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Tag: Human rights

  • Female Genital Mutilation Continues Amid Sudans Conflict and Forced Displacement

    Female Genital Mutilation Continues Amid Sudans Conflict and Forced Displacement

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    Paleki Ayang, Gender Advisor for the Middle East and North Africa, Equality Now
    • Opinion by Paleki Ayang (juba)
    • Inter Press Service

    JUBA, Feb 27 (IPS) – Female genital mutilation (FGM) stands as one of the most egregious violations of human rights, particularly affecting women and girls worldwide. However, when conflict and forced displacement enter the equation, the horrors of FGM are exacerbated, creating a dire situation that demands urgent attention and action. Where instability and insecurity prevail, the prevalence of FGM often intensifies, exacerbated by factors such as displacement, poverty, and the breakdown of social systems.

    On April 15, 2023, war erupted in the Sudanese capital, Khartoum, between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), plunging the country into an intense political and humanitarian crisis with unprecedented emerging needs. As of December 2023, over 7.4 million people were uprooted from their homes by the 9-month conflict, of which about half a million fled to neighboring Egypt, a country that also has similarly high records of FGM cases.

    Equality Now and the Tadwein Center for Gender Studies are currently commissioning a study in Egypt among select Sudanese families in Cairo and Giza to understand the particularities of cross-border FGM, to analyze the attitude of Sudanese families in Egypt towards FGM and to assess possible changes in the practice, such as the type of cutting, and the age of girls when they are cut.

    Nexus between conflict, displacement, and FGM

    Although Sudan legally banned the practice of FGM in 2020, women and girls continue to face heightened risks of violence, exploitation, and abuse, including FGM. Ongoing conflict has led to the breakdown of the rule of law and governance structures in Khartoum and a few other states.

    Declaring a state of emergency permits the government to prioritize security and stability over individual rights and the rule of law. In some locations with relative stability, there is selective enforcement of laws driven by social polarization, exacerbating discriminatory practices and inequalities.

    Additionally, in the chaos of displacement, traditional practices may persist, perpetuating the cycle of FGM and denying women and girls agency over their bodies and futures.

    The nexus between conflict, displacement, and FGM underscores the urgent need for holistic, multi-sectoral approaches that address the root causes of the practice and provide comprehensive support to affected populations.

    However, it is critical to redefine how the multi-sectoral approach could roll out within the context of conflict, specifically where legal protections for women and girls are minimal or non-existent.

    The usual activities undertaken by activists and civil society organizations—such as advocacy campaigns, community outreach programs, and legal reforms—may be hampered by the chaotic and unpredictable nature of conflict environments, making it challenging to mobilize support and raise awareness about the harms of FGM.

    Strengthening responses to FGM during conflict and displacement

    Conversations about new and innovative ways where legal frameworks and policy measures need to be strengthened to prohibit FGM must happen, and perpetrators must be held accountable for their actions, even amid conflict and displacement.

    A report on Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) in Humanitarian Settings in the Arab Region, published by UNFPA in 2021, discusses the challenges and barriers to addressing FGM in such contexts and offers recommendations for stakeholders involved in humanitarian response and protection efforts.

    This is critical, as the prevention and response to FGM are not prioritized in humanitarian settings due to lack of funding and political will. The report underscores the importance of culturally sensitive approaches, community engagement, capacity building, and partnerships to combat FGM and support survivors in humanitarian settings effectively.

    Medicalization of FGM requires urgent attention. Prior to the start of the current conflict, Sudan had the highest rate of medicalized FGM globally, accounting for 67% of cases in the country.

    The collapse of healthcare systems and infrastructure brought about a different reality that necessitated changing health priorities. It could be argued that the medicalization of FGM diverts already strained resources, attention, and expertise in-country away from essential healthcare services, especially sexual and reproductive health services, including responding to conflict-related sexual violence and maternal and child health.

    Women’s rights groups in Khartoum and other towns have established Emergency Response Rooms (ERRs) and other community-driven mutual aid efforts that could be used to mainstream FGM-related interventions as they respond to emerging humanitarian needs. Additionally, efforts to integrate FGM prevention and response into broader humanitarian assistance programs are essential in reaching displaced populations with life-saving interventions and support.

    Engaging communities, religious leaders, and key stakeholders in the ‘new social structures’ shaped by conflict and displacement can foster much-needed dialogue, dispel myths, and promote alternative rites of passage that celebrate womanhood without resorting to harmful practices.

    Despite having different priorities as displaced women and girls—such as humanitarian, livelihood, and other urgent needs— empowering them with knowledge and agency is essential in enabling them to assert their rights and resist pressures to undergo FGM.

    Addressing FGM amongst Sudan’s displaced communities

    Community-led initiatives to end FGM among Sudanese communities displaced from Khartoum into neighboring states or neighboring countries must take into consideration the diverse ethnic groups in Sudan—each with their distinct cultural traditions and practices relating to FGM, with some communities practicing different types of FGM. This requires an in-depth understanding of the sociocultural factors that drive it.

    Although wealthier households in Sudan and people in urban areas were previously less likely to support FGM’s continuation, conflict highlights the intersectional impacts on different groups of women and girls, and forced displacement could result in the practice being carried to host countries that may lack effective legal frameworks or enforcement mechanisms to address cross-border FGM.

    Considering anti-FGM interventions transcend geographical boundaries and ethnicities, they must be carefully tailored to community needs. Cross-border FGM could also be driven by a sense of struggling to maintain a cultural identity and uphold perceived social status in a new society.

    Reaffirming commitments to end FGM

    At the international level, concerted action is needed to address the intersecting challenges of FGM, conflict, and forced displacement. The United Nations and other multilateral organizations must prioritize the issue on the global agenda, mobilizing resources and political will to further research, support affected populations, and strengthen efforts to eradicate FGM in conflict-affected areas.

    Moreover, partnerships between governments, civil society organizations, and grassroots activists remain essential in driving a collective response that transcends borders and builds solidarity among diverse stakeholders.

    As Sudanese women bear the brunt of violence and displacement, women-led organizations are instrumental in fostering resilience and actively rebuilding their communities. Supporting and financing these organizations should be prioritized, as it is not only a matter of promoting rights but also a pathway to peace and stability.

    As we confront the grim reality of FGM amidst conflict and forced displacement, we must reaffirm our commitment to the fundamental rights and dignity of every woman and girl. We cannot stand idly by as generations continue to suffer the devastating consequences of this harmful practice.

    Now is the time for bold and decisive action guided by principles of justice, equality, and compassion. Together, we can break the chains of FGM, offering hope and healing to those who have endured untold suffering and paving the way for a future free from violence and discrimination for all.

    Note:Paleki Ayang is Equality Now’s Gender Advisor for the Middle East and North Africa

    IPS UN Bureau Report


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    © Inter Press Service (2024) — All Rights ReservedOriginal source: Inter Press Service

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  • Call for Scaled Up Funding for Much-Needed, Successful Joint Program in Nigeria

    Call for Scaled Up Funding for Much-Needed, Successful Joint Program in Nigeria

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    Yasmine Sherif, Education Cannot Wait Executive Director, speaks with students at the
    ECW-supported Pompomary Primary School in Maiduguri, North-East Nigeria.
    Credit: ECW
    • by Joyce Chimbi (maiduguri, nigeria & nairobi)
    • Inter Press Service

    MAIDUGURI, Nigeria & NAIROBI, Feb 23 (IPS) – Nigeria is home to 15 percent of the world’s out-of-school children. More than 7.6 million girls are not in school, and only nine percent of the poorest girls in the country are in secondary school. The Boko Haram insurgency and other armed groups fuel the out-of-school crisis in northeast Nigeria, disrupting the education of nearly two million school-age children.

    Grave violations of children’s rights prevail in northeastern areas, including the abduction of thousands of children and young people; girls are enslaved and sexually exploited, and boys forced to become child soldiers. Education Cannot Wait (ECW) Executive Director Yasmine Sherif visited communities affected by the conflict and interconnected crises, witnessing first-hand the positive impact of ECW’s initial Multi-Year Resilience Programme (2021-2024).

    “We visited a primary school, a transitional center for boys that fled Boko Haram areas, and one non-formal education center that provides vocational skills training. We have seen the power of holistic education to rehabilitate and reintegrate boys who have fled from Boko Haram areas back into society. ECW and partners, the national Ministry of Education, the Federal State Government, local organizations, teachers, students, and psychologists are all working hand-in-hand, leveraging education to heal children from traumatic experiences—providing them with better life prospects,” Sherif told IPS.

    Yasmine Sherif, Education Cannot Wait Executive Director, speaks with students at the ECW-supported Pompomary Primary School in Maiduguri, North-East Nigeria. Credit: ECW
    Yasmine Sherif, Education Cannot Wait Executive Director, speaks with students at the ECW-supported Pompomary Primary School in Maiduguri, North-East Nigeria. Credit: ECW

    Sherif met with senior government officials, including the Minister of Education, Dr. Tahir Mamman, and Borno State Governor, Prof. Babagana Umara Zulum, and aid partners, all working to ensure the right to education for boys and girls. She stressed that ECW’s expanded funding for crisis-affected girls and boys in north-east Nigeria is “an investment in a more stable, prosperous, and peaceful future for the whole region. ECW’s plans to continue providing safe, quality holistic education and learning opportunities towards protecting children and youth from exploitation—empowering them to achieve their dreams of touching humanity.”

    Sherif was also accompanied by a high-level delegation from UNICEF and the governments of Germany and Norway. Germany is ECW’s leading donor with USD 366 million in total contributions, and Norway is the Fund’s fifth largest donor with total contributions of USD 131 million. Building resilient education systems is both critical and urgent for Nigeria’s crisis-impacted children.

    ECW’s initial Multi-Year Resilience Programme, delivered by the Norwegian Refugee Council, Save the Children, and UNICEF, has consistently achieved its targets, and has so far reached nearly 500,000 children and adolescents with quality, holistic education in areas affected by the crisis in north-east Nigeria.

    school provides girls, boys and adolescents with holistic education support, including the provision of learning materials, teacher training and classroom rehabilitation. Credit: ECW
    The school provides girls, boys, and adolescents with holistic education support, including the provision of learning materials, teacher training, and classroom rehabilitation. Credit: ECW
    Education Cannot Wait (ECW) mission delegation and strategic partners on the ground during visit to Pompomary Primary School in Maiduguri, North-East Nigeria. The ECW-funded school provides girls, boys and adolescents with holistic education support, including provision of learning materials, teacher training and classroom rehabilitation. Photo credits: ECW
    Education Cannot Wait (ECW) mission delegation and strategic partners on the ground during a visit to Pompomary Primary School in Maiduguri, North-East Nigeria. The ECW-funded school provides girls, boys, and adolescents with holistic education support, including the provision of learning materials, teacher training, and classroom rehabilitation. Credit: ECW

    “We need additional funding to reach all two million children in north-east Nigeria and end the out-of-school crisis. Meanwhile, the rest of the world cannot wait—we have dire needs in the Middle East, the refugees in Latin America , across the Sahel region, and in the Sub-Saharan Africa region, where nine in 10 children cannot read simple sentences,” Sherif emphasizes.

    “ECW appeals for additional strategic donor partners—governments, the private sector, philanthropic foundations, and high-net-worth individuals—to join our efforts in mobilizing an additional US$600 million to reach our target of US$1.5 billion for ECW, allowing our partners to reach, by 2026, a total of 20 million girls and boys in crises-affected areas of the world quality education.”

    Dr. Heike Kuhn, Co-Chair of the ECW Executive Committee and Head of Education Division at Germany’s Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development, agrees, saying that building “resilient education systems for increased access to inclusive, quality, and lifelong learning is crucial for Nigeria, as half of its population are children and youth. Educating children means changing their lives and letting them participate in building peaceful, sustainable societies.”

    Merete Lundemo, Co-Chair of the ECW Executive Committee and Special Envoy for Education in Crisis and Conflict for Norway’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs also emphasized that education is a lifeline for crisis-impacted children and that education projects bring much needed relief and normalcy to children in affected areas. Welcoming strengthened cooperation with ECW to ensure that no child is left behind and that this is part of Norway’s wider engagement for children living in armed conflict.

    “This joint program and the education needs and dreams of Nigeria’s crisis-impacted children align with the African Union’s call on all governments to ensure that all children access quality education, officially declaring 2024 as the ‘Year of Education.’ We must all come together with urgency and commitment to make this a reality for the poor, vulnerable children in Africa living on the margins of abject poverty, fleeing from the traumas of violent conflict and interconnected crises,” Sherif observed.

    The delegation also met with survivors of conflict-related sexual violence who are co-creating a new innovative project launched by the Global Survivors Fund with funding support from ECW. The initiative provides formal and non-formal education as a form of reparation for survivors of conflict-related sexual violence and their children.The expanded funding for the planned Multi-Year Resilience Programme shall build on ECW’s USD 23.6 million investments in the north-east of Nigeria since 2018. The investments are delivered in partnership with the Ministry of Education, UN agencies, and international and local civil society partners.

    With a focus on building lasting solutions applying the humanitarian-development-peace nexus, ECW investments in the north-east of Nigeria have provided children with learning materials, supported teacher training and incentives, school feeding, provided essential mental health and psychosocial support for girls and boys impacted by the conflict, and worked with national authorities to get children back to school through permanent community-based programmes.

    IPS UN Bureau Report


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    © Inter Press Service (2024) — All Rights ReservedOriginal source: Inter Press Service

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  • Ratko Mladic Fast Facts | CNN

    Ratko Mladic Fast Facts | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    Here is a look at the life of Ratko Mladic, former leader of the Bosnian Serb army, sentenced to life in prison for genocide and other war crimes.

    Birth date: March 12, 1942

    Birth place: Kalnovik, Yugoslavia (now Bosnia and Herzegovina)

    Birth name: Ratko Mladic

    Father: Nedja Mladic

    Mother: Stana Mladic

    Marriage: Bosiljka Mladic

    Children: Darko and Ana

    1965 – Graduates from a military academy and joins the Communist Party.

    1992 – As a commander in the Bosnian Serb army, Mladic leads the siege of Sarajevo.

    July 1995 – Mladic spearheads an attack on the town of Srebrenica. Approximately 8,000 Muslim men and boys are killed.

    1995 – Mladic is indicted by the UN-established International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) for war crimes and atrocities.

    July 1996 – An international warrant is issued for his arrest.

