Africa

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"Humanitarian aid now. We need it," read a banner during a massive demonstration in Caracas on Feb. 12, demanding that international aid blocked at the border of neighboring countries be allowed into the country. The demonstrations were held in 50 towns and cities around the country, in support of Juan Guaidó as acting president and demanding that President Nicolás Maduro step down. Credit: Humberto Márquez/IPS

By Humberto Márquez
CARACAS, Feb 16 2019 (IPS)

The international food and medical aid awaiting entry into Venezuela from neighboring Colombia, Brazil and Curacao is at the crux of the struggle for power between President Nicolás Maduro and opposition leader Juan Guaidó, recognised as “legitimate president” by 50 governments.

The current situation “offers advantages to Guaidó. It is trying to break the ties between Maduro and the armed forces through the pressure to receive humanitarian aid,” Argentine analyst Andrei Serbin Pont, director of the Regional Coordinator of Economic and Social Research, a Latin American academic network, told IPS.

Serbin said Guaidó should secure the so-far reluctant participation of the Red Cross and the United Nations with respect to getting the aid into the country because “by definition humanitarian aid cannot have political objectives,” which are clearly present in the cooperation offered by governments of the Americas and Europe that refuse to recognise Maduro as the legitimately re-elected president."The struggle over the aid makes many local residents here see that there is hope that this time the opposition will bring about change; people now see light at the end of the tunnel." -- Nadine Cubas

President Maduro said: “It is not humanitarian aid but a rotten gift, which carries within the poison of humiliation of our people and serves as a prelude to military intervention. If the United States wants to help us, the blockade, the financial persecution and the economic sanctions against Venezuela should cease.”

U.S. President Donald Trump and several of his Latin America policy advisers repeat the mantra that “Maduro must go,” and that Washington “does not rule out any option, including the military option” with respect to Venezuela.

The Venezuelan armed forces, which have reiterated their loyalty to Maduro, have been deployed in territorial defence exercises since late January, have blocked road access from Colombia, and are ready to prevent any attempt to bring in the controversial aid shipments.

In the midst of one of the multitudinous street demonstrations that the opposition has held in recent weeks, Guaidó announced that “humanitarian aid is going to come in, no ifs ands or buts. I have given the order to the armed forces to allow it to enter” on Feb. 23.

The unprecedented situation in which Venezuela finds itself, with two supposed presidents, is due to the fact that the opposition and many governments consider invalid the May 2018 elections in which Maduro, 56, was elected for a second six-year term on Jan. 10, and refuse to recognise him as president.

In response, the opposition-dominated National Assembly, considered to be in a state of rebellion by the other branches of government, decided that its president, the 35-year-old Guaidó, would be acting president of Venezuela, starting on Jan. 23.

The border city of Cúcuta in northeastern Colombia has already received 500 tons of medicines and nutritional supplements, while Guaidó announced new collection centers in the state of Roraima in northern Brazil and on the neighboring Dutch island of Curacao, where 90 tons are expected from France, opposition deputy Stalin González told the media.

The aid accumulated so far “consists of emergency medicines and supplements for children under three years of age with severe malnutrition, pregnant or nursing mothers, and the elderly,” Julio Castro, leader of the non-governmental organisation Doctors for Health, told IPS.

The medical aid, according to Castro, “10 percent of what is urgently needed,” for some 300,000 patients, will go to public hospitals and will be distributed by NGOs and religious organisations, with the support of thousands of volunteers responding to the opposition’s call.

Gonzalez said there are already 250,000 volunteers mobilised around the country, including 10,000 health professionals.

Young people from the ruling United Socialist Party of Venezuela gathered in downtown Caracas on Feb. 12 to express support for President Nicolás Maduro. Credit: AVN

An immediate effect of the bid for aid has been that the government has increased in recent days the delivery of apparently stockpiled medicines and supplies to several public hospitals, according to workers at several hospitals in Caracas and other cities.

People like Natalia Vargas, 39, a bank clerk and diabetes patient, hope that “if emergency help arrives, then other medicines that are scarce because they are imported can come. And when you get them, they’re too expensive.”

