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An Interfaith Moment of Prayer for Peace at UN Headquarters. Credit: UN Photo/Eskinder Debebe
 
UN Secretary-General António Guterres said the gathering was taking place at a unique moment: on the last Friday of Ramadan, as Christians celebrate Easter, Jews mark the end of Passover, and Sikhs enjoy the festival of Vaisakhi. “Even the calendar is sending a message of unity,” he remarked. “Today, at this blessed moment of renewal across faiths, let us lift our hearts and voices for peace – our guiding star and our most precious goal.” April 2023

By Azza Karam
NEW YORK, Jun 28 2023 (IPS)

For the last 30 odd years, I have maintained that religions matter. I noted the reasons for why they matter, and always listed how they matter —as social service providers, as first responders in humanitarian crisis; as mediators in tensions and conflicts, as upholders of common good and the values of humanity; as protectors of children and of the most vulnerable; and even as political actors.

All to name but a few. I still feel amused when some of those I trained among the UN staff and the faith-based NGO community, quote something I said, in public – albeit without even being aware they are quoting (I am trying to be kind here) – such as: “we should not be talking about whether religions matter, but how they matter”.

In 2007, while at UNDP, I was told, more than once, “we do not do religion”. By the time I left the UN in 2020, after building two bodies – an Interagency Task Force on Religion and its Multi Faith Advisory Council – it was clear that almost all UN entities were competing to ‘do religion’. In fact, some UN entities are competing for religious funding.

While I have not lost that faith in faith itself, over the last years, I have grown increasingly incredulous of those who would speak in the name of ‘religion’. It is hard not to feel distinctly bemused, when versions of ‘if religious actors/leaders are not at the [policy] table, they will be on the menu]’, are being told in one gathering after another.

Often by the same kinds of speakers, among the same kinds of audiences, albeit meeting more and more frequently – and often more lavishly — in different cities around the world.

The reason for bemusement, is not disillusion with the unparalleled roles that various religious institutions and communities of faith play. Far from it. These roles are, in short, vast. In fact, they are as impossible to quantify, as they are implausible to assume full comprehension of.

After all, how do you accurately measure the pulse of our individual spiritualities – let alone our collective sense thereof? Religious leaders, religious institutions, faith-based and faith-inspired NGOs (FBOs) – let alone faith communities – are massive in number, and permeate all the world’s edifices, peoples and even languages. Faiths, and expressions of religiosity, are likely as numerous as the hairs on an average head (not counting those who may be lacking vigour in that department).

No, the reason for bemusement is disillusionment with the trend of commercialisation of religion, the business of ‘doing religion’. The emerging marketplace of “religion and [fill in the blanks – and anything is possible]” is reminiscent of not too many decades ago, when so many academics, consultants, think tanks, NGOs, worked on the business of democracy and/or good governance and/or human rights. Then, as now, projects, programmes, initiatives, meetings, and more meetings, were hosted.

A global emerging elite of ‘experts’ in the above (or variations thereof) permeated the four and five-star hotel meeting rooms, gave business to caterers and conference centres as they traipsed the ‘conference circuits’ from north to south, populated proposals to governments, philanthropists and various donor entities.

They defined the missions of for-profit consultancies claiming to enable the strategic capabilities, to inform the media presences, to refine the narratives, to provide the leadership coaching, to jointly express the common values, to uphold the good in public service… And so on.

We are not living in better democracies now, in spite of all that business. Will we have more faithful societies? Will people pray more, for one another and serve more selflessly now that ‘religion’ is in? Somehow, I doubt it.

By the time we realised the extent of the commercialisation of democracy and human rights, the commercial nature had corrupted much of the sagacity – and the necessary courage – there was. Even autocrats bought into the business of doing democracy and human rights, and used the narratives to enhance their respective agendas.

Few democratic actors worked together, and even fewer collaborated to serve – and save – the whole of humanity. As with any business venture, the motive of profit – and power – of some, dominated.

And rather than a consolidated civil society effort holding decision makers accountable for the sake of the most vulnerable, and collectively and successfully eliminating the tools of harm, we are living in the era where money, weapons – including nuclear ones – control over resources, and war (including war on this earth), dominate.

Today, some of the most authoritarian and self-serving regimes, and some of the most power-seeking individuals, and their retinues, are vested in the business of ‘religion’. And why not? It is among the most lucrative domains of financial, political and social influence.

Decades of study, however, point to some simple questions to ask, to distinguish the transactional nature of ‘religious affairs’ claiming to be for the good of all, from those actually serving the common good.

The questions include the following:

How many of those engaged in the work of religion (whether as religious or secular actors) actually give of or share, their varied resources, to/with one another (including those from other/different religions, entities, age groups, countries, races, etc.)?

How many different religious organisations plan and deliver, jointly, the same set of services to the same set of needs, in the same neighborhoods or in the same countries?

How many ‘religious actors’ actually partner with ‘secular’ civil society organisations to hold institutions of political and financial power equally accountable – if need be, at cost to their own welfare. In other words, how many stand on principle, irrespective of the cost?

And, my personal favourite: what are these religious actors’ respective positions on women’s rights, on gender equality and/or on women’s leadership?

The more diplomatic way to frame that is also one of the most powerful litmus tests: which human rights do these actors working on/with/for religion, value more? You see, those who are engaged in transactional practices wearing a religious garb, will invariably prioritise some rights, or some privileges, over others.

The answer to this question therefore, will indicate the difference between a coalition of religious fundamentalists (including secular power seekers and some religious and political leaders), and a multilateral alliance dedicated to serving the common good – for each and all, barring none, especially in the most challenging of times.

Azza Karam is a Professor of Religion and Development at the Vrij Universiteit of Amsterdam and served as a member of the UN Secretary General’s High Level Advisory Board on Effective Multilateralism.

IPS UN Bureau

 

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In the United States and Canada, overdose deaths, predominantly driven by an epidemic of the non-medical use of fentanyl, continue to break records. Credit: Shutterstock.

By Baher Kamal
MADRID, Jun 27 2023 (IPS)

How come that in a world where technology is -or is about to be- able to detect an ant in a jungle, the traffickers of death continue to carry out their lucrative criminal activities everywhere and in all fields, from weapons to prostitution, enslavement and drugs, to deadly fake medicines, through oil, gas and poisoned food.

In the specific case of Asia, a specialised organisation reports the Asian ‘Golden Triangle’ is where historically opium was grown to produce heroin for export, but where, in recent years, the trade of “even deadlier and more profitable synthetic drugs have taken over.”

Transnational organised crime groups anticipate, adapt and try to circumvent what governments do, and in 2022 we saw them work around Thai borders in the Golden Triangle more than in the past

Jeremy Douglas, UNODC Regional Representative for Southeast Asia and the Pacific
In its June 2023 report, the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) informs that East and Southeast Asian synthetic drug supply remains at ‘extreme levels’ and diversifies.

The report, “Synthetic Drugs in East and Southeast Asia: latest developments and challenges 2023”, confirms an expansion and diversification of synthetic drug production and trafficking in the region, while trafficking routes have shifted significantly.

“Thailand, Laos and Myanmar are at the frontlines of illicit trade in Asia dominated by transnational organised crime syndicates.”

 

Methamphetamine, ketamine…

‘High volumes’ of methamphetamine continue to be produced and trafficked in and from the region while the production of ketamine and other synthetic drugs has expanded.

“Transnational organised crime groups anticipate, adapt and try to circumvent what governments do, and in 2022 we saw them work around Thai borders in the Golden Triangle more than in the past,” said Jeremy Douglas, UNODC Regional Representative for Southeast Asia and the Pacific.

 

‘Unwanted’ to be seen

“Traffickers have continued to ship large volumes through Laos and northern Thailand, but at the same time they have pushed significant supply through central Myanmar to the Andaman Sea where it seems few were looking.”

Douglas added that criminal groups from across the region also started moving and reconnecting after lengthy pandemic border closures, with late 2022 and early 2023 patterns starting to look similar to 2019.

 

Hidden in “legal products”

Moreover, synthetic drugs containing a mixture of substances and sometimes “packaged alongside legal products” continue to be found throughout East and Southeast Asia, with serious health consequences for those who knowingly, or unknowingly, consume the products.

Moreover, the world drug problem is a complex issue that affects millions of people worldwide.

Many people who use drugs face stigma and discrimination, which can further harm their physical and mental health and prevent them from accessing the help they need, the UN warns on the occasion of the 2023 International Day Against Drug Abuse and Illicit Trafficking (26 June).

 

“Unprecedented” increase

The increase in the production of synthetic drugs in recent years has been “unprecedented” according to the UNODC Regional Representative.

It is not just drugs which are being trafficked across the region: chemical precursors to manufacture synthetic drugs are being illegally transported into Myanmar in quantities far larger than the drugs that are trafficked out, UNODC further explains.

 

Trafficking also in people, wildlife, timber…

In fact, a myriad of cross-borders issues, including drug and precursor chemical trafficking, migrant smuggling, human trafficking, wildlife and forestry crime, and, in some locations, the movement of terrorist fighters alongside public health and pandemic-related matters.

 

The impact of legalising the use of cocaine

Cannabis legalisation in parts of the world appears to have accelerated daily use and related health impacts, according to the World Drug Report 2022, which also details record rises in the manufacturing of cocaine, the expansion of synthetic drugs to new markets, and continued gaps in the availability of drug treatments, especially for women.

According to the report, around 284 million people aged 15-64 used drugs worldwide in 2020, a 26% increase over the previous decade.

“In Africa and Latin America, people under 35 represent the majority of people being treated for drug use disorders.”

Globally, the report estimates that 11.2 million people worldwide were injecting drugs. Around half of this number were living with hepatitis C, 1.4 million were living with HIV, and 1.2 million were living with both.

Reacting to these findings, UNODC Executive Director, Ghada Waly stated: “Numbers for the manufacturing and seizures of many illicit drugs are hitting record highs, even as global emergencies are deepening vulnerabilities.”

At the same time, mis-perceptions regarding the magnitude of the problem and the associated harms are depriving people of care and treatment and driving young people towards harmful behaviour, said Waly.

 

Key trends by region

In many countries in Africa and South and Central America, the largest proportion of people in treatment for drug use disorders are there primarily for cannabis use disorders. In Eastern and South-Eastern Europe and in Central Asia, people are most often in treatment for opioid use disorders.

In the United States and Canada, overdose deaths, predominantly driven by an epidemic of the non-medical use of fentanyl, continue to break records. Preliminary estimates in the United States point to more than 107,000 drug overdose deaths in 2021, up from nearly 92,000 in 2020.

 

Conflict zones magnets for synthetic drug production

This year’s report also highlights that illicit drug economies can flourish in situations of conflict and where the rule of law is weak, and in turn can prolong or fuel conflict.

Information from the Middle East and South-East Asia suggest that conflict situations can act as a magnet for the manufacture of synthetic drugs, which can be produced anywhere. This effect may be greater when the conflict area is close to large consumer markets.

Historically, parties to conflict have used drugs to finance conflict and generate income. The 2022 World Drug Report also reveals that conflicts may also disrupt and shift drug trafficking routes, as has happened in the Balkans and more recently in Ukraine.

 

A possible growing capacity to manufacture amphetamine in Ukraine

According to the UNODC report, “there was a significant increase in the number of reported clandestine laboratories in Ukraine, skyrocketing from 17 dismantled laboratories in 2019 to 79 in 2020. 67 out of these laboratories were producing amphetamines, up from five in 2019 – the highest number of dismantled laboratories reported in any given country in 2020.”

 

Gender treatment gap

Women remain in the minority of drug users globally yet tend to increase their rate of drug consumption and progress to drug use disorders more rapidly than men do. Women now represent an estimated 45-49% of users of amphetamines and non-medical users of pharmaceutical stimulants, pharmaceutical opioids, sedatives, and tranquillisers.

The treatment gap remains large for women globally. Although women represent almost one in two amphetamine users, they constitute only one in five people in treatment for amphetamine use disorders.

The World Drug Report also spotlights the wide range of roles fulfilled by women in the global cocaine economy, including cultivating coca, transporting small quantities of drugs, selling to consumers, and smuggling into prisons.

Anti-racism protesters in Brooklyn, New York, demonstrate demanding justice for the killing of African American, George Floyd. Credit: UN News/Shirin Yaseen

By Norman Solomon
SAN FRANCISCO, USA, Jun 27 2023 (IPS)

A recent Justice Department report concluded that “systemic” racial bias in the Minneapolis Police Department “made what happened to George Floyd possible.”

During the three years since a white police officer brutally murdered Floyd, nationwide discussions of systemic racism have extended well beyond focusing on law enforcement to also assess a range of other government functions.

But such scrutiny comes to a halt at the water’s edge — stopping short of probing whether racism has been a factor in U.S. military interventions overseas.

Hidden in plain sight is the fact that virtually all the people killed by U.S. firepower in the “war on terror” for more than two decades have been people of color. This notable fact goes unnoted within a country where — in sharp contrast — racial aspects of domestic policies and outcomes are ongoing topics of public discourse.

Certainly, the U.S. does not attack a country because people of color live there. But when people of color live there, it is politically easier for U.S. leaders to subject them to warfare — because of institutional racism and often-unconscious prejudices that are common in the United States.

Racial inequities and injustice are painfully apparent in domestic contexts, from police and courts to legislative bodies, financial systems and economic structures. A nation so profoundly affected by individual and structural racism at home is apt to be affected by such racism in its approach to war.

