Africa

Lesotho's quest for a first ever place in the Africa Cup of Nations finals continues on Sunday away to Cape Verde in their last qualifier of the campaign.

Amnesty International says it recorded 14 recent deaths - the US says its targets are "terrorists".

By Ian Richards
UNITED NATIONS, Mar 20 2019 (IPS)

A $64 million plan to move 750 back office jobs from the UN’s main duty stations to four new centralized service centres in Budapest, Montreal, Nairobi and Shenzhen, could end up being a waste of money.

Called the global service delivery model, this holdover from (former UN Secretary-General) Ban Ki-moon hopes to save the organization $23 million a year. Locations were chosen following an Amazon-style bidding war. While the assessment scores remain a closely-guarded secret, low wages played a key part.

The proposal (http://www.undocs.org/a/73/706), currently before the General Assembly, makes a number of promises.

First, that service quality will improve, although with administrative staff working far from their clients and no measurement of current service levels, this is hard to substantiate.

Indeed to-date there has been no study on how different duty stations carry out the same administrative processes and what they could learn from each other. It is also not clear why a relatively new service centre in Entebbe should shift operations to neighbouring Nairobi.

Second, that delivery of administrative services will “follow the sun,” allowing offices and missions to get same-day service in whichever continent they are based. Yet the centre for French-speaking operations in Africa and Europe is slated for Montreal, five to eight time zones away.

The project’s main selling point is financial. Through resulting cost savings, the UN’s 193 member states have been promised that they’ll make back their initial investment by 2022.

But putting figures into the kind of business model used for making investment decisions, and with modest adjustments for capital costs, technology improvements and cost overruns that include fast-rising salaries in some chosen locations (see endnote), it appears unlikely that the project will break even before 2029 – so in ten years instead of three.

By then, with new technologies and ways of working, and the UN preparing for a future beyond its Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), an entirely different administrative system might be required, rendering the investment obsolete.

On top of that, Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, in contrast to his predecessor, is pushing decentralization, handing department heads unprecedented powers to hire staff and manage procurement.

They may choose to increase the size of their own on-location administrative offices at the expense of the services they buy from the four centres, undermining an already fragile business case.

From a business point of view, the global service delivery model, not forgetting the associated disruption, would appear to be a poor investment; such a finding is of course not unusual and in line with experiences elsewhere.

But with the UN facing cash shortages, there may be more productive ways to spend $64 million and cheaper ways to reduce administrative overheads.

Footnote:
In developing the model* we took the cost figures provided in A/73/706 and adjusted them as follows:

• We assumed that costs in both the baseline and GSDM options would reduce by 2.5 percent a year. This reflects the impact on headcount of evolving technological improvements as well as recent budget trends concerning posts in administration. Reduced headcount would have the effect of slightly reducing the relative gains of moving to a lower wage location.
• We assumed minor cost overruns of 30 percent, given that the proposal might contain optimistic forecasting, that it might not be possible to mitigate all the risks outlined in the proposal, the likelihood of unforeseen cross-subsidies from other budgets, funds already spent, implementation delays and relatively fast-growing salaries in Budapest, Nairobi and Shenzhen. For context, estimates for Umoja’s overspend run from 120 percent and up.
• We employed a standard net present value calculation, which is standard for investment decision-making, and set a discount rate of 2 percent to reflect the risk-free cost of capital faced by the governments.

*The model was developed jointly with colleagues experienced in management consulting and accounting and is available on request.

The post UN’s Plan to Offshore Back-Office Jobs is Probably a Waste of Money appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Ian Richards is President of the Coordinating Committee of International Staff Unions and Associations, and an economist at UNCTAD.

The post UN’s Plan to Offshore Back-Office Jobs is Probably a Waste of Money appeared first on Inter Press Service.

A hotel in Zimbabwe is sheltering hundreds of people who have lost their homes in Cyclone Idai.

The UN calls the aftermath of Cyclone Idai in southern Africa a "massive disaster", with hundreds dead.

Bestselling author Alaa Al Aswany is alleged to have insulted the president, army and judiciary.

Samuel Fabin, who took Ghana to the quarter-finals of the U-17 World Cup in 2017, is appointed as Uganda's coach ahead of next month's U-17 Nations Cup.

Nigerian 'currency artist' Ezeanyika Anthony Chibuzor found life a struggle after moving to London.

By IPS World Desk
ROME, Mar 20 2019 (IPS)

Awareness of Austism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) has continued to grow worldwide, in recent years. But the number of diagnoses have continued to increase unabated.

Indeed, the number of people diagnosed with Autism has continued to rise by 6% to 15% percent globally, since 2010. With diagnoses covering a range of similar disorders affecting a person’s interaction, communication and behaviour, there is no specific cure.

 

 

Research in usually focused on the management of ASD symptoms. In the developed world, this is enabling, but progress in developing countries remains slow.

There are an estimated 70 million people in the world with Autism, and 80% of them live in developing countries.

Whilst indiscriminate when it comes to race and culture, ASD affects 1 in 4 boys. Currently, it is estimated that as many as 1 in 59 children are born with Autism and, in many countries, resources are so scarce for children that they can end up being socially and culturally marginalized for life.

