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Credit: Torture Museum, Amsterdam, via Wikipedia

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Feb 7 2023 (IPS)

Hinting at “Western hypocrisy”, a senior UN official once told a group of reporters, perhaps half-jokingly: “When you go on one of those sight-seeing tours in Europe, they will show you their palaces and castles– but never their medieval prisons or torture chambers.”

The world’s torturers, according to Western nations, were mostly in countries such as Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria and in authoritarian regimes of the Middle East -– with a notoriety for whip lashes, blind folds, leg irons, electric shock devices and public hangings.

In more recent years, torture and water-boarding were common forms of punishment in US-run Guantanamo Bay, in the Abu Ghraib prison in US-occupied Iraq and at the Bagram American air base in Afghanistan.

And in the heart of Amsterdam are a “Torture Museum” and a “Museum of Medieval Torture Instruments” displaying some of the equipment of a bygone era.

Last month, the London-based Amnesty International led a coalition of over 30 civil society organizations (CSOs) calling for a treaty to control the trade in tools of torture used to suppress peaceful protests and abuse detainees around the world.

Dr. Simon Adams, President and CEO of the Center for Victims of Torture, the largest international organization that treats survivors and advocates for an end to torture worldwide, told IPS it’s sickening and outrageous that even though torture is illegal everywhere, at all times, and in all circumstances, more than 500 companies from 58 countries are still manufacturing, marketing and selling goods used in torture on the world market.

“It’s time to strictly regulate goods that are deliberately misused by some security forces to commit torture, and to impose a global ban on goods that have no use other than torture.”

“We need to outlaw this immoral trade in unspeakable human suffering. The UN General Assembly is our global parliament, and international law obligates states to help prevent torture”.

So, the General Assembly should immediately move towards the adoption of a Torture-Free Trade Treaty and prohibit people and companies from profiting from torture,” he noted.

In the declaration signed in London January 20, the civil rights organizations (CSOs) launched a campaign calling for a treaty to prohibit the manufacture and trade in inherently abusive equipment such as spiked batons and body-worn electric shock devices, as well as the introduction of human rights-based controls on the trade in more standard law enforcement equipment, such as pepper spray, rubber bullets and handcuffs.

These items are often used to commit acts of torture or other ill-treatment, which are categorically prohibited under international law, the coalition said.

Asked whether such a treaty should originate at the United Nations, Verity Coyle, Amnesty International’s Law & Policy adviser, told IPS: “Yes, Amnesty International around the world is campaigning for a Torture-Free Trade Treaty through our Flagship Campaign – Protect the Protest.

When the Group of Governmental Experts (GGE) report was published on 30 May 2022, Amnesty published this PR response.

She said the 193-member UN General Assembly (UNGA) is the logical forum given 2019 resolution, including the GGE report recommendations.

The Alliance for Torture-Free Trade (60+ members) is coordinated by the EU, Argentina and Mongolia.

In June 2022, Amnesty was invited to present its analysis of the GGEs report to a meeting of the Alliance “and we continue to hold regular meetings with the EU in particular in anticipation of resolution being brought forward requesting a negotiating mandate”.

Civil Society in Latin America, Coyle pointed out, is speaking regularly to Argentina about the process.

“Our Sections around the world are about to embark on a series of lobby meetings in capitals”, said Coyle, who sits on the global Steering Committee of the Campaign to Stop Killer Robots, of which Amnesty International is a member.

In September 2017, the EU, Argentina and Mongolia launched the Alliance for Torture-Free Trade at the margins of the UN General Assembly in New York.

The Alliance currently comprises over 60 states from all regions of the world pledging to “act together to further prevent, restrict and end trade” in goods used for torture, other ill-treatment and the death penalty.

In June 2019, the UN General Assembly adopted Resolution A/73/L.94, Towards torture-free trade, initiating a process for “examining the feasibility, scope and parameters for possible common international standards” for regulating international trade in this area.

The first stage in this UN process resulted in the July 2020 publication of a UN Secretary General’s study of member states’ positions, which found that the majority of respondent states supported international standards, with most believing these should be through a “legally binding instrument establishing measures to control and restrict trade in goods used for capital punishment, torture or other forms of ill-treatment”.

Meanwhile, the UN Special Rapporteur on “the promotion and protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms while countering terrorism”, Fionnuala Ní Aoláin, is undertaking a “technical visit” to the United States.

Between 6 and 14 February, she will visit Washington D.C. and subsequently the detention facility at the U.S. Naval Station Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.

Over the course of the subsequent three-month period, Ní Aoláin will also carry out a series of interviews with individuals in the United States and abroad, on a voluntary basis, including victims and families of victims of the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks and former detainees in countries of resettlement/repatriation.

The visit takes place in accordance with the Terms of Reference for Country Visits by Special Procedures Mandate Holders.

Besides Amnesty International, the CSOs campaigning for the treaty include American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), Article 36, Asia Alliance Against Torture, Association for the Prevention of Torture (APT), Harvard Law School’s International Human Rights Clinic, International Commission of Jurists, International Rehabilitation Council for Torture Victims, The Philippine Alliance of Human Rights Advocates and the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF), among others.

Coyle of Amnesty International also pointed out that equipment, such as tear gas, rubber bullets, batons and restraints, have been used to intimidate, repress and punish protesters, human rights defenders and others, during the policing of demonstrations and in places of detention, in all regions, in recent years.

“Thousands of protesters have sustained eye injuries resulting from the reckless use of rubber bullets, while others have been hit by tear gas grenades, doused in excessive amounts of chemical irritants, beaten with batons, or forced into stress positions by restraints”.

Despite this, there are currently no global human rights-related controls on the trade in law enforcement equipment. However, the UN General Assembly now has a historic opportunity to vote to begin negotiations on a treaty, she declared.

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

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A mining waste deposit in the center of the municipality of Topia, in the northern Mexican state of Durango, threatens the air, water and people’s health. The Escazú Agreement, In force since 2021, guarantees access to environmental information and justice in Latin American countries, as well as public participation in decision-making on these issues. CREDIT: Emilio Godoy/IPS

By Emilio Godoy
MEXICO CITY, Feb 7 2023 (IPS)

In the municipality of Papantla, in the southeastern Mexican state of Veracruz, the non-governmental Regional Coordinator of Solidarity Action in Defense of the Huasteca-Totonacapan Territory (Corason) works with local communities on empowering organizations, advocacy capacity in policies and litigation strategies.

“This participation with organizations that work at the national level and have the capacity to influence not only the legal field is important,” Corason coordinator Alejandra Jiménez told IPS from Papantla. “They are able to bring injunctions, and this is how they have managed to block mining projects, for example.”“Up to now, the Escazú Agreement is dead letter, that is the history of many laws in Mexico. Environmentalists have clearly suffered from violence, and let's not even mention access to information, where there have even been setbacks.” -- Alejandra Jiménez

She was referring to the collaboration between locally-based civil society organizations and others of national scope.

Since its creation in 2015, Corason has supported local organizations in their fight against the extraction of shale gas through hydraulic fracturing or fracking, a highly polluting technique that uses large volumes of water and chemicals, in Veracruz and Puebla, as well as mining and hydroelectric plants in Puebla.

Cases like this abound in Mexico, as they do throughout Latin America, a particularly dangerous region for environmentalists.

Activists agreed on the challenges involved in enforcing the Regional Agreement on Access to Information, Public Participation and Justice in Environmental Matters in Latin America and the Caribbean, known as the Escazú Agreement, seen as a tool to mitigate dangers faced by human rights defenders in environmental matters.

A case that has been in the hands of Mexico’s Supreme Court since August 2021 is currently addressing the power of organizations to express their disagreement with environmental decisions and will outline the future of environmental activism in this Latin American country of some 130 million people, and of the enforcement of the Escazú Agreement.

The origin of the case lies in two opposing rulings by Mexican courts in 2019 and 2020, in which one recognized the power of organizations and the other rejected that power. As a result, the case went to the Supreme Court, which must reach a decision to settle the contradiction.

In August 2022 and again on Jan. 25 this year, the Supreme Court postponed its own verdict, which poses a legal threat to the megaprojects promoted by the government of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, a staunch defender of the country’s oil industry.

Gustavo Ampugnani, general director of Greenpeace Mexico, said the case was an alert to the Escazú Agreement, and that it should not represent a setback for the defense of the environment.

“The significance lies in the risks involved in a wrong decision by the Supreme Court on how to resolve this existing contradiction. If the Court decides that the legal creation of an environmental organization is not enough and that other elements are required, it would limit citizen participation and access to justice,” he told IPS.

Environmentalists are waiting for their Godot in the form of the novel agreement, to which Brazil and Costa Rica do not yet belong, to improve their protection.

The treaty, in force since April 2021 and which takes its name from the Costa Rican city where it was signed, guarantees access to environmental information and justice, as well as public participation in environmental decision-making. It thus protects environmentalists and defenders of local land.

Mexico’s foreign ministry, which represented this country in negotiating the agreement, has identified a legislative route to reform laws that make its application possible and promote the integration of a multisectoral group with that same purpose.

Escazú has been undermined in Mexico by López Obrador’s constant attacks against defenders of the environment, whom he calls “pseudo-environmentalists” and “conservatives” for criticizing his policies, which they describe as anti-environmental and extractivist.

For this reason, a group of organizations and activists requested in a letter to the foreign ministry, released on Feb. 2, details of the progress in the creation of inter-institutional roundtables, selection of indicators, creation of protection mechanisms, and training of officials, including courts, while demanding transparency, inclusion and equity in the process.

Activists from the southern Mexican state of Puebla protest the activities of a water bottling company, on Apr.19, 2021. Environmentalists face serious threats in Mexico, where the Escazú Agreement, which since 2021 provides guarantees to these activists in Latin American countries, has not been applied. CREDIT: Emilio Godoy/IPS

High risk

In 2021, there were 200 murders of environmentalists around the world, a slight decrease from 227 the previous year, according to a report by the London-based non-governmental organization Global Witness.

Latin America led these crimes, accounting for 157 of the killings, with a slight decline from 165 the previous year. Mexico topped the list with 54 murders, compared to 30 in 2020. Colombia ranked second despite the drop in cases: 33, down from 65 in 2020, followed by Brazil (26 vs. 20), Honduras (eight vs. 17) and Nicaragua (13 vs. 12).

The attacks targeted people involved in opposition to logging, mining, large-scale agribusiness and dams, and more than 40 percent of the victims were indigenous people.

In Mexico there are currently some 600 ongoing environmental conflicts without a solution from the government, according to estimates by the Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources.

The most recent case was the Jan. 15 disappearance of lawyer Ricardo Lagunes and indigenous activist Antonio Díaz, an opponent of mining in the western state of Michoacán, which the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights has demanded be urgently clarified.

One year after it came into force, the Escazú Agreement is facing major challenges, especially in countries such as Brazil, Colombia, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico and Nicaragua, where environmentalists face particular risks.

Olimpia Castillo, coordinator of the non-governmental organization Communication and Environmental Education, said the context sends out a warning.

“It is a very interesting round, because article 10 (of the agreement) refers to highlighting the participation of the organizations. That article could be violated, which would mean a major limitation. These are things that as a country we are going to have to face up to,” the activist, who participated in the negotiation of the agreement as a representative of civil society, told IPS.

In Mexico, compliance with the agreement has already faced hurdles, such as the November 2021 decree by which López Obrador declared his megaprojects “priority works for national security”, thus guaranteeing provisional permits, in contravention of the treaty.

Dispute resolution

Activists are already planning what to do if the Supreme Court hands down a negative verdict: they will turn to the Escazú Agreement dispute resolution mechanism – although the signatory countries have not actually designed it yet.

“We would consider turning to the treaty to resolve the issue. Environmental activism is highly dangerous. But that should not set aside the right of organizations to intervene in decisions. Activists and organizations must be given tools to use regional agreements, because what is happening in the country is very serious,” said Greenpeace’s Ampugnani.

Castillo’s organization is working to raise awareness about the agreement. “If no one knows it exists and that they are obliged to comply with it, how do we make them do it? There are still informative processes in which an application has not yet received a response. We have to demand compliance. There are conditions to apply the agreement. But we need political will to comply with it and to get the word out about it,” she said.

Corason’s Jiménez questioned whether the treaty was up-to-date. “Up to now, the Escazú Agreement is dead letter, that is the history of many laws in Mexico. Environmentalists have clearly suffered from violence, and let’s not even mention access to information, where there have even been setbacks. There is an environment that hinders progress,” she said.

In her view, it is not in the interest of governments to apply the agreement, because it requires participation, information and protection in environmental issues.

In March 2022, the first meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the Escazú Agreement took place, which focused on its operational issues and other aspects that the countries will have to hash out before the next summit is held in 2024.

The Supreme Court, which has not yet set a date for handing down its ruling, is caught between going against the government if it favors environmental organizations or hindering respect for the agreement. For now, the treaty is as far from land as Mexico City is from Escazú: about 1,925 kilometers.

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By Mario Osava
BOA VISTA, Brazil, Feb 6 2023 (IPS)

Roraima, the northernmost state of Brazil, on the border with Guyana and Venezuela, is undergoing an energy transition that points to the dilemmas and possible solutions for a safe and sustainable supply of electricity in the Amazon rainforest.

As the only state outside the national grid – the National Interconnected Electric System (SIN) – it is dependent on diesel and natural gas thermoelectric plants, which are expensive and polluting sources, that account for 79 percent of Roraima’s electric power.

The financial and environmental cost is exacerbated by the transportation of fossil fuels by truck from Manaus, the capital of the neighboring state of Amazonas, 780 kilometers from Boa Vista, the capital of Roraima.

But the people of Roraima pay one of the lowest prices for electricity in Brazil, thanks to a subsidy paid by consumers in the rest of the country.

These subsidies will cost about 2.3 billion dollars in 2023, benefiting three million people in this country of 214 million people, according to the National Electric Energy Agency regulator.

 

 

A fifth of the total goes to Roraima, which from 2001 to 2019 received electricity imported from Venezuela. This meant the state needed less subsidies while it enjoyed a degree of energy security, undermined in recent years by the deterioration of the supplier, the Guri hydroelectric plant, which stopped providing the state with energy two years before the end of the contract.

Fortunately, Roraima has natural gas from deposits in the Amazon, extracted in Silves, 200 kilometers from Manaus, to supply the Jaguatirica II thermoelectric power plant, inaugurated in February 2022, with a capacity of 141 megawatts, two thirds of the state’s demand.

