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Tag: Human rights

  • Prostitution an ‘Egregious Violation of Human Rights’—UN Special Rapporteur

    Prostitution an ‘Egregious Violation of Human Rights’—UN Special Rapporteur

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    Reem Alsalem, the UN Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women and Girls, at a press conference in which she discusses her findings on prostitution. Credit: Naureen Hossain/IPS
    • by Naureen Hossain (united nations)
    • Inter Press Service

    UNITED NATIONS, Oct 03 (IPS) – Reem Alsalem, the UN Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women and Girls, calls prostitution a “system of violence” that does not benefit society at all, especially the women and girls forced into this system.

    Alsalem spoke at the Roosevelt Public Policy House in New York on Wednesday, October 2, to discuss her special report in which she posits that prostitution is a form of violence against women and girls. The report was first made public in June 2024, where it was presented to the Human Rights Council in Geneva. Over 60 member states endorsed the report and its findings, including but not limited to Ghana, South Africa, Egypt, Norway, Sweden, Colombia, France, Bangladesh, India, and Nigeria.

    Alsalem received over 300 submissions for the report from multiple stakeholders, including civil society groups, academia, experts, policymakers, and, importantly, women from around the world with lived experience.

    Across the world, the exploitation of women and girls through prostitution and sex trafficking is a pervasive issue that threatens their safety and rights. Alsalem remarked that many systems of prostitution are built on patriarchal norms that position the abuse of power at the hands of mostly men, who are largely the ‘buyers’ or the profiteers in the sex trade. Deeper economic inequalities and the complexities of emergency humanitarian situations have only further displaced women and girls from systems that would have protected and empowered them.

    Alsalem remarked that efforts to normalize or recognize prostitution as a form of labor, such as referring to it as “sex work,” do more harm by gaslighting the women who have experienced it, and it fails to consider the serious human rights violations that can occur within the system, such as the physical and psychological harm they experience under this umbrella of “labor.”

    Pornography should also be classified as a form of prostitution and violence against women at large, according to Alsalem. She noted that its proliferation has only normalized acts of violence and harmful attitudes towards women and girls. Alsalem told IPS that the online platforms that host pornographic material only further incentivize and promote these acts and other forms of coercive and nonconsensual sexual acts.

    Regardless of the platform, how it is branded or how one enters the trade, the system of prostitution is based on the commodification of the body to undergo physical activity and under that there cannot be consent, Alsalem argues.

    “Trying to pretend that there is somehow consent in prostitution, that women want to do this, is actually meaningless in context like prostitution because the concept of consent is actually not relevant when there are systems of exploitation and violence,” she said. “And when the term of consent is being weaponized while we fully know that whatever notions of agreement that women may have—or at least some of them—is extorted through physical coercion, manipulation, and violence.”

    When it comes to the legal frameworks around prostitution, this also reveals the contradictions within countries on the letter of the law versus its regulation in practice. The report indicates that under certain approaches, little is actually done to de-incentivize “buyers” or “organizers” in engaging in prostitution systems.

    Criminalizing prostitution is more likely to punish the prostituted persons through persecution and incarceration, social ostracization, and even further abuse at the hands of law enforcement. In fact, under this approach, it is rare that the ‘buyers’ are punished or that the third parties are held accountable. Under the regulation approach, legal prostitution ensures control to the state through commercial establishments and federal or national laws, including tax laws that they profit from, often at the expense of the sex workers. Decriminalizing prostitution allows for all parties to operate without the fear of persecution; however, this has also resulted in an increased demand, and it does not stop exploitative parties from profiting off vulnerable women and girls and leading them into the sex trade.

    The report speaks in favor of the abolition approach, otherwise known as the “Equality model” or the “Nordic model.” Under this model, third parties (the ‘organizers’) and the buyers are criminalized for engaging in the buying and promotion of sex, while the sex workers do not face criminal persecution. Instead, more investments are made in exit pathways for sex workers to ensure alternative work, economic stability, housing, and support to address trauma and even substance abuse where needed. In the report, Alsalem notes that the Nordic model maintains the international standard on sexual exploitation and trafficking in persons by criminalizing third parties, and that it recognizes the majority of prostitutes are women and girls.

    This approach could have its limitations, however, as one report from the London School of Economics (LSE) notes that sex trade legislation still varies across the different countries that implement this model, the safety of sex workers remains uncertain and they still face the risk of policing. For migrant sex workers, their status prevents them from accessing social protections, and under immigration laws, prostitution can be grounds for deportation.

    The issues present in the current legal models for prostitution reflect some of the institutional structures that maintain the status quo where sex workers are exploited and left unprotected. At the same time, they also reflect a wider cultural issue on how prostitution, and more broadly, sex, is discussed and perceived.

    “In addition to being a human rights violation that needs legal solutions, what is mentioned very clearly in the report is that we are dealing with a cultural issue,” said Taina Bien-Aimé, Executive Director of Coalition Against Trafficking in Women. She added that other acts of violence against women, such as intimate partner violence, sexual violence, and harassment, are now recognized as forms of abuse.

    “But for some reason, because money is exchanged in prostitution, somehow it is seen outside of the context of male violence and discrimination, particularly against women and girls.”

    In her report, Alsalem offers recommendations to governments on how they can reshape their legislation and policies on prostitution towards a direction that is more conscionable of human rights and that centers the experiences of the women and girls who are forced to participate. Governments also need to take measures to address the root causes behind prostitution and the factors that leave women and girls at a higher risk of it.

    “The importance of this report is in its recommendations as well, where the Special Rapporteur is asking jurisdictions and member states around the world to find legislative and policy solutions to this egregious human rights violation,” said Bien-Aimé.

    When asked to elaborate on the steps that need to be taken by international actors like the United Nations, Alsalem referred to the recommendation that UN agencies should also adopt a rights-based approach to prostitution. Alsalem commented that she had reached out to several UN agencies. In particular, she is having “continuous conversations” with the World Health Organization (WHO) and the International Labour Organization (ILO), on her recommendation for these agencies to conduct studies into the wider impacts of prostitution on survivors within their focus of health and labor.

    Nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) such as the Frontline Women’s Fund, and local civil society groups play an important role in spotlighting the issue. Alsalem told IPS that they need to come together to listen to the survivors of prostitution, as well as engage with all actors working on the matter.

    “We see that in decision-making places, including governments, parliaments, whenever the issue is discussed, the law is being prepared or the policy is being revised, some have privileged access to these decision-making places, and that can be those that are advocating for full legalization of all aspects. Whereas those that are advocating for the abolition model… cannot get the same access, and that includes survivors.”

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  • US bans new types of goods from China over allegations of forced labor

    US bans new types of goods from China over allegations of forced labor

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    WASHINGTON — The Department of Homeland Security announced Wednesday that it would ban the import of goods from a Chinese steel manufacturer and a Chinese maker of artificial sweetener, accusing both of being involved in the use of forced labor from China’s far-west region of Xinjiang.

    The action broadens the scope of the U.S. effort to counter products from entering the country that the government says are tied to human rights abuses.

    The additions to the entity list under the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act marks the first time a China-based steel company or aspartame sweetener business have been targeted by U.S. law enforcement, DHS said.

    “Today’s actions reaffirm our commitment to eliminating forced labor from U.S. supply chains and upholding our values of human rights for all,” said Robert Silvers, undersecretary of Homeland Security for policy. “No sector is off-limits. We will continue to identify entities across industries and hold accountable those who seek to profit from exploitation and abuse.”

    The federal law that President Joe Biden signed at the end of 2021 followed allegations of human rights abuses by Beijing against members of the ethnic Uyghur group and other Muslim minorities in Xinjiang. The Chinese government has refuted the claims as lies and defended its practice and policy in Xinjiang as fighting terror and ensuring stability.

    The new approach marked a shift in the U.S. trade relationship with China to increasingly take into account national security and human rights. Beijing has accused the U.S. of using human rights as a pretext to suppress China’s economic growth.

    Enforcement of the law initially targeted solar products, tomatoes, cotton and apparel, but over the last several months, the U.S. government has identified new sectors for enforcement, including aluminum and seafood.

    “That’s just a reflection of the fact that sadly, forced labor continues to taint all too many supply chains,” Silvers told a trade group in June when marking the two-year anniversary of the creation of the entity list. “So our enforcement net has actually been quite wide from an industry-sector perspective.”

    He said the law “changed the dynamic in terms of putting the onus on importers to know their own supply chains” and that its enforcement had showed that the U.S. could “do the right thing” without halting normal trade.

    Since June 2022, the entity list has grown to a total of 75 companies accused of using forced labor in Xinjiang or sourcing materials tied to that forced labor, Homeland Security said.

    Baowu Group Xinjiang Bayi Iron and Steel Co. Ltd and Changzhou Guanghui Food Ingredients Co. Ltd. were the Chinese companies newly added to the list.

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  • Brazil judge makes new requests to allow X to be reinstated from suspension

    Brazil judge makes new requests to allow X to be reinstated from suspension

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    SAO PAULO — Brazilian Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes on Friday added conditions for Elon Musk’s X to have its service reestablished in the country, one day after the social media platform said it had complied with all the judge’s demands, including naming a legal representative.

    De Moraes said in a ruling that X may only be reinstated in Brazil after another company linked to the billionaire, satellite-based internet service provider Starlink, withdraws its appeals related to the case. X has been blocked in Brazil for nearly a month. De Moraes ordered the shutdown after sparring with Musk for months over free speech , far-right accounts and misinformation.

    Earlier this month, de Moraes ordered Starlink’s assets be used to cover X’s fines that already exceeded $3 million. The Brazilian justice argued the two companies are part of the same economic group — a justification that has been questioned by some legal experts.

    His new ruling also established a fine of 10 million Brazilian reais ($1.84 million). Experts examining X’s IP addresses — numeric designations that identifies sites’ location on the internet — said the company temporarily routed users through the servers of Cloudflare, a content delivery network.

    X said it changed its servers to service clients in Latin America, which inadvertently brought the social media network back online in Brazil.

    One source familiar with the judge’s decision told The Associated Press that both of de Moraes’ conditions are new. The source spoke on condition of anonymity because he wasn’t authorized to speak publicly.

    De Moraes also accepted X’s newly designated legal representative, but fined her in 300,000 reais ($55,000) for not complying with other decisions he made in August. The company’s lack of a legal representative in the country was the trigger for his decision to suspend the social media channel on Aug. 30.

    The company has clashed with de Moraes since earlier this year over free speech, accounts associated with the far-right and misinformation on the platform, and it claims to be a victim of censorship.

    Musk and his supporters have called de Moraes an authoritarian and a censor for his rulings, but those have been repeatedly upheld by his peers — including X’s nationwide suspension. On Aug. 28, X said it was removing all remaining Brazil staff in the country “effective immediately,” saying de Moraes had threatened its legal representative in the country with arrest.

    The company has reversed course in recent days. On Thursday, X submitted documentation to de Moraes saying it had complied with all his decisions and requesting its reactivation in Brazil, according to sources familiar with the decision, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to speak publicly.

    X was blocked in the highly online country of 213 million people, where it was one of X’s biggest markets, with more than 20 million users. Brazil has more restrictive rules on speech than the US.

    X said in a statement on Thursday it is “committed to protecting free speech within the boundaries of the law and we recognize and respect the sovereignty of the countries in which we operate.”

    “We believe that the people of Brazil having access to X is essential for a thriving democracy, and we will continue to defend freedom of expression and due process of law through legal processes,” it said in a post on its Global Government Affairs account.

    __

    AP writer David Biller reported from Rio de Janeiro

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  • Activists Call on World to ‘Imagine’ Peace, End Nuclear Arms

    Activists Call on World to ‘Imagine’ Peace, End Nuclear Arms

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    The panel for the session on “Remembering Hiroshima and Nagasaki: Imagining a World without Nuclear Weapons.” Credit: AD McKenzie/IPS
    • by AD McKenzie (paris)
    • Inter Press Service

    PARIS, Sep 27 (IPS) – In any discussion of world peace and the future of humanity, the issue of nuclear arms must be addressed, and now.

    That was the message from a range of delegates at the “Imaginer la Paix / Imagine Peace” conference, held in Paris September 22 to 24, and organized by the Sant’Egidio Community, a Christian organization founded in Rome in 1968 and now based in 70 countries.

    Describing its tenets as “Prayer, service to the Poor and work for Peace,” the community has hosted 38 international, multi-faith peace meetings, bringing together activists from around the world. This is the first time the conference has been held in Paris, with hundreds traveling to France, itself a nuclear-weapon state.

    Occurring against the backdrop of brutal, on-going conflicts in different regions and a new race by some countries to “upgrade” their arsenal, the gathering had a sense of urgency, with growing fears that nuclear weapons might be used by warlords. Participants highlighted current and past atrocities and called upon world leaders to learn from the past.

    “After Hiroshima and Nagasaki, we have been blessed with many who have said ‘no’—’no’ a million times, creating movements and treaties, (and) awareness… that the only reasonable insight to learn from the conception and use of nuclear weapons is to say ‘no’,” said Andrea Bartoli, president of the Sant’Egidio Foundation for Peace and Dialogue, based in New York.

    Participating in a conference forum Monday titled “Remembering Hiroshima and Nagasaki: Imagining a World Without Nuclear Weapons,”  Bartoli and other speakers drew stark pictures of what living in a world with nuclear weapons entails, and they highlighted developments since World War II.

    “After the two bombs were used against Hiroshima and Nagasaki, humans built more than 70,000 nuclear weapons and performed more than 2,000 tests. Still today we have more than 12,500, each of them with power greatly superior to the two used in August 1945,” Bartoli said.

    Despite awareness of the catastrophic potential of these weapons and despite a UN treaty prohibiting their use, some governments argue that possessing nuclear arms is a deterrent—an argument that is deceptive, according to the forum speakers.

    Anna Ikeda, program coordinator tor disarmament at the UN Office of Soka Gakkai International. Credit: AD McKenzie/IPS
    Anna Ikeda, program coordinator for disarmament at the UN Office of Soka Gakkai International. Credit: AD McKenzie/IPS

    Jean-Marie Collin, director of ICAN (the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, a movement launched in the early 2000s in Australia and recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize in 2017), said that leaders who cite deterrence “accept the possibility of violating” international human rights.

