, Fez is known for its religion, art, sciences, craftwork, and trade activities. The Fez Medina, often described as Morocco’s cultural and spiritual centre, is listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
It also retains a mix of cultures and identity, and a Jewish neighbourhood, named ‘Mellah’. The word literally means ‘salt’ or ‘saline area’, in reference to either a saline water source in the area or to the former presence of a salt warehouse, but ‘Mellah’ is now used as the name for Jewish quarters in other Moroccan cities, including Rabat and Marrakech.
The Jewish cemetery, nestled in the Mellah, is distinguished by its semi-cylindrical tombs, which capture the history of Morocco’s flourishing Jewry.
A ‘convergence of confluents’
The age-old intermingling of peoples made Fez an appropriate location for the ninth Forum of the United Nations Alliance of Civilizations (UNAOC), which took place in November 2022.
Opening the event, Andre Azoulay, the senior adviser to King Mohammed VI of Morocco – and father of UNESCO Director-General Audrey Azoulay – who is himself Jewish, declared that Morocco “is built around a model of openness, harmony and synergy that has seen the convergence of Arab-Islamic, Amazigh and Saharan-Hassanian confluents, and that has, at the same time, been enriched by African, Andalusian, Hebrew and Mediterranean tributaries”.
When asked about how she felt when she learnt that Fez was chosen to host the UNAOC ninth Forum, Ms. Ohana said she felt proud that Fez was chosen: “for Morocco, it reflects exactly the reality of our image, our culture”.
“Only renewables can safeguard our future, close the energy access gap, stabilize prices and ensure energy security,” he said in a video message to the 13th Session of the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) Assembly, taking place this weekend in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates.
“Together, let’s jumpstart a renewables revolution and create a brighter future for all.”
‘Death sentence’ for many
The world is still addicted to fossil fuels and the goal of limiting global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius is fast slipping out of reach, the UN chief warned.
“Under current policies, we are headed for 2.8 degrees of global warming by the end of the century. The consequences will be devastating. Several parts of our planet will be uninhabitable. And for many, this is a death sentence,” he said.
Renewable energy sources currently account for about 30 per cent of global electricity.
Mr. Guterres said this must double to over 60 per cent by 2030, and 90 per cent by mid-century.
Global public goods
His Five-point Energy Plan first calls for removing intellectual property barriers so that key renewable technologies, including energy storage, are treated as global public goods.
Countries also must diversify and increase access to supply chains for raw materials and components for renewables technologies, without degrading the environment.
“This can help create millions of green jobs, especially for women and youth in the developing world,” said Mr. Guterres.
Sergei Gapon / UNDP Belarus
In Belarus,UNDP helped build the country’s biggest wind-farm. Wind energy could help Belarus become energy-independent by 2050.
Subsidize the shift
The Secretary-General urged decisionmakers to cut red tape, fast-track approvals for sustainable projects worldwide and modernize power grids.
His fourth point focused on energy subsidies. He stressed the need to shift from fossil fuels to clean and affordable energy, adding “we must support vulnerable groups affected by this transition.”
The final point highlighted how public and private investments in renewables should triple to at least $4 trillion dollars a year.
Noting that most investments in renewables are in developed countries, the Secretary-General urged countries to work together to reduce the capital cost for renewables and ensure that financing flows to those who need it most.
Multilateral development banks must also invest massively in renewable energy infrastructure, he added, while richer nations must work with credit agencies to scale up green investments in developing countries.
Strengthening energy sovereignty
The President of the UN General Assembly, Csaba Kőrösi, underlined how success in climate protection depends on the transition to clean energy.
“But the energy transition we have foreseen was a peace time agenda,” he said in a pre-recorded message. “How will it work in times of major political confrontations when energy supplies are turned into a tool of conflict?”
Although setbacks might occur in the short term, along with a probable rise in the greenhouse gas emissions that drive global warming, Mr. Kőrösi pointed to the long-term benefits of green energy.