    1996-2001 – He takes refuge in Belgrade with the protection of Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic.

    2001 – Mladic goes into hiding after Milosevic is arrested.

    October 12, 2007 – Serbian officials offer one million euros for information leading to the capture of Mladic.

    May 26, 2011 – Mladic is arrested in Serbia.

    July 4, 2011 – Mladic refuses to enter a plea so the presiding judge enters not guilty pleas to all counts against him.

    May 16, 2012 – Mladic’s trial begins. He’s charged with two counts of genocide, nine crimes against humanity and war crimes.

    January 28, 2014 – He refuses to testify at the genocide trial of former Bosian Serb Leader Radovan Karadzic and denounces the ICTY court as “satanic.”

    October 23, 2014 – The ICTY announces that the court will hear details about a mass grave investigators believe has ties to Mladic.

    December 7, 2016 – During closing arguments, prosecutors recommend a life sentence for Mladic.

    December 15, 2016 – Mladic’s trial is adjourned. Three UN judges begin deliberating on his fate. The process could take up to a year.

    November 22, 2017 – Mladic is sentenced to life in prison after being found guilty of genocide and crimes against humanity.

    March 22, 2018 – Appeals his conviction and sentence.

    August 25-26, 2020 – Mladic’s appeal hearing takes place.

    June 8, 2021 – A UN court upholds Mladic’s conviction and life sentence.

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  • Childrens Futures at a Crossroads

    Childrens Futures at a Crossroads

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    • Opinion by Jasmina Byrne (united nations)
    • Inter Press Service

    UNITED NATIONS, Feb 23 (IPS) – At the start of 2024, we stand at a critical juncture: Geopolitical tensions are escalating, economic integration is unravelling, and multilateral cooperation is faltering. This global fragmentation threatens to undermine decades of progress made for children worldwide.

    The choices we make today – whether to continue on this path or whether we should bolster global cooperation – will have a profound impact on generations to come.

    Children are always the most vulnerable in times of crisis – a reality highlighted by the COVID-19 pandemic, when school closures, economic hardship and disrupted health services jeopardized children’s rights and wellbeing.

    Almost four years since that pandemic was declared, our new report, Prospects for Children in 2024: Cooperation in a Fragmented World, paints a concerning picture for children’s future development and welfare.

    Tensions among major powers are rising and the threat of new conflicts emerging is high. Beyond the immediate physical dangers, children can experience lasting psychological trauma and violations of their basic rights.

    If military spending continues increasing at the expense of investments in healthcare, education and social protections, children’s development will be further compromised.

    Meanwhile, economic fragmentation is widening disparities between countries. Restrictive trade policies and supply chain disruptions are leading to rising energy and food prices, reducing access to essential goods and negatively impacting child nutrition and household incomes.

    Competition for critical minerals essential for the green economy is increasing the risks of trade fragmentation while threatening the pace of the green energy transition. At the same time, the drive to expand mining for minerals puts mining communities and children at risk of exploitative practices.

    Despite continued global economic growth, the lukewarm and uneven recovery is diminishing prospects for reducing child poverty. From now until 2030, 15 million more children a year will be living in poverty than would have otherwise, due to the unequal post-COVID recovery.

    This gloomy picture is compounded by the weakening of multilateral institutions, which is further undermining the potential for progress for children. Why?

    Because a fragmented multilateral system that is hamstrung by competing interests will struggle to deliver on conflict prevention, climate change, effective digital governance, debt relief and enforcing child rights standards, fuelling dissatisfaction in the Global South with rising inequalities.

    Children in the poorest nations also face continued barriers to financing for basic services. Crippling debt, high remittance fees and lack of voice in global economic governance restrict investments in healthcare, education and social protections – investments vital to children’s survival and development.

    But amid all these concerning trends, we see still signs of hope. Alternative alliances are emerging in the developing world to advance cooperation, bringing novel policy solutions, more nimble policymaking and effective results.

    Despite expressing discontent with current democratic political structures, young people remain optimistic that opportunities exist to reform and resolve deficiencies in the political system, whether at the national or international level. They are engaging as change-makers, breathing new life into civic participation and democratic renewal.

    In addition, technological innovations are unlocking new opportunities to empower children and enhance their rights. Green transition, if carried out in a just and sustainable way – one that prioritizes young people’s needs, skills and access to jobs in emerging sectors (such as the digital and green economy) – can benefit younger generations.

    Reforms and modernization of global governance and financing arrangements could still deliver greater justice for developing countries. This more hopeful path will not unfold on its own. It requires global leaders to make an active choice – to double down on solidarity, inclusion and cooperation despite tensions and instability.

    Prioritizing children and their rights must be at the centre of this choice.

    Jasmina Byrne is Chief, Foresight & Policy, UNICEF Innocenti – Global Office of Research and Foresight.

    IPS UN Bureau


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    © Inter Press Service (2024) — All Rights ReservedOriginal source: Inter Press Service

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  • Forced Migration Grows, Justice Withers, Say Activists at World Social Forum

    Forced Migration Grows, Justice Withers, Say Activists at World Social Forum

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    “Governments are not motivated to fix migrants’ issues because the money they send home keeps their economies running” Credit: Shutterstock
    • by Marty Logan (kathmandu)
    • Inter Press Service

    KATHMANDU, Feb 19 (IPS) – As involuntary migration rises around the world, partly in response to the impacts of climate change, justice for those leaving their homes and families to earn a living is largely missing, said activists meeting at the World Social Forum (WSF) in Kathmandu on Sunday.

    In various sessions, participants from Europe, northern Africa and Latin America detailed governments squeezing doors shut on migrants trying to enter their countries. Disturbing stories from Asia focused on individuals falling victim to employers and traffickers as their governments looked the other way while profiting from migrants’ income remitted home.

    The WSF ends in Nepal’s capital Kathmandu on Monday. During the annual event global activists gather to discuss issues ranging from education to debt relief, legalization of sex work, and poor farmers’ lack of control over their land and resources.

    “One of the women we talked to told us that she had to sleep with six to seven men daily for six months. The saddest part is the employer’s wife regularly gave her a pill so she wouldn’t get pregnant,” said a researcher with the Bangladeshi organization OKUP. “Another worker was diagnosed with colon cancer: his employer sent him home without paying a single bit of his salary.”

    OKUP hosted the session, Climate Change, Migration and Modern Slavery, to share its report documenting the treatment given to migrant workers from coastal regions in Bangladesh who were forced to leave after the impacts of climate change destroyed their farms and other livelihoods.

    Research found that 51% of households migrated after being hit by cyclones, floods, salt water intrusion in their fields, erratic rainfall and other climate disasters. “There is no sustainable adaptation opportunities for them. In most cases people receive assistance from the government after disasters, but there is no sustainable assistance. That’s why people rely on loans to rebuild their houses or restart their farming activities,” said OKUP Chairperson Shakirul Islam.

    “Before they can repay the money they experience the next cycle of climate emergency,” he added, making them desperate to go earn money elsewhere in the country or abroad.

    Eighty-six percent of those displaced migrate within the country; 14% internationally. En route 90% face excessive fees, 81% do not get a promised work permit and 78% have their salaries held back. “I strongly believe that the same situation is present in other countries in South Asia,” said Islam.

    Chairperson of the Bangladeshi organization OKUP, (standing far right) introduces the session Climate Change, Migration and Modern Slavery at the World Social Forum on Sunday, Feb. 18. Credit: Marty Logan/IPS
    Shakirul Islam, Chairperson of the Bangladeshi organization OKUP, (standing far right) introduces the session Climate Change, Migration and Modern Slavery at the World Social Forum on Sunday, Feb. 18. Credit: Marty Logan/IPS

    Malaysian activist Sumitha Shaanthinni Kishna cautioned the group to not blame climate change for the migrants’ problems. “The fear I have is governments using climate change to justify migration. They will say ‘that’s why we have to send our migrants out’. They have done this to justify migration due to poverty.

    “The discussion has to be that climate change is real and how the government’s policies are contributing to climate change,” added Kishna, from the organization Our Journey, which provides legal support to migrants and refugees.

    In another discussion in another classroom just minutes later and only metres away, activists from India were learning about a hotline created after COVID-19 to help migrant workers in distress. In less than one year, the Migrant Assistance and Information Network has responded to 800-plus calls, said its director, Dr Martin Puthussery.

    The cases include 40 deaths (19 accidents, 15 accidents, 6 suicides), 20 instances of forced labour and 16 cases of legal aid or mediation, involving wage theft, delayed payments illegal confinements and imprisonments.

    During the question-answer session a participant from northern Bihar state noted that migration is a must because “everything is closed down. Where do the people of Bihar go to earn their livelihood?”

    “Can we ourselves create small industries?” she asked. “We can’t depend on the government.”

    Governments are not motivated to fix migrants’ issues because the money they send home keeps their economies running, said Arie Kurniawaty from Solidaritas Perempuan in Indonesia at one of the day’s last sessions, Call for Migration Coordination within the WSF in Kathmandu.

    “The basic problem is the perspectives of our governments, which think that migrant workers are a commodity… They will try to send many migrant workers abroad without considering if their situation will be good or bad,” added Kurniawaty.

    Other speakers in the session, which covered France, Africa, Palestine and Latin America as well as Asia, noted rising numbers of migrants but increasing hostility to them, led by governments.

    In Latin America, governments’ actions are linked to rising racism and xenophobia, said Patricia Gainza from the World Social Forum on Migrations. “This is nothing new but in this case we’ve had some very bad decisions by governments, like Peru, who invite people to come but later, for political reasons, pushed them out.”

    In Europe, the New Pact on Migration and Asylum, of December 2023, “encourages informal and confidential agreements between European countries and migrant-sending countries that are not legally binding, so that the European Parliament will not have to ratify them,” said Glauber Sezerino of the Paris-based Centre de Recherche et d’Information pour le Développement. “The pact tries to encourage more and more of this kind of agreement, so you can expect more violation of human rights” of migrant workers, he added.

    In North Africa, governments are increasingly dominating debate on migration policies, “leaving little room for civil society,” said Sami Adouani of FTDES Tunisia. In February 2023, a xenophobic speech by Tunisian President Kais Saied targeted migrants from sub-Saharan Africa. That triggered an exodus but also “exposed those remaining migrants to more institutional violence,” he added.

    © Inter Press Service (2024) — All Rights ReservedOriginal source: Inter Press Service

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  • Venezuela orders suspension of UN rights office, gives staff days to leave

    Venezuela orders suspension of UN rights office, gives staff days to leave

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    Earlier this week the UN agency expressed ‘deep concern’ over the detention of prominent rights activist, Rocio San Miguel.

    Venezuela has ordered the local office of the United Nations human rights body to suspend operations and given its staff 72 hours to leave, accusing it of promoting opposition to the South American country.

    Foreign Affairs Minister Yvan Gil announced the decision at a news conference in the capital Caracas on Thursday.

    He said the office – the local technical advisory office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights – had been used by the international community “to maintain a discourse” against Venezuela.

    The move came two days after the UN agency expressed “deep concern” over the detention of prominent rights activist Rocio San Miguel and called for her “immediate release”.

    Gil said the UN rights office had taken on an “inappropriate role” and had become “the private law firm of the coup plotters and terrorists who permanently conspire against the country”.

    He said the decision would remain in place until the agency “publicly rectify, before the international community, their colonialist, abusive and violating attitude of the United Nations Charter”.

    In a statement, Venezuela’s government said it decided to suspend the activities of the UN rights office and “carry out a holistic revision of the technical cooperation terms”. It said the review would take place over the next 30 days.

    It was not immediately clear if the Venezuelan government had notified the UN directly of its order to close the office. UN spokesperson Stephane Dujarric said during his daily briefing on Thursday that he had just been made aware of the decision and would get back to members of the press.

    The UN human rights office has operated in Venezuela since 2019.

    Rights activist detained

    San Miguel, 57, was arrested last Friday in the immigration area of an airport in Caracas, sparking an international outcry.

    Prosecutors have accused her of taking part in the latest alleged plot to assassinate President Nicolas Maduro, which the government has said was backed by the United States.

    Authorities said in January that they had uncovered five plots to assassinate Maduro, implicating rights activists, journalists and soldiers.

    The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, based in Geneva, Switzerland, on Tuesday expressed “deep concern” over San Miguel’s detention.

    In a post on the social media platform X, the office urged “her immediate release” and respect for her right to legal defence.

    Shortly before Gil’s Thursday announcement, the UN agency called for the respect of “due process guarantees, including right to defence” in her case.

    The detention of San Miguel comes in a crunch election year that has already seen Maduro block his main opposition rival, prompting the US to threaten to reimpose recently eased oil sanctions.

    San Miguel is the founder of an NGO called Citizen Control, which investigates security and military issues, such as the number of citizens killed or abused by security forces. She has detailed military involvement in illegal mining operations, and a recent femicide in the army.

    International rights groups see in the arrests a coordinated plan to silence government critics and perceived opponents.

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  • Millions of Indonesians choose a new president in one of the world’s largest elections

    Millions of Indonesians choose a new president in one of the world’s largest elections

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    JAKARTA, Indonesia — Millions of Indonesians were choosing a new president Wednesday as the world’s third-largest democracy aspires to become a global economic powerhouse just over 25 years since emerging from a brutal authoritarian era.

    The incumbent Indonesian defense minister, who has been accused of human rights atrocities as an ex-general, and two former governors are vying to succeed the still-widely popular President Joko Widodo.

    Widodo’s rise from a riverside slum to his country’s presidency has showcased the vibrancy of his Southeast Asian nation’s democracy in a region rife with authoritarian regimes.

    The voting in a vast archipelago of 17,000 islands sprawled across three time zones, with a population of 270 million, is a logistical nightmare, with white ballot boxes and ballots being brought by donkeys and on foot in some of the more remote locations. Polls open at 7 a.m. local time in each time zone and the first region began voting at 22:00 GMT.

    Aside from the presidency, about 20,000 national, provincial and district parliamentary posts would be contested by tens of thousands of candidates. About 10,000 hopefuls from 18 political parties are eyeing the the national parliament’s 580 seats alone.

    The presidency is being contested by Defense Minister Prabowo Subianto and two former provincial governors, Anies Baswedan and Ganjar Pranowo.

    Subianto, who is the front-runner based on several independent surveys, has picked Widodo’s eldest son, Gibran Rakabuming Raka, as his vice-presidential running mate.