“I hope that the politicians and the military will reach an agreement to bring in the aid,” she told IPS at her home in La Candelaria, a traditional lower-middle-class neighourhood in central Caracas.

The international aid initiatives are in response to the social and economic collapse that has occurred in Venezuela since Maduro firste came to power in 2013, unprecedented due to the fact that it happened in an oil-rich country and because of the speed of the collapse, without no natural catastrophe or war.

During the last five years and while some three million people left the country, more than 80 percent of Venezuela’s 31 million inhabitants were left in poverty and unable to acquire enough food and the medicines they need, in addition to hyperinflation since 2017, according to the Study on Living Conditions conducted by three of the country’s leading universities.

In the same period, the economy shrunk to half its size, GDP plunged 56 percent, 210,000 of the 490,000 companies in the country closed, half of the industrial park has been operating at 20 percent of capacity, and local agriculture can barely provide 25 percent of the necessary food, according to the 2018 year-end report of the Fedecámaras central business chamber.

The deficit of medicines in pharmacies remains has stood at 85 percent since last year, the president of the Federation of Pharmacists, Freddy Ceballos, said on Feb. 13.

From the town of Cúa, near the east of the capital, Nadine Cubas, 71, who suffers from hypertension and glaucoma, told IPS that “we are far from the border, that aid may not reach the valleys of the Tuy River, where we are, but if it supplies the people in the west then there is a better chance of getting medicines here.”

Cubas added that “the struggle over the aid makes many local residents here see that there is hope that this time the opposition will bring about change; people now see light at the end of the tunnel.”

What the opposition is counting on is this: if the government lets the aid in, it will show weakness and a division in the support of the military, with an unpredictable domino effect, and if it does not allow it in, it will look like an inhumane clique of leaders whose only concern is to hold onto power, opposition deputies Julio Borges and Juan Miguel Matheus told reporters.

This position is in line with the demand that the entry of aid be a first step for the Venezuelan crisis to lead to elections for a new government, as demanded by the United States, the Lima Group of 12 countries from the hemisphere and the majority of the European Union, against opposition by other governments, such as those of China, Cuba, Iran, Russia and Turkey, or calls for a search for a middle path, issued by Mexico and Uruguay.

Borges and Gonzalez said the humanitarian aid that has accumulated will be followed by more aid as the political game unfolds in Venezuela.

Governments such as those of Argentina, Canada, Chile, France, Germany, Puerto Rico and the United States, plus the Organisation of American States, have offered more than 200 million dollars in assistance.

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The post International Aid Feeds Hope and Fuels Confrontation in Venezuela appeared first on Inter Press Service.

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Natasha Chaudhary* is a trainer, coach and strategy consultant working to strengthen people-powered work. She is a Director at Haiyya, an Indian youth led feminist non-profit organization specializing in grassroots campaigning and consulting.

By Natasha Chaudhary
NEW DELHI, Feb 15 2019 (IPS)

Results from a survey with young and unmarried women suggest that as low as 1% of women have received information on sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) from their mothers, doctors or government campaigns.

And 53% of these women feel unsure if the sexual health problems they faced were severe enough to visit a gynaecologist. Within the Indian context and patriarchal system, any conversation around young women’s sexuality is limited and stigmatised.

Natasha Chaudhary

This massively impacts the way unmarried women view their sexual health. About 13 women in India die every day due to unsafe abortions.

Shame and stigma particularly impact unmarried women who end up delaying abortions and often resort to backdoor clinics putting their lives at risk. As low as 20% of the unmarried women my organization (Haiyya) surveyed, knew about the abortion law in India, and 95% had never visited a gynaecologist to take consultation on sex, pleasure or contraception.

As a demographic, unmarried women are completely invisible in the domain of SRHR in India. Due to societal biases and shame, they de-prioritize their sexual health needs and refrain from accessing services.

When they try to consult doctors, they are often denied services, misinformed or coerced into decisions. It is this stigma and narrative we are challenging through our initiative at Haiyya called Health Over Stigma.