Roraima thus reduced its dependence on diesel, which is more costly and more polluting.

But what several local initiatives are seeking is to replace fossil fuels with clean sources, such as solar, wind and biomass.

This is the path to sustainable energy security, says Ciro Campos, one of the heads of the Roraima Renewable Energy Forum, as a representative of the Socio-Environmental Institute (ISA), a pro-indigenous and environmental non-governmental organization.

The city government in Boa Vista, the state capital, home to two thirds of the population of Roraima, has made progress towards that goal. Solar panels cover the roofs of the city government building, municipal markets and a bus terminal, and form roofs over the parking lots of the municipal theater and the Secretariat of Public Services and the Environment.

In addition, a plant with 15,000 solar panels with the capacity to generate 5,000 kilowatts, the limit for so-called distributed generation in Brazil, was built on the outskirts of the city.

In total there are seven plants with a capacity to generate 6,700 kilowatts, in addition to 74 bus stops equipped with solar panels, some of which have been damaged by theft, lamented Thiago Amorim, the secretary of Public Services and the Environment.

In addition to the environmental objective, solar energy allows the municipality to save the equivalent of 960,000 dollars a year, funds that are used for social spending. Boa Vista describes itself as “the capital of early childhood” and has won national and international recognition for its programs for children.

The Renewable Energies Forum and the Roraima Indigenous Council (CIR), which promote clean sources, say the aim is to reduce the consumption of diesel, a fossil fuel transported from afar whose supply is unstable, and to avoid the construction of the Bem Querer hydroelectric plant.

The project, of which there are still no detailed studies, would dam the Branco River, Roraima’s largest water source, to form a 519-square-kilometer reservoir that would even flood part of Boa Vista. It would affect nine indigenous territories directly and others indirectly, said Edinho Macuxi, general coordinator of the CIR.

Bem Querer would have an installed capacity of 650 megawatts, three times Roraima’s total demand. It has awakened interest because it would also supply Manaus, a metropolis of 2.2 million inhabitants that lacks energy security, and could produce more electricity just as the generation of other hydroelectric plants in the Amazon region is declining.

Almost all of Roraima is in the northern hemisphere, and the rainiest season runs from April to September, when water levels run low in the rest of the Amazon region. The state’s hydroelectricity would therefore be complementary to the entire Brazilian portion of the rainforest.

That is why Bem Querer is a project inextricably connected to the construction of the transmission line between Manaus and Boa Vista, already ready to start, which would integrate Roraima with the national grid, enabling it to import or export electricity.

“We can connect, but we reject dependency, we want a safe and autonomous energy model. We will have ten years to find economically and politically viable solutions,” said Ciro Campos.

By Kate Lappin and Anis Chowdhury
MELBOURNE and SYDNEY , Feb 6 2023 (IPS)

Australia is set to become the first country or jurisdiction to require large multinational corporations (MNCs), with a global consolidated income of at least AU$1 billion, to publicly report country-by-country (CbC) tax information. The new Labor Government announced on 25 October, 2022 in its budget paper that MNC’s public CbC tax reporting will begin from 1 July, 2023. Australia’s public CbC reporting rules will apply to all companies headquartered in Australia and companies headquartered elsewhere with sufficient nexus in the country.

Kate Lappin

The announcement received very little media attention, perhaps overlooked as a technical amendment. Yet public CbC reporting could be a vital weapon in the fight against corporate tax avoidance in Australia and, more importantly, in low-income and highly indebted countries that lose even greater proportions of public revenue to tax havens.

All countries in the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), including Australia and the US, have required large MNCs to privately report CbC tax data under Action 13 of the OECD/G20 project against Base Erosion and Profit Shifting (BEPS). In November 2022, the European Parliament approved a directive to mandate public CbC reporting for large MNCs within the bloc, with a range of limitations discussed below, from 22 June, 2024.

The Australian move comes a month before a new push at the United Nations to convene a global tax body to set international taxation standards, after years of faltering efforts among the world’s richest countries at the OECD.

Losing billions
The Paradise Papers and the Luxembourg Leaks of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalism (ICIJ) shed light on tax manoeuvres of more than 100 MNCs. Apple alone shifted profits around the world to accumulate US$252 billion offshore. A 2021 ICIJ study revealed that, in one year alone, MNCs shifted US$1 trillion offshore, depriving governments of hundreds of billions in revenue.

Anis Chowdhury

Corporate profit shifting, as the practice is called, to dodge tax, costs countries US$500 billion to US$650 billion in lost tax revenue annually, according to a report by a high-level United Nations panel, published in 2021.

Research by the Centre for International Corporate Tax Accountability and Research uncovered tax dodging by MNCs that bled money from public services and workers including in scandal ridden aged care homes in Australia. It exposed how Microsoft receives billions in outsourced government IT Contracts, while lodging over AU$2billion in profits via its Bermuda based subsidiaries where it pays little tax.

Almost 800 large corporations paid no tax in 2020-21, Australian Taxation Office report reveals. The country loses about AU$8 billion a year due to MNCs profit-shifting.

Poor countries bleed most
The 2021 ICIJ study finds African countries the most “vulnerable” to profit-shifting. In 2017, the Tax Justice Network found that low-income countries were the biggest victims of profit shifting.

In some countries such as Zambia and Argentina, losses exceeded 4% of GDP. In Pakistan the losses due to profit shifting were 40% of total tax revenues, and in Chad, the estimated losses were larger than all taxes collected (106.2% of total tax revenue)!

The State of Tax Justice 2021 finds that low-income countries collectively lose the equivalent of 48% of their public health budgets.

Low-income countries rely more heavily on corporate income tax for the revenue required to fund cash-starved public services, making corporate tax transparency vital in addressing global poverty and inequality.

Rich countries serving corporate interests
International taxation rules have been designed by rich nations, especially by their club, OECD. Tax justice activists, such as the African Tax Administration Forum allege that developing countries are “not at the table” at the OECD, but on the menu, with OECD rules designed to allow multinationals to continue to extract profits in the global south, without making fair contributions.

The OECD’s standards for MNCs tax reporting are riddled with loopholes. As Oxfam points out, the OECD rules do not allow people in low-countries to have access to information about MNCs’ profit made or tax paid in their countries and nor do most tax authorities in low-income countries.

Similarly, the European Union’s CbC reporting is seriously watered-down. Tax transparency is only required for the 27 EU member states and the 21 black-listed or grey-listed jurisdictions on their flawed list of tax havens. Oxfam points out this means secrecy is retained for more than 75% of the world’s nearly 200 countries. The EU also provide a “corporate-get-out-clause” for “commercially sensitive information” for 5 years; and limit reporting to companies with consolidated turnover above EUR 750 million, excluding 85 – 90% of MNCs.

Unions’ play a critical role
The Labour movement has taken on the fight to end corporate tax avoidance. Labour’s share in GDP has been declining since the early 1970s in advanced countries and since the early 1980s in developing countries. Some unions have recognised that corporate tax avoidance erodes the public services workers need and undermines collective bargaining, while increasing corporate power.

The global union federation, Public Services International (PSI), co-ordinated union action to in support of public CbC reporting amongst other tax reforms. PSI joined the technical committee that drafted new Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) Tax Standards and worked with union pension funds to back the standards, which are now widely regarded as the best benchmark for corporate tax accountability.

In Australia PSI and affiliates exposed corporate tax avoidance in aged care, labour hire companies and corporations receiving large government contracts and worked with unions to shape the Labor party’s policy platform.

The announcement reflects one of the recommendations PSI and the International Trade Union Congress made to the Australian Treasury in its submission on Multinational Tax integrity and enhanced tax transparency.

Can Australia lead?
Since being elected in May 2022, the new Australian government has sought to improve its international standing by setting stronger climate targets, increasing engagement with Pacific Island countries and rebuilding capacities of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. If the government can make good on its promise to implement the GRI standards and require public CbC reporting, it will have significantly contributed to the global public good and set a precedent for the EU and other countries to follow.

In addition to setting new tax transparencies standards, the Albanese Government should support the push by African countries for a truly inclusive UN tax convention – which could slash the scope for tax abuse by MNCs and wealthy individuals. Together, these contributions would deliver more to low-income countries than Australia’s entire development aid budget.

Kate Lappin is the Asia Pacific Regional Secretary for Public Services International (PSI), the Global Union Federation representing more than 30 million workers who deliver public services in 154 countries and territories. Kate headed the Asia Pacific forum on Women, Law and Development (APWLD) for eight years and has worked across labour, feminist and human rights movements for more than 20 years.

Anis Chowdhury is Adjunct Professor, Western Sydney University. He served as Director of Macroeconomic Policy & Development and Statistics Divisions of UN-ESCAP (Bangkok) and Chief, Financing for Development Office of UN-DESA (New York).

IPS UN Bureau

 

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Nuclear experts warn that ‘tactical’ nuclear weapons could have devastating death toll and destruction. This photo shows the war damage in Borodianka, Kyiv Oblast. Credit: Oleksandr Ratushniak / UNDP Ukraine

By Helmut W. Ganser
HAMBURG, Germany, Feb 6 2023 (IPS)

The decision of Germany and other NATO states to supply modern battle tanks and other armoured infantry vehicles to Ukraine takes the West’s involvement in the war to a new level.

Presumably, in the further course of the war, the numbers mentioned so far will not be enough; the decision to provide tanks immediately sparked an international debate on delivering fighter planes as well.

We are also hearing initial calls for NATO troops to be deployed to Ukraine as a ‘deterrent’, which would mean NATO becoming embroiled in the war. However, the discussion about the objectives in the Ukraine war mustn’t be muddied, even if clarifying these leads to a fierce dispute both within and amongst the NATO states. There is just too much at stake.

The American and German governments indicate that they want to enable Ukraine to hold the frontline which it has fought for so far and liberate more areas wherever possible. All occupied territories, including Crimea, would probably be regained through a strategic approach of lengthy negotiations under the pressure of overwhelming Western sanction packages.

This objective comes with the broader demand that Ukraine be enabled to reconquer its entire territory through military counterattacks, something also put forward by the Ukrainian leadership. The serious risks of escalation associated with this must be thoroughly analysed, which has largely been skirted around in the discussions so far.

The fog of war prevents us from predicting how things will play out. All professional military policy experts are aware that their analyses, evaluations and forecasts are clouded by this; there are always bound to be frictions and surprises. However, looking at various scenarios can help us refine our assessments of what might be on the horizon.

We will attempt to assess the potential effects of the new tank deliveries to Ukraine, using two scenarios that look ahead to the early summer of 2023. In both scenarios, it is assumed that the Ukrainian army will gradually receive about 100 Western battle tanks, most of the Leopard model, and around 100 largely German and American infantry vehicles by early summer 2023.

The 31 M1 Abrams tanks previously promised are unlikely to be delivered by this point. Two tank battalions and two tank grenadier battalions – roughly equivalent to a brigade – will be equipped with the new heavy weapons systems by the early summer under both scenarios.

Another assumption is that the widely anticipated Russian spring offensive, targeting the Luhansk or Donetsk area, will begin around the end of February or March. Very few Western battle and infantry vehicles, if any, are likely to be used, in what are expected to be highly intense battles with severe casualties.

It is assumed with some uncertainty that the more professional and mobile Ukrainian defence can ward off larger operational gains from the major Russian units. These two scenarios look to the early summer after the Ukrainian army has taken delivery of the tanks from the West.

By the late spring, it becomes clear that the Ukrainian military intends to push hard towards the south from the area east and southeast of Zaporizhzhia. The goal is to advance over about 100 km to the Sea of Azov and cut the Russian troops off south of the river Dnieper and, more than anything, to stop Crimea from being supplied via the land bridge.

The terrain in this area is mostly open and flat – highly beneficial to tanks – and, with the exception of the town of Melitopol, is only dotted with small villages. In the early summer of 2023, Ukraine makes bold advances south under favourable weather conditions, targeting the Sea of Azov coast.

This results in the first major tank battle of the war, which sees German Leopards and Marders deployed at the front, as well as the American Bradleys and Strikers. With their better armour, agility and weapon effect, they clearly come out on top in a head-to-head battle.

Ukrainian commanders, however, struggle to master the complexity of mixed-weapons combat, in which battle tanks, armoured infantry vehicles with tank grenadiers, artillery, sappers and air support must work together in close coordination to achieve the full force of impact. Heavy Russian tank and infantry forces withstand the advancing units.

The Ukrainian counterattack progresses for about 30 km but then gets bogged down in the huge defensive firing, after Russian mechanised units succeed in pushing into the flank of the Ukrainian tank formations, jeopardising their supply. Soldier and material losses are severely high again on both sides.

Pictures of destroyed Leopard tanks are plastered across the internet. German television channels and online media increasingly draw parallels with historical footage of German tanks during the Second World War in the same region.

From a political and strategic perspective, attrition warfare has been consolidated in this scenario, despite tactical gains on both sides. Russia still has about 10 to 12 per cent of the Ukrainian territory under its control.

The extensive exhaustion of weapons systems, spare parts and ammunition from the German and American armies is increasingly running down the operational capability and perseverance of the NATO forces on both sides of the Atlantic.

As production capacity remains limited, there is increasing support for an agreement between the US, Ukraine and Russia to bring an end to the war. In Ukraine, the devastating losses are affecting more and more families, leading to political demands for a ceasefire. Opposition politicians demand that their president publish the actual losses incurred since the war began.

Scenario 2 is identical to scenario 1 up to the Ukrainian army’s counterattack from the area east of Zaporizhzhia. But in this scenario, operations are proceeding as planned by the Ukrainian General Staff. Kyiv has deployed forces equipped with Western tanks and infantry vehicles to the heart of the battlefield.

With the superior firepower, armour and agility of the Leopard 2 tanks, they advance towards intermediate targets northeast of Melitopol after a few days. Leadership, fighting strength and motivation are once again proving weak amongst Russian ranks, while the Ukrainian troops’ command of mixed-weapons combat is better than initially expected by Western military experts.

Leopard spearheads reach villages just off the coast, opposite Crimea. As Ukrainians advance, American-made HIMARS rockets destroy the new Russian bridge near Kerch in some places, rendering it unusable for supplying Crimea. Russia responds with the most intense air raid ever launched on Kyiv, with numerous casualties reported and electricity supply destroyed.

The Russian president makes a brief statement following a stage-managed press conference with his General Staff. Putin first states that the Russian Federation now considers the NATO states that supplied heavy weapons to Ukraine as direct opponents in the war, regardless of any fine details in international law.

