Dusk approaches in Yangon, Myanmar. Credit: Unsplash/Alexander Schimmeck
Opinion by Noeleen Heyzer (united nations)
Inter Press Service
UNITED NATIONS, Oct 27 (IPS) – The political, human rights and humanitarian crisis in Myanmar continues to take a catastrophic toll on the people, with serious regional implications.
More than 13.2 million people are food insecure, about 40 percent of the population is living below the poverty line and 1.3 million are internally displaced. Military operations continue with disproportionate use of force including aerial bombings, burning of civilian structures, and the killing of civilians including children.
I condemn the indiscriminate airstrikes on a celebration in Kachin State that killed large numbers of civilians days ago. The People’s Defence Forces are also accused of targeting civilians.
The plight of the Rohingya people, along with other forcefully displaced communities, remains desperate, with many seeking refuge through dangerous land and sea journeys. The price of impunity is a grave reminder that accountability remains essential.
Since the release of the Report of the Secretary-General on the situation in Myanmar, violence between the Arakan Army and the military in Rakhine has escalated to levels not seen since late 2020, with significant cross-border incursions, endangering all communities, harming conditions for durable return, and prolonging the burden on Bangladesh as host of about 1 million Rohingya refugees.
As the Myanmar crisis deepens, I continue to promote a coordinated international strategy, in line with my mandate, engaging all stakeholders for an inclusive Myanmar-led process to return to the democratic transition.
A child looks after his younger sibling in Myanmar. Credit: World Bank/Tom Cheatham
My first visit to Myanmar as Special Envoy in August to meet the military’s Commander-in-Chief was part of broader efforts by the UN to urgently support a return to civilian rule based on the will and needs of the people.
I made six requests during the visit: ending aerial bombing and burning of civilian infrastructure; delivery of humanitarian assistance without discrimination; the release of all children and political prisoners; a moratorium on executions; the well-being of and engagement with State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi.
I also highlighted Myanmar’s responsibility for creating conducive conditions for the voluntary, safe, dignified and sustainable return of Rohingya refugees. Soon after, I visited Dhaka and Cox’s Bazar on the five-year anniversary of the Rohingya’s mass displacement, where I expressed the United Nations’ appreciation for Bangladesh’s generosity and heeded Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s statements that the current situation is unsustainable.
A highlight of the visit was my discussions with women and youth in the refugee camps. They made it clear that they need to be engaged directly in discussions and decisions about their future.
Their rights and protection, in particular their citizenship, freedom of movement and security, must be guaranteed, guided by the recommendations of the Advisory Commission on Rakhine State. Going forward, I will continue to strengthen co-operation with ASEAN and engagement with all stakeholders.
While there is little room for the de-escalation of violence or for “talks about talks” in the present zero-sum situation, there are some concrete ways to reducing the suffering of the people. Recognizing that many more people will be forced to flee the violence,
I will continue to urge ASEAN to develop a regional protection framework for refugees and forcefully displaced persons. The recent forced return of Myanmar nationals, some of whom were detained on arrival, underlines the urgency of a coordinated ASEAN response to address shared regional challenges caused by the conflict.
Education and skills development are powerful tools to prepare Rohingya refugees for their return to Myanmar, which I continue to advocate, working closely with leaders of ASEAN and neighbouring countries as well as the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC).
Key Ethnic Armed Organizations and the National Unity Government have together appealed for me to convene an Inclusive Forum for engagement to facilitate protection and humanitarian assistance to ALL people in need, in observance of International Humanitarian Law.
I have also initiated a women, peace and security (WPS) platform on Myanmar with the Foreign Minister of Indonesia to amplify the needs of women affected by the conflict, and their leadership as agents of change.
To conclude, there is a new political reality in Myanmar: a people demanding change, no longer willing to accept military rule. I will continue to appeal to all governments and other key stakeholders to listen to the people and be guided by their will to prevent deeper catastrophe in the heart of Asia.
Noeleen Heyzer, Special Envoy of the Secretary-General on Myanmar, in her address to the United Nations General Assembly’s Third Committee 25 October 2022
Achieving the temperature goals of the Paris Agreement requires not only slowing new construction, but also retiring existing coal power plants early, worldwide. Credit: Wikimedia Commons
Opinion by Philippe Benoit (paris)
Inter Press Service
PARIS, Oct 26 (IPS) – With COP 27 approaching, pressure is mounting on wealthy countries to increase their support to poorer ones in the face of climate change. The recent floods in Pakistan have amplified this issue. China, as the world’s second largest economy, will similarly face increasing pressure to help other developing countries on climate.
At last year’s COP, the Asian Development Bank (ADB) unveiled an innovative program to fund the early retirement of coal power plants by mobilizing capital to buy-out the investors in these plants. This approach has an interesting, and potentially even easier, application to the coal plants financed by China in Pakistan and elsewhere overseas under its Belt and Road Initiative (“BRI”). The key to unlocking this, somewhat surprisingly, lies in the dominance of China’s state-owned companies in BRI transactions.
In response to this challenge, the ADB announced the Energy Transition Mechanism which includes an initiative to buy out existing coal investors to shutter their plants early and thereby avoid the attendant future emissions. Typically, this would involve mobilizing international financing from multilateral development banks, climate funds, etc. to compensate the private sector investors in these plants.
Interestingly, the dominance in the BRI’s overseas projects of China’s state-owned companies creates the opportunity for the Chinese Government to apply the ADB mechanism in a streamlined manner — under what could be called the “BRI Clean Energy Transition Mechanism”. How might this work? Some initial ideas follow.
As noted above, Chinese state-owned financial institutions are the major lenders to the BRI coal power projects in Pakistan. Similarly, Chinese government-owned energy firms are the dominant coal plant owners. It is the financial interests of these various Chinese state-owned lenders and other enterprises (SOEs) that would be affected adversely by any early retirement.
Consequently, under the proposed mechanism, China would be compensating its own SOEs for the revenues they would lose in the future from the early plant retirements in Pakistan. In essence, China would pay itself. This is a unique feature of this BRI coal retirement program that flows from China’s reliance on its own SOEs … and it presents several operational and financial advantages.
The financial arrangements for early retirement should be easier to negotiate and execute since the parties are all affiliated — i.e., the Chinese government, its state-owned banks and other SOEs. This should also reduce transaction costs.
In the ADB’s early retirement context, private sector investors would typically insist on some compensation being paid today for the loss of projected future revenues. In contrast, because the BRI context would involve compensation from the Chinese Government to its own SOEs, the Government could reasonably delay payments till the point at which the SOEs would actually be foregoing revenues. So, for example, if we assume early retirement in 2030 — an interval that would give Pakistan the time to replace the retired coal electricity generation with renewables in an orderly manner (see discussion below) – then the payments by the Chinese Government to its SOE lenders and energy firms could similarly be deferred till that time.
The Government would also, as a practical matter, enjoy significant discretion regarding the level of compensation to be paid to its SOE lenders and energy firms in 2030 and beyond. Notably, the Government could impose a discount on these future payments — especially if it has implemented by that time financial disincentives targeting coal generation (e.g., a carbon price) to support its own carbon peaking and neutrality goals.
The proposed BRI mechanism would resemble in various ways a debt-for-nature swap, notably from the perspective of China as a creditor/donor country. In this BRI “debt-for-coal” swap, China would forego the payments due its SOEs in the future from the operation of these Pakistan coal plants in exchange for the reduced emissions generated by their early retirement. Significantly, this mechanism would produce emissions avoidance benefits without China providing any new overseas funding.
What are some possible motivations for Beijing to launch this type of initiative?
Second, the ability to launch an international climate program that does not require China to disburse funds for the next several years — and, when it does so, to pay its own SOEs — may appeal to the Government, particularly given the current domestic economic stress. This is consistent with other debt-for-nature swap programs advanced by other donor countries where the financial cost to the donor is from foregone revenues, not new funding.
Moreover, the loss in revenues for China and its SOEs from the early BRI coal plant retirements would only take place in 2030 when China’s economy should be markedly larger and more capable of absorbing the expense.
Importantly, Pakistan and other BRI developing countries will need even more electricity to power their economic development. Consequently, the BRI Clean Energy Transition Mechanism needs to include additional funding for new renewables power generation capacity (as is the case under the ADB’s approach).
The extreme climate events of 2022 have increased awareness regarding the vulnerability of poorer countries to climate change and the consequent importance of reducing future emissions. This article sets out a proposal for how China could retire BRI coal plants early in Pakistan and elsewhere that capitalizes on its use of state-owned companies, while supporting more renewables in these countries to reduce the climate change threat and promote sustainable economic growth.
Philippe Benoit has over 20 years working on international energy, climate and development issues, including management positions at the World Bank and the International Energy Agency. He is currently research director at Global Infrastructure Analytics and Sustainability 2050.
STOCKHOLM, Oct 26 (IPS) – In his treatise On War, the Prussian general Carl von Clausewitz (1780–1831) stated that war is “merely a continuation of policy with other means”. With his experience from the Napoleonic Wars von Clausewitz knew that totalitarian regimes could end up conducting huge and ruthless military campaigns. Furthermore, he assumed that to win a war it is necessary to mobilize and indoctrinate the inhabitants of an entire nation. Such an endeavour is called total war, a term that actually can be applied to Putin’s war in Ukraine.
Putin came to power during the turbulent times following the collapse of the Soviet Empire. His image as a forceful personality convinced many that Putin could make Russia “safe for democracy and business”. In June 2000, Bill Clinton proclaimed that Putin was “fully capable of building a prosperous, strong Russia, while preserving freedom and pluralism and the rule of law.”
Soon business flourished, satisfying foreign investors eager to enjoy Russia’s vast deposits of natural riches. At the same time, fear of terrorism was boosted by explosions in heavily populated residential areas. Putin’s answer to these assumed terrorist threats was in accordance with von Clausewitz´s advice to use “force unsparingly, without reference to the quantity of bloodshed.” The pursuing escalation of the war in Chechnya, pinpointed as the origin of terrorism in Russia, made Putin a nationalist hero, while his characteristics as teetotaler, capable administrator, quick learner and talented actor made him assume the role of a Hollywood-inspired saviour/hero. He single-highhandedly flew planes and rode bare-chested through the wilderness surrounding Siberian rivers. Media lionised him as a rough and strong judo/black-belt champion capable of leading an entire, long suffering nation onto a straight path to prosperity.
Some worrisome signs were nevertheless written on the wall. In 2004, Putin declared the collapse of the Soviet Union as” the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the twentieth century.” Meanwhile, his acolytes were amassing the spoils from the collapsed Soviet Empire. Putin supported and protected those oligarchs who backed him, while bankrolling his inner circle.
In Munich 2007, Putin bared his teeth and claws in a speech given at an international Security Conference. He declared that the US was a predatory nation prone to apply an ”almost unconstrained hyper-use of force – military force – in international relations plunging the world into an abyss of conflicts.” This revelation was in 2008 followed by Russia´s military assault on neighbouring Georgia.
General elections were rigged, while some political opponents ended up dead, like Boris Nemtsov, who in 2015 was killed on a bridge close to the Kremlin. Alex Navalny, Putin’s most prominent and fearless opponent, was arrested and imprisoned for thirteen years. Out of jail, he was in 2020 poisoned on a flight to Siberia. Close to dying, he was brought to Germany for expert treatment. After recovering, Navalny went back to Russia, where he was immediately put on trial and imprisoned.
Non-compliant oligarchs were and are routinely harassed. First to be rounded up were those who controlled independent media, like Vladimir Gusinsky and Boris Berezovsky. Both fled the country. In 2013, Berezovsky died ”in suspicious circumstances”. Another oligarch, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, who had funded independent media, was already in October 2003 arrested on board his private jet and imprisoned for ten years.
Putin can now unopposed claim that the belligerent attack on Ukraine was necessary for protecting the Motherland. Subdued Russian media affirm that ruthless Ukrainian leaders have transformed their nation into a pawn in the cynical game of a Superpower intending to subjugate, or even annihilate, the Russian Federation.
It appears as if Putin is not only dedicated to make “Russia great again”. Another goal of his seems to be to enrich himself and his cronies. As a means to cover up his greed, Putin poses as upholder of “strict” morals, based on “pro-life” and traditional “family” values, as well as heroic patriotism and religious fundamentalism. Twenty years after coming to power Putin could declare: “The liberal idea has become obsolete. Liberals cannot simply dictate anything to anyone just like they have been attempting to do over recent decades.”
In spite of the Ukrainian war and his disrespect for human rights, Putin remains an icon for right-wing nationalists. A symbol of defiance to Western Liberal Establishment’s alleged encouragement of mass immigration and affinity to ”multiculturalism”, conceived as attempts to undermine morals and national identities.
As a counterweight to such assumed measures, backward looking politicians around the world pay homage to nostalgic notions, like a lost Great Chinese Tradition, a Russian Empire, Hindu pride before the arrival of Islam, a Global Britain, the Ottoman Empire, etc. This trend is occasionally joined with a global system where ruling elites consider themselves to be unrestrained by international norms, traditional modes of state governance, and democratic decision processes. Some world leaders try to pull the wool over the eyes of their followers by packaging their intents within populist opinions, like despise for political correctness, globalism, investigative journalism, LBTQ rights, feminism and environmental NGOs. A dangerous trend that, if unchecked, might as in the case of Putin´s Russia lead to socioeconomic conflicts degenerating into total war.
In the US, a strengthened adherence to illiberalism was fostered by Donald Trump. Under his watch US politics began to shift from rule-based order to one where might and wealth make right, a message boosted by media like Fox – and Breitbart News. Trump behaved like a wannabe despot, trying to apply authoritarian tactics at home, while paying homage to thugs and dictators abroad. Before him, US presidents had pledged their adherence to human rights, democracy, and freedom of speech. Nevertheless, their governments occasionally supported despots and dictators, not linking concerns for human rights to security, economy and financial affairs. A Realpolitik, which to “friendly” despots indicated that the US did not care so much about repression and corruption within the fiefdoms of their friends. Such behaviour was based on strategic reasons, while Donald Trump appeared to embrace authoritarians because he actually admired them – Dutete, Xi Jinping, Orbán, Erdo?an, Kim Jung-un, and not the least, Putin.
