OSLO, Norway, Dec 06 (IPS) – The pulverising of Gaza now ranks amongst the worst assaults on any civilian population in our time and age. Each day we see more dead children and new depths of suffering for innocent people enduring this hell.
Across the Gaza Strip, almost the entire population – 1.9 million people – have been displaced. Nearly two in three homes are now damaged or destroyed. Amid relentless air, land and sea attacks, thousands of families are forced to relocate from one perilous zone to another.
Today, more than 750,000 people are crowded into just 133 shelters. Tens of thousands live on the streets of southern Gaza, where, under bombardment, they are forced to improvise basic shelters from whatever they can get hold of.
The winter rains have arrived and so have infectious diseases, just as public health services have been utterly paralysed. Many of my own NRC staff members now live on the streets. One of them does so with her two-month-old baby.
Credit: NRC – Norwegian Refugee Council
Our colleagues in Gaza ask themselves a simple question: how is it that these atrocities are beamed across the world for all to witness, and yet so little is done to stop them?
Countries supporting Israel with arms must understand that these civilian deaths will be a permanent stain on their reputation. They must demand an immediate ceasefire in Israel and Gaza. Only a cessation of hostilities will allow us to ensure effective relief to the two million who now require it.
Severe restrictions on aid access have aggravated the situation, leading to starvation among Gaza’s population, intensifying an already dire humanitarian crisis. We have been forced to halt nearly all of our aid operations due to the bombardment, the chaos, and the panic.
There must be accountability for those responsible for the killings, the torture, and the atrocities committed in Israel on October 7th.
The killing of thousands of innocent children and women, the siege on an entire civilian population, and the trapping of bombarded civilians behind closed borders in Gaza are also crimes under international law.
There must also be accountability for this, from political and military leaders as well as those who provided arms and support. This military campaign can in no way be described as ‘self-defense.’
We again demand that all hostages are immediately and unconditionally released. Neither the lives of innocent children, women or men, nor the ability of aid workers to access the vulnerable, should be used as bargaining chips.
The situation in Gaza is a total failure of our shared humanity. The killing must stop.
Opinion by Bibbi Abruzzini, Nina Sangma (new delhi, india)
Inter Press Service
NEW DELHI, India, Dec 06 (IPS) – We, a global coalition of over 50 civil society and human rights organizations from over 30 countries have co-developed the “Civil Society Manifesto for Ethical AI”, a groundbreaking initiative aiming to steer AI policies towards safeguarding rights and deconolonising AI discourse. We question, and we are not the only ones: whose voices, ideas and values matter in AI ?
“If Silicon Valley was a country it would probably be the richest in the world. So how genuinely committed is Big Tech and AI to funding and fostering human rights over profits? The barebones truth is that if democracy was profitable, human rights lawyers and defenders including techtivists from civil society organizations wouldn’t be sitting around multistakeholder engagement tables demanding accountability from Big Tech and AI. How invested are they in real social impact centred on rights despite glaring evidence to the contrary?,” asks Nina Sangma, of the Asia Indigenous Peoples Pact, a regional organization founded in 1992 by Indigenous Peoples’ movements with over 40 members across 14 countries in the Asia-Pacific region.
We are currently at a critical juncture where most countries lack a comprehensive AI policy or regulatory framework. The sudden reliance on AI and other digital technologies has introduced new – and often “invisible” – vulnerabilities, and we have just seen the tip of the iceberg, literally melting from the effects of climate change.
Some things we have already seen though: AI is still a product of historical data representing inequities and inequalities. A study analyzing 100+ AI-generated images using Midjourney’s diffusion models revealed consistent biases, including depicting older men for specialized jobs, binary gender representations, featuring urban settings regardless of location, and generating images predominantly reinforcing “ageism, sexism and classism”, with a bias toward a Western perspective.
Data sources continue to be “toxic”. AI tools learn from vast amounts of training data, often consisting of billions of inputs scraped from the internet. This data risks to perpetuate harmful stereotypes and often contains toxic content like pornography, misogyny, violence, and bigotry. Furthermore, researchers found bias in up to 38.6% of ‘facts’ used by AI.
Despite increased awareness, the discourse surrounding AI, like the technology itself, has predominantly been shaped by “Western, whiteness, and wealth”. The discrimination that we see today is the result of a cocktail of “things gone wrong” – ranging from discriminatory hiring practices based on gender and race, to the prevalence of algorithms biases.
“Biases are not a coincidence. Artificial intelligence is a machine that draws conclusions from data based on statistical models, therefore, the first thing it eliminates is variations. And in the social sphere that means not giving visibility to the margins,” declares Judith Membrives i Llorens, head of digital policies at Lafede.cat – Organitzacions per la Justícia Global.
“AI development isn’t the sole concern here. The real issue stems from keeping citizens in the dark, restricting civic freedoms and the prevalence of polarisation and prejudice on several dimensions of our societies. This results in unequal access, prevalent discrimination, and a lack of transparency in technological processes and beyond. Despite acknowledging the potential and power of these technologies, it is clear that many are still excluded and left at the margins due to systemic flaws. Without addressing this, the global development of AI and other emerging technologies won’t be inclusive. Failure to act now and to create spaces of discussion for new visions to emerge, will mean these technologies continue to reflect and exacerbate these disparities,” says Mavalow Christelle Kalhoule, civil society leader in Burkina Faso and across the Sahel region, and Chair of the global civil society network Forus.
The Civil Society Manifesto for Ethical AI asks, what are the potential pitfalls of using current AI systems to inform future decisions, particularly in terms of reinforcing prevailing disparities?
Today, as EU policymakers are expected to close a political agreement for the AI Act, we ask, do international standards for regulating machine learning include the voice of the people? With the Manifesto we explore, challenge, disrupt, and reimagine the underlying assumptions within this discourse but also to broaden the discussion to incorporate communities beyond the traditional “experts.” Nothing about us, without us.
“We want Artificial Intelligence, but created by and for everyone, not only for a few,” adds Judith Membrives i Llorens.
From the “Internet of Cows” to the impact of AI on workers’ rights and on civic space, developed by over 50 civil society organisations, the Manifesto includes 17 case studies on their experiences, visions and stories around AI. With each story, we want to weave a different path to build new visions on AI systems that expand rather than restrict freedoms worldwide.
“The current development of AI is by no means an inevitable path. It is shaped by Big Tech companies because we let them. It is time for the civil society to stand up for their data rights,” says Camilla Lohenoja, of SASK, the workers’ rights organisation of the trade unions of Finland.
“Focusing on ethical and transparent technology also means giving equal attention to the fairness and inclusivity of its design and decision-making processes. The integrity of AI is shaped as much by its development as by its application,” says Hanna Pishchyk of the youth group Digital Grassroots.
Ultimately, the Manifesto aims to trigger a global – and not just sectorial and Western-dominated dialogue – on AI development and application.
Civil society is here not just as a mere token in multistakeholder spaces, we bring forward what others often dismiss, and we actively participate worldwide in shaping a technological future that embraces inclusivity, accountability, and ethical advancements.
Bibbi Abruzzini, Forus and Nina Sangma, Asia Indigenous Peoples Pact (AIPP)
BRUSSELS — Eva Kaili and Francesco Giorgi had left nothing to chance.
The duo that would later become the most famous — many would say infamous — couple in the European Union capital had been gearing up for this moment for years.
As Qatar prepared to host the 2022 FIFA World Cup, they were among the Gulf state’s fiercest advocates in Brussels, defending its record on human rights and fending off criticism of its treatment of migrant workers.
And now, less than a week before the high-profile soccer tournament was to kick off, it was all coming to a head. At a crucial hearing in the European Parliament, Qatar’s Labor Minister Ali bin Samikh Al Marri — aka “the Doctor” — would come in person to plead his case before the chamber’s human rights committee.
In the preceding days, Kaili, a Greek lawmaker who was then a vice president of the European Parliament, had ramped up her efforts. According to public records, interviews and a cache of investigative files seen by POLITICO, she had flown back and forth to Doha and spent hours pleading and cajoling fellow lawmakers to give Qatar a clean bill of health on human rights.
At several points, she turned to her partner, Giorgi, for advice. “Who else should I talk to?” she texted him on November 14, according to transcriptions of her WhatsApp messages included in the police investigation files.
While Kaili worked the phones, Giorgi, an Italian parliamentary assistant, had been putting the finishing touches to the Qatari minister’s speech. In police surveillance photographs taken three days before the hearing, he can be seen poring over the text with his longtime boss, Pier Antonio Panzeri — a former EU lawmaker who Belgian prosecutors would later describe as the mastermind of a sweeping cash-for-influence operation known as “Qatargate.”
Per their usual working method, the Italian-speaking Panzeri wrote the speech in his native language and then passed it on to Giorgi for translation. With one day to go, Giorgi and Kaili huddled with Al Marri in his suite at the 5-star Steigenberger Wiltcher’s hotel, according to hotel video recordings obtained by the police.
Finally, it was the big day. As the minister took to the stage on November 14, 2022, Kaili nervously texted her partner again to ask if she should show up in person.
“Don’t come,” Giorgi replied via WhatsApp. “I’m afraid you will be exposed. To enter with the baby, everyone will notice u.”
She replied: “I don’t want to be exposed.”
So she stayed with the couple’s child, while the rest of the key suspects in what would become the Qatargate scandal crowded into the auditorium where Al Marri — the man police would later describe as the leader in his country’s efforts to corrupt the European Parliament — was taking to the stage.
At a hearing, Ali bin Samikh Al Marri laid out the case for Qatar’s labor reforms and why his country deserved the world’s respect despite reports alleging abuse of migrant laborers | Pierre Albouy/EFE via EPA
If everything went well and Al Marri came out satisfied with their efforts over many months of lobbying, the Italian former lawmaker stood to make good on a long-standing business relationship he and Giorgi would later tell police was worth more than €4 million.
And if it failed? Nobody wanted to know.
As Al Marri spoke, laying out the case for Qatar’s labor reforms and why his country deserved the world’s respect despite reports alleging abuse of migrant laborers, Kaili and her partner of five years WhatsApped back and forth, as one might do while watching a major sporting event from two different locations.
“So Arabic and speaks without reading,” Giorgi texted.
A few minutes later, Kaili commented: “He’s losing it a bit.”
As other lawmakers took to the floor following Al Marri’s speech, she bristled at criticism of Qatar.
“Who is this fat,” she texted her partner, referring to one lawmaker, adding an adjective which to her was an insult: “Communist.”
As Al Marri wrapped up, the Greek lawmaker asked: “Why he didn’t follow the speech.”
Finally, it was over.
Giorgi texted Kaili: “Ela, we did everything we could.”
For the watch party, a major milestone had been crossed. A senior Qatari representative had been given a chance to address criticism in what could have been a fiercely critical environment.
So far, so good. Except what they didn’t know was that Giorgi and Panzeri had been under surveillance by Belgian secret services for months, suspected of taking part in a sweeping cash-for-influence scheme under which Qatar paid to obtain specific legislative outcomes. Their communications, including with Kaili and other suspects, would be scooped up as part of the wiretaps and the subsequent investigations.
Eva Kaili maintains her defense of Qatar was part of her job as a representative of the European Union | Julien Warnand/EFE via EPA
Kaili denies any wrongdoing in a scheme in which police say Panzeri and others accepted money from Qatar, Morocco and Mauritania in exchange for pushing their interests in the European Parliament. Kaili maintains her defense of Qatar was part of her job as a representative of the European Union and that the investigation into her actions breached the parliamentary immunity enjoyed by sitting MEPs.
There is no other evidence in the hundreds of pages of wiretapping by the secret services that indicates Kaili directly received money from Qatar or other countries. Giorgi has provided details of the operation to police, but his lawyer has argued his statements were extracted under duress.
And yet, as the pro-Qatar operation turned to its next challenges, Belgian investigators who had taken over the probe from the secret service were closing in.
On the morning of December 9, the trap slammed shut. Kaili, Giorgi, Panzeri and a couple of other suspects were arrested and thrown into jail on charges of corruption, money laundering and participating in a “criminal conspiracy.” Two other members of the European Parliament, Marc Tarabella and Andrea Cozzolino, would also be arrested and charged.
Police published photographs of bags stuffed full of hundreds of thousands of euros which they had recovered in Panzeri’s flat, at Kaili and Giorgi’s home and in a suitcase wheeled by Kaili’s father — instantly turning their probe into a page one news story for outlets around the Continent.
* * *
The shock arrests of one of the highest-ranking members of the European Parliament, her boyfriend and their alleged accomplices smashed open a window onto a murky world of lobbying for foreign governments in the heart of EU democracy.
The Brussels bubble, as the EU’s policymaking apparatus is known, likes to think of itself as a global paragon of democracy, transparency and respect for human rights. There’s another side of the EU capital, however — an ecosystem of hidden connections and low-grade corruption, of back-scratching politicians and the filter feeders that gravitate toward centers of political power and public largesse.
While the Qatargate case has yet to go to court and several of the key players, including Kaili, insist they are innocent of the charges, the scandal has already led to reforms. The European Parliament has introduced changes bolstering transparency, and the creation of an ethics body establishing common standards for EU civil servants is being negotiated.
The story of Qatargate is also still being written. And nobody better captures the human element of this complex affair — and the cozy, transactional world in which it took place — than Kaili and Giorgi.
Start with Kaili: A political celebrity in her native Greece, where she’d gained fame as a TV presenter, at the time of her arrest she was one of Brussels’ most prominent politicians, widely believed to be bound for higher office either within the EU system or back home. She’d recently had her first child with Giorgi, an ambitious parliamentary assistant nine years her junior whose wavy blond hair and dimpled smile were well known in the European Parliament.
Together, they formed a formidable power couple on the Brussels circuit — as well as a shining example of what Europeans hailing from their respective Mediterranean homelands can achieve in the EU system if they play their cards right.
And yet, in an instant, it was all over. Both of them were in jail, their reputations in tatters, their infant child outside and in the care of family members. In the space of a single morning, the EU capital’s golden couple had become the most notorious duo in town.
Pier Antonio Panzeri hired Francesco Giorgi as an intern in 2009 | European Union
To understand what propelled this sudden plunge, it helps to dial back the clock to the earliest days of their relationship, five years before anyone heard of the so-called Qatargate scandal.
It was a Monday in early 2017. Giorgi was at work doing a familiar task — interpreting for his language-challenged boss, Pier Antonio Panzeri, at a conference in Parliament.