The ongoing attack on Russian-occupied Crimea could only have come about through the massive involvement of Western states. The war has now created an existential dimension for the Russian Federation. As far as Russia is concerned, the entire war zone now extends to the territory of the Western states supporting Ukraine.

He refrains from verbal warnings of nuclear war because his earlier threats were not taken seriously. Putin says he has ordered his Defence Minister and General Staff to supply some of the nuclear-capable missile troops with the nuclear warheads stored in depots.

If the blockade of supplies to Crimea via the land bridge is not removed, Russia must use force through its tactical nuclear weapons. Russian bloggers report that the course of the war has brought unity to Kremlin leaders and only made them more determined to see it through, but this cannot be verified.

A few hours later, American satellites pick up Russian convoys beginning their journey from the nuclear weapons storage facilities to the nuclear missile battalion deployment areas. This secret intelligence becomes public across the world.

In a widely unexpected twist, China announces the largest mobilisation of its naval forces ever in the Strait of Taiwan. Its first fleet of warships has already set sail. The US and its NATO partners are now on the verge of a nuclear face-off that has escalated faster than many had believed, with consequences unimaginable for the whole of Europe.

Western governments, the NATO Council and Military Committee, as well as the UN Security Council, meet day after day. Commentators can’t help but compare it to the height of the Cuban crisis. But NATO leaders clash on their assessments of the situation and their approach. In Berlin, huge demonstrations are held calling for an immediate end to the war, with the slogan ‘Stop the madness’.

Of course, more optimistic scenarios can also be envisaged in which the Kremlin hands back Crimea without nuclear escalation. The powers that be, including those in Berlin, Washington and Paris, have so far held firm on their objective of not stepping into the grey area of getting directly involved in the war.

But the danger of slowly and unintentionally sleepwalking into what would be the biggest catastrophe for the whole of Europe is growing and growing. Unexpected twists and turns (sometimes referred to as black swans or wild cards) can also create dynamic developments that are likely to be extremely difficult to control and contain.

As more German tanks are sent to Ukraine, Germany’s share of responsibility for the course that the war takes – and the consequences thereof – increases and ultimately so does its right and need to influence the leadership in Kyiv.

Helmut W. Ganser, Brigadier General (retd), is a graduate psychologist and political scientist, who acted as Deputy Head of the Military Policy Department at the Ministry of Defence in Berlin, lecturer on strategy at the German Armed Forces Command and Staff College and military policy advisor to the German Permanent Representatives to NATO and to the UN.

Source: International Politics and Society (IPS)-Journal published by the International Political Analysis Unit of the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung, Hiroshimastrasse 28, D-10785 Berlin

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Nelly García is 65 years old, and for 30 years she has been selling flowers at a market in Lima because she was unable to return to her profession as a nurse technician after taking a break from work to raise her children when they were young. She says sadly that “if the government does not care about children, it cares about us even less. They must think ‘let these old people die because they’re no good for anything anymore’.” CREDIT: Mariela Jara/IPS

By Mariela Jara
LIMA, Feb 6 2023 (IPS)

Latin America and the Caribbean is no longer a young region and it will be one of the regions with the largest aging populations by 2050, which poses great challenges due to the social inequalities the countries face, but also opportunities to overcome them.

“Currently in the region an estimated 8.1 percent of the population is over 65 years of age, and this percentage is projected to increase to 17 percent by 2050, higher than the global average,” said Sabrina Juran, a regional technical advisor on population and development for Latin America and the Caribbean of the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA).

In 2022, the region was home to 658 million people, of whom some 52 million were older adults, creating great challenges for the countries in terms of work, health and pensions, in a context in which according to international organizations the economic slowdown will deepen in the region in 2023.

“I am 65 and employers already saw me as too old to hire at 35, and I did not manage to get another job as a nurse technician,” says Nelly García, who moved to the capital, Lima, with her parents when she was 10 years old from her hometown of Huancayo, a city in Peru’s central Andes highlands.

The case of García illustrates the labor problems faced by many older adults in Latin America, especially women whose job opportunities are often hindered by motherhood and their responsibilities to care for family members.

“Imagine at this age what chance of insurance or pensions exist for people like me or people who are even older and work in the informal sector,” she told IPS with bitterness, adding that “if the government does not care about children, it cares about us even less. They must think ‘let these old people die because they’re no good for anything anymore’.”

García lives in Breña, a working-class district of 75,000 people that is one of the 43 districts in the department of Lima. Since she failed to find work in any hospital 30 years ago, she has been selling flowers.

She had taken a break from her work as a nurse technician to raise her four children. When she sought to return to her profession, the doors of the hospitals slammed shut on her. “I was already seen as old at the age of 35,” she repeated several times.

She has social health insurance from her husband, who is about to retire from a book import company. “But his pension will be less than 200 soles (52 dollars); that will not even cover the electricity bill,” she lamented.

Peru, a South American country of 33 million people, is facing a severe economic, political and social crisis, with a poverty level that climbed during the pandemic to a national average of 30 percent, although in rural areas it is 45 percent.

There are more than four million people over 60 according to official figures, only one third or 35 percent of whom were in a pension system. And although 89 percent have access to public health insurance, coverage and quality do not go hand in hand

“I try to save up for when I’m older, although the truth is I don’t think I’ll reach the age of 75 because in my family we suffer from heart disease. But I’m not going back to the public health insurance system,” García said emphatically.

She talked about her experience of the system: “It’s an ordeal, you have to go to the hospital at dawn to make an appointment, they order tests for several months later and who knows when you’ll get the results back. If I go through the same thing now, I’ll surely die before they call me, so when it’s my time, I hope to leave in peace.”

García is referring to the Social Health Security, a public system that covers 35 percent of people over 60, which draws harsh criticism for its poor facilities, shortage of medical personnel and poor quality of care.

A group of Peruvian women take part in a demonstration for the rights of the elderly in Lima. Latin America and the Caribbean will become one of the regions with the most aging populations by 2050 due to advances in medicine and the decrease in the birth rate. Life expectancy at birth was 72 years in 2022. CREDIT: Wálter Hupiú/IPS

An irreversible path

On Jan. 12, the Division for Inclusive Social Development of the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (DESA) presented the World Social Report on demographic change, which ratifies the global tendency that the population over 65 is growing faster than younger age sets and that people are living longer.

Greater life expectancy at birth due to the advancement of medicine and the decline in the fertility rate, which stands at 2.1 births per woman, are factors contributing to this trend.

Sabrina Juran of UNFPA told IPS from Panama City, where the U.N. agency’s regional headquarters is located, that the birth rate in Latin America is 1.85 and regional population growth is below 0.67 percent per year, both of which are lower than the global rates.

She said that according to the latest U.N. projections, there would be around 695.5 million inhabitants in the region in 2030 with a peak of 751.9 in mid-2050, after which the population would constantly decrease until reaching 649.2 million in 2100.

Sabrina Juran, a regional technical advisor on population and development for Latin America and the Caribbean of the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), poses for a picture at the organization’s headquarters in Panama. By 2050, 17 percent of the regional population will be over 65, the agency projects. CREDIT: UNFPA LAC

Juran explained that further reductions in mortality are expected to lead to a global average longevity of about 77.2 years in 2050 and 80.6 years regionally. Life expectancy at birth in Latin America and the Caribbean was 72.2 years in 2022, three years less than life expectancy in 2019 due to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.

This scenario means governments in the region must focus on meeting greater demands for healthcare, employment, housing, and pensions.

Juran said the growth of the working-age population – from 38.7 percent in 1990 to 51 percent today – can help boost per capita economic growth, known as the “demographic dividend”, which offers to maximize the potential benefits of a favorable age distribution.

“But this increase in the working-age population will not remain constant: it will peak in 2040 at 53.8 percent before decreasing,” she said. “This means there is a window of opportunity to be taken advantage of.”

The region faces steep inequalities. According to the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) on Jan. 18, 22.5 percent of the population – in other words, at least 131.3 million people – were unable to afford a healthy diet.

“Countries must invest in the development of their human capital, guaranteeing access to healthcare, quality education at all ages, and promoting opportunities for productive employment and decent work,” Juran remarked.

She added that they must take measures to adapt public programs to the growing number of older people, establishing universal healthcare and long-term care systems, and improving the sustainability of social security and pension systems.

“At UNFPA we advocate measuring and anticipating demographic changes in order to be better prepared for the consequences that arise,” said the regional advisor.

She said the commitment is “to a world where people have the power to make informed decisions about whether and when to have children, exercise their rights and responsibilities, navigate risks and become the foundation of more inclusive, adaptable and sustainable societies.”

Achieving this demographic resilience, Juran said, starts with a commitment to count not only the number of people, but also their opportunities for advancement and the barriers that stand in their way, which requires transforming discriminatory norms that hold back individuals and societies.

The world’s Least Developed Countries are in a race against time to deliver Sustainable Development Goals by 2030. Credit: Joyce Chimbi/IPS

By Joyce Chimbi
UNITED NATIONS & NAIROBI, Feb 6 2023 (IPS)

It is a race against time to form a new global partnership to secure a better future for the world’s poorest and most vulnerable nations by 2030 in line with the UN’s SDGs. All 46 countries classified as Least Developed Countries (LDCs) are pressed for time in a bid to deliver critical development goals.

Sub-Saharan Africa has the biggest regional presence within the LDCs group. Countries in other regions include Afghanistan, Haiti and Bangladesh. All battling a common enemy and in dire, urgent need of a concerted global push to accelerate social, economic and environmental development.

With the  Istanbul Programme of Action for the Least Developed Countries  (IPoA) implementation period completed, a new conference is being held in two parts. The first part of the Fifth UN Conference on the Least Developed Countries (LDC5) led to the adoption of the Doha Programme of Action (DPoA) in New York on March 17, 2022.

Sheikha Alya Ahmed S. Al-Thani. Credit: Twitter

The Permanent Representative of Qatar to the UN, Sheikha Alya Ahmed S. Al-Thani, told IPS that the second part of the conference will be held in Doha, Qatar, on March 5-9, 2023 and is “a unique opportunity for the LDCs, development partners, major groups, and other stakeholders to come together and build momentum for effective implementation of the Doha Programme of Action (2021-2030) and to make concrete commitments that will strengthen global and inclusive partnerships to meet the special needs of the LDCs.”

She further stressed that the conference is “a key moment for the international community to advance true development and recovery that works for all people and all countries and, therefore, reinvigorate global solidarity towards the LDCs. The State of Qatar has a proven track record of responding to the needs and challenges of the LDCs, and it will spare no effort to ensure the success of the Fifth United Nations Conference on the Least Developed Countries.”

With an estimated combined population of 880 million people, translating to 12 percent of the world population, these countries are suffocating under severe structural impediments to growth. At varying levels, all 46 countries are characterized by issues such as poorly developed institutions, low saving rates, low literacy and school enrollment rates.

“I have heard it again and again that – to leave no one behind, we must start with that furthest behind – and for this aspiration to become a reality, the Doha Programme of Action for LDCs offers an excellent package. We all need to work together, to implement this programme of action – the LDCs, their partners and or friends and the UN system,” Rabab Fatima, UN Under-Secretary-General and High Representative for the LDCs, LLDCs (Landlocked Developing Countries) and SIDs (Small Island Developing States) told IPS.

Rabab Fatima, UN Under-Secretary-General and High Representative for the LDCs, LLDCs (Landlocked Developing Countries) and SIDs (Small Island Developing States). Credit: UN

LDC5 is, therefore, a critical once-in-a-decade opportunity to accelerate sustainable development in the places where international assistance is needed the most – and to tap the full potential of the least developed countries, helping them make progress on the road to prosperity.

As such, world leaders will gather with the private sector, civil society, parliamentarians, and young people to advance new ideas, raise new pledges of support, and spur delivery on agreed commitments, through the Doha Programme of Action. It is expected that leaders will also adopt a new Doha declaration.

“The Doha Programme of Action provides a blueprint for LDCs to overcome the impacts of ongoing global crises, to build sustainable and inclusive recovery from the pandemic, and to build resilience against future shocks – to get us back on track on the 2030 Agenda. This can only be fulfilled by strengthening our partnerships through South-South and Triangular cooperation,” Csaba Kőrösi, President of the UN General Assembly, told IPS.

DPoA is defined by six key focus areas, including investing in people, eradicating poverty and building capacity, supporting structural transformation as a driver of prosperity, enhancing international trade and regional integration, leveraging the power of science, technology and innovation, tackling climate change, COVID-19 and building resilience as well as mobilizing international partnerships for sustainable graduation.

Csaba Kőrösi, President of the UN General Assembly. Credit: UN Photo/Eskinder Debebe

It is firmly believed that the full implementation of DPoA will help the LDCs to address the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic as well as the resulting negative socio-economic impacts, return to a pathway to achieve the SDGs, address climate change challenges, and makes strides towards sustainable and irreversible graduation.

Therefore, during the second part of the conference in Doha, it is expected that specific initiatives and concrete deliverables will be announced that will address LDC-specific challenges. Gathered leaders will undertake a comprehensive appraisal of the implementation of the Istanbul PoA.

Leaders will also mobilize additional international support measures and action in favour of LDCs and agree on a renewed partnership between LDCs and their development partners to overcome structural challenges, eradicate poverty, achieve internationally agreed development goals and enable graduation from the LDC category.

The heart of the conference is hence the recognition that global recovery is heavily dependent on extending much-needed support to LCDs. And that bold investments across all key sectors – particularly health, education and social protection systems – must be alive to the special development needs of the poorest, most vulnerable nations.

In all, the Office of the High Representative for Least Developed Countries, Landlocked Developing Countries and Small Island Developing States (OHRLLS) is the UN’s focal point for LDC5 Conference preparations.

The High Representative for Least Developed Countries will be the Secretary-General of the Conference. OHRLLS and the LDC Group have expressed their gratitude for Qatar, Turkey and Finland’s generous support to LDC5 preparations and welcome the contribution of all stakeholders for the success of the conference. – Additional Reporting: Naureen Hossain

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

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Yasmine Sherif, the Director of Education Cannot Wait, sees the ECW High-Level Financing Conference as crucial to turning the agreements from the Transforming Education Summit into action. Credit: ECW

By Joyce Chimbi
NAIROBI, Feb 3 2023 (IPS)

The world is in the throng of a monumental, damaging, and unprecedented global education crisis. Wars, protracted conflict, extreme climate changes, hunger, COVID-19, and economic uncertainties are pushing children out of the education system.