The former US president´s homage to ideas similar to those of Putin and his pose as a nationalistic superman might be connected with his obvious narcissism and appeal to nationalistic extremists. However, his senseless bragging is also combined with greed. A wealth of investigating reporting has demonstrated links between organized crime and corrupt rulers/oligarchs with the Trump Organization’s overseas business connections.
Money is also part of Russian foreign relations. Populist, chauvinistic parties like Italian Lega Nord (currently known as the Lega) and the French Front National (currently Rassemblement National) have received intellectual and economic support from Russia. This support to European political parties may be considered as a Russian effort to secure support for Putin’s policies abroad, as well as locally.
Germany’s former chancellor, Angela Merkel, a fluent Russian speaker far from being a friend of Putin, dismissed him as a leader using nineteenth-century means to solve twenty-first century problems. For sure, Putin’s attack on Ukraine mirrors age-old use of devastating warfare as a radical solution to complicated sociopolitical problems. It seems to be a stalwart application of the two-hundred-years-old advice provided by von Clausewitz:
Philanthropists may easily imagine there is a skillful method of disarming and overcoming an enemy without causing great bloodshed, and that this is the proper tendency of the Art of War. However plausible this may appear, still it is an error which must be extirpated; for in such dangerous things as war, the errors which proceed from a spirit of benevolence are just the worst. As the use of physical power to the utmost extent by no means excludes the co-operation of the intelligence, it follows that he who uses force unsparingly, without reference to the quantity of bloodshed, must obtain a superiority if his adversary does not act likewise. By such means the former dictates the law to the latter, and both proceed to extremities, to which the only limitations are those imposed by the amount of counteracting force on each side.
Putin´s Ukrainian war neglects human suffering and has now disintegrated into a bloody power struggle, where Russia “to the utmost extent” makes use of its military strength, while being supported by “the co-operation” of a propaganda striving to engage the entire Russian population in the war effort.
The Ukrainian war not only concerns the protection of Mother Russia from a “predatory West”, its ultimate goal is to control a hitherto sovereign nation’s politics and natural resources. Putin’s declared support to an allegedly discriminated Russian minority in Luhansk and Donetsk seems to be a subterfuge for grabbing an essential part of Ukraine’s economic resources.
During early 2000s, privatization of state industries yielded a so called Donbas Clan control of the economic and political power in the Donbas region. These oligarchs were supported by Kremlin and a rampant corruption soon took hold of an area dominated by heavy industry, such as coal mining (60 billion tonnes of coal are waiting to be extracted) and metallurgy.
Before Russia in 2014 backed separatist forces in a ferocious civil war, this particular area produced about 30 percent of Ukraine’s exports and a huge amount of gas reserves in the Dnieper-Donets basin was beginning to be extracted. In those days, the most prominent oligarchs in the Luhansk and Donetsk regions were Putin proteges – Rinat Akhmetov and Viktor Yanukovych, the latter had become Ukraine’s President, though his attachment to Russia and conspicuous corruption led to his fall through the Maidan Uprising in 2013, starting point for Ukraine’s transformation into a prosperous nation.
The Maidan Revolution caused a wave of insecurity sweeping through the former Soviet Empire, shaking up corrupt “counterfeit” democracies/dictatorships like Belarus, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan. Small wonder that the authoritarian leaders of these nations are stout supporters of Putin’s war in Ukraine.
While reading von Clausewitz’s On War it is quite easy to relate it to Putin’s politics that undeniably have resulted in war as a “continuation of policy with other means.” It is not the first time in history that authoritarian regimes have plunged entire nations into a blood-drained pit of war. All of us have to be be aware that support of authoritarian regimes might lead us all down into Hell.
Main Sources: Klaas, Brian (2018) The Despot´s Accomplice: How the West is Aiding and Abetting the Decline of Democracy. London. Hurst & Company. von Clausewitz, Carl (1982) On War. London: Penguin Classics.
NEW YORK, Oct 26 (IPS) – Held in-person for the first time in three years, the annual meetings of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank last week in Washington, D.C. failed to offer solutions to the dozens of developing countries in debt distress or on the forewarned global recession instigated by monetary tightening.
Meanwhile, austerity measures are reinforced through a repeated emphasis on fiscal tightening, underpinned by a monetarism upheld by the IMF and rich country central banks.
The scenario of a dual tightening in both monetary and fiscal policy is only exacerbated by the absence of political will among creditors to cooperate in debt restructuring, bolstered by narratives of losing market access to financial flows.
New loan programs are created by the IMF to boost concessional financing for food price shocks, climate transitions and liquidity shortfalls. However, these very loans create new debt and reinscribe the very austerity measures that worsen the challenges of inflation and climate.
Within these asymmetries of power and access in the world economy, and the foreclosing of developmental policy tools for developing countries, what then is the fate of the vast majority of people and nations in the world?
The IMF’s World Economic Outlook warned of an imminent recession amidst a shift of financial regime from cheap and easy money to an aggressive synchronization of global monetary tightening.
“In short, the worst is yet to come, and for many people 2023 will feel like a recession,” said IMF Chief Economist Pierre-Olivier Gourinchas. Convening the world’s finance ministers, central bank governors, and financial market leaders, the IMF announced a slowdown in global growth by 2.7%, down from the 3.2% growth projected for this year.
On the heels of a global pandemic followed by the war in Ukraine, the US Federal Reserve’s interest rate hikes, aimed toward domestic price stability, is creating a global push toward more expensive money.
A stronger dollar, higher international and domestic interest rates, coupled with depreciating currencies and sell-offs in many developing country assets, is generating protracted economic and social pain across the globe.
The spillover impacts are seen in soaring food and fuel prices, increases in dollar-denominated debt and imports costs, volatile commodity markets and debt distress intensifying into a 50-year record across the developing world.
The UN’s 2022 Trade and Development Report warns that the most vulnerable countries and communities are being hit the hardest. Warnings of another ‘lost decade’ abound, in that the current interest rate hikes resemble those of 1979-82, which triggered debt crises in over 40 developing countries where ‘structural adjustment programs’ through IMF loans contributed to a decade of lost growth and development across the Global South.
The tightrope global central banks are walking is acknowledged by IMF Managing Director, Kristalina Georgieva, who says, “Not tightening enough would cause inflation to become de-anchored and entrenched — which would require future interest rates to be much higher and more sustained, causing massive harm on growth and massive harm on people.
On the other hand, tightening monetary policy too much and too fast — and doing so in a synchronized manner across countries — could push many economies into prolonged recession.”
Meanwhile, the topline recommendation of the IMF’s Global Financial and Stability Report is that “central banks must act resolutely to bring inflation back to target.” Doing otherwise would risk credibility and market volatility, or in other words, create difficulties in market access to financial and investment flows and/or worsen borrowing terms.
One of the central tenets of neoclassical economic consensus among global central banks is that of maintaining price stability through a low inflation target of 2%. Financial rulemakers have for decades deemed inflation a threat to economic growth by way of the specter of hyperinflation. However, empirical evidence points to the contrary.
Collating data from 31 countries from 1961-94, World Bank chief economist Michael Bruno and William Easterly concluded that the inflation does not lead to lower growth, even when the significant oil price increase of 1974-75 is included.
The US Federal Reserve’s own historical archives demonstrate that the so-called ‘Great Inflation’ of 1965-82 did not harm growth either. In light of these studies by neoclassical economists and central bank institutions, economists Anis Chowdhury and Jomo Kwame Sundaram argue that “there is no empirical basis for setting a particular threshold, such as the now standard 2% inflation target – long acknowledged as ‘plucked from the air.’”
From press conferences to panel speeches, the IMF leadership repeats that the danger of “entrenched” inflation requires a global commitment to tackle it head on through global to domestic monetary tightening.
This stems in large part from a belief that once inflation begins, it has an inherent tendency to accelerate. Consequently, IMF loans and surveillance recommend central bank independence (from the executive) as a means to ensure unbiased financial policymaking, while critics contend that it has only enhanced the influence and power of big banks and financial actors, largely at the expense of the real economy.
However, history again demonstrates that inflation does not accelerate easily, even when workers have more bargaining power, or wages are indexed to consumer prices – as in some countries.
Lost decade redux?
The IMF’s Fiscal Monitor, published on October 12, called upon all policymakers to “maintain a tight fiscal stance, so that fiscal policy does not work at cross-purposes with monetary policy.” In essence, fiscal policy must serve monetary policy in its “fight against inflation,” by retrenching public spending for the singular objective of sending “a powerful signal that policymakers are aligned in the fight against inflation.”
The rationale is straightforward: “In a time of high inflation, policies to address high food and energy prices should not add to aggregate demand.” Increased demand is anathema, as it “forces central banks to raise interest rates even higher.”
The fiscal tightening is not new. In 2021, 131 governments started scaling back public spending. The geographic and population scale of austerity cuts is expected to intensify up to 2025.
Governments are implementing, or discussing, a range of fiscal adjustment policies, such as targeting social protection, regressive taxation, reducing public expenditure in social sectors, eliminating subsidies, privatizing public services or State-Owned Enterprises, pension reforms, labor flexibilization.
All have long histories of negative social impacts on economic and social rights, such as the right to food, water, health, housing, education, and livelihoods. The human impact will reach over 6 billion people, or 85% of humanity, in 2023.
In a time of poly-crisis, retrenching public spending and imposing regressive taxes that disproportionately hurt the poor, especially women, not only extinguishes the hope of achieving the Sustainable Development Goals by 2030, but more fundamentally, regresses decades of fighting poverty.
Meanwhile, the IMF’s Board has approved the creation of two new loan facilities, the new Food Shock Window, available for a year to countries reeling from the global food price crisis, and the Resilience and Sustainability Trust (RST), through which many rich countries may re-channel their unused Special Drawing Rights if the funds are used to address “external shocks, including climate change and pandemics” by rules set out by the Fund.
While both loans address urgent threats, they also create new debt. The RST is also conditional upon an IMF loan program hinged on fiscal consolidation.
The severity of the food crisis warrants aid in the form of grants not loans. Based on prior research done by the World Bank and Center for Global Development on food price spikes, Oxfam estimates that another 65 million people could be pushed below the $1.90 extreme poverty line as a consequence of food price increases.
Debt crises nearing point of no return
Despite the imminent threat of a debt crises imploding across many developing countries, sovereign debt solutions, the Group of 20, IMF, World Bank as well as the Institute of International Finance, the consortium of private financial actors, have to date failed to create viable solutions.
The G20’s Debt Service Suspension Initiative, which suspended debt payments for 73 low-income countries, was terminated at the end of 2021. And two years after the Common Framework was established in 2020, it’s multiple flaws have led even the World Bank to call it a ‘slow-motion debt tragedy.’
One key dilemma is the lack of political will to enforce a comparability of treatment, where all creditors, including private, participate on equivalent terms or restructuring and in the principle of burden sharing. Another challenge is the glacial pace of restructuring is not only protracted but also riddled with uncertainty.
Middle-income countries, where the vast majority of the world’s poor reside and where serious debt defaults are taking place, are not included. Low-income countries fear that access to commercial financing will be cut off if they apply to the Common Framework, as evidenced by Fitch and S&P slashed Ethiopia’s sovereign rating when the nation applied to the Common Framework in 2021.
Out of the three countries that have so far asked for their debt to be treated – Chad, Ethiopia and Zambia – only Zambia has seen some forward movement.
The narratives coming from within the IMF reiterate a subservience to market access and creditor interests. Across panels and webinars, senior level IMF staff remarked that a large debt restructuring is a serious event, which may result in a decrease of future multilateral and private financing, in amounts that outweigh the financing gained in relief or restructuring.
Some warned that private creditors will not participate in debt restructuring where national fiscal instability reigns. To secure market access, countries have to tighten fiscal belts even more. The logic here is that financial stability imperative for accessing private credit requires fiscal consolidation that generates social devastation.
The lack of official creditor participation and the dilemma of transparency, referring in large part to China, was repeatedly stressed as a key problem. At the same time, an old and wholly condescending trope of the need to increase debtor discipline in light of its financial mismanagement and irresponsibility repeatedly emerged.
Meanwhile, there is no mention of the often-legalized corruption of private actors, such as tax evasion and avoidance, speculative and/or rigged trading. Amidst the talk, actual debt solutions are in omission. While political will is already in short supply, the lack of cooperation toward problem-solving is exacerbated by the finger-pointing between the creditor groups of bilateral, private, and multilateral.
History has repeatedly illustrated the way forward on debt, and the waves of austerity that it generates. For decades, advocates and policymakers alike have called for a transparent and binding debt workout mechanism within a multilateral framework for debt crisis resolution, in a process convening all creditors.
The UN General Assembly has adopted multiple resolutions calling for such a mechanism over the years. Debt justice movements from across the developing world have urged for the cancellation of all unsustainable and illegitimate debts in a manner that is ambitious, unconditional, and without repercussions for future market access.
Past cases show how reducing debt stock and payments allow for countries to increase their public financing for urgent domestic needs.
The principle of burden-sharing ensures genuine debt relief, as does the commitment to include all creditors in an automatic or orderly way. Recognizing that multilateral institutions account for around one-third of the outstanding debt of low- and lower-middle-income countries, the World Bank and IMF must participate in such efforts.
They should both cancel debt payments owed, and the IMF should eliminate surcharges. Protection needs to be provided to debtor states against holdouts and lawsuits by non-participating creditors, while laws and procedures for responsible borrowing and lending need to be ensured to protect citizens and communities against corrupt, predatory and odious debts.