    “Nuclear weapons are designed to destroy cities and kill and maim entire populations, which means that all presidents and heads of government who implement a defense policy based on nuclear deterrence and who are therefore responsible for giving this order, are aware of this,” Collin told the forum.

    ICAN campaigned for the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons that was adopted at the United Nations in 2017, entering into force in 2021. The adoption came nearly five decades after the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), which entered into force in 1970.

    The terms of the NPT consider five countries to be nuclear weapons states: the United States, Russia, the United Kingdom, France, and China. Four other countries also possess nuclear weapons: India, Pakistan, North Korea, and Israel.

    According to a 2024 ICAN report, these nine states jointly spent €85 billion (USD 94,6 billion) on their atomic weapon arsenals last year, an expenditure ICAN has called “obscene” and “unacceptable.” France, whose president Emmanuel Macron spoke about peace in broad, general terms at the opening of the conference, spent around €5,3 billion (about USD 5,9 billion) in 2023 on its nuclear weapons, said the report.

    The policy of “deterrence” and “reciprocity,”  which essentially means “we’ll get rid of our weapons if you get rid of yours,”  has been slammed by ICAN and fellow disarmament activists.

    “With the constant flow of information, we often tend to lose sight of the reality of figures,” Collin said at the peace conference. “I hope this one will hold your attention: it is estimated that more than 38,000 children were killed in the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Children!”

    All those killed—an estimated 210,000 people by the end of 1945—died in horrific ways, as survivors and others have testified. Delegates said that this knowledge should be the real “deterrent.”

    At the forum, Anna Ikeda, program coordinator for disarmament at the UN Office of Soka Gakkai International, a global Buddhist movement, described testimony from a Hiroshima a-bomb survivor, Reiko Yamada, as one she would never forget.

    “She (Yamada) stated, ‘A good friend of mine in the neighbourhood was waiting for her mother to return home with her four brothers and sisters. Later, she told me that on the second day after the bombing, a moving black lump crawled into the house. They first thought it was a black dog, but they soon realized it was their mother; she collapsed and died when she finally got to her children. They cremated her body in the yard,” Ikeda told the audience with emotion.

    “Who deserves to die such a death? Nobody!” she continued. “Yet our world continues to spend billions of dollars to upkeep our nuclear arsenals, and our leaders at times imply readiness to use them. It is utterly unacceptable.”

    Ikeda said that survivors, known as the “hibakusha” in Japan, have a fundamental answer to why nuclear weapons must be abolished—it is that “no one else should ever suffer what we did.”

    Note: This article is brought to you by IPS Noram in collaboration with INPS Japan and Soka Gakkai International in consultative status with ECOSOC.

    IPS UN Bureau Report


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  • Summit of the Future: Youth Driven Action Needed to Tackle Nuclear and Climate Crises

    Summit of the Future: Youth Driven Action Needed to Tackle Nuclear and Climate Crises

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    Dr. Tshilidzi Marwala, USG and Rector of the United Nations University, and Ms. Kaoru Nemeto, Director of the United Nations Information Centre during a discussion ‘Building the Future: Synergetic Collaboration on Nuclear and Climate Crises.’ Credit: Naureen Hossain/IPS
    • by Naureen Hossain (united nations)
    • Inter Press Service

    UNITED NATIONS, Sep 23 (IPS) – Driving the Summit of the Future’s core messages of international solidarity and decisive action are young people who are determined to address the intersecting issues that the world contends with today.

    During the Summit’s Action Days (20-21 September), it was young people who led the conversations of increasing and defining meaningful engagement, both on- and off-site from the United Nations Headquarters.

    Not only are they driving the conversation, but in the Pact for the Future adopted by world leaders at the United Nations on Sunday (September 22), youth and future generations are at the forefront of global leaders’ concerns, and their role was clearly defined with the first ever Declaration on Future Generations, with concrete steps to take account of future generations in our decision-making, including a possible envoy for future generations.

    This includes a commitment to more “meaningful opportunities for young people to participate in the decisions that shape their lives, especially at the global level.”

    Building the Future: Synergetic Collaboration on Nuclear and Climate Crises, a side event whose co-organizers included Soka Gakkai International (SGI) and the Future Action Festival Organizing Committee, with the support of the United Nations University (UNU) and the United Nations Information Centre (UNIC), brought together young activists to discuss the intersection between two different crises and what will define meaningful youth engagement.

    Kaoru Nemoto, the Director General of UNIC in Tokyo, observed that it was “ground-breaking” to see the agenda of the Summit’s Action Days largely led and organized by youth participants, as signified by the majority of seats in the General Assembly Hall being filled by young activists.

    “There is an undercurrent, a common message, that the youth can make this world a better place to live,” said Nemoto. “No matter what agenda you are working on, be it climate change, nuclear disarmament, fighting inequality… youth issues are cross-cutting, very strong cross-cutting issues across the board.”

    Nemoto further added that the United Nations needs to do much more to engage youth for meaningful participation. This would mean allowing youth to consult in decision-making and to be in positions of leadership. Youth presence cannot be reduced to tokenism.

    The climate and nuclear crises are existential threats that are deeply connected, said Dr. Tshilidzi Marwala, the rector of the United Nations University. Climate instability fuels the factors that lead to conflict and displacement. Conflict, such as what is happening in Sudan, Israel, Palestine, and Ukraine, increases the risk of nuclear escalation. As leaders in the present day tackle the issues, Marwala called on the youth to continue raising their voices and to hold those powers accountable.

    Marwala noted that the United Nations University would be committed to “realizing meaningful participation” in all parties. For young people, while they are motivated and demonstrate a care for deeper social issues, they face challenges in having their voices heard or in feeling galvanized to take action. Marwala noted that it was important to reach out to those young people who are either not involved or feel discouraged from getting involved in political work and activism.

    Chief among the Summit of the Future’s agenda is increasing youth participation in decision-making processes. It has long been acknowledged that young activists and civil society actors drive greater societal change and are motivated to act towards complex issues. Yet they frequently face challenges in participating in policymaking that would shape their countries’ positions.

    Among these challenges are representation in political spaces. Within the context of Japan, young people are underrepresented in local and national politics. As Luna Serigano, an advocate from the Japan Youth Council, shared during the event, there is a wider belief among young voters in Japan that their voices will go unheard by authorities.

    This is indicated in voter turnout, which shows that only 37 percent of voters are in their 20s, and only 54 percent of voters believe that their votes matter. By contrast, 71 percent of people in their 70s voted in elections. People in their 30s or younger account for just 1 percent of professionals serving in government councils and forums. The Japan Youth Council is currently advocating for active youth participation in the country’s climate change policy by calling for young people to be directly involved as committee members to work on a new energy plan for the coming year.

    Yuuki Tokuda, a co-founder of GeNuine, a Japan-based NGO that explores nuclear issues through a gender perspective, shared that young people are out of decision-making spaces. Although their voices may be heard, it is not enough. As she told IPS, the climate and nuclear crises are on the minds of young people in Japan. And while they have ideas on what could be done, they are not informed on how to act.

    There is some hope for increasing participation. Tokuda shared within policymakers on nuclear issues, of which 30 percent include women, have begun to engage with young people in these discussions.

    “It is time to reconstruct systems so that youth can meaningfully participate in these processes,” said Tokuda. “We need more intergenerational participation in order to work towards the ban of nuclear weapons and the climate crisis.”

    During the event, what meaningful youth engagement should look like was discussed. It was acknowledged that efforts have gone towards giving a space to the perspectives of young people. Including young people in the discussions is a critical step. It was suggested that direction should shift towards ensuring that young people have the authority to take the action needed to resolve intersecting, complex issues. Otherwise, the inclusion is meaningless.

    “The future-oriented youth is more needed than ever to tackle the challenges in building and maintaining peace,” said Mitsuo Nishikata of SGI.

    “As a youth-driven initiative such as what the Future Action Festival demonstrates, youth solidarity can stand as a starting point for resolving and passing issues.”

    Next year (2025) will mark 80 years since the end of World War II and the Hiroshima-Nagasaki atomic bombings. Nishikata pointed out that this will be a time for crucial opportunities to advance the discussions on nuclear disarmament and climate action, ahead of the Third Meeting of State Parties on the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons and the 30th UN Climate Conference (COP30).

    “We will continue to unite in our desire for peace, sharing the responsibility for future generations and expanding grassroots actions in Japan and globally.

    Other commitments for the Pact for the Future included the first multilateral recommitment to nuclear disarmament in more than a decade, with a clear commitment to the goal of totally eliminating nuclear weapons.

    It also pledged reform of the United Nations Security Council since the 1960s, with plans to improve the effectiveness and representativeness of the Council, including by redressing the historical underrepresentation of Africa as a priority.

    The pact has at its core a commitment to “turbo-charge” implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), including the reform of the international financial architecture so that it better represents and serves developing countries.

    “We cannot build a future that is suitable for our grandchildren with a system that our grandparents created,” as the Secretary-General António Guterres stated.

    This article is brought to you by IPS Noram in collaboration with INPS Japan and Soka Gakkai International in consultative status with ECOSOC.

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  • As Jimmy Carter nears his 100th birthday, a musical gala celebrates the ‘rock-and roll president’

    As Jimmy Carter nears his 100th birthday, a musical gala celebrates the ‘rock-and roll president’

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    A range of stars from the stage, screen and sport paid tribute Tuesday to former President Jimmy Carter ahead of his 100th birthday, the eclectic lineup meant to highlight the 39th president’s emphasis on human rights and his love of music as a universal language.”Everyone here is making history,” Jason Carter, the former president’s grandson, told more than 4,000 people who filled Atlanta’s Fox Theatre to toast the longest-lived U.S. executive in history. “This is the first time people have come together to celebrate the 100th birthday of American president.”The benefit concert, with ticket sales funding international programs of The Carter Center that Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter founded in 1982 after leaving the White House, brought together artists that crossed generations and genres that traced back to his 1976 campaign. The concert will be aired in full on Georgia Public Broadcasting on Oct. 1, Carter’s birthday. Carter remains in hospice care at his home in Plains, Georgia. “He really was the rock-and-roll president,” said Chuck Leavell, whose Georgia-based Allman Brothers Band campaigned with Carter in 1976. But more than that, Leavell said, Carter always understood music as something “that brings people together.”Indeed, Tuesday’s run of show assembled artists as varied as India Arie singing R&B and soul draped in a resplendent purple gown; the B-52s, formed in Athens, Georgia, singing “Love Shack” and projecting psychedelic imagery across the concert hall; and the Atlanta Symphony Chamber Chorus bringing a classical and patriotic repertoire.Former President Barack Obama, known for releasing his summer playlists on social media, marveled at the range.”Now I have another reason to respect you,” Obama said in a video message. “He has got great taste in music. … I’ve never thrown a concert that features pop, rock, gospel, country, jazz, classical and hip-hop.”Of course, Obama noted, “Jimmy never passes up the opportunity to send a message,” and several artists referenced one of Carter’s widely circulated quotes about music: “One of the things that has held America together has been the music that we share and love.”Leavell took the stage multiple times Tuesday, reprising music he played and sang almost 50 years ago when Carter, then an underdog former Georgia governor, outpaced better-known Democrats to win his party’s nomination and the presidency in the wake of the Vietnam War and the Watergate scandal.”Music was such an important part of his political legacy,” Jason Carter told The Associated Press. “The Allman Brothers helped get him elected. Willie Nelson helped get him elected. He truly believed that.”When he was coming out of the South, running for president of the United States, the Allman Brothers and some of these other folks were really announcing this New South that was turning the page on the days of segregation – their lyrics, their whole vibe,” the younger Carter continued. “He used that to connect across generations.”Leavell traced Carter’s love of music to his upbringing in church; the former president has written about his early church experiences, including visiting a Black congregation near his home just outside Plains. Carter recalled being more captivated by the music there than what he heard in his all-white congregation. At the Naval Academy, Leavell noted, Carter and one of his friends would buy classical recordings of the same pieces to study how music can be interpreted differently. Part of the evening involved recounting Carter’s legacy as president and with The Carter Center, which advocates democracy, resolves conflict and fights disease across the world. Hannah Hooper, a lead singer of the alternative rock band Grouplove, praised Carter for dramatically expanding nationally protected park lands, most of it in Alaska. Actress Renee Zellweger narrated the lifelong relationship between the former president and his wife, whom he first met when she was just days old and who died last November after 77 years of marriage. Two former Atlanta Braves baseball stars, Terry Pendleton and Dale Murphy, celebrated Carter as the team’s No. 1 fan. They recalled what it was like to play with the Carters sitting in a field-level box, and they presented the former president’s great-grandsons with a Braves jersey to give their great-grandfather. The jersey number: 100. Bernice King, the daughter of slain civil rights icon Martin Luther King Jr., recounted Carter’s relationship with her family — he was close to her mother, and her grandfather was instrumental in Carter’s 1976 election. Though Carter was not actively involved in King Jr.’s work, Bernice King thanked the former president for publicly crediting her father for his indirect role in Carter’s political rise. Without the successes of the Civil Rights Movement, she recalled Carter saying, the nation never would have elevated a Southern governor who came of age in the era of Jim Crow segregation. The night was mostly void of partisan politics. But there were signs of Democratic allegiances to Carter and shadows of the 2024 election.Patterson Hood of Drive-By Truckers praised Carter as being ahead of his time and added that the country would have been better off if he had gotten to “finish the job” — an obvious reference to Carter’s landslide defeat to Republican Ronald Reagan in 1980. The list of former presidents paying tribute was bipartisan: Democrat Bill Clinton and Republican George W. Bush were packaged with Obama. President Joe Biden added his greetings, recalling that he was the first U.S. senator to endorse Carter’s White House bid. “I admire you so darn much,” Biden said, calling Carter, “Mr. President.” But there was a notable omission: former President Donald Trump. The 2024 Republican nominee has this year repeatedly cast Carter as a failed president as he tries to make a comeback bid. After the 2016 election, Carter questioned Trump’s legitimacy. Arie’s selections, meanwhile, included “What If,” the lyrics of which include first names of Black women who have broken barriers. Among them: Kamala. That reference to the vice president and Democratic nominee, Kamala Harris, drew roars from the crowd. Jason Carter, for his part, said his grandfather has been captivated by Biden’s decision to end his reelection bid and the possibility that Harris could become the first woman in the Oval Office. The younger Carter, who now chairs The Carter Center board, said Jimmy Carter struggled in the months after Rosalynn Carter’s death but now is excited by another campaign.”He’s ready to turn the page on Trump,” Jason Carter said, but more driven by the opportunity to vote for Harris. “When Kamala came onto the scene, it really galvanized the party, and it really energized him as well.”