World Autism Awareness Day is observed on the 2nd April every year, in an effort to encourage member states of the United Nations to take measures to raise awareness about people with Autism.  The theme for this year’s UN World Autism Awareness Day is “Assistive Technologies, Active Participation”.

“For many people on the autism spectrum, access to affordable assistive technologies is a prerequisite to being able to exercise their basic human rights and participate fully in the life of their communities, and thereby contribute to the realization of the SDGs. Assistive technology can reduce or eliminate the barriers to their participation on an equal basis with others.”

 

The post VIDEO: World Autism Awareness Day 2019 – Assistive Technologies, Active Participation appeared first on Inter Press Service.

The coach of Cameroonian top-flight side Yong Sports Academy of Bamenda, Emmanuel Ndoumbe Bosso, is released after being abducted by gunmen.

Netherlands-born Oussma Idrissi receives clearance from Fifa to swap national allegiances and play for Morocco.

The president of Mozambique has declared Cyclone Idai "a humanitarian disaster of great proportion".

Rescue operations continue to recover survivors from the floods caused by Cyclone Idai in Mozambique.

By IPS World Desk
ROME, Mar 19 2019 (IPS)

Water is a precondition for human existence, and for the sustainability of our planet. It is entwined with almost everything human, from climate change and global economy to gender issues and human rights.

Worldwide, 100 million families are stuck in a cycle of poverty and disease, because they don’t have access to safe water.

 

 

In some countries, women and girls spend up to 6 hours every day walking to get water for their families.

Water-borne diseases kill more children under the age of five than malaria, measles, and HIV/AIDS – combined.

In developing countries, as much as 80% of illnesses are linked to poor water and sanitation conditions, and 2.4 billion people worldwide lack access to a toilet.

Water scarcity, flooding and lack of proper wastewater management continue to hinder social and economic development.

The United Nations’s Sustainable Development Goal 6 calls for “ensuring the availablity and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all, by 2030.”

Accordingly, World Water Day – celebrated on March 22nd – is observed internationally as day to inspire people around the world to learn more about water-related issues, and to take action to make a difference.

This year’s World Water Day theme, “Water for All,” is focused on tackling the water crisis as it affects marginalized groups, including women, children, refugees, indigenous peoples, disabled people and many others.

The post VIDEO: Water for All – World Water Day 2019 appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Tourists cool off from high temperatures on the beach at the archaeological site of Tulum, in the southeastern Yucatan peninsula, an area of Mexico highly vulnerable to climate change. Powerful hurricanes, storms, drought, heat waves and rising sea levels are climate change effects that impact the mental health of the country's population. Credit: Emilio Godoy/IPS

By Emilio Godoy
MEXICO CITY, Mar 19 2019 (IPS)

Minerva Montes lost her home on Holbox Island in 2005 when Hurricane Wilma hit the Yucatan Peninsula in southeastern Mexico. Rebuilding her home was quicker and easier than overcoming the psychological aftermath of the catastrophe.

“They activated the evacuation alarm, I didn’t know what to do, I packed my things and put them on the ground floor, because I had heard that the wind didn’t hit there. But I didn’t know then about the effects of the flood,” she said."The first thing is to save lives and get people into safe places. And after that comes the psychosocial intervention. What we pay a lot of attention to is the kind of reaction they have to such an extreme situation. Some people manage to overcome the situation on their own and help others, whole others continue to feel panic." -- Jorge Álvarez

Montes, who is involved in wildlife rehabilitation, had just moved to the island a year earlier. The island, located about 1,600 kilometers from Mexico City and home to some 2,000 people, forms part of the municipality of Lázaro Cárdenas in the state of Quintana Roo. And she had only been living in a house on the edge of the beach for a few months.

Montes, whose adult son no longer lived with her, took temporary refuge in the town of Tizimín, in the neighboring state of Yucatán, waiting for the emergency to pass and for her partner to return from abroad. A week later, she returned to what had been her home.

“What we saw was shocking, there were holes in the ground everywhere. I had the suspicion that I was not going to find anything (of the house). There were no walls, only the roof was still there. Everything I had put away to protect it had disappeared,” she told IPS during a trip through the Yucatán peninsula to observe how the local population is adapting to climate change.

Montes, who turned her nearly demolished house into a small hotel, sensed that the worst was coming, although she did not describe what she felt as fear. “You’re left with the feeling that you’re starting over. It was a hard and painful experience. It is not easy to be the victim of a disaster,” she said.

Hurricane Wilma, which reached a category 5 force due to the speed of its winds and the volume of rain dumped, making it one of the most powerful of the 21st century, hit Mexico’s Atlantic coast from Oct. 21-23, 12 years ago, to continue its destructive path towards the U.S. state of Florida.

Millions of people have suffered the same experience, exposed to the onslaught of climate change and its psychological consequences, which require attention and can become a public health problem as storms, floods, droughts and heat waves become more severe.

Mexico is highly vulnerable to the consequences of climate change.

A total of 480 Mexican municipalities are especially exposed to the phenomenon, of the 2,457 into which the country is divided, according to a report by the government’s National Institute of Ecology and Climate Change (INECC). The risks, the study estimated, threaten more than 50 million people, out of a total population of 128 million.