The two men went back a long way. Panzeri had been Giorgi’s boss for nearly a decade already, having hired him first as an intern in 2009 and then as a full-blown accredited assistant. The elder Italian was a well-known politician in Parliament — a shrewd operator on the left wing of Italy’s Partito Democratico, a trade union veteran from Milan who turned to international affairs late in his 15-year parliamentary career.
But he was a man of his generation — only really comfortable speaking in Italian and, according to Giorgi, unable to switch on a computer.
For all of those things, there was Giorgi. Then aged around 30, he was in a good place professionally and socially. Like thousands of Italians who flock to Brussels every year, he looked to the EU system as a land of opportunity. And the system had served him well. Paid handsomely, he had a front-row seat on his boss’s dealings, which included travel to places like Rabat, Morocco and Doha, Qatar, as well as more mundane tasks.
But nearly 10 years in, Giorgi was ready for change. And little did he know, the embodiment of that change was about to walk in the door.
While Kaili and Giorgi had seen each other in the halls of the European Parliament a few times since her election in 2014, according to her interviews with Belgian police, that Monday meeting in Brussels would stick out for them as their first proper encounter.
The mutual interest must have been powerful because it’s hard to overstate the disparity, in terms of age and political and financial power, that separated Giorgi from Kaili as she walked in, heading a NATO delegation.
To put it bluntly, Giorgi was a cog in the machine with no political weight. By contrast, Kaili was already a well-established politician in Brussels and very well plugged-in with Greece’s political and business elite. She had barreled her way up through the ranks of the Greek socialist party, PASOK, while still in her twenties, before making the jump to the European Parliament in 2014. In her office, Kaili employed no fewer than three Giorgis.
And yet the young Italian, who’d grown up sailing in the Mediterranean and skiing in the French Alps, decided to try his luck. According to Kaili’s testimony to police, after this initial encounter, the two of them dined “two or three times.” Giorgi spent the better part of a year trying to woo the Greek lawmaker, but it was tough going as she claimed to be far too busy with her work to carve out time for a serious relationship.
It was only after about a year, she said, that things became “serious.” Marking the transition from casual dating to partnership, they made a shared commitment: co-investing in an apartment located just behind their shared place of work, the European Parliament. It was Christmas Eve, 2019, according to Giorgi’s statements to police.
After Kaili returned to Greece in 2019 to campaign for reelection, Giorgi joined her a few months later. In February 2021, they were joined by a baby girl.
Eva Kaili returned to Greece in 2019 to campaign for reelection | Menelaos Myrillas/SOOC/AFP via Getty Images
But that’s where their story departs from the norm. Most wage-earning couples don’t live surrounded by stacks of cash. Most EU bubble couples don’t possess a “go bag” brimming with bank notes, or end up as suspects in sprawling corruption probes.
Part of the explanation can be found in their link to Panzeri, the Svengali-like third wheel in their relationship, whom Giorgi described initially as a “father figure” and whom Kaili later called a manipulator taking advantage of her boyfriend’s “idealistic” personality.
Indeed, in his interviews with Belgian investigators, Giorgi traces back the “original sin” of his involvement in Qatargate to a deal he agreed to with Panzeri shortly after becoming his employee in 2009. Under that arrangement, Giorgi allegedly agreed to pay Panzeri back €1,500 per month of his wages in exchange for the privilege of working for him, a relatively common scheme in the Parliament. (As a point of comparison, when the scandal broke, Giorgi was earning some €6,600 per month as an assistant to a different MEP).
The deal was to prove an introduction to a transactional world in which Panzeri — as a lawmaker and later, as the head of Fight Impunity, a nongovernmental organization he launched after leaving Parliament — had no trouble accepting large sums of cash from foreign governments in exchange for services rendered.
From 2018, Giorgi and Panzeri dove headlong into a partnership allegedly based on lobbying for Qatar in exchange for big cash payments. According to Giorgi’s statements to police, they agreed on a long-term lobbying agreement worth an estimated €4.5 million and to be split 60/40, with the larger share going to Panzeri.
Once arrested, Giorgi and Panzeri would butt heads about the precise role of each in the lobbying arrangement. But one of the younger Italian’s key tasks was to pick up cash payments at various places around Brussels, often from total strangers. Once he picked up €300,000 in cash near the Royal Palace from a person driving a black Audi with Dutch license plates. Another time, the drop-off happened in a parking lot near the canal.
In total, there were around ten such drop-offs, two or three per year, with the smallest amount around €50,000.
The alleged quid pro quo was that Giorgi and Panzeri would deliver specific parliamentary and public relations outcomes to their clients, which in addition to Qatar included Morocco and Mauritania. The ever-meticulous Giorgi kept a spreadsheet on his computer on which he documented hundreds of influence activities that the network allegedly carried out between 2018 and 2022.
It records more than 300 pieces of work, using a network of aides inside parliament whom they called their “soldiers,” according to the files.
Even as they pressed their clients’ interests, they were also trying to exploit their lack of familiarity with the workings of the bubble, reporting certain actions that, according to Giorgi, they actually had no influence over.
The scheme, Giorgi later told police, “relied on the ignorance of how parliament works” — on the part of the duo’s clients.
Panzeri, through his lawyer, declined to comment for this article.
* * *
As Giorgi dug deeper into his partnership with Panzeri, his romance with Kaili was expanding into a business partnership.
While each already had other properties — including Kaili’s two apartments in Athens (which she said were worth a combined €400,000) and one in Brussels (estimated by Kaili at €160,000) and one belonging to Giorgi purchased for €145,000 in Brussels — they were soon eyeing other purchases.
Eva Kaili and Francesco Giorgi purchased a flat near the European Parliament for €375,000 in 2019 | Leon Neal/Getty Images
After the Christmas Eve purchase of their flat near the Parliament for €375,000 in 2019, they purchased a plot of land on the Greek island of Paros for €300,000 in 2021 which they planned to develop into four holiday villas and at least one swimming pool, according to files recovered from Giorgi’s computer in a folder called “Business”. Then, in 2022, came the purchase of their second apartment, a penthouse right next to the Parliament, worth €650,000, according to Giorgi’s statements to police.
All told, the couple’s joint real estate purchases amounted to more than €1.3 million over a period of two years.
In between these purchases, there were other expenses: sailing holidays, a Land Rover bought for €56,000 and a fully refurbished kitchen. On several occasions, the couple sought to minimize their outlay by exploiting their insiders’ knowledge of the system.
According to documents seized at Giorgi’s home, a Qatari diplomat helped him get a discount on the Land Rover by taking advantage of special conditions for diplomatic staff, reducing the sticker price by about €10,000.
By any normal standards, Kaili and Giorgi were already wealthy based on their income.
In addition to taking home €6,600 per month as a parliamentary assistant, Giorgi received €1,000 in social benefits for their daughter, €1,800per month from the rental to the Mauritanian ambassador and — since the envoy never occupied the flat — €1,200 in cash from two women to whom he sublet the flat for a few months.
As for Kaili, she earned about €10,000 before taxes plus about €900 in monthly rent from a flat she owned in Brussels.
All told, the couple was pulling in well over €20,000 per month, an eye-watering amount in a country where the median monthly wage is €3,507 before taxes.
Yet even these substantial monthly earnings seem not to have covered the mounting costs related to their real estate investments or make the couple feel fully secure. Despite the fact her partner was pulling in more than three times the Belgian median wage, Kaili would tell police during the first interview after her arrest: “I know that Francesco doesn’t have a lot of money because he isn’t able to partake in all of our expenses.”
What motivated this drive for accumulation? According to a person who knew Kaili professionally and asked not to be named due to fear of retaliation, the answer lies partly in her background growing up without much money in Thessaloniki, Greece. “It feels like she grew up with a lot of deprivations,” the person said. “She wanted to feel that even if she quits politics, she will have a comfortable life.”
According to a person who knew Kaili professionally, the answer to her drive for accumulation lies partly in her background growing up without much money in Thessaloniki | Sakis Mitrolidis/AFP via Getty Images
As a result, Kaili tended to be very focused on financial opportunities. “She loved people with power and money. She was always, ‘You know this event is going to have businessmen,’” the person added. “And she always liked to have houses and property stuff, but she was never into luxury stuff.”
As for Giorgi, the son of a school director and import-export entrepreneur, he grew up in more comfortable circumstances in a town near Milan.
But as the junior partner in his relationship with Kaili, he may have struggled to keep up financially with a partner who earned more than he did and kept company with wealthy entrepreneurs and crypto bros.
“I have never loved luxury. I don’t know why I lost my way,” he told police during his first interview shortly after his arrest.
* * *
In interviews with police, Giorgi admitted to being part of a scheme, with Panzeri, to take hundreds of thousands of euros in cash from foreign governments — admissions his lawyer now says he made under pressure from police who he says threatened to take away his daughter.
But Kaili always maintained that she had nothing to do with the setup. Not only does she claim ignorance about the ultimate source of much of the money found in her apartment, and on her father; she also told police that she had nothing to do with Panzeri and Giorgi’s deals with foreign governments — an argument that her partner has always backed up, telling police early on that she had nothing to do with the scheme.
Panzeri, however, says the opposite. He alleges that in the spring of 2019, Kaili was part of a pact struck with Qatar to fund several MEPs’ election campaigns to the tune of €250,000 each. Giorgi and Panzeri both attest that a deal like this took place — but disagree on whether Kaili was involved.
In any case, having forged a reputation as a tech policymaker, Kaili’s work as a lawmaker veered suddenly toward the Middle East and the world of human rights, particularly in the Gulf, from 2017 onwards the year she met Giorgi. She traveled to Qatar for the first time later that year, at the invitation of another lawmaker, and made trips — some with Giorgi, some without — in 2020 and 2022.
In early 2022, just after she became a Parliament vice president, she asked the chamber’s president, Roberta Metsola, to give her files related to the Middle East and human rights. “I hope I didn’t make it difficult for you,” Kaili WhatsApped Metsola. “You gave me everything I love the most!” She was later designated as the vice president who would replace Metsola in her absence on issues related to the Middle East.
In the days and weeks leading up to the kickoff of the World Cup, Kaili and Giorgi’s work increasingly overlapped on two main files: opposition to a resolution critical of Qatar and a deal Doha was seeking with the EU that would allow its citizens to travel to the bloc without a visa.
On November 12, two days before Qatar’s labor minister would appear before the European Parliament, she reached out to Metsola, offering her tickets to the tournament in Doha.
“My dear President!” she wrote to Metsola. “Hope you are well. I have to pass you an invitation for the World Cup, you [sic] or your husband and boys might be interested,” she wrote on WhatsApp.
Eva Kaili reached out to European Parliament President Roberta Metsola, offering her tickets to the World Cup in Doha | Sean Gallup/Getty Images
It’s not clear what, if anything, Kaili asked from Metsola in exchange for the tickets. Throughout her dealings with lawmakers over Qatar, the Greek lawmaker would occasionally delete the messages she had sent. This includes her side of the rest of the conversation with Metsola — except for one text: “The rest I disagree too but I believe they will digest if we get the visa,” she wrote.
(A spokesperson for the Parliament president said Metsola never accepted any tickets to the World Cup and did not read Kaili’s messages before they were deleted.)
With the World Cup having started, the next big challenge awaiting Kaili, Giorgi and Panzeri was a plenary session in Strasbourg where rival politicians aimed to criticize Qatar’s human rights record weeks before the World Cup by putting a resolution on the agenda. Once again, they ramped up their lobbying.
So noticeable was the pro-Qatari line being pushed by Kaili and others affiliated with Panzeri that it started raising eyebrows among their colleagues.
“There were some very strange opinions being voiced on how we should not criticize Qatar, and we should rather recognize the reforms they were making and so on,” remembered Niels Fuglsang, a Danish MEP from the same S&D group. “I thought it was obvious that our group should criticize this, we are social democrats, we care about workers’ rights and migrants’ rights.”
For example, on November 21, Kaili pressed José Ramón Bauzá Díaz, a Spanish centrist MEP who ran the Qatari-EU friendship group, over his political faction’s stance on the resolution, poised to slam Qatar’s human rights track record.
“So, your group wants to vote in favor of a resolution Against Qatar World Cup,” she WhatsApped to him. He said: “It is crazy.” She went on to press him to take a pro-Qatari stance and reject the resolution.
Later that day, in a now-infamous video, Kaili took to the stage during Parliament’s plenary session and sung the praises of Qatar. “I alone said that Qatar is a front-runner in labor rights,” she said. “Still, some here are calling to discriminate them. They bully them and they accuse everyone that talks to them, or engages, of corruption. But still, they take their gas.”
With a crunch vote on the resolution’s final wording still to take place on November 24, Kaili was still going strong, texting with Abdulaziz bin Ahmed Al Malki, the Gulf country’s envoy to the European Union and NATO.
During this exchange, the Qatari gave Kaili direct instructions to take action on legislation of interest to Qatar.
“Hi Iva,” wrote the Qatari in a WhatsApp message on November 24. “My dear my ministry doesn’t want paragraph A about FIFA & Qatar. Please do your best to remove it via voting before 12 noon or during the voting please.”
Kaili deleted her responses.
Eva Kaili has challenged the lifting of her immunity in an EPPO investigation at the European Court of Justice | Nicolas Bouvy/EPA via EFE
But the recipient appeared to be pleased with what she texted, writing back a few hours later: “Thanks excellency” with a hands-clasped-in-prayer emoji.
The Qatar Embassy in Brussels and the spokesperson’s office in Doha did not respond to requests for comment.
* * *
Plainclothes Belgian police arrested Giorgi at 10:42 a.m. on December 9 at his home in Brussels. Earlier, they had picked up Panzeri. According to her statements to police, Kaili did not immediately know what had happened and originally thought Giorgi was involved in a car accident. She was told by police that her partner had been arrested.
Having tried and failed to get through by phone to Panzeri and his friends, Kaili set about trying to get rid of the stacks of cash in her apartment.
She headed to the safe that Giorgi had installed in their apartment and started to shovel stacks of bills into a travel bag. On top of them, she placed baby bottles for her child as well as a mobile phone and a laptop computer. Then she told her father, a civil engineer and sometime political operator who was visiting the family in Brussels, to take the bag and go to a hotel, where her father’s partner and Kaili’s baby were waiting. “I didn’t leave him the choice,” she later told police. “I just said, ‘Take this and go.’”