    ATLANTA —

    A range of stars from the stage, screen and sport paid tribute Tuesday to former President Jimmy Carter ahead of his 100th birthday, the eclectic lineup meant to highlight the 39th president’s emphasis on human rights and his love of music as a universal language.

    “Everyone here is making history,” Jason Carter, the former president’s grandson, told more than 4,000 people who filled Atlanta’s Fox Theatre to toast the longest-lived U.S. executive in history. “This is the first time people have come together to celebrate the 100th birthday of American president.”

    The benefit concert, with ticket sales funding international programs of The Carter Center that Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter founded in 1982 after leaving the White House, brought together artists that crossed generations and genres that traced back to his 1976 campaign. The concert will be aired in full on Georgia Public Broadcasting on Oct. 1, Carter’s birthday. Carter remains in hospice care at his home in Plains, Georgia.

    “He really was the rock-and-roll president,” said Chuck Leavell, whose Georgia-based Allman Brothers Band campaigned with Carter in 1976. But more than that, Leavell said, Carter always understood music as something “that brings people together.”

    Indeed, Tuesday’s run of show assembled artists as varied as India Arie singing R&B and soul draped in a resplendent purple gown; the B-52s, formed in Athens, Georgia, singing “Love Shack” and projecting psychedelic imagery across the concert hall; and the Atlanta Symphony Chamber Chorus bringing a classical and patriotic repertoire.

    Paras Griffin

    (L-R) Charlie Carter, Josh Carter, Jonathan Carter, Sarah Jane Opp Carter and guests attend Jimmy Carter 100: A Celebration in Song at The Fox Theatre on September 17, 2024 in Atlanta, Georgia. (Photo by Paras Griffin/Getty Images)

    Former President Barack Obama, known for releasing his summer playlists on social media, marveled at the range.

    ATLANTA, GEORGIA - SEPTEMBER 17: A view of the atmosphere at Jimmy Carter 100: A Celebration in Song at The Fox Theatre on September 17, 2024 in Atlanta, Georgia. (Photo by Paras Griffin/Getty Images)

    Paras Griffin

    A view of the atmosphere at Jimmy Carter 100: A Celebration in Song at The Fox Theatre on September 17, 2024 in Atlanta, Georgia. (Photo by Paras Griffin/Getty Images)

    “Now I have another reason to respect you,” Obama said in a video message. “He has got great taste in music. … I’ve never thrown a concert that features pop, rock, gospel, country, jazz, classical and hip-hop.”

    Of course, Obama noted, “Jimmy never passes up the opportunity to send a message,” and several artists referenced one of Carter’s widely circulated quotes about music: “One of the things that has held America together has been the music that we share and love.”

    Leavell took the stage multiple times Tuesday, reprising music he played and sang almost 50 years ago when Carter, then an underdog former Georgia governor, outpaced better-known Democrats to win his party’s nomination and the presidency in the wake of the Vietnam War and the Watergate scandal.

    “Music was such an important part of his political legacy,” Jason Carter told The Associated Press. “The Allman Brothers helped get him elected. Willie Nelson helped get him elected. He truly believed that.

    Jason Carter, center, grandson of President Jimmy Carter, with his sons, Henry Lewis Carter, right, and Thomas Clyde Carter, left, attends the "Jimmy Carter 100: A Celebration in Song," concert at the Fox Theatre, Tuesday, Sept. 17, 2024, in Atlanta. Former President Carter turns 100-years old on Oct. 1. (AP Photo/Mike Stewart)

    Mike Stewart

    Jason Carter, center, grandson of President Jimmy Carter, with his sons, Henry Lewis Carter, right, and Thomas Clyde Carter, left, attends the “Jimmy Carter 100: A Celebration in Song,” concert at the Fox Theatre, Tuesday, Sept. 17, 2024, in Atlanta. Former President Carter turns 100-years old on Oct. 1. (AP Photo/Mike Stewart)

    “When he was coming out of the South, running for president of the United States, the Allman Brothers and some of these other folks were really announcing this New South that was turning the page on the days of segregation – their lyrics, their whole vibe,” the younger Carter continued. “He used that to connect across generations.”

    Leavell traced Carter’s love of music to his upbringing in church; the former president has written about his early church experiences, including visiting a Black congregation near his home just outside Plains. Carter recalled being more captivated by the music there than what he heard in his all-white congregation. At the Naval Academy, Leavell noted, Carter and one of his friends would buy classical recordings of the same pieces to study how music can be interpreted differently.

    Part of the evening involved recounting Carter’s legacy as president and with The Carter Center, which advocates democracy, resolves conflict and fights disease across the world.

    Hannah Hooper, a lead singer of the alternative rock band Grouplove, praised Carter for dramatically expanding nationally protected park lands, most of it in Alaska. Actress Renee Zellweger narrated the lifelong relationship between the former president and his wife, whom he first met when she was just days old and who died last November after 77 years of marriage.

    Two former Atlanta Braves baseball stars, Terry Pendleton and Dale Murphy, celebrated Carter as the team’s No. 1 fan. They recalled what it was like to play with the Carters sitting in a field-level box, and they presented the former president’s great-grandsons with a Braves jersey to give their great-grandfather. The jersey number: 100.

    Bernice King, the daughter of slain civil rights icon Martin Luther King Jr., recounted Carter’s relationship with her family — he was close to her mother, and her grandfather was instrumental in Carter’s 1976 election. Though Carter was not actively involved in King Jr.’s work, Bernice King thanked the former president for publicly crediting her father for his indirect role in Carter’s political rise. Without the successes of the Civil Rights Movement, she recalled Carter saying, the nation never would have elevated a Southern governor who came of age in the era of Jim Crow segregation.

    The night was mostly void of partisan politics. But there were signs of Democratic allegiances to Carter and shadows of the 2024 election.

    Patterson Hood of Drive-By Truckers praised Carter as being ahead of his time and added that the country would have been better off if he had gotten to “finish the job” — an obvious reference to Carter’s landslide defeat to Republican Ronald Reagan in 1980.

    The list of former presidents paying tribute was bipartisan: Democrat Bill Clinton and Republican George W. Bush were packaged with Obama. President Joe Biden added his greetings, recalling that he was the first U.S. senator to endorse Carter’s White House bid. “I admire you so darn much,” Biden said, calling Carter, “Mr. President.”

    But there was a notable omission: former President Donald Trump. The 2024 Republican nominee has this year repeatedly cast Carter as a failed president as he tries to make a comeback bid. After the 2016 election, Carter questioned Trump’s legitimacy.

    Arie’s selections, meanwhile, included “What If,” the lyrics of which include first names of Black women who have broken barriers. Among them: Kamala. That reference to the vice president and Democratic nominee, Kamala Harris, drew roars from the crowd.

    Jason Carter, for his part, said his grandfather has been captivated by Biden’s decision to end his reelection bid and the possibility that Harris could become the first woman in the Oval Office. The younger Carter, who now chairs The Carter Center board, said Jimmy Carter struggled in the months after Rosalynn Carter’s death but now is excited by another campaign.

    “He’s ready to turn the page on Trump,” Jason Carter said, but more driven by the opportunity to vote for Harris. “When Kamala came onto the scene, it really galvanized the party, and it really energized him as well.”

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  • ECW Delivers Holistic Education Against All Odds, But More Funding Needed

    ECW Delivers Holistic Education Against All Odds, But More Funding Needed

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    Students interact with ECW’s Executive Director, Yasmine Sherif, as they participate in an art therapy session at an ECW-supported school in Kyiv, Ukraine. In partnership with UNICEF Ukraine and Caritas Ukraine, the school offers vital mental health and psychosocial support. Credit: ECW
    • by IPS Correspondent (united nations)
    • Inter Press Service

    UNITED NATIONS, Sep 17 (IPS) – Education Cannot Wait (ECW) has delivered quality education to children in crisis “against all odds,” ECW Executive Director Yasmine Sherif said at the United Nations today. “And you can imagine the odds. We are seeing more armed conflict, a growth of climate-induced disasters and the biggest refugee movement since World War 2.” 

    Education Cannot Wait’s ‘Results Against All Odds: 2023 Annual Results Report‘ launched today (September 17, 2024) gives details of the dire need for additional funding because, while the number of children in urgent need of education support has nearly tripled since 2016, for the first time in a decade funding for funding for education in emergencies and protracted crises dropped.

    The global community is falling behind on its promise to ensure ‘quality education for all‘ by 2030, the report says, as armed conflicts, forced displacement, climate change, and other emergencies and protracted crises have left more than 224 million crisis-affected children in urgent need of education support, a sharp rise from 75 million in 2016.

    Overall humanitarian funding for education decreased by 3% last year, from US$1.2 billion in 2022 to US$1.17 billion in 2023, according to the report.

    Despite this, Education Cannot Wait (ECW), the global fund for education in emergencies and protracted crises within the United Nations, and its strategic partners continue to deliver life-saving, life-sustaining and multi-year investments in education to the world’s most vulnerable children and adolescents.

    Sherif thanked ECW’s partners and the global community that supports education for children in crisis.

    “Mostofall,wehavetothankthechildrenwhoareclingingontohopedespitethedarknessandtheoddsagainstthem,stillwantingtogotoschool,wantingtolearnandwantingtochangetheirlives.Now,despiteallthesealarmingtrendsandrealities,educationcannotwait,” Sherif said, noting that this report gave details of many children that had been reached sinceECWbecameoperationalin2017. 

    “That’ssixyears,11millionwithaholisticqualityeducation,aneducationthatischild-centeredandthatentitlestheentirespectrumofschoolmeansacademictraining,artsandmentalhealthandpsychosocialservices,protection,teachertrainingandteachersupport,amongstsomanyotherthings.”  In 2023 alone, 5.6 million girls and boys were reached, she noted.

    More Funding Needed to Meet 2026 Goal

    To date, the fund has mobilized more than US$1.6 billion from public and private donors. However, US$600 million is urgently needed in donor contributions for ECW and its strategic partners to reach a total of 20 million children and adolescents with inclusive, quality education by the end of its 2023-2026 strategic plan period.

    “For our 25 strategic donor partners, these transformative investments deliver a quality child-centered and holistic education, and thus represent a commitment to sustainable development, human rights, economic resilience and global security,” said Gordon Brown, UN Special Envoy for Global Education and Chair of ECW’s High-Level Steering Group.

    “Education is the most powerful tool to restore hope in a world marred by brutal conflicts, human rights violations and inequality. It is our investment in a new generation of leaders.”

    From Afghanistan, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, Gaza, the West Bank, to Haiti, the Sahel, Sudan, Ukraine and other hotspots around the globe, ECW’s report highlights the profound impact of education in crisis settings.

    Funding Education: A Moral Choice

    “Girls and boys in crises are enduring the worst impacts of brutal man-made conflicts, forced displacement, climate change and other disasters. Our new report proves that despite these challenges, it is possible to provide them with the protection, hope and life-changing opportunity of a quality holistic education. To do this, we urgently call for US$600 million to meet our strategic plan targets and ensure a better future for 20 million girls and boys by the end of 2026,” said ECW Executive Director Yasmine Sherif. “This is the time to make a moral choice that is aligned with political action.”

    The new report shows ECW’s strong focus on the world’s most vulnerable and at-risk children: of the children reached in 2023, more than half were girls (51%), 17% were internally displaced and 22% were refugees.

    The quality and impact of the education delivered—even in the most difficult of circumstances—are also improving. In all, 9 out of 10 programmes reported improved school enrollment and 72% showed gender-equitable progress. ECW reported that, among programmes able to monitor learning outcomes, 80% of its investments demonstrated academic improvements and 72% showed improvements in children’s social and emotional learning and well-being.

    ECW investments also improved the continuity of learning, with notable increases in the number of girls and boys reached through the Fund’s investments in early childhood education and secondary school, disability inclusion, gender-transformative approaches, mental health support, and agile, holistic solutions that address whole-child needs.

    The climate crisis is an education crisis. The number of children reached through First Emergency Responses resulting from climate-induced hazards nearly doubled from 14% in 2022 to 27% in 2023.

    The report lays out ECW’s distinct approach and results in improving coordination at the humanitarian-development nexus, joint programming, increasing localization and community engagement, and building stronger data and evidence systems.

    It demonstrates ECW’s efforts with partners to deliver on key United Nations initiatives and reforms, including the Grand Bargain agreement, the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the Secretary-General UN reform. The report shows that the systems are in place and that Education Cannot Wait has brought a revival through bold support to make the systems work at its best. But funding is required to achieve the goals.

    “Education is a public good and a fundamental right. To achieve our goals, global leaders must align policies, funding and humanitarian principles. Multilateral aid funding must immediately be increased to reverse the current downward trend, and partnerships and collaboration must be strengthened across humanitarian, development and peace efforts. Education Cannot Wait has shown us that the seemingly ‘impossible’ is indeed possible—provided that the funding is made available,” said Brown.