    Subianto is the only candidate with links to the 1967-98 Suharto dictatorship, when he was a lieutenant general. A longtime commander in the Kopassus special forces, he was dishonorably discharged in 1998 after Kopassus soldiers kidnapped and tortured political opponents of Suharto, his then-father-in-law.

    Of 22 activists kidnapped that year, 13 remain missing. Subianto never faced trial, although several of his men were tried and convicted.

    Polls show the 72-year-old Subianto well ahead of his two rivals, though perhaps not with the majority needed to avoid a runoff. While he is the oldest candidate, his running mate is the youngest: 36-year-old Surakarta Mayor Gibran Rakabuming Raka, Widodo’s son.

    Raka is below the statutory minimum age of 40 but was allowed to run under an exception created by the Constitutional Court. The court was then headed by Widodo’s brother-in-law, which set off criticism against the president over perceived favoritism.

    Subianto has vowed to continue Widodo’s economic development plan in what experts view as an attempt to draw on Widodo’s popularity. But he is strongly opposed by human rights activists, who associate him with torture and disappearances during the final years of the Suharto dictatorship.

    Baswedan, the former head of an Islamic university, served as governor of Jakarta until last year. A former Fulbright scholar, Baswedan had been education and culture minister from 2014 to 2016, when Widodo removed him from the Cabinet.

    Baswedan opposes Widodo’s signature plan to move Indonesia’s capital from Jakarta to Nusantara on the island of Borneo, about 2,000 kilometers (1,240 miles) away, which involves constructing government buildings and housing from scratch.

    He said in an interview with The Associated Press last month that democracy in Indonesia is declining, referring to Subianto’s choice of Widodo’s son as his running mate, and pledged to get it back on track.

    “This means that there is a decline in trust, it means that our democracy is experiencing a decline in quality, it means that many legal rules are being bent,” he said.

    Pranowo is the governing party candidate, but does not have the support of Widodo. He was a national legislator for the governing Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle for 10 years before being elected in 2013 for the first of two terms as Central Java governor.

    While governor, he refused to allow Israel to participate in the Under-20 FIFA World Cup to be held in his province. FIFA subsequently dropped Indonesia as host of the games, triggering a backlash against Pranowo from soccer fans.

    Israel and Indonesia, the world’s largest Muslim-majority nation, do not have diplomatic ties.

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  • What Is It Like to Live in Ecuador, One of the Most Violent Countries?

    What Is It Like to Live in Ecuador, One of the Most Violent Countries?

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    A view of part of Guayaquil, Ecuador’s second most populated city and main port, which is now dominated by violence as a hub for shipping drugs out of the country to the United States and Europe. CREDIT: Carolina Loza León / IPS
    • by Carolina Loza (guayaquil, ecuador)
    • Inter Press Service

    GUAYAQUIL, Ecuador, Feb 12 2024 (IPS) – “For a couple of years now we’ve been seeing the violence growing so fast,” said José, who asked not to give his last name for fear of reprisals he may face in Monte Sinai, a low-income neighborhood in Ecuador’s most populous city, Guayaquil.

    José, a 45-year-old Venezuelan, came here looking for a better life in 2019. “You could scrape by, barely, but you could make a living,” he said.

    For José, Ecuador offered an opportunity for a peaceful life that allowed him to cover his expenses and raise his three children, something he could no longer do in his native Venezuela. He first moved to a shantytown in this part of western Guayaquil, which is also the country’s main port and one of its two economic hubs, along with Quito, the capital.

    José paused before telling IPS: “In the last two years, the violence has accelerated, it’s impossible to live.”

    This South American country has recently become one of the most violent in Latin America and the world. And José’s anxious observations coincide with the analysis of different organizations and experts.

    Ecuador’s geographic position between two cocaine producers, Colombia and Peru, make it a strategic location for drug distribution across the Pacific Ocean.

    The demand for drug trafficking, the gradual economic devastation and the weakening of the country’s political system exacerbated in 2023 with the dissolution of the legislature and a call for early elections, helped strengthen criminal gangs, which began to take root in Ecuador as part of the chain of trafficking of cocaine and other drugs.

    Growing institutional corruption enabled the gangs to infiltrate the police and the prison system, making it easier for imprisoned criminal leaders to turn prison facilities, intended for rehabilitation, into their centers of operations and expansion.

    In the gangs’ struggle to gain control, in 2021, the first large-scale massacre inside a prison in Ecuador occurred, something that became routine as the violence escalated.

    For years in Ecuador, criminal organizations have been coordinating their actions against the State, according to Renato Rivera-Rhon, an organized crime and security analyst. “Prisons are an environment of opportunity for organized crime in Ecuador,” he said in an interview with InSightCrime, an organization that focuses on criminal activities.

    Rivera-Rhon mentioned that networks within prisons facilitate dialogue, and gang leaders have lawyers within the network, indicating the existence of a web of a certain level of agreements between organized crime gangs.

    Police officers prepare to patrol the streets in Guayaquil, on Ecuador's Pacific coast, days after the declaration of a state of emergency as the government tries to combat the drug gangs that have turned Ecuador into one of the world's most violent countries. CREDIT: Carolina Loza León / IPS
    Police officers prepare to patrol the streets in Guayaquil, on Ecuador’s Pacific coast, days after the declaration of a state of emergency as the government tries to combat the drug gangs that have turned Ecuador into one of the world’s most violent countries. CREDIT: Carolina Loza León / IPS

    José told IPS how he went from being a street vendor outside schools in Guayaquil without any complications to becoming a victim of extortion, forced to make “protection payments” known locally as “vacunas” or vaccines.

    Monte Sinai was one of the first areas in Guayaquil where residents and business owners became the victims of criminal gangs who began demanding “vacunas”, although none of the residents consulted by IPS would identify the group that controls the area, and they never refer to it by name.

    The extortion method varies depending on the business and the payment can be demanded weekly, monthly or, as in José’s case, daily. “One of them (a gang member) would hang around when I was selling outside the schools, and would keep track of how much I sold and charge me a third of what I earned that day,” José said.

    “You can’t live like this. They don’t let you do anything, you can’t survive,” he complained.

    One of José’s three sons was also a victim of extortion when he set up a fast food business selling mainly hamburgers.

    Friends of José told him that when they rode on public transportation buses, people would get on and ask for “a little donation,” which was actually another form of extortion. The charge was one dollar, which they had to plan for on top of the 0.35 cent fare.

    “You prefer not to ride the bus, because you don’t have the money to pay a dollar for each trip,” said a friend of José’s who preferred not to be identified.

    Monte Sinai is a rapidly growing neighborhood, a city within a city as some demographers call it, where a large number of people make a living in the informal economy.

    In Ecuador, a country of some 17 million inhabitants, where more than 3.6 million people live in Greater Guayaquil, over 50 percent of the economically active population works in the informal economy.

    The growth of gangs in Ecuador took hold gradually, in poor areas such as Monte Sinai, and their presence and control boomed during the last two years. Bomb threats, sporadic detonations, leaflets in which gangs threaten individuals or groups such as immigrants, and an increase in robberies are reflections of the violent control exercised by these groups.

    The activity of the gangs has spread throughout the country, in an escalation that has reached the point of total chaos at times, such as on Jan. 9.

    That day, a television station was taken over by a gang in Guayaquil, there were bomb threats in several cities and shootings near judicial entities, which led the government to declare a state of emergency.

    The state of emergency allowed for joint military and police action in the streets and prisons, under the premise that the State is in conflict with armed criminal groups.

    Lorenzo and his teenage son Carlos are photographed on one of the unpaved streets of Monte Sinai, a low-income neighborhood in northwest Guayaquil, which they had to flee because of threats and extortion by criminal gangs in the area. CREDIT: Carolina Loza León / IPS
    Lorenzo and his teenage son Carlos are photographed on one of the unpaved streets of Monte Sinai, a low-income neighborhood in northwest Guayaquil, which they had to flee because of threats and extortion by criminal gangs in the area. CREDIT: Carolina Loza León / IPS

    Rivera-Rhon stressed that on Jan. 9, the alliances and ties between criminal gangs were demonstrated by the scope and coordination of the chaos in the country and the fear provoked among the public.

    He said that “if you look at things from the point of view of someone in the capital, law enforcement has a monopoly of force, but this is not the case in rural areas, where there is total abandonment by the State.”

    The expert on crime mentioned how in localities on the border with Colombia, there was already a social order imposed by armed groups that “generated a contagion to other areas of the country” and wondered whether the State had control over the exercise of force in other parts of the country and neighborhoods in cities such as Guayaquil.

    Carlos Carrión, secretary of the Fundación Desaparecidos en Ecuador (Foundation for Missing People), said abandonment by the State has been going on for decades. A resident of Jaramijó, a fishing village near the port city of Manta, for years he has led petitions for the repatriation of fishermen imprisoned in the United States for transporting drugs.

    Carrión pointed to the lack of response at the State level and the growing control of drug trafficking networks that recruit fishermen, without any control by the armed forces. “Nobody seems to have cared for years, and look where we’ve ended up,” Carrión told IPS by telephone from Jaramijó, some 190 kilometers north of Guayaquil.

    Lorenzo, 46, said the Jan. 9 violence was nothing new. In 2023 he had to move from Guayaquil to the port of Posorja, after he became the victim of robberies and closed down his small business.

    “Outside the store there were four guys on a motorcycle. From far away, one of them pulled a gun on me and I didn’t know how to get away. I had a backpack, where I carried my phone. I also had my watch and money that I always carry, about 20 or 40 dollars. They took everything,” said Lorenzo, who had worked hard to open a small store selling food and other products in Monte Sinai.

    He told IPS that “they said to me: ‘get out of here.’ They left quickly, after going around the same street twice.” It was the last episode of violence and extortion he put up with in Guayaquil and the one that led him to decide to close his shop and look for work in Posorja, a small fishing port 113 kilometers away.

    “I used to live here, but now we’re doing better. I had my monthly income from the store, but I had to leave the house in Monte Sinai to rent in Posorja,” he said during one of his last Sunday visits to the neighborhood to see friends and check on his now empty house.

    One of his sons, teenager Carlos, was with him on the Sunday he was interviewed by IPS in Monte Sinai. His two older sons have also moved out of the neighborhood.

    Businesses are closed in a small shopping center on Delta Avenue, near the main university in the Ecuadorian city of Guayaquil, due to people's fear of going out in certain areas of the port city. CREDIT: Carolina Loza León / IPS
    Businesses are closed in a small shopping center on Delta Avenue, near the main university in the Ecuadorian city of Guayaquil, due to people’s fear of going out in certain areas of the port city. CREDIT: Carolina Loza León / IPS

    Lorenzo’s biggest fear before leaving Monte Sinai was that something would happen to his children. He even considered emigrating in 2022, crossing the Darien Gap, after hearing about people who had made it through that dangerous stretch of Panamanian jungle to the United States.

    Both José and Lorenzo lived in fear of the impact that the violence and increased insecurity could have on their families.

    According to José, violence during 2023 in the area “increased by 70 percent.” And so far, according to his former neighbors, the armed forces have not yet arrived in Monte Sinaí, despite the fact that a state of emergency has been declared and that the area is notorious for the violence suffered by local residents.

    José stays in contact with his former neighbors, a community that welcomed him with solidarity and to which he will always be grateful.

    “I love Ecuador, I was welcomed here, but the situation had become unlivable,” he said from Quito, the capital, where he now sells candy at stop lights. At the end of January, José decided to move to Quito and check out the possibility of settling in this city, where he feels safer.

    With most of Monte Sinai’s schools closed due to the violence, José had no alternative when he was left without a source of income and became subject to constant threats, he told IPS during a second meeting in Quito, 430 kilometers from his old life.

    His eldest son sold the supplies for his fast food business and returned to Venezuela, while his two teenagers are still in Guayaquil, waiting for their father to get everything ready in Quito.

    Lorenzo is no longer returning to Monte Sinai, he told IPS by telephone from Pasorj a few days after the interview there, because both he and his son Carlos received new threats. He is looking for alternatives to move to the coastal province of Manabí, which is also affected by violence, although to a lesser degree than Guayas province, of which Guayaquil is the capital.

    José finds some consolation in living in Quito and being able to go out on the street with a little more peace of mind. He quotes a friend who stayed in Guayaquil: “Back there, the only thing they don’t charge us for is breathing.”

    © Inter Press Service (2024) — All Rights ReservedOriginal source: Inter Press Service

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  • Demands for Canada to stop supplying weapons to Israel grow louder

    Demands for Canada to stop supplying weapons to Israel grow louder

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    Montreal, Canada – Human rights advocates are accusing Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government of misleading the public over weapons sales to Israel, which have come under greater scrutiny amid the deadly Israeli bombardment of Gaza.

    At issue is legislation that prohibits the government from exporting military equipment to foreign actors if there is a risk it can be used in human rights abuses.

    But regulatory loopholes, combined with a lack of clarity over what Canada sends to Israel, have complicated efforts to end the transfers.

    Dozens of Canadian civil society groups this month urged Trudeau to end arms exports to Israel, arguing they violate Canadian and international law because the weapons could be used in the Gaza Strip.

    But in the face of mounting pressure since Israel’s war on Gaza began on October 7, Canada’s foreign affairs ministry has tried to downplay the state’s role in helping Israel build its arsenal.

    “Global Affairs Canada can confirm that Canada has not received any requests, and therefore not issued any permits, for full weapon systems for major conventional arms or light weapons to Israel for over 30 years,” the department told Al Jazeera in an email on Friday.

    “The permits which have been granted since October 7, 2023, are for the export of non-lethal equipment.”

    But advocates say this misrepresents the total volume of Canada’s military exports to Israel, which totalled more than $15m ($21.3m Canadian) in 2022, according to the government’s own figures.

    It also shines a spotlight on the nation’s longstanding lack of transparency around these transfers.

    “Canadian companies have exported over [$84m, $114m Canadian] in military goods to Israel since 2015 when the Trudeau government was elected,” said Michael Bueckert, vice president of Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East, an advocacy group.

    “And they have continued to approve arms exports since October 7 despite the clear risk of genocide in Gaza,” Bueckert told Al Jazeera.

    “Unable to defend its own policy, this government is misleading Canadians into thinking that we aren’t exporting weapons to Israel at all. As Canadians increasingly demand that their government impose an arms embargo on Israel, politicians are trying to pretend that the arms trade doesn’t exist.”