Many Americans recognize that racism holds significant sway over their society and many of its institutions. Yet the extensive political debates and media coverage devoted to U.S. foreign policy and military affairs rarely even mention — let alone explore the implications of — the reality that the several hundred thousand civilians killed directly in America’s “war on terror” have been almost entirely people of color.

The flip side of biases that facilitate public acceptance of making war on non-white people came to the fore when Russia invaded Ukraine in early 2022. News coverage included reporting that the war’s victims “have blue eyes and blond hair” and “look like us,” Los Angeles Times television critic Lorraine Ali noted.

“Writers who’d previously addressed conflicts in the Gulf region, often with a focus on geopolitical strategy and employing moral abstractions, appeared to be empathizing for the first time with the plight of civilians.”

Such empathy, all too often, is skewed by the race and ethnicity of those being killed. The Arab and Middle Eastern Journalists Association has deplored “the pervasive mentality in Western journalism of normalizing tragedy in parts of the world such as the Middle East, Africa, South Asia and Latin America. It dehumanizes and renders their experience with war as somehow normal and expected.”

Persisting today is a modern version of what W.E.B. Du Bois called, 120 years ago, “the problem of the color line — the relation of the darker to the lighter races.” Twenty-first century lineups of global power and geopolitical agendas have propelled the United States into seemingly endless warfare in countries where few white people live.

Racial, cultural and religious differences have made it far too easy for most Americans to think of the victims of U.S. war efforts in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Libya and elsewhere as “the other.”

Their suffering is much more likely to be viewed as merely regrettable or inconsequential rather than heart-rending or unacceptable. What Du Bois called “the problem of the color line” keeps empathy to a minimum.

“The history of U.S. wars in Asia, the Middle East, Africa and Latin America has exuded a stench of white supremacy, discounting the value of lives at the other end of U.S. bullets, bombs and missiles,” I concluded in my new book War Made Invisible. “Yet racial factors in war-making decisions get very little mention in U.S. media and virtually none in the political world of officials in Washington.”

At the same time, on the surface, Washington’s foreign policy can seem to be a model of interracial connection. Like presidents before him, Joe Biden has reached out to foreign leaders of different races, religions and cultures — as when he fist-bumped Saudi Arabia’s de facto ruler Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman at their summit a year ago, while discarding professed human-rights concerns in the process.

Overall, in America’s political and media realms, the people of color who’ve suffered from U.S. warfare abroad have been relegated to a kind of psychological apartheid — separate, unequal, and implicitly not of much importance.

And so, when the Pentagon’s forces kill them, systemic racism makes it less likely that Americans will actually care.

Norman Solomon is the national director of RootsAction.org and executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy. He is the author of a dozen books including War Made Easy. His latest book, War Made Invisible: How America Hides the Human Toll of Its Military Machine, was published in June 2023 by The New Press.

IPS UN Bureau

 

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With the monsoon refugees in the cramped camps in Cox’s Bazar are expected to be impacted by an increase of dengue, which last year accounted for 1,283 cases in the Rohingya camps. Credit: Rafiqul Islam/IPS

By Rafiqul Islam
DHAKA, Jun 27 2023 (IPS)

With the monsoon in Bangladesh, Rohingya refugee camps in Cox’s Bazar have emerged as a dengue hotspot, with the mosquito-borne disease continuing to spread among the stateless refugees.

“A total of 1,066 dengue cases were reported in highly cramped refugee camps in Cox’s Bazar up to May 23 this year, while the case tally was only 426 among the local community there,” Dr Nazmul Islam, Director of Disease Control and Line of the Directorate General of Health Services (DGHS), said.

However, the latest data of the DGHS revealed that 1,283 people were infected with and 26 people died of dengue in the Rohingya camps and surrounding host community in Ukhiya and Teknaf upazilas of Cox’s Bazar from January 1 to June 6, 2023.

Nazmul said the dengue infection rate is highest in the Rohingya camps.

“Rohingya camps in Cox’s Bazar have the highest number of dengue patients. Last year, over 17,000 dengue patients were identified there. The number of dengue patients is so high this year, too,” he said.

Official data showed that dengue cases increased significantly in 2022 when the monsoon started. Experts fear the dengue situation will be more acute in the Rohingya camps during the monsoon this year.

Bangladesh witnessed its largest influx of Rohingya refugees in 2017 following a military crackdown in the Rakhine State of Myanmar. According to UNHCR, about 7,73,972 Rohingya people entered the country as refugees, totaling nearly 10 million with the previous influxes.

The forcibly displaced Rohingyas took shelter in overcrowded makeshift camps where they lacked access to civic amenities, including education, food, clean water, and proper sanitation, and also face natural disasters and infectious disease transmission.

“Most refugees have no adequate access to clean water, sanitary facilities, or healthcare. The monsoon season also poses a huge threat to thousands of Rohingya families living in makeshift shelters as dengue outbreak emerges in camps during the period,” said Ro Arfat, a Rohingya refugee.

Nazmul said Rohingya refugees live in a limited space in the camps where there is not enough scope to runoff rainwater, so stagnant water creates an enabling environment for the breeding Aedes mosquito, carrier of the dengue virus.

He said the risk of dengue infections climbs in densely populated areas. With the monsoon, the dengue situation could turn dangerous in the refugee camps.

Dr Iqbal Kabir, Professor and Director at the Climate Change and Health Promotion Unit, the Ministry of Health, Bangladesh, said in recent years, environmental changes have been markedly observed throughout the globe, and there is no exception in Bangladesh.

“The nature of the Aedes mosquito is that it must bite five humans to suck blood as per its demand, and an Aedes mosquito lays more than 200 eggs a time. Once they get suitable humidity and temperature, mosquito breeding occurs,” Kabir said.

He observed that dengue spreads very fast, but the authorities have not controlled dengue infections in the highly-crowded refugee camps in Cox’s Bazar.

During the monsoon, Bangladesh experiences spikes in dengue outbreaks. In 2022, 17 refugees died from dengue infections in Rohingya camps.

Despite having a high dengue infection rate in the camps, lack of awareness about the virus and the absence of prompt diagnosis of the disease make the Rohingya refugees more vulnerable.

“An Aedes mosquito can infect many within seconds, and keeping densely populated refugee camps safe from mosquitoes is really difficult. So there is a high possibility of a severe outbreak in the refugee camps,” said Mahbubur Rahman, Civil Surgeon, and Chief Health Officer for Cox’s Bazar.

Urgent Action Needed

The burden of dengue is related to the changes in rainfall patterns. The rainfall pattern has been changed. Pre-monsoon erratic rainfall is linked with the increase of vectors.

Unusual rainfall occurred in Cox’s Bazar area earlier this year, triggering dengue outbreaks in the camps.

Kabir said the dengue national guideline should be revisited to check dengue outbreaks across the country, including Rohingya camps.

He suggested launching a crash programme to prevent dengue infections in Rohingya camps; if clustering could be ensured, it would be easy to deal with the dengue situation there.

Golam Rabbani, head of BRAC’s Climate Bridge Fund, said the Bangladesh government should initiate research and increase the authorities’ capacity to tackle any future outbreak of dengue in the country.

He says the Department of Public Health and the DGHS should identify dengue as one of the most climate-sensitive diseases and improve their disease profile, suggesting the government initiate investment and policy interventions to address the dengue in Bangladesh.

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

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Credit: White House, September 2020
 
Ron DeSantis is considered Trump's biggest rival for the Republican presidential primaries. But for the Florida governor, it's a battle of unequal weapons

By Marco Bitschnau
NEUCHATEL, Switzerland, Jun 26 2023 (IPS)

It’s been seven months since Florida Governor Ron DeSantis celebrated a brilliant re-election victory in the midst of an otherwise mixed Republican midterm performance. He had come in with nearly 20 per cent more votes than Democrat Charlie Crist.

This was an almost surreally good result for a state that, until a few years ago, was considered a veritable swing state – and still is, according to many local media. His fabulous result made Florida’s already successful chief executive the man of the hour overnight.

Every smile, every gesture, every Caesar-like sweep of the crowd by the beaming victor seemed to say: here is someone who could actually challenge Donald Trump for the Republican presidential nomination in 2024. Someone who shares many of his strengths but few of his weaknesses.

A steep downward spiral

Today, these scenes seem like something from another world. Trump, who had basically been written off at one point, has now overtaken his opponent in almost all of the major opinion polls: most recently, Trump’s lead according to Quinnipiac was 31 percentage points, (33 at FOX News, 34 at Morning Consult and 42 at Harvard/Harris).

To some extent, the results are even more disastrous for DeSantis at the individual state level. In West Virginia, for example, a poll at the end of May saw him trailing behind Trump by a whopping 45 percentage points, with only 9 per cent thinking he was the right candidate.

Admittedly, even under the best of circumstances, the Harvard lawyer wouldn’t be a good fit for the coal mining towns of Appalachia. But falling below the 10 per cent mark should still wound his ego.

It is unclear what this rapid decline in pre-election popularity can be attributed to. On the one hand, of course, it seems possible that the mid-term election hype surrounding DeSantis was too great and that the situation is simply returning to normal.

On the other hand, it may relate to the criminal proceedings against Trump, his increased media presence as a result and an incipient nostalgia for his time in office. But there is a widespread view that the challenger himself is not entirely free of his own misery.

DeSantis’ presidential candidacy was announced comparatively late, the campaign launch with Twitter boss Elon Musk – in theory, an impressive idea – suffered from technical defects, and the narrative of the valiant fight against ‘wokeness’ also seems to be wearing thin these days. In this case, as so often in life, oversaturation creates frustration.

All the more so, as one should know how to abandon a topic if it threatens to bog down the discourse and to change the branding strategy – a skill that the governor, who tends toward micromanagement, evidently cannot claim as one of his strengths.

For example, when DeSantis threatened to take control of the 100-square-kilometre Reedy Creek Improvement District away from the media company Disney – which had publicly opposed a Florida anti-gay law – it initially went down well with an electorate that was already sceptical about such corporate privileges.

But then, the ensuing exchange of blows did not inspire an image of a confident leader. Instead of being celebrated as a winner, DeSantis escalated the conflict, which has since become a tangle of legal confusion and has led to a freeze on Disney’s investments in the state.

Even if the 44-year-old still gets the legal upper hand in the end, the scratches on his image as ‘a tough man of action’ cannot be glossed over so quickly. They also pose a big risk for him: the impression seems to be gaining ground that, despite all his shrewdness, he lacks a certain something – the assertiveness and the authority of his rival, who is still surrounded by a post-presidential aura.

And nowhere is this difference in image more evident than when Trump and DeSantis refer to each other.

While Trump has been touring the country for months, ranting about ‘Ron DeSanctimonious’ as a nobody ‘who needs a personality transplant’ and owes his success to him alone, people in the DeSantis camp are at a loss as to how to counter this strategy.

Some don’t want to get involved in a mudslinging contest where they can only lose against the Insulter-in-Chief. Others see the greater danger – too much restraint, following the old proverb that ‘the best defence is a good offence’.

Beating Trump at his own game

Trump’s own campaign history is, of course, the best example of how successful this second strategy can be: in 2016, with a deliberately hyper-aggressive manner, he managed to repudiate all of his competitors and redirect existing loyalties to himself.

This Trump was someone who savagely lashed out at his hapless predecessors, Mitt Romney and John McCain – and was enthusiastically acclaimed for it by people who had supported both.

He was someone who openly accused George W. Bush of ‘destabilising the Middle East’ and waging unjust wars – and was met with approval from people who had spent half their lives defending those same wars. Someone who wanted to turn the Grand Old Party into his personal electoral vehicle – and the more brazenly he pursued this goal, the more open doors he charged through.

According to this logic, Trump would have to be ‘out-Trumped’, so to speak, in order to knock him off his pedestal. He would have to be ridiculed, with doubt cast on his assertiveness. Ask him where the promised border wall went, why Mexico didn’t pay for it and why Chinese products are still flooding the US market.

Accuse him of being too soft on criminals and too hard on freedom-loving patriots. Call him a failure because he has proven incapable of carrying out the Make America Great Again agenda. In short: turn his own weapons against him. However, it is hardly to be expected that DeSantis, with his wait-and-see attitude, will rise to the task anytime soon. The fear of prematurely losing support among the Trump supporters who are still to be wooed is likely too great.

The Indian-born biotech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, who is also vying for the Republican nomination and enjoys the advantage of being able to throw his punches from outside the political field of vision, is more skilfull Although he greatly respects Trump, he recently went on record saying that Trump failed in his fight against the cartels and has kept very few of his promises: ‘I think I’m closer to Trump in 2015 than Trump today is to Trump in 2015.’

It’s not a bad move to position himself as an alternative for voters who want to make a distinction between personalities and political positions. It’s a strategy that was successful enough for the unknown Ramaswamy to now rank in the polls ahead of established party figures like Tim Scott and Nikki Haley, whose half-hearted campaigns – both of whom are obviously eyeing the vice presidency – are still struggling.

For DeSantis, whose options are more limited, it remains a fight with unequal weapons – and against time. In order to show that he actually has a real chance, he has to reverse the disastrous poll trend as soon as possible and unite a broad coalition of all those behind him, who have little interest in a third attempt by ex-President Trump.

This includes moderate Republicans who recognise a power-conscious pragmatist behind the rhetorical bombast, the old party establishment just waiting for the right opportunity to free itself from the Babylonian captivity of the last few years, but also various libertarians, evangelicals and grassroots conservatives from the orbit of former presidential aspirant Ted Cruz, who believed that Trump ruled in an overly dirigiste manner, or who don’t consider him sufficiently ideologically sound.

Forging and maintaining such a heterogeneous alliance requires not only political mobility and a strong ground game but also a bulging war chest – and at least in this respect, DeSantis seems capable of scoring.