In 2016, an estimated 75 million children in crisis needed educational support. Today, the number has tripled to 222 million. From Afghanistan, Moldova, Colombia, Libya, Iraq, Somalia, and South Sudan, as life as they knew it crumbles around them, education is their last hope.

“The dreams of 222 million girls and boys are being crushed by conflicts, displacement, and climate chaos. Nobody knows this better than Education Cannot Wait — an education lifeline for children across 40 countries in crisis,” said UN Secretary-General António Guterres.

UN Secretary-General António Guterres says children’s dreams cannot be defeated by conflict, displacement, and climate chaos. Credit: UN

“At February’s financing conference, I urge leaders to commit to investing in education systems that can support those being left behind. Let’s keep dreams alive. Let’s keep hope alive. Let’s keep pushing for the brighter future every child deserves.”

Not only are affected children furthest left behind the education system missing out on lifelong learning and earning opportunities, but they are also the most vulnerable to sexual and economic exploitation, human trafficking, and recruitment into militia groups.

Yet funding is insufficient to push back against multiple challenges so that children can access a safe, inclusive, quality education. For this reason, leaders across the globe will come together at the Education Cannot Wait High-Level Financing Conference on February 16-17, 2023, in Geneva, Switzerland, to make good on commitments to ensure every child, everywhere, is offered quality education.

Yasmine Sherif, the Director of Education Cannot Wait, explains that the ECW High-Level Financing Conference is a “crucial opportunity to turn commitments from the Transforming Education Summit (TES) into action. By providing substantive funding contributions to ECW, strategic donor partners can ensure quality education for girls and boys in the toughest crisis contexts around the globe.”

She further stressed that “now is the time to redouble our collective efforts if we want to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by 2030. Education – SDG4 – must be at the center of these efforts, as it is the foundation for all other goals to be achieved.”

With support, ECW High-Level Financing Conference can offer hope of quality education to all children. Credit: UNHCR Ghislaine Nentobo

Co-hosted by ECW and Switzerland and co-convened by the Governments of Colombia, Germany, Niger, Norway, and South Sudan, the Geneva event will be open to the public as a live-streamed virtual event.

The heart of the conference agenda is a concerted global push to mobilize much-needed resources from donors, foundations, and high-net-worth individuals to deliver on ECW’s four-year strategic plan, which will mobilize US$1.5 billion in additional resources to reach 20 million children and adolescents caught in some of the world’s worst humanitarian crises.

Keynote speakers include the UN Special Envoy for Global Education and Chair of ECW’s High-Level Steering Group, Gordon Brown; Federal Councillor of the Swiss Confederation, Ignazio Cassis; Federal Minister for Economic Cooperation and Development, Germany, Svenja Schulze; Minister of Education, Niger, Ibrahim Natatou; Minister of International Development, Norway, Anne Beathe Tvinnereim; Minister of General Education and Instruction, South Sudan, Awut Deng Acuil; and Minister of Education, Colombia, Alejandro Gaviria.

Top-level representatives from UN agencies, civil society, governments, and global youth representatives will also participate in the two-day event, which expects over 400 delegates in-person and many more joining online globally.

The significance of this conference cannot be over-emphasized, for 78 million out of an estimated 222 million children and adolescents impacted by conflict, and other emergencies are out of school altogether.

Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Malala Yousafzai says without financing, young people in countries affected by crises may have to wait for generations to have their right to education. Credit: UN

“At this pace of progress,” the Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Malala Yousafzai cautions, “Girls in crisis-affected countries may not be able to complete their education until 2063. Young people in countries affected by crises will have to wait for generations to have their right to education.

“I urge leaders to ensure a safer and fairer future to all children by fully funding Education Cannot Wait. Please make sure that 222 million children are not left behind. Please ensure that all children can access safe, quality, and free education.”

To accelerate progress, the event will kick off with a high-level segment on February 16, 2023, inviting global leaders to position the education needs of crisis-impacted children at the top of the international agenda.

On the first day of the conference, leaders will announce substantial new financial support to Education Cannot Wait to deliver on the Fund’s goal to reach 20 million girls and boys over the next four years.

A notable spotlight on Afghanistan – headlined by “I Am Malala” co-author Christina Lamb and Somaya Faruqi, captain of the Afghan Girl’s Robotic Team – will provide a key advocacy moment on the first day of the conference, along with important sessions on A New Way of Working, Delivering with Humanitarian Speed and Development Depth, and Leaving No One Behind in Forced Displacement Situations.

On the second day, February 17, 2023, a series of roundtable discussions to share ideas, experiences, and stories to transform education delivery in emergencies worldwide will be featured.

Founded in 2016, Education Cannot Wait has already reached close to 7 million children and adolescents with holistic education support, including upgrading learning spaces and ensuring children have quality learning materials, training and financially supporting teachers, and providing mental health services, school feeding, and other whole-of-child solutions. The Fund has already raised over US$1.1 billion from donors, the private sector, and philanthropic foundations.

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

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Food insecurity in Sri Lanka has increased dramatically due to two consecutive seasons of poor harvests, foreign exchange shortages, and reduced household purchasing power. Amidst Sri Lanka’s worst economic crisis since independence, the UN revised its joint Humanitarian Needs and Priorities (HNP) Plan, appealing for more life-saving assistance to aid 3.4 million people. November 2022 Credit: UNICEF/Chameera Laknath

By Neville de Silva
LONDON, Feb 3 2023 (IPS)

On February 4, Sri Lanka commemorates 75 years of Independence. But it will not be the extravaganza of the past years, the minaturised imitations of the grand displays on Moscow’s Red Square or China’s Tiananmen Square.

Still, a critical question has been reverberating in the community ever since the government announced a scaled down celebration to commemorate 75 years since Britain relinquished power in 1948.

After defaulting on the country’s debt servicing last April for the first time in its post-independence history and being forced to resort to massive printing of money to meet state expenditure, does Sri Lanka need to celebrate independence day this year however downsized it would be?

Particularly so, when President Ranil Wickremesinghe’s government itself claims Sri Lanka is struggling economically and it would take years to recover from its current chaos created by leaders who inexorably pushed it to the tip of the abyss with stupid economic policies, wasteful expenditure and wide- scale corruption and fraud.

While imposing unbearable new taxes and other restrictions on the daily lives of the people, driving them further into penury with school children going without meals, fainting in their classrooms and in need of medical treatment which itself is becoming scarce, the country’s leaders don’t seem short of resources for celebrations.

Even the country’s diplomatic missions will be holding their annual independence day celebrations as the invitation I received indicated, feasting their countrymen as best as they could.

Yet over the last couple of months the government has been selling the story that it has no funds to pay for the Local Government elections due in March. A strange enough claim after President Ranil Wickremesinghe, in one of his other roles as finance minister, presenting the budget for 2023 last November allocated funds for the election and parliament, which oversees public expenditure, approved it.

Now, the very persons who allocated money just three months ago claim to lack funds for a constitutionally required election. Punning on the old Harry Belafonte calypso, there is a hole in the budget, said some wag on social media.

It is this contradiction in government conduct that an already enraged people find inexcusable. Having got rid of one elected president– Gotabaya Rajapaksa– who surreptitiously fled the country last July when mounting peoples’ protests demanded the Rajapaksa clan quit the government, they find themselves confronted with what Sri Lankans have come to see as a Rajapaksa clone– and now derisively call him Ranil Rajapaksa– thrust into the presidency to keep the family’s political fires alight.

The Roman poet Juvenal dismissively called the delusionary performances staged by the Roman emperors of the time to distract their discontented citizenry, “panem et circensus”- bread and circuses.

Bread, like some other essentials, might be scarce or priced beyond the reach of many of its 22 million people. A few months back, the UN agency UNICEF reported that 5.7 million Sri Lankans including 2.3 million children, are in need of humanitarian assistance and the numbers are likely to rise in the coming days.

But the country’s leaders are not beyond performing their own circus acts. A few days back President Wickremesinghe appointed two more cabinet ministers bringing the total to 22.

Within hours Sri Lankans with their innate sense of humour were on social media branding the new cabinet “Ali Baba and the 22” with the doors to the cabinet still open for more acolytes chosen not for integrity and competence but loyalty.

Before the two new ministers fattened the cabinet, splicing off the portfolios of two existing ministers, President Wickremesinghe a couple of months ago appointed 37 state ministers leaving room for three more.

Sri Lanka’s bloated ministerial ranks would surely be one of the largest in today’s parliamentary democracies. Not only is it large in numbers but the perks offered to ministers and state ministers is stunningly staggering–salaries, free housing, several expensive vehicles with fuel, free utilities such as electricity, water, telephones up to a point, several personal staff with paid salaries, armed personal security with escort vehicles, a special allowance for each day they attend parliament, state pension after five years and other facilities not generally known.

While the government is prepared to splash state funds on bolstering party cadres and lickspittle who have creamed off state assets, in the last couple of months it has been using every ruse in the books-and some which are not in them- trying to deprive the people of their constitutional right to the franchise, by blocking the Local Government elections due shortly.

This election, last held in 2018, is for 340 municipal councils, urban councils and village bodies is scheduled for March 9—the date set by the independent Election Commission last month.

But as the day for the election, as constitutionally required, neared, the attempts to stymie it began with grandees of President Ranil Wickremesinghe’s United National Party (UNP) and the Rajapaksa clan-run Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (SLPP) that is propping up Wickremesinghe with its parliamentary majority, asserting that economic recovery must precede elections.

Ministers and even state officials were trotting out excuses that there was no money to fund elections, expecting the populace to have forgotten the budgetary allocation passed by parliament a few months back.

As this was being written, internationally-known legal academic and former foreign minister Prof GL Peiris was telling the media the government had made seven attempts to try and stop the election including an affidavit to the Supreme Court filed by the secretary to the finance ministry claiming the state of the economy precluded holding elections right now.

The latest ruse was a law called the Election Expenses Bill to control spending for elections hurriedly passed by parliament. If, as Justice Minister Wijeyadasa Rajapaksa said, this proposal has been hanging fire for years, why the rush now, the opposition and anxious voters asked.

Like the opposition, the public too smelled a rotten rat. It was seen as another attempt to derail the elections by calling for the provisions of the bill be incorporated which would call for more time.

Despite all the public bravura, both the Rajapaksa-controlled SLPP and Wickremesinghe-led UNP which was swept into oblivion at the 2020 general elections, fear that given the mood of the country which rose in mass protests for some seven months last year leading to the resignation of President Rajapaksa and three of his brothers from the cabinet, they would suffer ignominious defeat.

Especially so the UNP which lost every single seat including that of party leader Wickremesinghe who managed to creep back into parliament one year later through a clause in the electoral law.

Not only would a poor electoral performance by the SLPP and UNP which have now joined hands make governance difficult and troublesome, it would also strengthen public opposition both to the Rajapaksas and President Wickremesinghe who many argue-and rightly so-as a leader rejected by the country two years ago and lacking a popular mandate to rule the country.

So what one sees now is a symbiotic relationship between the executive headed by Wickremesinghe and the legislature controlled by the Rajapaksas, running the country and using outdated laws- some dating back to British times- to beat back public dissent, employing the security forces to trample on the constitutionally guaranteed freedoms of the people- free speech and expression, of association and assembly and peaceful protest.

It also raises issues about the independence of the Attorney-General and some of the independent institutions set up under the constitution which are believed to have come under pressure during the Wickremesinghe presidency.

With two arms of the state- the executive and legislature under the control of the Wickremesinghe-Rajapaksa- led cabal and backed by the security forces as recent event have shown, Sri Lanka’s increasingly beleaguered populace can only rely for justice on the third arm of the state- an independent judiciary.

Over the years the judiciary has, now and then, been under pressure from dictatorial leaders who have not been averse to tamper with justice and the judicial process, sometimes denying impartial, independent judges their rightful place as chief justice or appointing friends or those amenable to the judiciary.

But two recent judgements by the Supreme Court have resurrected public faith that the judiciary could be relied on to safeguard the constitution and the peoples’ constitutional and human rights against state abuse of the law and the battering and brutality by the security forces.

A few months back the government tried to push through a “Bureau of Rehabilitation Bill” ostensibly to help treat and rehabilitate drug addicts and other drug users. Under cover of that it hoped to incarcerate political dissidents, activists and others which state security would identify those they do not like as ‘trouble makers’.

So, it included among those to be included under the law “ex-combatants, members of violent groups, violent extremist person and any other person or group of persons”.

The Supreme Court saw through this as an attempt to round up any person the authorities considered a political nuisance and hold them without recourse to the law. The court struck down the clause.

Holding that the Bill as a whole violated the constitution, it said it could be acceptable if certain clauses were amended. One of the clauses it found repugnant was the one cited above which the court wanted deleted, leaving rehabilitation open only to drug dependent persons and those identified by law as in need of rehabilitation.

In mid-January the Supreme Court delivered a landmark verdict which held former president Maithripala Sirisena, secretary of the defence ministry, police chief and top- ranking intelligence officers, of dereliction of duty and “failure to act” when valid and clear intelligence was passed on by foreign sources of an impending terrorist attacks by Islamic extremists on churches on Easter Sunday in 2019.

Some 270 persons including foreigners were killed and several hundred wounded in these attacks on churches and Colombo hotels.

Since these were civil cases, President Sirisena was fined 100 million rupees and the others lesser amounts. Sirisena as a former president was no longer entitled to immunity, a lesson for other former and future presidents that they too are liable to civil and criminal action such as corruption and human rights violations once they cease to hold office.

These judicial judgments bring some hope to the people that the citadels of power are vulnerable and could be breached by a strong and upright judiciary, the only institution now left to protect and uphold the country’s democratic traditions and norms.

If the judiciary is badgered, the last resort is too bloody to contemplate.

Neville de Silva is a veteran Sri Lankan journalist who held senior roles in Hong Kong at The Standard and worked in London for Gemini News Service. He has been a correspondent for the foreign media including the New York Times and Le Monde. More recently he was Sri Lanka’s Deputy High Commissioner in London.

Source: Asian Affairs, London

IPS UN Bureau

 

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By Ines M Pousadela
MONTEVIDEO, Uruguay, Feb 2 2023 (IPS)

On 25 January, roughly six weeks after being sworn in following her predecessor’s removal, Peruvian president Dina Boluarte finally recognised that elections were the only way out of political crisis. Elections were rescheduled for April 2024, much earlier than the end of the presidential term she’s been tasked with completing, but not soon enough for thousands who’ve taken to the streets demanding her immediate resignation.