    Lack of information

    While Canada may not transfer full weapons systems to Israel, the two countries enjoy “a consistent arms trade relationship”, said Kelsey Gallagher, a researcher at Project Ploughshares, a peace research institute.

    The vast majority of Canada’s military exports to Israel come in the form of parts and components. These typically fall into three categories, Gallagher explained: electronics and space equipment; military aerospace exports and components; and finally, bombs, missiles, rockets and general military explosives and components.

    But beyond these broad categories, which were gleaned by examining Canada’s own domestic and international reports on weapons exports, Gallagher said it remains unclear “what these actual pieces of technology are”.

    “We don’t know what companies are exporting them. We don’t know exactly what their end use is,” he told Al Jazeera.

    Global Affairs Canada did not immediately respond to Al Jazeera’s question about what “non-lethal equipment” the government has approved for export to Israel since October 7.

    “What does this mean? No one knows because there’s no definition of that and it really could be quite a number of things,” said Henry Off, a Toronto-based lawyer and board member of the group Canadian Lawyers for International Human Rights (CLAIHR).

    Human rights lawyers and activists also suspect that Canadian military components are reaching Israel via the United States, including for installation in fighter jets such as the F-35 aircraft.

    But these transfers are difficult to track because a decades-old deal between Canada and the US – 1956’s Defence Production Sharing Agreement – has created “a unique and comprehensive set of loopholes that are afforded to Canadian arms transfers to the US”, said Gallagher.

    “These exports are treated with zero transparency. There is no regulation of, or reporting of, the transfer of Canadian-made military components to the US, including those that could be re-transferred to Israel,” he said.

    The result, he added, is that “it is very difficult to challenge what are problematic transfers if we do not have the information with which to do so”.

    Domestic, international law

    Despite these hurdles, Canadian human rights advocates are pressuring the government to end its weapons sales to Israel, particularly in light of the Israeli military’s continued assault on Gaza.

    Nearly 28,000 Palestinians have been killed over the past four months and rights advocates have meticulously documented the impact on the ground of Israel’s indiscriminate bombing, and its vast destruction of the enclave. The world’s top court, the International Court of Justice, also determined last month that Palestinians in Gaza face a plausible risk of genocide.

    Against that backdrop, eliminating weapons transfers to Israel is effectively a demand for “Canada [to] abide by its own laws”, said Off, the Toronto lawyer.

    That’s because Canada’s Export and Import Permits Act obliges the foreign minister to “deny exports and brokering permit applications for military goods and technology … if there is a substantial risk that the items would undermine peace and security”.

    The minister should also deny exports if they “could be used to commit or facilitate serious violations of international humanitarian and human rights laws” or in “serious acts of gender-based violence or serious acts of violence against women and children”, the law states.

    Meanwhile, Canada is also party to the Arms Trade Treaty (ATT), a United Nations pact that bans transfers if states have knowledge the arms could be used in genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes and other violations of international law.

    But according to Off, despite a growing list of Israeli human rights violations since October 7, Canada “has been approving the transfer of military goods and technology that might fuel” them.

    Late last month, Canadian Lawyers for International Human Rights wrote a letter to Canadian Foreign Minister Melanie Joly demanding an immediate end to the transfers. The group said it would consider next steps, including possible legal action, if action is not taken.

    ‘It takes a village’

    Still, Canada insists that it maintains one of the strongest arms export control regimes in the world.

    Asked whether his government intends to end arms transfers to Israel, Trudeau said in Parliament on January 31 that Canada “puts human rights and protection of human rights at the centre of all our decision-making”.

    “It has always been the case and we have been consistent in making sure that we are responsible in the way we do that. We will continue to be so,” the prime minister said.

    Gallagher, at Project Ploughshares, told Al Jazeera, however, that Canada maintains “a level of permissibility” in choosing which countries it chooses to arm, including Israel.

    “More than [27,000] Palestinians killed, the vast majority civilians; much of the Gaza Strip absolutely destroyed,” he said, referring to Israel’s offensive. “This is obviously an operation that is not being conducted within the bounds of international humanitarian law, which should be colouring the risk assessment performed by Canadian officials.”

    Destroyed houses in the Al Bureij refugee camp, Gaza, on February 7, 2024 [Mohammed Saber/EPA]

    And while Canadian weapons exports to the Israeli government pale in comparison to other countries – notably the US, which sends billions of dollars in military aid to Israel annually – Off said, “Any difference is a difference.”

    “It takes a village to make these instruments of death and it should make a difference if we cut off Canada’s contributions,” he told Al Jazeera, adding that the pressure on Canada also sends a message to other countries “potentially aiding and abetting Israel’s slaughter of Gaza”.

    “If you send arms to countries committing serious violations of international humanitarian law, you will be held to account.”

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  • From Memory to Policy

    From Memory to Policy

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    In Gaza, every day is a struggle to find bread and water. Without safe water, many people will die from deprivation and disease. Credit: UNRWA
    • Opinion by Robert Misik (vienna, austria)
    • Inter Press Service

    VIENNA, Austria, Feb 09 (IPS) – A bloodbath is taking place in the Middle East, and yet, the world is embroiled in absurd debates. One is tempted to say, paraphrasing Marx: here the tragedy, there the farce. The German-speaking world – and Germany in particular – takes a decidedly pro-Israeli stance, while in other societies, an equally dubious anti-Israeli position prevails.

    At the beginning of October, Hamas and other Islamist groups not only launched an attack from the Gaza strip but also carried out a cruel massacre. Over 1 200 people were killed, most of them civilians, young party people, including many peace activists: the majority of the inhabitants of the affected kibbutzim belonged to the Israeli left.

    Horrific war crimes were committed, which cannot be justified as ‘collateral damage’ of legitimate resistance. Nor can we ignore the fanatical ideology of radical Islamism, which eliminates empathy and justifies acts of bloodshed.

    However, due to the bloody history of at least 75 years of conflict and the recent history of occupation policies and the irresponsible escalation strategies of Benjamin Netanyahu’s radical right-wing governments, the attack met much approval within the Palestinian population. Fatah and the Palestinian Authority have been weakened for years, and their support is dwindling.

    Rights and obligations

    The Israeli government responded with massive military action and retaliatory strikes. This, on the one hand, was to be expected – no nation in the world could not have reacted to such an attack – but, on the other hand, the war immediately escalated in a horrific manner, which was, unfortunately, also to be expected. Around 27 000 people have now lost their lives in Gaza. Entire families have been wiped out by the bombardments.

    Under international law, Israel has the right to respond to such an attack, but every country also has the duty to act ‘proportionately’. What is proportionate – in relation to threats or to defined, legitimate war aims – is a complicated legal debate.

    But it is largely undisputed that the shrugging acceptance of tens of thousands of civilian casualties cannot be justified, even in the fight against a ‘terrorist’ organisation. And excessive force that literally razes Gaza to the ground, which destroys the livelihoods of the civilian population, the supply of food and the medical-care system, is itself a war crime.

    Put quite simply: to a bestial war crime by Hamas, Israel has itself responded with war crimes. And the matter is made worse by the fact that leading members of Israel’s government have engaged in appalling rhetoric, from Manichean religious-war language to vile fantasies of mass expulsions and ‘ethnic cleansing’.

    Just as the history of the conflict has for decades provided both sides with arguments for viewing the other as the perpetrator and their own side only as the victim, the same has been true in these recent months. Palestinian figures see Hamas’ actions as a justified reaction to oppression, while their Israeli counterparts see excessive (and criminal) military action as a legitimate response to terror.

    Yet, that is precisely the problem. Those who paint a Manichean, black-and-white picture fall far short of the terrible complexities of this conflict. There are horrible pogroms in the West Bank by right-wing extremist settlers and members of the army, and violent expulsions of Palestinians and an expropriation of their land. And there are terrible acts of violence involving unspeakable cruelty by Palestinian militias.

    But the world is increasingly sorting itself into vocal supporter groups of fans and followers. In many societies, this is obviously about their own history and identity. To be more precise: a complex reality is being accommodated to the apparent requirements of their domestic politics of remembrance — and if it doesn’t fit, it is being made to.

    Manipulation strategies

    Germany and Austria have adopted a decidedly pro-Israeli position. First, this can be explained by their own history, the fatal past of genocidal anti-Semitism which escalated under the Nazi regime into the Shoah against European Jews.

    This is why Germany has been an ally of Israel for decades: the former chancellor, Angela Merkel, declared it an important element of the German Staatsräson (reason of state). This is why there is, properly, a strong sensitivity in Germany towards anti-Semitism and the threat to Jews and why the identity of Israel as a safe ‘home’ for all Jews is supported.

    The extreme right in both Germany and Austria supports Israel today, on the one hand because Israel’s opponents are Muslims (whom it hates even more than contemporary Jews) and on the other because this is the best way to immunise itself against the accusation of being ‘Nazi’.

    In addition, however, the Israeli right – above all the prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and his party, in alliance with right-wing Jewish lobby groups abroad – has sought in recent decades to denounce almost any criticism of Israeli policy as ‘anti-Semitic’ and thus morally eliminate it.

    In German-speaking countries and some other societies with a very well-founded sense of guilt, this manipulation strategy has worked: nobody wants to expose themselves to the suspicion of being seen as a person with morally reprehensible opinions — in other words, as an anti-Semite.

    Susan Neiman, a Jewish-German-American intellectual who is director of the Berlin Einstein Centre, recently wrote a major essay in the New York Review of Books in which she spoke of a ‘philosemitic McCarthyism’ that had taken on the characteristics of ‘hysteria’.

    Things had gone so far that ‘non-Jewish Germans publicly accuse Jewish writers, artists and activists of anti-Semitism’. As in the early postwar campaign of denunciation of ‘anti-Americanism’ led by Senator Joseph McCarthy, dissenting views are silenced.

    In extreme cases, this has had bizarre consequences. Conferences have been banned, at which large numbers of people with the most diverse views should have been exchanging them. In Kassel, an Indian art critic and curator lost his position because he had signed a (rather stupid) Israel boycott petition years ago, despite having unequivocally condemned ‘the terror unleashed by Hamas on 7 October’ as a ‘terrible massacre’.

    A Berlin theatre removed from its programme a humorous play (The Situation) about the conflict of narratives by the Austro-Israeli playwright Yael Ronen — now that the situation ‘puts us on Israel’s side’.

    ‘Israel’ has become a ‘trigger point’ in the culture wars, as with ‘wokeness’ or similar themes elsewhere. ‘Part of a proper culture war is … to want to misunderstand the other side at all costs’, the critic Hanno Rautenberg wrote recently in the Hamburg weekly Die Zeit, about the German debates on Israel: ‘One wrong word or even just one unsaid word and you’re threatened with discursive excommunication.’

    No doubt there are forms of criticism of specific Israeli policies that carry more than just anti-Semitic overtones, but in most cases, this is far from reality. As a result, German public opinion is oddly many times more ‘pro-Israeli’ than Israeli public opinion itself.

    Good and evil, oppressor and oppressed

    If there is one-sidedness in the discourse in the German-speaking world, this certainly exists in other parts of the world as well, and not only in Muslim or Arab countries such as Turkey, Iran, Jordan or Indonesia.

    In the United States, Britain and other societies, significant sections of the public and the academic left cultivate their own one-sidedness. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is described in categories of imperialism and colonialism, into which it hardly fits.

    The ‘post-colonial’ left has adopted theories, some of which are quite inspiring and have opened up productive new intellectual horizons, but it has radicalised them into Manichean delusions. The world is divided into oppressor and oppressed — and, in this simple-minded worldview, the person identified as the ‘oppressed’ is always right. Since oppressors can never even comprehend the experiences of the oppressed, the oppressed must always be proved right.

    From there, it is only a small step to the final clicking into place: the Palestinians are black / ‘people of colour’, the Jews are white, and in Israel, they are beacons of ‘US imperialism’. Even if one cannot find everything Hamas does to be right, as an authentic expression of the resistance of the oppressed against the system of oppression it is ‘right’ in a higher way. Israel, on the other hand, is a ‘settler-colonialist’ project.

    Since, in this perspective, the idea of free debate is a ‘bourgeois ideology’ only invented to support the ruling power, dissenting views should be delegitimised or, if necessary, shouted down, because what is deemed ‘sayable’ and what ‘non-sayable’ is merely an effect of power.

    Just as in Germany, any criticism of Israel is labelled ‘anti-Semitic’ and thus compromised as morally culpable, so any defence of Israel’s right to exist is dismissed as an expression of ‘racism’.

    Amid all this dogmatism, one gets the impression the whole world has gone mad. While Germany unconditionally supports Israel, as an imperative of its own guilt and exterminationist anti-Semitism, American, British and other discourses are also characterised by the imperatives of their own history: racism, the genocide of indigenous populations, the enslavement of black people, imperial exploitation, colonial oppression and exploitation. Fragments of the real are used arbitrarily and pressed into the scheme of one’s own politics of memory, for which ‘identity politics’ is then actually the opposite decryption.

    Most of the time, all this has less to do with real Palestinians and real Israelis than who and what one wants to be — how one wants to see the world and oneself in it. One poses as a heroic fighter against anti-Semitism, or against racism and colonialism, while the external appurtenances of reality become at most the set for this show of the self, as props in a play— to whose script reality must be made to conform.

    Source: Social Europe and International Politics and Society (IPS)-Journal, Brussels.

    Robert Misik is a writer and essayist. He publishes in many German-language newspapers and magazines, including Die Zeit and Die Tageszeitung.

    IPS UN Bureau


    Follow IPS News UN Bureau on Instagram

    © Inter Press Service (2024) — All Rights ReservedOriginal source: Inter Press Service



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  • Saudi Arabia Accused of ‘Sportswashing Its Human-Rights Record

    Saudi Arabia Accused of ‘Sportswashing Its Human-Rights Record

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    Soccer great Cristiano Ronaldo is on target again for Saudi Pro League side Al Nassr. The Saudi government has invested billions of its oil revenues in recent years in sport, including tennis, golf, boxing and, above all, football. Credit: Shutterstock
    • by Paul Virgo (rome)
    • Inter Press Service

    ROME, Feb 05 (IPS) – Argentina forward Lautaro Martinez scores as Inter Milan beat Napoli in the Saudi capital Riyadh to win the Italian Super Cup for the third consecutive time.

    Soccer great Cristiano Ronaldo is on target again for Saudi Pro League side Al Nassr.