Despite the botched start, his campaign raised a whopping $8.2 million within 24 hours of announcing his candidacy, while Trump has managed to raise only $9.5 million over the past six months. The fact that this man from the small town of Dunedin has won the hearts of so many donors is more than just a sign of encouragement.

Anyone who has sufficient financial resources on the hellishly expensive US primary election stage can also get through a dry spell here and there without having to fear direct operational collapse. And this much is certain: in his fight against Trump, the eternal comeback kid, DeSantis will need every penny.

Marco Bitschnau is pursuing a PhD in political sociology at the Swiss Forum for Migration and Population Studies (SFM) at the University of Neuchâtel and is a research associate at the Swiss National Science Foundation. His research focuses on migration, populism, democracy and the welfare state.

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

IPS UN Bureau

 

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Perla Venegas is one of 1444 female bus drivers in the surface public transport network in Santiago, Chile, which aims at gender inclusion and offers job stability and shift flexibility compatible with family life. CREDIT: Orlando Milesi / IPS

By Orlando Milesi
SANTIAGO, Jun 26 2023 (IPS)

Sexual harassment and discrimination are daily realities for women on public transport in Chile and also an obstacle for plans to expand mass transit in order to reduce pollution in several cities in this South American country.

Santiago, the capital, is the most polluted city based on fine air particulate matter among the large Latin American cities, according to the World Air Quality Report 2022, ahead of Lima and Mexico City, while five other Chilean cities are among the 10 most polluted in South America.

Sexual harassment is the most visible form of discrimination against women in Chilean public transportation, in addition to insecurity due to poorly lit bus stops, inadequate buses, and more frequent trips at times when women are less likely to travel.

Personal accounts gathered by IPS also mentioned problems such as the constant theft of cell phones and the impossibility for young women to wear shorts or low-cut tops when traveling on buses or the subway, the backbone of Santiago’s public transportation system.

To address these problems, the Chilean government and the Santiago city government adopted gender strategies: they put in place special telephones to report harassers and thieves, began installing “panic buttons” and alarms at bus stops, and incorporated more women in driving and security.

“When I was younger I suffered a lot of harassment because I didn’t have the character to stand up to the harassers. Now that I am older, I am able to confront an aggressor without fear, even when he is harassing another person, whether a man or a woman. When I confront them, they run away,” Bernardita Azócar, 34, told IPS.

 

Bernardita Azócar, in a subway station in Santiago, Chile, heads to her job in a collection agency. She says she suffered sexual harassment on public transport in the capital when she was younger, but now she is more alert to any aggression and feels empowered to help others who suffer the same bad experience. CREDIT: Orlando Milesi / IPS

 

“It happened to me a couple of times when I was younger. They want to grope you or try to touch another girl and now I confront them. I suffer less because I’m more aware and I try not to put myself at risk,” she added during a dialogue at the University of Chile subway station in Santiago.

Azócar, who works for a collection company, said the root cause of harassment lies in education and in Chilean society.

“If you wear a miniskirt or show cleavage, society points the finger at you, as if you were provoking men and it was your fault. And I don’t think that’s why it happens. It’s abuse to be harassed in the public system…or anywhere else,” she said.

Maite, a humanities student at the Catholic University, feels that women are at a disadvantage on public transportation.

“When a woman takes a bus, she tends to sit next to the aisle to have an easier way to flee from any threat. Or she sits next to another woman so as not to travel alone. There are many things that women do that are not explicit. They are behaviors we learn, to get by on public transportation,” said the young woman who, like her friends, preferred not to give her last name.

According to Maite, “women can’t wear shorts or backpacks on the bus, or openly use a cell phone. Every time you get on the bus you have to take a lot of measures.”

Maite and four other classmates told IPS that they take a combination of buses and the subway to go to school and that none of them have suffered harassment on the bus, but they know of several cases that happened to their friends.

“If someone tries to touch me or crowd me too closely I don’t feel so safe,” said Elena, a commercial engineering student.

“A friend of mine had her cell phone stolen. I have not been harassed, but I would never go on the bus or subway in shorts even if I were dying of heat. I wear long pants because wearing shorts is a risk,” added Emilia, a psychology student.

 

The five university students in this group lament the discrimination women suffer on Chilean public transport and recognize that they have a “code of conduct” that they personally follow to avoid problems, such as not wearing shorts or miniskirts or showing cleavage, even in summertime, although it sometimes restricts their personal freedom. CREDIT: Orlando Milesi / IPS

 

The joys and pitfalls of being a female bus driver

Getting more people to use buses and other public transport in Chile, a long narrow country with a population of 19.8 million, is difficult because 71 percent of households own at least one car.

The incorporation of more female bus drivers is aimed at a friendlier mass transit system.

Perla Venegas, 34, has been working as a bus driver in Santiago’s public transportation system for six years.

“I like my job and driving. The most complicated thing is dealing with cyclists, pedestrians and passengers, who are never satisfied,” she told IPS while parked waiting to pull out on the corner of Santa Rosa and Alameda, in the heart of downtown Santiago.

Her route connects downtown Santiago with the municipality of Maipú, in the western outskirts of the capital.

“I’m on a par with the male drivers, but I’m more cautious, not so aggressive and I’m a more defensive driver. I have been complimented several times, especially by elderly people,” said Venegas, who lives with her two daughters, aged 16 and 8.

“I have female colleagues who have been hit and beaten. I received a death threat from a passenger because when the route ended he wouldn’t get off. He was a homeless drug addict. It was 5:30 AM. In the end I found a carabineros (police) patrol car and I turned him in,” she said.

She added that she has had both pleasant and negative experiences and acknowledged that she is proud that her eldest daughter also wants to be a bus driver “although I would not like her to experience the hard parts.”

 

The Santiago subway is the backbone of the mass transit system in the Chilean capital. It makes it possible to reach 23 of the 32 municipalities that encompass the capital and allows passengers to combine with a bus network to reach any point of the metropolitan region. CREDIT: Orlando Milesi / IPS

 

Staying alert in the subway, the main means of public transport

On the Santiago subway there are 2.3 million trips on working days. Its tracks cover 140 kilometers on six lines, with 136 stations in 23 of the 32 municipalities that comprise the metropolitan area. Greater Santiago is home to 7.1 million people.

An additional 2.1 million average daily trips are made on surface public transport.

According to official statistics, during the first five months of the year there were 21 pollution episodes in Santiago above the maximum standard level and eight environmental alerts for excess fine particulate matter, so increasing the use of public transport instead of private vehicles is considered a priority for the authorities.

Paulina del Campo, the subway’s sustainability manager, told IPS that gender issues are a strategic objective in this state-owned company.

“We have taken the issue of harassment very seriously. We do not have large numbers, but we do have moments like March 2022 when the issue was raised because of situations in the streets and in universities that included public transportation,” she said.

After meetings with authorities and student leaders, the subway increased the presence of female security guards at stations in the university district.

“One of the things they said is that in a situation of harassment it is much more comfortable to ask for help from a woman than from a man,” explained Del Campo.

The company thus hired a specific group of female guards to receive and respond to complaints.

“Qualified staff respond and are trained to provide support for the victims. We can quickly activate the protocols with the carabineros police. When it happens we can intercept the train and often arrest the people (aggressors) on the spot,” said Del Campo.

In another campaign, a standard methodology designed by international foundations with expertise in harassment was adapted to the situation in Chile.

At the same time, the subway increased its female staff and the number of women in leadership positions.

“Two years ago we had a female staff of around 20 percent and now, in May, 26.5 percent of the 4,400 subway workers are women. In the area of security guards we have a staff of approximately 700 and of these 110 are women,” explained the company’s Sustainability Manager.

 

These two women are security guards at the Plaza Egaña subway station, on line 6 in Chile’s capital. The state-owned Metro company is increasing the number of women in its services as part of a gender policy that even includes the maintenance of trains. CREDIT: Orlando Milesi / IPS

 

Gender policies in public transportation

The Metropolitan Public Transport Directorate (DTPM) informed IPS that it aims to reduce the male-female gap in public transport.

It also plans to increase the number of women bus drivers.

The Red system, with buses running throughout Santiago, currently employs 1,444 women – only 7.6 percent of all drivers.

“Many women who have entered this field come from highly precarious and unregulated jobs, so this opportunity has allowed them greater autonomy and, on many occasions, to leave violent environments and improve their self-confidence,” the DTPM stressed in response to questions from IPS.

“This has meant an effort to train and generate conditions to keep and promote women who are part of the system,” it added.

Origin-Destination Surveys reveal that women are the main users of public transport and 65 percent of trips for the purpose of caring for the home, children or other people are made by women. They are more likely to make multidirectional trips and in the so-called off-peak hours, with little traffic.

According to the DTPM, waiting for the bus is one of the most critical moments in every trip.

“This is why we installed the panic button at bus stops and real-time information on the arrival of buses to improve the perception of security,” it explained.

The information is available through an application on cell phones, while the panic buttons began as a women’s safety pilot plan in October 2022 at stops in one of the capital’s municipalities. The plan is to extend them to a large number of stops in Santiago.

Credit: United Nations

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Jun 26 2023 (IPS)

When the United Nations commemorated ‘International Day of Women in Diplomacy’ last week, the President of the General Assembly (PGA) Csaba Kőrösi rightly pointed out the woeful absence of women to hold that position in the UN hierarchy.

“Women have played a central role in the history of the United Nations ever since the signing of the UN Charter,” he said, “but out of the 78 people elected to my role, President of the General Assembly, only four have been women.”

So far, the only four women elected as PGAs in the 78-year history of the UN were: Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit from India (1953), Angie Brooks from Liberia (1969), Sheikha Haya Rashed Al-Khalifa from Bahrain (2006) and Maria Fernando Espinosa Garces from Ecuador (2018).

The 193-member General Assembly (GA) is described as the highest policy making body at the United Nations – and according to a longstanding diplomatic protocol, the PGA is virtually treated as head of state at international conferences.

At a dinner hosted by a UN ambassador years ago, one of the former women PGA’s told a group of reporters she was at a summit meeting of world leaders in a Middle Eastern capital where all the heads of state were, rightfully, accommodated in the front rows of the hall.

But she was deprived of that honor because she was a woman — and was offered a back row seat – in a country which did not obviously believe in gender empowerment.

“Gender parity?”, one of the journalists at the dinner table remarked, “it’s always a losing battle”.

Kőrösi told delegates only one in 4 Permanent Representatives (PRs) are women – “even if some of them are spearheading this session’s major, and very complicated, negotiation processes”.

He said the latest ‘Women in Diplomacy Index’ shows that, in 2023, only one fifth of all ambassadors in the world are women.

“I extend my gratitude to the women PRs for their strong leadership of some of the most challenging talks, including on the SDG Summit, Financing for Development, or Universal Health Coverage, just to mention a few.”

“In my own Office”, he said,” women account for two thirds of the team, with the same proportion in the management of the OPGA (Office of the President of the General Assembly).“

“For it is only by working together that we will achieve a sustainable future for both halves of humanity”.

According to a new report from the World Economic Forum it will take about 131 years for women to attain gender parity with men – and not until 2154.

Speaking during the commemoration of ‘International Day of Women in Diplomacy’, US Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield shared a little history.

She said: “US Ambassador Madeleine Albright (1993-97), who was our representative at the Security Council, told me that she created this group called the G7. And it was all of the women that I thought were on the Security Council and I was amazed that there were seven women at that time”.

“And so, I went to see her after I started here, and I said there are only five women on the Security Council now. And she said that’s fantastic – because I was the only woman on the Council (during 1993-97).

Her G7 were all the women in the General Assembly—seven out of 193 ambassadors.

“So, we have made progress. But there’s still more to be made. And I think as women, we are able to bring out those issues that really highlight and amplify women in the Security Council”.

“We ensure that there are women speakers who come to brief the Council. We ensure that issues related to Women, Peace, and Security are amplified in our discussions. And it’s not that men don’t always do it, but they don’t do it enough. As women we’re constantly aware and constantly looking for opportunities to raise women up,” she said.

According to the UN, women have been playing a crucial role in global governance since the drafting and signing of the United Nations Charter in 1945.

“Women and girls represent half of the world’s population and, therefore, also half of its potential. Women bring immense benefits to diplomacy. Their leadership styles, expertise and priorities broaden the scope of issues under consideration and the quality of outcomes”.

“Research shows that when women serve in cabinets and parliaments, they pass laws and policies that are better for ordinary people, the environment and social cohesion. Advancing measures to increase women’s participation in peace and political processes is vital to achieving women’s de facto equality in the context of entrenched discrimination”.

Out of the 193 Member States of the United Nations, only 34 women serve as elected Heads of State or Government.

“Whilst progress has been made in many countries, the global proportion of women in other levels of political office worldwide still has far to go: 21% of the world’s ministers, 26% of national parliamentarians, and 34% of elected seats of local government.”

According to a new UN report, at the current pace of progress, equal representation in parliament will not be achieved until 2062.

The UN General Assembly (UNGA) is the world’s largest yearly meeting of world leaders. While the UNGA has been the setting for several historic moments for gender equality, much has yet to be achieved regarding women’s representation and participation.

The 15-member UN Security Council has primary responsibility for the maintenance of international peace and security. “While women currently represent slightly over a third of the Security Council’s members — far higher than the average — it is still far from enough”, says the UN.

“Historically, diplomacy has been the preserve of men. Women have played a critical role in diplomacy for centuries, yet their contributions have often been overlooked. It’s time to recognize and celebrate the ways in which women are breaking barriers and making a difference in the field of diplomacy”.