Boluarte’s call for a ‘national truce’ has been met with further protests. Their repression has led to major bloodshed: the Ombudsman’s office has reported close to 60 dead – mostly civilians killed by security forces – and 1,500 injured.

What happened and what it means

It’s unusually easy to impeach Peru’s presidents: a legislative majority can vote to remove them on vaguely defined grounds.

Pedro Castillo, elected president in July 2021, had already survived two removal attempts and faced a third. On 7 December he made a pre-emptive strike: he dissolved Congress and announced a restructuring of the judiciary, as former president Alberto Fujimori had done decades earlier in the ‘self-coup’ that started several years of authoritarian rule.

Castillo announced the establishment of an exceptional emergency government where he would rule by decree and promised to hold congressional elections soon. The new Congress, he said, would have the power to draft a new constitution.

But unlike Fujimori, Castillo enjoyed meagre support, and within hours Congress voted to remove him from office. He was arrested and remains in pretrial detention on rebellion charges. Vice-president Boluarte was immediately sworn in.

In the whirlwind that followed there was much talk that a coup, or a coup attempt, had taken place – but opinions differed radically as to who was the victim and who was the perpetrator.

The prevailing view was that Castillo’s dissolution of Congress was an attempt at a presidential coup. But others saw Castillo’s removal as a coup. Debate has been deeply polarised on ideological grounds, making clear that in Peru and Latin America, a principled rather than partisan defence of democracy is still lacking.

Permanent crisis

Recent events are part of a bigger political crisis that has seen six presidents in six years. In 2021, a polarising presidential campaign was followed by an extremely fragmented vote. The runoff election yielded an unexpected winner: a leftist outsider of humble origins, Castillo, defeated the right-wing heiress of the Fujimori dynasty by under one percentage point. Keiko Fujimori initially rejected the results and baselessly claimed fraud. Castillo’s presidency was born fragile. It was an unstable government, with a high rotation of ministers and fluctuating congressional support.

Although Castillo had promised to break the cycle of corruption, his government, himself and close associates soon became the target of corruption allegations coming not just from the opposition but also from state watchdog institutions. Castillo’s response was to attack the prosecutor and ask the Organization of American States (OAS) to apply its Democratic Charter to preserve Peruvian democracy supposedly under attack. The OAS sent a mission that ended with a call for dialogue. Only two weeks later, Castillo embarked on his short-lived coup adventure.

Protests and repression

According to Peru’s Constitution, Boluarte should complete Castillo’s term. But observers generally agree there’s no way she can stay in office until 2024, never mind 2026, given the rejection she faces from protesters and political parties in Congress.

A wave of protests demanding her resignation rose as soon as she was sworn in, led mostly by students, Indigenous groups and unions. Many also demanded Castillo’s freedom and government action to address poverty and inequality. Some demands went further, including a call for a constituent assembly – the promise Castillo made before being removed from office – to produce more balanced representation, particularly for Indigenous people. For many of Peru’s poorest people, Castillo represented hope for change. With him gone, they feel forgotten.

Four days into the job, Boluarte declared a regional state of emergency, later extended to the whole country. Protests only increased, and security forces responded with extreme violence, often shooting to kill. No wonder so many Peruvians feel this isn’t a democracy anymore.

The state of Peruvian democracy

The Economist Intelligence Unit’s Democracy Index rates Peru as a ‘flawed democracy’. A closer look at the index’s components suggests what’s wrong with Peruvian democracy: it gets its lowest score in the political culture dimension. In line with this, the Americas Barometer shows Peru has one of the lowest levels of support for democracy in Latin America and is the country where opposition to coups is weakest.

Peru’s democracy scores low on critical indicators such as checks and balances, corruption and political participation. This points to the heart of the problem: it’s a dysfunctional system where those elected to govern fail to do so and public policies are inconsistent and ineffective.

According to every survey, just a tiny minority of Peruvians are satisfied with their country’s democracy. The fact that no full-fledged alternative has yet emerged seems to be the only thing currently keeping democracy alive. Democratic renewal is urgently needed, or an authoritarian substitute could well take hold.

Inés M. Pousadela is CIVICUS Senior Research Specialist, co-director and writer for CIVICUS Lens and co-author of the State of Civil Society Report.

 

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By External Source
Feb 2 2023 (IPS-Partners)

 

UN Secretary-General António Guterres is calling on world leaders to support the UN’s global fund for education in emergencies, Education Cannot Wait (ECW), at the upcoming ECW High-Level Financing Conference in Geneva Switzerland, 16 and 17 February 2023.

Around the world, 222 million children and adolescents impacted by conflict, climate change, displacement and other protracted crises are in need of urgent education support.

In his video statement, Guterres called on leaders to support ECW and its strategic partners in realizing 222 million dreams for the world’s most vulnerable children.

The ECW High-Level Financing Conference seeks to mobilize much-needed resources from donors, foundations and high-net-worth individuals to deliver on ECW’s four-year strategic plan, which will mobilize US$1.5 billion in additional resources to reach 20 million children and adolescents caught in some of the world’s worst humanitarian crises.

The Conference is co-hosted by Switzerland and ECW, in close collaboration with the Governments of Colombia, Germany, Niger, Norway and South Sudan, and will be open to the public as a live-streamed virtual event.

Register today

 

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Protesters in Mulhouse, France warn of the dangers of privatisation. The sign reads ‘when everything is privatised, we will be deprived of everything. Credit: NeydtStock / Shutterstock.com

By Océane Blavot, Rodolfo Bejarano and Mae Buenaventura
BRUSSELS / LIMA / MANILA, Feb 2 2023 (IPS)

Last month, we joined more than 1000 representatives from all sectors of civil society who came together in Santiago de Chile to debate the future of – and threats to – public services the world over.

Participants discussed the chronic underfunding which continues to drive economic inequality, injustice and austerity, and the neocolonial policies that maintain the status quo.

Today those debates have resulted in the launch of “Our Future is Public: The Santiago Declaration for Public Services” – a momentous agreement signed by more than 200 organisations vowing to work to “transform our systems, valuing human rights and ecological sustainability over GDP growth and narrowly defined economic gains.”

One of the most damaging initiatives that has deeply affected the delivery of public services and infrastructure projects on all continents is the rise of public-private partnerships, or PPPs.

They have long been promoted by institutions such as the World Bank as a silver bullet to close the so-called gap to finance investments in services and infrastructure. The premise is that the private sector can deliver these services more efficiently and to a higher standard than the public sector, despite extensive evidence to the contrary.

We lay the pitfalls of PPPs bare in our new report History RePPPeated II: Why public-private partnerships are not the solution – the second in a series of investigations documenting the impacts of PPPs across Africa, Asia, Latin America and Europe.

Launched at the Santiago conference with some of the partners responsible for investigating and authoring the case studies, the report not only highlights negative impacts of PPPs, but sets out recommendations for how to better finance infrastructure and public services in the face of false solutions that have been proposed given the context of the current polycrisis.

These narratives wholly reflect red flags that are raised in the Santiago Declaration.

Through these investigations, we discovered failures on multiple levels in PPPs covering infrastructure such as roads and water supplies, as well as vital public services like healthcare and education.

From escalating costs for the stretched public sector to environmental and social impacts, we found time and again that communities had been ignored, displaced, and had their basic rights violated by thoughtless projects designed and implemented in the pursuit of profit.

A prime example is that of the the Melamchi Water Supply Project (MWSP) in Nepal. First announced nearly a quarter of a century ago, the project’s aim was to deliver clean, reliable and affordable water to 1.5 million people in Kathmandu.

And yet, 24 years later, residents are still waiting, while communities at the Melamchi water source are facing scarcity of water and eroded livelihoods. Instead of safe, clean drinking water – an internationally recognised human right – they have witnessed an extraordinary revolving door of private companies and institutional funders, including the World Bank, who have each failed to deliver.

To add to the MWSP’s colossal failure, 80 hectares of farmland have been lost to the project, a heavy blow to local residents, and up to 80 households have been forcibly displaced due to construction.

Who owns and controls our resources and public services became even more vitally important with the outbreak of the Covid pandemic in March 2020. Market-based models cannot be relied upon to deliver on human rights or the fight against inequalities as they are accountable only to their shareholders and not to their users.

This resulting focus on profit is overwhelmingly apparent in our case study from Liberia. Here, US firm Bridge International Academies (now NewGlobe) ‘abandoned’ its students and teachers during the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, shutting down schools and cutting teachers’ salaries by 80-90 per cent, despite being paid by the government.

And yet, in 2021 the Liberian government indefinitely extended the project, effectively subsidising a US for-profit firm at a cost that is at least double government spending on public schools.

In Peru, the Expressway Yellow Line has emerged as one of the most controversial projects ever carried out. This toll road was supposed to ease congestion issues in the capital city Lima, but instead toll rates have been unreasonably increased on at least eight occasions.

This generated almost $23 million for the private company involved and transpired with the complicity of public officials. Meanwhile, the Peruvian state suffered economic damages of US$1.2 million due to under the table negotiations between public officials and the private company, which led to the incorrect implementation and improper modifications of the contract years after it was initially signed.

Today, questions regarding the project and conflicts surrounding its implementation remain, while Lima residents’ expectations of quality road infrastructure to improve living conditions for those who have been most affected, continue to go unmet.

The human cost of the PPP projects showcased by History RePPPeated II is self-evident, but they are far from the exception. Rather they serve to illustrate common failures with the PPP model that risk compromising fundamental human rights and that undermine the fight against climate change and inequalities.

Their continuing promotion is one of the many reasons why we support the Santiago Declaration. Together with all its signatories, we will strengthen resistance to PPPs with their focus on private-led interests and promote public-public or public-common partnerships for a future that is public.

Océane Blavot is Senior Campaign and Outreach Coordinator, Development Finance, European Network on Debt and Development; Rodolfo Bejarano is Economist and Analyst – New Financial Architecture, Latin American Network for Economic and Social Justice; Mae Buenaventura is Debt Justice Programme, Team Manager, Asian People’s Movement on Debt and Development

The Santiago Declaration on Public Services, is a global manifesto signed by more than 300 organisations from around the world, and which was launched at the end of last week. The Declaration signals the start of an international movement to move away from the privatisation of public services and towards a future that is publicly funded and controlled. It is also the outcome of a 4-day conference during which several CSOs from around the world launched a report containing a series of investigations highlighting the failures of the PPP model in projects around the world, titled History RePPPeated II.

This OpEd is authored by three of the report’s authors.

IPS UN Bureau

 

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By Jomo Kwame Sundaram
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia, Feb 2 2023 (IPS)

Few policymakers ever claim credit for causing stagnation and recessions. Yet, they do so all the time, justifying their actions by some supposedly higher purpose.

Now, that higher purpose is checking inflation as if it is the worst option for people today. Many supposed economists make up tall tales that inflation causes economic contraction which ordinary mortals do not know or understand.

Jomo Kwame Sundaram

Inflating inflation’s significance
Since early 2022, like many others in the world, Americans have been preoccupied with inflation. But official US data show inflation has been slowing since mid-2022.

Recent trends since mid-2022 are clear. Inflation is no longer accelerating, but slowing. And for most economists, only accelerating inflation gives cause for concern.

Annualized inflation since has only been slightly above the official, but nonetheless arbitrary 2% inflation target of most Western central banks.

At its peak, the brief inflationary surge, in the second quarter of last year, undoubtedly reached the “highest (price) levels since the early 1980s” because of the way it is measured.

After decades of ‘financialization’, the public and politicians unwittingly support moneyed interests who want to minimize inflation to make the most of their financial assets.

War and price
Russia’s aggression against Ukraine began last February, with retaliatory sanctions following suit. Both have disrupted supplies, especially of fuel and food. The inflation spike in the four months after the Russian invasion was mainly due to ‘supply shocks’.

Price increases were triggered by the war and retaliatory sanctions, especially for fuel, food and fertilizer. Although no longer accelerating, prices remain higher than a year before.

To be sure, price pressures had been building up with other supply disruptions. Also, demand has been changing with the new Cold War against China, the Covid-19 pandemic and ‘recovery’, and credit tightening in the last year.

There is little evidence of any more major accelerating factors. There is no ‘wage-price spiral’ as prices have recently been rising more than wages despite government efforts ensuring full employment since the 2008 global financial crisis.

Despite difficulties due to inflation, tens of millions of Americans are better off than before, e.g., with the ten million jobs created in the last two years. Under Biden, wages for poorly paid workers have risen faster than consumer prices.

Higher borrowing costs have also weakened the lot of working people everywhere. Such adverse consequences would be much less likely if the public better understood recent price increases, available policy options and their consequences.

With the notable exception of the Bank of Japan, most other major central banks have been playing ‘catch-up’ with the US Federal Reserve interest rate hikes. To be sure, inflation has already been falling for many reasons, largely unrelated to them.

Making stagnation
But higher borrowing costs have reduced spending, for both consumption and investment. This has hastened economic slowdown worldwide following more than a decade of largely lackluster growth since the 2008 global financial crisis.

Ill-advised earlier policies now limit what governments can do in response. With the Fed sharply raising interest rates over the last year, developing country central banks have been trying, typically in vain, to stem capital outflows to the US and other ‘safe havens’ raising interest rates.

Having opened their capital accounts following foreign advice, developing country central banks always offer higher raise interest rates, hoping more capital will flow in rather than out.

Interestingly, conservative US economists Milton Friedman and Ben Bernanke have shown the Fed has worsened past US downturns by raising interest rates, instead of supporting enterprises in their time of need.

Four decades ago, increased servicing costs triggered government debt crises in Latin America and Africa, condemning them to ‘lost decades’. Policy conditions were then imposed by the International Monetary Fund and World Bank for access to emergency loans.

Globalization double-edged
Economic globalization policies at the turn of the century are being significantly reversed, with devastating consequences for developing countries after they opened their economies to foreign trade and investment.

Encouraging foreign portfolio investment has increasingly been at the expense of ‘greenfield’ foreign direct investment enhancing new economic capacities and capabilities.

The new Cold War has arguably involved more economic weapons, e.g., sanctions, than the earlier one. Trump’s and Japanese ‘reshoring’ and ‘friend-shoring’ discriminate among investors, remaking ‘value’ or ‘supply chains’.

Arguably, establishing the World Trade Organization in 1995 was the high water mark for multilateral trade liberalization, setting a ‘one size fits all’ approach for all, regardless of means. More recently, Biden has continued Trump’s reversal of earlier trade liberalization, even at the regional level.