    England’s Tyrrell Hatton becomes the latest golf star to sign up for the rebel Saudi-backed LIV circuit.

    The World Snooker Tour announces a first TV event in Saudi Arabia in March, featuring seven-time world champion Ronnie O’Sullivan and current world title-holder Luca Brecel and a rule change that will make it possible for players to notch a maximum score of 167, instead of the traditional 147.

    If you have seen a news headline about Saudi Arabia recently, there is a good chance that the story is related to sport.

    The Saudi government has invested billions of its oil revenues in recent years in sport, including tennis, golf, boxing and, above all, football.

    Taken at face value, it is a way for the kingdom to splash its vast wealth on laying on lavish entertainment and boost its GDP in the process.

    Critics, however, see something more sinister at play.

    Human Rights Watch (HRW) says the policy is primarily designed to “sportswash” Saudi Arabia’s reputation, hosting major sporting events that attract widespread, positive media attention to divert it away from the hosts’ abuses.

    It says that, by becoming the country where Ronaldo and Neymar ply their trade, and hosting events like Real Madrid versus Barcelona in the Spanish Super Cup, it becomes easier to forget Jamal Khashoggi, the journalist brutally murdered in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul in 2018, and his colleagues jailed, censored or harassed in Saudi Arabia, to not think about women’s and LGBT rights in the kingdom; and ignore the mass killings of migrants along the Saudi border with Yemen.

    “Sports unite fans across the political spectrum, and – with due exceptions, such as when national teams of ‘rival’ countries compete against each other – are generally non-political territory,” Claudio Francavilla, HRW Associate Director, EU Advocacy, told IPS.

    “They are seen as part of the entertainment industry, and attract media, sponsors, tourists and potential investments.

    “When an abusive government hosts a major sporting event for sportswashing purposes, its goal is that media, sponsors and the general public focus on the game, often preceded and followed by flashy opening/closing ceremonies, appreciate the organization and hospitality provided by the host, and promote the hosting government as an open, advanced, great-to-visit-and-make-business-with country – everything but its human rights abuses, to be hidden from the public sphere and debate.

    “In other words: look at the ball, look at the fireworks, forget the abuses”.

    In May, Saudi human rights activists, and intellectuals released “A People’s Vision for Reform in Saudi Arabia”, a document calling for the release of all political prisoners, the respect of the rights to freedom of expression and of association, the upholding of the rights of women, migrants, and religious minorities, the abolition of torture and the death penalty, reform of the justice system, and a redistribution of the country’s wealth.

    HRW says that, instead of complying with their human rights obligations and starting a dialogue with these civil society actors, the Saudi authorities have continued to repress dissent and invest in campaigns and events that whitewash or sportswash their reputation.

    Indeed, having already secured the rights to host EXPO 2030 and the 2034 Asian Games, the Saudi government may soon secure the rights to host the 2034 men’s football World Cup and – gallingly, considering the country’s treatment of women – it is bidding for the 2035 women’s World Cup too.

    Saudi Arabia is not the only country to indulge in sportwashing.

    “The most prominent recent cases include Russia’s 2018 World Cup and China’s 2022 Winter Olympics,” said Francavilla.

    “The UAE buying Manchester City FC has been characterized as sportswashing, as well as Bahrain’s Formula 1 Grand Prix and the Saudi acquisition of English Premier League club Newcastle United FC”.

    Sportswashing does not always have the desired effect mind.

    Before the recent Spanish Super Cup in Riyadh, Barcelona warned their fans of potential “severe penalties” regarding same-sex relations and “open displays of support for LGBTI causes, even on social media”, thus drawing attention to the issue.

    The 2022 soccer World Cup in Qatar highlighted serious abuses against migrant workers there.

    It could be argued that Saudi Arabia is only using sport in the same way that competitions like NBA basketball and Premier League soccer have long been part of the soft power of the United States and Britain, neither of which have unblemished human-rights records.

    That said, while Human Rights Watch doesn’t rank countries in its annual report on abuses worldwide, other organizations, such as RSF with its press freedom index, do and States like China, Russia, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Bahrain and India, rank considerably below the UK and the USA.

    “The deliberate use of sports events by governments with abysmal human rights records as a tool to sportswash their reputations, instead of enacting human rights reforms that would do the same job, much more effectively and impactfully, and likely at a much lower economic cost, is particularly despicable,” said Francavilla.

    He calls on sports federations, especially world soccer’s governing body FIFA, to take the lead on curtailing this phenomenon, whoever is guilty of it.

    “In June 2017, FIFA adopted and published its Human Rights Policy stating that human rights commitments are binding on all FIFA bodies and officials,” he said.

    “Human Rights Watch has long called on FIFA to apply clear, objective human rights criteria to all states for hosting both the men’s and women’s World Cup and other tournaments, and for any major commercial sponsorships, including labour protections, press freedom, non-discrimination and inclusion.

    “Given past corruption and serious human rights abuses, including discrimination against LGBT people and the unexplained deaths of thousands of migrant workers who built the infrastructure for the 2022 World Cup, Human Rights Watch has requested FIFA to apply a series of measures for the 2030 and 2034 World Cup bids.

    “Those measures would apply to any bidder, be it the US, UK, China or Saudi Arabia”.

    © Inter Press Service (2024) — All Rights ReservedOriginal source: Inter Press Service

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  • Unlocking India’s Potential with AI

    Unlocking India’s Potential with AI

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    A new UN Advisory Body is expected to make recommendations on international governance of AI. The members of the AI Advisory Body – launched October 2023 by Secretary-General António Guterres – will examine the risks, opportunities and international governance of these technologies. Credit: Unsplash/Steve Johnson
    • Opinion by Nandan Nilekani, Tanuj Bhojwani (bangalore, india)
    • Inter Press Service

    BANGALORE, India, Feb 05 (IPS) – India is on the brink of a transformation that could change its economic and social future.

    Before the end of this decade, more Indians will use AI every day than in any other country in the world. What’s more, people in advanced economies will be surprised by the ways the country will use AI.

    India is on the cusp of a technological revolution that could alter the trajectory of its social and economic future, and in this revolution. there are lessons for the rest of the world.

    Our prediction hinges on three facts: India needs it, India is ready for it, and India will do it.

    India needs it

    The concept of “China plus one” has been gaining traction, with its admonition that global companies should not depend inordinately on China for their manufacturing and software needs.

    India, with its growing infrastructure investments, favorable policies, and young working population, is the most likely beneficiary of this shift. It is perhaps the only country poised to match the scale of China.

    With 1.4 billion people, India is closer to a continent than a country. Its population is almost twice that of Europe. But the average age in India is 28, compared with Europe’s 44, which means a higher share of the population is of working age. This is the starting point: India is a very large country of very young people.

    This demographic dividend, favorable global trends, and the unlocking of decades of suppressed potential are starting to show returns. Even as the macroeconomic projections for most of the world seem modest or bleak, India remains a bright spot. These young Indians are aspirational and motivated to use every opportunity to better their lives.

    What really sets India apart from the West are its unique challenges and needs. India’s diverse population and complex socioeconomic concerns mean that AI there is not just about developing cutting-edge technology. It’s about finding innovative solutions to address pressing problems in health care, education, agriculture, and sustainability.

    Though our population is just double the size of Europe’s, we are much more diverse. Indians, like Europeans, are often bi- or multilingual. India recognizes 19,500 dialects spoken by at least 10,000 people. Based on data from the Indian census, two Indians selected at random have only a 36 percent chance of speaking a common language.

    This language barrier is complicated by the fact that the official literacy rate in the country hovers near 77 percent, varying vastly between states. This means that roughly 1 in 4 people can’t read or write. Even though the government tries to provide welfare assistance for its most vulnerable, it’s hard to spread awareness about the service and reach the last mile.

    Filling out a simple form to access welfare can be daunting for someone who is illiterate. Determining eligibility for assistance means depending on someone who can read, write, and navigate the bureaucracy.

    Actually. receiving services means assistance seekers must have an agent helping them who is not misinformed—or worse, corrupt. These barriers disproportionately affect those who need government assistance the most.

    We have the ability to solve a lot of problems for our population, but the hard part has always been in the distribution, not the solution. In India, we believe that AI can help bridge this access gap.

    AI enables people to access services directly with their voice using natural language, empowering them to help themselves. As Canadian writer William Gibson aptly said, “The future is already here—it’s just not evenly distributed.” Nowhere is this more glaringly evident than in India.

    The rest of the world has been eyeing AI with curiosity, waiting for real-use cases. In India, we see potential today. While this may be true of many other developing economies, the other important factor is that.

    The rest of the world has been eyeing AI with curiosity, waiting for real-use cases. In India, we see potential today.

    India is ready for it

    India’s population isn’t just young, it is connected. According to the country’s telecommunications sector regulator, India has more than 790 million mobile broadband users. Internet penetration continues to increase, and with the availability of affordable data plans, more and more people are online. This has created a massive user base for AI applications and services.

    But where India has surpassed all others is in its digital public infrastructure. Today, nearly every Indian has a digital identity under the Aadhaar system. The Aadhaar is a 12-digit unique identity number with an option for users to authenticate themselves digitally—that is, to prove they are who they claim to be.

    Further, India set up a low-cost, real-time, interoperable payment system. This means that any user of any bank can pay any other person or merchant using any other bank instantly and at no cost.

    This system—the Unified Payments Interface—handles more than 10 billion transactions a month. It is the largest real-time payment system in the world and handles about 60 percent of real-time payment transactions worldwide.

    With the success of these models, India is embracing innovation in open networks as digital public infrastructure. Take the example of Namma Yatri, a ride-hailing network built in collaboration with the union of auto-rickshaw drivers in Bangalore and launched in November 2022.

    These drivers have their own app, with a flat fee to use it, no percentage commission and no middleman. The app has facilitated close to 90,000 rides a day, almost as many as ride-hailing companies in the city.

    Unlike Western countries, which have legacy systems to overhaul, India’s tabula rasa means that AI-first systems can be built from the ground up. The quick adoption of digital public infrastructure is the bedrock for these technologies.

    Such infrastructure generates enormous amounts of data, and thanks to India’s Account Aggregator framework, the data remain under the citizens’ control, further encouraging public trust and utilization. With this solid footing, India is well positioned to lead the charge in AI adoption.

    India will do it

    In September 2023, the Indian government, in collaboration with the EkStep foundation, launched the PM-Kisan chatbot. This AI chatbot works with PM-Kisan, India’s direct benefit transfer program for farmers, initiated in 2019 to extend financial help to farmers who own their own land.

    Access to the program, getting relevant information, and resolving grievances was always a problem for the farmers. The new chatbot gives farmers the ability to know their eligibility and the status of their application and payments using just their voice. On launch day more than 500,000 users chatted with the bot, and features are being released slowly to ensure a safe and risk-managed rollout.

    These steps are part of an encouraging trend of early adoption of new technology by the Indian government. But the trend extends beyond the government. India’s vibrant tech ecosystem has taken off as well, a direct offshoot of its booming IT exports—currently at nearly $250 billion a year.

    Next to those from the US, the largest number of developers on GitHub, a cloud-based service for software development, are from India. This sector not only innovates but also widely adopts digital public infrastructure.

    The effect is cyclical: start-ups feed the growing tech culture and, in turn, leverage the data to build more precise and beneficial AI tools. India’s dynamic start-up ecosystem, moreover, is actively working on AI solutions to address various challenges.

    AI can be a game changer in education as well, helping close the literacy gap. AI technologies are uniquely positioned to help students learn in their native languages, as well as learn English. AI’s applications are useful not only for students; they extend to teachers, who are often overwhelmed by administrative tasks that detract from teaching.

    As AI takes over routine tasks in government and start-ups, the roles of teachers and students evolve, and they form dynamic partnerships focused on deep learning and meaningful human interaction.

    What India needs is a strategic plan to chase down the most important opportunities for AI to help. The trick is not to look too hard at the technology but to look at the problems people face that existing technology has been unable to solve.

    And organizations such as EkStep have stepped up with a mission called People+AI. Instead of putting AI first, they focus on the problems of people. This has led to surprising new uses unique to India.

    India’s emerging status as a technological powerhouse, combined with its unique socioeconomic landscape, puts it in a favorable position to be the world’s most extensive user of AI by the end of this decade.

    From streamlining education to aiding in social protection programs, AI has the potential to deeply penetrate Indian society, effecting broad and meaningful change.

    Nandan Nilekani is the chairman and cofounder of Infosys and founding chairman of UIDAI (Aadhaar); Tanuj Bhojwani is head of People+AI

    Source: IMF Finance & Development

    Opinions expressed in articles and other materials are those of the authors; they do not necessarily reflect IMF policy.

    IPS UN Bureau

    © Inter Press Service (2024) — All Rights ReservedOriginal source: Inter Press Service

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  • The West’s Addiction to War Must End in Gaza

    The West’s Addiction to War Must End in Gaza

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    • Opinion by Melek Zahine (kabul, afghanistan)
    • Inter Press Service

    KABUL, Afghanistan, Feb 02 (IPS) – Two months ago, an opinion piece I wrote, “The Cries of Gaza Reach Afghanistan,” was published with the hope of reminding American and other Western leaders of how quickly wars ON terror descend into wars OF terror because of their disproportionate impact on civilians and the unpredictability once unleashed.

    The United States and its Western alliance of ‘forever wars’ since 9/11 were all entered under the pretext of defeating terrorism. Instead, they strengthened the political and military standing of those they aimed to destroy while simultaneously causing unimaginable suffering for millions of civilians, including their own citizens.

    According to Brown University’s Cost of War Project and various other independent research groups, a catastrophic 4.5 million direct and indirect deaths are attributed to Western efforts to “defeat terrorism” since 9/11.

    If Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen, Syria, and Libya have taught us anything, it should be this. Today, the Taliban once again rules Afghanistan, and Iraq, after years of sectarian violence resulting from the U.S. invasion has moved closer to the political influence of Iran. In Syria, Bashar al-Assad’s autocratic rule remains firmly in place. The U.S./European NATO-led air war to rid Libya of Muammar Qaddafi and usher in democracy in 2011 was so naively executed that no consideration was paid to how such a reckless, violent endeavor would ultimately trigger a civil war, terrorism, and mass migration. In Yemen, U.S. support for Saudi Arabia’s war against Houthi rebels has led to the deaths of more than 200,000 Yemenis and strengthened the Houthis to the point where, for the “first time in history, a naval blockade is being successfully enacted” by a non-state actor with “no navy and cheap, low-grade technology.”