Last but not least, an automatic mechanism for a debt standstill in the wake of an extreme exogenous shock should be created. As proposed by the G77 group of developing countries in the UN General Assembly in response to the global financial crisis of 2007-8, such a mechanism must “be established for a determined period in response to external catastrophe events, as climate and natural disasters, health pandemic, military conflict and inflation.” The prescience of the G77 group in 2009 offers a salient message.
While the developing world has little recourse but to ‘dance to the tune of the Federal Reserve,’ the devastating toll of the human, social and economic crisis must be addressed through tools and choices that can be generated.
The question is how to muster political will, be it from the moral pressure of global justice movement to analysis of the effects that soaring poverty and intensifying climate change will have on the very survival of our planet and species.
Bhumika Muchhala is development economist and senior advocate on economic governance at Third World Network. She works on research, analysis, advocacy and public education on the international political economy of development, feminist economics and decolonial theory and approaches.
Women living in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’s idyllic Swat valley are determined that Taliban militants will not take root in their community again. Credit: Zofeen T. Ebrahim/IPS
by Zofeen Ebrahim (karachi)
Inter Press Service
Karachi, Oct 26 (IPS) – The rise in militancy in Swat still haunts many locals with flashbacks of what they went through 15 years ago.
Dr Yasmin Gul can recall every last detail of the day she and her family were forced to leave their hometown of Matta, in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’s (KP) idyllic Swat valley, along with thousands, days before the Pakistan army launched an offensive, Operation Rah-e-Rast, against the militants of Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) after the failed peace agreement with the latter, in 2009.
It was not just the “excruciating” pain running with her braces (Gul is a polio survivor) but the mayhem that afternoon that she recalls.
“We ran with nothing but the clothes on our back,” and went to Madyan, a town an hour’s drive from Matta, and stayed for three months with their uncle. She was among the nearly three million people, many of whom fled Swat for several years.
She can still recall the indignity faced by “the women, the children and the elderly – some of whom were being carried on the shoulders of their sons” after they ran for their lives amidst the sound of deafening “bombing”.
“The militants forced the burqa (an enveloping outer garment worn by women which fully covers the body and the face) upon us, but that afternoon I saw women running for their lives without covering themselves with the chadar (traditional Pashtun cloth that envelops the body from head to foot),” she said.
“I never want to go through that again,” she said resolutely. “We will not let anyone bring us to the brink, and this time, we will not be deceived.”
The images of dead bodies on streets are as fresh as the hushed tones that echo in her ears of elders talking of young girls from her family being kidnapped, raped, and even forced into marriage to militant commanders and of defiant men who were punished in the most barbaric manner including being beheaded and slaughtered. The victims were then put on public display. “I was old enough to remember many things,” she said.
“I don’t think I have healed and come out of the horror of all that I witnessed,” said Gul. “Neither has anyone else; we just don’t talk about it and have bottled it all up.”
In 2002 a firebrand cleric from Swat, Mullah Fazlullah, set up his headquarters at his village in Imam Dehri.
Between 2004 and 2007, he started wooing the locals, especially the women, through several dozen illegal FM radio stations promising the Nizam-e-Adal (Islamic justice system), not just in Swat but the entire Malakand division, of the KP province, comprising the districts of Bajaur, Buner, Chitral, Dir and Shangla. By 2007, the TTP had established its writ in the valley, just 160 km from the country’s capital, Islamabad, while the 20,000 army troops deployed looked on helplessly. The Taliban spokesperson Muslim Khan had told IPS in a 2009 interview: “We want to give women their rightful place in Islam”.
“People say it was the women of Swat who supported Fazlullah by giving large donations, even their jewellery, but no one asks why,” said Musarrat Ahmad Zeb, a Pakistani politician from Swat, who had been a member of the National Assembly of Pakistan, from June 2013 to May 2018.
Talking to IPS from Swat, she said the TTP promised quick justice to the locals, which they had enjoyed when the wali ruled Swat and had eroded after the princely state acceded to Pakistan in 1969. Zeb is the widowed wife of Miangul Ahmed Zeb, son of the wali of Swat, Miangul Jahan Zeb.
But instead of giving the women what the TTP promised, they took away their right to life altogether. They were forced to give up jobs where there was interaction with men, they were forbidden from walking to the market unescorted and adolescent girls were not allowed to go to school.
Twenty-one-year-old Neelum Noori is worried she may have to close down her beauty parlour in Mingora, the capital city of Swat.
“We had a fairly good clientele, but since the last two months, it’s a trickle. If this continues, how will we be able to pay the rent and utility bills of the place?” she told IPS over the phone. She not only supports her parents but also pays for her tuition. Noori is enrolled in the two-year diploma course for a lady health visitor programme.
Senator Mushahid Hussain Sayed, the chairperson of the Senate Committee on Defence and National Security, told IPS the “resurgence of terrorism” in KP was of “serious concern”, recalling the sacrifices made by Pakistan’s armed forces and the people to combat and contain the “scourge”.
But the arrival of the Taliban is not new and not in Swat alone. “They have been there for many years and are everywhere in KP. I have been bringing it to the notice of colleagues in the assembly since 2018,” Mohsin Dawar, a legislator, from North Waziristan, and chairperson of the National Democratic Movement, a nationalist party.
He told IPS the militants got energized after the Taliban took over Kabul last year.
According to a recent research paper produced by the Islamabad-based think tank, Pak Institute of Peace Studies, as many as 433 people were killed and 719 injured in 250 attacks in Pakistan between August 15, 2021.
Terming them “isolated incidents of terrorism”, the officials claimed all did not take place in KP. However, the TTP has claimed responsibility for a majority of these attacks.
Last month eight six persons, including a former peace committee head Idrees Khan, were killed by a remote-controlled bomb attack. Khan was at the forefront of mobilizing resistance against the Taliban in 2007. Earlier this month, a minister of Gilgit Baltistan was taken hostage; in return, they demanded the release of their comrades involved in the deadly 2013 terrorist attack on the Nanga Parbat base camp, in which foreign climbers were targeted. They also wanted an end to women’s sports activities in GB. “These high-profile cases create fear among the general public and are very demoralizing for them,” Dawar had said in the assembly recently.
While it was the “people’s resistance” that had “contained” the situation, he warned it can get out of hand and become “even more dangerous than last time” if not taken notice of now.
Fazal Maula Zahid, a member of the Swat Qaumi Jirga (a platform of elders and notables working for peace in the region), had high hopes for the youth and women of the valley. “If they come out as a collective force and are organized,” he said, no harm can come to the valley.
“Today’s youth are energetic and have seen or heard the troubles of their elders; they will not allow history to repeat itself,” Zahid said, adding the people had no faith in government functionaries who have done little to protect the hapless people.
For a few weeks now, residents from different towns and cities of KP, like Khawazakhela, Kabal, Matta, Mingora, Charbagh and Madyan, have been coming out to protest against the surge in terrorist attacks.
“At Mingora, there were more than 80,000 at Nishtar Chowk; it was huge,” said Zahid, who attended the event. “I am told the one at Charbagh was even bigger!”
“It is heartening that people have risen against this resurgence and showed their resolve to never again allow this phenomenon to pollute their society,” said Sayed and the “gains of the recent past are not frittered away”.
He informed that at a committee meeting held earlier this month, it was resolved to “revitalise the counterterrorism apparatus”, especially the National Counter Terrorism Authority, (responsible for making counter-terrorism and counter-extremism policies and strategies). He hoped, there “won’t be a yawning chasm between words and deeds” and the interests of the people and the state will remain paramount, not “political expediency”.
But these were only men, as the custom of segregation in public spaces is still prevalent.
However, said Zahid, in an unprecedented move, on October 21, a handful of women also protested in Madyan.
Both Noori and Gul said they, too, want to come out. “I think if there are enough women, my family will give permission,” said Gul.
Ammunition used by the Iranian secfurioty forces in Sanandaj, Kurdistan province during anti-regime protests. Credit: courtesy
by Arina Moradi (copenhagen)
Inter Press Service
COPENHAGEN, Oct 25 (IPS) – It’s been over a month since Bayan, a 30-year-old Persian language teacher, last left her home in the Kurdish city of Piranshahr, 730 northwest of Tehran. Her parents believe they must protect her from what might happen to a protester in Iran.
“I told them that I am ready to die now in this fight rather than languish to death in this country,” this woman tells IPS over the phone. Like the rest of those interviewed from the Danish capital and who live inside Iran, she doesn’t want to disclose her identity for fear of reprisals. Her family, she adds, are afraid of detention, torture and especially the possibility of being subject to sexual violence by security forces inside detention centres.
After the tragic death of Mahsa Amini -the 22-year-old Iranian Kurd died in police custody after she was detained in Tehran for “inappropriate attire”-, thousands of young women and men have been chanting “Women, Life, Freedom” in the Iranian streets since mid-September. However, there are many more Iranian women nobody has seen so far among the protesters. Like Bayan, many yearn for freedom without being able to leave their family homes.
It’s doubtless easier for the men. Despite the brutal anti-riot forces’ crackdown, Soran, Bayan’s younger brother, says he has joined almost every protest in the city. His parents have been warning him of the possible consequences too, but they can’t stop him from leaving the house.
“I tried to convince my parents to let my sister join me, but they wouldn’t allow it. So we found a safer way to participate,” the 24-year-old Kurd tells IPS. They have worked together on a list of contacts of many journalists outside of the country.
“My brother goes out to join the protests and also gather news. I contact the journalists from the list to let them know what´s going on here: I send them videos, pictures and the name of those we think have been arrested by security forces,” explains Bayan. “I hope what I do helps somehow.”
Ammunition used by the Iranian secfurioty forces in Sanandaj, Kurdistan province during anti-regime protests. Credit: courtesy
According to the state news agency IRNA, more than 1000 people including journalists have been arrested across Iran, but the actual number is estimated to be much higher.
There has been no official data on the number of detainees in Iran’s recent protests, In its October 18 report, The United Nations warned about “mass arrests of protesters,” including the detention of at least 90 civil rights activists, human rights defenders, lawyers, artists, and journalists.
Iranian journalist Niloofar Hamedi is among those captured. On September 16, Hamedi gained access to Kasra Hospital in Tehran, where Mahsa Amini was being treated following her detention by the morality police. Hamedi would later publish a photo of Amini’s parents hugging and crying in the hospital. The picture quickly spread along with Hamedi’s reporting on Amini’s death, something which eventually spiralled into nationwide protests
In the country’s capital Tehran, Neda, a 38-year-old mother of two also does her bit. Since the very beginning, she has sheltered dozens of protesters who were chased by security forces and needed a place to hide.
“It first happened on the second night of the protests in Tehran. A group of six young women and men were slamming the door asking for help as police were chasing them in the streets. It was before midnight. I opened the door as fast as possible and closed it even faster. The kids woke up and we were all in a panic. I got so emotional that I cried and hugged one of the girls. Some of them cried too. I can’t forget their young innocent faces,” the Iranian woman tells IPS over a phone conversation.
Since that night, Neda is always ready whenever there is a protest in their neighbourhood. She delivers food, water, medicines or whatever is needed by the protesters who hide from the anti-riot forces.
“One night, there was a young boy who was shot in his right leg. I called a friend of mine who is a doctor to treat him at my place. We couldn’t risk taking him to the hospital for security reasons.”
Neda says all she wants is to see the end of the Islamic Republic’s power. “I wish to see my kids growing up in a country where there is respect for women, freedom, and equality. I just want to see the fall of this regime with my own eyes.”
However, she finds it difficult to convince her husband to let her leave the house and join the protesters in the streets.
“Everybody expects a mother of two to stay home with the kids. I feel like I am on fire. I stay at home while these young people risk their lives being in the streets. Sometimes I feel so powerless and guilty,” she admits.
Women in Saqqez, Kurdistan province, holding hands amid anti-regime protests in October 12, 2022. Credit: Courtesy
Behind the slogan
As of October 15, at least 215 people including 27 children have been killed in the protests in Iran, Norway-based group Iran Human Rights reported.
“The reckless state violence which has even targeted children and prisoners, along with the false narratives presented by Islamic Republic officials, make it more crucial than ever for the international community to establish an independent mechanism under the supervision of the UN to investigate and hold the perpetrators of such gross human rights violations accountable,” the organization’s director, Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam, said in the report.
On October 17, Amnesty International also called on the UN Human Rights Council to hold a special session on Iran “as a matter of urgency” and urged the Council to establish “an independent mechanism with investigative, reporting and accountability functions to address the most serious crimes under international law and other gross human rights violations committed in Iran.”
Iranian authorities have blamed the west for instigating the unrest. “Who would believe that the death of a girl is so important to Westerners?” the country’s foreign minister, Hussein Amir Abdollahian, said on October 15.
Despite the growing crackdown by Iranian security forces, protests keep spreading all across the country thanks to people like 41-year-old Hana. She lives with her husband and their two kids in Bukan, 478 kilometres west of Tehran, in Azerbaijan province. This city of around 200,000 has seen waves of protests and public strikes in the past month. However, she could not join the protesters in the streets.
“I stayed home to take care of the children and my husband went out to protest. He believes that kids need me more than they need him in case of detention, injuries or even death due to the security forces’ brutal crackdown on the protesters,” Hana tells IPS over the phone.
She owns a women’s clothing shop and she has joined all the strikes to show objection to the state. The security forces have broken her shop’s windows and many others in the city as a tactic to force them to end the strike.
“I didn’t give up. It’s the least I could do to contribute to the uprising,” says the Iranian woman. “Women, life, and freedom,” she insists, is much more than a slogan.
“It’s a lifetime goal for most Iranian women who have been suffering all kinds of pressure from their families, from society and, above all, from the state and its anti-women laws.”