A few hours later, police followed Kaili’s father as he walked to the Sofitel, a short distance from their flat. According to a person familiar with the details of the investigation, bank notes were fluttering out of the bag as he went. Cops stoppedKaili’s father inside the hotel, seized the suitcase and detained him. Then it was Kaili’s turn. In the early afternoon, police detained her and took her to the Prison de Saint-Gilles.
The next day, the European Public Prosecutor’s Office (EPPO) announced it was investigating Kaili and another Greek member of Parliament in a probe looking at whether she took kickbacks from her assistant’s salaries as well as cuts of their reimbursements for “fake” work trips. Kaili has challenged the lifting of her immunity in this case at the European Court of Justice.
As the one-year anniversary of her spectacular downfall has approached, Kaili and her lawyers have done their best to turn the tables on the prosecutors, casting doubt on the evidence gathered against her and the way the investigation was carried out. Since her arrest, and through a four-month incarceration, Kaili has never wavered from her story. Her advocacy for Qatar, she has argued, was just part of her job as a European politician trying to foster ties with a petroleum-rich country in a region of critical importance to the EU.
Kaili’s lawyers have argued that the testimony provided by Panzeri, who has struck a deal with investigators and confessed in detail, cannot be trusted. Giorgi’s lawyer, Pierre Monville, has maintained his client’s statements were made under duress. “Whatever Giorgi has declared or written during his detention was under extreme pressure and preoccupation regarding the fact that his daughter was left without her parents,” he said.
Kaili’s lawyers have also noted that police kept Panzeri and Giorgi in the same cell in the days after their detention, giving them a chance to coordinate their stories. Kaili’s lawyers argue she was subjected to illegal surveillance, arbitrary detention and what amounts to “torture” while in jail.
The Qatargate suspects won a major victory last summer when the lead investigator, Michel Claise, stepped down over conflict-of-interest concerns after it was revealed that his son was in business with the son of an MEP who was close to Panzeri but hasn’t been arrested or charged.
Then, in September, Kaili played the ace up her sleeve, throwing the entire investigation in doubt with a legal challenge arguing that the evidence against her should be ruled inadmissible because it was gathered before the European Parliament voted to lift the immunity she enjoyed as a lawmaker.
The Qatargate suspects won a major victory last summer when the lead investigator, Michel Claise, stepped down over conflict-of-interest concerns | BELPRESS
Prosecutors retort that such a step wasn’t needed because Kaili had been caught red-handed by her decision to send her father out with a suitcase full of cash, but the case has been delayed pending a decision on her challenge by an appeals court expected in the middle of next year.
“We’re exploring uncharted legal territory here,” said a person familiar with the case, who requested anonymity as they were not allowed to speak on the record. In the meantime, Kaili is back in Parliament, giving interviews to international media and losing few opportunities to make the case for her innocence to her fellow lawmakers.
Giorgi and Kaili are, by all accounts, living together again. One of her lawyers says they’ve been given dispensation to do so, despite the fact that they are suspects in the same case.
Kaili and Giorgi declined to comment for this article, but they clearly haven’t given up the fight. Giorgi’s WhatsApp status is “FORTITUDINE VINCIMUS” — through endurance, we conquer.
Kaili’s profile pic on the app features the famous quote often wrongly attributed to Mahatma Gandhi:
“First they ignore you.
Then they laugh at you.
Then they fight you.
Then you win.”
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Nicholas Vinocur, Elisa Braun, Eddy Wax and Gian Volpicelli
“Silence the guns and return to dialogue – the suffering inflicted on civilians is too much to bear. More violence is not the answer. It will bring neither peace nor security,” Volker Türk said in a statement, voicing deep concern that negotiations towards a continuation of last week’s pause had reportedly stalled.
Fighting resumed on Friday and hundreds of Palestinians have been killed by Israeli bombardments, he said, citing the Gaza Ministry of Health.
No aid entered the enclave via the Rafah crossing with Egypt on Friday, and delivery on Saturday was restricted, further impacting humanitarian operations to support millions amid a scarcity of food, water, fuel and other basic essentials.
No safe place
Mr. Türk feared the renewed and intensified hostilities would lead to even more death, disease, and destruction.
“As a result of Israel’s conduct of hostilities and its orders for people to leave the north and parts of the south, hundreds of thousands are being confined into ever smaller areas in southern Gaza without proper sanitation, access to sufficient food, water and health supplies, even as bombs rain down around them,” he said, adding “there is no safe place in Gaza.”
He stressed that international law and human rights law uphold the protection of civilians and the facilitation of unimpeded humanitarian access to people in need.
Concern for north Gaza
The UN human rights chief also highlighted how hundreds of thousands of people remaining in northern Gaza are at renewed risk of bombardment and continue to be deprived of food and other essentials.
He said this appalling situation and the orders to move south means people are essentially being forced to move in what appears to be an attempt to empty northern Gaza of Palestinians.
“The world bore witness of week upon week of horror since this latest crisis began, marked by extremely grave concerns around wilful killing of civilians, firing of indiscriminate rockets, indiscriminate attacks using explosive weapons with wide-area effects in populated areas, forms of collective punishment, obstruction of humanitarian aid, and hostage-taking – all forbidden under international law,” he said.
He added that extremely serious allegations of multiple and grave breaches of international law must be fully investigated and those responsible held to account. In cases where national authorities prove unwilling or unable to carry out such investigations and prosecutions, international investigation is necessary.
Change course now
He urged Member States to do everything in their power to ensure all parties comply with their obligations under international law and prevent the commission of international crimes.
“The time to change course is now. Those that choose to flout international law are on notice that accountability will be served. No-one is above the law,” he said.
WHO calls for ceasefire
The head of the World Health Organization (WHO) also called for a ceasefire in Gaza in a post on social media on Saturday.
WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said the reports of ongoing hostilities and bombardment were “petrifying”.
He said a WHO team visited Nassar Medical Hospital in southern Gaza on Friday, where countless people had sought shelter and patients were receiving care on the floor.
“These conditions are beyond inadequate -unimaginable for the provision of health care,” he wrote on X, formerly Twitter. “I cannot find words strong enough to express our concern over what we’re witnessing. Ceasefire. NOW.”
Yamide Dagnet points to the urgency of climate action to meet the Paris Agreements, while protecting frontline communities and about 70 000 attendees grapple with issues during the UN Climate Change Conference COP28. Credit: COP28/Walaa Alshaer
by Umar Manzoor Shah (dubai)
Inter Press Service
DUBAI, Dec 03 (IPS) – Yamide Dagnet, the Director for Climate Justice at Open Society Foundations, delves into the intricacies of the negotiations at the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) 27th session of the Conference of Parties (COP28) in Dubai.As the world converges for COP 28, the urgency of addressing climate change has never been more palpable. In an exclusive interview with IPS, Yamide Dagnet, the Director for Climate Justice at Open Society Foundations, delves into the intricate details of this pivotal conference—from the unprecedented start to key challenges and opportunities in climate finance. She offers a comprehensive and nuanced perspective on global climate discourse.
As COP 28 unfolds, this interview provides a panoramic view of the complex landscape of climate action. From the challenges of climate finance to the critical role of the private sector and the ethical considerations in technology deployment, Dagnet offers a roadmap for navigating the intricate terrain of climate change, including an urgent call to action urging global leaders, businesses, and civil society to address the challenges that lie ahead collaboratively. As the world grapples with the consequences of climate change, the interview serves as a compass, guiding stakeholders towards a more sustainable and resilient future, and her voice clearly articulates her views that while the just energy and industrial revolution hold immense potential for economic growth in resource-rich nations, it is crucial to protect the rights of frontline communities and activists.
The Start of COP 28
The conference’s initial day set an unprecedented tone. “Positive developments like the creation of the Loss and Damage Fund and sizeable pledges, especially from countries like the UAE, Germany, and the EU, are highlights of this momentum’s emphasis on international solidarity; I hope that the momentum generated on day one will permeate the entirety of COP 28,” Dagnet told Inter Press Service.
Yamide Dagnet, Director for Climate Justice at Open Society Foundations. Credit: TJ Kirkpatrick, Open Society Foundations
Wealthier Nations and Climate Change
Dagnet delves into the role of wealthier nations in the fight against climate change. “While there is an expectation for these nations to fulfil their commitments, reality paints a different picture. Adaptation finance has not seen the necessary investment,” she said while pointing to a critical gap in addressing the immediate impacts of climate change. Looking at the financial dynamics, Dagnet dissected the pledges made by key nations and highlighted the ongoing challenges in reaching the financial targets made since 2009 and outlined in the Paris Agreement. Dagnet contends that “fulfilling pledges and demonstrating seriousness are essential steps for wealthier nations to regain trust and ensure a unified front in the fight against climate change.”
Key Trends in Climate Change Policy
Transitioning into a discussion on key trends shaping climate change policy in the next decade, Dagnet underscored the critical importance of aligning investments with the goals of the Paris Agreement. A concerning trend emerges as she highlights the “doubling of subsidies for fossil fuels, signaling a misalignment with the imperative to transition to clean energy. There is a need to redirect investments toward clean energy, adaptation, and activities in line with the Paris Agreement.”
Dagnet also highlights the challenge of balancing economic goals while adhering to climate policies, emphasizing the integration of climate policy into the broader development agenda. She illustrated the economic risks posed by climate-related disasters, citing examples of hurricanes causing widespread destruction. “Resilient infrastructure is vital, as even substantial economic gains can be wiped out if development projects are not resilient to floods, hurricanes, and other climate-related events,” she said.
Exploring the business sense of investing in reducing emissions, Dagnet highlights that, with the decreasing costs of renewable energy, it is not only an environmental imperative but also financially prudent. “The cost-effectiveness of renewable energy makes a compelling case for nations to prioritize emission reduction efforts, aligning economic goals with sustainable development,” she said.
It also means recognizing that the rare transition minerals needed to scale up the use of renewable energy require a just energy and industrial revolution, which holds immense potential for economic growth in resource-rich nations.
“However, the risk of human rights abuses and other adverse effects should be taken into account and mitigated by focusing on value addition in mineral supply chains by reconciling with the protection of activists and frontline communities, including people’s rights in land use, labor, and conservation of cultural heritage.”
The Role of the Private Sector
Dagnet further delves into the role of the private sector in climate action, focusing on areas such as adaptation and loss and damage. She acknowledged the challenges faced by the private sector in engaging with these aspects, emphasizing the need for them to integrate climate risk into their business models. “While adaptation may not seem immediately profitable, the long-term consequences of inaction are severe,” she says. She suggests that insurance companies need to review their business models, considering how they can better contribute to tackling losses and damages.
Technology for Addressing Climate Change
Turning to the role of technology in addressing climate change, Dagnet discussed the potential and pitfalls. She advocates for a “balanced approach that leverages indigenous knowledge alongside technological solutions. Dagnet highlights the importance of proper assessment, monitoring, safeguards, and global governance to mitigate the risks associated with less-proven and more controversial solutions like geoengineering, carbon dioxide removal, and carbon capture and storage. This is critical for responsible technology deployment, recognizing that while technology can offer solutions, it must be guided by ethical considerations, an understanding of potential risks, and the design of appropriate guardrails to minimize unintended adverse impacts.” She suggested that a holistic approach, which includes both technological advancements and indigenous knowledge, together with a more participatory process bringing various constituencies from both the global north and global south, provides a more robust foundation for addressing climate change challenges in an innovative and equitable way.
Civil Society’s Accountability Role
Dagnet further highlighted the vital role of civil society in holding governments accountable for their climate commitments, including their financial pledges. She contends that efforts to “measure progress and scrutinize government actions are essential tools for civil society to hold governments accountable for their commitments.” She also acknowledged the power of public pressure to drive governments to take more ambitious climate action. Dagnet emphasized the need for a multi-faceted approach, combining legal frameworks, grassroots movements, and international collaboration based on robust data and supported by nuanced and more sophisticated communication strategies, to hold governments accountable on the global stage effectively.
Assessment of International Agreements
Dagnet provided a sober assessment of the international agreements reached so far in the fight against climate change. She also acknowledged that the world is far from achieving its climate objectives, and the window to meet temperature goals is shrinking rapidly. But like many climate justice avengers, she is not defeated and points out ways COP28 and its global stocktake can create an inflection point, with a “course correction pathway” that highlights the need for increased attention to scaling up efforts to keep global temperature increases to 1.5 degrees Celsius and enhance resilience, especially in the face of recent climate-related disasters globally. “No country is immune to the disasters the climate change is unleashing. It is imperative to scale up and speed up efforts to keep fossil fuels on the ground while focusing on building resilience to mitigate the impact of climate change,” she concluded.
SANTIAGO, Chile — In Chile, leftists were tortured, tossed from helicopters and forced to watch relatives be raped. In Argentina, many were “disappeared” by members of the brutal military dictatorship that held detainees in concentration camps.
It all happened with the endorsement of Henry Kissinger, the former U.S. secretary of state who died Wednesday at age 100.
As tributes poured in for the towering figure who was the top U.S. diplomat under Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford, the mood was decidedly different in South America, where many countries were scarred deeply during the Cold War by human rights abuses inflicted in the name of anti-communism and where many continue to harbor a deep distrust of their powerful neighbor to the north.
“I don’t know of any U.S. citizen who is more deplored, more disliked in Latin America than Henry Kissinger,” said Stephen Rabe, a retired University of Texas at Dallas history professor who wrote a book about Kissinger’s relationship with Latin America. “You know, the reality is, if he had traveled once democracy returned to Argentina, to Brazil, to Uruguay — if he had traveled to any of those countries he would have been immediately arrested.”
There is likely no starker example of Kissinger’s meddling with democracy in the region and then supporting brutality in the name of anti-communism than Chile.
In Chile, Kissinger played a key role in the efforts to do everything in the United States’ power to undermine and weaken the socialist government of Salvador Allende, who was elected president in 1970. Kissinger then used his sway to prop up the military dictatorship of Gen. Augusto Pinochet, who rose to power in a 1973 coup, repeatedly refusing to call attention to the numerous human rights violations of Pinochet’s regime, which murdered opponents, canceled elections, restricted the media, suppressed labor unions and disbanded political parties.
Kissinger long alleged that he wasn’t aware of the human rights abuses that were committed in the region, but records show that this wasn’t the case, said Peter Kornbluh, a senior analyst at the National Security Archive that is in charge of its Chile project.