    The same hubris that has blinded the West’s addiction to answering terrorism with war since 9/11 is the same hubris and hypocrisy that fuels its unconditional support for Israel’s war against Hamas today. To be clear, the attacks of Hamas on October 7, like the attacks of Al Qaeda on 9/11, deserve the harshest global condemnation and a proportional, strategic response that respects international law. It does not justify the unconditional support and shielding of Israel’s punitive war on Gaza’s unarmed civilian population, its civilian infrastructure, and its cultural and religious heritage while further risking the lives of the remaining Israeli hostages held by Hamas. Moreover, this war serves no military objective for Israel and offers no strategic benefit for those aiding and abetting Israel’s war from Washington, London, and various EU capitals.

    In seeking to wipe out Hamas, all that Israel and its supporters led by the United States are doing is wiping out Gaza. In 100 days, Israel has succeeded in decimating 4 percent of Gaza’s population. Ninety thousand men, women, and children in the Gaza Strip have been killed, seriously injured, or disappeared. 75% of those killed are women and children (Source: Euro-Med Monitor), not Hamas fighters.

    If Gaza was called an open-air prison before this war, now it’s an open-air graveyard. A closer look at the 4 percent shows an even bigger tragedy unfolding by the minute. Unchallenged by those who are supplying it with arms and political cover, Israel is targetting Palestinian healthcare workers, humanitarian relief specialists, journalists, artists, poets, civil society activists, and educators, along with their families. As if the killing of Gaza’s children and its brightest wasn’t enough, Israel, through the collaboration of its Western allies, is also obliterating Gaza’s residential and public service infrastructure.

    According to a Wall Street Journal satellite imagery survey, “Israel has bombarded and destroyed 70 percent of homes in Gaza.” According to the W.H.O., “none of Gaza’s 36 hospitals are functioning,” and universities, including its primary medical teaching college, have been blown up by the I.D.F. Even places of worship, mosques, and churches, historically places of refuge during times of war, haven’t been spared the wrath of the Israeli-Western assault on Gaza.

    Investigations conducted by The Washington Post and Truthout state, “Israel has deployed over 22,000 U.S. produced bombs on Gaza including 2,000-pound ‘bunker bombs’ which experts warn are not meant for densely populated areas as well as white phosphorus produced by munitions manufacturer, the Pine Bluff Arsenal, in the U.S. state of Arkansas (source: Arkansas Times) and supplied to Israel by the U.S. government over the years. Despite massive protests in major U.S. cities calling for a cease-fire, President Biden has bypassed Congress on two occasions to get even more weapons to Israel. The U.K. and Europe, for their part, have also continued to supply key weapons to Israel since the start of the war (Stockholm International Peace Research Institute) despite loud calls from their citizens for an immediate cease-fire.

    When asked about these atrocities, the only reply from Israeli, American, British, and European officials is, “Do you condemn Hamas?” The answer should always be yes, but Hamas’s crimes against Israeli citizens on October 7 are not a license for Israel and the West to kill, maim, and displace the entire unarmed civilian population of Gaza. Furthermore, Israel’s reasoning that Hamas is using the civilians of Gaza as human shields and, therefore, justified in deploying any form of military action it deems necessary is not war but a crime against humanity. It’s also a disingenuous argument meant to create a fog of war repeated with criminal negligence by countless U.S., U.K., and European leaders and government officials.

    It’s hard to imagine today, but the suffering being inflicted upon two million Palestinians and the remaining 132 Israeli hostages in Gaza, fatefully connected by history, geography, and the tragic events of October 7, will eventually come to an end. Perhaps the historic ruling by the International Criminal Court of Justice (I.C.J.) will prevail, but this could take months. In the meantime, the atrocities being committed on Gazans will intensify, and the plight of the Israeli hostages will enter an even darker, more desperate stage.

    The recent ruling of the world’s highest court, while legally binding, doesn’t have the power of enforcement. Furthermore, the court’s order to Israel to “take measures which prevent further harm on Palestinians” without actually ordering a cease-fire fails to take into consideration the entrenched and sick appetite for war that exists between the world’s political elites who are not providing their unconditional support for Israel’s war on the civilian population of Gaza, but participating and profiting from it.

    According to EuroMed Monitoring, “Since the I.C.J.’s ruling, Israel has maintained its rate of killing in Gaza” with either no or muted reactions from Western leaders. The fury but also the inertia of powerful states, regardless of political governance and persuasion, is virtually impossible to stop once their war machines are set in motion. It’s no different for Israel.

    It took the United States twenty years to end its war in Afghanistan and almost ten years in Iraq. It still maintains counter-terrorism operations with Saudi Arabia in Yemen despite the deadly impact on Yemeni civilians. Europe continues its unwavering support for continued war in Ukraine for no reason other than political arrogance. Russia, for its part, despite its upper hand in Ukraine, continues to fight with devastating consequences for both Russians and Ukrainians. So, why should Netanyahu and his war cabinet be counted on to rein in their war in Gaza? Like their militarily powerful peers, Israel’s warmongering has no bounds.

    The entire population of Northern Gaza is now internally displaced, forced by Israel to move south towards Rafah on the Egyptian border. Despite the I.C.J.’s ruling, Israel has intensified its ground operation towards Rafah, where hundreds of thousands from the North of Gaza are already taking refuge on the outskirts of the city, living for weeks in a harsh desert landscape. If Israel continues its violent push into Rafah as it has warned Egypt it plans to do, the entire population of Gaza will be trapped in a tiny corner of the desert with no protection and no safe passage out.

    Those who survive the daily air strikes are now dying of hunger, disease, and injuries left untreated because of the destruction of Gaza’s health care system. Two million people are now also forced to endure the extreme traumas of trying to survive without any viable shelter, food, clean water and sanitation, electricity, and safe passage while surrounded by constant air and ground bombardment, snipers, drone attacks, the cold and rain of winter and perhaps worse of all the inaction of world leaders who have it in their power to end Israel’s genocidal campaign in Gaza and, now it’s frightening assault on the civilian population of the West Bank, where Hamas isn’t even in power.

    Only the United States, specifically President Biden, is uniquely positioned to pressure Israel to respect each of the I.C.J’s rulings. Perhaps, given its reliance on war as an answer to every foreign policy challenge since 9/11, the United States has forgotten it also has something called soft power- something it has sorely neglected the past twenty years.

    The easiest way for President Biden to prove that he and the United States are still committed to international law is by announcing his personal support for an immediate cease-fire and showing proof that he’s pressuring Israel to do the same. He will also need to push for a robust and independent humanitarian assistance effort without any interference from Israel at either border crossing into Gaza.

    Of course, all of this assumes that President Biden is willing to stop listening to the impenetrable wall of aides and advisors he’s created around himself and start seeing with his own eyes the scale of the suffering and the dire risks of a wider, regional war that is already endangering American lives.

    According to a confidential source with extensive U.S. foreign policy experience, the deadly attack on U.S. troops on the border between Jordan and Syria this past week “exhibits how even the projection of U.S. military power serves to fuel conflict rather than mitigate it.” For totally preventable reasons, now the families of these American soldiers can join all the Palestinian and Israeli lives torn apart by the sheer insanity of this preventable war and unfolding humanitarian disaster.

    Above all, President Biden needs to start hearing the calls of his fellow citizens, including the many thousands of Jewish Americans, who are demanding that their taxes and their nation not be used to wage yet another senseless war in their names. A failure to do so will have unimaginable consequences not just for Israelis and Palestinians but for the world.

    IPS UN Bureau


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  • Target stops selling product dedicated to Civil Rights icons after TikTok video shows errors

    Target stops selling product dedicated to Civil Rights icons after TikTok video shows errors

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    NEW YORK — NEW YORK (AP) — Target says it will stop selling a product dedicated to Civil Rights icons after a now-viral TikTok spotlighted some significant errors.

    In a video posted earlier this week, Las Vegas high school teacher Tierra Espy displayed how three Civil Rights icons — Carter G. Woodson, W.E.B. DuBois and Booker T. Washington — were misidentified in the magnetic learning activity.

    “These need to be pulled off the shelves immediately,” Espy, who uses the TikTok handle @issatete, says in her Tuesday video. “I teach U.S. History … and I noticed some discrepancies as soon as I opened this.”

    In a Friday interview with The Associated Press, Espy explained that she purchased the “Civil Rights Magnetic Learning Activity” at the end of January, in hopes of giving it to her kids. But when she opened the product at home, she quickly found the egregious errors and shared them online.

    Soon after, Target confirmed that it would stop sales of the product.

    “We will no longer be selling this product in stores or online,” Minneapolis-based Target said in a statement. “We’ve also ensured the product’s publisher is aware of the errors.”

    Target did not immediately address how long the product had been for sale, or a timeline for when its removal would be complete. The product’s removal comes at the start of Black History Month, which Target and other retailers are commemorating with special collections aimed at celebrating Black history.

    The erroneous magnetic activity featured in Espy’s video has a Bendon manufacturing label. The Ohio-based children’s publisher did not immediately respond to requests for statements Friday.

    As of Friday, Espy said that Target and Bendon had yet to reach out to her. While she said she is glad the product was removed from shelves, she also said she was disappointed to not see an apology from the companies yet.

    In addition to an apology, Espy said the incident underlines the importance of reviewing products before making them available to consumers — which would help avoid harmful errors like this down the road.

    “Google is free, and like I caught it in two seconds. They could have caught it by just doing a quick Google search,” she said.

    Espy added that she appreciated the support from fellow TikTok users who helped make sure the errors didn’t go unnoticed.

    “I’m happy that people are realizing that history, period, matters,” she said.

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  • Inclusive & Sustainable Businesses Set New Pathways for Sri Lanka

    Inclusive & Sustainable Businesses Set New Pathways for Sri Lanka

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    • Opinion by Marta Perez Cuso, Yihan Zhao (bangkok, thailand)
    • Inter Press Service

    BANGKOK, Thailand, Feb 02 (IPS) – Selyn, a women-led handloom business, offers flexible employment and valuable income opportunities to about 1,000 women artisans and persons from marginalized groups in rural Sri Lanka. Selyn develops and exports high-value craft products in global markets.

    The bigger revenue margins of quality products translate into better incomes for women artisans. Thanks to its pioneering use of blockchain in the supply chain – consumers can track how their purchases translate into earnings for women in the informal economy.

    The Small Organic Farmers Association (SOFA) of Sri Lanka, produces and exports organic food while creating a sustainable and equitable environment for smallholder farmers. It facilitates fair trade certification for smallholders and links more than 3,600 organic farmers to export markets.

    WindForce, the largest renewable energy developer in Sri Lanka, owns, develops and operates renewable energy power plants that provide clean energy access to businesses, communities and industries. WindForce allocates a portion of the profits into community development projects to support the welfare of local communities including livelihood support, education and childhood development, environmental conservation and health care.

    These are a few examples of inclusive and sustainable businesses that go beyond the usual “profit-first” market approach to provide affordable goods, services and livelihoods to low-income people and to support environmental sustainability in Sri Lanka.

    With ambitious reforms taking centre-stage towards rebuilding Sri Lanka into a resilient and sustainable economy, the Government of Sri Lanka is exploring opportunities to harness the potential of the private sector in fostering inclusive and sustainable growth.

    On 31 January, a groundbreaking Strategy to Promote Inclusive and Sustainable Businesses to Achieve the Sustainable Development Goals was officially launched by the Government of Sri Lanka. Designed by the Sustainable Development Council of Sri Lanka in collaboration with the UN Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP) and United Nations Sri Lanka, this strategic roadmap envisions a strong and dynamic ecosystem where inclusive and sustainable businesses like Selyn, SOFA and WindForce can not only emerge but thrive.

    Inclusive and sustainable businesses are purpose-driven enterprises that deliberately seek positive change in communities and the environment. These impact businesses can play a crucial role to achieve national social development and environment sustainability goals. Inclusive and sustainable businesses use market-based approaches to achieve positive social and environmental impacts, while ensuring their own commercial sustainability.

    The Strategy seeks to put in place regulations that encourage and recognise inclusive and sustainable businesses, provide training and services that help businesses pivot towards more inclusive and sustainable practices, and improve access to finance for businesses.

    It builds on and brings together for the first time the collaborative and cross-sectoral efforts of government agencies, private sector organizations and development partners, to shape an inclusive, sustainable and resilient economy.

    Actions will cover five core areas:

      1) Setting the direction for Sri Lanka to become an inclusive and sustainable export and investment hub;
      2) Raising awareness on the economic and social value that impact businesses bring and recognizing local success stories, through award and formal accreditation;
      3) Building the capacities of businesses and governments to develop and to promote inclusive and sustainable businesses;
      4) Supporting impact measuring and reporting; and
      5) Enhancing access to finance for impact businesses.

    Sri Lanka’s commitment to this Strategy is a testament to its aspiration for a sustainable and inclusive future where businesses are not just economic entities but forces for positive change.

    Marta Perez Cuso is Economic Affairs Officer, UN Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP); Yihan Zhao is Associate Economic Affairs Officer, ESCAP.

    IPS UN Bureau


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  • Is the Reform of the UN Security Council a Good Try in a Lost Cause?

    Is the Reform of the UN Security Council a Good Try in a Lost Cause?

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    UN General Assembly meets on the question of equitable representation– and increase in membership of the Security Council. November 2023. Credit: UN Photo/Eskinder Debebe
    • by Thalif Deen (united nations)
    • Inter Press Service

    UNITED NATIONS, Feb 02 (IPS) – The myriads of proposals for the reform of the much-maligned Security Council have been kicked around the United Nations for more than two decades—with no significant progress.

    Speaking at the General Assembly’s (GA) annual debate, GA President Dennis Francis told delegates last November that without structural reform, the Council’s performance and legitimacy will inevitably continue to suffer.

    “Violence and war continue to spread in regions across the world, while the United Nations seems paralyzed due largely to the divisions in the Security Council,” he said.

    With the world changing quickly, the Council is “dangerously falling short” of its mandate as the primary custodian for the maintenance of international peace and security, he said.

    Meanwhile, a proposed new model for reforms, initiated by the Group of Four (G4: Brazil, Germany, India, and Japan), has been doing the rounds.

    Not surprisingly, all four countries have been longstanding contenders for permanent seats (P5s) which have remained the privilege of five countries since the creation of the world body 79 years ago: the US, UK, France, China and the Russian Federation (replacing the USSR of a bygone era).