Biodiversity is in trouble as the WWF report, 2022 Living Planet Index, indicates that the global wildlife population had decreased by 69 percent since 1970. Credit: Joyce Chimbi/IPS
by Joyce Chimbi (nairobi)
Inter Press Service
Nairobi, Oct 25 (IPS) – Home to a variety of iconic and rare animal and plant species, freshwater lakes, rivers, waterfalls, and the expansive Indian Ocean coastline, Kenya’s place as a biodiversity hotspot has never been in doubt.
But the first National Wildlife Census report finalized in August 2021 pointed to signs of trouble. For instance, as many as five wildlife species are critically endangered and could disappear in the immediate future. The report noted that there were just 1,650 Tana River Mangabey, 897 black rhinos, 497 Hirolas, 51 Sable antelopes, and 15 Roan antelopes.
Biodiversity expert John Mwangi Gicheha tells IPS the decline in species population abundance has now been validated by the newly-released Living Planet Report 2022.
“The health of planet earth is well and truly on a sharp decline, and we are not only seeing a decrease in the global population of species but a decline in their genetic diversity and a loss of species climatically determined habitats,” Gicheha expounds.
Conducted by the World Wildlife Fund for Nature (WWF), an independent conservation organization, this is the first ever most comprehensive report on the state of global vertebrate wildlife populations, and it makes a startling revelation: the world’s wildlife populations have declined by 69 percent since 1970.
As a measure of the state of the world’s biological diversity among population trends of vertebrate species from terrestrial, freshwater, and marine habitats, the 2022 Living Planet Index analyzed approximately 32,000 populations of 5,230 species across the world.
By tracking trends in the abundance of mammals, fish, reptiles, birds, and amphibians worldwide since 1970, a disturbing image emerged: one million plants and animals are threatened with extinction.
Worse still, 1-2.5 percent of birds, mammals, amphibians, reptiles, and fish have gone extinct.
Key findings include revelations that monitored freshwater populations are hardest hit as there is an alarming decline of 83 percent in the last 50 years, more than any other species groups.
The decline in freshwater population is mainly caused by habitat loss and barriers to migration routes which account for an estimated half the threat to these populations. Further, only 37 percent of rivers over 1,000 kilometres remain free-flowing in their natural state.
Against this backdrop, the report stresses that the global community is living the consequences of double crises and shows how “interlinked emergencies of human-induced climate change and the loss of biodiversity are threatening the well-being of current and future generations.”
The greatest regional decline in wildlife population is in Latin America and the Caribbean region, whose average population abundance decline is 94 percent.
Africa comes second with a 66 percent fall in its wildlife populations over the past 52 years, and across the board, the poor and marginalized remain highly vulnerable and most affected by the decline.
There was an 18 percent decline in Europe and Central Asia and a 55 percent decline in wildlife populations in the Asia Pacific.
More findings show despite mangroves being unique forests of the sea; they remain at great risk as they continue to be lost to aquaculture, agriculture and coastal development at current rates of 0.13 percent per year.
Mangrove loss is not only a loss of habitat for biodiversity, the report emphasizes, but the loss of ecosystem services for coastal communities.
Further, approximately 50 percent of warm water corals have already been lost. Even worse, a warming of 5 degrees Celsius will lead to a loss of 70 to 90 percent of warm water corals.
Overall, the global abundance of 18 of 31 oceanic sharks and rays declined by 71 percent since 1970. By 2020, three-quarters of sharks and rays were threatened with an elevated risk of extinction. Kenya is currently home to 9 whale sharks, two blue whales and 17 tiger sharks, per the National Wildlife Census.
The report stresses that dominating the natural world irresponsibly, taking nature for granted, exploiting of resources wastefully and unsustainably and, distributing these resources unevenly have life-altering consequences.
Judy Ouya, a government official in the Ministry of Environment and Forestry tells IPS that said consequences could no longer be ignored as they are too severe and frequent. They include loss of lives and economic assets from extreme weather conditions, deepening poverty and, severe food and water insecurity from droughts.
For instance, the reports references Amboseli, Kenya, Maasai community who rely on selling livestock and are now greatly affected by the severe prolonged dry spell.
Earlier in June 2022, the World Bank projected that Kenya’s growth will slow down within the year and into 2023-24 due to the ongoing ravaging drought and other external influences, such as the war in Ukraine.
“The ongoing climate and biodiversity crises are significantly induced and sustained by human activity and particularly our land use change and, our interactions with ocean and lake ecosystems. There is significant over-exploitation of nature, and the consequences are coming faster and more severe than expected,” Ouya observes.
WWF finds that while ongoing conservation efforts are helping, urgent action is required if the global community is to reverse nature loss. The broken relationship with nature, experts such as Ouya emphasize, impacts all aspects of human life and will significantly derail economic development and attainment of UN SDGs.
Overall, the index finds too much nature has been lost at a speed that calls for higher ambitions to effectively, efficiently and sustainably address the six key threats to biodiversity loss which include habitat degradation and loss, exploitation, the introduction of invasive species, pollution, climate change and disease.
Higher ambitions include working together towards the complimentary goals of net-zero emissions by 2050 and net-positive biodiversity by 2030 as they represent “the compass to guide us towards a safe future for humanity, to shift to a sustainable development model, to support the delivery of the 2030 SDGs.”
If the global community works together to achieve these goals and because nature can bounce back, the report foretells a promising future, of a decade that will end better than it started with more natural forests, more fish in the ocean and river systems, more pollinators in our farmlands, more biodiversity worldwide.
Opinion by Jomo Kwame Sundaram, Anis Chowdhury (sydney and kuala lumpur)
Inter Press Service
SYDNEY and KUALA LUMPUR, Oct 25 (IPS) – Widespread adverse reactions to the UK government’s recent ‘mini-budget’ forced new Prime Minister Liz Truss to resign. The episode highlighted problems of macroeconomic policy coordination and the interests involved.
Macro-policy coordination
But macroeconomic, specifically fiscal-monetary policy coordination almost became “taboo” as central bank independence (CBI) became the new orthodoxy. It has been accused of enabling CBs to finance government deficits. Critics claim inflation, even hyperinflation, becomes inevitable.
Anis ChowdhuryGovernment finance ministries and CBs are the two main macroeconomic policy protagonists. Poor ‘macro-policy’ coordination has generated problems, including contradictory policy responses. This has meant more macroeconomic and financial instability, worrying markets and investors.
Fiscal policy – notably variations in government tax and spending – mainly aims to influence long-term growth and distribution. CB monetary policy – e.g., variations in short-term interest rates and credit growth – claims to prioritize price and exchange rate stability.
By the early 1990s, the ‘Washington consensus’ implied the two macro-policy actors should work independently due to their different time horizons. After all, governments are subject to short-term political considerations inimical to monetary stability needed for long-term growth.
Claiming to be “technocratic”, CBs have increasingly set their own goals or targets. CBI has involved both ‘goal’ and ‘instrument’ independence, instead of ‘goal dependence’ with ‘instrument independence’.
CBI was ostensibly to avoid ‘fiscal dominance’ of monetary policy. Meanwhile, government fiscal policy became subordinated to CB inflation targets. For former Reserve Bank of Australia Deputy Governor Guy Debelle, monetary policy became “the only game in town for demand management”.
Debelle noted that except for rare and brief coordinated fiscal stimuli in early 2009, after the onset of the global financial crisis, “demand management continued to be the sole purview of central banks. Fiscal policy was not much in the mix”.
Jomo Kwame SundaramSub-optimal outcomes
But more than three decades of “divorce” between independent CBs and fiscal authorities have failed to deliver its promised benefits. Instead, monetary policy dominance has worsened financial instability.
Adam Posen found the costs of disinflation, or keeping inflation low, higher in OECD countries with CBI. Carl Walsh found likewise in the European Community.
For Guy Debelle and Stanley Fischer, CBs have sought to enhance their credibility by being tougher on inflation, even at the expense of output and employment losses.
Committed to arbitrary targets, independent CBs have sought credit for keeping inflation low. They deny other contributory factors, e.g., labour’s diminished bargaining power and globalization, particularly cheaper supplies.
John Taylor, author of the ‘Taylor rule’ CB mantra, concluded CB “performance was not associated with de jure central bank independence”. De jure CB independence has not prevented them from “deviating from policies that lead to both price and output stability”.
The de facto independent US Fed has also taken “actions that have led to high unemployment and/or high inflation”. As single-minded independent CBs pursued low inflation, they neglected their responsibility for financial stability.
CBs’ indiscriminate monetary expansion during the 2000s’ Great Moderation enabled asset price bubbles and dangerous speculation, culminating in the global financial crisis (GFC).
Since the GFC, “the financial sector has become dependent on easy liquidity… To compensate for quantitative easing (QE)-induced low return…, increased the risk profile of their other assets, taking on more leverage, and hedging interest rate risk with derivatives”.
Independent CBs also never acknowledge the adverse distributional consequences of their policies. This has been true of both conventional policies, involving interest rate adjustments, and unconventional ones, with bond buying, or QE. All have enabled speculation, credit provision and other financial investments.
They have also helped inefficient and uncompetitive ‘zombie’ enterprises survive. Instead of reversing declining long-term productivity growth, the slowdown since the GFC “has been steep and prolonged”.
Dire consequences
The pandemic has seen unprecedented fiscal and monetary responses. But there has been little coordination between fiscal and monetary authorities. Unsurprisingly, greater pandemic-induced fiscal deficits and monetary expansion have raised inflationary pressures, especially with supply disruptions.
This could have been avoided if policymakers had better coordinated fiscal and monetary measures to unlock key supply bottlenecks. War and economic sanctions have made the supply situation even more dire.
Government debt has been rising since the GFC, reaching record levels due to pandemic measures. CBs hiking interest rates to contain inflation have thus worsened public debt burdens, inviting austerity measures.
Thus, countries go through cycles of debt accumulation and output contraction. Supposed to contain inflation, they adversely impact livelihoods. Many more developing countries face debt crises, further setting back progress.
Needed reforms
Sixty years ago, Milton Friedman asserted, “money is too important to be left to the central bankers”. He elaborated, “One economic defect of an independent central bank … is that it almost invariably involves dispersal of responsibility… Another defect … is the extent to which policy is … made highly dependent on personalities… third … defect is that an independent central bank will almost invariably give undue emphasis to the point of view of bankers”.
Thus, government-sceptic Friedman recommended, “either to make the Federal Reserve a bureau in the Treasury under the secretary of the Treasury, or to put the Federal Reserve under direct congressional control.
“Either involves terminating the so-called independence of the system… either would establish a strong incentive for the Fed to produce a stabler monetary environment than we have had”.
Undoubtedly, this is an extreme solution. Friedman also suggested replacing CB discretion with monetary policy rules to resolve the problem of lack of coordination. But, as Alan Blinder has observed, such rules are “unlikely to score highly”.
Effective fiscal-monetary policy coordination requires appropriate supporting institutions and operating arrangements. As IMF research has shown, “neither legal independence of central bank nor a balanced budget clause or a rule-based monetary policy framework … are enough to ensure effective monetary and fiscal policy coordination”.
Although rules-based policies may enhance transparency and strengthen discipline, they cannot create “credibility”, which depends on policy content, not policy frameworks.
For Debelle, a combination of “goal dependence” and “instrument or operational independence” of CBs under strong democratic or parliamentary oversight may be appropriate for developed countries.
There is also a need to broaden membership of CB governing boards to avoid dominance by financial interests and to represent broader national interests.
But macro-policy coordination should involve more than merely an appropriate fiscal-monetary policy mix. A more coherent approach should also incorporate sectoral strategies, e.g., public investment in renewable energy, education & training, healthcare. Such policy coordination should enable sustainable development and reverse declining productivity growth.
As Buiter urges, it is up to governments “to make appropriate use of … fiscal space” created by fiscal-monetary coordination. Democratic checks and balances are needed to prevent “pork-barrelling” and other fiscal abuses and to protect fiscal decision-making from corruption.
European Union leaders struggle to find solutions for the energy crisis. Credit: Bigstock
by Baher Kamal (madrid)
Inter Press Service
MADRID, Oct 24 (IPS) – European politicians continue to run in all directions to find a way out of their energy crisis. One of them – Simonetta Sommaruga, the Swiss Environment Minister, asked people to ‘shower together’. Others are competing to grant the business of transporting energy from the North of Africa to the continent. All this is not new.
The MidCat
In 2010, a project aimed at transporting 7.500 million cubic metres of gas by linking Catalonia (Spain) to Occitania (France) and from there to other European Union countries.
With an initial estimated cost at over three billion Euro, this MidCat project quasi-blocked just one year later, to be finally stopped in 2018 following cost and impact studies.
Following the energy impact of the condemnable proxy war in Ukraine, Spain has recently proposed relaunching the MIDCAT. But France continued to block the project alleging high costs. Maybe also under the heavy pressure of its extended, powerful business of nuclear plants?
The Italian Connexion
Meanwhile, taking advantage of the deteriorated relations between Spain and Algeria due to Madrid’s support to the annexation of Western Sahara by Morocco, Rome rushed to negotiate with Algiers the transportation of the Algerian gas and oil to Europe through Italy.
But this project hasn’t worked out either.
The Turkish Pipe
At that state, Ankara proposed in September 2022 transporting Russian fossil fuels to Europe through a Turkish pipeline crossing the country’s territory. Also this way out was soon discarded.
The BarMar
During their yet another summit in late October, the European Union’s heads of state and governments launched more debates on how to grant their energy supplies.
At the end, the leaders of Spain, Portugal, and France agreed on 20 October 2022 to replace the MidCat project with a new “green energy corridor” that would be able to transport hydrogen. And they called it BarMar.
Where From?
So far, no accurate details are known of the major features of such a project. For instance: where will this hydrogen come from?