“The declassified historical record, the documents that Kissinger wrote, read and said, leave no doubt that he was the chief architect of the U.S. policy to destabilize the Allende government and that he was also the chief enabler of helping the Pinochet regime consolidate what became a bloody, 17-year infamous dictatorship,” Kornbluh said.
Kissinger was “somewhat obsessed” with Allende’s government, fearing that the rise of a socialist government through democratic means could have a contagion effect in the region, said Chilean Sen. José Miguel Insulza, a former secretary general of the Organization of American States who served as a foreign policy adviser in Allende’s government.
“For him, any action that meant defending the national interest of the United States seemed justifiable,” Insulza said.
Kissinger feared what Allende’s government could mean for the world.
“In geopolitical terms, Kissinger considered the rise of a left-wing coalition to power through democratic means even more dangerous than the example set by Cuba. Indeed, this could be replicated in Western countries with powerful communist parties in terms of electoral influence, such as in Italy,” said Rolando Álvarez, a history professor at the University of Santiago, Chile.
Kissinger was seemingly unaffected by tales of suffering at the hands of military officers, even though his own family arrived in the U.S. as refugees who had to flee Nazi Germany in his teens.
“By the end of 1976, State Department aides were telling Henry Kissinger, a Jew, that Jews were being targeted in Argentina,” Rabe said. “And Kissinger just didn’t do anything.”
In Chile’s neighbor, Argentina, a military junta rose to power in 1976 vowing to combat leftist “subversives.” Kissinger made clear he had no objections to their brutal tactics and repeatedly ignored calls from other State Department officials to raise more concerns about human rights violations.
In a June 1976 meeting, Kissinger had a message for Argentina’s foreign minister, Admiral César Augusto Guzzetti: “If there are things that have to be done, you should do them quickly.” He later reiterated that support during a meeting in October 1976 — a time when Argentine officials were worried the U.S. would raise human rights concerns amid increasing reports of torture and disappearances.
Guzzetti was “overjoyed” at the meetings, and “had felt that Kissinger had given him the signal that the United States had no objection to wholesale slaughter,” Rabe said.
Kissinger had a similar attitude toward other military dictatorships in the region, including in Uruguay and Brazil, and never raised objections to what was known as Operation Condor, a clandestine program that allowed military regimes in that part of the world to illegally pursue, detain, torture and assassinate political dissidents who fled their countries.
That attitude made a lasting imprint on Latin Americans’ psyche.
“At least here in Latin America, what I perceived in Henry Kissinger’s vision is very negative because it’s a kind of anything goes mentality. No matter how brutal the dictatorship is that must be supported, it doesn’t matter,” said Francisco Bustos, a human rights lawyer and professor at the University of Chile.
Decades later, the effects of that policy are still being felt in a region that feels the U.S. would go to any lengths to support its interests.
“There is a segment of political parties and movements in Latin America, including Chile, where the relationship with the United States is essentially marked by anti-imperialism. This perspective essentially sees any U.S. administration, whether Democratic or Republican, liberal, progressive, or ultraconservative, as more or less the same,” said Gilberto Aranda, an international relations professor at the University of Chile.
Although U.S. intervention in a region that was often referred to as “America’s backyard” has a long history, Kissinger seemed to take that into overdrive.
It’s no surprise then that one of the harshest reactions to Kissinger’s death came from a Chilean official.
“A man has died whose historical brilliance never managed to conceal his profound moral misery,” Chile’s ambassador to the United States, Juan Gabriel Valdes, posted on the social media platform X. Chile’s leftist President Gabriel Boric then retweeted the message.
Northern night in Kirkenes, 400 kilometres north of the Arctic Circle. This Norwegian town on the Russian border has become home to four exiled Russian journalists. Credit: Elizaveta Vereykina/IPS
by Karlos Zurutuza (madrid)
Inter Press Service
MADRID, Nov 29 (IPS) – At 400 kilometres north of the Arctic Circle, Russian journalist Giorgi Chentemirov says he had already been out of the country for six months when the Russian Ministry of Justice labeled him a “foreign agent.”
“I was informed of this development last March. I won’t say it came as a surprise to me but it still made me worried,” the journalist explains to IPS by telephone from Kirkenes, a Norwegian town with just over 4,000 inhabitants bordering Russia.
Chentemirov, 38, is one of many journalists who have been forced to leave the country in the past two years. He labels Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine — in February 2022 —as a “turning point” for the press in Russia.
“The Censorship Law was passed under which it was considered a crime to talk about ‘war’ in Ukraine instead of ‘special operation’. We could only cite official sources, excluding even those from the UN. Going off script, even today, can lead to long prison sentences,” recalls the Russian journalist.
Beyond his prominence in Russian media, Chentemirov also served as the president of the Union of Journalists of Karelia, his regional jurisdiction. “Despite the subservience of the Union of Russian Journalists is, we were very independent, we were never silent,” he underscores.
Chentemirov speaks of a country where censorship is also exercised by blocking countless web pages and social networks and where many editors live under the pressure that an out-of-tone article may force them to fold.
“Unfortunately, real journalism in Russia involves signing with pseudonyms to protect your identity and publishing for media outlets that are not in the country,” explains Chentemirov.
Thomas Nilsen, editor-in-chief of the Barents Observer (right), poses with some of the latest additions to his staff, including Elizaveta Vereykina and Georgi Chentemirov (second from left). Credit: Barents Observer
Today he works for the Barents Observer, a digital media that has collaborated with Russian journalists for 20 years and has recently added three other Russian journalists to its staff.
“It is key to have a Russian-speaking media that can call a war ‘war’, and that covers topics banned in Russia such as certain civil initiatives, the political opposition, the brutality of the Ukrainian front, the lies of the Kremlin…,” Thomas Nilsen, editor-in-chief of the Barents Observer, explains to IPS over the phone from Kirkenes.
Over the years, they have gained deep experience in avoiding Russian censorship. In 2019, however, it became the first Nordic media to be blocked in Russia. Nilsen claims to have resources today to overcome obstacles on the Internet.
His readers are also forced to use alternative ways to access information.
“As most foreign media outlets that do real journalism are banned in Russia, millions access the Internet through tools like VPNs,” explains the Norwegian journalist.
Cell phones in the hands of Russians in exile working as volunteers on the Polish-Ukrainian border. Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine has also led to an escalation in threats to Russian journalists. Credit: Gilad Sade/IPS
“Climate of terror”
The Committee to Protect Journalists has denounced the classification of dozens of media outlets and more than 100 journalists as “foreign agents” in Russia since 2021.
The NGO which promotes the rights of journalists worldwide, points to at least 19 Russian journalists currently in prison. The most recent two were sentenced on November 17, to sentences of 9.5 and 10.5 years under “fabricated” charges according to the CPJ statement.
Russia has fallen to 164th place (out of 180) in Reporters Without Borders’ World Press Freedom Index.
“It is today, with the war in Ukraine, that we see all this disinformation machinery operating at full capacity, but we need to remember that it was created by Vladimir Putin back in 2005,” Alfonso Bauluz, president of Reporters Without Borders Spain, explains to IPS from Madrid.
Bauluz regrets the “impossibility” of disagreement in Russia. He points to “insane” regulations that, he stresses, are pushing many independent journalists into exile and forcing those who stay to keep a low profile.
Among the initiatives launched by RSF, the one led by the German section of the NGO stands out: two million euros have been raised to give economic viability to newsrooms in exile and to assist in evacuating journalists.
However, harassment is not exclusive to Russian journalists. There are two Americans among those imprisoned in Russia and many more foreign correspondents based in the country have been forced to leave.
“Before the war in Ukraine it was already difficult and dangerous to work in the country. Today, however, we can say that journalism no longer exists in Russia,” Marc Marginedas, correspondent in Moscow for eleven years for the Periódico de Catalunya, told IPS by telephone.
He speaks from his native Barcelona after leaving the country last year. Other than a “climate of terror” that, the journalist says, the press in Russia lives in, Marginedas describes the Kremlin’s communication policy as an “orgy of fake news.”
“There´s also the administrative offensive: visas that need to be renewed every three months, the bureaucratic nightmare of renting an apartment and obtaining registration from the Migration Service…,” explains the Spanish journalist.
Panoramic view of Kirkenes. Russia’s borders with Finland and Norway have become points of tension since the start of the Ukrainian war. Credit: Barents Observer
Starting over
Everything is more painful when it’s your house you can’t return to. After seven years working for the BBC, the British public broadcaster, Moscow reporter Elizaveta Vereykina left Russia a few weeks after Moscow launched its offensive in Ukraine.
“I worked for the channel for a few months in Turkey and Latvia. Then the BBC asked me to go back because they needed people in Russia and I did, in May 2022,” Vereykina tells IPS in a telephone conversation from Tromso, in Norway´s far north. It was barely four months until she decided to leave the country again.
“The situation was getting worse every day and I felt it was dangerous. People were afraid to talk to us because it was a foreign channel. Besides, it was increasingly difficult to travel within the country and even do things as simple as making a reservation at a hotel,” she recalls.
Her colleague at the BBC, the veteran British journalist Sarah Rainsford, had been forced to leave the country in August, 2021. “Even before the invasion it was clear that things were beginning to change, that we were heading towards a real witch hunt,” adds the Russian reporter.
After passing through the United Kingdom and Georgia, Vereykina accepted the Barents Observer’s invitation to join its staff last February. Without losing sight of current events in her country of origin, she also focuses on the threats suffered by the delicate Arctic ecosystem.
“I am in love with this part of the world and, today, I enjoy the freedom of being able to choose my own topics,” she says, just before adding that she does not see a future for herself in Russia.
Nordan Otzer during a cancer awareness event in a village in Ladakh, India. Credit: Athar Parvaiz/IPS
by Athar Parvaiz (ladakh, india)
Inter Press Service
LADAKH, INDIA, Nov 29 (IPS) – While working as a doctor in the initial months of his medical career in southern India, a telephone call from his home in the Ladakh Himalayas convinced Nordan Otzer to involve himself with cervical cancer awareness.
“While I was working in a hospital in rural Tamil Nadu (in 2007), one day I received a distressing call from my family informing me that my mother’s health had deteriorated and she urgently needed my presence back home,” says Otzer, an ENT surgeon who is now in his mid-40s and works as a medical practitioner and social worker in Ladakh, a cold desert in the Himalayan Plateau in India.
“When I saw my mother lying on the bed, she was hardly recognizable. It was only at that point that she disclosed to me that she had been experiencing persistent spotting and occasional abdominal pain that had worsened over time,” Otzer tells IPS. “Unfortunately, she only sought medical assistance when her pain (because of cervical cancer) became intolerable.”
According to the WHO, a large majority of cervical cancers (more than 95%) are caused by human papillomavirus (HPV), which is the most common viral infection of the reproductive tract.
“Although most HPV infections clear up on their own and most pre-cancerous lesions resolve spontaneously, there is a risk for all women that HPV infection may become chronic and pre-cancerous lesions progress to invasive cervical cancer,” reads a segment of a fact sheet about cervical cancer on the WHO website.
“When screening detects an HPV infection or pre-cancerous lesions, these can easily be treated, and cancer can be avoided. Screening can also detect cancer at an early stage where treatment has a high potential for cure,” the WHO fact sheet says and urges the countries that screening (of women for HPV infection) “should start from 30 years of age in the general population of women, with regular screening with a validated HPV test every 5 to 10 years, and from 25 years of age for women living with HIV.”
Otzer says his mother was flown to the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) in New Delhi for treatment, but her condition deteriorated, and she succumbed to the disease within days.
“Throughout the journey from my home to Delhi, she held my hand, perhaps also hoping that her doctor son would save her life. But unfortunately, I couldn’t do anything except watch helplessly while she slowly faded away,” Otzer recalls ruefully.
As someone who has studied medical sciences, says Otzer, “I knew my mother’s life could have been saved if she was aware of cervical cancer and its preventable measures.”
“My mother’s death due to cancer altered the course of my career, leading me to make the choice to remain and contribute to my own community.” Since those days, Otzer says that he started making efforts to launch an awareness campaign about cervical cancer and screening of women for HPV infection in Ladakh, a remote mountainous region more than 14,000 feet above sea level in the Tibetan Plateau, which remains cut off from the rest of the world in winters.
Since 2009, Otzer, with the help of his local supporter, Stanzin Dawa, and visiting doctors from Singapore led by Swee Chong Quek, has organized over 140 awareness and screening events for women across Ladakh, where villages are spread out across the terrain and not easily reachable.
“We have conducted screenings for 12,400 women thus far, among whom one out of every 10 women has precancerous lesions. This implies that without timely treatment, these lesions could progress into full-blown cancer,” Otzer says.
Besides the logistical challenges, such as travelling long distances and traversing tough terrain, other challenges, according to Otzer, included women being too shy and reticent.
“Women in Ladakh tend to be reticent about discussing women’s health matters openly, not even with their own family members. Therefore, when I initially launched a cervical cancer screening program, there was a noticeable reluctance among them to undergo checkups,” he says, adding that initially, women would avoid making eye contact and refrain from asking any questions.
“However, with the passage of time, they gradually became more receptive and started attending our screening camps for examinations.”
Cervical Cancer Awareness and India
In India, cervical cancer is the second most common cancer in women, and India contributes the largest proportion of the global cervical cancer burden. In December last year, the federal government in India urged the state governments to create awareness and take steps to prevent cervical cancer.
According to an article published by Lancet in March 2023, the Indian Ministry of Health and Family Welfare plans to vaccinate 68 million girls across India against human papillomavirus (HPV) by the end of 2025, which will be followed by vaccination of a further 11,2 million girls aged 9 years and older each year.
Cervical cancer accounted for 9.4 percent of all cancers and 18.3 percent (123,907) of new cases in 2020 in India, says this December 2021 Springer study, adding that cervical cancer is still among the most common cancers in India and a leading cause of cancer-related deaths in women in low- and middle-income countries.
According to the Springer study, cervical cancer is the second leading cause of cancer deaths for females in 12 Indian states. “The situation is more alarming in rural areas where the majority of women are illiterate and ignorant about the hazards of cervical cancer and healthcare resources are scarce.
Research has established that awareness and the availability of medical infrastructure play a significant role in preventing cervical cancer. Results of a study published in the Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention have confirmed that stages (of cervical cancer) “are strongly correlated with survival outcome, and early stages of the disease are associated with an exceptionally favourable prognosis provided they are adequately treated, whereas survival for stage III and IV cancers was dismally low.”