“If we look into the investment trends, the long-term impact of the conflict might be the opposite. From solar to wind, wave, and geothermal, renewable energy sources are available for every climate. Their use has a potential ofstrengthening energy sovereignty,” he said.
Weather and climate-related disasters – extreme floods, heat and drought affected millions of people and cost billions in 2022, as tell-tale signs and impacts of climate change intensified.
‘Desperate race against time’
The General Assembly President outlined steps that must be taken for renewable energy to comprise 60 per cent of global power generation by 2030.
They include investing in scientific tools of measurement, creating a follow-up mechanism to assess progress, removing intellectual property barriers, and bolstering partnerships for sustainable energy initiatives.
Mr. Kőrösi stressed the urgency to act now.
“We are in a desperate race against time. We need bold transformative action to curtail climate change,” he said. “We have the knowledge. We have the means. We should only have the will.”
The study presents the latest data on electrification of healthcare facilities in low- and middle-income countries, and projects investments required to achieve adequate and reliable power.
It was published by the World Health Organization (WHO), the World Bank, the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA), and Sustainable Energy for All (SEforAll).
A matter of life and death
“Electricity access in healthcare facilities can make the difference between life and death,” said Dr Maria Neira, WHO interim Assistant Director-General for Healthier Populations.
“Investing in reliable, clean and sustainable energy for health-care facilities is not only crucial to pandemic preparedness, it’s also much needed to achieve universal health coverage, as well as increasing climate resilience and adaptation.”
Access to electricity is critical for providing people with quality healthcare, from delivering babies to managing emergencies like heart attacks, or ensuring children receive lifesaving vaccines.
Electricity is required to power the most basic devices – lighting, communications equipment and refrigeration, for example, or those that measure vital signs like heartbeat and blood pressure. It is also crucial for both routine and emergency procedures.
Disparities in access
However, more than one in 10 health facilities in South Asia and sub-Saharan African countries lack any electricity access whatever, according to the report, and power is unreliable in half of all facilities in sub-Saharan Africa.
Despite recent progress, approximately one billion people are served by healthcare facilities without reliable electricity supply, or none at all – a number that is nearly as large as the entire populations of the United States, Indonesia, Pakistan and Germany combined.
There also stark disparities in access within countries themselves. Primary healthcare centres and rural facilities are considerably less likely to have electricity access than hospitals and facilities in urban areas, according to the report.
Urgent intervention needed
The report stressed that electrification of healthcare facilities “must be considered an utmost development priority”.
A World Bank needs analysis, included in the report, showed that almost two-thirds of healthcare facilities in low and middle-income countries require some form of urgent intervention, such as a new electricity connection or backup power supply.
Nearly $5 billion is urgently needed to bring them to a minimal standard of electrification.
Sustainable solutions available
The authors said decentralized sustainable energy solutions are available which would have a huge impact on health delivery, citing the example of solar photovoltaic systems which convert sunlight into electricity.
Such solutions are cost-effective, clean and rapidly deployable on site, meaning there is no need to wait for the arrival of the central energy grid.
Healthcare systems and facilities are increasingly affected by the impacts of the climate emergency, the authors added.
Therefore, making them more resilient calls for building facilities and services that can meet the challenges of climate change while improving environmental sustainability.
China COVID-19 data welcomed
In other health news,
The World Health Organization (WHO) has welcomed data from China on its COVID-19 surge, according to a statement issued following a conversation on Saturday between Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus and Minister Ma Xiaowei, Director of the country’s National Health Commission.
“WHO appreciates this meeting, as well as the public release of information on the overall situation,” the UN agency said.
Chinese officials have provided information to WHO, and in a press conference, on topics that include outpatient clinics, hospitalizations, patients requiring emergency treatment and critical care, and COVID-19 related hospital deaths.
WHO is analyzing the data, which covers the period from early December 2022 to 12 January 2023, recalling that it has been requesting China to share detailed information.