According to the European Union’s data, hydrogen accounts for less than 2% of Europe’s present energy consumption and is primarily used to produce chemical products, such as plastics and fertilisers. 96% of this hydrogen production is through natural gas, resulting in significant amounts of CO2 emissions. So?
How Green Is the “Green Energy Corridor”?
The BarMar project’s defenders say that hydrogen is the future of energy. Critics insist that hydrogen is most efficient if it is used around its source.
Anyway, if it is so green, why has the West, including Europe, not turned up sooner to this source of energy?
For How Long. How Much? Who Will Pay?
This BarMar project implies great costs and, according to European sources, it would be a sort of a “transitional” plan. To what? How long will it take to implement the project?
Not having released specific final details, the Spanish, Portuguese and French leaders decided to meet in December 2022 to discuss those details.
Where Will the Money Come From?
For now, French President Emmanuel Macron rushed to put the bandage before the wound, saying that the BarMar project would “benefit from European funding.”
The European Union’s funds are composed of the proportional contribution of each one of its 27 member countries, with Germany being the major contributor.
However, in view of the big European financial crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic and now exacerbated by Ukraine’s proxy war, a big portion of such reserves have been designated to alleviate the economic and social impacts, let alone the spectacular rise of fossil fuels prices for citizens.
The Military Race
During NATO’s Summit in Madrid, this Western alliance of 30 countries, decided to further militarise Europe by increasing the continent’s spending on weapons and multiplying its troops, in addition to further extending its presence in Africa. Such militarisation process implies high costs to Europe.
In addition, following the United States’ huge weapons supplies to Ukraine, which for now are estimated at more than 17 billion US dollars, European countries have also continued to send weapons to Ukraine.
Here, some European politicians started talking about the urgent need to replenish the continent’s “empty weapons shelves.”
Furthermore, the European leaders have just decided to transfer to Ukraine up to 1.5 billion US dollars… every single month… as part of the estimated 3 to 3.5 billion… a month… that the West decided to send to Ukraine.
Is the Fossil Fuels Rush Over Soon?
Not really. Germany seems to be thinking about reopening their nuclear plants to produce electricity.
Norway is reported as planning to increase oil production from the Northern Sea. The United States, being the world’s largest oil producer, has doubled its liquified gas supplies to Europe.
Venezuela, Saudi Arabia
Washington decided that the heavily sanctioned Nicolas Maduro’s government in Venezuela is not all that bad, therefore the US has approached Caracas to increase its fossil fuels production.
At the time, Western leaders pressured the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), which groups 13 oil-exporting ‘developing nations,’ to pump more oil and gas in the market.
Having OPEC’s top producer: Saudi Arabia shown reluctance, the US-led West has threatened to punish their own “friend and ally” — the Saudis, through sanctions.
Carbon, Fracking
Meanwhile, several European states, mostly the EU Eastern member countries, have been steadily intensifying the extraction and use of another fossil fuel: coal.
And one more European country however is no longer an EU member: the United Kingdom plans to extend the business of “fracking”.
Further to the United Kingdom’s parliamentary debates around the already ousted Liz Truss Conservative government plan to lift the 2019 decision to ban fracking, the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) reminded that hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, is a technique for recovering gas and oil from shale rock.
And that it involves drilling into the earth and directing a high-pressure mixture of water, sand and chemicals at a rock layer in order to release the gas inside.
Environmental organisations and activists worldwide continue to warn about the high dangers to Earth of carrying out such an activity. An activity that, by the way, is still widely extended in the world’s biggest fossil energy producer–the United States.
Republicans in general favor less immigration than Democrats. For example, a national Gallup poll in July 2022 found that the proportion saying immigration to America should be decreased was 69 percent among Republicans versus 17 percent among Democrats. Credit: Guillermo Arias / IPS
Opinion by Joseph Chamie (portland, usa)
Inter Press Service
PORTLAND, USA, Oct 24 (IPS) – Given the upcoming midterm elections in the United States and the consequences of the outcome for domestic legislation and programs as well as the country’s foreign policy, it’s useful and fitting to review fundamental differences between America’s two major political parties on vital demographic issues.
On virtually every major demographic issue, including reproduction, mortality, immigration, ethnic composition, gender, marriage and population ageing, significant divides exist between the Democrats and Republicans (Figure 1). Those divides have significant consequences and implications for current and future government policies and programs.
Source: Various U.S. public opinion surveys.
Those divides on vital demographic matters, which have become increasingly politicized by the two major parties, are reinforcing political polarization and partisan antipathy across the country and hindering the economic, social and cultural development of the United States.
With respect to reproduction, while most Democrats are in favor of a woman’s legal access to abortion, most Republicans are not. For example, a March 2022 PEW national survey found that proportion of Democrats saying abortion should be legal in all or most cases was more than twice that of Republicans, i.e., 80 versus 38 percent.
Also, Gallup polls indicate a widening gap since the late 1980s between Democrats and Republicans on the circumstances permitting abortion. By 2022, for example, the proportions of Democrats and Republicans saying abortions should be legal under any circumstances were 57 and 10 percent, respectively (Figure 2).
Source: Gallup.
A similar difference on abortion is evident among members of Congress and justices of the Supreme Court. While Congressional Democrats are largely in favor codifying access to abortion and safeguards to the right to travel across state lines to undergo the procedure, Congressional Republicans are opposed to such access and safeguards. And the recent Supreme Court abortion decision ending the right to abortion reflects the divides in the views of justices appointed by Republican and Democrat administrations.
Concerning access to birth control methods, the vote on the recently passed bill by the House of Representatives was mostly along party lines. All but eight Republicans opposed the bill that aims to ensure access to contraception. In the Senate, the birth control measure is expected to fail as most Republicans are likely to be against it.
On mortality and morbidity issues, Congressional Democratic and Republican leaders are also divided. A notable example of that divide has been the sustained Republican opposition to the Affordable Care Act enacted by Democrats more than a decade ago.
Recent research has also found that more premature deaths occur in Republican-leaning counties than in Democratic-leaning counties. The policies adopted by Democratic-leaning states compared to those in Republican states are believed to have contributed to the greater divide in mortality outcomes. Those policies include Medicaid expansion, health care access, minimum wage legislation, tobacco control, gun legislation, and drug addiction treatment.
The early responses to the COVID-19 pandemic, which was transformed from a public health concern into a major political issue, also reflect the divide in mortality outcomes between Democrats and Republicans. While mask wearing, social distancing, and related preventive measures were often stressed by most Democratic officials, many Republican leaders resisted such measures and downplayed the risks of the coronavirus.
Those partisan differences concerning the COVID-19 pandemic were reflected in the behavior and attitudes of Republicans and Democrats across the country. As a result of those attitudinal and behavioral differences, Republican-leaning counties have had higher COVID-19 death rates than Democrat-leaning counties.
With respect to immigration, Republicans in general favor less immigration than Democrats. For example, a national Gallup poll in July 2022 found that the proportion saying immigration to America should be decreased was 69 percent among Republicans versus 17 percent among Democrats. The rise for decreased immigration during the past several years is primarily due to Republicans, whose desire for reducing immigration increased by 21 points since June 2020 compared to an increase of 4 points among Democrats (Figure 3).
Source: Gallup.
To address immigration levels, the former Republican administration advocated building a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border and limiting the granting of asylum claims. In contrast, most Democratic leaders have not been in favor of erecting a border wall. Also, the current Democratic administration has been removing obstacles to granting asylum claims, including ending the former administration’s “Remain in Mexico” policy.
Concerning the more than 11 million illegal immigrants residing in the country, the former Republican administration wanted to ban counting them in the 2020 census. The desired exclusion of undocumented migrants in the census enumeration was aimed at not including them when determining Congressional representation. The current Democratic administration, in contrast, includes undocumented migrants in the census count and determining Congressional representation.
On whether to offer an amnesty to immigrants living unlawfully in the country, a wide divide exists between the two major political parties. While Democrats are largely in favor of offering illegal immigrants a path to U.S. citizenship, many Republicans oppose granting an amnesty to those who are unlawfully resident in the country. A PEW survey in August 2022, for example, found the proportion in favor of a path to U.S. citizenship among Democrats was more than double the level among the Republicans, 80 versus 37 percent, respectively.
Regarding the changing ethnic composition of the U.S. population, Democrats tend to view the changes more favorably than Republicans. For example, one national PEW survey found Democrats three times more likely than Republicans to say a majority nonwhite population will strengthen America’s customs and values, i.e., 42 and 13 percent, respectively.
Similar divides between Democrats and Republicans were found with respect to interracial marriage and same-sex marriage. The growth of interracial marriage is considered to be a good thing for the country by a majority of Democrats and a minority of Republicans, 61 and 33 percent, respectively. Also, Democrats have been consistently more likely than Republicans to say that same-sex marriages should recognized by the law as valid, with the proportions in 2022 at 83 and 55 percent, respectively (Figure 4).
Source: Gallup.
Democrats and Republicans also differ in their views about gender identity. While a national PEW survey found 80 percent of Republicans saying that whether someone is a man or a woman is determined by the sex assigned at birth, 64 percent of Democrats took the opposite view, believing that a person’s gender can be different from the sex assigned at birth.
Moreover, the majority of Republicans, 57 percent, say that society has gone too far in accepting people who are transgender, compared to 12 percent of Democrats.
On the issue of population ageing, noteworthy policy differences with program implications exist between Democrats and Republicans. In general, Republican leaders have resisted government entitlement programs established by Democrats, such as Social Security and Medicare, preferring reliance on the private sector, freedom of choice and individual responsibility.
Republican leaders have proposed replacing those major programs for older Americans with private investment accounts and a voucher system for health insurance. In addition, some Republicans recommend eliminating Social Security and Medicare as federal entitlement programs and have them become programs approved by Congress annually as discretionary spending.
A similar political divide exists among Americans concerning the provision of long-term care that the elderly may need. One national PEW survey in 2019 reported that while two-thirds of Democrats say the government should be mostly responsible for paying for that care for the elderly, 40 percent of Republicans have that view.
In sum, significant divides currently exist between Democrats and Republicans on nearly every major demographic issue facing the United States. Those divides are being politicized by the two parties, reinforcing political polarization and partisan antipathy across the country, which in turn are affecting domestic legislation and foreign policy as well as hampering America’s progress in the 21st century.
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.”
Opinion by Isabel Ortiz, Matti Kohonen (london / new york)
Inter Press Service
LONDON / NEW YORK, Oct 24 (IPS) – Finance ministers of the G20 and the world met in Washington, October 10-16, to discuss how to navigate multiple crises, including rising cost-of-living, broken global supply chains, climate shocks, and the lingering COVID-19 pandemic.
All this weighted heavily on the IMF outlook, pointing to a bleak future ahead.
This is particularly bad news for developing countries. Using IMF data, our research showed that recovery spending in the last two years of the pandemic in the Global South was only 2.4% of GDP on average, a quarter of the level recommended by the UN and a fraction of what rich countries spent.
Meanwhile, only 38% of the total went to social protection, with corporate loans and tax breaks getting the lion’s share.
Things will get worse unless there is a fundamental policy change. This year recovery funds have dried up and, as most countries are heavily indebted, the IMF projects large expenditure cuts.
In 2023, at least 94 developing countries are expected to cut public spending in terms of GDP. Our report estimates that 85% of the world’s population living in 143 countries will live in the grip of austerity measures by 2023, and the trend is likely to continue for years.
Unless these policies are reversed, people in developing countries will suffer as a result cuts to social protection and public services at a time they are most needed, with 3.3 billion people (or nearly half of mankind) expected to be living below the poverty line of US $5.50/day by the end of 2022.
This crisis will affect especially women who received half less COVID-19 recovery funds than their male counterparts.
But the impact goes far beyond women. Elderly pensioners and persons with disabilities will receive lower pension benefits. Workers around the world will see less job security, poorer pay and working conditions as regulations are dismantled.
A recent study on inequality found that the vast majority of countries were making labor markets more flexible to help big corporations. As inflation keeps rising, worsened by higher consumption taxes, families will be much affected while any support they receive will be less due to austerity cuts.
South Africa reflects the crisis of countries falling into the austerity trap. The government provided Social Relief of Distress (SRD) grants of R350 (US$24 in 2021) per month that were instituted at the start of the pandemic, supporting for the first-time low-income individuals who are of working age.
These grants have been extended several times, providing a lifeline for those worst hit by the pandemic.
However, despite the cost-of-living crisis, the government -advised by the IMF- is now considering reducing social expenditures and helping only the most vulnerable, leaving many low-income households without any support. Other austerity measures being discussed include cuts to the salaries of civil servants, and labor flexibilization reforms.
Instead of these austerity cuts, the South African government and the IMF should focus on raising additional revenues to fund social protection and public services, making sure everyone pays taxes, reducing corporate tax loopholes and exemptions, taxing excess profits and wealthy individuals.
Similarly, Ecuador has been shaken by social unrest because of austerity reforms. In 2019, after large riots, the government of Lenin Moreno flew from the capital and had to stop a loan with the IMF that had proposed cuts to subsidies and other austerity reforms.
In 2021, the same austerity policies were proposed again by the IMF, such as cuts to subsidies and public services, reducing social protection and labor regulations.
In 2022, farmers, indigenous men and women, marched again to the capital with pitchforks to join students and workers protesting austerity policies, forcing President Lasso to back down and agree to grant subsidies and other demands.
These are only two examples reflecting the austerity storm gathering around the world. This is extremely unfair and will generate unnecessary social hardship, as populations are struggling with a severe cost-of-living crisis, especially at a time when many countries are losing significant amounts of revenue to tax abuses, illicit financial flows and tax exemptions to large corporates that are wholly unnecessary.
Austerity cuts are not inevitable, there are alternatives even in the poorest countries. Instead of austerity cuts, governments can increase progressive tax revenues, restructure and eliminate debt, eradicate illicit financial flows, and re-allocate public expenditures, among other options.