At the UNGA’s 76th Session, the General Assembly by consensus declared the 24th of June each year to be the ‘International Day of Women in Diplomacy’.

By its resolution (A/RES/76/269), the Assembly invited all Member States, United Nations organizations, non-governmental groups, academic institutions and associations of women diplomats — where they exist — to observe the Day in a manner that each considers most appropriate, including through education and public awareness-raising.

According to UN Women:

• There are 31 countries where 34 women serve as Heads of State and/or Government as of January 2023.
• Of the five United Nations-led or co-led peace processes in 2021, two were led by women mediators, and all five consulted with civil society and were provided with gender expertise.
• In 2022, the Security Council held its first-ever formal meeting focusing on reprisals against women participating in peace and security processes.
• In multilateral disarmament forums, wide gaps persist in women’s participation and women remain grossly underrepresented in many weapons-related fields, including technical arms control – only 12 per cent of Ministers of Defense globally are women.
• Countries where there are more women in legislative and executive branches of government have less defense spending and more social spending.

Meanwhile, the Related “UN Observances” on Women include

• Gender equality
• International Women’s Day
• International Day of Women Judges
• International Day of the Girl Child
• International Day of Rural Women
• International Delegate’s Day
• International Day of Multilateralism and Diplomacy for Peace
• International Day of Women in Multilateralism
• Women Rise for All

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

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ECW Executive Director Yasmine Sherif launches the Multi-Year Resilience Programme in Yirol, South Sudan. The three-year programme, delivered by Save the Children, the Norwegian Refugee Council and Finn Church Aid, in close conjunction with the Ministry of General Education and Instruction and other partners, will reach at least 135,000 crisis-affected children and youth. Credit: ECW/Jiménez

By Joyce Chimbi
NAIROBI, Jun 24 2023 (IPS)

South Sudan is experiencing one of the most severe crises in the world today, causing fragility, instability, and economic stagnation. While a peace agreement was reached in 2018, sporadic intercommunal violence and climate-induced disasters continue to spur displacement. More than 2.2 million people are internally displaced. Another 2.3 million have fled to neighboring countries as refugees.

“South Sudan ranks the lowest on the human development index. It is the poorest country in the world and will need to catch up across all sustainable development goals and especially in areas such as eliminating extreme poverty, improving the education system, and gender equality. Yet, before COVID-19, 2.8 million children, and adolescents, or 70 percent of school-aged children, were not attending school. The number is now closer to 3 million,” ECW’s Executive Director Yasmine Sherif told IPS.

Sherif was on a field mission to South Sudan, where she met the President of South Sudan, Salva Kiir Mayardit, and Awut Deng Acuil, South Sudan’s Minister of General Education and Instruction, to assist immediate solutions to the education crisis in a country where only 13 percent of children transition to secondary school. For them, education and conflict are two sides of the same coin. Their joint mission is to ensure no child is left behind, especially in hard-to-reach areas such as Pibor and Abyei.

“Years of conflict and forced displacement, compounded by climate-induced disasters, have taken a heavy toll on South Sudan’s next generation. Now is the time to turn the tide and provide the most vulnerable girls and boys with the protection and hope that only a quality education offers. By working together with the Government, donors, civil society, and across the United Nations, this is the single best investment we can make for the future of this young country and the entire region,” said Sherif when she met with Ministry officials in Lakes State.

At least 135,000 children will benefit from the ECW’s Multi-Year Resilience Programme in South Sudan. Credit: ECW/Jiménez

ECW is the United Nations global fund for education in emergencies and protracted crises and has supported South Sudan with multi-year investment since 2020. To address these interconnected crises through the transformative power of education, President Kiir and Sherif announced USD 40 million in catalytic grant funding in a function attended by key stakeholders, including the governor of Lakes State, education officials, parents, and children.

From the Lakes State, the fund has launched its second and the largest ever multi-year investment amounting to USD 75 million and has secured two-thirds of that amount, which is USD 50 million. Of this, ECW contributed USD 40 million. The Global Partnership for Education provided another USD 10 million for Education. In addition to the new multi-year investment, ECW also announced a half-a-million dollar First Emergency Response grant to support the immediate education response to the arrivals of refugees and returnees fleeing Sudan.

“We appeal to government donors and the private sector to close the remaining gap of one-third, equivalent to USD 25 million, to fully fund a multi-year investment education program. We say five for five to fully fund the multi-year investment. If five strategic donor partners and private sector (partners) offered five million dollars each, we would have a fully funded multi-year resilience program in the education sector,” she says.

ECW funding in South Sudan now tops USD 72 million, up from the fund’s USD 32 million invested to date – reaching close to 140,000 children, built or rehabilitated over 160 classrooms and temporary learning spaces, and provided learning materials to 50,000 children thus far.

With the extended response multi-year response, children will continue to enjoy a quality, safe, inclusive education. Sherif says there is a special focus on children with disability, especially those with cognitive disabilities, an invisible problem that often goes unrecognized among children in developing countries.

Further stressing that the President and education ministries are fully committed to bringing girls back to school through progressive messaging to the community, policy, and law. The push to keep girls in school and out of reach of child marriages and early child pregnancies is unrelenting.

“The Government of South Sudan is fully committed to ensuring that all children are able to obtain a quality education. Education Cannot Wait’s top-up investment will provide life-saving educational opportunities for tens of thousands of crisis-affected girls and boys across the country,” said President Salva Kiir Mayardit.

“To advance this work, we are calling on world leaders to step up funding for ECW and its in-country partners. This is a critical investment in sustainable development, peace, and prosperity for the people of South Sudan and crisis-impacted children worldwide.”

Closer home, the current conflict in Sudan is fuelling additional needs in South Sudan. More than 100,000 people have crossed the border in recent weeks. Cornered by unrelenting multiple challenges, options for a better future shrink with every new challenge. Unmitigated, an entire generation of children could miss out on lifelong learning and earning opportunities.

“In light of the unfolding Sudan crisis, we will allocate and make an announcement of half a million dollars to support the Government of South Sudan to provide education to arrivals and returnees fleeing the Sudan conflict. Children and adolescents who were already going to school will continue to do so uninterrupted, have school meals, and psychosocial and mental health support,” Sherif said.

The new funding will extend ECW’s Multi-Year Resilience Programme in South Sudan for another three years. The three-year programme will be delivered by Save the Children, the Norwegian Refugee Council, and Finn Church Aid, in conjunction with the Ministry of General Education and Instruction and other partners.

It will reach at least 135,000 crisis-affected children and youth – including refugees, returnees, and host-community children – with holistic education supports that improve access to school, ensure quality learning, enhance inclusivity for girls and children with disabilities, and build resilience to future shocks.

Importantly, the new multi-year programme will improve responsiveness and resilience through improved evidence-based decision-making, strengthen coordination and meaningful engagement with local actors, and scale-up resource mobilization.

As the United Nations global fund for education in emergencies and protracted crises, ECW collaborates closely with governments, public and private donors, UN agencies, civil society organizations, and other humanitarian and development aid actors to increase efficiencies and end siloed responses.

ECW and its strategic partners are assessing the impacts of the civil war in Sudan on neighboring countries, including the Central African Republic, Chad, Ethiopia, and South Sudan, to provide agile and responsive investments that return crisis-impacted girls and boys to the safety and protection of quality learning environments. The fund urgently appeals to public and private sector donors for expanded support to reach more vulnerable children and youth.

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

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Lucineide Cordeiro loads manure from her two oxen and two calves into the "sertanejo" biodigester that produces biogas for cooking and biofertilizer for her varied crops on the one-hectare agroecological farm she manages on her own in the rural municipality of Afogados da Ingazeira, in the semiarid ecoregion of northeastern Brazil. CREDIT: Mario Osava / IPS

By Mario Osava
AFOGADOS DA INGAZEIRA, Brazil , Jun 24 2023 (IPS)

“The biodigester really gives a huge boost to those who have the courage to do things,” said Maria das Dores Alves da Silva, based on her own experience as a 63-year-old small farmer.

She did not hesitate to accept the offer of Diaconia, a social organization of Protestant churches in Brazil, to acquire the equipment to produce biogas on her farm in the rural area of Afogados da Ingazeira, a municipality of 38,000 people in the state of Pernambuco in the Northeast region of Brazil."We seek to promote energy, food and water autonomy to maintain more resilient agroecosystems, to coexist with climate change, strengthening community self-management with a special focus on the lives of women." -- Ita Porto

At first she did not have the cattle whose manure she needed to produce biogas, that enables her to save on liquefied petroleum gas, which costs 95 reais (20 dollars) for a 13-kg cylinder – a significant cost for poor families.

She brought manure from a neighboring farm that gave it to her for free, in an hour-long trip with her wheelbarrow, until she was able to buy her first cow and then another with loans from the state-owned Banco del Nordeste.

“Now I have more than enough manure,” she said happily as she welcomed IPS to her four-hectare farm where she and her husband have lived alone since their two children became independent.

Das Dores, as she is known, is an example among the 163 families who have benefited from the “sertanejos biodigesters” distributed by Diaconia in the sertão of Pajeú, a semiarid micro-region of 17 municipalities and 13,350 square kilometers in the center-north of Pernambuco.

Farmer Maria das Dores Alves da Silva stands between the manure pit and the “sertanejo” biodigester designed by Diaconia, a social organization of Protestant churches in Brazil, which has already installed 713 biogas production plants in eight of Brazil’s 26 states. CREDIT: Mario Osava / IPS

Biofertilizer

In addition to using the biogas, she sells the manure after it has been subjected to anaerobic biodigestion that extracts the gases – the so-called digestate, a biofertilizer that she packages in one-kilo plastic bags, after drying and shredding it.

Every Saturday, she sells 30 bags at the agroecological market in the town of Afogados da Ingazeira, the municipal seat. At two reais (40 cents) a bag, she earns an extra income of 60 reais (12.50 dollars), on top of her sales of the various sweet cakes she bakes at home, at a cost reduced by the biogas, and of the seedlings she also produces.

The seedlings provided her with a new business opportunity. “The customers asked me if I didn’t also have fertilizer,” she said. The biodigester produces enough fertilizer to sell at the market and to fertilize the farm’s crops of beans, corn, fruit trees, flowers and different vegetables.

This diversity is common in family farming in Brazil’s semiarid Northeast, but even more so in the agroecological techniques that have expanded in this territory of one million square kilometers in the northeastern interior of the country, which has an arid biome highly vulnerable to climate change, subject to frequent droughts, and where there are areas in the process of desertification.

The Pajeú river basin is the micro-region chosen by Diaconia as a priority for its social and environmental actions.

On Lucineide Cordeiro’s small farm, cotton, corn, sesame, sunflower, cassava and fruit trees are alternated in the fields, as recommended by agroecology, which is on the rise on family farms in Brazil’s semiarid Northeast, which is threatened by longer and more severe droughts due to the climate crisis. CREDIT: Mario Osava / IPS

Energy and food security

“We seek to promote energy, food and water autonomy to maintain more resilient agroecosystems, to coexist with climate change, strengthening community self-management with a special focus on the lives of women,” Ita Porto, Diaconia’s coordinator in the Pajeu ecoregion, told IPS.

“The production of biogas on a rural family scale fulfills the needs of energy for cooking, sanitary disposal and treatment of animal waste and reduction of deforestation, in addition to increasing food productivity, with organic fertilizer, while bolstering human health,” said the 48-year-old agronomist.

More than 713 units of the “sertanejo biodigester”, a model developed by Diaconia 15 years ago, have been installed in Brazil. In addition to the 163 in the sertão do Pajeú, there are 150 in the neighboring state of Rio Grande do Norte and another 400 distributed in six other Brazilian states, financed by the Caixa Econômica Federal, a government bank focused on social questions.

“Hopefully the government will make it a public policy, as it has already done with the rainwater harvesting tanks in the semarid Northeast,” said Porto.

More than 1.3 million rainwater harvesting tanks for drinking water have already been built, but some 350,000 are still needed to make them universal in rural areas, according to the Articulation of the Semi-Arid (Asa), a network of 3,000 social organizations that spearheaded the transformative program.

Maria Das Dores examines the biofertilizer that comes out of the biodigester, without the gases from the animal manure. She sells this by-product at the agroecological market in the town of Afogados da Ingazeira, the seat of the municipality where her four-hectare farm is located, which earns her an average extra income of 12.5 dollars a week. CREDIT: Mario Osava / IPS

The value of manure

“One cow is enough to produce the biogas consumed in our stove,” said Lucineide Cordeiro, on her one-hectare farm where she grows cotton, corn, sesame seeds and fruit, in an interconnected agroecological system, along with chickens, pigs and fish in a pond.

She also has two oxen and two calves, which she proudly showed to IPS during the visit to her farm.

“Pig manure produces biogas more quickly, but I don’t like the stench,” the 37-year-old farmer who is the director of Women’s Policies at the Afogados da Ingazeira Rural Workers Union told IPS.

The difference in the crops before and after fertilization by the biodigester by-product is remarkable, according to her and other farmers in the municipality.

She tends to her many crops on her own, although she is sometimes helped by friends, and has several pieces of equipment such as a brushcutter and a micro-tractor.

“It’s the best invention,” says Lucineide Cordeiro, as she shows IPS the seeder created by the Japanese for small-scale farming, which allows her to sow in half a day the land that used to take her two days to plant, on her one-hectare farm in Afogados da Ingazeira, in Brazil’s semiarid Northeast. CREDIT: Mario Osava / IPS

“But the seeder is the best invention that changed my life, it was invented by the Japanese. Planting the seeds, which used to take me two days of work, I can now do in half a day,” Cordeiro said.