1995 also saw strengthening intellectual property rights internationally, limiting technology transfers and progress. Recent ‘trade conflicts’ increasingly involve access to high technology, e.g., in the case of Huawei, TSMC and Samsung.

With declining direct tax rates almost worldwide, governments face more budget constraints. The last year has seen these diminished fiscal means massively diverted for military spending and strategic ends, cutting resources for development, sustainability, equity and humanitarian ends.

In this context, the new international antagonisms conspire to make this a ‘perfect storm’ of economic stagnation and regression. Hence, those striving for international peace and cooperation may well be our best hope against the ‘new barbarism’.

IPS UN Bureau

 

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abitha Siman recalls an attack in Kaduna, Nigeria, which left her twin daughter, husband and co-wife dead. Insecurity in Nigeria is a major issue and is high on the agenda during the upcoming elections. Credit: Oluwatobi Enitan/IPS

By Oluwatobi Enitan
ABUJA, Feb 2 2023 (IPS)

Tabitha Siman, a survivor of an attack at her home, says life is not worth living after her twin daughters, husband, and co-wife were killed during an attack at her home.

Siman lives in southern Kaduna in Nigeria, where the impact of kidnapping in the region hit the headlines when bandits attacked a train heading for Abuja, killing eight and kidnapping 168. Many months later and after about USD 13 million in ransom money was paid, all were released. But the notorious rail incident is not an isolated incident. In the past year, Kaduna has seen more than 1800 deaths due to insecurity, with attacks being reported almost weekly.

Siman recalls her family were at home in Zango Kataf Local Government in July 2021 when they received information that a nearby village had been raided.

Her husband and a friend rushed to warn their neighbours because the Agbak, the village under siege, was very close.

“We started hearing sporadic gunshots. I shouted at the top of my voice, calling everyone to scamper for safety. I shouted the Fulani were attacking.”

She and her parents-in-law and one daughter were able to run to safety.

“Every other person we knew didn’t make it out on time. Here they lie in state in their mass graves.”

Insecurity, insurgency, and banditry are increasing concerns as the country returns to the polls next year for its seventh successive general election since it returned to democracy 23 years ago.

 

Women pose outside a polling station during the 2019 Nigerian Elections. Analysts say security is one of the major issues Nigeria’s future president will need to address. Credit: Commonwealth

Analysts say rising insecurity in the country could impact its outcome – with Nigeria’s security apparatus unable to guarantee security. Al Chukwuma Okoli writing in The Conversation, lists security as one of the five major challenges facing the next president. Other concerns are national cohesion, the economy, the university system and the fight against corruption.

“Nigeria is more divided and polarised than it’s ever been. The cleavages and fault-lines of ethnocentrism, sectarianism, sectionalism, parochialism and religious extremism are pushing the country to the brink,” Okoli writes.

He describes the state of national security as “apocalyptic”.

“The receding Boko Haram insurgency in the northeast is being substituted by a nexus of banditry and terrorism in the north-west. The north-central is still grappling with the deadly farmer-herder crisis. For its part, the south-east is enmeshed in separatist violence and the associated criminal opportunism. There is an upswing in gang and ritual brigandage in the south-west while south-south is still afflicted with militancy, piracy and oil theft.”

Nigeria’s insecurity has many antecedents, with many attacks, like the one affecting Siman, blamed on Fulani herders – who are seen as violent perpetrators, as climate change is believed to be behind their move to new migratory routes bringing them into conflict with settled farming communities. However, the Fulani are only one of several instigators of violence. According to the International Crisis Group, the insecurity has “escalated amid a boom in organised crime, including cattle rustling, kidnapping for ransom and village raids. Jihadist groups are now stepping in to take advantage of the security crisis.”

John Campbell writing for The Council on Foreign Relations, notes that Kaduna is increasingly the epicentre of violence in Nigeria “with conflicts over water and land use escalating in the rural areas.”

In the capital, Kaduna, there has been prolonged political, ethnic and religious violence – some dating back to colonial times when Lord Frederick Lugard, the first governor-general of an amalgamated Nigeria, built the city and encouraged the Muslims to inhabit the north and the Christians the south.

Whatever the cause of the ongoing banditry, kidnappings and violence, it’s uncertain whether the Nigerian security apparatus can keep it under control.

“The government needs put in place a robust and comprehensive security plan to deal with the risks to a smooth election process,” analysts and academics Freedom Onuoha and Oluwole Ojewale write in The Conversation. “Security forces must plan for operations involving, for example, ground and air raids against armed groups in their strongholds. There is also a need for information and psychological operations to tackle the propaganda and disinformation put out by armed groups.”

The International Crisis Group says a multipronged approach is needed. “Nigeria’s federal authorities and state governments in the northwest should work more closely, not only to heal longstanding rifts within communities and curb violence but also to address the structural causes of insecurity in the region. International partners should lend their support and expertise as well.”

Another attack survivor Jonathan Madaki, a schoolboy, remembers what happened on the morning of March 11, 2019, in an attack also blamed on Fulani, which left 73 people dead in Dogonoma Community, Kajuru Local Government Area.

On a Monday morning, they heard the sound of gunfire from a group they identified as Fulani. His mother told him to run; she went in one direction, and he and his sister in another.

“I was hit in the hand by a bullet, and I fell to the ground; despite being in pain, I appealed to my sister not to scream, and she did not scream. We stayed there for hours,” Madaki said.

The siblings finally trekked to another village and were hospitalised; once discharged, a good Samaritan enrolled him in school.

For villagers in Southern Kaduna, who are predominantly farmers, keeping body and soul together has been difficult for years. Farmers often cannot harvest crops because almost all the villages have become an enclave for the attacks.

Villagers like Bala Musa have equally lost hope in the Government restoring peace to the affected communities.

Musa, a blacksmith and a farmer, says they often find themselves in the centre of the conflict, targeted by attackers and accused by the police and soldiers of collaborating with bandits. Musa says the police shot him because they were convinced the locals were concealing weapons and hiding Fulani men.

All presidential candidates for the 2023 elections have pledged to address insecurity, but based on published articles, their promises lack details of in-depth strategies. – Additional reporting Cecilia Russell

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

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Credit: Ramón Díaz Yanes – Cartoon Movement’. The image was originally featured in The New Humanitarian | Why so many humanitarian crises are ‘forgotten’, and 5 ideas to change that

By Martin Scott, Kate Wright and Mel Bunce
NORWICH / EDINBURGH / LONDON, Feb 1 2023 (IPS)

In a new book, entitled Humanitarian Journalists: Covering Crises from a Boundary Zone, we document the unique reporting practices of a small but influential group of journalists who defy conventional approaches to covering humanitarian crises.

We argue that these humanitarian journalists show us that another kind of crises reporting is possible.

But who exactly are humanitarian journalists? What motivates them? Who do they work for? And how is their coverage of humanitarian affairs different to mainstream journalism?

In this article, we answer these questions though an account of ‘Sophia’ a fictional journalist whose story helps illustrate the key themes of our research.

Sophia: A humanitarian journalist

Sophia is a humanitarian journalist. She works for a small non-profit news outlet that covers international aid and global affairs. She regularly reports on under-reported crises, with a focus on in-depth, explanatory, and solutions-oriented journalism.

She is particularly keen to highlight the perspective, not only of affected citizens, but of a range of other local actors including rebels, aid workers, politicians, and think-tanks. She has significant freedom to choose which stories to cover and how to report them and regularly commissions local stringers living in affected countries.

Sophia used to work for a large international news broadcaster. Despite having a permanent position and a significantly higher salary, she left after just eighteen months because she was frustrated by what she felt was their rigid and formulaic approach to covering global affairs. She thought that much of their coverage of recent humanitarian crises was superficial and fleeting.

Although she was proud that she helped break a news story revealing corruption within an international NGO, she worries that it unfairly damaged the reputation of the humanitarian sector as a whole, because some of the subtleties of international humanitarian response got lost in the reporting.

The news organisation Sophia works for now generates very little advertising or reader revenue and relies almost exclusively on short term grant funding from a very small number of private foundations. Although she has never felt under any pressure to cover stories in ways that might please their current, or potential donors, she does resent the amount of time it takes to meet their reporting requirements.

If their funding is cut, and she loses her job, she intends to work either as a freelance journalist, or as an aid agency press officer. The only other news outlet she is aware of that covers similar stories has recently closed due to a lack of funding.

Sophia has never actually met any of her current colleagues in person as they all work remotely, in different countries. During their daily online editorial meetings they frequently disagree about which stories fall within their remit.

There is no consensus about what makes a story ‘humanitarian’, as opposed to a human rights or global development issue, for example. For this reason, some of the stories she pitches still get rejected – and she doesn’t fully understand why.

Although Sophia was recently nominated for a One World Media award, in general, she is frustrated by the lack of recognition and reach of her work. She also worries about being able to pay the bills – she knows her job is precarious.

But despite this lack of external recognition and the financial risks, Sophia is glad she took this job – because it allows her the freedom to do the kind of work she has always wanted to do.

Sophia is one of a small group of ‘humanitarian journalists’ whose work bridges the worlds of international news production and humanitarianism. She is motivated by both the traditional journalistic desire to document, witness and explain events, and the desire to help alleviate suffering and save lives.

There are a small number of non-profit news outlets employing humanitarian journalists like Sophia, who play a valuable role in the global media system.

Dr Martin Scott is Associate Professor in Media and Global Development at the University of East Anglia; Dr Kate Wright is Senior Lecturer in Media and Communications, Politics, and International Relations at the University of Edinburgh; Prof Mel Bunce is Professor of International Journalism and Head of the Journalism Department at City, University of London.

This article is based on an extract from Humanitarian Journalists: Covering Crises from a Boundary Zone by Dr Scott, Dr Wright, and Prof. Bunce

IPS UN Bureau

 

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With China’s population at 1.4126 billion, the reported decrease of 850,000 amounts to 0.06 percent. Credit: Shutterstock.

By Joseph Chamie
PORTLAND, USA, Feb 1 2023 (IPS)

China’s announcement on 17 January 2023 that its population had declined for the first time in 60 years has fostered population decline hysteria and promoted more Ponzi demography in many parts of the world.

Pro-population growth advocates, including many policy makers, traditional economists, business leaders, conservative writers and media commentators, are advancing the hysteria of demographic gloom and doom following the Chinese government’s announcement of a decline in the world’s largest population.

China’s population decline was reported to be 850,000, which is the difference between 9.56 million births in 2022 against 10.41 million deaths. With China’s population at 1.4126 billion, the reported decrease of 850,000 amounts to 0.06 percent.

Much of the media has described China’s population decline with various hysteria phrases, including “demographic time bomb”, “disappearing population” and “demographic collapse” (Chart 1).

 

Source: Author’s compilation from news media.

 

The population decline hysteria has in turn facilitated the promotion of Ponzi demography, which calls for sustained robust rates of population growth. Ponzi demography is basically a pyramid scheme that generates more money, power and influence for some by adding on more and more people through natural increase and in some cases immigration.

Its underlying strategy is relatively straightforward: privatize benefits and profits and socialize burdens and costs incurred from increased population growth. Ponzi demography, however, is clearly unsustainable. Populations cannot continue to grow indefinitely without having serious social, economic, environmental and climatic consequences.

The unsustainability of Ponzi demography, however, doesn’t seem to be a concern of those calling for continuing, robust population growth with no endpoint in sight. The unsustainability and critical consequences of long-term population growth are typically ignored, dismissed or trivialized.

Instead of getting caught up with population decline hysteria and Ponzi demography, it’s prudent, instructive and advisable to review the past growth of China’s population, examine its likely future growth, and consider some of the major challenges posed by those expected demographic changes.

China’s population of 1.4126 billion people in 2022, which represents 18 percent of the world’s total, grew rapidly during the recent past. In 1950 the Chinese population was slightly more than a half a billion. China’s one billion population milestone was reached in 1981. By the close of the 20th century, China’s population had grown to approximately 1.3 billion by (Figure 1).

 

Source: United Nations.

 

China’s future population over the coming decades depends largely on the course of the country’s fertility rate. If its fertility rate of 1.18 births per woman were to remain constant at its current level, the Chinese population at midcentury is projected to decline to 1.28 billion, a decrease of about 10 percent.

The often-cited United Nations medium variant population projection assumes China’s fertility rate will increase slightly over the coming several decades, reaching 1.39 births per woman by 2050. If that were to occur, China’s population in 2050 is again projected to decline, reaching 1.31 billion.

Under the UN high variant population projection, China’s fertility rate is a half child higher than medium variant, i.e., 1.89 births per woman by 2050. The high variant projection results in China’s population in 2050 remaining essentially unchanged at its current size of 1.41 billion.

Alternatively, fertility in the UN low variant population projection is a half child lower than the medium variant, i.e., 0.89 births per woman by 2050. The expected 2050 population of China in the low variant projection is 1.22 billion, a decrease of 15 percent from its current population.

China is not alone in its low fertility rate. Approximately 100 countries worldwide have a fertility rate below the replacement level of 2.1 births per woman.

Moreover, the fertility rates of some thirty countries in 2022 were less than 1.5 births per woman. Several of those countries had fertility rates that were roughly half or less than the replacement level, including China, Italy and South Korea, and consequently are confronting population decline (Figure 2).

 

Source: United Nations.

 

The low fertility rates of today, including China’s, are expected to increase somewhat in the coming decades. However, despite the desires, policies, and programs of governments to raise fertility levels, expectations of a return to replacement level fertility in the foreseeable future can be simply described as future fertility fantasies. Consequently, the current populations of some 50 countries, including China’s, are projected to be smaller by midcentury.

Instead of getting caught up with population decline hysteria and Ponzi demography, it’s prudent, instructive and advisable to review the past growth of China’s population, examine its likely future growth, and consider some of the major challenges posed by those expected demographic changes

In addition to population decline, China as well as many other low fertility countries are experiencing demographic ageing. The median age of China’s population is expected to continue rising during the 21st century. China’s median age increased from 18 years in 1970 to nearly 39 years today. By 2070 the median age of China’s population is expected to be 55 years, or three times the median age of the population in 1970.

Besides its expected population decline, demography ageing presents a major challenge for China. The consequences of the demographic realities of older population age structures with declining numbers of young workers supporting growing numbers of the elderly are likely unavoidable.

Consequently, careful rethinking, comprehensive evaluations and major adjustments, some likely to be unpopular with the public such as raising the official retirement age, will be needed.