    The G4 is calling for a total of 11 permanent members (P11): China, France, The Russian Federation, UK and the US, plus six others.

    In the event of possible expansion, and upon the adoption of a comprehensive framework resolution on Security Council reform, interested Member States prepared to assume the functions and responsibilities of permanent members of the Security Council would submit their candidatures in writing to the President of the General Assembly.

    The General Assembly will then proceed, as soon as possible, at a date to be determined by the President, to the election of six new permanent members, by a vote of two thirds of the members of the General Assembly. through a secret ballot. The rules of procedure of the General Assembly will be applied to the election of the new permanent members.

    The criteria of Article 23 (1) should also apply to the election of the new permanent members: “due regard shall be paid, in the first instance to their contributions to the maintenance of international peace and security and to the other purposes of the Organization, and also to equitable geographical distribution”.

    The non-permanent members with a two-year term, currently at 10, will be increased to a total of 14/15 seats – The election process for non-permanent members will follow current practices.

    According to the G4 proposal, the six new permanent members of the Security Council shall be elected according to the following pattern: (i) Two from African Member States: (ii) Two from Asia-Pacific Member States, (iii) One from Latin American and Caribbean Member States; (iv) One from Western European and Other Member States.

    The four/five new non-permanent members of the Security Council shall be elected according to the following pattern; (i) One/Two from African Member States: (ii) One from Asia-Pacific Member States: (iii) One from Eastern European Member States; (iv) One from Latin American and Caribbean Member States.

    Member States should give due consideration during the nomination and election of non-permanent members to adequate and continuing representation of small and medium size Member States, including Small Island Developing States (SIDS).

    Andreas Bummel, Executive Director, Democracy Without Borders, told IPS any reconfiguration of the Security Council would have to be adopted in line with Article 108 of the Charter, which means it requires the support of two thirds of UN members and the P5.

    “Given the fact that Security Council reform has been discussed for decades, I think it is legitimate to pursue such a vote instead of consensus. Whether it is politically wise is a different question.”

    In essence, he said, the G4 are not willing to compromise. “If they can mobilize a two thirds majority and the P5, fine. But if not, it’s finally game over for them. I can’t see how a broad agreement is possible without introducing new concepts that go beyond today’s permanent and non-permanent seats.”

    Re-electable seats rotating among the membership of certain regions is a good approach, in my mind. New permanent seats vested with a veto will make the Security Council even more unworkable.

    This option should be off the table. Delaying a decision for fifteen years does not solve this, he declared.

    On the question of the veto, the G4 says Member States should be invited to continue discussions on the use of the veto in certain circumstances.

    The new permanent members, would as a principle, have the same responsibilities and obligations as current permanent members.

    However, the new permanent members shall not exercise the veto-right until a decision on the matter has been taken during a review, to be held fifteen years after the coming into force of the reform.

    Amendments to the charter shall reflect the fact that the extension of the right of veto to the new permanent members will be decided upon in the framework of a review.

    The enlarged Security Council would be encouraged to, inter alia, hold regular consultations with the President of the General Assembly; submit an analytical and comprehensive evaluation of the Council’s work in the annual report to the General Assembly; submit more frequently special reports to the General Assembly in accordance with Articles 15 (1) and 24 (3) of the Charter, improve participation of the Chair of the Peacebuilding Commission and the chairs of the country-specific configurations of the Commission in relevant debates and, in an appropriate format, in informal discussions

    Asked for her comments, Barbara Adams, Senior Policy Analyst, Global Policy Forum, told IPS: Surely, now 11 (not 5) veto-wielding powers, will not correct the inability of P5 or P11 to put their chartered responsibility for international peace and security above their national security interests.

    She pointed out that the G4 proposal for a 15-year pause on use of the veto acknowledges the tension between expanding the number of permanent members and the veto.

    Re the proposal for seats for developing countries, and countries from other regions, they should not need to be justified by the concept of regional representation, she argued.

    “The privilege of permanency in the Security Council extends beyond the use of veto. The “chill factor” of this privilege reaches into many parts of the UN system in ways formal and informal such as preferential treatment for senior UN positions,” Adams declared.

    Joseph Chamie, a consulting international demographer and a former director of the UN Population Division, told IPS reform of the United Nations Security Council is not a new proposal; it’s been around for decades.

    Despite committees, discussions and calls by many Member States for reform of the Council, he pointed out, little progress has been achieved towards equitable representation, inclusiveness and legitimacy.

    “Increasing numbers of both governments and people consider the Council to be ineffectual and unjust and require reform, including expanding membership and restricting vetoes”.

    While enormous changes have occurred in the world over the past eight decades, he said, the Council continues to have the same five permanent members.

    When established, the five permanent members accounted for about 35 percent of the world’s population. Today, they represent 25 percent and by mid-century they are expected to represent 20 percent of the world’s population, said Chamie, author of numerous publications on population and related issues.

    In brief, the desire for reform of the Security Council is both understandable and reasonable and despite the geo-political challenges, reform should be undertaken without further delays, he declared.

    IPS UN Bureau Report


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  • Israel Could Face Further Legal Action For Non-Compliance of ICJ Ruling

    Israel Could Face Further Legal Action For Non-Compliance of ICJ Ruling

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    Displaced families living in an UNRWA school-turned shelter in Deir al-Balah, Middle Areas, The Gaza Strip, January 2024. Credit: Mohamed Hinnawi/UNRWA
    • by Naureen Hossain (united nations)
    • Inter Press Service

    UNITED NATIONS, Feb 02 (IPS) – South Africa’s permanent representative to the United Nations, Mathu Joyini, said the country would take further legal action should Israel ignore the provisional measures set out by the International Court of Justice (ICJ).

    She was speaking at the UN Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People this week. The meeting saw the adoption of its agenda for 2024, for which the Committee will engage with member states and regional groups to support the realization of the rights and dignities of the Palestinian people. This has become all the more relevant in the face of the current humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip.

    The ICJ ruled that Israel should take all measures within its power to prevent a genocide in the Gaza Strip. It stopped short of ordering a ceasefire. According to the Hamas Health Ministry, 7,000 people have been killed and 66,000 wounded in Gaza since Israel started it’s military offensive in reaction to the October 7, 2023, attack.

    The Permanent Representative of Senegal, Cheikh Niang, who was re-elected to his position as Committee Chair, lamented that the current war between Israel and Hamas spoke to a “collective failure” to realize the rights of the Palestinian people and expressed hope that the Security Council “will hear the many voices” that are calling for a ceasefire.

    “It is time to begin to heal the wounds that have been reopened in so many places,” he said as he advocated for a two-state solution, wherein Israel and Palestine would co-exist in peace and security within recognized borders based on the pre-1967 border lines.

    Secretary-General António Guterres convened the meeting and delivered the opening statement, beginning with reiterating his condemnation of Hamas and other extremist groups and calling for the safe release of the Israeli hostages while also condemning the ensuing violence that has afflicted the people of Gaza.

    “There is no justification for the intentional killing, injuring, torture, or kidnapping of civilians, using sexual violence against them, or launching rockets towards civilian targets,” he said. “At the same time, nothing can justify the collective punishment of the people in Gaza.”

    He reiterated his call for an immediate humanitarian ceasefire, warning that the “humanitarian system in Gaza collapsing. The current hostilities have lasted over 120 days, and the casualties and devastation on the Gaza Strip and West Bank stand as a “scar on our shared humanity and conscience.”

    Guterres also noted that the recent hostilities in the Red Sea, Iraq, and Syria signal the impact the ongoing violence has on the region and that this could trigger “broader escalation, risking regional stability.”

    Gréta Gunnarsdóttir, Director of the UNRWA Representative Office in New York, appealed to the Committee and to donor states that had made the decision to suspend their funding of UNRWA.

    “Every day, our staff is making a direct impact on the ground for the people of Palestine,” she said.

    She added that other humanitarian organizations, including its UN partners, depend on UNRWA to deliver humanitarian aid. As the largest humanitarian agency in the region, it has been made particularly vulnerable. UNRWA facilities, notably schools, shelters, and health care centers, have not been spared from bombardments. Disease outbreaks and the risk of famine in the region are as likely to be the cause of deaths for civilians as gunfire and bombardments.

    Gunnarsdottir warned that if UNRWA were to collapse, then all humanitarian operations in Palestine would collapse.

    Recently, the agency has faced allegations that some of its staff were actively involved in Hamas attacks on October 7. As a result, at least 17 major donor countries, including the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, France, Germany, and the European Union, have suspended donations.

    The dossier Israeli intelligence shared with the United States, which details the allegations, had not been presented to UNRWA, according to Gunnarsdottir.

    She told the Committee that UNRWA’s Commissioner General has terminated the contracts of eight out of the twelve staff members accused; two were confirmed dead, one has not been identified, and one does not match with the staff lists.

    Joyini accused Israel of continuing “to behave in a manner that is contrary to the court order” and said that if Israel did not comply with the court’s order, then South Africa would be willing to take legal measures to enforce that ruling.

    Joyini asked the Committee to extend public support to South Africa’s case to strengthen it further in the ICJ through Article 63 of the ICJ’s Statute of the Court of Justice, which would allow member states to request permission from the court to intervene if the state holds an interest that may be affected by the decision of the court case.

    Riyad H. Mansour, Permanent Observer of the State of Palestine, noted that Israeli leaders and the military should “face justice… and accountability in every place possible, including the international legal system.” When speaking of the situation in Gaza, he remarked that the crimes were “beyond description,” adding that it was the international community’s “collective duty” to prevent any further trauma.

    Mansour called for Palestine to become a full-fledged member of the United Nations, aligning with the demand for a two-state solution that the Committee and the Secretary-General have made. He proposed that an international peace conference should be convened, which would put the status of Palestine at the forefront. A draft resolution will be brought forward to the General Assembly with support from Nigeria.

    IPS UN Bureau Report


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  • Poverty and Inequality Mark Rural Life in Latin America

    Poverty and Inequality Mark Rural Life in Latin America

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    • by Humberto Marquez (caracas)
    • Inter Press Service

    CARACAS, Jan 31 (IPS) – Rural life in Latin America and the Caribbean continues to be marked by poverty and inequality compared to the towns and cities where the vast majority of the population lives. A new focus on rural life in the region could help reveal and address the challenges and neglect faced by people in the countryside.

    “Many people in our countryside simply no longer have a way to live, without services or incentives comparable to those in the cities, producing less and for less pay, under the threat of more disease and poverty,” Venezuelan coffee producer Vicente Pérez told IPS.

    In Mexico, whose countryside was home to 24 million of its 127 million inhabitants at the beginning of this decade, according to the World Bank, a study by the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) showed that eight out of every 10 rural inhabitants lived in poverty, and six in extreme poverty.

    It was in the Mexican capital where experts from ECLAC and the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) proposed this January “a new approach” to the concept of rural life in the region, to help public action to reduce inequality and contribute to the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

    The project’s director, Ramón Padilla, told IPS from Mexico City that “we need a new narrative about rural Latin America that goes beyond the traditional static and dichotomous vision, and that sees rural areas not as backward places, but as territories with great potential for development and connections.”

    Building a new narrative “is important for a better visualization, treatment and reduction of inequalities in income, infrastructure, education, health, gender, etc.,” added Padilla, head of ECLAC’s Economic Development Unit in Mexico.

    “Those who have access to electricity, drinking water, communications and transport to work or school in a big city are at a great distance from life in many depressed rural areas,” said Pérez, executive director of the Venezuelan Confederation of Agricultural Producers (Fedeagro).

    Entrenched rural poverty

    Hilda, the head of her household in Los Rufinos, a village of 40 families in the middle of a sandy dry forest in the northwestern department of Piura, Peru, told visitors from the Argentina-based Latfem regional feminist communication network what it is like to live without electricity and drinking water, to cook with firewood and, among other hardships, to get her granddaughters the schooling she did not have.

    In their dirt-floored houses with fences and walls made of logs, plastic and tin sheeting, the women in Los Rufinos cook in the early hours of the morning for the men of the village who go to work in the agro-exporting fruit plants in Piura, the departmental capital.

    “When there is no moon, the night is really dark, you can’t see a thing. It’s not like in the city, where there is so much light,” Hilda commented to the Latfem representatives.

    In Peru, a country of 33.5 million inhabitants (80 percent urban and 20 percent rural), 9.2 million people are poor, according to the government statistics institute. Poverty measured by income affects 24 percent of the urban population and 41 percent of the rural population, while extreme poverty affects 2.6 percent of the urban population and 16.6 percent of the rural population.

    Farther north, in a rural area of the department of Cundinamarca in central Colombia, Edilsa Alarcón showed on the television program “En los zapatos de” (In the Shoes of), on the Caracol network, how she goes every day to two small fields near her home to milk four cows, her family’s livelihood.

    She carries 18 liters of milk on the back of a donkey every morning, which she sells for 14 dollars, barely enough to live on. She owns no land and her biggest expense is renting pastureland for 860 dollars a year.

    Colombia’s rural areas are home to 12.2 million people (51.8 percent men and 48.2 percent women), 46 percent of whom live in poverty, according to ECLAC.

    “Gente de Guate”, produced by Guatemalan Youtubers , collects and delivers food, household goods and even cash for families in the countryside who barely scrape by in houses with four walls made of corrugated metal sheeting, boards and logs, wood stoves and a few chickens running around among corn and cooking banana plants.

    Of Guatemala’s 17.2 million inhabitants, 60 percent live in poverty and between 15 and 20 percent in extreme poverty, according to figures from official entities and universities. Half of the population lives in rural areas, where poverty affects two thirds of the overall population – and 80 percent of indigenous people – and extreme poverty affects nearly one-third of the total population.

    Regional data

    Some 676 million people live in Latin America and the Caribbean, of whom 183 million are poor (29 percent), and 72 million are in extreme poverty (11.4 percent), according to ECLAC data for 2022 and 2023.

    While 553 million people (81.8 percent) live in towns and cities, 123 million (18.2 percent) live in rural areas. And while in urban areas poverty stands at 26.2 percent and extreme poverty at 9.3 percent, in rural areas 41 percent of the inhabitants are poor and 19.5 percent are extremely poor.

    Gender inequality also persists, stubbornly. One figure that reflects it is that only 30 percent of rural women (58 million) have access to some form of land ownership, their jobs are often more precarious and less well paid, and at the same time they spend more time on household and family care tasks.