A study published by Lancet in October 2023 found heterogeneity in cervical cancer survival across India, with higher survival rates in urban areas where healthcare facilities are much better than predominantly rural and mountainous north and northeastern regions.
“The disparity in survival between the populations could explain the overall effectiveness of the health care system. This informs policymakers to identify and address inequities in the health care system,” the study says, emphasizing the “importance of promoting awareness, early detection, and improving the health care system.”
Authorities in Indian-administered Kashmir have arrested seven students under a stringent terror law for allegedly celebrating India’s defeat in the cricket World Cup finals earlier this month, drawing severe criticism.
The students of Sher-e-Kashmir University of Agricultural Sciences and Technology (SKUAST) have been booked under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA), a law deemed draconian by several rights groups.
The law, which makes securing bail almost impossible, has largely been used by India’s Hindu nationalist government against political dissenters and Muslim activists.
A senior police officer in Indian-administered Kashmir told Al Jazeera there was a face-off between the accused and some non-local students on November 19 as they watched a TV broadcast of India playing against Australia at the Narendra Modi Stadium in the western state of Gujarat.
Australia beat India by six wickets to win a record-extending sixth men’s ICC Cricket World Cup, dashing India’s hopes of a third win after 1983 and 2011.
“A non-local student submitted a written complaint naming the seven Kashmiri students for abusing and threatening him and raising pro-Pakistan slogans. On the basis of the complaint, the case has been registered under the UAPA,” he said.
The non-local students at SKUAST’s Shuhama campus in central Kashmir’s Ganderbal district allege the seven Kashmiri students raised anti-India and pro-Pakistan slogans after India lost the game.
“After finishing the match they [students] started abusing me and targeting me for being a supporter of our country,” read the complaint by the 20-year-old student, who has not been identified by the police.
The seven students have been charged with Section 13 of UAPA which deals with advocating, abetting, or inciting the commission of any unlawful activity, and Sections 505 and 506 of the Indian Penal Code which deals with intent to incite offence against any other class or community and criminal intimidation.
As the move to invoke terror charges in a case related to sport was criticised, police on Tuesday issued a statement, defending their action.
“It is not about dissent or freedom of expression. It is about terrorising others who may be nourishing pro-India feelings or anti-Pakistan feelings,” said the statement.
A SKUAST official, on condition of anonymity since he was not authorised to speak to the media, told Al Jazeera the non-local students did not complain to the university administration and went directly to the police.
“If the students would have approached us, we could have sorted the matter out internally. The complaint did not reach us,” he said.
The official said the arrested students are in their early 20s and are studying fourth-year Bachelor of Veterinary Science.
“Even if our children made a mistake out of emotional foolishness, the harsh charges on them should be dropped. This will ruin their lives. We are requesting the government to save their future,” a relative of one of the students told Al Jazeera.
Fearing reprisals from the government, the relative did not want to be named.
It’s not the first time Kashmiri students have been charged in a case linked to cricket, a game extremely popular in the subcontinent. India and Pakistan, which both claim the Himalayan region of Kashmir in its entirety but rule over parts of it, are also arch-cricketing rivals.
In October 2021, police in Indian-administered Kashmir filed criminal cases under the same UAPA law against some students of two medical colleges for allegedly celebrating Pakistan’s victory against India in the Twenty20 World Cup. The charges were later dropped.
In another incident during the 2014 Asia Cup tournament, nearly 60 Kashmiri students were suspended by a college in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh after they allegedly celebrated Pakistan’s win over India.
Anti-India sentiments in the Indian-administered Kashmir have turned more intense since 2019 when New Delhi unilaterally scrapped its partial autonomy and brought the region under its direct control.
In a statement, the Jammu and Kashmir Students Association, a local student body, said the students booked under the UAPA belong to poor families. It demanded the dropping of the charges against them.
“The UAPA charges should be withdrawn as this punishment could ruin their future,” the association said.
Mehbooba Mufti, the last elected chief minister of the region, said the case against the students was “disconcerting and shocking”.
“Normalising slapping of laws like UAPA on journalists, activists and now students reveals the ruthless mindset of the establishment towards youngsters in [Kashmir),” she wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter.
LONDON — She might have crashed Britain. But can she save the world?
Former U.K. Prime Minister Liz Truss landed in Washington this week to drum up support for Ukraine among skeptical Republican lawmakers.
On both sides of the Atlantic there are hopes Truss can help steer the debate on the American right away from isolationism and toward the active international role espoused by both U.K. prime minister Rishi Sunak and U.S. President Joe Biden.
Truss — no fan of either man — makes for an unlikely diplomatic superhero.
The trip comes barely a year after her humiliating resignation ended a disastrous tenure as Britain’s shortest-serving prime minister. Since the end of her 49-day stint in Downing Street, Truss has tried to carve out a place for herself as a champion of right-wing policies around the world.
She is in Washington this week as part of a delegation of the Conservative Friends of Ukraine (CFU), alongside fellow former Tory leaders Iain Duncan Smith and Michael Howard. The group has a packed schedule, with around two dozen meetings planned with conservative U.S. lawmakers and think tanks.
The delegation’s arrival coincides with a stand-off between Biden and Republican lawmakers, who are stalling on a request to send billions more dollars in military aid to Ukraine. Congress has twice passed spending bills this fall that omitted funding for the conflict.
Republicans have sought to tie support for Ukraine with measures to strengthen the U.S–Mexican border.
Former President Donald Trump, who is widely expected to secure the Republican nomination for next year’s general election — and whom polling suggests is ahead of Biden in a series of key battleground states — shares this skeptical view of Ukraine aid. Back in May, Trump refused to say even whether he thought Ukraine or Russia should prevail in the war.
A showdown is expected next week with a potential vote in the Senate on Joe Biden’s $106 billion aid package — $61.4 billion of which is earmarked for Ukraine. Senior diplomats on both sides of the Atlantic hope Truss could help break the impasse.
One U.K. official said of the delegation: “They bring a more authentic voice to those kind of Republicans who like speaking to people from their own party — they’re not encumbered by government policy, they don’t have to sort of say nice things about the [Biden] administration.
“If that resonates with Republican lawmakers in a way that governments don’t, then all to the good.”
“We’ve targeted Trump-leaning or Trump-supporting Republicans to try and get them to think strategically,” Tory MP Jake Lopresti said | Jim Vondruska/Getty Images
Showing the right what’s right
Truss’ full-bodied right-wing agenda might have ended in disaster in Downing Street — but it puts her in a good stead with the Republican right.
Far from being nice about the Biden administration, Truss was quick to explicitly endorse the Republican Party ahead of her trip, writing in the Wall Street Journal that she hoped “a Republican will be returned to the White House in 2024.”
She went on: “There must be conservative leadership in the U.S. that is once again bold enough to call out hostile regimes as evil and a threat.”
The CFU said there is no meeting with Trump himself on its agenda. Instead, Jake Lopresti, a Tory MP who is among the delegation, told POLITICO the group was focusing on lawmakers ahead of the expected Senate vote next week. “We’ve targeted Trump-leaning or Trump-supporting Republicans to try and get them to think strategically,” he said.
Lopresti said the case the delegation was making was simple: “If you want to avoid conflict in the future, you have to have a strong deterrent. There’s trouble bubbling up all over the world. It’s a bit like the 1930s.
“It’s cheaper and cleaner and quicker to actually solve it now, send a message — we won’t allow people to walk into other people’s countries in the 21st century. Ukraine is an independent nation, free, democratic. It’s got a right to run its own affairs.”
High stakes
John E. Herbst, a senior director at the Atlantic Council — and former U.S. Ambassador to Kyiv — said his think tank is supporting the delegation because it agrees Washington has a “vital stake … in making sure Russia loses in Ukraine.”
“When Tory MPs come to the United States to explain to populist Republicans that the policy view of those Republicans on Ukraine is a great mistake, we think they should be supported,” he said.
Notably, the delegation is following in Boris Johnson’s footsteps — another former British PM who has travelled to Washington several times this year to bring the case for supporting Ukraine to wavering Republican lawmakers.
Johnson addressed a lunch organized by a pro-Ukraine think tank deep in the Republican territory of Dallas, Texas, where he told those present that victory for Vladimir Putin would be “terrible in its ramifications.” He evoked China’s claim over Taiwan, a major foreign policy concern for U.S. politicians of all stripes — especially Republicans.
Duncan Smith, who has been sanctioned by China for criticizing its human rights record, similarly warned in a speech to the Heritage Foundation this week that the conflict in Ukraine and China’s threats against Taiwan are “linked inexorably” by a “new axis of totalitarian states.”
“To ignore one is to multiply the danger in the others,” he said. “If Ukraine loses or is forced into some weak settlement with Russia … this in turn will be the strongest signal that the free world will not stand by Taiwan.”
Whether enough Republicans are ready to listen remains to be seen.
BERGEN, Norway, Nov 27 (IPS) – Popular migration discourses in Europe often question the ability of African states to govern migration effectively. Media images of African migrants squeezed into dingy boats in the Mediterranean constantly reinforce these discourses.
However, positive examples of what migration governance should be now exist within the continent, and they can provide important lessons for many of the EU Member States. One such example is the National Coordination Mechanism on Migration (NCM) adopted by countries in the East and Horn of Africa.
NCMs are government-led interagency platforms that bring together different ministries to promote dialogue on migration issues and formulate holistic migration policies. They have realised coherent and inclusive migration governance in the region, and more states in other parts of Africa are now adopting this approach.
The African continent boasts of diverse migration experiences, including but not limited to regular cross-border trade, labour migration, forced migration, seasonal migration and migration for educational purposes. These happen at the domestic, regional and international levels and can be documented or undocumented.
Currently, 85 per cent of mobility occurs within the continent, as most African migrants – including refugees – prefer moving to neighbouring countries.
Ensuring coherent and inclusive migration governance
Against this backdrop, African Union (AU) Heads of State adopted the African Migration Policy Framework in 2006. Its current version is the Migration Policy Framework for Africa and Plan for Action (2018-2030).
The framework provides comprehensive and integrated policy guidelines to AU Member States and Regional Economic Communities (RECs) in their endeavours to promote migration and development. It further provides a guideline on how to address migration challenges on the continent.
The Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD), a REC in the Horn of Africa comprising eight members (Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia, Sudan, South Sudan and Uganda), decided to establish NCMs to implement the African Union’s framework.
The REC also has a Regional Migration Policy Framework guided by the AU’s policy framework, and NCMs are also part of this implementation.
NCMs, as stated earlier, are platforms that foster dialogue on migration-related issues to realise coherent and inclusive migration governance. For instance, Kenya’s NCM, spearheaded by the Ministry of Interior and National Administration, includes the Ministry of Labour and Social Protection, the Ministry of Foreign and Diaspora Affairs, the Ministry of Investments, Trade and Industry, the Ministry of Youth Affairs, Sports and the Arts, the Ministry of Health, the Ministry of Education and, last but not least, the Ministry of Environment and Forestry.
Government agencies like the National Bureau of Statistics and the National Employment Authority are also involved. The NCM also holds consultative workshops with academia, civil society, trade unions, the private sector, church, as well as faith-based organisations, including county assemblies at local governance levels.
More broadly, NCMs in the IGAD region endeavour to mainstream migration into national development through a whole-of-society and government approach. They mobilise resources, offer technical support and directly participate in implementing migration programmes rolled out by different government ministries.
As such, it makes it possible for various ministries to know what the others are doing, avoiding duplication of activities and save limited resources.
Lessons for Europe
It is thus fair to say that European Union Member States have something to learn from IGAD Member States. In most EU countries, the migration docket currently falls solely within the Ministries of Interior or Home Affairs. These ministries often work in silos and formulate migration policies without fully involving other relevant ministries.
As a result, migration policies and overall migration governance take off from a security standpoint first and foremost. Consequently, migration is viewed and governed as a threat to the nation-state.
On the contrary, numerous peer-reviewed studies and reports show that migrants contribute to their destination countries’ economic and social development. The EU and its Member States continuously disregard this fact and put more funds into externalisation than into opening regular migration pathways.
The union has set aside millions of euros to outsource migration management to countries outside Europe to prevent migration into its territory. This strategy has, however, not been successful, as evidenced by hardline stands, pushbacks by African border states and the abuse of migrants’ human rights within these states.
The number of migrants that reached Italy’s shores in the summer of 2023, for example, was at a record high compared to previous years. It is, therefore, imperative for the EU to look at migration differently and develop new approaches to manage it effectively.
Bringing together all migration stakeholders through one platform is a daunting task — but not an impossible one. IGAD Member States have proven that it is an achievable endeavour. Kenya, Uganda, Ethiopia and Djibouti, considered to be on a development trajectory, have had more progress in the implementation of NCMs and provide lessons that could be a starting point for countries in the EU.
NCMs, as highlighted, offer a platform to critically address specific migration issues and challenges and share diverse ways to manage migration in a coordinated manner. NCMs also allow the sharing of migration data across different ministries and agencies to inform policies coherently.
For instance, Kenya’s NCM has developed and validated Standard Operating Procedures on migration data management by all NCM stakeholders. Different government ministries have also signed a Memorandum of Understanding on data sharing, exchange and dissemination.
These initiatives have facilitated informed dialogue on migration issues within the NCM and further resulted in inclusive migration policies.If accompanied by political goodwill, a similar undertaking can achieve maximum results within EU Member States.
The EU Member States have proven that they are able to make great strides, such as with the General Data Protection Regulation, and they have the financial and technical capabilities to implement such a platform.
But with the migration narrative currently being run by far-right politicians, the time to act is now!
Felicity Okoth coordinates the International Migration and Ethnic Relations (IMER) research network in Bergen, Norway. She is also pursuing a PhD at the department of Social Anthropology at the University of Bergen. Her research looks at the situated and trans-local practices of Sub-Saharan African migrants in Nairobi and how these influence their migration aspirations (return or move to third countries).