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  • Global Community Urged to Help Deliver Quality, Holistic Education for Ukrainian Children

    Global Community Urged to Help Deliver Quality, Holistic Education for Ukrainian Children

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    A student participates in an art therapy session at an ECW-supported school in Kyiv, Ukraine. In partnership with UNICEF Ukraine and Caritas Ukraine, the school offers vital mental health and psychosocial support, alongside essential learning materials, helping children recover from trauma and promoting social cohesion between host communities and displaced children and families. Credit: ECW
    • by Joyce Chimbi (kyiv kyiv & nairobi)
    • Inter Press Service

    KYIV Kyiv & NAIROBI, Sep 13 (IPS) – In a major escalation of a conflict that started in 2014 and which is the largest in Europe since World War II, Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022. Since then, thousands of Ukrainian civilians—many of them women and children—have lost their lives. Countless others have been displaced from their homes, clinging to what remains of the education system as their communities disintegrate.

    On a high-level UN mission to Ukraine this week, Education Cannot Wait (ECW)—the global fund for education in emergencies and protracted crises within the United Nations—met with children affected by the war and local partners. The mission took stock of the impact of the conflict on approximately 4 million children across Ukraine whose schooling has been severely disrupted.

    “We visited a school in Kyiv, where classes continue despite the constant threat of attack. Alarms frequently signal imminent danger. The school has a bomb shelter for 500 children, but there are over 1,000 students enrolled. To ensure everyone has access to the shelter when needed, primary school children attend in the morning, and secondary school children attend in the afternoon,” Yasmine Sherif, ECW’s Executive Director, told IPS.

    “We also spoke with psychologists and parents, including single mothers displaced from the east, north, and south of the country. They’ve come to Kyiv, leaving behind the fathers and grandparents of their children. We were able to see how a strong focus on mental health and social services is helping children and families cope with these challenges, with excellent collaboration between teachers, psychologists, parents, and the broader community. The Ministry of Education is working tirelessly to ensure safe   learning environments for all children,” Sherif added.

    Yasmine Sherif, Education Cannot Wait Executive Director and children participate in an art therapy session at an ECW-supported school in Kyiv, Ukraine. In partnership with UNICEF Ukraine and Caritas Ukraine, the school offers vital mental health and psychosocial support, alongside essential learning materials, helping children recover from trauma and promoting social cohesion between host communities and displaced children and families. Credit: ECW
    Yasmine Sherif, Education Cannot Wait Executive Director and children participate in an art therapy session at an ECW-supported school in Kyiv, Ukraine. In partnership with UNICEF Ukraine and Caritas Ukraine, the school offers vital mental health and psychosocial support, alongside essential learning materials, helping children recover from trauma and promoting social cohesion between host communities and displaced children and families. Credit: ECW

    According to Sherif, children in Ukraine continue their education in core subjects like reading and mathematics, alongside arts education, even under these difficult circumstances. ECW was among the first to invest in education in Ukraine, starting in 2017, with an initial emergency response supporting children along the front lines in eastern Ukraine.

    Since then, ECW has provided USD 27 million in funding to support quality, holistic education programmes in Ukraine since 2017. As conflict continues to escalate and education needs multiply, ECW has received much-needed donations from additional donors, including Germany and Japan, to support education in Ukraine.

    At last year’s Education Cannot Wait High-Level Financing Conference, the Global Business Coalition for Education pledged to mobilize USD 50 million from the business community to support ECW’s four-year strategic plan. In partnership with GBCE, TheirWorld, HP and Microsoft, USD 39 million in partnership and device donation for ECW has already been mobilized, and over 70,000 laptops have been shared with schools, teachers and other people in need, both inside Ukraine and in neighboring countries.

    This is a huge investment in expanding educational opportunities for children who are unable to access in-person learning. Delivered by a consortium of partners including Finn Church Aid, the Kyiv School of Economics, Save the Children and UNICEF—in coordination with Ukraine’s Ministry of Education and Science—ECW’s education programmes have thus far reached more than 360,000 children, about 65 percent of whom are girls.

    Yasmine Sherif, Education Cannot Wait (ECW) Executive Director, mission delegation, school staff, children and their parents during a visit to an ECW-supported school in Kyiv, Ukraine. Credit: ECW
    Yasmine Sherif, Education Cannot Wait (ECW) Executive Director, mission delegation, school staff, children and their parents during a visit to an ECW-supported school in Kyiv, Ukraine. Credit: ECW

    Against this backdrop, Munir Mammadzade, UNICEF Representative to Ukraine, emphasized that the “support from Education Cannot Wait is critical for children, their parents and teachers who are doing everything they can to keep classrooms open and to continue in-person learning despite the impact of the war across the country.”

    However, more funding is urgently needed. Over 1,300 educational facilities have been damaged or destroyed, and nearly 600,000 children remain unable to access in-person learning since the start of the school year in early September, due to ongoing deadly and destructive fighting, attacks and displacement.

    “This atrocious war must stop now! For as long as the children, adolescents and teachers in Ukraine suffer this unfathomable horror, schools must be protected from attacks. As a global community, we must rise to the challenge before us to ensure that every girl and every boy in Ukraine impacted by this brutal war and the refugees have access to the safety, hope and opportunity that only a quality education can provide,” Sherif said.

    ECW and its strategic partners are calling for USD 600 million in additional funding from private and public donors to deliver on the global targets outlined in the Fund’s 2023-2026 Strategic Plan. This funding would provide 20 million children in crisis-impacted countries around the globe with safe, inclusive, and quality education, and the hope for a better tomorrow.

    A young learner at an ECW-supported school in Kyiv, Ukraine, welcomes Education Cannot Wait's high-level mission
    A young learner at an ECW-supported school in Kyiv, Ukraine, welcomes Education Cannot Wait’s high-level mission delegation. Credit: ECW

    According to Sherif, ECW’s investment in education is an investment in recovery, peace, security, and justice for Ukraine and beyond. It is an investment in the vast potential of future generations. Earlier this year, ECW announced an USD 18 million allocation to roll out a Multi-Year Resilience Programme in Ukraine. The investment aims to raise an additional USD 17 million to reach over 150,000 children across 10 of the country’s most affected areas.

    The programme aims to improve learning outcomes in safer, more accessible environments while expanding digital learning options as an alternative. There is also a strong emphasis on mental health, psychosocial support, and targeted assistance for girls and children with disabilities.

    The UN high-level mission concluded at the Fourth Summit of First Ladies and Gentlemen, where ECW called on world leaders to commit to protecting education from attack and to scale up funding to provide life-saving access to safe education, both in-person and through remote learning opportunities, when necessary, as well as catch-up classes for children who have fallen behind.

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  • Africa’s Strong Case for Reforms of UN Security Council Led by Sierra Leone Presidency

    Africa’s Strong Case for Reforms of UN Security Council Led by Sierra Leone Presidency

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    • Opinion by Kingsley Ighobor (united nations)
    • Inter Press Service

    UNITED NATIONS, Sep 09 (IPS) – At most international forums, including the annual UN General Assembly high-level debate, Sierra Leonean President Julius Maada Bio consistently highlights the injustices of the global system, particularly Africa’s absence in the permanent category and underrepresentation in the non-permanent category of the United Nations Security Council (UNSC).

    President Bio is the coordinator of the African Union Committee of Ten Heads of State and Government on UNSC Reform, known as C-10, a platform he uses to amplify his UNSC reform advocacy.

    This year, he has been particularly vocal, as Sierra Leone currently holds a non-permanent seat on the Security Council and presides over the Council for the month of August.

    For example, in his statement in the Security Council chambers on 12 August, President Bio emphasized the outdated nature of the current UNSC structure. “The current structure of the Security Council reflects an outdated world order, an era that fails to recognize Africa’s growing importance and contributions,” he remarked.

    In a subsequent interview with Africa Renewal, the president pointed out that the continent is home to 1.3 billion people and 54 of the 193 UN member states—a significant part of the global community.

    “We cannot just be a territory for proxy wars. We know what our problems are, and we should have a say in how to solve them,” he asserted, adding that more than 60 percent of the issues discussed in the Security Council pertain to Africa.

    It is unjust for Africa to be sidelined in the 21st century, he argued, declaring: “I call on all African leaders and on all those who stand for justice and democracy around the world to fight this unfairness.”

    As the UN prepares to celebrate its 80th anniversary in 2025, President Bio asserted that the celebration would only be meaningful if the current configuration of the Council is reformed, reflecting the frustration of many African leaders who feel the continent’s concerns are often overlooked.

    Africa’s demands

    Africa is demanding at least two permanent seats in the UN Security Council and two additional non-permanent seats, bringing the total number of non-permanent seats to five.

    Additionally, Africa advocates for the abolition of the veto power. However, if the veto is retained, President Bio insisted that it must be extended to all new permanent members as a matter of justice.

    The President broke down the potential support for Africa’s push for greater representation on the Security Council into two categories: support from within the continent and support from major global powers.

    While support from within the continent comes naturally, he acknowledged the challenges posed by the P-5, (the five permanent members of the Security Council), who wield enormous power in the Council. “The main issue we have is the P-5. They are manning the gate. They have to let us in.”

    Despite these challenges, he was encouraged that “They have recognized the fact that Africa has been treated unfairly.”

    He stressed: “There is a new spirit; the world has changed, and leaders have come and gone. What I’m trying to do is convince my colleagues in Africa and the world at large that the injustice done to Africa cannot be accepted.”

    The United Nations Secretary-General, António Guterres, supports Africa’s demands for UNSC reforms. “We cannot accept that the world’s preeminent peace and security body lacks a permanent voice for a continent of well over a billion people — a young and rapidly growing population — making up 28 percent of the membership of the United Nations,” Guterres said at the 12 August meeting.

    He added, “Nor can we accept that Africa’s views are undervalued on questions of peace and security, both on the continent and around the world.”

    To ensure the Council’s full credibility and legitimacy, he emphasized the importance of “heeding the longstanding calls from the UN General Assembly, various geographic groups — from the Arab Group to the Benelux, Nordic, and CARICOM countries — and some permanent members of this Council itself, to correct this injustice.”

    I call on all African leaders and on all those who stand for justice and democracy around the world to fight this unfairness.

    Lessons from Sierra Leone’s civil war

    Sierra Leone’s brutal civil war (1991-2002) may have shaped President Bio’s views on conflict resolution and international diplomacy.

    “After all the fighting, after all the destruction, we resolved our problems at the negotiating table,” he reflected, emphasizing the importance of dialogue and consensus-building.

    Drawing from Sierra Leone’s experience, he envisioned Africa playing an important role in global peace and security. “We have learned quite a lot—partnership, multilateralism, dialogue, and the need to build consensus.

    “What we are bringing to the table within the UN Security Council is how we can be a bridge, how we can support multilateralism as a way for peace and security around the world.”

    Women’s empowerment

    Beyond global governance, Sierra Leone has adopted progressive gender policies under President Bio’s leadership. For example, the country passed a law mandating, among other provisions, that at least 30 percent of positions in both the private and public sectors, including in the cabinet, be held by women—a huge step toward gender equality.

    Earlier this year, Sierra Leone also enacted a law banning child marriage.

    “It would be wrong for us to talk about development if you keep more than half of your population in the kitchen or do not empower them enough to be part of the force that is going to change the nation,” he declared.

    Empowering women, he stressed, begins with education. This focus on education is part of a broader strategy to transform Sierra Leone’s human capital, which President Bio considers the nation’s most valuable resource.

    He said: “When you talk about Sierra Leone, you think of diamonds, gold, and other natural resources. I have said to my nation, yes, these are precious minerals, but the most important resources we have in this country are the people.”

    Climate change

    As a leader of one of the world’s most climate-vulnerable countries, President Bio highlighted Sierra Leone’s challenges in handling increasingly severe weather patterns. “When it rains, it rains so heavily that it overwhelms the infrastructure. We’ve seen cars floating, we’ve seen houses swept away,” he noted, drawing parallels with similar disasters in more developed nations.

    In response, Sierra Leone has launched a nationwide climate action campaign focusing on reforestation, improving drainage systems, and educating the public on the importance of the environment.

    “Combating climate change requires collective action, both locally and globally,” he emphasized.

    On the issue of capital flight from Africa, President Bio underscored his deep sense of pride in African identity and potential. He urged Africans to acquire knowledge and skills from the West and to bring back those lessons to build their societies back in Africa.

    “Home is home. Nobody’s going to fix that home. We have to fix that home,” he insisted.

    Source: Africa Renewal

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  • Top Brazilian judge orders suspension of X platform in Brazil amid feud with Musk

    Top Brazilian judge orders suspension of X platform in Brazil amid feud with Musk

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    SAO PAULO — A Brazilian Supreme Court justice on Friday ordered the suspension of Elon Musk’s social media giant X in Brazil after the tech billionaire refused to name a legal representative in the country, according to a copy of his decision.

    The move further escalates the monthslong feud between the two men over free speech, far-right accounts and misinformation.

    Justice Alexandre de Moraes had warned Musk on Wednesday night that X could be blocked in Brazil if he failed to comply with his order to name a representative, and established a 24-hour deadline. The company hasn’t had a representative in the country since earlier this month.

    “Elon Musk showed his total disrespect for Brazilian sovereignty and, in particular, for the judiciary, setting himself up as a true supranational entity and immune to the laws of each country,” de Moraes wrote in his decision.

    The justice said the platform will stay suspended until it complies with his orders, and also set a daily fine of 50,000 reais ($8,900) for people or companies using VPNs to access it.

    In a later ruling, he backtracked on his initial decision to establish a 5-day deadline for internet service providers themselves — and not just the telecommunications regulator — to block access to X, as well as his directive for app stores to remove virtual private networks, or VPNs.

    Brazil’s telecommunications regulator Anatel has 24 hours to comply. The regulator’s chairman Carlos Baigorri told GloboNews channel that the country’s biggest service providers will respond quickly, but added smaller ones might need more time to suspend X from their services.

    The full bench of Brazil’s Supreme Court is expected to rule on the case, but no date for deliberations was set.

    Brazil is an important market for X, which has struggled with the loss of advertisers since Musk purchased the former Twitter in 2022. Market research group Emarketer says some 40 million Brazilians, roughly one-fifth of the population, access X at least once per month.

    X had posted on its official Global Government Affairs page late Thursday that it expected X to be shut down by de Moraes, “simply because we would not comply with his illegal orders to censor his political opponents.”