The seeder is a small machine pushed by the farmer, with a wheel filled with seeds that has 12 nozzles that can be opened or closed, according to the distance needed to sow each seed.

The emergence of appropriate equipment for family farming is recent, in a sector that has favored large farmers in Brazil.

Female protagonism clashes with male chauvinist violence

For the success of local family farming, the support of the Pajeú Agroecological Association (Asap), of which Cordeiro is a member and a “multiplier”, as the women farmers who are an example to others of good practices are called, is important.

In family farming the empowerment of women stands out, which in many cases was a response to sexist violence or oppression.

Blue flames emerge from the burners of Maria Das Dores’ biogas stove at her home in Afogados da Ingazeira, in Brazil’s semiarid Northeast region. A single ox or cow produces enough manure to generate more biogas than a family requires for its domestic needs. CREDIT: Mario Osava / IPS

“The first violence I suffered was from my father who did not let me study. I only studied up to fourth grade of primary school, in the rural school. To continue, I would have had to go to the city, which my father did not allow. I got married to escape my father’s oppression,” said Cordeiro, who also separated from her first husband because he was violent.

After living in a big city with the father of her two daughters, she separated and returned to the countryside in 2019. “I was reborn” by becoming a farmer, she said, faced with the challenge of taking on that activity against the idea, even from her family, that a woman on her own could not possibly manage the demands of agricultural production.

Organic cotton, promoted and acquired in the region by Vert, a French-Brazilian company that produces footwear and clothing with organic inputs, has once again expanded in the Brazilian Northeast, after the crop was almost extinct due to the boll weevil plague in the 1990s.

In the case of Das Dores, a small, energetic, active woman, she has a good relationship with her husband, but she runs her own business initiatives. Thanks to what she earns she was able to buy a small pickup truck, but it is driven by her husband, who has a job but helps her on the farm in his free time.

“He drives because he refuses to teach me how, so I can’t go out alone with the vehicle and drive around everywhere,” she joked.

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A demonstration in the city of Córdoba, capital of the province of the same name in central Argentina, in favor of legal, safe and free abortion and women's rights. The color green has identified the movement in favor of the legalization of abortion, which was passed by Congress in late 2020. CREDIT: Catholics for Choice

By Daniel Gutman
BUENOS AIRES, Jun 23 2023 (IPS)

Viviana Mazur is a doctor at the Santojanni Hospital in Mataderos, a working-class neighborhood in Buenos Aires. She has witnessed the advances in women’s rights in Argentina, where until 2020 abortion was only allowed on two grounds, while it is now available on demand up to 14 weeks of pregnancy.

“Today what we see at the hospital is that most women come in for a consultation very early; in many cases they do so as soon as their period is late. This makes it possible to resolve almost all abortions with medication, in the woman’s own home, with medical advice and monitoring,” she said."(Medical abortion) is less traumatic and less risky for the woman and it's less costly for the public health system." -- Viviana Mazur

Mazur, who is also coordinator of Sexual Health in the Buenos Aires city government, said there are many advantages of medication abortion over the traditional surgical procedures.

“It’s less traumatic and less risky for the woman and it’s less costly for the public health system,” she told IPS.

In Argentina, as a result of years of struggle by the women’s rights movement, since January 2021 abortion has been decriminalized. In the last stage of the fight, mass demonstrations by women – and also men – wearing green headscarves, which has become a pro-choice symbol in Latin America, filled the streets.

Since then, Law 27,610 on Access to Voluntary Interruption of Pregnancy allows any woman to have an abortion up to the 14th week of pregnancy free of charge and without having to explain the reasons for her decision.

Until the law came into force, access was severely restricted: a Supreme Court ruling in effect since 2012 authorized what was called Legal Termination of Pregnancy, only in the case of rape or if the pregnancy endangered the woman’s life or health.

Argentina’s Minister of Health Carla Vizzotti (C) holds the green headscarf that is the symbol for the feminist movement that fought for the successful legalization of abortion in Argentina. CREDIT: Ministry of Health

More abortions recorded in 2022

In 2022, the first full year in which the law allowing abortion on demand was in force, 96,664 abortions were performed in the public health system of this South American country of 46 million inhabitants, according to official data. This marked a significant increase over 2021, when the total was 73,847, partly due to the rise in abortions in the public health system.

“More than 85 percent of abortions in 2022 were performed with medication,” Valeria Isla, the national director of Sexual and Reproductive Health, told IPS.
.
“The good news is that today these are safe practices taking place within the health system. In any case, since until recently most abortions were clandestine, we believe it is too early to draw conclusions with respect to the number. The figures have yet to stabilize,” she added.

Isla explained that her office provides training to health personnel from all over the country on how to perform abortions and that medications are distributed, as well as equipment for manual vacuum aspiration, which is a less risky medical procedure in a doctor’s office than dilation and curettage, which is performed in an operating room.

In this sense, since 2022 the incorporation of mifepristone into the Argentine health system, in addition to misoprostol, which has been used for years to perform medical abortions, has been a great step forward.

The combination of mifepristone and misoprostol, called “combipack”, makes abortions more efficient and less painful for women, and in fact the combination of these two drugs for pregnancy termination is one of the techniques recommended by the World Health Organization (WHO) since 2005.

Last year, the WHO ratified both as essential drugs for providing quality health services and backed their efficacy and safety for abortion.

Isla explained that since last year the national government has been distributing mifepristone in public hospitals thanks to a donation from the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA).

Since March of this year, mifepristone has been fully available also for the Argentine private health system, since the governmental National Administration of Medicines, Food and Medical Technology (Amnat) authorized its sale in pharmacies.

This has allowed the “combipack” to be used in recent months in the private health system as well, where women now also have easier access to abortion.

“The incorporation of mifepristone has been very important on a day-to-day basis to make abortion easier for women, because it means less misoprostol is used, side effects are reduced and the whole process can be carried out at home, with prior and subsequent checkups,” Florencia Grazzini, a social worker at a primary care clinic in the municipality of Lanús, on the outskirts of Buenos Aires, told IPS.

Grazzini began providing support to women who needed access to abortion long before the legalization of voluntary termination of pregnancy. She worked for years at the Kimelú counseling center, formed by feminist activists and serving the southern area of Greater Buenos Aires.

She said that while access to abortion has now been greatly facilitated, for some women termination of pregnancy is still a stigma.

“Despite the fact that with the law there is no need to gjve a reason for abortions up to 14 weeks of pregnancy, the justification for the decision continues to appear in the record of the consultations,” Grazzini pointed out.

She added that, “We are working so that people can share how they feel about their situation, but we don’t want them to feel that they need to explain in order to access an abortion.”

She said the women are told that they do not need to explain why they wish to have an abortion, although psychological assistance is provided to those who request it.

Abortion, however, sometimes encounters resistance from health professionals themselves. This was reflected in May, when the Ministry of Health updated the Protocol of Care and urged the “elimination of all requirements that are not clinically necessary for the safe practice of abortion.”

Specifically, it called for the elimination of waiting or reflection periods and the requirement of parental or partner consent.

A rally at the Ministry of Health in Buenos Aires, where feminist activists showed their green scarves and demonstrated in favor of women’s rights. CREDIT: Ministry of Health

The need for support

More data that shows that the legalization of abortion has not eliminated all the actual barriers is provided by Socorristas en Red (roughly, “Helpers Online Network”), a women’s organization that provides nationwide support for women who need an abortion.

In 2022, the network received 13,292 calls from women who wanted to terminate their pregnancies.

Only 10 percent of them had abortions in the public health system and the rest had abortions that they arranged elsewhere. The organization provided them with psychological assistance, information, instructions, WhatsApp messages, phone calls, and virtual and face-to-face company by “socorristas” or helpers. With all this they found greater comfort than in the health system.

This picture is completed by the visible inequality in access to abortion in different areas of the country.

Although the number of public hospitals and health centers that perform abortions reached 1793 in 2022 – against less than 1000 in 2021 – in some provinces the supply is very limited. For example, in the northern provinces of Santiago del Estero and Chaco there are only eight and nine health institutions, respectively, that perform abortions.

“In some places there is resistance from officials and a lack of knowledge among fellow workers about outpatient treatment with medications,” Ana Morillo, a social worker in the province of Córdoba, in the center of the country, told IPS.

Morillo, who is an activist and member of the Network of Professionals for Choice and the organization Catholics for Choice, said the advocacy work of the women’s rights movement has made Cordoba one of the provinces with the greatest access to abortion, since there are 180 hospitals and health centers that perform the procedure.

“The greatest inequalities are between cities and rural areas, where it is much more difficult to access an abortion. These are the disparities in the country on which we still have to work the hardest,” she said.

Indigenous activist protesting in Colombia. Credit: Sebastian Barros

By Marianne Buenaventura
PARIS, Jun 23 2023 (IPS)

As the Summit for a New Global Financing Pact unfolds in Paris on 22-23 June, Forus, a global network representing over 22,000 civil society organisations across Africa, Latin America, Asia, Europe and the Pacific, calls for the respect of human rights and for meaningful inclusion of civil society in shaping financial systems and structures.

The summit, co-hosted by India, could help find common ground on finance that drives progress at key events later in 2023 and in 2024 – the G20 summit in New Delhi, the COP28 climate talks in Dubai, and the Finance in Common summit with public development banks in Cartagena.

As part of the summit, Sarah Strack, Forus Director, is amplifying civil society’s voices at the high-level Finance in Common event in the presence of French President Emmanuel Macron and other leaders, to discuss and leverage the role of Public Development Banks in financing the SDGs, scaling up sustainable finance, and supporting inclusion. Forus has been engaging in the Finance in Common initiative since its inception in 2020 with the aim to ensure that a people-based approach to development is pursued.

“If we want to have a chance to tackle the most pressing challenges and the multiple crises of our time in a way that really puts first the interests and needs of people, then a shift of mindset and a new financial framework are absolutely necessary. It is essential that civil society plays a central role in shaping this new paradigm at every stage. Let us not forget the wealth of knowledge and leadership present at the local level. By actively engaging and collaborating with communities, we can genuinely measure our progress and honor the commitments we have made to those most in need,” says Sarah Strack.

Harsh Jaitli, CEO of the Voluntary Action Network India (VANI), is representing Forus as an official respondent in the Summit Roundtable “Power Our Planet: Act today. Save tomorrow”, co-hosted by Global Citizen and CISCO. The event seeks to rally for immediate action on economic, social, and climate justice, engaging both public and private sectors to catalyze renewable energy investment in climate-vulnerable countries to reduce energy poverty and accelerate the low-carbon transition.

Harsh Jaitli of VANI states that the New Global Financial Pact will require improved partnerships and the building of trust.

“Double standards have negatively impacted our collective capacity to deliver on effective development and climate related programmes. In some countries, multinational corporations respect human rights, fiscal and climate regulations, but in other countries decisions are made to violate them. Not only does this send the wrong message that some countries and populations are more important than others, but also jeopardizes our collective efforts to affect change. Multinational corporations should commit to respecting human rights, fiscal and climate regulations in all countries and in a consistent manner. When no strong regulations exist, this is the opportunity for multinationals to be proactive and to apply strong rules, which are coherent with their policies,”says Harsh Jaitli.

Julien Comlan Agbessi, Coordinator of the Regional Coalition of West Africa (REPAOC) emphasizes the importance of multi-stakeholder cooperation. Agbessi explains that cooperation between the private sector and the civil society organisations is possible, since the private sector could leverage hugely on the experience and outreach of civil society. “Many poverty alleviation programs and projects with significant funding implemented over the past decades have failed to deliver for communities. Transformative investments in low-income countries and climate impacted countries require putting the needs of people first,” says Julien Comlan Agbessi.

Lina Paola Lara Negrette, Coordinator of the Confederación Colombiana de ONG (Ccong), states that the New Global Financial Pact must incorporate stronger and more meaningful engagement with civil society.

“Civil society has an important role to play in ensuring the accountability and transparency of both government and private sector actors. Civil society can work closely with governments and the private sector to ensure the delivery of social and environmental needs in all investments, which includes respect of human rights”.

Olivier Bruyeron, President of the French platform of CSOs Coordination SUD, equally emphasizes the importance of partnerships with the public and private sector, “CSOs hold valuable knowledge and expertise on international solidarity needed to construct sustainable global solutions and to link them with local development” adds Olivier Bruyeron.

Marianne Buenaventura is project coordinator at Forus.

IPS UN Bureau

 

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The Destruction of the Nova Kakhovka dam in Ukraine has left thousands displaced and disastrous impacts on the environment. Credit: Ukraine Red Cross/Twitter

By Ed Holt
BRATISLAVA, Jun 23 2023 (IPS)

As well as creating a humanitarian crisis, the destruction of the Nova Kakhovka dam in Ukraine has wrought enormous environmental damage which may never be undone, ecologists have said.

The collapse of the dam in the Kherson region on June 6 put more than 40,000 people in immediate danger from flooding and left hundreds of thousands without access to drinking water, according to Ukrainian officials.

The reservoir at the dam, which continued to drain days after the dam’s destruction, held 18 cubic kilometres (4.3 cubic miles) of water – a volume roughly equal to the Great Salt Lake in Utah – and was the source of fresh water for large parts of the south of the country.

The disaster – which Kyiv says was the result of Russian sabotage –  flooded scores of villages, towns and cities along the Dnieper River. Entire settlements were destroyed, with houses washed away or almost completely submerged by the floodwaters.