The Yucatan Peninsula, which divides the Gulf of Mexico in the Caribbean Sea, encompasses the states of Campeche, Quintana Roo and Yucatan, and plays a key climate role, as it is home to rainforest that regulates water flow and temperatures in the region. Credit: Public domain

Particularly vulnerable to global warming, the Yucatán peninsula, which includes the states of Campeche, Quintana Roo and Yucatán, plays a vital climate role, as it is home to rainforest that regulates water flow and temperatures in the region.

This year, springtime began a month earlier than usual, surprising people with unusually high temperatures in several areas of the country, while the weather service is now forecasting rain in the coming weeks.The climate footprint on health

The Pan American Health Organisation (PAHO) has highlighted the impact on mental health of extreme weather events, such as hurricanes or droughts, during its 2017 regional health conference, which was held shortly after three unusually strong hurricanes wreaked havoc in the Caribbean, especially in island countries.

According to the United Nations regional agency, climate change will be a factor in the emergence of new diseases, particularly in the countries most vulnerable to the phenomenon, such as Caribbean island nations, and especially infectious, respiratory, cardiac and mental diseases. It called on governments to adapt their health policies to the new situation.

Globally, according to PAHO, it is estimated that in the 2030s the climate footprint on health will cause 250,000 additional deaths annually, from diseases such as those highlighted by the agency.

The latest official data confirms that this country is the second biggest emitter of greenhouse gases (GHG) in Latin America, following Brazil, with the launch into the atmosphere of 446.7 million net tons, according to figures from 2016 published last year by INECC.

For Jorge Álvarez, coordinator of the Crisis Intervention Programme for Victims of Disasters in the psychology department of the National Autonomous University of Mexico, the impact is important and the situation is only going to get worse, since the climate roulette unleashed by human activity continues to spin.

“The first thing is to save lives and get people into safe places. And after that comes the psychosocial intervention. What we pay a lot of attention to is the kind of reaction they have to such an extreme situation. Some people manage to overcome the situation on their own and help others, whole others continue to feel panic,” he told IPS.

Frequent symptoms include sleep disturbance, panic attacks, and post-traumatic stress disorder, which “if not resolved soon, require specific assistance.”

While Mexico has made progress in issuing early warnings for other climate events, as well as in its rapid disaster response system, the mental health of victims could become a critical issue.

This country ranks among the 10 nations and territories in the world with the highest absolute disaster losses, amounting to 46.5 billion dollars from storms, on a list headed by the United States, with 944.8 billion in losses.

This is indicated in the 2018 report “Economic losses, poverty and disasters 1998-2017”, produced by the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction and the Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters of the School of Public Health of the Catholic University of Louvain, Belgium.

Between 2000 and 2019, Mexico issued 2,145 emergency, disaster and extreme weather warnings, 1,998 – or 93 percent – of which were in response to hydrometeorological events, while the remaining seven percent responded to geological, chemical and health problems.

On the other hand, according to the government’s National Risk Atlas, natural and man-made disasters have left a death toll of at least 7,700, more than 27 million people affected by losses and more than 21 billion dollars in damage.

The DN-III-E Plan, implemented by the Secretariat (ministry) of National Defence in disasters, includes immediate psychological care, but is ambiguous as to the follow-up of victims.

The link between these events and climate change is already attracting the attention of academia.

The study “Higher temperatures increase suicide rates in the United States and Mexico,” published in the scholarly journal Nature Climate Change in July 2018, found that the suicide rate increases 0.7 percent in U.S. countries and 2.1 percent in Mexican municipalities for each one degree Celsius rise in average monthly temperature.

The authors of the report, researchers based in universities in Canada, Chile and the United States, compared temperature and suicide data from hundreds of counties and municipalities between the years 1990 and 2010.

They also studied depressive language in more than 600 million social media updates to assess whether hotter temperatures affected mental well-being.

“This effect is similar in hotter versus cooler regions and has not diminished over time, indicating limited historical adaptation,” says the report, which projects that “unmitigated climate change” could lead to between 9,000 and 40,000 additional suicides across the United States and Mexico by 2050.

Montes is afraid another disaster could happen.. “A category 4 or 5 hurricane could wipe out everything. It frightens me to think about what could happen to people, the wildlife and vegetation. If the island disappears, there is no plan B, where to go? who to go to? I’m in a more vulnerable situation than if I lived in a city,” she lamented.

She says the government should provide more assistance. “Psychological support is essential, because people need to regain emotional security. The fear of losing one’s life, one’s health, everything you face afterward, paralyses you,” she said.

According to Álvarez, psychological follow-up and prevention are fundamental. “Disasters also involve socio-organisational aspects, which include many factors. A disaster aggravates existing conflicts,” he said.

Related Articles

• Climate Change Threatens Mexico’s Atlantic Coast
• Mexico’s Forests, Both Victim of and Solution to Climate Change

The post Climate Change Also Affects Mental Health in Mexico appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Millions of people were in the direct path of the cyclone which struck last week.

By Jomo Kwame Sundaram
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia, Mar 19 2019 (IPS)

With the Washington Consensus from the 1980s being challenged, President Donald Trump withdrawing the United States from the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), and China pursuing its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), most notably with its own initiatives such as the multilateral Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), the political and economic landscape in East Asia continues to evolve. Jomo Kwame Sundaram was interviewed about likely implications for developing countries in the region and beyond.