    Time to migrate from the countryside

    Latin America has experienced a massive exodus from rural to urban areas in the 20th century and so far in the 21st. “In 1960, less than half of the region’s population lived in cities. By 2016 that proportion had risen to over 80 percent,” wrote Matías Busso, a researcher at the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB).

    This process, driven by the search for better employment opportunities and living conditions, first fueled the expansion of the region’s major cities – to form megalopolises such as São Paulo and Mexico City – and more recently migration to foreign destinations, such as the United States.

    The largest migratory phenomenon abroad that the region has known, the exodus of more than seven million Venezuelans in the last decade, has involved numerous urban and suburban inhabitants, but also people from many rural areas.

    Pérez said that, in addition, in countries like Venezuela there is now a tendency to move from the countryside to urban areas, “but not to the big cities, like Caracas or Maracaibo, but to nearby towns or small cities, maintaining their ties to the plot of land where the family has crops or a few animals.”

    “New shantytowns form in small towns next to agricultural areas, such as coffee plantations in the Andes (southwest) or grain fields in the (central) Llanos, and people work for a few days in some urban job and then return to the countryside at the weekend. A sort of double life,” said Pérez.

    Seeking a new narrative

    New realities such as these prompted the ECLAC-IFAD initiative to “overcome the traditional view that contrasts rural and urban areas, recognizing the existence of different degrees of rurality in the territories and greater interaction between them,” according to its advocates.

    “The project seeks to replace the dominant narrative – which is reductionist and marginalizing – of rural areas as static and backwards, with one that recognizes the challenges and opportunities of today’s new rural societies,” said Peruvian economist Rossana Polastri, regional director of IFAD.

    The basis of the initiative is that between what is defined as rural and urban – the limit in countries such as Mexico is to consider urban areas as those with more than 2,500 inhabitants and rural areas as those below that level – there is a variety, degree and wealth of possibilities and opportunities to address issues of equity and development.

    Padilla from Mexico said that a first element of the work they propose is to collaborate with the public bodies in charge of designing and implementing policies for rural areas, since “technical work, well grounded in concepts and theories, has to go hand in hand with a dialogue with the public sector.”

    “A second element is continuous dialogue with the communities. The new understanding has to be translated into participatory solutions, in which each community and each territory creates a new vision, a renewed plan for sustainable development,” said the head of the project to build a new approach to rural life in Latin America.

    © Inter Press Service (2024) — All Rights ReservedOriginal source: Inter Press Service



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  • Illegal Artisanal Mining Threatens Amazon Jungle and Indigenous Peoples in Brazil

    Illegal Artisanal Mining Threatens Amazon Jungle and Indigenous Peoples in Brazil

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    An area of illegal mining activity was raided by the Brazilian Federal Police in the eastern Amazon on Jan. 17, where their precarious installations and housing, as well as their equipment, were destroyed. The fight against illegal mining, especially in indigenous territories, intensified after a new tragedy of deaths of Yanomami indigenous people caused by encroaching garimpeiros or informal miners became headline news. CREDIT: Federal Police
    • by Mario Osava (rio de janeiro)
    • Inter Press Service

    RIO DE JANEIRO, Jan 29 2024 (IPS) – Artisanal mining, or “garimpo” as it is known in Brazil, has returned to the headlines as a factor in the deaths of Yanomami indigenous people, whose territory in the extreme north of Brazil suffers constant encroachment by miners, which has intensified in recent years.

    In the first few days of the year, Yanomami spokespersons denounced new invasions of their land and the suspension of health services, in addition to the violence committed by miners or “garimpeiros”, which coincided with the fact that the military withdrew from areas they were protecting.

    Furthermore, the media published new photos of extremely malnourished children. In response, the government promised to establish permanent posts of health care and protection in the indigenous territory.

    “But what they are involved in there is not garimpo but illegal and inhumane mining practices,” said Gilson Camboim, president of the Peixoto River Valley Garimpeiros Cooperative (Coogavepe), which defends the activity as environmentally and socially sustainable when properly carried out.

    “Garimpo is mining recognized by the Brazilian constitution, with its own legislation, which pays taxes, is practiced with an environmental license and respects the laws, employs many workers, strengthens the economy and distributes income,” he told IPS by telephone from the headquarters of his cooperative in Peixoto de Azevedo, a town of 33,000 people in the northern state of Mato Grosso.

    Coogavepe was founded in 2008 with 23 members. Today it has 7,000 members and seeks to promote legal garimpo and environmental practices, such as the restoration of areas degraded by mining.

    But it is difficult to salvage the reputation of this legal part of an activity whose damage is demonstrated by photos of emaciated children and families decimated by hunger and malaria, because the encroachment of miners pollutes rivers, kills fish and introduces diseases to which indigenous people are vulnerable because they have not developed immune defenses.

    Garimpeiros and indigenous deaths

    The humanitarian tragedy among the Yanomami people became big news in January 2023 when Sumaúma, an Amazonian online media outlet, denounced the deaths of 570 children under five years of age, due to malnutrition and preventable diseases, during the far-right government of former president Jair Bolsonaro (2019-2022).

    Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who took office on Jan. 1, 2023, visited Yanomami territory and mobilized his government to care for the sick and expel illegal miners, destroying their equipment and camps. But a year later, the resumption of mining activity and a resurgence of hunger and deaths were reported.

    Moreover, the entire extractivist sector has a terrible reputation due to tragedies caused by industrial mining. Two tailings dams broke in the southeastern state of Minas Gerais in 2015 and 2019, killing 289 people and muddying an 853-kilometer-long river and a 510-kilometer-long river.

    Brazil is the world’s second largest producer of iron ore, following Australia. Iron ore is the main focus of industrial mining in the country.

    Garimpo is mainly dedicated to gold, and accounts for 86 percent of its production. Garimpeiros also produce cassiterite (the mineral from which tin ore is extracted) and precious stones, such as emeralds and diamonds. Its major expansion, many decades ago, was along rivers in the Amazon jungle, to the detriment of indigenous peoples and tropical forests.

    Indigenous people protest in the state of Roraima in northern Brazil against the invasion of Yanomami territory by garimpeiros or artisanal miners, who often practice illegally. CREDIT: Alberto César Araújo / Amazônia Real
    Indigenous people protest in the state of Roraima in northern Brazil against the invasion of Yanomami territory by garimpeiros or artisanal miners, who often practice illegally. CREDIT: Alberto César Araújo / Amazônia Real

    Threat to the environment and health

    Currently, 97.7 percent of the area occupied in Brazil by artisanal mining is in the Amazon rainforest, where it reaches 101,100 hectares, according to MapBiomas, a project launched by non-governmental organizations, universities and technology companies to monitor Brazilian biomes using satellite images and other data sources.

    The production of gold uses mercury, which has contaminated many Amazonian rivers and a large part of their riverside population, including indigenous groups, such as the Munduruku people, who live in the basin of the Tapajós River, one of the great tributaries of the Amazon with an extension of 2,700 kilometers.

    Garimpo dumps about 150 tons of mercury in the Brazilian Amazon rainforest every year, the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) estimates. The fear is that the tragedy of Minamata, the Japanese city where mercury dumped by a chemical industry in the mid-20th century killed about 900 people and caused neurological damage in tens of thousands, may be repeated here.

    Brazil produced 94.6 tons of gold in 2022, according to the National Mining Agency. But the way it is extracted varies greatly, based mainly on informal mining, of which illegal mining makes up an unknown percentage.

    Three prices govern this production, according to Armin Mathis, a professor at the Núcleo de Altos Estudos Amazónicos of the Federal University of Pará, who lives in Belém, the capital of this Amazonian state, with 1.3 million inhabitants.

    The price of gold in Brazil; the price of diesel, which represents a third of the cost of gold mining; and the cost of labor are the three elements that determine whether the garimpo business is profitable, the German-born PhD in political science, who has been studying this activity since he arrived in Brazil in 1987, explained to IPS from Belém.

    This mining was in fact artisanal, but it began to use machines, especially the backhoe, in the 1980s, which is why diesel increased its costs. And unemployment and periods of economic recession, in the 1980s and in 2015-2016, made garimpo more attractive.

    In those periods and the following years, invasions of Yanomami territory, which also extends through the state of Amazonas in southwestern Venezuela, became more massive and aggressive. But the consequences for the native people living in vast areas of the rainforest only become news on some occasions, like now.

    Small airplanes seized by police and environmental authorities were at the service of illegal miners in Roraima, an Amazonian state in the extreme north of Brazil. This is where most of the Yanomami Indians live, currently the main victims of illegal, mechanized mining. CREDIT: Federal Police
    Small airplanes seized by police and environmental authorities were at the service of illegal miners in Roraima, an Amazonian state in the extreme north of Brazil. This is where most of the Yanomami Indians live, currently the main victims of illegal, mechanized mining. CREDIT: Federal Police

    From artisanal to mechanization

    Mechanization has restructured the activity. Machines are expensive and require financiers. Entrepreneurs have emerged to manage the now more complex operations, as well as others who only own and rent out the equipment.

    In addition, the owners of small airplanes that supply the mining areas and facilitate the trade of the extracted gold became more powerful. The hierarchy of the business has expanded.

    “We must differentiate between garimpo and the garimpeiros. This is not a rhetorical distinction. The garimpeiro, who works directly in the extraction of gold, is more a victim than a perpetrator of illegal, predatory and criminal mining. The person responsible lives far away and gets rich by exploiting workers in slavery-like labor relations,” observed Mauricio Torres, a geographer and professor at the Federal University of Pará.

    “The garimpeiro, depicted as a criminal by the media, pays for the damage,” he told IPS by telephone from Belém.

    The workers recognize that they are exploited, but feel that they are a partner of the garimpo owner, as they earn a percentage of the gold obtained. They work hard because the more they work, the more they earn.

    A large part of the garimpeiros along the Tapajós River, where this kind of mining has been practiced since the middle of the last century, are actually landless peasant farmers who supplement their income in the garimpo business, when agriculture or fishing does not provide what they need to support their families, Torres explained.

    Therefore, agrarian reform and other government initiatives that offer sufficient income to this population could reduce the pressure of the garimpo on the environment in the Amazon rainforest, which affects the region’s indigenous and traditional peoples, he said.

    The situation of the garimpeiros also differs according to the areas where they work in the Amazon jungle, Mathis pointed out. In the Tapajós River, where the activity has been taking place for a longer period of time and is already legal in large part, coexistence is better with the indigenous Munduruku people, some of whom also became garimpeiros.

    In Roraima, a state in the extreme north on the border with Venezuela and Guyana, where a large part of the territory is made up of indigenous reserves, illegal mining is widespread and includes the more or less violent invasion of Yanomami lands.

    On the other hand, as the local economy depends on gold, the population’s support for garimpo, even illegal and more invasive practices, is broader than elsewhere. There, former president Bolsonaro, a supporter of garimpo, won 76 percent of the votes in the 2022 runoff election in which he was defeated by Lula.

    Another component that aggravates the violence surrounding garimpo and, therefore, the crackdown on the activity, is the expansion of drug trafficking in the Amazon rainforest. The informality of the mining industry has facilitated its relationship with organized crime, whether in the drug trade or money laundering, said Mathis from Belém.

    © Inter Press Service (2024) — All Rights ReservedOriginal source: Inter Press Service

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  • Remembering Holocaust victims, Guterres urges a stand against division

    Remembering Holocaust victims, Guterres urges a stand against division

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    Observing Saturday’s International Day of Commemoration in Memory of the Victims of the Holocaust, he highlighted the millions of Jewish children, women and men, along with countless others, who suffered persecution and death during that dark period.

    “We honour their memory. We stand with the survivors, their families and descendants. We pledge never to forget – nor let others forget the truth of what happened,” he said.

    The International Day of Commemoration is marked annually on 27 January, the date on which the Auschwitz-Birkenau Nazi concentration and extermination camp was liberated in 1945.

    This year’s observance, on the theme ‘Recognizing the Extraordinary Courage of Victims and Survivors of the Holocaust’ pays tribute to the bravery of all those who stood up to the Nazis, despite the grave risks.

    ‘We must remember’

    Mr. Guterres underscored the ongoing relevance of the commemorative day in today’s world, where antisemitic hate is spreading rapidly, particularly online.

    “But today of all days, we must remember,” he said, “that demonization of the other and disdain for diversity is a danger to everyone … and that bigotry against one group is bigotry against all.”

    ‘We must resolve’

    Quoting the former Chief Rabbi of the United Kingdom, Jonathan Sacks, the UN chief reminded the international community that “the hate that begins with Jews never ends with Jews.”

    “So today – especially in the wake of the abhorrent 7 October terror attacks by Hamas — we must resolve to stand up against the forces of hate and division,” he said, calling for strongly condemning all forms of racism, hatred and prejudice.

    Mr. Guterres emphasized the imperative to speak out against discrimination and intolerance, insisting on the defense of human rights and the dignity of every individual.

    “Let us never lose sight of each other’s humanity, and never let down our guard,” he urged.

    “To all who confront prejudice and persecution, let us clearly say: you are not alone. The United Nations stands with you.”

    ‘Our essential duty’

    Audrey Azoulay, Director-General of the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) called for strengthening our commitment to sharing the memory of the victims of the Holocaust “to pass the torch on to future generations.”

    “To honour the victims, but also to train future generations to identify and combat hate speech, this International Day reminds us of our essential duty to remember,” she said.

    “May we remain vigilant,” she added, recalling the warning given by Hungarian writer and camp survivor Imre Kertész, that “Auschwitz was not an accident of history, there are many signs that its repetition is possible.”

    UN Photo/Manuel Elías

    Sisters Selma Tennenbaum Rossen and Edith Tennenbaum, survivors from Poland, address the UN Holocaust Memorial Ceremony, held in observance of the International Day of Commemoration in memory of the victims.

    Commemorative events

    Memorial ceremonies were held at UN offices worldwide, including the United Nations Headquarters in New York, the UN Office at Geneva, and the UNESCO Headquarters in Paris.

    At the ceremony in New York on Friday, Holocaust survivors Christian Pfeil and sisters Edith Tennenbaum Shapiro and Selma Tennenbaum Rossen shared their stories, alongside a prayer by Cantor Daniel Singer, and performances by violinist Doori Na, singers Petra and Patrik Gelbart.

    A video of the ceremony is available here.

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