Although those waters have begun to recede in many places now, and the immediate risk from drowning has largely abated, other grave dangers remain, with Ukraine’s health ministry warning of the threat of water and food-borne diseases as dead bodies, chemicals, landfills, and waste from toilets could contaminate floodwaters and wells.

President Volodymyr Zelensky also highlighted a potential danger from anthrax as floodwaters may have disturbed animal burial sites, and Health Ministry officials told IPS that they were especially concerned about the risk of cholera in the weeks to come.

The death toll was at least 52, with Russia giving 35 in its territory and Ukraine saying 17.

And those who have been evacuated are unlikely to be able to return to their homes for some time, if at all, adding tens of thousands of already vulnerable people to the country’s ongoing crisis of internal displacement.

“There are already 5 million people internally displaced in Ukraine. This will put more strain on already stretched services,” Olivia Headon, spokesperson for the International Organisation for Migration, which is helping with rescue efforts in affected areas, told IPS.

But while the human toll of the disaster is becoming increasingly apparent, so too is its massive environmental impact.

Ukrainian Deputy Foreign Minister Andrij Melnyk has called the destruction of the dam “the worst environmental catastrophe in Europe since the Chernobyl disaster”, and many local experts believe the ecological effects will be felt for decades to come.

“Some ecosystems could recover within a dozen years from the flooding itself [but] the drop in groundwater level upstream of the dam is permanent – unless the dam is rebuilt – so [some] ecosystems will never recover,” Natalia Gozak, Wildlife Rescue Field Officer in Ukraine for the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW), told IPS.

The area downstream from the dam – which includes three national parks – is rich in wildlife, some of it very rare.

Local environmental groups estimate that hundreds of thousands of animals have been affected by the dam’s destruction and that tens of thousands have been killed.

They fear a loss of endemic endangered species – areas home to nearly all known locations of the rare ant species Liometopum microcephalum, as well as 70% of the world population of Nordmann’s birch mouse (Sicista loriger), have been flooded.

Meanwhile, ecosystems which were already endangered are now having to deal with either too much or too little water and could disappear.

Ecologists are also worried about a massive loss of bird life while the draining of the reservoir at the dam will also result in major freshwater fish stocks in Ukraine being lost.

The loss of water from the dam reservoir and the major canals it served also spells an end to water supplies for land used to grow crops and other produce which feeds not only Ukrainians but many millions in developing countries too. Forty percent of the World Food Programme’s wheat supplies come from Ukraine.

“In future years, the greatest impact will be seen in southern agricultural areas, which are now left without water supplies. These areas will already have changed next summer depending on what adaptation measures are possible and what action is taken,” said Gozak.

She added that in areas where irrigation channels are no longer being filled from the reservoir, agriculture will stop. “It is possible there will be desertification [of this land],” she said.

The IFAW says this drying of land will subsequently affect local microclimates and cause temperature shifts, while wind erosion will blow sand and soil all over neighbouring areas, impacting both people and nature.

Meanwhile, there are other long-term environmental threats.

Pollution is one as floodwaters have washed an estimated 150 tons of machine oil has been washed as far down as the Black Sea, according to Ukrainian officials. Huge oil slicks have also been seen on the waters in Kherson city’s port and industrial facilities.

And there have been warnings that parts of the river and surrounding lands may now be full of mines.

Some areas of Ukraine have been heavily mined since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion last year, and it is believed the floodwaters dislodged many of them.

While there have been reports of some exploding as they hit debris on their way downstream, many are likely to have remained unexploded and covered in silt and mud or buried under other debris.

International rescue groups say that finding where they are and then demining them would be a very slow process, even without the ongoing war.

“We’re mapping the likelihood of where the mines were and where they might end up. The area around the dam was heavily mined to stop an amphibious assault, and we don’t know precisely how many mines there are. There could be thousands of mines involved, but we hope not tens of thousands,” Andrew Duncan, a weapon contamination coordinator for the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), told IPS.

“If the fighting stopped and we were able to get into the area, it would be a case of all reasonable effort being made to locate the mines. But this is a very slow process. Any affected land will be out of commission for years,” he added.

But that is not all.

About 150 kilometres upstream from Nova Kakhovka is the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant which draws its cooling water from the dam’s reservoir. The reactors at the plant, which had been under the control of Russian forces since early on in the war, had been shut down prior to the disaster, but they still needed water to cool them and prevent a nuclear catastrophe.

While officials at the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) have said that alternative sources, including a large pond next to the plant, can provide cooling water for a number of months, the disaster has highlighted the potential for an even greater catastrophe at the site, others say.

Ukrainian nuclear scientist Mariana Budjeryn, Senior Research Associate at the Project on Managing the Atom, Harvard Kennedy School, told international media: “If the Russians would do this with Kakhovka, there’s no guarantee they won’t blow up the reactor units at the Zaporizhzhia plant that are also reportedly mined – three of the six. It wouldn’t cause a Chernobyl, but massive disruption, local contamination and long-term damage to Ukraine.”

Regardless of what may or may not come to pass at the nuclear plant, the effects of the dam’s destruction will be felt by both people and nature for a long time to come.

Olena Kozachenko*, an office worker from the Korabel district in the Kherson region, told IPS: “We’re all going to have to live with the dangers, such as dislodged mines, for a long time after the flooding.”

Gozak added: “The human toll of the disaster is probably greater than the environmental toll [but] it will take years and years for ecosystems and habitats to get back to how they were if it can happen at all.”

*Not her real name.

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

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Cover photo by Reuters/Stringer via Gallo Images

By Andrew Firmin
LONDON, Jun 23 2023 (IPS)

The violence keeps coming in Myanmar, under military rule since February 2021. The junta stands accused of war crimes and crimes against humanity, with evidence of systematic use of killings, rape, torture and other gross human rights violations in its attempt to suppress forces demanding a return to democracy.

Even humanitarian aid is restricted. Recently the junta refused to allow in aid organisations trying to provide food, water and medicines to people left in desperate need by a devastating cyclone. It’s far from the first time it’s blocked aid.

Crises like this demand an international response. But largely standing on the sidelines while this happens is the regional intergovernmental body, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). Its recent summit, held in Indonesia in May, failed to produce any progress.

ASEAN’s inaction

ASEAN’s response to the coup was to issue a text, the Five-Point Consensus (5PC), in April 2021. This called for the immediate cessation of violence and constructive dialogue between all parties. ASEAN agreed to provide humanitarian help, appoint a special envoy and visit Myanmar to meet with all parties.

Civil society criticised this agreement because it recognised the role of the junta and failed to make any mention of the need to restore democracy. And the unmitigated violence and human rights violations are the clearest possible sign that the 5PC isn’t working – but ASEAN sticks to it. At its May summit, ASEAN states reiterated their support for the plan.

A major challenge is that most ASEAN states have no interest in democracy. All 10 have heavily restricted civic space. As well as Myanmar, civic space is closed in Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam.

It wouldn’t suit such states to have a thriving democracy on their doorstep, which could only bring greater domestic and international pressure to follow suit. States that repress human rights at home typically carry the same approach into international organisations, working to limit their ability to uphold human rights commitments and scrutinise violations.

Continuing emphasis on the 5PC hasn’t masked divisions among ASEAN states. Some appear to think they can engage with the junta and at least persuade it to moderate its violence – although reality makes this increasingly untenable. But others, particularly Cambodia – a one-party state led by the same prime minister since 1998 – seem intent on legitimising the junta.

Variable pressure has come from ASEAN’s chair, which rotates annually and appoints the special envoy. Under the last two, Brunei Darussalam – a sultanate that last held an election in 1965 – and Cambodia, little happened. Brunei never visited the country after being refused permission to meet with democratic leaders, while Cambodia’s prime minister, Hun Sen, visited Myanmar last year. The first post-coup visit to Myanmar by a head of government, this could only be construed as conferring legitimacy.

Indonesia, the current chair, hasn’t appointed a special envoy, instead setting up an office headed by the foreign minister. So far it appears to be taking a soft approach of quiet diplomacy rather than public action.

Thailand, currently led by a pro-military government, is also evidently happy to engage with the junta. While junta representatives remain banned from ASEAN summits, Thailand has broken ranks and invited ASEAN foreign ministers, including from Myanmar, to hold talks about reintegrating the junta’s leaders. A government that itself came to power through a coup but should now step aside after an election where it was thoroughly defeated looks to be attempting to bolster the legitimacy of military rule.

ASEAN states seem unable to move beyond the 5PC even as they undermine it. But the fact that they’re formally sticking with it enables the wider international community to stand back, on the basis of respecting regional leadership and the 5PC.

The UN Security Council finally adopted a resolution on Myanmar in December 2022. This called for an immediate end to the violence, the release of all political prisoners and unhindered humanitarian access. But its language didn’t go far enough in condemning systematic human rights violations and continued to emphasise the 5PC. It failed to impose sanctions such as an arms embargo or to refer Myanmar to the International Criminal Court (ICC).

Civil society in Myanmar and the region is urging ASEAN to go further. Many have joined together to develop a five-point agenda that goes beyond the 5PC. It calls for a strategy to end military violence through sanctions, an arms embargo and a referral of Myanmar to the ICC. It demands ASEAN engages beyond the junta, and particularly with democratic forces including the National Unity Government – the democratic government in exile. It urges a strengthening of the special envoy role and a pivoting of humanitarian aid to local responders rather than the junta. ASEAN needs to take this on board.

A fork in the road

ASEAN’s current plan is a recipe for continuing military violence, increasingly legitimised by its neighbours’ acceptance. Ceremonial elections could offer further fuel for this.

The junta once promised to hold elections by August, but in February, on the coup’s second anniversary, it extended the state of emergency for another six months. If and when those elections finally happen, there’s no hope of them being free or fair. In March, the junta dissolved some 40 political parties, including the ousted ruling party, the National League for Democracy.

The only purpose of any eventual fake election will be to give the junta a legitimising veneer to present as a sign of progress – and some ASEAN states may be prepared to buy this. This shouldn’t be allowed. ASEAN needs to listen to the voices of civil society calling for it to get its act together – and stick together – in holding the junta to account. If it doesn’t, it will keep failing not only Myanmar’s people, but all in the region who reasonably expect that fundamental human rights should be respected and those who kill, rape and torture should face justice.

Andrew Firmin is CIVICUS Editor-in-Chief, co-director and writer for CIVICUS Lens and co-author of the State of Civil Society Report.

 

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The 2012 Cape Town Agreement, adopted by the International Maritime Organization, outlines design, construction, and equipment standards for fishing vessels of 24 meters or more in length and details regulations that countries that are party to the agreement must adopt to protect fishing crews and observers. Credit: The Pew Charitable Trusts

By Peter Horn
LONDON, Jun 23 2023 (IPS)

Long before Hollywood highlighted the dangers of commercial fishing in The Perfect Storm, Deadliest Catch and other programming, governments around the world knew that this was one of the most hazardous jobs, killing thousands of fishers every year.

Until last fall, how many people perish while working in the seafood industry has never been clear. But now, through research commissioned by The Pew Charitable Trusts and conducted by the FISH Safety Foundation, a nonprofit organization in New Zealand dedicated to improving safety at sea, we know the truth: Worldwide, fishing is responsible for the deaths of more than 100,000 people every year, along with a staggering number of life-altering injuries.

And although there is a way to limit some of these risks, namely through the ratification of an international treaty known as the Cape Town Agreement (CTA), there has been little movement to date protecting fishers. But with the CTA, which is the only global agreement specifically designed to tackle the safety of the environment fishers work in, this could change.

This agreement focuses on safety standards for industrial-size fishing vessels and would grant fishers the same structural integrity, safety precautions, and training that have been in place for other seafarers for decades.

More than 3 billion people rely on seafood for a significant source of protein, and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) expects that demand to grow.

But although many of us are familiar with the thrill of the chase depicted in media—big fish, bigger boats and even bigger waves—we’re unfamiliar with who is most at risk on the water. The answer is vulnerable and lowest-income people.

People, often the most marginalized, are frequently coerced and even forced to work on unsafe vessels and in conditions that in many cases meet the definition of slavery—long workdays, crowded and filthy sleeping quarters, violent and abusive superiors, insufficient nutrition, little or no safety equipment or medical care, and no chance of escape.

These conditions have been documented throughout the world’s ocean, in both national and international waters, from the largest industrial ships to small subsistence rafts and canoes.

Three intergovernmental bodies share responsibility for fishing, fishers and safety: the FAO, along with the International Labour Organization (ILO) and the International Maritime Organization (IMO). But none have full decision-making authority—and all lack the data to expose the dangerous realities of commercial fishing. To make matters worse, coordinated action across these organizations has been missing.

But today, there’s no longer any excuse for ignoring the high death rates at sea. The Cape Town Agreement—coupled with two other treaties—give authorities the leverage they need to protect fishers on large-scale industrial vessels that traverse international waters.

Fisher safety provides a powerful incentive for full ratification of the CTA. And the agreement should not be difficult to implement; many developed nations have already adopted its recommended guidelines for their fleets.

Unfortunately, this fact is being used as an argument against the treaty. Specifically, that because some large fleets already adhere to the guidelines, ratification is unnecessary and will not improve safety for fishers.

But this misses an important point. Ratification will help show leadership and encourage other countries to improve safety standards, which could help the most endangered workers.

The agreement needs 22 countries with a combined 3,600 vessels to go into force. Ratification by three more countries, with a combined 1,500 eligible vessels, will meet that goal.

However, it should have been met already. In 2019, 51 countries committed to ratify the agreement by October 2022, but most haven’t followed through, despite the number of fatalities each year.