The current intense COVID-19 surge has been caused by known Omicron subvariants, according to the data. It is mainly affecting older people and those with underlying health conditions, similar to waves of infections experienced by other countries.
“The reported data indicate a decline in case numbers, hospitalizations, and those requiring critical care. WHO has requested a more detailed breakdown of data by province over time,” said the statement.
During the call, Tedros also reiterated the importance of China’s deeper cooperation and transparency on understanding the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic, and in carrying out recommendations detailed in the report by its Strategic Advisory Group for the Origins of Novel Pathogens.
Percy Santos, a visually impaired college student in Honduras, recently received his digital ID card from the government. “The new ID is designed perfectly for people like me. This is a personal fulfilment. I feel better identified,” he says.
Mr. Santos is one of the 5.4 million people enrolled in the new population database in Honduras, set up with help from the UN Legal Identity project in the country, which has a special focus on Indigenous peoples, LGBTQI+, minorities and persons with disabilities. Thanks to the digital card, he now has easy access to social benefits.
UNDP/RNP
Around 5.4 million people are now enrolled in the new population database in Honduras.
As well as making life easier for people like Mr. Santos, the new system has also helped the Honduran authorities to create a more robust electoral database, improving the voting system significantly in the 2021 elections, and helping to reduce distrust in the electoral system.
The chances of succeeding in life without a legal identity are very low. It’s much harder to get a job in the formal economy, and the likelihood of benefitting from social protection or basic health care systems during pandemics like COVID-19, or during times of conflict or climate emergencies, will be negligible. Absence of legal identity is likely to impact insurance, pension, or even basic utility services like water, telephone, and gas connection.
The Honduras project is just one example of the ways in which the UN is helping countries in their attempts to establish national population registers, national ID schemes, or digital ID programs.
A young mother from Sierra Leone and her baby, displaced by conflict (file)
Sierra Leone: identifying those displaced by conflict
In Sierra Leone, years of armed conflict, and the widespread human rights abuses associated with it, led to significant levels of internal displacement, and statelessness.
The UN Development Programme (UNDP) and partners are helping the authorities to integrate the displaced, stateless population, so that people who do not have legal documents can acquire a National Identification Number (NIN).
This means that they can get a driver’s licence, apply for formal employment and, most importantly, have a legal identity. For the government, it means keeping track of revenues generated from taxes, reduced corruption, proper checks and balances, and increased security.
Thanks to these efforts, Sierra Leone now has a digital record of six million people who were previously undocumented.
Women weigh their babies at a clinic in Zambia (file)
Zambia: Major increase in registered births
The UN has been a key partner in making registration more accessible in Zambia, helping the government to install an integrated and digital national registration system that covers Zambians from birth to death, in different areas of the country. The same legal identity works to vaccinate, as well as enrol children in school.
As a result, Zambia has seen an increased registration of birth from 14.3 percent to 84 percent as of 2022.
“In addition to provision of legal identity from birth to death and its contribution to the maintenance of internal security, the integrated national registration system shall provide reliable and timely vital statistics for planning purposes and targeted provision of social services to eligible population groups,” remarks Jacob Jack Mwiimbu, Minister of Home Affairs and Internal Security of Zambia.
Rochan Kadariya/UNDP
Citizens in Mozambique with their identity cards
Mozambique: A ‘ground-breaking initiative’
Mozambique, which has low levels of civil registration – 12.1 per cent of deaths and 49 per cent of births are registered – is one of the United Nations Legal Identity Agenda pilot countries.
As part of the project to improve the registration and national identity database, the UN country team developed a plan to improve these figures, and create systems for civil registration, vital statistics, and identity management.
The project has been praised by the most senior UN official in Mozambique, Myrta Kaulard. “The Legal Identity Agenda is a ground-breaking initiative, to benefit from migration and guarantee the rights for those who are in the country,” says Ms. Kaulard.