Belt and Road Initiative

What do you think of world growth prospects and China’s Belt and Road Initiative?

Jomo Kwame Sundaram

Although there are some hopeful signs here and there, there are few grounds for much optimism around the North Atlantic (US and Europe) for various reasons. Unconventional monetary policies, especially quantitative easing (QE), have helped achieve a modest recovery in the US, but appears less likely to succeed elsewhere. Such measures have also accelerated massive wealth concentration, which is why a few of the world’s richest men own more than the bottom half of the world’s population.

The situation is more promising in East Asia due to China’s diminished but sustained growth, and its almost unique rising labour share of national income. Most importantly for others, China has been willing to finance massive infrastructure projects, although this has given rise to a host of problems. For example, Chinese contractors are known for using Chinese material and human resources as far as possible, minimizing multiplier benefits for host economies. A few years ago, China’s ambassador to Tanzania publicly apologized for the conduct of Chinese firms in Africa, but most others tend to see all Chinese in monolithic terms. Meanwhile, US, European, Japanese, Indian and other competition for influence has helped increased options for other developing countries. However, it is not yet clear that China’s BRI and ‘alternative globalization’ will be enough to sustain rapid progress in the region.

Trade liberalization?

You once said that “If President…Trump lives up to his campaign rhetoric, all plurilateral and multilateral free trade agreements will be affected.” Now, with the US having withdrawn from the TPP, why are the Japanese, Australians and Singaporeans still pushing for the CPTPP (Comprehensive and Progressive TPP) with all the others without the US?

It must be emphasized that the US, the EU and Japan have done little to advance trade multilateralism and keep the promise of the Doha Round of World Trade Organization negotiations, flawed as they are against developing country interests. Meanwhile, the Japanese, Australians and Singaporeans are trying to hype up the CPTPP as a political counterweight to China. But as a trade agreement, it will not do much except to strengthen foreign corporate power and further weaken governments, e.g., through its investor state dispute settlement (ISDS) provisions.

Why will the CPTPP have little impact on growth, but will strengthen the power of foreign enterprises?

Let us be clear that even with the original TPP, all projections, including the most optimistic ones by the Peterson Institute, projected very modest economic growth attributable to trade liberalization. US government projections were much more modest. About 85 percent of the Peterson Institute’s projected ‘growth gains’ were attributed to ‘non-trade measures’, mainly broadening and strengthening intellectual property rights (IPRs) and foreign corporate legal rights against host governments with its ISDS provisions, which they are promoting as features for so-called 21st century free trade agreements. So, for example, if stronger IPRs raise the prices of medicines, the value of trade will also rise! With ISDS, if a government decides to ban the use of a toxic agrochemical to protect farm workers and consumers for instance, it will have to compensate the supplier for loss of profits!

International financial institutions

Do you think the Washington Consensus is threatened by South-led financial institutions like the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank and New Development Bank?

Although still very influential, the Washington Consensus is acknowledged to have been superseded by new policy prescriptions. Despite recent ethno-nationalist Western reactions, all too many developing country governments still believe that further trade liberalization will boost growth. Meanwhile, financial globalization continues despite its adverse effects for growth, stability and equity.

Now, digital globalization is supposed to have wonderful progressive effects when it has clearly accelerated concentration of power and wealth, albeit with the rapid ascendance of innovative new players able to quickly consolidate lucrative monopolies.

I wish the new multilateral development banks would be bolder, but thus far, they have largely chosen to work within the dominant framework shaped by the Washington Consensus, probably to secure market confidence.

Credit from China’s banks, usually benefiting China’s corporations, is far more important than what the AIIB and NDB offer. Of course, lending by China’s banks has undermined the BWIs’ monopolies, and this has already been reflected by new policy initiatives by the West and Japan, e.g., to more generously provide infrastructure finance.

Meanwhile, the World Bank has aligned itself more closely with the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals in order to provide its new initiatives to promote market-based private finance such as securities and derivatives besides public private partnerships.

Capital controls

You have pointed out that both portfolio investment inflows to developing countries have in recent years. Do you think it appropriate to resume capital controls, as Malaysia did during the 1997-1998 Asian financial crisis, to counter capital outflows?

With even China reintroducing capital controls, it is important to consider such options. I have long advocated counter-cyclical ‘capital account management’ to smoothen financial cycles, rather than to only impose controls after a crisis, as effective capital account management must be pro-active, agile, and flexible.

Almost by definition, capital account management is context specific. There are few ‘one size fits all’ rules. What I specifically called for in the early and mid-1990s is probably no longer relevant or appropriate. The challenge is not to expect the last crisis to recur, but to protect national economic progress from likely future threats.

Capital inflows to sustainably enhance the real economy should be prioritized, not portfolio flows which tend to be speculative, easily reversible, and do not enhance the real economy.

Jomo Kwame Sundaram, a former economics professor, was United Nations Assistant Secretary-General for Economic Development, and received the Wassily Leontief Prize for Advancing the Frontiers of Economic Thought.