Those avoidable deaths should move these countries to act—now. The other two treaties in force are the FAO Port State Measures Agreement, which works to prevent illegally caught fish from entering the seafood supply chain, and the 2007 ILO Work in Fishing Convention C188, which sets standards for working conditions onboard vessels. However, to better protect fishers, more countries are needed to join all three treaties and implement them.

It is time for countries to acknowledge that fisher fatalities are a serious problem, many fishing-related deaths are preventable, and despite the complexity, they want to find effective solutions.

We know for certain that fishers who work each day to bring their catch to tables or the marketplaces around the world put their lives in danger. As people demand more and more fish, we can’t—and shouldn’t—go another year without stronger safety rules for fishing, starting with ratification of the Cape Town Agreement.

Peter Horn, who directs efforts to end illegal fishing as part of The Pew Charitable Trusts’ international fisheries program, has spent more than 30 years in the British Royal Navy, where he reached the rank of commander, and served in the Fishery Protection Squadron.

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Yohei Sasakawa, WHO’s Goodwill Ambassador for Leprosy Elimination, speaks at the two-day Bergen International Conference on Hansen’s Disease. The conference coincided with the 150th anniversary of the discovery of Mycobacterium leprae by Norwegian doctor Gerhard Armauer Hansen. Credit: Thor Brødreskift/Sasakawa Leprosy (Hansen’s Disease) Initiative

By Joyce Chimbi
NAIROBI, Jun 22 2023 (IPS)

The 1873 discovery of Mycobacterium leprae, the causative agent of leprosy by Norwegian doctor Gerhard Armauer Hansen, remains one of the greatest paradigm shifts in medical history, a true revolution.

“Before the great discovery, even in the days when communication and transportation technologies were not as developed as today, leprosy was detested by the entire world. Leprosy was believed to be a divine punishment or a hereditary disease; once affected, patients were segregated to remote areas and islands for life,” says Yohei Sasakawa, WHO’s Goodwill Ambassador for Leprosy Elimination.

Sasakawa, who also serves as chairperson of The Nippon Foundation, spoke during a two-day conference in Bergen, Norway, to commemorate the 1873 discovery. In attendance were over 200 people, including medical, human rights, and historical preservation experts, researchers, NGOs, and organizations of persons affected by the disease.

The Bergen International Conference on Hansen’s Disease, held on June 21 and 22, 2023, was organized by the Sasakawa Leprosy (Hansen’s Disease) Initiative and the University of Bergen. It focused on medical efforts against leprosy, human rights, and dignity issues and preserving the history of leprosy for the lessons it can teach future generations. All three are pillars of the Sasakawa Leprosy (Hansen’s Disease) Initiative’s activities for a world free of leprosy and the discrimination it causes, in line with the UN’s Resolution on Elimination of discrimination against persons affected by leprosy and their family members.

In his speech to delegates, Sasakawa acknowledged the extraordinary advances made by medical professionals since Dr Hansen’s discovery that leprosy was neither a curse nor a punishment from God but a chronic disease caused by a bacillus.

With the 1873 discovery, leprosy went from being a mythological divine disease shrouded in mystery to something one could observe and explain—although it would take more than half a century before a cure was found.

Delegates at the Bergen International Conference on Hansen’s Disease held on June 21 and 22, 2023. The conference was organized by the Sasakawa Leprosy (Hansen’s Disease) Initiative and the University of Bergen. Credit: Thor Brødreskift/Sasakawa Leprosy (Hansen’s Disease) Initiative

Margareth Hagen, Rector, University of Bergen, said there was a clear shift in the scientific discourse about leprosy before and after the discovery.

Sasakawa said the journey towards a cure started with a single anti-leprosy drug to more effective drug regimens and, ultimately, a recommendation from WHO’s medical team that leprosy patients receive drug regimens consisting of multiple drugs.

“A single anti-leprosy drug tended to increase drug resistance. Since the development of multi-drug therapy, with early detection and treatment, leprosy has become totally curable. About 60 million patients have been cured over the last 40 years,” he said.

Abbi Patrix, the great-grandson of Dr Hansen, now responsible for his great grandfather’s history, spoke about the man behind the science in a session titled, ‘My grandfather, my mother, the documents and me.’

Patrix, a European performance storyteller, talked about the day his mother, the only direct descendant of Dr Hansen at the time, learned that leprosy was named Hansen’s disease after her grandfather.

She was moved and wondered why? His mother was informed that Dr Hansen’s discovery had put a name to a disease that had confounded scientists and society alike and that labeling it ‘Hansen’s disease’ meant freedom for those afflicted because a cure could now be found.

The conference venue was, therefore, a recognition of his renowned great-grandfather because he was born in Bergen, and this was the site for his landmark 1873 discovery at only 32 years of age.

WHO Director-General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told the audience: “WHO was born halfway between 1873 and today, 75 years ago. Much progress has been made since the two major milestones in the fight against leprosy. But much remains to be done toward our shared goals of zero disease, zero disability, and zero discrimination. Cases of leprosy have decreased significantly in recent decades, but more effort is needed to recover from the health system disruptions of the COVID-19 pandemic and move further ahead.”

Ghebreyesus said the WHO was committed to supporting countries in their bid to eliminate leprosy in line with the roadmap for neglected tropical disease for 2021 to 2030.

“So far, 49 countries have eliminated at least one neglected tropical disease, including Human African trypanosomiasis, rabies, and trachoma. With your support and those of our global partners, we can achieve that goal for leprosy too.”

Other dignitaries who spoke at the conference include United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk, who said the conference celebrated medical innovations over the last 150 years.

“But when leprosy was eliminated as a global public health problem in 2000, it did not mean that the disease disappeared. Over 250,000 people suffer from leprosy every year, 15,000 of them are children. The actual figures are likely far higher,” he emphasized.

“Around three to four million people who have already been cured still bear varying degrees of impairment. The burden of leprosy is heaviest in countries with the greatest inequality, poverty, and marginalization.”

Türk further said that to better the lives of people affected by leprosy, “We need to address the physical symptoms, but we also need social and behavioral measures to address stigma and discrimination. We need comprehensive strategies with access to quality care, education, and social protection,” and told participants that “together we can make a real difference in ending leprosy, which causes immense preventable and unjustifiable suffering for thousands of people.”

Against this backdrop, Sasakawa stressed that further action is needed to combat stigma and discrimination, pointing out that as many as 130 discriminatory laws against leprosy are still in place in more than 20 countries.

“When respect for human rights is a must, it is unacceptable to leave such a large-scale and serious human rights violation unaddressed,” he said.

As the curtain fell on the Bergen conference of a remarkable journey to end leprosy over the last 150 years, Dr Takahiro Nanri, executive director of Sasakawa Health Foundation, noted that this was the third international conference that the foundation has helped to organize since launching its “Don’t Forget Leprosy” campaign in 2021 to help to ensure that the disease and those affected by it are not overlooked amid the coronavirus pandemic.

“Our purpose in organizing these conferences is to make the world aware that there are still many people who have Hansen’s disease and its consequences; to build momentum for collaboration toward the realization of a leprosy-free world; and to provide a setting for both formal and informal exchanges that can be a catalyst for innovative solutions that we as a foundation are ready to support,” he said.

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• We Must Do More to Remove People’s Negative Image of Leprosy from their DNA – Yohei Sasakawa
• Youth Have the Spirit to Change Trajectory of Leprosy, says Yohei Sasakawa

Santiago Abascal, leader of Spain’s far-right Vox party. The party could soon be in government, after the 23 July 2023 general elections. Credit: Shutterstock

By Baher Kamal
MADRID, Jun 22 2023 (IPS)

The abuse of human rights has sharply increased with the steady rise of the right and far-right parties in the wealthy industrialised countries, whose extremist ideology is now spreading faster than ever in Europe.

Indeed, most of the European Union 27 member countries are now either formally ruled by or strongly influenced and supported by extremists and populist parties, which publicly negate basic human rights, while masking their policies of suppressing public services like health, education, pensions, and protection of workers.

 

Life of citizens to be handled by private corporations

Let alone, their negation of the existing deadly gender violence, the right of women to equal opportunities, and the devastating climate catastrophes which impact the very same Europe, let alone all international laws regulating the rights of migrants, refugees and asylum seekers.

It’s like a ladder of incremental extremism - You start at the bottom with a stereotype, move on to emojis and memes that lead to harmful speech. Harmful speech leads to hate speech, a torrent of hate builds up, and results in the incitement of violence. And then you have actual violence

And they are active in most European countries, from Scandinavian and Baltic States, to Italy and Greece, through Hungary, Poland, Czechia, France and Austria, let alone the United Kingdom.

Spain is one of very few European countries still ruled by a progressive Government, although it is feared that the right and far-right parties will take over after the 23 July 2023 general elections.

 

The myth of white supremacy

Their trend to further promote the myth of ‘white supremacy’ is not new, but rather a reflection of what is being done by European descendents in the United States, Canada, and Australia.

Such a myth goes against what they call ‘minorities,’ e.g., anybody who is not White and Christian.

They call it “the defence of our national identity.”

In short, the spread of hate speech, stigmatisation and racial discrimination is now being widely “institutionalised” in European countries, those whose governments signed –and their Parliaments ratified– all international, legally-binding declarations, treaties and laws defending the protection of human rights.

For such purposes, they further spread hate speech, which reinforces “discrimination and stigma and is most often aimed at women, refugees and migrants, and minorities,” as described by the United Nations on the occasion of this year’s International Day for Countering Hate Speech (18 June).

With hate “spreading lightning fast on social media and mega spreaders using divisive rhetoric to inspire thousands, hate speech “lays the ground for conflicts and tensions, wide scale human rights violations.”

 

‘Dark age of intolerance’

On this, Mita Hosali, Deputy Director of the UN Department of Global Communication (DGC), said young people are often seen today as vectors of such toxic trends as online hate speech.

“Increasingly, we are entering this dark age of intolerance, fueled by polarisation and mis- and disinformation, and there are all kinds of ‘facts’ swirling out there,” she cautioned.

“It’s like a ladder of incremental extremism,” Hosali said.

“You start at the bottom with a stereotype, move on to emojis and memes that lead to harmful speech. Harmful speech leads to hate speech, a torrent of hate builds up, and results in the incitement of violence. And then you have actual violence.”

Tech companies must now show effective leadership and responsibility around moderation to set up guard rails for respectful online discourse, she said.

“It really boils down to leaders, whether they are political, business, faith, or community leaders,” she said, emphasising that such efforts must also start within the family and ripple across all circles of influence so that ordinary people fight back against hate speech.

According to the world’s largest multilateral body –the UN–, the devastating effect of hatred is sadly nothing new.

However, “its scale and impact are amplified today by new technologies of communication, so much so that hate speech has become one of the most frequent methods for spreading divisive rhetoric and ideologies on a global scale.”

 

Social exclusion fuels terrorism

The consequences of such a growing social exclusion spreading in Europe and elsewhere are dire.

On this, the UN Secretary-General, António Guterres, on 19 June 2023 stressed at the UN’s Third Counter-Terrorism week that terrorism affects every region of the world, while preying on local and national vulnerabilities.

“Poverty, inequalities and social exclusion give terrorism fuel. Prejudice and discrimination targeting specific groups, cultures, religions and ethnicities give it flame.”

 

No one is born to hate

Hatred, conspiracy theories and prejudice infiltrate our societies and affect all of us. We are flooded by information – and disinformation – more than ever before both on- and offline. “But no one is born to hate.”

Nevertheless, ‘toxic and destructive’ hate speech has now grown much faster and wider than anytime before.

 

Migrants, the easiest victims

In the right and far-right campaigns in defence of what they call “our freedom,” “our Western civilisation,” “our democracy,” “our values,” and “our Christian faith,” they turn migrants, now more than ever before, into the easiest prey to chase.

In fact, like the United States, the United Kingdom and Australia, among other Western wealthy powers, the 27 members of the European Union on 8 June adopted a strongly criticised by major human rights organisations, which further restricts the basic human rights of migrants, refugees and asylum seekers.

 

Death of migrants, ‘normalised’

The number of migrants who died and are still hopelessly missing as a consequence of the 14 June shipwreck off Greece coast of a fishing vessel carrying between 450- and 750 migrants, is still unknown.

Anyway, it just adds to a long series of migrant deaths in only one sea: the Mediterranean.

Although the number of dead migrants in the Mediterranean is far from being credibly counted, the International Organization for Migration (IOM)’s Missing Migrants Project documented 441 migrant deaths in the Central Mediterranean in the first quarter of 2023, “the deadliest first quarter on record since 2017.”

 

The most dangerous maritime crossing

The increasing loss of lives on the “world’s most dangerous maritime crossing” comes amidst reports of delays in State-led rescue responses and hindrance to the operations of humanitarian non-governmental organisations’ search and rescue (SaR) vessels in the central Mediterranean.

Not only that: Italy, like other South European States, still argues that the non-governmental, voluntary humanitarian vessels dedicated to search and rescue migrants in the Mediterranean, are involved in… human trafficking.

Paraquat is currently banned in over 67 countries, including China, the EU, and Brazil. In the US, it's labelled as a restricted-use substance, meaning that farmworkers are still allowed to spray it on crops as long as they receive proper EPA training and certification. Credit: Atraxia Law

By Miguel Leyva
San Diego, California, US, Jun 22 2023 (IPS)

The US agricultural industry has been one of the key sectors driving our country’s continuous demographic and economic growth. Unfortunately, farmworkers are one of the least protected professional groups, with minority and migrant agricultural laborers suffering disproportionately higher health risks due to deeply-entrenched discriminatory policies and practices.