Policy makers must act on this. All the human suffering and social unrest that austerity inflicts is unnecessary.
Civil society organizations have launched a global campaign to End Austerity, including, among others, ActionAid International, European Network on Debt and Development (Eurodad), Fight Inequality Alliance, Financial Transparency Coalition and Oxfam International.
Austerity campaign calls on citizens and organizations from all around the world to fight back against the wave of austerity sweeping the globe, supercharging inequality and compounding the effects of the cost-of-living crisis.
Our decision-makers need to wake up and change course. There is no time to lose.
Matti Kohonen is Executive Director of Financial Transparency Coalition; Isabel Ortiz is Director of the Global Social Justice Program at Joseph Stiglitz’s Initiative for Policy Dialogue
Mr. Guterres was in the country to take part in a ceremony to commemorate the 45th anniversary of its membership in the UN.
He held meetings with the President, Nguyen Xuan Phuc; Prime Minister, Pham Minh Chinh, and other senior officials, including the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Bui Thanh Son, and Environment Minister, Tran Hong Ha.
Protection against tragedy
On Saturday, the UN chief spoke at Viet Nam’s Meteorological and Hydrological Administration in the capital, Hanoi, where he highlighted the critical role of disaster preparedness for all governments.
The goal is to have early warning systems in all countries within five years, “to end the tragedy of people dying, livelihoods being destroyed, because people did not know that tragedy was unfolding,” he said.
“When we have an early warning system, and we know that something terrible is coming, we have time to relocate people, we have time to protect property,” he added.
Mr. Guterres will launch an action plan at the COP27 UN climate conference in Egypt next month to make the five-year deadline a reality.
The Secretary-General also commended Viet Nam’s work to protect the Mekong Delta.
The country’s agricultural and industrial heartland is among the most vulnerable places in the world, as it is exposed to rising sea levels, saltwater intrusion, flooding and changing rainfall intensity.
He said efforts to protect the Mekong Delta were not only important for Viet Nam but could be shared with other nations around the world.
Dialogue with youth
The Secretary-General also participated in a dialogue with Vietnamese youth representatives and UN peacekeepers from the country, held at the Academy of Diplomacy under the theme of ‘Innovation and Participation for an Inclusive and Sustainable Future.’
He stressed that solidarity is the only way to overcome the climate crisis and other current or emerging global challenges.
“We face the risk of new pandemics. We face climate change and inequality in the world. There is only one way to be able not to be defeated by these challenges, and that is if we join efforts, if we come together. And for that we need to feel true solidarity.”
Later that day, the Secretary-General also posted a message on Twitter to all young people worldwide, urging them not to give up hope.
“You can count on me to amplify your ideas (and) support your efforts to build a better, fairer, more sustainable world for all,” he wrote.
While at the Academy, Mr. Guterres also planted trees alongside Viet Nam’s Foreign Minister, Bui Thanh Son.
UN-Viet Nam partnership
The Secretary-General arrived in Viet Nam on Friday and participated in the ceremony celebrating its 45 years as a UN Member State.
He praised the country’s strong partnership with the UN, and its “remarkable journey” during this period, which he described as a story of transformation and hope, written by the Vietnamese people.
“Little more than a generation ago, United Nations staff were in Viet Nam delivering food aid to a country ravaged by war, isolated, and on the brink of famine,” he recalled.
“Today, it is Vietnamese peacekeepers coming to the aid of people in some of the most desperate parts of the world.”
UN Photo/Minh Hoang
Secretary-General António Guterres (second from right) and Nguyen Xuan Phuc (right), State President of Viet Nam meets with Vietnamese Peacekeepers during a ceremony commemorating the 45th anniversary of Viet Nam’s membership in the United Nations.
Service and sacrifice
Vietnamese “blue helmets” are serving in countries such as the Central African Republic, he said, risking their lives to bring peace and hope to people there, as well as the chance for a better life.
The country also provides double the global average of women peacekeepers serving under the UN flag.
The Secretary-General also saluted Viet Nam’s full commitment to achieving sustainable development.
Solidarity and cooperation
With the world in peril due to the COVID-19 pandemic and the impacts of the war in Ukraine, Mr. Guterres also addressed the need for justice, as well as greater solidarity and cooperation.
“And nowhere do we need it more – and more urgently – than in our fight against the climate crisis,” he said.
The UN chief emphasized that action on loss and damage is a moral imperative that must be front and centre at COP27.
Mr. Guterres was in the region for five days.
Prior to Viet Nam, he visited India, where he participated in a ceremony to mark the country’s 75th anniversary of independence, among other events.
He also travelled to the country’s first solar-powered village and saw how green energy is changing the lives of residents.
“We have to walk for more than seven kilometres to find water, and sometimes what we find isn’t safe to drink,” says 39 Elimlim Ingolan, mother of a seven-month-old baby. She describes digging for water from dry riverbeds, sometimes for hours, often without success.
Ms. Ingolan is speaking at an outreach session in village of Lokapararai, in Turkana county. The session, supported by the UN reproductive rights agency (UNFPA) is one of many aimed at bringing sexual and reproductive health, and gender-based violence protection services, to women and girls affected by the prolonged drought currently ravaging the region.
Dried up
In some areas, over 90 per cent of water sources have dried up and, as crops fail, and families lose their livestock – which, for many, is their only source of income – more than four million people are grappling with acute hunger. An estimated 134,000 women are currently pregnant or breastfeeding in drought-affected regions of Kenya; many are now malnourished and anaemic, conditions which can be life-threatening.
It is usually women and girls who are sent to fetch water; because of the drought, they have to walk even further, and wait for hours at boreholes.
This puts them at greater risk of violence, at a time when hostilities among communities desperate to secure scarce resources, are mounting.
With hundreds of thousands of Kenyans forced to move in search of survival, vulnerable women and girls have little to no access to critical health facilities or protection and support services – at the very time they need them the most.
There is evidence that gender-based violence, female genital mutilation, and child marriage have risen since the drought, as families marry off their girls to pay for food or cattle.
UNFPA Kenya
Safeguarding health, rights, and lives
To help protect women and girls from the drought’s fallout on their health, safety and well-being, UNFPA is distributing maternal health and dignity kits across Kenya.
These kits contain essential hygiene supplies for women and girls, and items to support new mothers, as well as a solar-powered torch and a whistle to call for help if needed. UNFPA also provides free referrals to hospital and ambulance transfers for women with obstetric and new-born emergencies.
From October 2021 to June 2022, UNFPA reached more than 186,000 women and girls with sexual and reproductive health support.
The agency also supported over 60,000 with gender-based violence response and protection services, including mental health support for more than 45,000 survivors
Joint appeal
But much more support is needed: the UN is calling for $320 million to support more than four million people in dire need of assistance through a joint drought appeal.
It is feared that, if forecasts of failed rains during the October to December season prove accurate, millions more vulnerable women and girls risk being affected by the crisis.
Gadvi Kailashben, a 42-year-old widow, lives in Modhera, home to the centuries-old Sun Temple and now the first village in India that runs on solar energy.
She earns a meagre income from agriculture which she uses to take care of her family. The Government has installed solar panels on her house which has given her much-needed relief from household expenses.
“Earlier, when solar was not there, I had to pay huge amount for the electricity bill – close to 2,000 rupees. However, with the installation of the solar, my electricity bill is now zero. Everything from the refrigerator to washing machine now runs on solar in my house. I am not paying even 1 rupee electricity bill now,” said Ms. Kailashben.
“The extra money is now saved in my account. I use that money for daily house expenses, and for the education of my children,” she added.
UN News
With the electricity bill in minus, Ashaben is not only saving the money that she used to spend on electricity, but the excess electricity generated is sold back to the grid and she gets money in return.
Renewable energy as an income source
Conversion to a clean, renewable energy source is not only enabling the villagers to run more electrical household gadgets to make life comfortable, without worrying about the electricity bill. It is also becoming a source of income for them.
Ashaben Mahendrabhai, 38, lives with her husband and two children. “We work in our farm and used to pay huge electricity bill for agriculture. Since solar installation in our village, we are now saving a lot of electricity. Earlier our electricity bill used to come around 2,000 rupees. Now it is in minus,” she said.
With the electricity bill in minus, Ashaben is not only saving the money that she used to spend on electricity, but the excess electricity generated is sold back to the grid and she gets money in return.
“When the first time the project team came to us with the idea of solar, we didn’t understand the concept, so we refused to get it installed. We were not literate to understand what solar energy was and had little knowledge about it. But slowly, the team made us understand the concept and the advantages of solar, how we will save electricity and money, then we got interested in it,” she said.
UN News
Pingalsinh Karsanbhai (right) feels that the project not only provides freedom from electricity bills, but “this saving is like a pension for our old age.”
Local farmers Pingalsinh Karsanbhai Gadhvi and Surajben Gadhvi, who are married, got solar rooftops installed on their house six months ago.
Pingalsinh Karsanbhai feels that this project has not only given them freedom from electricity bills, but the savings will hold them in good stead in old age.
“Earlier we used to get electricity bill of 3,000 rupees and after solar it is zero now. Now we are saving those 3,000 rupees every month,” he said.
“These solar panels have benefited the entire village. All the institutions like schools, public institutions, all have benefited from the solar in the village. In my individual capacity I am saving 3,000 rupees. Now we don’t require extra energy. The entire house runs on solar.”
UN News
Residents of India’s first solar village interacting with the UN Secretary-General during his visit.
He exclaimed that “this saving is like a pension for our old age. We are really happy about it.”
His wife Surajben was all smiles and eager to recommend it for other villages.
“If this solar is installed across the country it would be really advantageous. It feels like the Sun God is providing us energy through its light. This benefit that our Modhera village has got, should reach the entire country,” she said.
Interacting with the villagers of Modhera during his visit, UN Secretary-General António Guterres hailed the efforts of the Government and the residents.
“Here where the Temple of Sun was built 1,000 years ago, there is a new Temple of Sun. It’s based on solar energy. And the fact that solar energy is transforming the lives of the people of this village, making it more healthy, giving them more prosperity, but at the same time, contributing to rescue our planet from climate change that is still riding without control.”
Inspiration from the Sun God
UN News
The Modhera Sun Temple in Gujarat, India, now runs a 3D light show entirely on solar power.
Home to the iconic Sun Temple of Gujarat, Modhera village is approximately 97 km from the city of Ahmedabad in the Mehsana district of Gujarat.
With the vision of powering the Sun Temple and the entire village through Sun God (solar energy), this project is the first of its kind, where rural residents are envisaged to be self-reliant through green energy.
“The idea behind this project is that since the Modhera temple is the Temple of the Sun God, so the entire energy of this town and community should come from solar energy,” said Mamta Verma, Principal Secretary, Energy and Petrochemicals in the Government of Gujarat.
The Sun Temple now runs a 3D light show entirely on solar power, its premises run on solar energy and the parking area also boasts electric vehicle charging stations.
UN News
Solar-powered electric vehicle charging stations at the Sun Temple in Modhera, India.
Renewable energy storage
Armed with a large array of solar panels on the rooftops of houses, on Government schools, bus stops, utility buildings, car parks and even the premises of the Sun Temple, Modhera benefits from the six-megawatt installed capacity power plant in nearby Sujjanpura village.
With the village consumption merely one to two megawatts, the excess is added to the transmission grid.
UN News
Government schools, bus stops and utility buildings in the village of Modhera in Gujarat, India, now run entirely on solar power.
“There are three major components to this entire project. One is our ground mounted 6-megawatt project. The second is the 15-megawatt battery storage system and the third is the one-kilowatt rooftops installed on 1,300 houses,” the Chief Project Officer of Gujarat Power Corporation Limited (GPCL), Rajendra Mistry, explained.
“Out of the 1,000 rooftops we have provided in the village, the electricity that comes out is first consumed by the people of the village, and the excess electricity is then given to the grid.”
Funded by the Government of India and the Government of Gujarat, the estimated cost of the entire project is $9.7 million. What sets it apart is the fact that Modhera is also the first village to become a net renewable energy generator.
UN News
Solar panels on the rooftops of houses in Modhera, located in Gujarat state, India.
“This is the first village in India where even during the night, the energy consumed by the villagers comes from the solar component. That’s the speciality of this project,” said Vikalp Bhardwaj, Managing Director of Gujarat Power Corporation Limited.
Vision for the future
This demonstration project is expected to provide learning to resolve bottlenecks related to renewable energy. If the project proves to be economically viable, the plan is to replicate it in other rural areas in Gujarat.
Said Mr. Bhardwaj: “This kind of project acts as a demonstration project for other villages and towns in India. And similarly, the other villages and towns can adopt this model to become self-dependent, self-sufficient in the energy needs.”
Modhera resident Ashaben Mahendrabhai summed up the benefits.
“I would encourage the other villages also to put solar as it is beneficial in all aspects, from saving money to saving electricity,” she said.
UN News
POWERED BY THE SUN
More than 1,300 households have 1 KW Rooftop Solar Systems on Residential buildings.
316 KW Rooftop Solar PV Systems on various government buildings at Modhera, Samlanpura and Sujjanpura villages.
6 MW Grid Connected Ground Mounted Solar PV Power Plant at Sujjanpura
15 MWh, 6 MW, Battery Energy Storage System (BESS) at Sujjanpura.
Modhera uses only 1Mw, with rest being added to the grid.
Installation of Smart Energy Meters (more than 1700) at electric consumer level.
Fully solar-powered Sun Temple runs a 3D projection Light Show entirely on renewable energy.
Sensor based smart street lights near the Sun Temple.
50 KW Solar Parking Infrastructure with 150 kWh Battery Storage with Electric Charging Stations at the Modhera Sun Temple.
UN News
The solar panel installations have benefited the entire village of Modhera.
“If you do something in a video game and then it appears in real life, you notice that you have this power to change your community, to change the world, and you start getting involved in other projects,” explains Mr. Gastelum, the first person in UN history to hold the title “Video Game Expert”.