In addition to China, many countries with below replacement fertility are expected to face declining populations and older age structures over the coming decades. In contrast, many other countries, especially in Africa, with fertility levels of more than four births per woman are expected to have rapidly increasing populations and relatively young age structures throughout the century.

The net result of these substantial country differences in future population growth rates is that the world’s current population of 8 billion is projected to continue increasing. Over the next forty years, the world’s population is expected to add another 2 billion people, reaching 10 billion around 2058.

So, in conclusion, it’s time to stop fostering population decline hysteria with its doom and gloom and promoting Ponzi demography of unsustainable, continued robust population growth. It’s time to recognize, understand and analyze today’s demographics and their likely trends over the coming decades. And also importantly, it’s time for countries to prepare for the formidable challenges of their respective expected demographic realities in the 21st century.

Joseph Chamie is a consulting demographer, a former director of the United Nations Population Division and author of numerous publications on population issues, including his recent book, “Population Levels, Trends, and Differentials”.

Moniza Kakar gets thumb impressions of Afghan women on the legal document called Wakalatnama, which is a document filed by a party in order to appoint a lawyer to plead on their behalf. Credit: Moniza Kakar

By Zofeen Ebrahim
KARACHI, Feb 1 2023 (IPS)

“If I return to Afghanistan, the Taliban will kill me; I’m prepared to stay in a prison in Karachi than face those ruthless people,” said 24-year-old Afghan refugee, Sabrina Zalmai*, referring to the recent crackdown on hundreds of Afghans residing without proper documents in the metropolis, who are being arrested and then deported back to Afghanistan.

Having taken refuge in Pakistan for almost a year without a visa, she said she was feeling extremely unsafe. “We are trying to remain as invisible as possible,” she said.

But, said 45-year-old Naghma Ziauddin*, a former broadcast journalist working in Kabul, and having fled to Karachi, living under the radar, illegally, in the city was difficult. If arrested and deported, she said, she would instantly be recognized since she had been “very vocal in my hatred for the Taliban, and they know my voice.”

She, her husband, two sons, and a sick daughter-in-law came to Karachi in March 2022. “If they put us behind bars, how will we take care of my daughter-in-law?” she said, adding: “Because of the recent arrests, we have become caged in our home. I hardly go out; I am always anxious about being apprehended when I take my daughter-in-law to see the doctor for her monthly check-up.”

According to official reports, about 250,000 Afghans have fled to Pakistan after the Taliban seized power in August 2021.

But the amnesty extended to those fleeing Afghanistan and entering Pakistan with valid visas that have expired, terminated in December 2022.

To renew their visas, they have to re-enter Afghanistan, which they still find a dangerous place.

A majority of those who fled feared they would find themselves in the crosshairs of the Taliban. These included soldiers, judges, journalists, human rights defenders, and those whom the Taliban despised, the Shia Hazaras, the LGBTQIA+, and those who were musicians and singers. The economic immigrants who were without work in Afghanistan were also among the refugees.

Ziauddin finds deportations “very inhuman”.

Not only is it inhuman, said Umer Ijaz Gilani, an Islamabad-based lawyer, it is a violation of the non-refoulement (forcibly returning refugees or asylum seekers where they may be persecuted) principle. Acting on behalf of 100 Afghan human rights defenders seeking asylum, he has urged the government’s National Commission on Human Rights to direct state authorities not to deport them. “We may have to take them to the court otherwise,” he told IPS in a phone interview.

According to Moniza Kakar, a Karachi-based young human rights lawyer, Afghan refugees are being arrested across Pakistan. “They get deported immediately in other provinces, but in Sindh, the arrested Afghans are put behind bars for months, treated badly in prisons, fined, and then deported,” she said.

Kakar is helping in the release of the Afghan refugees in Sindh. “So far, of the 1,400 arrested (including 200 women and 350 children), 600 have been released and deported,” she told IPS.

“If a person lives illegally in any country, the government takes action and deals with them according to the law,” Sindh Information Minister Sharjeel Memon said, justifying the arrests. “Nobody has been sentenced to jail for more than two months,” he added. He also denied that children were put behind bars.

Kakar said because Pakistan had not adopted the 1951 Refugee Convention and its 1967 Protocol, “which stops states from punishing people who enter a country illegally”, it is able to invoke the domestic Foreigners Act 1946 to use against Afghans residing in Pakistan illegally, to punish and deport them.

Of the imprisoned Afghans, Kakar said, nearly 400 had been arrested wrongfully as they had valid documents that allowed them to stay in Pakistan. They remained incarcerated for months till their cases were heard.

“Some Afghans arrested in Jacobabad have been sentenced to as much as six months rigorous imprisonment and a fine of Rs 5,000 imposed on all males, and Rs 1,000 each on all minors and females,” she said, contradicting Memon’s statement to media. “Why were minors fined when the government claims they were not offenders or imprisoned?” she asked.

Kakar said because Pakistan had not adopted the 1951 Refugee Convention and its 1967 Protocol, “which stops states from punishing people who enter a country illegally”, it is able to invoke the domestic Foreigners Act 1946 to use against Afghans residing in Pakistan illegally, to punish and deport them.

Amnesty International has urged the Pakistani government to stop the deportations and extend support to the refugees so they can live with dignity and free of fear of being returned to Afghanistan. In a letter to Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, Agnes Callamard, secretary general of Amnesty International, said she found it alarming to note the country lacked national legislation for the protection of refugees and asylum seekers.

Pakistan may not have signed the international refuge protocol, but, argued Lahore-based Sikander Shah, who teaches at the law school at the Lahore University of Management Sciences, there were several international human rights conventions that Pakistan had adopted, like the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the Interna­t­i­­onal Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, the Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women, the Con­ve­n­­tion on the Rights of the Child, the Convention aga­inst Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, that can be “turned to, to help the hapless refugees”.

“My experience has been that the judges in Sindh do not empathize with the Afghan refugees,” pointed out Kakar. “In fact, one judge said in the open court that the refugees did not deserve to be looked at from a humanitarian lens; that they were criminals who were involved in terrorist activities in our country,” said the young rights activist bemoaning the open hostility prevalent not just among other segments of society, but even her own legal fraternity.

She also said the Afghans were especially ill-treated both by prison authorities and the inmates. “They complain of being lugged with more than their share of work and not always provided with meals,” said Kakar.

Many say they face constant discrimination.

Armineh Nasar* 21, another refugee, who came to Karachi last year, in December 2021, with her mother and three siblings, said she had experienced much suspicion. “I have witnessed how Pakistani mothers pull away their children when they find out their kids are playing with Afghan kids. I’ve heard them say, we are terrorists,” she said.

Before the Taliban took over Kabul, Zalmai was working in Kabul in a nongovernmental organization. But the reason she would find herself on the wrong side of the Taliban if she were deported was that, like Ziauddin, she had been “very vocal in my dislike of the Taliban, and they know who I am.” She fled with her grandmother in January 2022 after her family got hold of a hitlist of Taliban which had her name on it as well.

With a BA in economics, her dream of opening a boutique in Kabul’s upscale market has been dashed. “Right now, I work as a domestic help, sweeping floors, earning up to Rs 300 (USD 1.30 cents) for half a day’s work,” because she cannot find any office work as it would require her to show an identification card. “I had never done this kind of work even at home as I was either studying or working outside. “We are a family of seven; I’m the eldest, and I was the main bread earner of my family, earning Afghani 15,000 (USD 166) per month,” she told IPS. Her father, a security guard in an office, earned less.

Like the other two, Nasar, too, cannot find work, so she keeps hopping from one job to the other till the issue of documents comes up. “I’ve worked in an office and in a supermarket, each lasting three months, and then had to leave as I was unable to show any identity card.” Having studied till 12 grade in Kabul, she wanted to enroll in higher studies. “But the university administration wants to see a refugee card before giving me admission. I’ve missed a year because of that!” said Nasar, who wants to study computer sciences and enter the profession of banking.

But it is not just that they cannot work; without documentation, Afghans cannot access housing or open bank accounts (to be able to receive money). They also cannot obtain a SIM card or seek medical treatment at a government facility.

With no one in her family able to earn, Ziauddin said she was worried the family would soon run out of money. The cash they had after selling her jewelry and household items to flee to Pakistan is drying up fast, as are all their savings.

“I am under a lot of anxiety that has caused my blood pressure to rise,” said Ziauddin. Her doctor had suggested she begin walking as a form of exercise, which she did, but she gave it up after she got robbed last month.

“If only the UNHCR could provide us with the documents stating we are refugees, we would not face so many problems,” she said.

But it seems even the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees’ hands are tied.

Since 2021, the UNHCR has been in discussion with the government on measures and mechanisms to support vulnerable Afghans. “Regrettably, no progress has been made,” said UNHCR spokesperson Qaiser Khan Afridi.

He said the refugee agency was ready to work with the government of Pakistan in identifying Afghans in need of protection and to seek solutions to their plight. But the latter has yet to agree to recognize the newly arriving Afghans as refugees. “It does, however, allow Afghans in possession of a valid passport and visa to cross into Pakistan; the online visa application process is also available to those with passports.”

In addition, said Afridi, in line with its mandate, the UNHCR strives to find durable solutions for refugees. “But the realization of such solutions is beyond its control.” It all depends on countries to offer third-country resettlement opportunities or to allow refugees to naturalize as citizens in the country where they sought asylum. “Resettlement, unfortunately, cannot be available for the entire refugee population as the opportunities are limited,” he agreed but said the refugee agency was urging RST (Refugee Status Determination) countries (like Pakistan) to increase the resettlement quotas.

*Names have been changed to protect their identity. 
IPS UN Bureau Report

 

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A wind energy generation plant located in Loiyangalani in northwestern Kenya. Credit: Isaiah Esipisu/IPS

By External Source
WASHINGTON DC, Jan 31 2023 (IPS)

Meeting our climate change goals will require massive investments in clean energy projects, in both advanced economies and across the Global South.  But financing projects in the latter group of countries requires an increase in foreign capital inflows that will be constrained by currency exchange rate risk. Creating an innovative Exchange Rate Coverage Facility can help to overcome this constraint.

Over the coming two decades, annual energy emissions across the Global South (not counting China) are currently projected to grow by 5 Gt.  Analysis by the International Energy Agency, the World Economic Forum and the World Bank shows that reversing this dynamic so as to meet the climate goals of the Paris Agreement, while also supporting the development needs of these countries, will require a four- to seven-fold increase in clean energy investments by 2030 from the current level of $150 billion.

If this currency risk cannot be overcome, it will be impossible to mobilize the level of foreign capital inflows that developing countries require to grow their energy systems with a low-emissions trajectory. This poses risks for both rich and poorer countries in the global effort to lower greenhouse gas emissions

Significantly, most of the needed clean energy projects provide domestic-oriented services (such as power from solar or wind power plants, public transit systems, building efficiency retrofit campaigns, electric vehicle charging stations). These generate local currency revenues.

Although much of the funding for these projects will come from domestic resources, the sheer magnitude of the required investment will necessitate significant amounts of foreign capital, potentially $180 billion or more per year by 2030.

Exchange rate risk (i.e., the potential that the local currency devalues relative to the foreign currency loan or other investment) is a major impediment to mobilizing large foreign capital flows for these projects (albeit, not the only one).

This risk translates into many problematic impacts. Notably, it increases the cost of capital, raises the financial liabilities of domestic stakeholders as their local currency depreciates, and, perhaps most significantly, constrains the level of foreign investment.

While currency hedging and other options exist (including specialized programs for developing countries), they can be expensive and are lacking for many Global South currencies, particularly at the long tenors, low cost and large scale required to support many clean energy investments.

If this currency risk cannot be overcome, it will be impossible to mobilize the level of foreign capital inflows that developing countries require to grow their energy systems with a low-emissions trajectory. This poses risks for both rich and poorer countries in the global effort to lower greenhouse gas emissions.

What to do to address this impediment? We propose an Exchange Rate Coverage Facility (ERCF), a blended-finance vehicle that would be funded by a combination of host country stakeholders, multilateral/bilateral development and climate agencies, and climate-engaged international capital.

The ERCF would be established as an offshore facility to absorb currency exchange risk on its balance sheet. It would issue guarantees protecting international lenders against this risk (see figure 1), while in parallel helping to insulate domestic sponsors from it. The Facility would pay any and all shortfalls between the value of contracted local currency (LC) payments and foreign currency (FC) debt repayments if the local currency (LC)depreciates relative to pre-defined  exchange rate .

 

Figure 1: Clean Energy Exchange Rate Coverage Facility Model

 

Under our proposed financing structure, the Facility would be a “blended finance” vehicle funded by the following :

(i) carbon credits generated by the clean energy project that are assigned to the Facility, which would cover “first loss”;

(ii) multilateral development banks (including guarantees counter-guaranteed by host countries), development finance institutions and other development/climate agencies, providing funding for defined subsequent losses; and

(iii) international capital, including philanthropies, sovereign wealth funds, and interested private institutions, covering “third loss”.

A fuller description of this facility is set out in the report: “Scaling Clean Energy Through Climate Finance Innovation: Structure of an Exchange Rate Coverage Facility for Developing Countries.”

 

Figure 2: The “Ladder” of Coverage for Local Currency Depreciation in the ERCF

 

The Facility could generate multiple benefits:

(i) catalyzing additional foreign financing for clean energy projects in developing countries;

(ii) lowering exposure of local project stakeholders to currency exchange rate shifts, thereby reducing prospect of tariff increases if the LC depreciates;

(iii) reducing the cost of foreign financing to clean energy projects;

(iv) facilitating scalability of coverage;

(v) supporting the growth of carbon credits projects and markets;

(vi) enabling funders to leverage financial impact through blended-finance structure; and

(vii) flexibility to include specialized windows (e.g., country-specific programs, including under the Just Energy Transition Partnerships being discussed with South Africa, Indonesia, Vietnam and others).

To mobilize international capital flows in the magnitude required to achieve the dual objectives of sustained development and low emissions, there is a need for new financial tools.

The proposed blended-finance ERCF is being incubated as a solution to address currency exchange risk as part of the initiative on Mobilizing Investments for Clean Energy in Emerging Economies. Its proponents welcome interested organizations and individual experts to join forces on the implementation of a pilot Facility to facilitate increased funding for the global clean energy transition.

 

Authors: Philippe Benoit, Adjunct Senior Research Scholar, Center on Global Energy Policy, Columbia University; Jonathan Elkind, Senior Research Scholar, Center on Global Energy Policy, Columbia University; Justine Roche, Energy Initiative Lead, World Economic Forum

This piece was first published by the World Economic Forum

Youn Sun Nah in Brussels (photo by A.M.)