The post Belt and Road Initiative vs Washington Consensus appeared first on Inter Press Service.

The International Organisation for Migration’s peer-to-peer campaign is aimed at educating people about the real dangers of irregular migration. The project, known as Migrants as Messengers, trains returnee migrants to interview and record on camera returnee migrants. They are also taught how to publicly speak about their own stories. Credit: Amadou Kendessa Diallo/IPS

By IPS Correspondent
CONAKRY, Mar 19 2019 (IPS)

Elhadj Mohamed Diallo was a prisoner in Libya between October and November 2017, but he was not helpless. Far from his home in Guinea he understood the power of an organised union.

He mobilised other detainees around him to maintain order in the prison and to demand better conditions while in detention.

And when he finally returned to his home in West Africa, he used the power of the collective voice again, this time to caution others against experiencing what he did in Libya.

Back in Guinea, Diallo became part of the International Organisation for Migration’s (IOM) peer-to-peer campaign, which is aimed at educating people about the real dangers of irregular migration. The project, known as Migrants as Messengers (MAM), trains returnee migrants to interview and record on camera returnee migrants. They are also taught how to publicly speak about their own stories. As part of the campaign, the returnee migrants, who are volunteers, also attend community events where they speak in public about their own stories and first hand experiences.

The aim is to capture and present authentic and balanced stories about their migration experiences and their reintegration back home. These are shared on social media as well as through local media.

Les bandits en Algérie

Cet homme guinéen a beaucoup souffert sur la route vers l’Algérie. Il y avait même des bandits là-bas ! Prenez soin de vous et de vos proches. Partagez son histoire. #MigrantsasMessengers

Posted by Migrants as Messengers on Friday, November 16, 2018

Diallo, who was incarcerated in Libya for being an irregular migrant, understood how a group of people with a common cause could become a powerful influence for change. So he create an association with about 50 other young returnees migrants, to caution people against irregular migration.

“The fact that we managed to mobilise people of many nationalities in a prison, [I thought] why not call the migrants here to make an association? I contacted those with whom I was in prison in Libya. IOM has called us for the project Migrants as Messengers. After the training, as we were bonded, we said we continue like this,” he told IPS.

“The objectives are to sensitise young people to abandon irregular migration, to set up reintegration projects to reintegrate migrant returnees first and to attract potential migrants to invest in our projects. [It aims to show them how] to succeed at home,” Diallo said.

The association is still very young, but is making progress.

Mariama Bobo Sy, the spokesperson for IOM in Guinea, told IPS, “The association’s executive office, which is made up of six people, was set up after the permission and the approval was granted on Aug 28, 2018 by the governorate of Conakry, the capital city. As we speak, these trained VFOs have become independent and have been taking part in various IOM projects that focus on migration in all aspects.”

Highly motivated, the association members willingly share their experiences in neighbourhoods and public places. They have conducted sensitisation campaigns at universities, through traditional media and social networks and also meet with other returned migrants to help them tell their stories. They plan to work in partnership with businesses and other employment providers to promote the professional reintegration of returned migrants.

IOM, for its part, has agreed to pay the fees for the headquarters of the association as they set up. Lucas Chandelier the communication officer at IOM in Guinea told IPS: “We are supporting  them to help them get started but the idea is that they can stand on their own and find their own funding. And the fact that they are an association will allow them to raise other grants, other than those of IOM.”

*Additional reporting by Issa Sikiti da Silva in Cotonou, Benin.

Related Articles

• From Irregular Migrant to Graduate Lawyer: One Woman’s Journey to Success
• For Love of the Game: Using Football to Educate Nigerians About the Dangers of Irregular Migration
• ‘All the Roads Leading to Agadez and Italy are Dangerous’

The post Guinea’s Returnee Migrants Harness the Strength of Unity appeared first on Inter Press Service.

By Era Dabla-Norris and Kalpana Kochhar
WASHINGTON DC, Mar 19 2019 (IPS)

As girls, we were raised with the belief that we could accomplish anything, and that no barrier was insurmountable. Yet, for so many women, the reality doesn’t quite meet their aspirations. Things weren’t exactly equal in the relatively conservative middle-class society in India where we both grew up.

But we thought of gender inequality as largely an issue of social justice. It was only after we started delving into the topic that we came to realize that it is an equally significant economic issue.

Women make up almost half of the world’s working-age population of nearly 5 billion people. But only about 50 percent of those women participate in the labor force, compared with 80 percent of men.

Not only is female labor force participation lower, but women who are paid for their work are disproportionately employed in the informal sector—especially in developing economies—where employers are subject to fewer regulations, leaving workers more vulnerable to lower wages and job losses.

Furthermore, even in the formal sector, women doing the same work and having the same level of education earn less than their male counterparts. And, because women generally spend less time in the paid labor market, they have lower pensions and face a higher risk of poverty in old age.

Among those who do work, few rise to senior positions or start their own businesses. Women also shoulder a higher share of unpaid work within the family, including childcare and domestic tasks, which can limit their opportunity to engage in paid work and constrain their options when they do.