Source: International Politics and Society (IPS)-Journal published by the International Political Analysis Unit of the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung, Hiroshimastrasse 28, D-10785 Berlin
“He who loves does not kill, does not humiliate or mistreat” reads a poster carried in a protest against violence against women in Lima, the capital of Peru, which is part of a slogan repeated in demonstrations against femicides and other forms of sexist violence in Latin America. CREDIT: Mariela Jara / IPS
by Mariela Jara (lima)
Inter Press Service
LIMA, Nov 24 (IPS) – This article is part of IPS coverage of the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, celebrated Saturday, Nov. 25.”The Latin American and Caribbean region has made many advances in the fight against gender violence, but now we are facing reactions that show that our rights are never secure and that we must always be on the alert to defend them,” said Susana Chiarotti, a member of Mesecvi’s Committee of Experts.
Chiarotti summed up the regional situation of progress and setbacks in a conversation with IPS from her home in the Argentine city of Rosario, ahead of the United Nations’ Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women, commemorated on Saturday, Nov. 25.
Gender violence violates the human rights of one in four women in this region with an estimated female population of 332 million, 51 percent of the total, and escalates to the extreme level of femicide – gender-based murders – which cost 4050 lives in 2022, according to figures confirmed Friday, Nov. 24 by the Gender Equality Observatory for Latin America and the Caribbean.
Likewise, UN Women‘s regional director for the Americas and the Caribbean, María Noel Vaeza, told IPS from Panama City that the emblematic date seeks to draw the attention of countries to the urgent need to put an end to violence against women once and for all by adopting public policies for prevention and investing in programs to eliminate it.
She pointed out that Nov. 25 is the first of 16 days of activism against gender-based violence, which run through Dec. 10, Human Rights Day.
Vaeza said that less than 40 percent of women who suffer violence seek some kind of help, which clearly shows that they do not find guarantees in the prevention and institutional response system and therefore do not report incidents.
“This has serious consequences for their lives and those of other women, as the perpetrators do not face justice and impunity and violence continue unchecked,” she said.
Uruguayan María Noel Vaeza, UN Women regional director for Latin America and the Caribbean, draws the attention of countries to the urgent need to put an end to violence against women through the adoption of public policies for prevention and investment in programs to eliminate it. CREDIT: UN Women
Vaeza said that, despite these worrying trends, there is more evidence than ever that violence against women is preventable, and urged countries in the region to invest in prevention.
“The evidence shows that the presence of a strong, autonomous feminist movement is a critical factor in driving public policy change for the elimination of violence against women at the global, regional, national and local levels,” said the UN Women regional head.
She explained that many studies have shown that large-scale reductions in violence against women can be achieved through coordinated action between local and national prevention and response systems and women’s and other civil society organizations.
So in order to move towards regulatory frameworks and improve the institutional architecture and budget allocations to prevent, respond to and redress gender-based violence, strengthening the advocacy capacity of feminist and women’s movements and organizations is indispensable.
She also mentioned that whenever progress is made, there are setbacks as well, and “unfortunately history shows us that social changes against things like machismo/sexism and violence require the efforts of society as a whole and plans and policies that give answers to the victims today, but also make it possible to improve the system in the medium and long term.”
Vaeza stressed that violence against women and girls remains the most pervasive human rights violation around the world. Its prevalence worsened in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic and is growing further due to the interrelated crises of climate change, global conflicts and economic instability.
She also mentioned the proliferation of new forms of violence and the persistence of those “who believe that we do not have to guarantee women’s human rights, and organize themselves, and in the region we have situations such as attacks against women human rights defenders and activists that have become more frequent.”
Vaeza, from Uruguay, underlined that there is more evidence than ever that it is possible to change this reality and that in order to have peaceful societies, reducing inequality and poverty is key, and all this will depend on advancing gender equality and the rights of those who have historically faced discrimination.
They are mainly, she said, women living in poverty, indigenous women, women of African descent, rural women, women migrants, and women and girls with disabilities.
Susana Chiarotti is a member of the Committee of Experts of the Follow-up Mechanism to the Belém do Pará Convention, which has been monitoring the performance of States in their obligation to prevent, punish and eradicate violence against women for the past 30 years. CREDIT: Cladem Argentina
Strong reactions to progress
Chiarotti said: “I have been with Mesecvi for 20 years and I can see the changes. Let’s remember that it was only in 1989 that laws on violence against women began to be enacted and that we did not have services, shelters, specialized courts and even less a specific Convention to address this issue, which was the first in the world.”
The lawyer and university professor emphasized that in 40 years the women’s movement has put the issue of violence against women on the public agenda and has made such huge strides that “we could be called the most successful lobby in history in positioning an issue in such a massive and global manner.”
And she added that “we did not believe then, in 1986, 1987 or 1988, that the phenomenon had permeated all structures, not only the intimate sphere; there was symbolic, institutional, political and many other forms of violence, which led us to demand more answers, especially from the State, which, being patriarchal, admitted women only with forceps.”
Chiarotti, who is also a former head of the Latin American and Caribbean Committee for the Defense of Women’s Rights (Cladem), warns that they are now facing reactions to the extent that unimaginable alliances have arisen to stop them, such as that of the Vatican with conservative evangelical churches and far-right groups.
She also mentioned the decision of the U.S. Supreme Court that in June 2022 overthrew the right to abortion in that country, which had been in force for almost 50 years.
“That makes you realize that our rights are never secure, that we must always be on the alert to defend them. And it is difficult for a movement that is cyclical, that has waves, that rises and falls, to be always alert,” she said.
In addition, she mentioned the recent victory of the candidate Javier Milei as future president of Argentina and the dangers he represents for women’s rights, sexual diversity and the historical memory of human rights abuses.
“This will not be the first time that this people, and women especially, will enter a stage of resistance, because we have been resisting misogynistic attacks and fighting for life for centuries, but we have a very hard time ahead of us,” Chiarotti said.
She added that Latin America has fragile democracies that are only a few decades old and in crisis, which impact women’s rights. “Many of our countries came out of dictatorships, the longest has had 50 or 60 years of democracy. We will have to work to defend democratic institutions, to use them to defend our rights,” she said.
Holding up signs demanding “No to violence” and “No to machismo,” women demonstrate against gender violence in front of Peru’s main courthouse in Lima. CREDIT: Mariela Jara / IPS
Prevention: a task eluded by the States
The expert argued that since the work of preventing gender-based violence is more costly and time-consuming than that of punishment and less politically profitable, the efforts of countries are weak in this area despite their importance.
“Limiting the work to punishment and addressing incidents is like seeing a big rock that people stumble over and bang up against, and they are cured and taught to go around it, but without removing it from the path. Without prevention we will always have victims because the discriminatory culture that reproduces violence will not be transformed,” she warned.
But even adding up what countries invest to address and eradicate violence against women in the region, none of them reach one percent of their national budget according to the Third Hemispheric Report published by Mesecvi in 2017, a proportion that has apparently not changed since then.
In September of this year, the United Nations published a study showing that an investment of 360 billion dollars is needed to achieve gender equality and women’s empowerment by 2030, established as one of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). This would help to eliminate the scourge of gender-based violence.
Climate change impact on Africa has been devastating as this photo taken in the aftermath of Cyclone Idai in Mozambique shows. Credit: Denis Onyodi / IFRC/DRK
by Joyce Chimbi (nairobi)
Inter Press Service
NAIROBI, Nov 24 (IPS) – A just transition should be viewed as an opportunity to rectify some of the wrongs where women are not prioritised in the energy mix, yet their experience of the impact of climate change is massive, says Thandile Chinyavanhu, a young South African-based climate and energy campaigner with Greenpeace Africa.
Recent UN scientific research on the state of the climate change crisis and ongoing climate action reveals that the window to reach climate goals is rapidly closing. The world is not on track to reach the goals set out in the Paris Agreement, which commits all countries to pursue efforts to limit the global temperature increase to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels.
To achieve this goal, emissions must decrease by 45% by 2030 and reach net zero by 2050. Ahead of COP28 in Dubai, United Arab Emirates (UAE), expectations are high that a clear roadmap to net zero progress will be reached, bringing issues of energy, a global energy transition, and energy security into sharp focus.
The energy sector has a significant impact on climate as it accounts for an estimated two-thirds of all harmful greenhouse gas emissions. The burning of fossil fuels is the primary cause of the ongoing global climate change crisis, significantly altering planet Earth. The issue of energy and climate is of particular concern to African countries, especially the Sub-Saharan Africa region, as they also relate to increased vulnerabilities for women, especially rural women. The intersection between energy security and economic growth, poverty reduction, and the empowerment of women and girls is not in doubt.
Still, despite access to reliable, affordable, and sustainable energy for all being articulated under the UN’s SDG 7, one in eight people around the world has no access to electricity. In sub-Saharan Africa alone, nearly 600 million people, or an estimated 53 percent of the region’s population, have no access to electricity. Currently, less than a fifth of African countries have targets to reach universal electricity access by 2030. For some, the silver bullet is to dump fossil fuels and go green; for others, it is an urgent, just, and equitable transition to renewables.
IPS spoke to Chinyavanhu about her role as a social justice and climate activist. She says she wants to contribute to climate change mitigation, ensuring that people and cities are prepared for climate change and can adapt to what is coming.
Thandile Chinyavanhu
Here are excerpts from the interview.
IPS: Why are current energy systems untenable, considering the ongoing climate change crisis?
Chinyavanhu: On going green and dumping fossil fuels, there are several issues at play, and they vary from country to country. Fossil fuels—coal, oil, and gas—are by far the largest contributors to global climate change, as they account for more than 75 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions and nearly 90 percent of all carbon dioxide emissions. South Africa, for instance, has a big coal mining industry and is one of the top five coal-exporting countries globally. The country relies heavily on coal for about 70 percent of its total electricity production. We need to move away from energy consumption models that are exacerbating the climate crisis, but we must also ensure that we are centred on a just transition.
IPS: What should a ‘just energy transition’ look like for Africa and other developing nations?
Chinyavanhu: Overall, we are looking at issues of socio-economic development models that leave no one behind. To achieve this, renewable energy is the pathway that provides us with energy security and accelerated development. We have serious energy-related challenges due to a lack of preparation and planning around the energy crisis. The challenge is that Africa needs energy and, at the same time, accelerates its development in a manner that leaves no one behind, be it women or any other vulnerable group that is usually left behind in policy responses.
There is a need to address challenges regarding access to energy for all so that, in transitioning to clean energy, we do not have any groups of people being left behind, as has been the case. This is not so much a problem or challenge as an opportunity for countries to address gaps in access to energy and ensure that it is accessible to all, especially women, bearing in mind the many roles they play in society, including nurturing the continent’s future workforce. A just energy transition is people-centred.
We must recognise and take stock of the economic impact that moving from fossil fuels to clean energy could have on people and their livelihoods, such as those in the mining sector. It is crucial that people are brought along in the process of transition, giving them the tools and resources needed for them to be absorbed into new clean energy models. There is a very deep socio-economic aspect to it because people must be given the skills and capacities to engage in emerging green systems and industries.
IPS: As a young woman activist, what do you think the roles of women in an energy transition are?
Chinyavanhu: Women are generally not prioritised, and so they do not have the same opportunities as men, even in matters of climate change adaptation and mitigation, and this is true for sectors such as agriculture and mining. Women have great economic potential and have a very big role to play towards a just energy transition as key drivers of socio-economic progress.
In the green energy space, economic opportunities are opening up. Men are quickly taking over the renewable energy industry, but there are plenty of opportunities for women to succeed if given the right resources. We are at a point in time when we have the opportunity to leave behind polluting technologies and, at the same time, address some of the key socio-economic challenges that have plagued societies for a long time.
This transition should be viewed as an opportunity to rectify some of those wrongs in a way that is people-centred and inclusive. No one should be left behind. It is really about building harmony with nature while also addressing many of the socio-economic issues that plague us today. This is more of an opportunity than a hurdle. It is about understanding and rectifying systems’ thinking that contributes to women being left behind. It is important that we see the bigger picture—identify and acknowledge that different groups—not just women, but any identifier that places people at a point of vulnerability—have been left furthest behind. The energy transition process has presented an opportunity to make it right.
KABUL, Afghanistan, Nov 22 (IPS) – On the morning of 11 November, Mohammed Abu Salmiya, the Director of Gaza’s largest medical center, Al Shifa Hospital, sent out an emotional S.O.S. to the world through a television news interview and through the remaining charge on his mobile phone. His plea for an immediate ceasefire on behalf of a hospital under siege and its 700 critically injured and ill patients, 36 premature babies, 400 staff, and the 2000 vulnerable civilians. These people sheltering within the hospital and its garden were heard as far away as Afghanistan yet totally ignored where it counted most- with the men in Israel’s war cabinet and Washington; they were busy executing and aiding an illegal war of choice on an unarmed, defenseless hospital and one of the poorest and densely populated places in the world.
Like the Palestinians, Afghans have experienced the cruelty of armed conflict and occupation for decades. They know the painful cost of the endless wars waged by those who so casually destroy innocent lives in exchange for more power, revenge, or, as in the case of America’s post-9/11 response to Afghanistan, delusion that war can somehow defeat terrorism. In 2015, a U.S. gunship fired hundreds of shells into an M.S.F. trauma hospital in Kunduz, in northeastern Afghanistan because it had intelligence that Taliban fighters were based at the same location.
Like Al Shifa Hospital’s S.O.S., those M.S.F. staff who survived the initial shelling desperately called military authorities in the area to call off the attack. Shelling continued for nearly an hour, and by the time it stopped, 34 men, women, children, patients, nurses, doctors, and M.S.F. support staff were killed, and dozens more seriously injured. Another casualty of the attack was the community. Before the hospital was destroyed, it had served as a lifeline for civilians wounded by the war raging around them but also as the only specialized surgical hospital in the region. It took six years for the hospital to reopen.
Between 2001 and the day U.S. Forces chaotically left Afghanistan twenty years later, nearly 50,000 Afghan civilians were killed as a direct result of the U.S. and Coalition military occupation. Brown University’s The Cost of War Project and other independent sources, such as the Uppsala Conflict Data Program, have determined that the scope of direct and indirect deaths through injury, malnutrition, poor water sanitation, infectious disease, pregnancy and birth-related risks, and cancers left untreated as a result of destroyed public services and infrastructure. The U.S. led post 9-11 total civilian death toll in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Yemen, Syria and Libya was an unfathomable 4 million people and a staggering 40 million people displaced by the fighting.
Despite the lingering scars of war and the dire humanitarian crisis facing Afghans today, the hearts of Afghans are with Gazans and with all those citizens of the world from Washington DC to London, Mexico City to Istanbul, who are crying out for a cease-fire and sense of humanity to prevail amidst world leaders. This heartbreaking, cruel moment transcends borders.