By SWAN
BRUSSELS, Jan 31 2023 (IPS)

When the parents of Korean jazz singer Youn Sun Nah realized that the COVID-19 pandemic had begun, they called and urged her to return to Seoul from New York, where she was based at the time.

“They said buy the ticket immediately,” the singer recalls. “There’ll be a total lockdown and you might never be able to come home. When I watched television and heard that borders would be closed, I packed my bags and I got the last ticket. I thought I would come back in three months, but not a year.”

In Korea, under travel restrictions like most of the world, Sun Nah wondered how she could fight the blues that threatened to overwhelm her. She began writing lyrics and composing music for what would become the extraordinary Waking World (Warner Music), her 11th album, released in 2022.

The songs are an exploration of the life of an artist, confronting angst and despair, and their haunting beauty – as well as experimental range of styles – may help Sun Nah to broaden her already substantial international audience, as she embarks on a “Spring Tour” beginning in March. With the memorable track Don’t Get Me Wrong, the album also contains a message about the dangers of spreading misinformation and hate, the “other” ills of the pandemic.

Born in Seoul to musician parents (and named Na Yoon-sun), Youn Sun Nah learned to play the piano as a child but grew up focusing on the usual curriculum at school. She graduated from university in 1992 with an arts degree, having studied literature, and she thought this would be her career direction. She didn’t want to pursue music, she says, because she had seen her parents – a choir director and a musical actress – work too hard.

Still, when the Korean Symphony Orchestra invited her to sing gospel songs in 1993, she began taking her first steps in the world of performing and recording, eventually moving to France to study music, as she relates. In Paris, she followed courses in traditional French chanson and enrolled at the prestigious CIM School of Jazz and Contemporary Music, where she had to overcome certain artistic challenges.

In the years since then, she has performed worldwide, sung at the closing ceremony of the Sochi Winter Olympics in 2014, contributed to a Nina Simone tribute album, and taken part in the 2017 International Jazz Day concert which was held in Havana, Cuba. (International Jazz Day is an initiative of legendary jazz pianist Herbie Hancock and the United Nations cultural agency, UNESCO.) In addition, she has received the Officier des Arts et des Lettres award from the French Ministry of Culture, the Sejong Culture Award from Korea, and a host of other music prizes and accolades.

In an interview with SWAN before a recent concert in Brussels, Youn Sun Nah spoke of her career with self-deprecating humour, discussing the effects of the pandemic on her art and the meanings behind the songs on Waking World. She shed light, too, on the experience of being a jazz singer amidst the global Korean pop music phenomenon. The edited interview follows.

SWAN: How would you describe yourself?

Youn Sun Nah: I’m a jazz singer from Korea. I studied jazz in France, and I travel around the world, and I’m kind of all mixed up, but I’m very happy with that.

SWAN: Are you now based in France?

YSN: No, I used to live in Paris for a long time, but actually, I don’t have a place to stay in France now. Every time I go there, it’s just for the tour, so I go to different places. I could say I live in Korea, but it’s a nomadic life.

SWAN: Let’s speak about Waking World, which was released last January. You’re doing a tour to promote it now, as that wasn’t possible earlier, during the pandemic.

YSN: Yes, we couldn’t really do the promotion thing, but c’est la vie. My manager called in 2021 to say: now you can come, you can take the plane now. So, I quickly bought the ticket, came back to France and recorded the album in Paris, and then I did some shows.

SWAN: A lot of artists have had to find ways to keep going during the pandemic, and it’s been especially difficult for many musicians who couldn’t tour, couldn’t be on the road. Has that been the case for you too?

YSN: As you know, jazz is really live music, and I think most jazz musicians feel the same way. You want to do as many gigs as possible. I don’t know if people listen to my music on platforms like Spotify or iTunes, but I feel very lucky to perform live music. More than 400 jazz festivals exist in France, so it’s a privilege.

SWAN: How did Waking World come about, and what does it mean for your fans, for you?

YSN: When I went back to Korea at the start of the pandemic, I was kind of optimistic that things wouldn’t last long. Everyone was wearing masks, but we could move around, just not take the plane. Then … six months, seven months, eight months. From that moment, I got really depressed, and I thought that maybe I should change my job, that maybe I would never be able to go back to Europe and perform. What can I do, I thought. All the musicians I played with were in Europe because I studied jazz in France, and I don’t know that many jazz musicians in Korea. So, I had a kind of homesickness even though I was home. But in Korea, we never lose hope, so I think that’s in my DNA. I told myself: you should wake up, and you should do something else; you can’t disappoint the people who’ve supported you for a long time, you should have something to present to your audience. So, I started writing some new tunes. Without the musicians I usually work with, I had to do it all by myself.

SWAN: But you’re used to singing in English?

YSN: Yes, after I started studying jazz. You know, when I came to France, I didn’t know what jazz was. If I’d known, I would definitely have gone to the States. I was so naïve … and maybe stupid? One day I’d asked one of my musician friends in Korea what kind of music I should study to become a good singer, and he’d said: do jazz. What is jazz, I asked him. And he said: jazz is original pop music, so if you learn how to sing jazz, you can sing anything. And I said: oh, it sounds great!

I’m a huge fan of French chanson, so he said one of the oldest jazz schools in Europe is located in Paris, so go there. Oh, great! I arrived there, and what you learn at school is American standards, and everything was in English. I actually studied in four different schools at the same time because, well, I’m Asian, and I’m used to that education system where you don’t have to have any free time for yourself! When I had only six hours of lessons, I thought: what am I gonna do with the other eighteen hours? (Laughter.)

SWAN: That kind of approach must have helped with the album?

YSN: Well, I didn’t know when I could record this album, so I just kept writing and composing. And arranging by myself, as I had a lot of time. But, as you know, jazz is like … we should gather together and arrange in the moment. When I could finally fly to France, I just gave all the material to the musicians. And they said, oh, we’ll respect your scores. And I said, no, no, do what you want. But they played exactly what I wrote, every single note. I’m embarrassed.

SWAN: Tell us about the inspiration behind some of tracks, such as Bird On The Ground, the first song, which has the refrain “I want to fly. I want to fly. I want to fly.”

YSN: Well, “bird on the ground” – that’s me during the pandemic.

SWAN: Don’t Get Me Wrong, the second track, has an infectious melody, but the message is clear: the world “has no chance with those who lie and lie”. Tell us more.

YSN: During the pandemic, I could only watch TV or go on the internet to know what was happening. But sometimes the information wasn’t true, and even though it’s a lie you end up believing everything. Yeah, so I thought the world has no chance with people who lie.

SWAN: The sixth track has an intriguing title – My Mother. (Lyrics include the line: “How can you keep drying my eyes every time, my mother?”) What’s the story behind it?

YSN: With the touring, I usually don’t spend that much time at home. But with the pandemic, I was home for a whole year, and I spent a lot of time with my mother, and I really had the chance to talk about everything, about her life and what she experienced. She’s my best friend, and we became even closer.

SWAN: And the title song Waking World?

YSN: I wanted this to be a dream and not real, but at the same time this is the reality, so it was kind of ambiguous for me. Where am I? Am I dreaming? No, you’re wide awake.

SWAN: Tangled Soul, track eight?

YSN: My soul was completely tangled. (Laughter.) And then one day, I felt: it’s okay, everything will be all right.

SWAN: Speaking about music in general, K-pop has become a global phenomenon. Are you in the wrong field? (Laughter.) More to the point, are you affected by the huge interest?

YSN: At every show, I’m really shocked or surprised because the audience says “hello” and “thank you” in Korean. Unbelievable! There are many people who’ve told me about their experience in Korea, too, saying they’ve spent a month or six months there. It’s something that my parents’ generation couldn’t have expected because the country was destroyed during the war – it’s not that long ago – and they had to build a completely new country. They worked so hard, and because of them, we have this era. People know Korea through K-pop, through Netflix.

SWAN: Then there’s this Korean jazz singer – you. When listeners hear your work, the “soul” comes through. Can you talk about that?

YSN: When I arrived in Paris, not knowing what jazz was, as I mentioned, I told my parents: Oh, I’m gonna study jazz for three years, and I think I can master it, and then I’ll come back to Korea and maybe teach. And afterwards, I felt so stupid, and so bad because I can’t swing, and I don’t have a voice like Ella Fitzgerald, and I could barely learn one standard song. So, I tried everything. On Honeysuckle Rose, I think I wrote down every moment that Ella breathed in, breathed out. But … I couldn’t sing like her, it sounded so fake. So, I said: No, I’ll never be able to sing jazz, this is not for me. After a year, I told my professors that, sorry, I made a wrong choice, I’m going to go back home. And they laughed at me. They said: What? Youn, you can do your own jazz with your own voice. And I said, no, I can’t. Then they recommended some jazz albums of European jazz singers, such as Norma Winstone, who’s an English singer, and my idol. She has a kind of soprano voice like me, and when she interprets, it’s like a whole new tune. And I said, oh, we can call this jazz too? I didn’t know.

So, I learned to try with my own voice and my own soul, with my Korean background, and the more I used my own voice, the more I did things my own way, the more I felt accepted.

SWAN: What is next for you?

YSN: Well, everyone has told me that this album is not jazz, but that’s what I wanted to do. Herbie Hancock always said that jazz is the human soul, it’s not appearances, so you can do whatever you want to do. We’ll see. It’s been a while that I’ve wanted to do an album of jazz standards, so we’ll continue this tour in 2023 and then we’ll see. – A.M. / SWAN

 

Youn Sun Nah’s Spring Tour runs March 9 to May 26, 2023, and includes concerts in France, Germany, and the Netherlands.

Women receive food rations at a food distribution site in Herat, Afghanistan. Credit: UNICEF/Sayed Bidel

By Naureen Hossain
UNITED NATIONS, Jan 31 2023 (IPS)

Recent visits to Afghanistan by senior-led UN delegations underscore the urgency to protect the rights of women and girls, including their access to humanitarian aid and their right to work.

The first delegation was led by Deputy Secretary-General Amina Mohammed, who called for the Taliban to reverse its decisions that have limited women’s and girls’ rights.

The delegation, led on behalf of the Secretary-General, also included senior leaders from the UN; Executive Director of UN-Women, Sima Bahous; and the Assistant Secretary-General of the Department of Political, Peacebuilding Affairs, and Peace Operations, Khaled Khiari.

The delegation completed a four-day visit to Afghanistan to appraise the current situation and to engage with Taliban authorities. This visit followed the recent decree by the Taliban to ban women from working in national and international non-governmental organizations. This is among the latest in a series of decrees that have further stripped women and girls of the rights and means to actively participate in society.

In this mission, Mohammed and Bahous met with affected communities, humanitarian actors, and civil society in the cities of Kabul, Kandahar, and Herat.

“My message was very clear: while we recognize the important exemptions made, these restrictions present Afghan women and girls with a future that confines them in their own homes, violating their rights and depriving the communities of their services,” Mohammed said.

Deputy Secretary-General Amina Mohammed called for the Taliban to reverse its decisions that have limited women’s and girls’ rights. CREDIT: UN

Mohammed later told Al-Jazeera that some work had been resumed by three NGOs in Afghanistan, particularly in the health sector. “I think that’s because the international community, and particularly the partners who are funding this, were able to show the implications and the impact of woman-to-woman services, particularly childbirth,” she said.

“What is happening in Afghanistan is a grave women’s rights crisis and is a wake-up call for the international community,” Bahous said. “It shows how quickly decades of progress on women’s rights can be reversed in a matter of days. UN-Women stands with all Afghan women and girls and will continue to amplify their voices to regain all their rights.”

The recent bans on women working in NGOs have forced these organizations to temporarily suspend their operations, which can no longer be delivered safely or meaningfully.

“The effective delivery of humanitarian assistance is predicated on principles that require full, safe, and unhindered access for all aid workers, including women,” said Mohammed in the UN’s official statement.

On the other hand, statements from Taliban spokespersons and senior government officials have stated that the current authorities would respond to issues according to the principles of Islamic law, so they claim.

“The international community, countries, and involved parties should also respect the principles, traditions, and spirituality of our country,” said Bilal Kamiri, a deputy spokesperson for the Taliban following the DSG’s meeting.

The de facto authorities in Afghanistan have acknowledged that they are reliant on international aid in order to revitalize a country where over 28 million, more than half of their population, are in need. These authorities must, therefore, also be aware that this aid would come with the basic stipulation that all the people of Afghanistan must have their rights and dignities respected, including women and girls.

How the UN will proceed in its ongoing negotiations with the Taliban will remain to be seen while they continue to reiterate their solidarity with the women and girls of Afghanistan.

The UN delegation led by the Deputy Secretary-General also met with its partners, civil society, and Government leaders, including the leadership of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) and the Islamic Development Bank.

It was understood between partners and countries that the UN’s efforts must continue and be intensified to reflect the urgency of the situation and the immense pressure that humanitarian aid workers already face.

On Tuesday, UNESCO dedicated the International Day of Education to the women and girls of Afghanistan. In a statement, UNESCO Director-General Audrey Azoulay noted the international community’s responsibility to ensure the restoration of their rights immediately. “The decisions made by the de facto authorities of Afghanistan threaten to wipe out the development gains made over the past twenty years,” she said in an official statement.

Martin Griffiths, Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator for OCHA was in Afghanistan meeting with Taliban authorities to reconsider the edict to ban Afghan from working in NGOs.

In an interview with the BBC, Griffiths shared that he was receiving “encouraging responses” from Taliban ministers, stating that there was “a consistent pattern of Taliban leaders presenting us with exceptions, exemptions, and authorizations for women to work.”

“I think they’re listening, and they told me they will be issuing new guidelines in due course, which I hope will help us reinforce the role of women,” he said.

He added, “If women do not work in humanitarian operations, we do not reach, we do not count, the women and girls we need to listen to. In all humanitarian operations around the world, women and girls are the most vulnerable.”

The sentiments from UN officials and those publicly shared by the Taliban are at clear odds with one another. Meanwhile, humanitarian aid organizations have been prevented from providing the full capacity of their services, leaving millions of Afghans more vulnerable than before. Meanwhile, women and girls cannot openly protest or object to the loss of their basic right to education without risking violence and imprisonment.

The UN and the international community must continue to listen to and amplify the voices of the vulnerable communities and prioritize them in the coming weeks and proposed meetings. For these promised countermeasures, let us hope they do not wait for the next ban on women to put them into action.

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

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