    “When we attempted to defend ourselves in court, Judge de Moraes threatened our Brazilian legal representative with imprisonment. Even after she resigned, he froze all of her bank accounts,” the company wrote. “Our challenges against his manifestly illegal actions were either dismissed or ignored. Judge de Moraes’ colleagues on the Supreme Court are either unwilling or unable to stand up to him.”

    X has clashed with de Moraes over its reluctance to comply with orders to block users.

    Accounts that the platform previously has shut down on Brazilian orders include lawmakers affiliated with former President Jair Bolsonaro’s right-wing party and activists accused of undermining Brazilian democracy. X’s lawyers in April sent a document to the Supreme Court in April, saying that since 2019 it had suspended or blocked 226 users.

    In his decision Friday, de Moraes’ cited Musk’s statements as evidence that X’s conduct “clearly intends to continue to encourage posts with extremism, hate speech and anti-democratic discourse, and to try to withdraw them from jurisdictional control.”

    Musk, a self-proclaimed “free speech absolutist,” has repeatedly claimed the justice’s actions amount to censorship, and his argument has been echoed by Brazil’s political right. He has often insulted de Moraes on his platform, characterizing him as a dictator and tyrant.

    De Moraes’ defenders have said his actions aimed at X have been lawful, supported by most of the court’s full bench and have served to protect democracy at a time it is imperiled. He wrote Friday that his ruling is based on Brazilian law requiring internet services companies to have representation in the country so they can be notified when there are relevant court decisions and take requisite action — specifying the takedown of illicit content posted by users, and an anticipated churn of misinformation during October municipal elections.

    The looming shutdown is not unprecedented in Brazil.

    Lone Brazilian judges shut down Meta’s WhatsApp, the nation’s most widely used messaging app, several times in 2015 and 2016 due to the company’s refusal to comply with police requests for user data. In 2022, de Moraes threatened the messaging app Telegram with a nationwide shutdown, arguing it had repeatedly ignored Brazilian authorities’ requests to block profiles and provide information. He ordered Telegram to appoint a local representative; the company ultimately complied and stayed online.

    X and its former incarnation, Twitter, have been banned in several countries — mostly authoritarian regimes such as Russia, China, Iran, Myanmar, North Korea, Venezuela and Turkmenistan. Other countries, such as Pakistan, Turkey and Egypt, have also temporarily suspended X before, usually to quell dissent and unrest. Twitter was banned in Egypt after the Arab Spring uprisings, which some dubbed the “Twitter revolution,” but it has since been restored.

    Earlier on Friday, a search on X showed hundreds of Brazilian users inquiring about VPNs that could potentially enable them to continue using the platform by making it appear they were logging on from outside the country. It was not immediately clear how Brazilian authorities would police this practice and impose fines cited by de Moraes.

    “This is an unusual measure, but its main objective is to ensure that the court order to suspend the platform’s operation is, in fact, effective,” Filipe Medon, a specialist in digital law and professor at the law school of Getulio Vargas Foundation, a university in Rio de Janeiro, told The Associated Press. “As a general rule, there are no provisions in Brazilian law that prevent users from using VPNs, since they are not the subjects of the blocking and suspension orders, but rather the companies.”

    Even so, Mariana de Souza Alves Lima, known by her handle MariMoon, showed her 1.4 million followers on X where she intends to go, posting a screenshot of rival social network BlueSky.

    X said that it plans to publish what it has called de Moraes’ “illegal demands” and related court filings “in the interest of transparency.”

    Also on Thursday evening, Starlink, Musk’s satellite internet service provider, said on X that de Moraes this week froze its finances, preventing it from doing any transactions in the country where it has more than 250,000 customers.

    “This order is based on an unfounded determination that Starlink should be responsible for the fines levied—unconstitutionally—against X. It was issued in secret and without affording Starlink any of the due process of law guaranteed by the Constitution of Brazil. We intend to address the matter legally,” Starlink said in its statement. The law firm representing Starlink told the AP that the company appealed, but wouldn’t make further comment.

    Another Brazilian Supreme Court Justice, Cristiano Zanin, rejected an appeal by Starlink to unfreeze the company’s bank accounts.

    Musk replied to people sharing the reports of the freeze, adding insults directed at de Moraes. “This guy @Alexandre is an outright criminal of the worst kind, masquerading as a judge,” he wrote.

    Musk later posted on X that SpaceX, which runs Starlink, will provide free internet service in Brazil “until the matter is resolved” since “we cannot receive payment, but don’t want to cut anyone off.”

    In his decision, de Moraes said he ordered the freezing of Starlink’s assets, as X didn’t have enough money in its accounts to cover mounting fines, and reasoning that the two companies are part of the same economic group.

    While ordering X’s suspension followed warnings and fines and so was appropriate, taking action against Starlink seems “highly questionable,” said Luca Belli, coordinator of the Getulio Vargas Foundation’s Technology and Society Center.

    “Yes, of course, they have the same owner, Elon Musk, but it is discretionary to consider Starlink as part of the same economic group as Twitter (X). They have no connection, they have no integration,” Belli said.

    ___

    Ortutay reported from San Francisco and Biller from Rio. AP writer Mauricio Savarese contributed from Sao Paulo.

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  • In Tonga the UN Secretary-General Declares a Global Climate Emergency

    In Tonga the UN Secretary-General Declares a Global Climate Emergency

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    Secretary-General António Guterres (second from right) visits Tonga, where he attended the Pacific Islands Forum.
    Credit: UN Photo/Kiara Worth
    • by Catherine Wilson (sydney & nuku’alofa)
    • Inter Press Service

    SYDNEY & NUKU’ALOFA, Aug 30 (IPS) – Three months ahead of the COP29 United Nations (UN) Climate Change Conference, the United Nations Secretary-General, António Guterres, has called for an emergency response from the international community as new data from the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) reveals a critical deterioration in the state of the climate.

    Scientists have called for limiting the global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels to prevent overheating of the atmosphere and a damaging rise in sea levels. But, due to inaction on reducing greenhouse gas emissions, there is an 80 percent chance that the 1.5 degree threshold will be breached within the next five years, reports the WMO. 

    “This is a crazy situation: rising seas are a crisis entirely of humanity’s making. A crisis that will soon swell to an almost unimaginable scale with no lifeboat to take us back to safety,” the UN Secretary-General declared in Nuku’alofa, the capital of Tonga, a Polynesian nation of about 106,000 people located southeast of Fiji, on Monday. He has been on the ground in the Pacific Islands, witnessing firsthand how people’s lives are hanging in the balance as they suffer a relentless battering of climate extremes, such as cyclones, floods, rising seas and hotter temperatures.

    “Today’s reports confirm that relative sea levels in the southwestern Pacific have risen even more than the global average, in some locations by more than double the global increase in the past 30 years,” Guterres said. “If we save the Pacific, we also save ourselves. The world must act and answer the SOS before it is too late.”

    According to a newly released UN report, Surging Seas in a Warming World, the increase in the global mean sea level was 9.4 cm, but in the southwest Pacific it was more than 15 cm between 1993 and 2023. Expanding oceans, due to melting Arctic and Antarctic ice, are projected “to cause a large increase in the frequency and severity of episodic flooding in almost all locations in the Pacific Small Island Developing States in the coming decades.” Ninety percent of Pacific Islanders live within 5 kilometres of coastlines, leaving them highly exposed to encroaching seas. Climate change impacts pose a serious threat to human life, livelihoods and food security, and the implications for increasing poverty and loss and damage are ‘profound and far-reaching,’ the report claims.

    For years, Pacific Island leaders have led the way in calling for world leaders and industrialized nations to take rigorous action to halt the increasing carbon dioxide emissions destroying earth’s atmosphere.  In Tonga, the Secretary-General joined many of them at the 53rd Pacific Islands Forum Leaders’ summit on the 26-27 August, including the summit’s host and Prime Minister of Tonga, Hon. Siaosi Sovaleni, Papua New Guinea’s Prime Minister, James Marape, Samoa’s leader, Fiame Naomi Mata’afa and Tuvalu’s PM, Feleti Teo.  And he took the opportunity to amplify their voices and their climate leadership. ‘Greenhouse gases are causing ocean heating, acidification and rising seas. But the Pacific Islands are showing the way to protect our climate, our planet and our ocean,’ he said.

    The UN chief took time to listen to the voices of local communities and youth, gaining valuable insights into how the people of Tonga are responding to climate extremes and disasters.

    In January 2022, a tsunami, triggered by the eruption of an undersea volcano known as Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai, descended on Tonga. It reached the main island of Tongatapu and others, affecting 80 percent of the country’s population, destroying livestock and agricultural land and causing damage of more than USD 125 million. Guterres met with people in the coastal villages of Kanokupolu and Ha’atafu, which were devastated when the tsunami swept through and surveyed the ruins of beach resorts and coastal infrastructure while witnessing the resilience and determination of those who have rebuilt their homes and lives.

    Two years ago, the UN also launched ‘Early Warnings for All’, a project aimed at installing early warning systems in every country by 2027 in order to save lives and prevent damage.

    “With the increase in the intensity of tropical cyclones and flooding , simple weather forecasting is not enough for people to prepare for these natural disasters,” Arti Pratap, an expert on tropical cyclones who lectures in Geospatial Science at the University of the South Pacific in Fiji, told IPS. She said it was important to “focus on building the capacity of communities to make use of the information provided by national meteorological services in the Pacific on an hourly, daily and monthly basis for decision-making.”

    UN Secretary-General António Guterres visits a house in Lalomanu that has been abandoned due to storm damage and flooding as a result of climate change during his trip to Samoa. Credit: UN Photo/Kiara Worth
    UN Secretary-General António Guterres visits a house in Lalomanu that has been abandoned due to storm damage and flooding as a result of climate change during his trip to Samoa. Credit: UN Photo/Kiara Worth

    Many farmers, for instance, “tend to rely on readily available traditional knowledge on weather and climate and its interaction with the environment around them, which they are familiar with. However, traditional knowledge may not be sufficient in the background of global warming,” Pratap said.

    The UN initiative involves the setting up of meteorological observation stations, ocean sensors and radars to better predict extreme weather and disaster events. According to the UN, providing 24 hours’ notice of an approaching disaster can reduce damage by 30 percent. As part of the project, Guterres launched a new weather radar at Tonga’s International Airport.

    His week-long tour of the Pacific Islands, which also included time in Samoa, New Zealand and East Timor, was an opportune moment for Guterres to open conversations about the goals that will be on the table at COP29, to be held in Baku, Azerbaijan, on 11-22 November.

    The key priorities of this year’s climate summit will be, among others, limiting the global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius and achieving broad agreement on the scale and provision of climate finance. ‘The one thing that is very clear in my presence here is to be able to say loud and clear from the Pacific Islands to the big emitters that it is totally unacceptable, with devastating impacts of climate change, to go on increasing emissions,’ Guterres declared in Nuku’alofa on August 26, 2024.


    And, for many Pacific Islanders, gaining better access to climate finance is vital. The development organization, Pacific Community, reports that the region will require at least USD 2 billion per year to implement climate resilience and adaptation projects and transition to renewable energy. This far exceeds what the Pacific is currently receiving in climate finance, which is about USD 220 million per annum.

    “Despite the commendable pledges from the United Nations and world leaders, such as the Paris Agreement, the existing global finance mechanisms still hinder community-based and youth organizations from accessing critical support,” Mahoney Mori, Chairman of the Pacific Youth Council, told local media during a meeting between the UN Chief and Pacific youth leaders in Tonga’s capital.

    ‘As a first step, all developed countries must honor their commitment to double adaptation finance to at least USD 40 billion per year by 2025,’ the UN Secretary General said on World Environment Day on June 24.

    Tonga’s Prime Minister summed up the views of many in the Pacific as world attention focused on his island nation with the visit of the UN Secretary-General: “We need a lot more action than just words,’ he said at the Pacific leaders meeting. Referring to a minor earthquake that shook the islands as leaders converged on Tonga, he added, “We put on a show with the rain and a bit of flooding and also shook you guys up a little bit by that earthquake, just to wake you up to the reality of what we have to face here in the Pacific.”

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  • Nicaragua, China, India among 55 Nations Restricting Freedom of Movement

    Nicaragua, China, India among 55 Nations Restricting Freedom of Movement

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    Credit: Freedom House
    • Opinion by Liam Scott (washington)
    • Inter Press Service

    WASHINGTON, Aug 27 (IPS) – At least 55 governments in the past decade have restricted the freedom of movement for people they deem as threats, including journalists, according to a Freedom House report published last Thursday.

    Governments control freedom of movement via travel bans, revoking citizenship, document control and denial of consular services, the report found. All the tactics are designed to coerce and punish government critics, according to Jessica White, the report’s London-based co-author.

    “This is a type of tactic that really shows the vindictive and punitive nature of some countries,” White said. This form of repression “is an attempt to really stifle peoples’ ability to speak out freely from wherever they are.”

    Belarus, China, India, Nicaragua, Russia, Rwanda and Saudi Arabia are among the countries that engage in this form of repression, the report found. Freedom House based its findings in part on interviews with more than 30 people affected by mobility controls.

    Travel bans are the most common tactic, according to White, with Freedom House identifying at least 40 governments who prevent citizens leaving or returning to the country.

    Revoking citizenship is another strategy, despite being prohibited by international law. The Nicaraguan government in 2023 stripped more than 200 political prisoners of their citizenship shortly after deporting them to the United States.

    Among them were Juan Lorenzo Holmann, head of Nicaragua’s oldest newspaper, La Prensa. “It is as if I do not exist anymore. It is another attack on my human rights,” he told VOA after being freed. “But you cannot do away with the person’s personality. In the Nicaraguan constitution, it says that you cannot wipe out a person’s personal records or take away their nationality. I feel Nicaraguan, and they cannot take that away from me.”

    Before being expelled from his own country, Lorenzo had spent 545 days in prison, in what was widely viewed as a politically motivated case.

    Blocking access to passports and other travel documents is another tactic. In one example, Hong Kong in June canceled the passports of six pro-democracy activists who were living in exile in Britain.

    In some cases, governments refuse to issue people passports to trap them in the country. And in cases where the individual is already abroad, embassies deny passport renewals to block the individual from traveling anywhere, including back home.