Mother’s pride
This skillset has been put to good use in the workshops he leads, where young people redesign renderings of public spaces on the Minecraft platform – where players build and tend their own virtual worlds – and get the chance to see those plans turned into reality, transforming neglected, unwelcoming urban environments into safe, vibrant, and popular parts of town.
“We go to the community, teach them how to play Minecraft, and then the community members are the ones who change the public space into what they desire or what they need in Minecraft,” he says. “It’s the best job in the world! I’m playing video games, I’m travelling, I’m meeting people, and I’m teaching. I’m improving the planet.”
Looking back on his childhood growing up in Mexico City, Mr. Gastelum laughs when he recalls how his mother used to scold him for wasting his time on screen. Now she takes pride in the fact that he’s not just gaming – he’s a game-changer.
The workshops are organized by the Block by Block Foundation, a collaboration between Microsoft, Mojang (the makers of Minecraft), and UN-Habitat, the UN programme for human settlements.
Access all areas
The foundation says that it has implemented over 50 projects in 30 countries since 2012, giving millions of young people access to a public space they designed in Minecraft.
“Millions and millions of people play Minecraft,” says Shipra Narang Suri, Chief of UN-Habitat’s Urban Practices Branch. “And we’ve actually allowed children as young as six or seven to express their views on the re-design of public spaces. And then we help put it into proper design and take it to city leaders and make sure that it gets done.”
The Congo-Rwanda border bustles with traders going between the two countries but is also a conduit for criminal syndicates to smuggle elephant tusks and other contraband. Credit: Aimable Twahirwa/IPS
by Aimable Twahirwa (rubavu, northwestern rwanda)
Inter Press Service
RUBAVU, Northwestern Rwanda, Oct 21 (IPS) – Every morning, Valerie Mukamazimpaka, a businesswoman selling various food products from Rubavu, a district in Northwestern Rwanda, wakes up early morning to cross “Petite Barrière,” one of the busiest border crossings with the neighboring Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).
The mother of three takes advantage of the ‘Jeton,’ a daily authorization paper allowing individuals to move within the municipal limits of the border towns of Rubavu, Rwanda, and the frenetic city of Goma from North Kivu Province in the eastern part of DRC.
All day long, a constant stream of trade crisscrosses between the two countries, with people like Mukamazimpaka carrying bags of fruits, vegetables, and other products for business purposes on their backs or heads.
With over 55,000 legal crossings daily, “Petite Barrière” is described as the busiest land border between Rwanda and DR Congo under the strict supervision of law enforcement officers and customer agents whose duties primarily investigate and apprehend suspected smugglers.
“There are villagers around here who are sometimes forced to use porous entry points to avoid the risk of detection and apprehension because of moving smuggled goods such as ivory tusks mixed with other business commodities,” she told IPS.
In these remote villages across the transborder region, the modus operandi of ivory tusks smugglers is diverse. While some traffickers that smuggle ivory often deal in other illegal goods. Other highly sophisticated networks use social media platforms for advertising wildlife products online and finding buyers in their target market abroad.
While large-scale illegal wildlife crime is not prominent in Rwanda, conservation experts observe that Rwanda is a strategically relevant country in the illicit trade of wildlife products because it is nestled between several important sources, transit, and destination countries.
The use of social media has allowed smugglers of wildlife products to expand their network’s reach using Rwanda as a transit route, experts say.
According to Rwanda Wildlife Conservation Association, because the illegal wildlife trade, such as in ivory tusks, constantly evolves, the country needs law enforcement capacity building for police, customs, and judiciary personnel. It is also crucial that a national database for wildlife crime cases is set up and local communities are made aware of the penalties for wildlife crime.
Last year Rwanda Investigation Bureau (RIB) arrested four people for allegedly trafficking products from endangered animals, such as elephant ivory.
According to Dr Thierry Murangira, RIB Spokesperson, the suspects were caught while using Rwanda as a transit country to smuggle 45 kilograms of ivory from the DRC to Asian countries.
The ring of smugglers had been using Facebook to connect with their accomplices who were still at large on the other side of the border. The case exposed that smuggling syndicates are now utilizing media platforms as an intermediate tool to connect buyers from Asia and buyers from DRC as the primary source market.
During a field investigation conducted on a freezing cold evening in Busasamana, a remote village from Rubavu, a district located at the border with the DRC, this reporter spotted residents who disguised themselves as farmers while waiting impatiently for potential customers looking to move goods using porous routes in their illegal cross-border trade to Rwanda.
A trader, who identified himself as Habanabakize, says his business is transporting goods on his wheelbarrow and moving smuggled goods to survive.
Investigations conducted by this reporter have demonstrated the role of social media platforms as a means for smugglers to connect and use locals to move ivory tusks across the border.
“People here are sometimes forced to take increasingly hazardous paths to cross the border because they are looking to make a living,” Habanabakize told IPS in an interview.
Online tools
Across these transborder areas, organized wildlife smuggling is severely threatening the survival of some of the most threatened species, including elephant ivory from Eastern DRC, where smugglers use technology to control their business remotely, according to the latest report by TRAFFIC, an international organization engaged in the fight against wildlife trade.
One of the investigations conducted by this reporter found that despite efforts by local administrative officials, customers, and border patrol agents in chasing smugglers, individuals engaged in this highly profitable illegal business use any online tools available to them.
But to move smugglers’ items to their destination, traffickers advertise wildlife products by messaging thousands of people through Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and WhatsApp using anonymous accounts to control their illegal business using remote surveillance.
Aimable Twahirwa struck up a conversation with a smuggler during his investigation. Credit: Aimable Twahirwa/IPS
This helps them connect with wildlife hunters and their informants on the other side of the border before engaging with potential customers through social media and chat rooms to sell elephant tusks, the typical commodity being illegally trafficked to consumers, particulars from parts of Asia.
Online payment methods
Most criminal syndicates rely on established methods such as placement and laundering of funds through formal financial institutions, which are undertaken through various online payment methods.
According to Rwanda’s National Public Prosecutor Authority (NPPA), money launderers, who play a significant role in the illegal wildlife trade, use smart techniques and utilize complex sequences of banking transfers or commercial transactions, which cannot be easily detected or traced.
Jean Bosco Murenzi, head of the Compliance and Prevention Department of Rwanda’s Financial Intelligence Centre (FIC), says that the cooperation and information exchange with Financial Intelligence Centres from other countries remains key to cracking down on such financial cheating where it is common to launder money through online and social media platforms.
With the establishment of the FIC in August 2020, financial institutions in the country can now submit suspicious transaction reports to the center, which also has the authority to exchange information with its peers from other countries.
Through this regional partnership, Rwanda and Kenya signed an agreement of cooperation in July this year, focusing on areas of information sharing about money laundering.
In many countries across the East African region, including Rwanda, conservation experts believe that the rise of e-commerce has made illegal wildlife trade online more hidden and more difficult to track and monitor.
East Africa’s judicial and procuratorial organs stepped up efforts in March to deepen their cross-border collaboration on ‘asset recovery’ – taking back the proceeds of wildlife crime and ending the money laundering that allows ill-gotten gains to be used for profitable investments. According to Paul Kadushi, Director, Asset Forfeiture, Transnational and Specialized Crimes Division, National Prosecutions Service of Tanzania, wildlife crime is leading to the proliferation of guns in the region.
During the investigation, the writer asked to join one of the Facebook buy/sell groups that focus on selling a wide array of items, with among products available for purchase sellers claimed were ivory.
After placing an order for ivory tusks on Facebook, the writer was prompted to a separate online form requesting him to fill in contact details, including phone number, and he was asked to pay with Mobile Money. The writer did not proceed.
Social media is the new medium that connects illegal elephant tusk traders with their markets. Credit: Aimable Twahirwa/IPS
However, a few minutes later, the writer received a call from an anonymous number introducing himself as an agent from a registered company without elaborating on the name of the business and address location.
Criminal syndicates
Conservation experts believe that today’s trade of wildlife products across the East African region has shifted from physical markets to online marketplaces where traffickers apply e-commerce business models and use encrypted messages to evade detection by law enforcement.
“By their organization, they are very highly sophisticated criminal networks, and they are very difficult to detect, and a lot of it is being sold over the internet now,” said Dr Katherine Chase Snow, founder of Gaia Morgan group, a US-based non-profit conservation intelligence consultancy.
Reports show that the Internet has become a prime outlet to advertise and arrange sales, including of wildlife specimens, both legally and illegally.
A TRAFFIC report released in July 2020 indicated that 8,508 ivory items, from elephant tusks to jewelry and decorative items, were posted for sale on 1,559 Facebook and Instagram accounts in major countries across Asia in 2016.
According to Rwanda Investigation Bureau (RIB), most smugglers now use social media to find new ways to connect with potential customers and hide their real identities from the police.
Meantime, Interpol also says that traffickers take advantage of different social media platforms to advertise and sell wildlife and wildlife products online.
Gaining access to a vast international marketplace and following the same routes as other crimes such as drugs and weapons smuggling, wildlife trafficking is rising 5% to 7% annually, it said.
Online advertising
Andrew McVey, climate advisor at World Wildlife Fund (WWF), stresses the need to have a greater public perception that wildlife crime is actually a serious and organized crime.
“Online advertising has been the main tactic used by wildlife traffickers, but still, Governments need to do more routine surveillance of the internet,” McVey said.
Fidele Ruzigandekwe, the Deputy Executive Secretary for Programs at the Rwandan-based Greater Virunga Transboundary Collaboration (GVTC), observes in an interview that current efforts to combat wildlife crime should not solely be linked to anti-poaching and law enforcement activities in each specific country across the region.
GVTC is an interstate collaboration toward sustainable conservation in the Virunga landscape, which stretches along the borders of Rwanda, Uganda, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).
“There is a need for transborder consultation between relevant organs within the partner states to crackdown illegal wildlife crimes that are now relying on sophisticated technologies,” Ruzigandekwe said.
Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) headquartered in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia
Opinion by Soraya M. Deen, Christine M. Sequenzia (los angeles / washington dc)
Inter Press Service
LOS ANGELES / WASHINGTON DC, Oct 21 (IPS) – Eleven out of 57 members of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) still sanction the death penalty for blasphemy and apostasy, silencing their citizens and emboldening violence by non-state actors.
For the past 70 years, Article 18 of the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights has condemned capital punishment for religious offenses, a global standard shared during our recent visit to the UN headquarters in New York.
As a prelude to the UN General Assembly (UNGA) high-level meetings in mid-September, we led the International Religious Freedom (IRF) Roundtable Campaign to Eliminate Blasphemy and Apostasy Laws, urging UN members to stand in strong support during two paramount resolutions calling for an end to the death penalty and extrajudicial killings.
We urge the insertion of language codifying the death penalty never being imposed as a sanction for non-violent conduct such as blasphemy and apostasy. The effort produced an encouraging response by Nigerian third committee officials who renewed their commitment to freedom of religion or belief by supporting embedded language in both the moratorium on the death penalty and a resolution on renouncing the death penalty for extrajudicial killings.
In the days that followed our visit, the world has witnessed the outrage of human rights activists and concerned global citizens with the death of Masha Amini, an Iranian Muslim woman who was arrested and subsequently died in the custody of Iranian morality police for a violation of the Islamic Republic of Iran’s compulsory hijab mandate.
Brutal cases like these will only cease when government officials in Iran, and other egregious human rights violators, listen to the cries of their people and uphold globally recognized human rights declarations. These include statutes supporting international religious freedom or belief, and the repeal of apostasy and blasphemy laws.
When most countries around the world and the majority of Muslim nations are taking concrete steps to abolish capital punishment for perceived religious offenses such as blasphemy and apostasy, some refuse to modernize their legislation, thus branding themselves as the worst violators of internationally recognized basic human rights.
This staunch obsession with upholding persecutory laws and implementing the harshest of punishments, violates religious freedoms – the right to life and the right to freedom of religion or belief. This misinterpretation of scripture is an abuse of Islam, tarnishing the image of Muslims around the world and a disregard to Gods mercy, a belief that transcends faith orientation.
The multidisciplinary and multifaith delegation from the International Religious Freedom (IRF) Campaign urged UN members, including: Luxemburg, Canada, and Sri Lanka, to raise their voices loudly in favor of embedded international religious freedom language in two resolutions which will come up for a vote during the UNGA in November.
Penholders Australia and Costa Rica are calling for a moratorium on the death penalty which is only supported by the IRF Campaign with the addition of specific language ensuring the death penalty never be imposed for non-violent conduct such as apostasy or blasphemy.
Likewise, Finland, as penholder for the UNGA resolution on extrajudicial executions, is being asked by global advocates to add language on freedom of religion or belief, emphasizing the necessity for States to take effective measures to repeal laws currently allowing the death penalty for religious offences, such as criminalization of conversion and expression of religion or belief as a preventative measure.
Article 18 of the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights is clear – everyone has the right to freedom of religion or belief. Yet, 11 States today maintain the death penalty for apostasy and blasphemy. We raise the voices of the voiceless, such as Pakistani woman Aneeqa Ateeq who was sentenced to death for blasphemy in January 2022 after being manipulated into a religious debate online by a man who she romantically refused.
Also, an 83-year-old Somali man, Hassan Tohow Fidow, who was sentenced to death for blasphemy by an al-Shabaab militant court and subsequently horrifically executed by firing squad; and a 22-year-old Nigerian Islamic gospel singer Yahaya Sharif-Aminu who was sentenced to death for blasphemy because one of his songs allegedly praised an Imam higher than the Prophet.
As an outcome of our UN advocacy, we pray that the 11 Muslim member states—Afghanistan, Brunei, Iran, Maldives, Mauritania, Nigeria, Pakistan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, and Yemen– join in the common-sense repeal of the death penalty for blasphemy and apostasy as a great step toward becoming civilized nations.