The collective punishment of the Palestinian people by Israel in retaliation for the actions of Hamas, with the unconditional diplomatic backing and financial and military support of the United States and many European nations, is now a collective pain felt across the world, irrespective of nationality, religion, ethnicity, or class.
When President Biden visited Israel on 18 October, he said, “I caution this: While you feel rage, don’t be consumed by it…After 9/11, we were enraged in the United States. And while we sought justice and got justice, we also made mistakes.” Instead, Washington, the U.K., and E.U. leaders have wasted precious time and lives arguing for humanitarian pauses while giving Israel the green light to continue its slaughter of civilians throughout the Gaza Strip.
The scope of the human catastrophe so far could have been prevented had President Biden backed up his advice to Israel with immediate humanitarian action for the Palestinian people and support through the several law enforcement and diplomatic options at Israel’s disposal to expedite the release of the 240 Israeli hostages and reinforce Israel’s border security from further Hamas attacks.
In the face of such inhumanity, President Biden’s ultimate mistake now would be continuing to ignore his advice to Israel. As Yonatan Zeigen, the son of 74 Vivian Silver, a lifelong peace activist, murdered by Hamas at Kibbutz Be’eri on October 7th, said this week, “Israel won’t cure our dead babies by killing more babies.”
It has been 12 brutal days and nights since those in power ignored the S.O.S. by the director of Al-Shifa Hospital. The I.D.F. forces stormed the hospital soon after the director’s urgent humanitarian appeal to the world. All of Al Shifa’s 22 intensive care patients have died, and another 30 patients, including three premature babies, have also died. Mohammed Abu Salmiya made another call to the world. This time, he said Al Shifa was “no longer a hospital but a graveyard” and reminded world leaders that civilians and civilian infrastructure such as hospitals are protected by international law and, if not the law, then by one’s sense of decency and humanity. So far, the response to Al Shifa’s Director from Washington and some E.U. members continues to be a surge in lethal military aid to Israel.
The four-day humanitarian pause Qatar just announced needs to be reinforced by American and European demands on Israel for a definitive end to hostilities. The devastation of lives and infrastructure in Gaza is so vast and traumatic that a humanitarian pause immediately followed by a resumption of attacks on civilians by Israel and retaliations by Hamas will only lead to an abyss of more suffering for both Palestinians and Israelis and escalate the risk for a broader regional war.
If only Western leaders, starting with President Biden, had as much courage as the director, staff, and patients of Al Shifa Hospital and the loved ones of those killed at Kibbutz Be’eri on 7 October.
Unlike in Afghanistan, the time to stop the war is now, not after twenty years.
Melek Zahine is a humanitarian affairs and disaster management specialist with over 30 years of experience working in Afghanistan, the Middle East, and the Balkans.
This article is part of the Road to COP special report, presented by SQM.
Last week’s surprise deal between China and the United States may provide a boost to the climate talks in Dubai — but the two powers remain at odds on tough questions such as how quickly to shut down coal and who should provide climate aid to developing nations.
The world’s top two drivers of climate change are also divided by a thicket of disagreements on trade, security, human rights and economic competition.
The good news is that Washington and Beijing are talking to each other again and restarting some of their technical cooperation on climate issues, after a yearlong freeze. That may still not be enough to get nearly 200 nations to commit to far greater climate action at the talks that begin Nov. 30.
The two superpowers’ latest detente creates the right “mood music” for the summit, said Alden Meyer, a senior associate at climate think tank E3G. “But it still is not saying that the world’s two largest economies and two largest emitters are fully committed to the scale and pace of reductions that are needed.”
The deal, announced after a meeting this month between U.S. climate envoy John Kerry and his Chinese counterpart Xie Zhenhua, produced an agreement to commit to a series of actions to limit climate pollution. Those include accelerating the shift to renewable energy and widening the variety of heat-trapping gases they will address in their next round of climate targets.
U.S. President Joe Biden and Chinese leader Xi Jinping endorsed that type of cooperation after a meeting in California on Wednesday, saying they “welcomed” positive discussions on actions to reduce greenhouse gas emissions during this decade, as well as “common approaches” toward a successful climate summit. Biden said he would work with China to address climate finance in developing countries, a major source of friction for the U.S.
“Planet Earth is big enough for the two countries to succeed,” said Xi ahead of his bilateral with Biden.
But the deal leaves some big issues unaddressed, including specific measures for ending their reliance on fossil fuels, the main contributor to global warming. Andthe two countries are a long way from the days when a surprise U.S.-Chinese agreement to cooperate on climate change had the power to land a landmark global pact.
That puts the nations in a dramatically different place than in 2014, when Xi and then-President Barack Obama made a historic pledge to jointly cut their planet-warming pollution, paving the way for the landmark Paris Agreement to land in 2015.
Even a surprise joint deal between the two nations in 2021 failed to ease friction, with China emerging at the last minute to oppose language calling for a phase-out of coal power. The summit ended with a less ambitious “phase-down.”
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi speaks after receiving the Order of Propitious Clouds with Special Grand Cordon, Taiwan’s highest civilian honour | Handout/Getty Image
The two countries’ struggles to find comity have come at the worst possible moment — at a time when rapid action is crucial to preventing climate catastrophe. A growing number of factors has threatened to widen the U.S.-Chinese wedge further, including their competition for supremacy in the market for clean energy.
Two nations at odds
While the U.S. has contributed more greenhouse gases to the atmosphere than any other nation during the past 150 years, China is now the world’s largest climate polluter — though not on a per capita basis — and it will need to stop building new coal-fired power for the world to stand a chance of limiting rising temperatures.
The recent agreement hints at that possibility by stating that more renewables would enable reductions in the generation of oil, gas and coal, helping China peak its emissions ahead of its current targets.
The challenge will be bridging the countries’ diverging approaches to climate issues.
The Biden administration is urging a rapid end to coal-fired power, which is waning in the U.S., even as it permits more oil drilling and ramps up exports of natural gas — much of it destined for Asia.
At the same time, it wants the United States to claim a larger role in the clean energy manufacturing industry that China now dominates, and is seeking to loosen China’s stranglehold on supply chains for products such as solar panels, electric cars and the minerals that go into them. It’s also pressuring Beijing to contribute to U.N. climate funds, saying China’s historic status as a developing country no longer shields it from its responsibility to pay.
China sees the U.S. position as a direct challenge to its economic growth and energy security.
Beijing wants to protect the use of coal and defend developing countries’ access to fossil fuels. It has also backed emerging economies’ demands that rich countries pay more to help them deploy clean energy and adapt to the effects of a warmer world. China says it already helps developing countries through South-South cooperation and points to a clause in the 2015 Paris Agreement that says developed countries should lead on climate finance.
Hanging over the talks is also the prospect of a change of administration in the U.S., and continued efforts by Republicans to vilify Beijing and accuse the Biden administration of supporting Chinese companies through its climate policies and investments. And as China’s response to Pelosi’s trip underscored, climate cooperation remains hostage to other tensions in the two countries’ relationship, a dynamic likely to heighten in the coming year as both Taiwan and the U.S. hold presidential elections.
One challenge is that China doesn’t seem to see much to gain from offering more ambitious climate actions amid worsening relations with other countries, said Kevin Tu, a non-resident fellow at the Center on Global Energy Policy at Columbia University and an adjunct professor at the School of Environment at Beijing Normal University.
“In the past several years, China has voluntarily upgraded its climate ambitions a few times amid rising geopolitical tensions,” Tu said, pointing to its 2020 pledge to peak and then zero out its emissions. “So China does not necessarily have very strong incentive to further upgrade its climate ambition.”
The divide between the two nations has created a dilemma for some small island nations that often walk a fine line between negotiating alongside China at climate talks while pushing for more action to scale back fossil fuels.
The U.S. and China remain at odds on how quickly to shut down coal and who should provide climate aid to developing nations | Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Getty Images
“The U.S. is trying to drag everyone to talk about an immediate coal phase-out,” Ralph Regenvanu, climate minister for the Pacific island nation of Vanuatu, said during a recent call with reporters, calling the effort a “U.S.-versus-China thing.”
“But we also need to talk about no more oil or gas as well,” he added.
Operating on its own terms
The dynamic between China and the U.S. will either drag down or bolster the ambitions of countries updating their national climate pledges, a process that begins at the close of COP28. Nations are already woefully behind cuts needed to hit the goals they laid out in Paris.
China’s new 10-year targets will be crucial for meeting those marks, given that China accounts for close to 30 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions and that it plans to build dozens of coal-fired power plants in the coming years. The U.S., and many other countries, will be looking for greater commitments from China — whether that’s modifying what it means by phasing down coal or setting more stringent targets.
China has pledged to peak its carbon emissions before 2030 and zero them out before 2060,a decadelater than the United States has promised to reach net-zero. Beijing is unlikely to accelerate that timeline, in part because — analysts say — its philosophy is fundamentally different from that of the U.S.: underpromise and overdeliver.
Even without committing to more action, China’s massive investments in low-carbon energy installations — twice that of the United States — may inadvertently help the country achieve its peaking target early, some analysts say.
A complicated picture
If the Trump years drove China further from America, the global pandemic and resulting economic slowdown that started during his final year didn’t bring it closer. And the energy crunch stemming from Russia’s war with Ukraine cemented China’s drive for reliable energy to meet the rising needs of its 1.4 billion people. That created a coal boom.
Meanwhile, China heavily subsidized the expansion of wind, solar and electric vehicle production. Its clean energy supply chain dominance has lowered the global costs for those technologies but drawn scorn from the U.S. as it tries to rebuild its own domestic manufacturing base.
China has turned more combative in response. Rather than work with the U.S. to make joint announcements on climate action, Xi has made clear that China’s climate policy won’t be dictated by others. At G20 meetings, China has aligned with Saudi Arabia and Russia in opposing language aimed at phasing out fossil fuels.
“At the end of the day, it’s harder to make a claim that China needs the U.S. and it’s harder to make the claim that the U.S. can rely on China,” said Cory Combs, a senior analyst at policy consulting firm Trivium China.
Wealthy countries’ inability to deliver promised climate aid to vulnerable countries hasn’t helped. While China remains among the bloc of developing nations in calling for more action on climate finance, it also points to the investments it’s making in the Global South through its Belt and Road infrastructure initiative and bilateral aid.
A foreign diplomat who asked for anonymity to speak openly said China has resisted pressure to contribute money to a climate fund that would help developing countries rebuild after climate disasters and would likely push back against a focus on its continued build out of coal-fired power plants.
US climate envoy John Kerry sits next to China’s special climate envoy Xie Zhenhua | Fabrice Coffrini/AFP via Getty Images
“Anything that would signal that they would need to do more is something that gets blocked,” the person said.
China did release a plan earlier this month to cut emissions of the potent greenhouse methane, delivering on a promise it had made in a joint declaration with the U.S. at climate talks in 2021. But it has still not signed onto a global methane pledge led by the U.S. and the European Union.
All that amounts to a complicated picture for the U.S.-Chinese relationship and its broader impact on global climate outcomes.
“The U.S.-China talks will help stabilize the politics when countries meet in the UAE, but critical issues such as a fossil fuel phase-out still require much [further] political efforts,” said Li Shuo, incoming director of the China climate hub at the Asia Society Policy Institute.
“It’s very much about setting a floor,” and the talks in Dubai still need to build out from there, Shuo added.
He argues in a recent paper that China will subscribe to targets it sees as achievable and will continue toside with developing countries on climate finance. Chinese government officials are cautious about what they’re willing to commit to internationally, which sometimes serves as a disincentive for them to be more ambitious, he said.
The calculation is likely to be different for Biden’s team, who “want a headline that the world agrees to push China,” said David Waskow, who leads the World Resources Institute’s international climate initiative.
Not impossible
The power of engagement can’t be completely written off, and in the past it has proven to have a positive effect on the U.S.-China relationship.
“[Climate] sort of was a positive pillar in the relationship,” said Todd Stern, Obama’s former chief climate negotiator. “And it came to be a thing where when the two sides have come to get together, it was like, ‘What can we get done on climate?’”
Engagement with Chinaat the state and local level and among academics and research institutes has potential — in large part because it’s less political, said Joanna Lewis, a professor at Georgetown University who closely tracks China’s climate change approach.
There could also be opportunities to separate climate from broader bilateral tensions.
“I do feel like there’s that willingness to say, ‘We recognize our roles, we recognize our ability to have that catalytic effect on the international community’s actions,’” said Nate Hultman, director of the University of Maryland’s Center for Global Sustainability and a former senior adviser to Kerry. “It doesn’t solve all the world’s issues going into the COP, but it gives a really strong boost to international discussions around what we know we need to do.”
Sara Schonhardt and Zack Colman reported, and Phelim Kine contributed reporting, from Washington, D.C.
This article is part of the Road to COP special report, presented by SQM.The article is produced with full editorial independence by POLITICO reporters and editors. Learn more about editorial content presented by outside advertisers.
Elon Musk employed an aggressive strategy—including the threat of a “thermonuclear” lawsuit— to contain the fallout after his endorsement of anti-Semitic rhetoric on X that prompted an advertising backlash at the billionaire’s social media company and some on Wall Street to call for his censure.
NEW YORK, Nov 20 (IPS) – In the midst of the Israel-Hamas conflagration, a significant anniversary at the United Nations –October 24th was the 78th year since its founding–went unremarked by the larger world. But the work of–and significant problems with–the UN continues. Among the problems is embedded institutional racism. It’s time that it be deeply addressed–not just by lip service.
The UN was founded in the aftermath of World War II to prevent the recurrence of such catastrophic events, with a commitment to “reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights, the dignity, and worth of the human person” and, proclaiming “the right of everyone to enjoy all human rights and fundamental freedoms, without distinction as to race, sex, language or religion.”
Marking International Day on Eliminating Racial Discrimination on March 21, 2023, the UN Secretary-General António Guterres said, “Racial discrimination is a deeply damaging and pervasive abuse of human rights and human dignity that affects every country. It is one of the most destructive forces dividing societies, responsible for death and suffering on a grotesque scale throughout history. Today, racial discrimination and the legacies of enslavement and colonialism continue to ruin lives, marginalize communities and limit opportunities, preventing billions of people from achieving their full potential.”
There are visible contradictions in how the UN addresses racism and racial discrimination that go against the stipulations of the UN Charter. Some of this is attributable to systemic issues that date back to the founding of the UN.