The IMF’s research highlights how the uneven playing field between women and men imposes large costs on the global economy. Early IMF studies on the economic impact of gender gaps assumed that men and women were likely to be born with the same potential, but that disparities in access to education, health care, and finance and technology; legal rights; and social and cultural factors prevented women from realizing that potential. In turn, these barriers facing women shrank the pool of talent available to employers (Kochhar, Jain-Chandra, and Newiak 2017).

The result was lower productivity and lower economic growth. The losses to an economy from economic disempowerment of women were estimated to range from 10 percent of GDP in advanced economies to more than 30 percent in South Asia and in the Middle East and North Africa.

More recent research suggests that the economic benefits of bringing more women into the labor force exceed previous estimates. This is because women and men may have the same potential, but they bring different skills and ideas—that are economically valuable—to the table (Ostry and others 2018).

Gender differences may reflect social norms and their impact on upbringing, social interactions, risk preferences, and response to incentives. For instance, studies have found women to be more risk averse, reflecting greater fear of failure, and less competitive.

Women’s greater caution has benefits: gender-balanced corporate boards improve firm performance, especially in high-tech manufacturing and knowledge-intensive services. Gender diversity on boards of banking supervision agencies is also associated with greater financial stability (Sahay and Čihák 2018).

Similarly, banks with higher shares of women board members have thicker capital buffers, a lower proportion of nonperforming loans, and greater resistance to stress, possibly because having more women in executive positions contributes to diversity and complementarity of thought, leading to better decision-making.

Drawing on macroeconomic, sectoral, and firm-level data, a recent IMF study (Ostry and others 2018) suggests that men and women complement each other in the workplace in terms of different skills and perspectives, including different attitudes toward risk and collaboration.

As a result, increasing women’s employment boosts growth and incomes more than previously estimated, exceeding the improvement that comes simply from adding workers.

Among countries where gaps in participation rates are the largest, closing them adds 35 percent to GDP, on average. Four-fifths of the gains come from adding workers to the labor force, but fully one-fifth arises from the boost to productivity brought by greater gender diversity.

The study also shows that increasing women’s labor force participation produces large gains in economic welfare, which account for changes in consumption goods, home production, and leisure time; these gains exceed 20 percent in South Asia and the Middle East and North Africa (see Chart 1).

Another important finding: when more women participate in the labor force, men also benefit. Why? Because women’s complementary skills raise productivity, boosting wages for everyone.

This increase in productivity more than makes up for the decline in wages that might be expected when more workers are competing for jobs.

But simply bringing more women into the workforce may not be enough. A recent IMF study sounds a cautionary note on the challenges women face in a rapidly changing labor market (Brussevich and others 2018).

Digitalization, artificial intelligence, and machine learning are hollowing out jobs that involve routine and repetitive tasks while increasing the value of jobs involving management and cognitive skills.

Hard-won gains from policies to increase the number of women in the paid workforce and close wage gaps may be quickly eroded if women are overrepresented in jobs at high risk of automation.

Indeed, the study finds that women perform more routine tasks than men across all sectors and occupations, although there is significant variation across countries.

The risk of displacement is particularly high for less-educated women, those aged 40 and above, and those in low-skill clerical and sales jobs.

Meanwhile, women across sectors and occupations are underrepresented in professional and managerial positions that are at lower risk of displacement by technology.

Globally, women hold fewer than 20 percent of board seats in banks and bank supervision agencies (Sahay and Čihák 2018) and account for fewer than 2 percent of bank CEOs.

In the fast-growing tech sector, women are 15 percent less likely than men to be managers and professionals and 19 percent more likely to be clerks and service workers (see Chart 2).

Given the current state of technology, the study estimates that 26 million women’s jobs in 30 countries (28 countries in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development plus Cyprus and Singapore) have a greater than 70 percent chance of being displaced by technology within two decades.

On a global scale, this suggests that 180 million women’s jobs are at risk. While more men than women are at risk of being displaced by automation, the number of female jobs lost represents a larger proportion of the female labor force.

What can be done? Because gender inequality is so multifaceted, there is no single remedy, and the best policy approach will vary across countries, depending on the level of economic development, existing gender gaps, and the speed at which the new technology affects the economy. Three broad areas can be highlighted:

First, policies to bring more women into the workforce: A range of institutional, legal, regulatory, and fiscal policy levers have been shown to boost female labor force participation.

While there is no one-size-fits-all solution, policies should seek to foster opportunity and remove barriers. Policies and infrastructure that make it easier for women to reconcile work and family life are particularly effective.

Emerging market and developing economies should

● Invest in infrastructure. In rural South Africa, for example, electrification increased female labor force participation by 9 percent. In India, building adequate sanitation facilities narrowed gender gaps in education and in female labor force participation. Mexico introduced public buses exclusively for women to ensure that they could travel safely.

● Support female entrepreneurs by increasing their access to finance. Women often face more restrictive collateral requirements, shorter maturity of loans, and higher interest rates than men (see “Banking on the Future of Women” in this issue of F&D). Initiatives such as Malaysia’s Women Entrepreneur Financing Programme and Chile’s simplified deposit accounts have helped close the gender gap in borrowing rates.

● Promote equal rights for women. Measures include addressing laws governing inheritance and property rights. Malawi, Namibia, and Peru revised their legal frameworks to reduce gender discrimination; in the decade that followed, female labor force participation rates increased substantially in all three countries.