It all started 2 years ago, when one of our colleagues had to undergo an abortion. It was a traumatic and harrowing experience she went through at the clinic, where her dignity was shamed and destroyed.

Following that event, we found ourselves sharing personal stories with each other that we had never shared before. One of us had been denied getting a pap smear test because the doctor felt she would only need it once married.

Someone else had elongated treatment of a vaginal infection because she was too scared to visit a gynaecologist. Someone else had been shamed by the doctor, who dared to ask if her parents knew she was sexually active.

We all had approached our sexual health from a place of fear. None of us felt we could hold service providers accountable. We felt as if we were alone and had no bargaining power as a community.

We began talking to more women and found that despite different experiences, we were bound by our stories of isolation and helplessness. This issue has persisted because power lies with age old institutions where women are disengaged from decision making processes that affect their very own lives.

We needed to flip this by organizing unmarried women as a collective and moving the onus and accountability on medical institutions.

After two years of work, we are challenging the status quo. As a recipient of the Goalkeepers Youth Accelerator Award, this year I will be able to lead Haiyya in the implementation of a campaign were women will mobilize and demand to be treated with dignity and their agency upheld and asking doctors to fulfil their duty as non-judgmental service providers.

Through storytelling and community building, we are aiming to achieve three key objectives in 2019:

Catalyzing public commitments from institutions such as hospitals, ministries and other relevant health actors to update their code of conduct. Creating an online platform that empowers women by providing them with resources on their rights, how to access services, and testimonials from individual experiences.

Building a community of women in India who drive an online conversation in key states on devising informed strategies that improve access to health services and combat stigma

Within the sexual reproductive health and rights spaces, unmarried women continue to be a marginalised group. As a young unmarried woman working with other such women, I want to change that narrative.

We will achieve UN Sustainable Development Goal 5.6 (ensuring universal access to sexual and reproductive health and rights) by making possible that all women, from diverse backgrounds, ages and choices, have the right and necessary information.

*Natasha Chaudhary holds a Master’s degree in Development Studies from University of Sydney and was an undergraduate at Delhi University. She says she deeply cares about gender, health and caste issues with a focus intersectional leadership and designing-interventions that enable changemakers as decision- makers shifting away from service delivery models.

The post Dismantling Sexual Health Stigma in India appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Natasha Chaudhary* is a trainer, coach and strategy consultant working to strengthen people-powered work. She is a Director at Haiyya, an Indian youth led feminist non-profit organization specializing in grassroots campaigning and consulting.

The post Dismantling Sexual Health Stigma in India appeared first on Inter Press Service.

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Suriname’s President, Desiré Delano Bouterse, who this week gathered the High Forest Cover and Low Deforestation nations in Paramaribo for a major conference to discuss the way forward. Credit: Desmond Brown/IPS

By Desmond Brown
PARAMARIBO, Feb 15 2019 (IPS)

At the Bonn Climate Conference in 2017, Suriname announced its aspirations to maintain its forest coverage at 93 percent of the land area.

For Suriname and other High Forest Cover and Low Deforestation (HFLD) nations, maintaining forest coverage is their contribution to saving the planet from the effects of climate change, something they did not cause.

But HFLD nations have faced a challenge finding a development model that balances their national interests while continuing to deliver eco-services to the world. They say the valuable contribution of especially HFLD developing countries to the climate change challenge is not reflected in climate finance.

These countries – which also include, among others: Panama, Colombia, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Peru, Belize, Gabon, Guyana, Bhutan, Zambia, and French Guiana – now have a champion at the forefront of their cause.

He is Suriname’s President, Desiré Delano Bouterse, who this week gathered the HFLD nations in Paramaribo for a major conference to discuss the way forward.

The three-day conference ended with countries adopting the Krutu of Paramaribo Joint Declaration on HFLD Climate Finance Mobilisation.

“The declaration is one of significance,” Bouterse told IPS in an interview.