The UN was established in 1945 as a solution for countries of European descent as they looked for a stable new international (and European) order. At that time, most parts of the world remained under European colonial domination, so the creation of the UN was led by those colonial and former enslaving powers.
The wave of decolonization between 1945 and 1960 changed the face of the world order as well as the World Body. The membership of the UN grew from 51 founding members in 1945 to 127 by 1970, and currently there are 193 member states. This aspect contributed towards altering the balance of power within the UN. These new member states were not from Europe and not white.
These new members persuaded the UN to embrace the change in the world order and brought new ideas to the General Assembly, the main deliberative body of the UN, which now practices the noble principle of “One Nation One Vote” and with five Regional Groups of member states – Africa, Asia – Pacific, Eastern Europe, Latin America and the Caribbean, and Western Europe and Other Group (including North America).
However, a similar transformation did not take place within the staffing of the organizations of the UN system.
In UN organizations, the staff experience or witness workplace discrimination largely on the basis of national origin, race, or skin color, according to the findings of several recent surveys. Most mentioned their lack of trust and confidence in the system, including existing recourse mechanisms and believed that the organization would offer no recourse if they complained about the racism they experienced.
The JIU review on racism and racial discrimination confirms that racism and racial discrimination are widespread throughout the system and the magnitude is high, based on evidence of prevalence, form, and effects of racism and racial discrimination. It further revealed that the “likelihood of experiencing racism and racial discrimination is higher” among black/African descent, Indigenous, South Asian and Middle Eastern/North African respondents.
More than half of the staff in the Professional and higher categories in the UN organizations are from Western countries or European descent. Hence, there is disproportionate representation among the five regional groupings. This disparity, directly and indirectly, contributes to the current organizational culture that enables racism and racial discrimination.
All organizations in the UN system should implement measures to reduce the proportion of the most highly represented regional groups and to increase the proportion of less represented regional groups, thereby reducing the overall imbalance among regional groups and making the UN organizations more representative of the populations they serve, including at decision-making levels.
Tackling systemic racism and racial discrimination within the UN system is not only an ethical issue but also a business issue. Racism and racial discrimination cause significant financial losses for all parties. Staff members suffer from loss of income, health, morale, enthusiasm and job satisfaction during their career span, while organizations suffer in terms of loss of time, resources, talent, committed staff, quality of work, timely delivery, productivity and reputation, among others.
It is therefore important to assess the tangible impacts of racism, in monetary terms, on staff, organizations and their capacities for programme delivery, especially the implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals. Such an exercise is critical if the UN organizations are genuinely committed to eliminating racism within.
The world urgently needs the UN leadership to fight systemic racism. Hence, the organizations of the UN system do not have time to spend another year on internal discussions and dialogues. Immediate implementation of the Secretary-General’s Strategic Action Plan on Addressing Racism and Promoting Dignity for All in the UN Secretariat would be a starting point, and similar action plans should follow urgently in all other UN organizations.
The time is now for the UN to act to fully eradicate racism and racial discrimination within its organizations.
Shihana Mohamed, a Sri Lankan national, is a founding member and one of the Coordinators of the United Nations Asia Network for Diversity and Inclusion (UN-ANDI) and a Public Voices Fellow with The OpEd Project and Equality Now.
UN-ANDI is a global network of like-minded Asians of the United Nations system who strive to promote a more diverse and inclusive culture and mindset within the UN system. UN-ANDI is the first-ever effort to bring together a diverse group of personnel (staff, retirees, consultants, interns, diplomats, and others) from Asia and the Pacific (nationality/origin/descent) in the UN system. Please contact via email at UnitedNationsA[email protected] to connect or/and collaborate with UN-ANDI.
MONTEVIDEO, Uruguay, Nov 20 (IPS) – Australia had the chance to take a step forward in redressing the exclusion of its Indigenous people – and chose not to. In a referendum held in October, voters rejected a constitutional amendment to establish an institution for Indigenous people to have a say on matters that concern them.
On a 90 per cent turnout under mandatory voting, 60 per cent voted against. Supporters of the referendum were left pointing the finger at disinformation – and those who pushed it for political gain.
A history of exclusion
For a long time, Indigenous Australians – currently 3.8 per cent of the country’s population – lacked any recognition. European settlers didn’t see any need for a treaty with the people already there. Indigenous Australians only got the vote in 1962 and, following a referendum, were put on the census as late as 1972 – until then, they literally didn’t count. They remain unrecognised in the country’s constitution.
For most of the 20th century, assimilation laws saw Indigenous children forcibly taken from their families on a mass scale. It’s estimated that between 1910 and 1970 10 to 30 per cent of Indigenous children were handed to childless white couples to be raised as white. The horror of the ‘stolen generations’ only began to be acknowledged in the mid-1990s.
In 1997 the Australian Human Rights Commission issued a report with recommendations for healing and reconciliation. But a belated prime ministerial apology came only in 2008. That same year, the government issued a plan to reduce disadvantage among Indigenous people. After most of its targets expired unmet, a new approach was developed in partnership with an Indigenous coalition in 2020.
But little progress has been made in overcoming exclusion. On almost any indicator, Indigenous people remain two to three times worse off than non-Indigenous Australians. Being dramatically underrepresented in decision-making bodies, they also lack the tools to change it.
The Uluru Statement from the Heart
The road towards the referendum started more than a decade ago, when an expert panel found that constitutional recognition was the way to go. But the call for a referendum was delayed. In 2016, a Referendum Council again concluded that constitutional reform should proceed.
In 2017, the First Nations Dialogues issued the Uluru Statement from the Heart, which called for a Voice to Parliament for Indigenous people, a truth commission and a treaty. The Voice was viewed as the first step to open up a conversation and enable further progress.
Then-Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, of the centre-right Liberal Party, rejected the Uluru Statement. But in 2018 another committee was set up to investigate options for constitutional change – and again, it endorsed a constitutionally enshrined Voice. The Labor opposition promised to put the proposal to a referendum if it won the next election.
Political change: potential and limitations
The Liberal/National coalition lost the May 2022 election, and Labor’s incoming prime minister Anthony Albanese promised progress on long-stalled policies to address Indigenous rights.
The proposed constitutional amendment and text of the ballot question were made public in March 2023 and approved by parliament in June. The government endorsed a set of principles of representation, transparency and accountability that would be used to design the Voice. It was made clear that, as the name implied, this new body would give a voice to Indigenous people but not have decision-making authority or veto power. Any further decision on its composition, functions, powers and procedures would be in the hands of parliament.
Foreshadowing what was to come, the Liberal and National opposition parties submitted dissenting reports, and the Nationals rejected the proposal entirely. By siding with the No campaign, the opposition doomed the referendum. No referendum has ever been carried without bipartisan support.
For and against
Given the legal requirement to distribute an official pamphlet presenting the case for both sides, members of parliament who’d voted for and against the amendment bill drafted and approved a text containing their side’s arguments. This meant that disinformation was inserted into the process from the start: as an independent fact-checking initiative showed, several claims in the No pamphlet were false or misleading.
The Yes campaign focused its messaging on fairness, reconciliation and healing, seeking to sell the idea that Australia would be made better by the recognition of a space for Indigenous people to have a say in national politics.
Indigenous people overwhelmingly supported the proposal, although some opposed it – because they thought it didn’t go far enough, saw it as whitewash or hoped not to see relationships they’d painstakingly developed sidelined. The No campaign made a point of foregrounding contrarian Indigenous voices, disproportionately boosted by supportive media.
Different organisations in the No camp appealed to different groups. Advance, a conservative lobby group, went after young progressives with its ‘Not Enough’ campaign, suggesting that the Voice wasn’t what Indigenous Australians wanted and wouldn’t solve their problems. The Blak Sovereign Movement questioned the timing, arguing that a treaty should be negotiated first. Disinformation and racial abuse were rife.
Two much-repeated claims were that the Voice would divide Australians and enshrine privileges for Indigenous people. No campaigners peddled a zero-sum idea: that non-Indigenous people would lose if Indigenous people won. They falsely claimed that people would lose their farms or that Indigenous people would charge them to access beaches.
Another fear-stoking argument was that the Voice was only the beginning – after they secured this, Indigenous people would go for more, until they took everything from the rest. It could, for example, open up a conversation about land rights. That may have been a genuine fear for Australia’s powerful extractive industries, explaining why the right-wing think tanks that have consistently opposed climate action also lobbied against the Voice.
Having sowed disinformation and confusion, the No campaign told voters that, if in doubt, they should play it safe and vote no. It worked.
What next?
The result could bring even greater backlash. Emboldened, some opposition politicians have since withdrawn their previously stated support for a treaty and suggested rolling back practices they now present as inadmissible concessions to identity politics. This could be a harbinger for the opposition pinning its comeback hopes on a culture war strategy.
But while the referendum defeat has dealt a hard blow to hopes of challenging the exclusion of Indigenous Australians, it isn’t quite game over. A specific proposal has been defeated, but there’s plenty left to advocate for. Progress on the wider reconciliation agenda, including other forms of recognition and redress, could still be possible, particularly at state and local levels. The Uluru Statement from the Heart remains the compass, and civil society will keep urging politicians and the public to follow its path.
Aya, a 5-year-old girl clutching her doll to ease her fear, gazes at Gaza’s sky filled with warplanes from inside an UNRWA school in the Gaza Strip. Credit: UNRWA
by Joyce Chimbi (nairobi)
Inter Press Service
NAIROBI, Nov 20 (IPS) – As the global community marks World Children’s Day, every child should be guaranteed their rights, including those in the Gaza Strip, where heavy bombardment and military operations by Israel have killed more than 11,000 people, 40 percent of them children.
“Under international humanitarian laws and the Safe Schools Declaration, civilians—in particular children, schools, and school personnel—must be protected. What we are seeing in this conflict are bombs pounding the most densely populated area on earth, schools and other civilian infrastructures being attacked, and an entire population being trapped in the most dire conditions, with no safe place to flee to. Surviving children are maimed, orphaned, or have lost close and extended family. Horrors of unimaginable proportion are unfolding before our eyes,” Yasmine Sherif, Executive Director of Education Cannot Wait, the UN global fund for education in emergencies and protracted crises, tells IPS.
“No child can or should have to be prepared for what is happening in Gaza. Children and adolescents are hurting and traumatized. According to UNRWA, initial assessments in October showed that at least 91 percent of children are demonstrating signs of acute stress and trauma and are in need of Mental Health and Psychosocial Support (MHPSS).”
According to the UN, children account for nearly half of the population in Gaza. More than 625,000 students and 22,564 teachers have been affected as attacks continue. At least 86 percent of school buildings are either being used as shelters for the displaced population, catering for up to four times their capacity, or have been destroyed.
Camilla Lodi, Norwegian Refugee Council’s (NRC) Global Psychosocial Support Head of the Better Learning Programme, told IPS the impact of war on children was devastating.
“When children experience conflict, war, and displacement, they go through personal, ongoing life threats—constantly witnessing violence and its effects. Prolonged exposure to such traumatic events increases the risk of complications in processing trauma. When the fighting stops, the journey to recovery starts for children and adults who have gone through high levels of stress and trauma. Mental Health and Psychosocial Support (MHPSS) is not a luxury but a necessity. It helps regain a sense of normalcy,” she said.
“NRC works specifically on a psychosocial support program within broader education in emergency interventions. Simply, children cannot learn unless they feel well and safe. MHPSS is an essential, necessary, and mandatory intervention that should be embedded in every education in emergency programs. The Better Learning Programme (BLP) is NRC’s signature non-specialized classroom-based psychosocial support intervention that helps restore learning capacities for children that have gone through trauma and high levels of stress.”
The program has been at the forefront of providing immediate and long-term critical care and psychosocial support for more than a decade, investing in children’s futures in 33 countries, such as Ukraine, Sudan, and Palestine. Lodi stresses that MHPSS is critical in crises and emergencies.
Sherif stresses that as homes and schools lie in ruin in this high-level stress cycle, surviving children are at risk of severe lifelong mental health problems. A life of debilitating chronic anxiety, depression, and various degrees of trauma now beckons for more than 224 million children and adolescents in conflict and crises globally. She adds that Education Cannot Wait, which supports education programs for children in over 40 countries affected by emergencies and protracted crises, has included MHPSS as a core component of all its country-level investments since 2020. This includes support for the NRC’s Better Learning Programme.
“ECW has prioritized MHPSS to protect and promote students’ and teachers’ well-being, as mental health is the foundation of learning. We have a target to invest at least 10 percent of our resources for mental health and psychosocial support services,” says Sherif.
ECW recently announced a $10 million 12-month grant in support of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) and UNICEF to provide children in Gaza with life-saving mental health and psychosocial support.
“For Gaza specifically, it is a humanitarian catastrophe defined by a relentless cycle of violence. Past research within the Better Learning Programme found that 1093 students (6–17 years of age) who sought help for nightmares and sleep disturbances reported recurrent traumatic nightmares on average 4.57 nights per week, with an average duration of 2.82 years,” Lodi says.
“We always talk about the cost of inaction. Neglecting MHPSS can result in five significant risks, notably the perpetuation of cycles of violence and trauma. As a conflict concludes, the suffering and psychological impact on children commence and, if left unaddressed, can endure throughout their lives. This neglect also results in the loss of educational and developmental milestones, increasing susceptibility to mental health disorders. Additionally, the diminishing sense of community connectedness, a stabilizer for peace, is compromised. There is also an economic fallout, as increased healthcare costs and long-term productivity losses contribute to a substantial financial and economic impact.”
Lodi stresses that no child should pay the price of adults’ conflict and that a ceasefire is urgent to help re-establish a sense of safety and predictability and for children to resume recreational play and education activities in a safe environment, which will allow a safe break for their body in “emergency, flight mode.”
“The catastrophic humanitarian situation in Gaza cannot continue. All parties must respect the UN Charter, international humanitarian law, and universal human rights. I join my colleagues in the United Nations’ call for an immediate humanitarian ceasefire now,” says Sherif.
If soul-shattering human suffering is not halted and safety restored, Sherif says our moral standing as an international community will be questioned by the young generation today and for generations to come. How can we make promises to children in crisis during this World Children’s Day, whose theme is For Every Child, Every Right? Children everywhere in the world, including more than 224 million crisis-affected children, deserve every right and promise delivered despite, and especially because, of their hardships.