    Myanmar’s embassy in Berlin, for instance, has refused to renew the passport of Ma Thida, a Burmese writer in exile in Germany. Ma Thida told VOA earlier this year she believes the refusal is in retaliation for her writing.

    White said Ma Thida’s case was a classic example of mobility restrictions. For now, the German government has issued a passport reserved for people who are unable to obtain a passport from their home country — which White applauded but said is still rare.

    “Our ability to freely leave and return to our home country is something that in democratic societies, people often take for granted. It’s one of our fundamental human rights, but it’s one that is being undermined and violated across many parts of the world,” White said.

    Mobility restrictions can have devastating consequences, including making it difficult to work, travel and visit family. What makes matters even worse is the emotional toll, according to White.

    “There is a huge psychological impact,” White said. “A lot of our interviewees mention especially the pain of being separated from family members and not being able to return to their country.”

    In the report, Freedom House called on democratic governments to impose sanctions on actors that engage in mobility controls.

    White said that democratic governments should do more to help dissidents, including by providing them with alternative travel documents if they can’t obtain them from their home countries.

    https://freedomhouse.org/sites/default/files/2024-02/FIW_2024_DigitalBooklet.pdf

    Source: Voice of America (VOA)

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  • X announces suspension of Brazil operations, alleging ‘censorship orders’ from Supreme Court justice

    X announces suspension of Brazil operations, alleging ‘censorship orders’ from Supreme Court justice

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    MEXICO CITY (AP) — Social media platform X said Saturday it will close its operations in Brazil, claiming Brazilian Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes threatened to arrest its legal representative in Brazil if they did not comply with orders.

    X is removing all remaining Brazil staff in the country “effective immediately,” though the company said service will still be available to the people of Brazil. The company did not clarify how it could claim to suspend operations while continuing to provide services to Brazilians.

    Earlier this year, the company clashed with de Moraes over free speech, far-right accounts and misinformation on X. The company said his most recent orders amounted to censorship, and shared a copy of the document on X.

    The Supreme Court’s press office didn’t immediately respond to Associated Press email requests seeking comment, or to confirm the veracity of the document, on Saturday.

    In the United States, free speech is a constitutional right that’s much more permissive than in many countries, including Brazil, where de Moraes in April ordered an investigation into CEO Elon Musk over the dissemination of defamatory fake news and another probe over possible obstruction, incitement and criminal organization.

    Brazil’s political right has long characterized de Moraes as overstepping his bounds to clamp down on free speech and engage in political persecution.

    Whether investigating former President Jair Bolsonaro, banishing his far-right allies from social media, or ordering the arrest of supporters who stormed government buildings on Jan. 8, 2023, de Moraes has aggressively pursued those he views as undermining Brazil’s young democracy.

    “Moraes has chosen to threaten our staff in Brazil rather than respect the law or due process,” the company said in a statement on X.

    In a tweet Saturday morning, the self-proclaimed “free speech absolutist” and owner of X, Musk, said de Moraes “is an utter disgrace to justice.”

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  • Bronze statue of John Lewis replaces more than 100-year-old Confederate monument

    Bronze statue of John Lewis replaces more than 100-year-old Confederate monument

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    DECATUR, Ga. (AP) — A large bronze statue of the late civil rights icon leader and Georgia congressman John Lewis was installed Friday, at the very spot where a contentious monument to the confederacy stood for more than 110 years in the town square before it was dismantled in 2020.

    Work crews gently rested the 12-foot-tall (3.7-meter-tall) statue into place as the internationally acclaimed sculptor, Basil Watson, looked on carefully.

    “It’s exciting to see it going up and exciting for the city because of what he represents and what it’s replacing,” Watson said, as he assisted with the install process.

    Lewis was known for his role at the front lines of the Civil Rights Movement and urged others to get in “good trouble” for a cause he saw as vital and necessary. In DeKalb County where the Confederate monument stood for more than a century, protesters have invoked “good trouble” in calling for the swift removal of the obelisk.

    Back in 2020, the stone obelisk was lifted from its base with straps amid jeers and chants of “Just drop it!” from onlookers in Decatur, Georgia, who were kept at a safe distance by sheriff’s deputies. The obelisk was erected by the United Daughters of the Confederacy in 1908.

    Groups like the Beacon Hill Black Alliance for Human Rights and Hate Free Decatur had been pushing for the monument to be removed since the deadly 2017 white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia.

    The monument was among those around the country that became flashpoints for protests over police brutality and racial injustice, following the death of George Floyd at the hands of police in Minneapolis. The city of Decatur then asked a Georgia judge to order the removal of the monument, which was often vandalized and marked by graffiti, saying it had become a threat to public safety.

    The statue of Lewis will be officially unveiled on Aug. 24.

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  • Origins of the Gaza Catastrophe – Part 1

    Origins of the Gaza Catastrophe – Part 1

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    • Opinion by Jan Lundius (stockholm, sweden)
    • Inter Press Service

    STOCKHOLM, Sweden, Aug 16 (IPS) – During the first half of the 20th century, antisemitism was endemic in Europe and eventually burst out in full force when Nazi-Germany and its collaborators between 1941 and 1945 systematically (and well-documented) murdered six million Jews across German-occupied Europe.

    In an environment mined by hostile public opinion, the Zionist Nahum Sokolow popularized the Hebrew term Hasbara. The word has no real equivalent in English, but might be translated as “explaining”, indicating a strategy seeking to explain actions, regardless whether or not they are justified.

    As a skilled diplomat, Sokolow based his widely publicized opinions on in-depth research of actual events, though he presented his findings in a manner that favoured his cause.

    David Alfaro Siqueiros: Echo of a Scream. 1937

    The State of Israel has often used hasbara, now generally described as public diplomacy, meaning that policies and actions have not been denied, but at the same time has any criticism of such facts been presented as biased and/or tinged by “antisemitism”.

    To avoid being labelled as antisemitic the following article is mainly based on two books by Ilan Pappé – The Biggest Prison on Earth: A History of the Occupied Territories and The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine.

    Pappé is considered to be a member of the New historians, a loosely defined group of Israeli historians who challenge the official version of Israel’s role in the 1948 expulsion of Palestinians. An event which among Palestinians is called Nakba, the Catastrophe.

    In 1948, more than 700,000 Palestinian Arabs, about half of the former British controlled Mandatory Palestine’s predominantly Arab population, fled from their homes.

    At first they were attacked by Zionist paramilitaries and after the establishment of the State of Israel by its regular army, acting on direct orders from the newly founded nation’s leaders.

    Dozens of massacres targeted the Arab population and between 400 and 600 Palestinian villages were destroyed. Village wells were poisoned and properties looted to prevent Palestinian refugees from returning.

    The New historians debunked several myths. For example, that the British Government tried to prevent the establishment of a Jewish state – it was actually against the founding of a Palestine state.

    The official version states that Palestinians fled their homes on their own free will, instigated to do so by surrounding Arab states. However, the majority of them were actually expelled, and/or fled out of a well-founded fear of the Israeli army.

    Furthermore, general opinion has been that the surrounding Arab nations at the time were united and more powerful than the newly established State of Israel – as a matter of fact, Israel had the advantage both in manpower and arms, while the Arab nations were divided by internal strife and did not have a coordinated plan to destroy Israel.

    The recurrent praise that the Israelis made the desert bloom and took over a land without a people for a people without a land, are according to Pappé unfounded clichés. Before the ethnic cleansing the vast majority of agricultural land was being cultivated by Palestinians. It is estimated that on the eve of the 1948 war, around 739,750 acres of agriculturally apt land were being cultivated by Palestinians, actually greater than the physical area which was under cultivation in Israel almost thirty years later.

    The appropriation of Palestinian land occurred in conjunction with a Land Acquisitions Law allowing for a mass transfer of the entire Palestinian economy to the Israeli state. Practically overnight, the State gained control of a vast amount of fertile land, 73,000 houses, and 7,800 workshops. This dropped the average cost of settling a Jewish family in Palestine from 8,000 USD to 1,500 USD.

    Furthermore, the whole issue whether Palestine belongs to “Jews” or “Arabs” is somewhat spurious. It is a myth that any region constitutes a closed environment. Trade, immigration, invasion and intermarriage are part of any nation’s history.

    Across the millennia, additions and losses have befallen people living in Palestina (it was the Romans who in 131 CE changed the denomination “Judea” into “Syria Palaestina”). Conquerors, like those of the Muslim faith, seldom replaced an entire native population, they only added to it.

    Many of the Palestinians of today are the Jews of yesteryears. Palestinian Arabs did not suddenly appear from the Arabian Peninsula in the 7th century to settle in Palestine, most of those “Arabs” living there now are descendants of indigenous peoples who lived there before. People who, like most others, over time have changed their beliefs and traditions. For example, Sardinians eventually became Italians, but no one would suggest that Sardinians were kicked out and replaced by a foreign Italian people.

    We ought to separate political nationalist identities from the actual reality of a human being. Nationalism is a relatively modern concept, especially in the Middle East.

    Likewise, the Jewish diaspora was not the result of a sudden expulsion of Jews from their Holy land. It was, just as current migration, a result of various factors, including refugees from war and repression, forced labour, deportation, overpopulation, indebtedness, military recruitment, and not the least opportunities in business, commerce, and agriculture.

    Before the Romans in 70 CE destroyed Jerusalem and its temple and in 131 forbade Jews to settle there, large and prosperous Jewish communities existed in provinces like Egypt, Crete, Cyrenaica, Syria, Asia, Mesopotamia, and in Rome itself.

    However, the destruction of the temple of Jerusalem motivated many Jews to formulate a new self-definition and adjust their existence to the prospect of an indefinite period of displacement, that eventually would culminate in a return to a mostly imaginary realm of Israel. In 1948, this religious dream became a reality through the establishment of the Jewish State of Israel.

    A development that by most the U.S. and European politicians was considered to strengthen a “Western” strategic, economic, and political presence in the Middle East, at the same time as the establishment of Israel could ease the burden of a bad conscience for not having done enough to hinder the extermination of Jews, combined with easing the pressure to resettle and compensate the victims.

    Nowadays, the Sate of Israel does not only control the land granted to it by the British, but also territories inhabited by also areas like the West Bank, the Golan Heights and the Gaza strip. In Gaza, Israel maintains control of its airspace, its territorial waters, no-go zones within the strip, and the population registry. Pappé has stated that

    “the tale of Palestine from the beginning until today is a simple story of colonialism and dispossession, yet the world treats it as a multifaceted and complex story – hard to understand and even harder to solve. Indeed, the story of Palestine has been told before: European settlers coming to a foreign land, settling there, and either committing genocide against or expelling the indigenous people. The Zionists have not invented anything new in this respect. But Israel succeeded nonetheless, with the help of its allies everywhere, in building a multilayered explanation that is so complex that only Israel can understand it. Any interference from the outside world is immediately castigated as naïve at best or anti-Semitic at worst.”

    On October 11th 2023, Hamas-led fighters breached the Gaza-Israel barrier, attacking military bases and massacring civilians in 21 communities, killing 1,139 people, including 695 Israeli civilians, among them 38 children, 71 foreign nationals, and 373 members of the Israeli security forces, while taking about 250 Israelis as hostages. Incidents of great brutality and rape were witnessed and reported.

    Israeli repercussion was swift and merciless. Israel has ravaged the Gaza Strip. Apartment buildings, mosques, schools, hospitals, and universities have been reduced to rubble.

    During their hunt for Hamas fighters Israel has deliberately targeted and destroyed civilian structures where civilians have sought refuge. On May 21st 2024, Israeli government offered its first estimate of the operation’s death toll, claiming its troops had killed 14,000 terrorists and 16,000 civilians. A week earlier the U.N. reported that approximately 35,000 individuals had died during the conflict, including 7,797 minors, 4,959 women and 1,924 elderly, the latter three groups with confirmed identities. Among the victims were 103 journalists and 196 humanitarian workers.

    At almost the same time, Save the Children reported that more than 13,000 children had been killed, while WHO stated that at least 1,000 children have had one or both legs amputated. On the 11th of August the death toll was estimated to be approximately 39,000 people.

    The killing is continuing unabated, worsened by starvation. WFP recently reported that 1.1 million Gaza inhabitants are facing catastrophic hunger.

    In northern Gaza, one in three children under two years of age suffer from acute malnutrition. According to estimates by UNICEF, people’s daily nutritional intake is down to 245 calories, i.e. less than a can of beans. This is mostly attributable to an Israeli blockade that according to UNICEF since March 1 has stopped 30 percent of aid missions, letting in a daily average of only 159 of the required 500 aid trucks.

    Even before October 11th people of Gaza had an intolerable existence, lacking sufficient access to electricity, potable water, food, and medical equipment. Unemployment rate was more than forty per cent, while children grew up in a world of intermittent war and persistent trauma, of barbed wire and surveillance. Israeli attacks continue while remains of Hamas’ military branch has become a drastically diminished insurgent force, which fighters pop up from the rubble to shoot at Israeli soldiers.

    An entire population has been severely punished for the presence of a fanatical, political party, which according to polls conducted in September 2023 by the majority of Gazans was considered to be repressive and corrupt, but which they were frightened to criticize. Hamas’s support was estimated to be between 27 and 31 percent, though since many Gazans are unable to perceive a viable solution to Israel’s iron grip on their confined strip of land, they consider armed resistance to be the only way out.

    In Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu’s two decades long regime has tried to sabotage a two-state-solution by weakening the Palestinian Authority on the West Bank, allowing for vast amounts of mainly Qatari money to reach Hamas, in exchange for maintaining a ceasefire and sowing division within Al-Fatah, the party governing the West Bank.

    Part of this policy has also been the increased support to 144 Israeli settlements within the West Bank, including 12 in East Jerusalem, and a discreet sustenance to over 100 “Israeli outposts”, i.e. settlements not authorized by the Israeli government. Over 450,000 Israeli settlers reside in the West Bank, with an additional 220,000 in East Jerusalem. Living in a settlement is made attractive through lower costs of housing compared to living in Israel proper. Government spending per citizen in settlements is double, in some cases triple, than what is spent per Israeli citizen in Israel proper.