“What I want to communicate to the world community is that we should first and foremost note that our planet is in danger and that it calls for common action.”

Bouterse said HFLD developing countries have set themselves on a new path, and that Suriname takes its new assignment very seriously and pledge its dedication.

Excerpts of the interview follow:

Inter Press Service (IPS): Mr. President, what was your vision when this conference was being conceptualised?

Desiré Delano Bouters (DDB): It’s more than 30 years that we are facing this issue, and what we have looked at is that countries that are facing the issue of high forestry have difficulties getting financial opportunities. So that is basically the main reason for the conference.

We have forest cover of approximately 94.6 percent. Our commitment to the world is that we will maintain a forest cover of 93 percent. That is a commitment we made.

What we know is that there is a contention between the interest and will to maintain the forest cover and on the one hand. On the other hand are the development challenges with scarce financial resources. Thirdly is the difficult to access financial opportunities. So, what has to happen is that the world community has to understand this commitment and seek a mechanism for easier accessibility to financial mechanisms so that we can therefore get training, we can get capacity building – access to finances in order to maintain this commitment. So, it’s crucial to get that access.

IPS: We have seen so many declarations made before, is there a reason to be optimistic about the Krutu of Paramaribo Joint Declaration on HFLD Climate Finance Mobilisation?

DDB: Yes, there have been declarations but here’s what I think is necessary coming out of this process. There is a need for precise scientific research which will allow us a truthful picture of what we can be given for the offer we make; so that there is a very precise calculation so to speak, so that we don’t estimate but rather know what the value is of the offer we have made.

IPS: What does this declaration mean in terms of financial resources and also benefits to the people of Suriname and other HFLD nations?

DDB: Firstly, the declaration is one of significance, such that we have gathered as like-minded countries to basically face the coming challenges together and therefore approach the world community with one voice in order to over the hurdle that we commonly face. And so you should see the declaration in that sense, that we have brought the many Heads of countries with similarities together to get mileage out of what we offer.

IPS: You have been charged with championing this cause on behalf of the NFLD nations – You are speaking directly to the international community, what message are you sending right now?

DDB: What I want to communicate to the world community is that we should first and foremost note that our planet is in danger and that it calls for common action. If we neglect coming together to address this danger, we may face a very tragic situation which will then leave our planet worse than we have met it for our children and their children.

IPS: Now that you have adopted the Krutu of Paramaribo Joint Declaration, what is the next step?

DDB: Firstly, what we have to do or know is that the group of countries have identified Suriname as the leader to communicate what we have agreed upon in this conference and as such we have to use each international opportunity to let the world know what we have agreed upon and what we are expecting from them.

We have to, from a common position, reason. We have to reason from a common position and therefore we should approach our position, not from a point of view that the other developed countries should take the lead. No, we should look at it from our point of view.

You should see it as this, politically and economically, being in the Caribbean and South America, we should approach it from a common and joint position. Let me give an example. When you look at CARICOM, even if it’s the United States, CARICOM works together as one. It’s the same when it comes to China, Canada, India or even Europe. Why? Because we’re joined together. We have a common strategy. So, when you’re alone, it’s very difficult. But when you have your structure, they will take you more seriously. That’s why I give the example of CARICOM. There are different, small nations but the big countries – if it’s Russia or India – everybody wants to talk with the 14 CARICOM countries.

IPS: Is there a role for the youth and all of this?

DDB: Yes, we have in our portfolio in CARICOM, inclusion of the youth, this is something we are proud of. What we have seen here today is that young people have stepped up to the plate and they have made their voices heard. However, I’m also of the belief that we should make the space and give them the opportunity to assume leadership so that they can learn and make errors, but at the same time don’t make the same mistake that we as leaders have made; because before you know it, it’s their turn to be leaders. It is therefore important to allow them that experience so that they can be part of the process.

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Excerpt:

IPS Correspondent Desmond Brown interviews DESIRE DELANO BOUTERSE, president of Suriname.

The post Q&A: Suriname’s President Champions Preserving the World’s Forests appeared first on Inter Press Service.

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