Advanced economies should

● Push for greater parity between maternity and paternity leave. In Sweden, this has helped mothers return to work more rapidly and has shifted underlying gender norms about parenting.

● Promote access to affordable, high-quality childcare. An example is Japan, which expanded childcare leave benefits from 50 percent to 67 percent of salary. Research shows that cutting the cost of childcare by half could increase the number of young mothers in the labor market by 10 percent.

There is also considerable evidence that women are more responsive to specific tax policies than men. These include policies that do not penalize the secondary earner, who is still most likely to be female, by replacing family taxation with individual taxation, as Canada, Italy, and Sweden have done.

Tax relief measures for low-income families have also been found to increase employment rates for women. The reason: tax relief reduces the tax burden and increases after-tax earnings for women, thus increasing the incentive for women to join, or remain in, the labor force.

Examples include the earned income tax credit in the United States and a combination of tax credits and transfers in Belgium, Germany, and the United Kingdom.

Second, policies to provide women with the right skills and to empower women in the workplace: Gender parity in investments in education and health are necessary to ensure that women can obtain quality jobs.

In India, for instance, IMF research suggests that female labor force participation would rise by 2 percentage points if Indian states increased education spending by 1 percent of GDP. Building skills early would also provide the most important safeguard against displacement by technology and allow women to benefit from new work opportunities.

For those already in the workforce, fiscal instruments such as tax deductions for training in the Netherlands and portable individual learning accounts in France can remove barriers to lifelong learning. Countries could also consider subsidizing training by private companies via dedicated payroll taxes and public grants.

Concerted efforts are needed to provide women with more opportunities to rise into managerial and leadership roles by setting relevant recruitment and retention targets for organizations, setting promotion quotas as was done in Norway, and creating mentorship and training programs.

Large gender gaps persist in access to the digital technology that creates new job opportunities: 60 percent of the global population, mostly women in emerging market and developing economies, still have no access to the internet; 250 million fewer women are online than men.

Public and private investment will be essential to support technological adoption and close digital gender gaps. Finland’s approach to ensuring universal access to broadband connectivity, digital education for all, and digital access to business and government services is a good example of a comprehensive approach to closing the gender digital divide.

Third, easing transitions for displaced workers: Given that female workers face a particularly high risk of being displaced through automation, it will be essential to ensure equal support for displaced men and women through labor market policies to improve skills, connect workers with jobs, and promote job creation.

Social protection systems will also need to adapt to more flexible forms of work, such as telework. To address deteriorating income security associated with rapid technological change, some advanced economies may consider expanding noncontributory pensions and adopting basic income guarantees.

Recent decades have seen considerable progress in leveling the playing field for economic opportunities, but much more work remains to be done. The good news is that countries across the globe have embraced the imperative for gender equality.

Policymakers, governments, and corporations now recognize the benefits for economic growth and development of giving women equal opportunities, and they are seeking to improve their policies and practices in this area.

The IMF is committed to working with other international organizations, governments, civil society organizations, and the private sector to reduce barriers to gender equality by providing policy advice and analysis.

The post Closing the Gender Gap: The Economic Benefits of Bringing more Women into the Labour Force appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Era Dabla-Norris is a division chief in the IMF’s Fiscal Affairs Department, and Kalpana Kochhar is director of the IMF’s Human Resources Department.

The post Closing the Gender Gap: The Economic Benefits of Bringing more Women into the Labour Force appeared first on Inter Press Service.

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Mar 19 2019 (IPS)

The United Nations has vowed to eradicate extreme hunger and malnutrition on a self-imposed deadline of 2030.

But it is facing a harsh realty where human-induced climate change – including flash floods, droughts, heatwaves, typhoons and landslides– is increasingly threatening agriculture, which also provides livelihoods for over 40 per cent of the global population.

In an interview with IPS, Dr. Hans R. Herren, President of the Washington-based Millennium Institute, said while agriculture remains the single largest employer on a global scale, it is even more so “when we talk about the entire food system– from production to consumption.”

It is worth to note, he pointed out, that the people employed along the food value chain, are the least well paid, with farmers, and many in the food preparation industry, among the least paid and poorest members of society.

Dr. Hans R. Herren – President Millennium Institute

“How is this possible, given that without food, there is no life?”, he asked.

“We do have a structural problem in agriculture, with a number of blockages (see report of the International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food System (IPES) titled “From Uniformity to Diversity “ 2016) which hamper the transformation in the food system and would allow for more equity as well a better food quality, accessibility, in all regions of the world.”

This is important given that climate change is a major challenge to agricultural production, in all parts of the world, with increasing impact in already food-challenged areas in many sub-tropical and tropical areas of the world, said Dr Herren, who is also President and Founder of the Biovision Foundation for Ecological Development.

The United Nations admits that significant changes are needed in the global food and agriculture system if we are to nourish the hungry.

“In our world of plenty”, says UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, “one person in 9 does not have enough to eat while about 820 million people still suffer from hunger”.

Speaking at the Fourth Environment Assembly in Nairobi March 14, Deputy Secretary-General Amina J. Mohammed said the newest 5G technology and Artificial Intelligence (AI) “can help build smarter agricultural systems, energy efficient buildings, more connected energy grids and give us real time information to better respond to climate-induced natural disasters.”