    The International Court of Justice (ICJ) has ruled that Israeli settlements on occupied territory is, according to international laws, illegal and established that Israel has “an obligation to cease immediately all new settlement activities and to evacuate all settlers from the occupied territories”. The Court is talking to deaf ears.

    A current expansion of settlements has involved the confiscation of Palestinian land and resources, leading to displacement of Palestinian communities while creating a source of tension and conflict. The UN Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) reported that from 1 January to 19 September 2023, Israeli settlers killed 189 Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and wounded 8,192. The violence increased after October 3rd, after that date 460 Palestinians have so far been murdered by settlers. On average, there are every day three cases of settlers attacking Palestinians in the West Bank, resulting in the killing and injuring of Palestinians, harming their property, and preventing them from reaching their land, workplace, family, and friends.

    International ramifications are continuously unfolding – armed exchanges between Israel and Iran, between Israel and Hezbollah, Iran supported Houthi attacks on commercial shipping in the Red Sea, followed by Israeli counterattacks on Yemen, waves of pro-Palestine demonstrations across Europe, the U.S., and Arab capitals, combined with increased antisemitism. All this could for Israel mean its worst defeat ever, while at the same time it may for Palestinians prove to be more deadly and devastating than the Nakba.

    IPS UN Bureau


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  • WFP in Gaza: ‘We Need a Long Ceasefire That Leads to Peace so We Can Operate’

    WFP in Gaza: ‘We Need a Long Ceasefire That Leads to Peace so We Can Operate’

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    Credit: WFP/Ali Jadallah/2024
    • Opinion by World Food Programme (rome)
    • Inter Press Service

    ROME, Aug 15 (IPS) – Corinne Fleischer, WFP’s regional director for the Middle East, North Africa and Eastern Europe, describes Gaza as “a terrible situation getting worse.” Over the past two weeks, 21 United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) food distribution points have been closed under evacuation orders.

    “UNRWA says that 86% of the Strip is under an evacuation order,” she says on a video call from her office in Cairo. Fleischer visited the enclave in July.” 2 million people are crammed into 14% of the territory.”

    Despite Immense Challenges, WFP Continues to Assist Gazans

    With continuous evacuation orders forcing WFP to uproot food distribution sites, precise targeting of the most vulnerable groups becomes challenging. We provide ready-to-eat food, hot meals and nutrition support to breastfeeding women and small children.

    Mohammed was severely injured in the conflict but all efforts to evacuate him for medical treatment failed. His family fully depends on food from WFP to survive.

    “We support partners in almost 80 kitchens, where they cook meals, pack and distribute them to people in camps,” Fleischer explains. She previously visited Gaza last December. “Then, it was really about how do we bring food in – that’s still very much the case,” she says. “Now, at least we have a dedicated WFP operation on the ground.” Our main accomplishment? “We have helped prevent full-scale famine from happening,” she says.

    There are currently nearly 500,000 people at IPC5/Catastrophe, the highest grade of food insecurity on the global standard for measuring food insecurity – down from 1.1 million people earlier this year.

    Fleischer is keen to highlight the positive impacts of humanitarian supplies making it through.”Right now, we don’t bring enough food into Gaza,” she says. “We don’t bring in what we plan for the month because we don’t have enough crossing points open. We need all the crossings open and at full capacity.”

    “Operations are super complicated,” Fleischer says. “We work in a war zone. Roads are destroyed. We are waiting hours at checkpoints for green lights to move.”

    WFP, she stresses, also works to support the wider humanitarian community. “We are leading the Logistics Cluster (the interagency coordination mechanism) and supporting partners to bring in their goods through the Jordan corridor. We are receiving their goods in the north at the Zikim crossing point. We’re helping them in Kerem Shalom. So, of course, we’re helping with fuel supplies too.”

    Nowhere Is Safe in Gaza

    “Gazans cannot get out, and they’re asking to get out,” Fleischer says. “They’re beyond exhausted. There is no space – one makeshift tent after the other up to the sea. Streets are teeming with people.” Meanwhile, the breakdown of sewage systems, lack of water and waste management means diseases, such as Hepatitis A which is spreading among children, are allowed to fester.

    Children eat fortified biscuits from WFP at a makeshift camp in southern Gaza.

    “We are lucky that nothing has happened to our amazing staff – more than 200 UNRWA staff have been killed,” she says. “That is not acceptable.” She adds: “We have amazing security officers who advise management on which risks to avoid, so that we can stay and do our work safely and families can access our assistance safely. But the risks are high. Very high. We have bullets close to our convoys. We’re there repairing roads. We’re there moving with our trucks. We’re there reaching people. And it’s very dangerous.”

    On the path to recovery, the private sector has a role to play, says Fleischer – take the reopening of shops. “If you think of a lifeline, of hope, or a sense of normalcy, it’s surely when the staple bread is back in the market,” she says of bakeries that have reopened with WFP support. “Bakeries need wheat flour, they need yeast, and diesel too – and that’s where we come in.”

    High Prices Keep Basic Foods Out of Reach for Most Gazans

    In the south of Gaza, “basic food items are slowly re-emerging in food markets. You can actually find vegetables, fruits in the markets but because prices are high, they remain out of reach for most,” she says “And in any case, people don’t have cash. There are no jobs. Even our own staff tell us, ‘We have a salary, but we can’t access cash’.”

    Fleischer is keen for humanitarian efforts to reach a stage where people “stop eating things they have been eating for the past nine months” – to diversify diets heavily dependent on canned food (provided by WFP) and whatever people can get their hands on.

    “This level of destruction I’ve never seen.”

    Fleischer’s biggest fear for Gaza is “that there is no end to this . That we continue with ever less space for the people who already have nowhere to go back to. Even if they moved back to the north, where could they go?”

    “Everything is flattened. There are no homes, it’s all destroyed. We need a long ceasefire that leads to peace so we can operate.”

    After the Rafah incursion, many people returned to Khan Younis but there’s no means of living in the area. There are no homes left. Credit: WFP

    Fleischer, who has served with WFP in Syria and Sudan’s Darfur Region, adds: “This level of destruction I’ve never seen. Hospitals and clinics are destroyed, food processing plants are destroyed. Everything is destroyed.”

    Yet, “There is this never-give-up attitude from the people, from the families we serve,” she says. “I can’t believe children still run to you and laugh with you. They probably see in us hope that there will be an end to all this – a sign they are not forgotten.”

    This story originally appeared on WFP’s Stories on August 8, 2024 and was written by the WFP Editorial Team.

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  • Digital Trade & the Sustainable Development Goals: A Dynamic Agenda

    Digital Trade & the Sustainable Development Goals: A Dynamic Agenda

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    • Opinion by Witada Anukoonwattaka, Preety Bhogal (bangkok, thailand)
    • Inter Press Service

    BANGKOK, Thailand, Aug 12 (IPS) – The rapid growth of digitalization has fundamentally altered commerce, impacting production and facilitating the movement of goods. The 2023 Asia-Pacific Trade and Investment Report (APTIR), has pointed out that although digital trade revenues of Asia and the Pacific account for a significant share of global trade, this growth is uneven, with trade concentrated in a few areas, leading to disparities across the region.

    Studies show a positive relationship between digital trade and progress on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). These linkages among digital trade policy and the social and economic pillars of the SDGs may appear more indirect, but they do manifest through economic channels.

    Various facets of the relationship between sustainable development and digital trade are evident, such as the impact of digital trade on wealth inequality in the region, the role of the Internet in export expansion, how e-commerce facilitates small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), and how digital trade can help achieve the ambitious agenda behind the SDGs.

    However, better digital infrastructure does not necessarily engender competition and instead requires active measures from the government to promote linkages between export superstars and domestic suppliers.

    Additionally, robust regulatory frameworks on digital trade can help eliminate “monopolistic and restrictive” trade policies, contributing significantly to a more equitable distribution of wealth.

    Examples of good practices

    Different policy measures to establish an inclusive digital trade and e-commerce landscape have been used across the region. For example, research on internet courts in China showed how such public and digitized judicial systems benefit smaller and medium-sized firms compared to private dispute resolution mechanisms, which are highly costly.

    Similarly, research on the Pacific Alliance’s trade policies, particularly its binding agreements and work instruments, provided a framework to incorporate net neutrality in the promotion of equitable digital development.

    Indonesia’s introduction of single submission for freight transport applications and its impact on sustainability in supply chains was another case study. This policy instrument has had significant impacts across multiple domains, such as increasing time effectiveness, reducing costs, and increasing transparency in shipping and port clearances.

    Lessons learned and the way forward

    There is a need to understand the specific digital trade policy instruments that promote sustainable development. It is critical to acknowledge key differences and similarities between trade and digital trade policy to strategically leverage their interlinkage to achieve the SDGs. Social development works in tandem with economic progress.

    A key concern is the lack of data on cross-border e-commerce in the Asia-Pacific and Latin America regions, which hinders the implementation and evaluation of programs designed to promote the participation and productivity of small and medium enterprises (SMEs).

    More concerted efforts to improve data measurement through private-public partnerships could be a possible policy intervention to address this issue. States should establish effective monitoring systems by improving the availability of economic statistics and third-party evaluations for measuring the progress and impact of SME support programs.

    However, given the diversity in operations of SMEs across sectors, it is essential to devise and tailor policies that cater to their specific needs and realities.

    There is also a need for sharing real-world examples of successful government initiatives and SME support programs so neighboring countries can draw lessons from them. There are doubts about the long-term usefulness of stand-alone Digital Economy Agreements (DEAs) due to the lack of stringent legal provisions for possible breaches, unlike market-access free trade agreements (FTAs).

    Lastly, the United States, which has played a pivotal role in advocating for an open global trade environment, gradually step back from its position, it is time to rethink the leadership that would guide the establishment of digital trade provisions in the future.

    This involves showcasing how digital trade rules will be established and enforced moving forward. Who will provide such public goods for digital trade is a major question facing the global economy.

    Given its rapid digital-economy growth, significant market size, and increasing influence in global digital trade, should that leadership come from the Asia-Pacific region?

    Witada Anukoonwattaka is Economic Affairs Officer, Trade Investment and Innovation Division, ESCAP; Preety Bhogal is Consultant, Trade Investment and Innovation Division, ESCAP.

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  • Shocking violence in Bangladesh must stop: UN rights chief

    Shocking violence in Bangladesh must stop: UN rights chief

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    More than 80 people, including at least 13 police personnel, are said to have been killed in clashes between security forces and protesters, according to media reports. Authorities have imposed a curfew and restricted internet access.

    A police station in Sirajganj district, about 100 kilometres (62.5 miles) northwest of the capital, Dhaka, was also attacked.

    The renewed violence follows massive protests in July by students against the Government, demanding an end to a “quota system” for government jobs amid rising unemployment, in which more than 200 people were reportedly killed.

    At least 32 children were among those killed last month.

    March on capital planned Monday

    Volker Türk, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, voiced deep concern over the situation, including a planned mass march on Dhaka on Monday, and the youth wing of the ruling Awami League party called up against the protesters.

    “I am deeply worried that there will be further loss of life and wider destruction. I appeal urgently to the political leadership and to the security forces to abide by their obligations to protect the right to life, and the freedom of peaceful assembly and expression,” he said in a statement.

    He underscored the importance of accountability for human rights violations, including for those with superior and command responsibility.

    “The international community must make it clear that at this pivotal time, there will be no impunity.”

    Cease suppression of discontent

    High Commissioner Türk also called on the Government to cease targeting those participating peacefully in the protest movement, as well as immediately release those arbitrarily detained.

    Alongside, full Internet access must be restored and conditions created for meaningful dialogue.

    “The continuing effort to suppress popular discontent, including through the excessive use of force, and the deliberate spread of misinformation and incitement to violence, must immediately cease,” Mr. Türk said.

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  • Activists Challenge Pharma Company Gilead Over HIV Medication

    Activists Challenge Pharma Company Gilead Over HIV Medication

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    Activists protest during the 25th International AIDS Conference (AIDS2024) in Munich over a affordable pricing for a drug currently sold by pharmaceutical firm Gilead. Credit: Ed Holt/IPS
    • by Ed Holt (munich)
    • Inter Press Service

    MUNICH, Aug 02 (IPS) – Campaigners and experts have demanded a breakthrough HIV intervention hailed as “the closest thing to an HIV vaccine” must be made available as soon and as cheaply as possible to all who need it as its manufacturer faces protests over its pricing.

    Activists led a massive protest during the 25th International AIDS Conference (AIDS2024) in Munich last week as a study was presented showing lenacapavir—a drug currently sold by pharmaceutical firm Gilead for more than USD 40,000 per year as an HIV treatment—could be sold for USD 40 per year as a form of pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) to help prevent HIV infection.

    Community groups working in prevention, as well as experts and senior figures at international organizations fighting HIV, called on the company to ensure it will be priced so it is affordable for low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), which account for 95 percent of HIV infections.

    “It is no exaggeration to call lenacapavir a game changer. It could be life-changing for some populations. We need to see it produced generically and supplied to all low- and middle-income countries to the people who need it,” said Dr. Helen Bygrave, chronic disease advisor at Medecins sans Frontiere’s (MSF) Access Campaign.

    During the event, data from a trial of lenacapavir, a twice-yearly injectable, were presented. The results of the trial were announced by pharmaceutical firm Gilead last month and showed the drug offered 100% protection to more than 5,000 women in South Africa and Uganda.

    Many experts and community leaders helping deliver HIV interventions who spoke to IPS described the drug as a real “game changer,” offering not just spectacular efficacy but relative ease and discretion in delivery—the latter key in combating stigma connected with HIV prevention intervention in some societies—compared to other interventions, such as oral PrEP.

    But they warned there were likely to be challenges to access, with cost expected to be the main barrier.

    Lenacapavir is currently approved only as a form of HIV treatment at a price of USD 42,000 per person per year.

    While as a PrEP intervention it would be expected to be sold at a much lower price, an abstract presented at the conference showed that it could cost just USD 40 a year for every patient.