The majority of OIC member nations who do not sanction the death penalty for religious offenses should be regarded as examples of modernity and humanity and their path to restore and uphold basic human rights should be replicated.
The Qur’an says, “There shall be no compulsion in religion; the right way has become distinct from the wrong way.” (Qur’an 2:256). Likewise, we read passages like 18:26:, “And say, ‘The truth is from your Lord. Whoever wills – let him believe. And whoever wills – let him disbelieve,” and “whoever among you renounces their own faith and dies a disbeliever, their deeds will become void in this life and in the Hereafter (Qur’an 2:217).”
The holy book, which serves as a moral compass for the laws in OIC member nations, upholds the right to freedom of religion or belief which has been recognized by the OIC majority.
As has been recently witnessed in Iran, when civil society activates around globally recognized human rights, the world takes note. The OIC asserts its purpose “to preserve and promote the foundational Islamic values of peace, compassion, tolerance, equality, justice and human dignity” and “to promote human rights and fundamental freedoms, good governance, rule of law, democracy, and accountability”.
To that end, with the passage of both critical UN resolutions, OIC members will face the controversial and politically sensitive task of calling out other OIC colleagues who continue to violate human rights by imposing the death sentence upon individuals for exercising their right to freedom of thought, conscience, and religion.
We assert that it is a societal problem as much as it is a reflection of the deficiency of democratic values and principles.
Embedding international religious freedom language in both resolutions calling for the repeal of the death penalty will be strengthened with the strong support of the 46 OIC nations and other human rights champion nations in the days ahead.
We are encouraged by Saudi Arabian scholar, Dr. Mohammad Al-Issa of the Muslim World Alliance, who travels the world sharing the unanimously approved Charter of Makkah – a document affirming differences among people and beliefs as part of God’s will and wisdom.
Our collective voice must be unwavering in its call and commitment to repeal the death penalty for blasphemy and apostasy as a primary step towards upholding theologies of love and compassion, building toward human flourishing.
Dr. Christine M. Sequenzia, MDiv is co-chair IRF Campaign to Eliminate Blasphemy and Apostasy Laws; Soraya M. Deen, Esq. is lawyer, community organizer, founder, Muslim Women Speakers, and co-chair International Religious Freedom (IRF) Women’s Working Group
Ian Fry, Australian National University Professor and Tuvalu’s former ambassador for Climate Change for over 21 years, was appointed in May by the UN Human Rights Council, as the first Special Rapporteur on climate, following the overwhelming vote to recognize the Right to a Healthy Environment, in 2021.
“Human-induced climate change is the largest, most pervasive threat to the natural environment and societies the world has ever experienced, and the poorest countries are paying the heaviest price”, the expert told delegates.
Mr. Fry highlighted the “enormous injustice” perpetrated by rich countries and major corporations, which are not acting to reduce their greenhouse emissions, and consequently failing the poorest and least able to cope.
“The G20 members, for instance, account for 78 per cent of emissions over the last decade”, he underscored.
The Special Rapporteur sat down with UN News before delivering his report, which focuses on three areas: mitigation action, loss and damage, access and inclusion, and the protection of climate rights defenders.
He spoke about what he hopes the upcoming UN Climate Conference in Egypt (COP27) will achieve, addressed some of the climate-action challenges given the war in Ukraine, and shared some of the recommendations he made to member states, including the call for a High-Level Forum to be held next year.
UN Video screenshot
Ian Fry, Special Rapporteur for the promotion and protection of human rights in the context of climate change, sits down for an interview with UN News.
UN NEWS: Can you please explain what is the focus of your first report to the General Assembly?
IAN FRY: The main issues are those coming up at the COP in Egypt.
First, issues around improving action on mitigation to get countries to commit to more action. We know that there’s not enough being done to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, so I want to bring attention to that and look at the human rights implications of not doing enough on climate change.
The next issue is precisely the consequences of that, and I’m looking at the issue of loss and damage. These are the huge impacts that countries are suffering as a consequence of climate change and the huge costs that are involved. To date, there have been discussions around establishing a Loss and Damage fund, but that’s been moving very slowly, so I’m hoping to build further momentum to work on getting that fund agreed, and up and running.
The final issue is around access and inclusion. This is getting people who are most affected by climate change to be able to present their voices to climate change meetings. This is women, children, youth, people with disabilities, indigenous peoples, all the groups that are right at the forefront of climate change and human rights impacts. We need to find ways of getting their voice into the climate change process.
UN NEWS: What is the connection between human rights and these issues we see related to climate action
If we think about the floods in Nigeria and Pakistan, and the severe drought that’s occurring in Somalia now, people’s human rights are being affected as a consequence of climate change.
These are millions of people around the world whose basic enjoyment of human rights is being affected. So, we have to make that connection, we have to put a human face to climate change.
On 3 September 2022, four-year-old Rahim stands on the rubble of his house, destroyed by the floods in Pakistan.
UN NEWS: In the last UN Climate Conference, which was held in Glasgow in 2021, member states signed a declaration which finalized the negotiations of outstanding terms of the Paris Agreement. What do you expect countries will be speaking about during the upcoming COP in Egypt?
Well, there are a number of issues on the table. We’re leading up to what’s called the Global Stocktake [in 2023], this is a review of the implementation of the Paris Agreement. So, there are processes involved in establishing this review process.
I think that the crunch issue will be around this whole loss and damage debate. We’ve seen pushback by some key countries around advancing the issue, but the developing countries have unanimously said “we want loss and damage on the agenda” and civil society is saying the same thing.
UN NEWS: And what are the challenges regarding the loss and damage issue?
Well, there are major developed countries that are quite concerned about it and looking at this issue from the perspective of what the polluter pays. At the moment, the countries most affected by climate change and suffering the costs are having to deal with those costs themselves.
I was recently in Bangladesh and saw firsthand the impacts of climate change. And it’s unfair for countries like Bangladesh to have to deal with the cost of climate change on their own, which is not of their own making. So, the most vulnerable countries produce the least amount of emissions, yet they’re paying the cost of the damage from climate change.
So, it’s time the big countries, the major emitters, stood up and said, “we’ve got to do something, we’ve got to make a contribution to these vulnerable countries”.
Villagers in Pakistan’s Khairpur Mirs District in Sindh province cross flooded land to get to their homes.
UN NEWS: For you what would be the best outcome of this COP?
I’ve put forward a number of recommendations in my report. One of them is to commence a process to establish this Loss and Damage Fund.
We also must have a process to ensure greater participation, particularly for civil society, youth, and women groups, and to open up the COP to these groups to have a better say.
I would also like to see a revision of the Gender Action Plan since it’s quite old, it’s not well-developed. We know that there are critical issues of climate change impacts on women and young people, and those issues need to be brought and put forward onto the Agenda and Action Plan developed to address those issues.
There is a whole host of other issues that I’m looking at advancing. For example, the issue of increasing mitigation. I’m trying to suggest that parties should call for the UN Secretary-General to hold a special summit next year on ramping up pledging to reduce their emissions.
So hopefully that will come forward as well.
IOM/Anne Schaefer
An aerial view of N’djamena following heavy rains in August 2022.
UN NEWS: Since the Right to a Healthy Environment was declared a Universal Human Right, have you seen any changes implemented by countries?
I think countries are starting to see how they can implement that resolution. There’s certainly dialogue within countries.
I know the European Union is having discussions about how to incorporate that resolution within their national legislation, within constitutions. And I think regional bodies are also looking at that to develop regional agreements that bring on board that resolution.
UN NEWS: Do you think is possible at this point to keep the goal of curbing global warming to 1,5 degrees?
Well, it’s a challenge. We’re not seeing that with the current Nationally Determined Contributions and the sort of commitments that have been made by countries.
We’re heading on a pathway towards two to three degrees Celsius, so there has to be a lot more action to get countries to reduce their emissions.
The complication, of course, is the Ukraine war, where we’re seeing countries sort of having to find old sources of fossil fuel energy to replace what they’ve been deprived of, as a consequence of the war. So that’s the problem, and that’s been a distraction as well.
However, there’s a good side to it, I think countries are also saying that they need to be self-sufficient in energy and the cheapest way to do so is with renewable energy.
And we’re seeing Portugal moving towards 100 per cent renewable, we know Denmark is also doing that, and I think that will drive other countries to see the need to be renewable and self-sufficient in their energy.
Human Rights High Commissioner Volker Türk has deplored the deadly use of force against demonstrators, including killings by live ammunition, the Office said in a statement.
Thousands took to the streets in the capital, N’Djamena, and other cities on Thursday, to protest the 24-month extension of the transition to civilian rule.
‘Lethal repression’
Some 50 people were killed, including a journalist, and nearly 300 were injured.
“Our Office has also received reports of violence by protesters following the lethal repression, including attacks on property. We call for calm and for all sides to show restraint,” said OHCHR Spokesperson Ravina Shamdasani.
Reports indicate that at least 500 people were arrested. OHCHR has called for all persons detained for exercising their rights to peaceful assembly to be promptly released.
The protests erupted on the day the military were due to hand over power.
Political transition delayed
Chad has faced a political crisis since longtime President, Idriss Déby, died battling rebels in the north in April 2021.
The military installed his son, Mahamat Idriss Deby, who was supposed to step down on Thursday, but says he will rule for another two years.
Ms. Shamdasani said OHCHR’s Chad Office received information from sources that several hundred protesters, mostly young people, started demonstrating in N´Djamena early on Thursday.
Internal security forces used tear gas and fired live ammunition to disperse the protestors.
Respect human rights
OHCHR reminded the Chadian authorities of their obligation to protect and respect human rights, including the right to life, and to ensure that citizens can exercise their rights to peaceful assembly as well as freedom of opinion and expression.
“Defence and security forces must refrain from the use of force against peaceful protesters and ensure that force is not used unless strictly necessary and, if so, in full compliance with the principles of legality, precaution, and proportionality,” said Ms. Shamdasani.
OHCHR also urged the authorities to conduct impartial, prompt and effective investigations into any human rights violations that may have occurred, “including the apparent use of unnecessary or disproportionate force to disperse protests.”
IOM/Anne Schaefer
An aerial view of N’djamena following heavy rains in August 2022.
Devastating flooding
The crisis is occurring as Chad faces flooding affecting one million people. The heavy rains began in July, and 18 out of 23 provinces have been impacted.
Several neighborhoods in the capital are entirely submerged, and people have been forced to flee their homes, UN Spokesperson Stéphane Dujarric said on Thursday.
He added that some 465,000 hectares of agricultural land have been destroyed, which could further aggravate the already critical food insecurity situation in the country.
The UN and partners have so far delivered food, medicine, tents, mosquito nets, solar lamps and other items to some 200,000 people.
“The humanitarian community and Government’s joint flood response plan seeks nearly $70 million to reach 800,000 people, but so far it received only 25 per cent of the funding it needs,” said Mr. Dujarric.
The partners are ramping up efforts to mobilize resources to reach more people.
Criminal gangs have been blocking access to the main fuel terminal in the capital Port-au-Prince, bringing critical services to a standstill, as Haiti grapples with a widening cholera epidemic, amid political and economic meltdown.
‘Catastrophic’ hunger
“Catastrophic” levels of hunger have been recorded this month for the first time, in the gang controlled Cite Soleil neighbourhood, and 4.7 million people are facing acute hunger, with many losing access to jobs, markets, health and nutrition services.
Resolution 2653, drafted by the United States and Mexico, is the first sanctions regime adopted since that of Mali, just over five years ago. It establishes a committee which will be responsible for designating the individuals and entities to be sanctioned.
Enemy of the people
The resolution specifically sanctions notorious gang leader, Jimmy Cherizier, an ex-police officer who is reportedly the most powerful gang boss in the country, known by his alias “Barbeque”.
He heads the so-called “G9 Families and Allies”, and the annex notes that he has engaged in “acts that threaten the peace, security and stability of Haiti”, having planned or directed acts that amount to “serious human rights abuses.”
Asset freeze, travel ban, arms embargo
Sanctions include an assets freeze, travel ban and arms embargo, against those engaging in or supporting criminal activity and violence, involving armed groups and criminal networks.
Designated activity includes recruiting children, carrying out kidnappings, trafficking, murder and sexual and gender-based violence.
Crucially, the resolution also designates the obstruction of humanitarian assistance to and inside Haiti, and any attacks on personnel or premises, of UN missions and operations.
UN Photo/Manuel Elías
Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield of the United States addresses the UN Security Council meeting on Haiti.
Speaking in the Council chamber following the vote, US Ambassador and co-pen holder on Haiti, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, said the unanimous vote represented “an important step to help the Haitian people”, and was “truly reflective of Council consensus.”
‘Clear message’ to the gangs
She said the Council was “sending a clear message to the bad actors, that are holding Haiti hostage. The international community will not stand idly by, while you wreak havoc on the Haitian people.”
She said clear measurable and well-defined safeguards were also in place to review the effectiveness of the targeted sanctions, but the challenge now remained of restoring security and alleviating the humanitarian crisis.
Non-UN force in the pipeline
Ms. Thomas-Greenfield reminded that the US-Mexico are working on a resolution which will authorize a “non-UN international security assistance mission” to address security issues to facilitate humanitarian aid. This was not only in response to a request from the Haitian Government, but also an option suggested by the UN Secretary-General, she added.
![Pingalsinh Karsanbhai (right) feels that the project not only provides freedom from electricity bills, but "this saving is like a pension for our old age."](https://unitednations.entermediadb.net/assets/mediadb/services/module/asset/downloads/preset/Libraries/Production%20Library/21-10-22_Pingalsinh_Karsanbhai_and_Surajben%20.jpg/image1170x530cropped.jpg "Pingalsinh Karsanbhai (right) feels that the project not only provides freedom from electricity bills, but "this saving is like a pension for our old age."")