But how close, or how far away, are we from this goal?

“Real-time information about weather patterns increases crop productivity, improving both food yields and economic security.”

The opportunities that these new technologies will create for climate action are immense, she said, pointing out that they do come with potential risks.

“5G is projected to use twice as much energy as we consume for today’s digital networks. This is concerning for a world that needs to lower emissions – not grow them.”

But governments must ask digital and internet companies to power their new infrastructure and data centers with clean energy and cool the centers with waste water, she said.

The new technology reality will require us to plan ahead – and invest differently, she added.

Asked if the UN’s much-publicized Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which calls for the eradication of extreme hunger and malnutrition by 2030, is realistic, Dr Herren said: ““Yes, Goal number 2 is achievable within the 2030 time period given for the SDGs.”

“However, (it will) not, if one continues to invest in short term projects, that may boost production in the short term, but jeopardies it in the medium and long term, by destroying soils, loosing biodiversity and ruining farmers with dependencies on external inputs and government subsidies.”

He said there is enough food to nourish the world population by 2050, projected at some 9.0 billion people.

“Today we do produce already enough for such a population, and the problem is less the quantity than the access. We overproduce and waste lots of food in the developed world, while in the countries in transition, farmers are being neglected,” said Dr Herren,

He said it has been easier for their governments to import subsidized, cheap food from overseas rather than help the local farmers produce the needed food.

“I have 30 years of experience in Africa, and know that farmers there can produce sufficient affordable and quality food for all. This with some R&D (research & development) support, market access and also more investments in infrastructure along the food value chain”.

With these investments, he noted, one would also create quality jobs, raise income levels and support economic, social development.

With the right agricultural practices, such as agroecology– not the green revolution approach that is still promoted by the Gates Foundation, USAID, the World Bank and other development agencies– one would promote the change needed to make agriculture the engine of growth, the solution, not the problem when it comes to climate change, and support good health and prosperity for the people in countries in transition.

“We are not too far off, but still need a dramatic and urgent transformation toward agroecology if we want to have solutions that are truly sustainable and in line with achieving the sustainable development goals (SDG),” said Dr Herren.

He said the UN’s “ Agriculture at a Crossroads” Report, which he co-chaired, suggested a transformation of the conventional and industrial agriculture model towards agroecology, organic, permaculture and other forms of sustainable agriculture, but the blockages mentioned in the IPES report have been standing in the transformation’s way.

Excerpts from the interview:

IPS: The 2018 annual report of the State of Food Security and Nutrition identifies climate change as a key force behind the ongoing rise in global hunger. How much of damage could be inflicted by extreme weather conditions on food and agriculture in the foreseeable future?

Dr HERREN: Climate Change (CC) is the most important threat to food production, and must both be mitigated and adapted to. Agriculture can be a key element in mitigation, by sequestering carbon underground, but this is only possible with organic/agroecology based agriculture.

These forms of agriculture bring resilience into the system, because they are diverse, deal with the soil and in harmony with the local environment. They do not use external inputs based on fossil energy, and so are CC neutral in the worst case, and CC positive at their best, when practiced with all the science that has been developed already to support them.

To ignore CC and the impact on agricultural production, by continuing the promotion of the green revolution model, with synthetic fertilizers, pesticides and GMOs is criminal, this knowing that alternatives exist and are feasible at all.

IPS: Has there been enough investments in infrastructure and technology to improve agricultural productivity – particularly in the developing world, and more so in Africa? If not, why is this lacking?

Dr HERREN: No, there is a lack of R&D investments by governments, same story in the, so called, developed world actually. We need to reinvent the agriculture and food system research and extension infrastructure, which remains mostly stuck in the green revolution paradigm, of solving all problems with chemicals and plant breeding, GMOs today.

Agriculture is very dependent on local ecological factors, so research has also to be done close and with the farmers, a change in the way one does R&D. It is the role of government mostly, with some support from the private sector to assure that good science and without patents is made available to the farmers…not the other way around as is the case now, where development agencies and major foundations are dictating what is good for the farmers.

IPS: In the foreseeable future, there are predictions that food in itself may be treated as a medicine— healthy eating patterns like the Mediterranean diet focusing on nuts, fruits, olive oil and vegetables—to fight diseases such as obesity and diabetes. Is this feasible in a distant future?

Dr HERREN: What is needed is a healthy production system, which produces healthy food, residue free and rich in nutrients. This food can only come from organic and agroecologically produced food. Most of the food produced via green revolution methods, that include all the synthetic fertilizers and pesticides for crops, feed and fibers, growth hormones and antibiotic in animal production are unhealthy, lead to cancer and chronic diseases that are burdening already bankrupt governments around the world, with health care costs totally out of control.

Therefore, and also because on the health of the planet, a change in the food system is urgently needed. The change can be done, we can produce enough quality food everywhere on the planet to satisfy everyone’s needs (but not greed, as Mahatma Gandhi so rightfully said).

The writer can be contacted at thalifdeen@ips.org

The post Climate Change: a Threat to Agriculture & UN’s Goal to Eradicate Hunger appeared first on Inter Press Service.