    In a statement put out following the protests, Gilead said it was developing “a strategy to enable broad, sustainable access globally” but that it was too early to give details on pricing.

    Critics claimed Gilead was not being transparent in its statement—the company talked of being committed to access pricing for high-incidence, resource-limited countries rather than specifically low- and middle-income countries—and there are fears that the price at which it is eventually made available as PrEP will be so high as to put it out of reach of the countries that are struggling most with the HIV epidemic.

    “Cabotegravir, a two-month injectable form of PrEP, is currently being procured by MSF for low-income countries for USD 210 per person per year. We would not expect to be higher than that, and we would hope it would be more ‘in the ballpark’ of  USD 100 per person per year,” said Bygrave.

    She added that “questions have been asked of Gilead about its pricing for lenacapavir, and the company has been pretty vague in its answers.”

    “Civil society needs to put continued pressure on Gilead about this issue because, without that pressure, I do not trust Gilead to do the right thing,” Bygrave, who took part in protests at the conference against Gilead’s pricing, said.

    Some speakers at the conference set out a series of demands for the firm.

    Winnie Byanyima, Executive Director of UNAIDS, called on Gilead to license generic manufacturers to produce it more affordably through mechanisms such as the Medicines Patent Pool (MPP), a UN-backed programme negotiating generics agreements between originators and generic pharmaceutical companies.

    Others, such as keynote speaker Helen Clark, Chair of the Global Commission on Drug Policy, said such interventions must be seen as “common global goods, and ways must be found to make them accessible to all.”

    “The pharmaceutical industry has been the beneficiary of much public research investment. With respect to HIV/AIDS, it has benefited from the mobilization of scientists and engaged communities who have advocated for investment in R&D and treatments. Prima facie, the notion that the companies can then make great profits from and not share the intellectual property created is wrong,” she said.

    Others went even further, accusing some pharmaceutical firms of being parties to the creation of a de facto global two-tier system for medicine supply.

    “Companies must share their medicines. We cannot accept an apartheid in access to medicine in which the lives of those living in the Global South are not regarded as having the same value as the lives in the North,” Archbishop Dr Thabo Makgoba, Archbishop of the Anglican Church of Cape Town and HIV advocate, said at a UNAIDS press event during the conference.

    Some of those who work with key populations stressed the need to push through all necessary approvals and set lenacapavir’s price at an accessible level as quickly as possible to save lives.

    “It’s great to have innovation and get important new tools in the fight against HIV. But the question is: how long will it take to get them to the people who need them? Until then, they are just a great announcement—like a beautiful picture hanging up there that you can see but cannot actually touch. We need to give communities the funding and the tools they need to do their vital work,” Anton Basenko, Chair of the Board of the International Network of People who Use Drugs (INPUD), told IPS.

    The calls came as campaigners stressed the exceptional potential of lenacapavir. It is not only its astonishing efficacy, but also its relative ease and discretion of delivery, which experts are excited about.

    Stigma around HIV prevention, such as oral PrEP, which involves taking daily tablets, has been identified as a major barrier to the uptake of HIV interventions in some regions.

    Some HIV healthcare specialists at the conference told IPS they had seen cases of women leaving clinics with bottles of tablets and, as soon as they heard them rattling in the bottle, threw them into the bin outside the clinic because the noise would tell others they were taking the tablets and leave them open to potential discrimination, or even gender-based violence.

    “The lack of oral PrEP uptake and adherence among women and girls is due to a number of factors, such as stigma and worries about being seen with a huge bottle of pills. What about if you are in a relationship and your partner sees the bottle and starts asking whether you are cheating on them or something?

    “A woman could go and get a lenacapavir injection a couple of times a year and no one would have to even know and she wouldn’t have to think about taking pills every day and just get on with her life. This drug could change lives completely. I would definitely take it if it was available,” Sinetlantla Gogela, an HIV prevention advocate from Cape Town, South Africa, told IPS.

    The concerns around access to lenacapavir at an affordable price for low and middle income countries come against a background of record debt levels among poor countries, which experts say could have a severe negative impact on the HIV epidemic.

    A recent report from the campaign group Debt Relief International showed that more than 100 countries are struggling to service their debts, resulting in them cutting back on investment in health, education, social protection and climate change measures.

    Speakers at the conference repeatedly warned these debts had to be addressed to ensure HIV programmes, whether they include lenacapavir or not, continue. Many called for immediate debt relief in countries.

    “African debt needs to be restructured to let countries get hold of the medicines they need,” said Byanyima.

    “Drop the debt; it is choking global south countries, denying us what we need for health. Please let us breathe,” said Makgoba.

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  • 79 Years After Hiroshima & Nagasaki: A Grim Reminder of Nuclear Annihilation

    79 Years After Hiroshima & Nagasaki: A Grim Reminder of Nuclear Annihilation

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    Erico Platt looks at the disarmament exhibition that she staged, “Three Quarters of a Century After Hiroshima and Nagasaki: The Hibakusha—Brave Survivors Working for a Nuclear-Free World.” Credit: UNODA/Diane Barnes
    • by Thalif Deen (united nations)
    • Inter Press Service

    UNITED NATIONS, Aug 01 (IPS) – The upcoming 79th anniversary of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which took place on August 6 and 9, 1945, remains a grim reminder of the destructive consequences of nuclear weapons.

    The US bombings killed an estimated 90,000 to 210,000, with roughly half of the deaths occurring on the first day in Hiroshima.

    But despite an intense global campaign for nuclear disarmament, the world has witnessed an increase in the number of nuclear powers from five—the US, UK, France, China and Russia—to nine, including India, Pakistan, North Korea and Israel.

    Is the continued worldwide anti-nuclear campaign an exercise in futility? And will the rising trend continue—with countries such as Iran, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and South Korea—as potential nuclear powers of the future?

    South Africa is the only country that has voluntarily given up nuclear weapons after developing them. In the 1980s, South Africa produced six nuclear weapons, but dismantled them between 1989 and 1993. A number of factors may have influenced South Africa’s decision, including national security, international relations, and a desire to avoid becoming a pariah state.

    But there is an equally valid argument that there have been no nuclear wars—only threats—largely because of the success of the world-wide anti-nuclear campaign, the role of the United Nations and the collective action by most of the 193 member states in adopting several anti-nuclear treaties.

    According to the UN Office for Disarmament Affairs (UNODA), the United Nations has sought to eliminate weapons  of mass destruction (WMDs) ever since the establishment of the world body. The first resolution adopted by the UN General Assembly in 1946 established a commission to deal with problems related to the discovery of atomic energy, among others.

    The commission was to make proposals for, inter alia, the control of atomic energy to the extent necessary to ensure its use only for peaceful purposes.

    Several multilateral treaties have since been established with the aim of preventing nuclear proliferation and testing, while promoting progress in nuclear disarmament.

    These include the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), the Treaty Banning Nuclear Weapon Tests in the Atmosphere, in Outer Space and Under Water, also known as the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT), which was signed in 1996 but has yet to enter into force, and the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW).

    Jackie Cabasso, Executive Director, Western States Legal Foundation in Oakland, California, which monitors and analyzes US nuclear weapons programs and policies, told IPS: “As we approach the 79th anniversary of the U.S. atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the world is facing a greater danger of nuclear war than at any time since 1945.”

    “The terrifying doctrine of “nuclear deterrence,” which should long ago have been delegitimized and relegated to the dustbin of history and replaced with multilateral, non-militarized common security, has metastasized into a pathological ideology brandished by nuclear-armed states and their allies to justify the perpetual possession and threatened use—including first use—of nuclear weapons,” she pointed out.

    “It is more important than ever that we heed the warnings of the aging hibakusha (A-bomb survivors): What happened to us must never be allowed to happen to anyone again; nuclear weapons and human beings cannot co-exist; no more Hiroshimas, no more Nagasakis!”

    This demands an irreversible process of nuclear disarmament. But to the contrary, all nuclear armed states are qualitatively and, in some cases, quantitatively upgrading their nuclear arsenals and a new multipolar arms race is underway, she noted.

    “To achieve the elimination of nuclear weapons and a global society that is more fair, peaceful, and ecologically sustainable, we will need to move from the irrational fear-based ideology of deterrence to the rational fear of an eventual nuclear weapon use, whether by accident, miscalculation, or design.”

    “We will also need to stimulate a rational hope that security can be redefined in humanitarian and ecologically sustainable terms that will lead to the elimination of nuclear weapons and dramatic demilitarization, freeing up tremendous resources desperately needed to address universal human needs and protect the environment.”

    In this time of multiple global crises, “our work for the elimination of nuclear weapons must take place in a much broader framework, taking into account the interface between nuclear and conventional weapons and militarism in general, the humanitarian and long-term environmental consequences of nuclear war, and the fundamental incompatibility of nuclear weapons with democracy, the rule of law, and human wellbeing,” declared Cabasso.

    Dr. M.V. Ramana, Professor and Simons Chair in Disarmament, Global and Human Security School of Public Policy and Global Affairs and Graduate Program Director, MPPGA at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, told IPS, “The glass is half-full or half-empty depending on how one looks at it.”

    “The fact that we have avoided nuclear war since 1945 is also partly due to the persistence of the anti-nuclear movement. Historians like Lawrence Wittner have pointed to the many instances when governments have chosen nuclear restraint instead of unrestrained expansion.”

    While South Africa is the only country that dismantled its entire nuclear weapons program, many countries—Sweden, for example—have chosen not to develop nuclear weapons even though they had the technical capacity to do so. They did so in part because of strong public opposition to nuclear weapons, which in turn is due to social movements supporting nuclear disarmament, he pointed out.

    Thus, organizing for nuclear disarmament is not futile. Especially as we move into another era of conflicts between major powers, such movements will be critical to our survival, declared Ramana.

    According to the UN, a group of elderly hibakusha, called Nihon Hidankyo, have dedicated their lives to achieving a non-proliferation treaty, which they hope will ultimately lead to a total ban on nuclear weapons.

    “On an overcrowded train on the Hakushima line, I fainted for a while, holding in my arms my eldest daughter of one year and six months. I regained my senses at her cries and found no one else was on the train,” a 34-year-old woman testifies in the booklet. She was located just two kilometres from the Hiroshima epicenter.

    Fleeing to her relatives in Hesaka, at age 24, another woman remembers that “people, with the skin dangling down, were stumbling along. They fell down with a thud and died one after another,” adding, “still now I often have nightmares about this, and people say, ‘it’s neurosis’.”

    One man who entered Hiroshima after the bomb recalled in the exhibition “that dreadful scene—I cannot forget even after many decades.”

    At a disarmament exhibition in UN Headquarters in New York, a visitor reads text about a young boy bringing his little brother to a cremation site in Nagasaki, Japan. Credit: UNODA/Erico Platt
    At a disarmament exhibition in UN Headquarters in New York, a visitor reads text about a young boy bringing his little brother to a cremation site in Nagasaki, Japan. Credit: UNODA/Erico Platt

    A woman who was 25 years old at the time said, “When I went outside, it was dark as night. Then it got brighter and brighter, and I could see burnt people crying and running about in utter confusion. It was hell…I found my neighbor trapped under a fallen concrete wall… Only half of his face was showing. He was burned alive”.

    The steadfast conviction of the Hidankyo remains: “Nuclear weapons are absolute evil that cannot coexist with humans. There is no choice but to abolish them.”

    Addressing the UN Security Council last March, Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned that with geopolitical tensions escalating the risk of nuclear warfare to its highest point in decades, reducing and abolishing nuclear weapons is the only viable path to saving humanity.

    “There is one path—and one path only—that will vanquish this senseless and suicidal shadow once and for all.  We need disarmament now,” he said, urging nuclear-weapon States to re-engage to prevent any use of a nuclear weapon, re-affirm moratoria on nuclear testing and “urgently agree that none of them will be the first to use nuclear weapons.”

    He called for reductions in the number of nuclear weapons led by the holders of the largest arsenals—the United States and the Russian Federation—to “find a way back to the negotiating table” to fully implement the New Measures for the Further Reduction and Limitation of Strategic Offensive Arms, or START Treaty, and agree on its successor.

    “When each country pursues its own security without regard for others, we create global insecurity that threatens us all,” he observed.  Almost eight decades after the incineration of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, nuclear weapons still represent a clear danger to global peace and security, growing in power, range and stealth.”

    “States possessing them are absent from the negotiating table, and some statements have raised the prospect of unleashing nuclear hell—threats that we must all denounce with clarity and force,” he said.  Moreover, emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence and cyber and outer space domains have created new risks.”

    From Pope Francis, who calls the possession of nuclear arms “immoral”, to the hibakusha, the brave survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, to Hollywood, where Oppenheimer brought the harsh reality of nuclear doomsday to vivid life for millions around the world, people are calling for an end to the nuclear madness.  “Humanity cannot survive a sequel to Oppenheimer,” he warned.

    When Nagasaki marked the 78th anniversary of the U.S. atomic bombing of the city last year, the mayor Shiro Suzuki, urged world powers to abolish nuclear weapons, saying nuclear deterrence also increases risks of nuclear war, according to an Associated Press (AP) report.

    He called on the Group of Seven (G7) industrial powers to adopt a separate document on nuclear disarmament that called for using nuclear weapons as deterrence.

    “Now is the time to show courage and make the decision to break free from dependence on nuclear deterrence,” Suzuki said in his peace declaration. “As long as states are dependent on nuclear deterrence, we cannot realize a world without nuclear weapons.”

    Russia’s nuclear threat has encouraged other nuclear states to accelerate their dependence on nuclear weapons or enhance capabilities, further increasing the risk of nuclear war, and that Russia is not the only one representing the risk of nuclear deterrence, Suzuki said.

    Suzuki, whose parents were hibakusha, or survivors of the Nagasaki attack, said knowing the reality of the atomic bombings is the starting point for achieving a world without nuclear weapons. He said the survivors’ testimonies are a true deterrent against nuclear weapons use, the AP report said.

    This article is brought to you by IPS Noram, in collaboration with INPS Japan and Soka Gakkai International, in consultative status with UN ECOSOC.

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