Although acknowledged as essential workers during the height of the covid pandemic, minority farmworkers still have to contend with inadequate working conditions and insufficient social protections that leave them and their communities vulnerable to the enduring effects of toxic agrochemicals.

 

Rooted in Environmental Racism

Due to its high potency and increasing medical evidence indicating its links to life-threatening conditions, paraquat is currently banned in over 67 countries, including China, the EU, and Brazil. According to data from the US Geologic Survey, more than 17 million pounds of paraquat are used in US agriculture every year, with states like California, Texas, Illinois, and Mississippi spraying over 1 million pounds on crops annually

Throughout the 20th century, redlining kept low-income ethnic communities segregated in areas with substandard living conditions. At the same time, racist lending practices enabled white Americans to operate and own 94 to 98 percent of US farmland, further preventing the social mobility of marginalized groups and their capacity to amass generational wealth.

The disproportionate health burdens minorities endure due to systemic prejudice is better described as “environmental racism.” Notably, approximately 83% of the US agricultural labor force is Hispanic. In rural areas where agriculture is the primary source of employment, this phenomenon is propagated by the excessive use of synthetic pesticides.

As the main ingredient in popular products like Gramoxone and Parazone, paraquat (paraquat dichloride) is an extremely effective herbicide used to combat weed species that have developed resistance to conventional pest-control chemicals. In the US, it’s labeled as a restricted-use substance, meaning that farmworkers are still allowed to spray it on crops as long as they receive proper EPA training and certification.

However, due to its high potency and increasing medical evidence indicating its links to life-threatening conditions, paraquat is currently banned in over 67 countries, including China, the EU, and Brazil.

 

Farmworker’s Toxic Exposure Risks

According to data from the US Geologic Survey, more than 17 million pounds of paraquat are used in US agriculture every year, with states like California, Texas, Illinois, and Mississippi spraying over 1 million pounds on crops annually. Other states where annual paraquat applications exceed 500,000 pounds/year include Tennessee, Oklahoma, Ohio, Arkansas, Louisiana, North Carolina, Missouri, South Dakota, Iowa, and Washington.

In California’s mainly-Hispanic counties, minority farmworkers and agricultural communities endure disproportionate levels of pesticide exposure. Although not exclusive to the Golden State, with similarly high rates documented in Florida, North Carolina, Idaho, and Washington, clinical studies carried out in the Central Valley illustrate the toxic burdens plaguing Latino and migrant workers.

Chronic exposure to paraquat has been linked to breast and thyroid cancer, as well as fetal and pregnancy-related toxicity. Even more concerning, a recent UCLA study found that long-term paraquat exposure is associated with higher Parkinson’s disease prevalence, building on evidence uncovered over a decade ago. Even though correlation doesn’t imply causation, it’s worth noting that California also has the highest number of Parkinson’s diagnoses in the US (106,701).

The steep health toll minority farmworkers and their families pay is punctuated not only by the lacking occupational protections that current pesticide regulations provide but also by farm owners’ disregard for EPA-mandated worker protection standards. While owners are obliged to provide safety training, personal protective equipment, and prevent workers’ access to fields until exposure risks subside, they rarely follow regulations given the low chance of penalties and insufficient institutional enforcement.

Additionally, the linguistic barriers migrant and minority farmworkers encounter make it less likely that they will fully understand safety guidelines or seek medical help when pesticide poisoning occurs. At the same time, non-English speakers who aren’t aware of their rights are far more susceptible to unscrupulous employers’ exploitative practices.

 

Combating Social Injustice in the Agricultural Sector

Despite the risks, ethnic farmworkers put up with unsafe working conditions and hesitate voicing their discontent since doing so may endanger their employment status and prevent them from earning the income their families rely on.

Faced with a plethora of socio-economic and occupational hazards, vulnerable minority workers and their communities rely on state and federal institutions to create a legal framework that provides adequate protection against toxic environmental exposure. However, the EPA controversially approved paraquat’s relicensing until 2035, discounting mounting evidence of the herbicide’s potential for enduring harm.

Several environmental, public health, and farmworkers’ rights organizations contested the EPA’s decision, determining the Agency to reconsider paraquat’s relicensing for agricultural purposes, with a final decision expected later this year. Such actions are vital and embolden disenfranchised minority groups who often lack the resources or political influence to confront industry interest groups who oppose pesticide policy reform.

Moving forward, Congress could help reduce exposure risks in the agricultural industry by restoring partial or complete jurisdiction over pesticide regulations to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), enabling better coordination with the EPA on regulatory and enforcement issues. Meanwhile, more attention should be afforded to legislative proposals such as Sen. Corry Booker’s Protect America’s Children from Toxic Pesticides Act (PACTPA), which seeks to ban dangerous pesticides like paraquat, impose more stringent penalties on uncompliant farm owners, and mandate bilingual labeling for pesticides.

Farmworkers who have worked with Paraquat pesticide either as a sprayer, chemical mixter, tank filler and have been diagnosed witth Parkinsons’ should file a Paraquat claim to obtain rightful compensation. People living near farming communities where Paraquat was sprayed and were diagnosed with Parkinson’s are also eligible for a claim.

 

Miguel Leyva is a case manager with Atraxia Law and helps agricultural workers harmed by Paraquat exposure compile the documentation and medical records needed to file a toxic exposure claim.

 

By Matti Kohonen
LONDON, Jun 22 2023 (IPS)

The sanctions against Russian oligarchs who hold billions of dollars have mostly failed to have a real impact beyond freezing a few yachts and properties. So, what went wrong? Now we know.

The “Rotenberg Files”, a mass leak of over 42,000 emails and documents, has showed how Russian oligarchs Boris and Arkady Rotenberg hid their assets and those of Vladimir Putin, using trusts and private equity investment funds, taking advantage of the lack of public beneficial ownership registries.

Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2014 and especially since 2022, sanctions on Russian oligarchs and legal entities linked to the Russian invasion of Ukraine include 12,900 designations against Russia. Some estimates say that Russian oligarch offshore wealth is over US$1 trillion, but sanctions so far have only frozen US$58 billion, due to difficulty in establishing ownership.

Sanctions vary but have been mainly implemented by G7 countries and the European Union. Their effectiveness depends on setting up beneficial ownership registries that cover all possible legal vehicles, and the obligation to cross-check beneficial owners against sanctions regimes by a wide variety of professional enablers for due diligence purposes.

This has largely not happened. Despite progress in establishing centralised beneficial ownership registries, a commitment made by nearly 100 countries, very few of them are open to public access and are ridden with loopholes. In reality, global South countries are now leading the way in establishing effective BO registries after the European Court of Justice ended public access to EU-wide BO registries in November 2022.

This has allowed trusts to become the legal vehicle of choice by Russian oligarchs to hide their wealth. They are also very hard to detect as the presence of a trust deed can be kept at a lawyer’s office if there is no requirement to register the trust in a beneficial ownership registry. Many BO registries do require declaring trusts, but there are loopholes that allow for setting up trusts in jurisdictions that do not require registration of trusts or have loopholes regarding thresholds or exemptions. Only 65 countries require some form of registration of trusts.

Eight of the 18 BVI companies mentioned in the Rotenberg leaks were ultimately dissolved, and two relocated to Cyprus. This implies that Cyprus has become a key location to use trusts and other instruments to conceal ownership. As a European Union member, Cyprus was obliged to create a central register of beneficial ownership in line with the EU’s fifth Anti-Money Laundering Directive. Trusts based in Cyprus do come under this requirement, but the Rotenbergs used a loophole in the BO laws to conceal ultimate ownership that goes around the existing EU 5th Anti-Money Laundering Directive.

They effectively created a complex ownership structure around different entities in order to be below the trigger points for reporting beneficial ownership (in most cases 25 percent of control), yet still retaining control through power through potential voting coalitions in the complex structure that were concealed elsewhere. The structure used by the Rotenbergs involved a US entity that is owned by entities elsewhere, including Italy, the UK, Luxembourg, Cyprus, Bahamas (four entities), the British Virgin Islands and Cayman Islands,

Along with trusts, private equity firms have been revealed as another preferred vehicle to dodge sanctions. Investment vehicles called “closed mutual funds,” in Russian abbreviated as “ZPIFs,” held these assets. They are not considered legal entities under Russian law, and thus are not under obligations to reveal their shareholders to the authorities. The leaked files show that 13 ZPIFs were linked to the Rotenbergs.

To evade questions about the true nature of the beneficial owners, the leaked files show that “there is a practice where the General Director of the Management Company is recognized as the ultimate beneficiary”. The ZPIF’s invested in Russian companies, Monaco real estate, and other assets where beneficial ownership checks do not take place. Companies where they owned minority stakes could do business relatively normally.

Private equity and mutual funds are a global concern. According to a recent report, “Private Investments, Public Harm”, there are nearly 13,000 investment advisers in an $11 trillion industry with little or no anti-money laundering due diligence responsibilities in the USA, with the real possibility that sanctioned oligarchs use such vehicles to conceal their ownership. The US Enablers Act seeks to remove the exemption from due diligence checks from investment managers but the bill did not pass last December.

Art is another way to conceal ownership, as art dealers are not under any reporting requirements for money laundering purposes. A July 2020 report by a U.S. Senate subcommittee detailed an elaborate scheme in which the Rotenberg brothers spent more than US$18 million on art purchases in the months after they were sanctioned by the U.S. in March 2014. They acquired several artworks, including a US$7.5 million René Magritte, through a web of offshore companies based in Cyprus and the British Virgin Islands.

The tools to hide wealth used by Russian oligarchs to evade sanctions are exactly the same than the ones used by those behind natural resource crimes such as illegal, unregulated and unreported fishing, or indeed wealthy billionaires abusing laws to pay less than what they should in taxes. One cannot create a regime to just catch Russian billionaires. An overhaul of ownership transparency, from companies and trusts to art, vessels, aircraft and among other asset classes, including private equity and hedge funds, is required. Otherwise Russian oligarchs and kleptocrats around the world will continue dodging controls, keeping their shady money safely hidden.

IPS UN Bureau

 

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Excerpt:

The author is Executive Director of Financial Transparency Coalition

The UN General Assembly in session. Credit: UN Photo

By Adam Day and Florian Krampe
STOCKHOLM, Sweden, Jun 22 2023 (IPS)

The wildfires raging in Canada are yet another reminder that climate change is already having an impact on all our lives. As the smoke clears around the United Nations building in New York, we are likely to see a renewed push for the UN Security Council to tackle the security risks posed by climate change, including in the upcoming New Agenda for Peace policy brief from UN Secretary-General António Guterres.

Recent reports by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), supported by a growing body of scientific evidence, reach the inescapable conclusion that climate change is a meaningful factor in the risks of violent conflict.

In fact, one group of experts recently suggested that only a ‘misreading of the state of science’ could allow any doubt over the links between climate change and insecurity.

Despite the evidence, and despite the Security Council having already passed more than 70 resolutions and statements on climate-related security risks, efforts to make climate change a standing item on the Security Council’s agenda have so far failed.

While some permanent and elected members favour broadening the Security Council’s mandate to cover responses to all ‘threats to peace and security’, including climate change, others—notably China and Russia—want to keep Security Council business restricted to deploying peace operations, imposing sanctions, authorizing the use of military force and creating tribunals.

These mechanisms are not sufficient to address the plethora of climate-related security challenges societies around the world are facing.

The Security Council seems likely to continue its incremental approach, recognizing some country-specific climate–security links in resolutions (e.g. mentioning climate-driven recruitment into an armed group) without tackling the broader security impacts of the climate crisis.

Even this limited scope offers some real opportunities for addressing climate-related security issues in conflict settings that are already on the Security Council’s agenda. Nevertheless, it is time to ask whether more can be achieved within the UN system on broader climate–security challenges outside the Security Council chamber, in particular through the UN General Assembly.

There are many instances where the General Assembly has acted when the Security Council has become deadlocked. United Nations General Assembly Resolution 377—also known as the 1950 Uniting for Peace resolution—allows the General Assembly to call emergency sessions on threats to peace and security when this happens.

After laying unused for 25 years, the resolution was invoked in February 2022 in relation to the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine. Furthermore, there is a surprisingly rich history of the General Assembly adopting a wide range of actions on security matters linked to human rights violations.

We here consider some of the arguments for the General Assembly taking a bigger role in addressing climate–security challenges.

A more inclusive forum

One of the objections to the Security Council’s role on climate–security (and indeed more generally) is that it is not an inclusive or meaningfully representative body. The 10 elected members have only two years to shape an issue, after which they rotate off the Council.

Thus, most of the time, the 188 UN member states, without the five permanent Security Council seats, have no say in the Council’s agenda. With every member state represented, the General Assembly is arguably a more representative forum for negotiating responses to a global issue such as climate change and its ensuing security risks.

Better access to the science

The scientific knowledge base on climate change and its impacts is developing fast. To design appropriate and timely multilateral responses, member states need regular access to the latest evidence, and this is another area in which the General Assembly’s offers important opportunities.

The Security Council could theoretically invite any scientist or expert to brief it on climate-related security risks, but in practice it has offered little access. The situation has improved significantly in the past five years thanks to the Climate Security Mechanism and the Informal Expert Group on Climate Security.

Also, efforts by the Peacebuilding Commission to broaden the climate–security discussion and introduce more evidence have only partially succeeded thus far.

The General Assembly has a more open and potentially dynamic set of processes for bringing in the latest climate and political science, and is able to consider evidence across the development, humanitarian and human rights arenas—where many of the human security impacts of climate change are most acutely felt.

In addition, its inclusive format means it can increase visibility of evidence coming from the most affected regions.

Generating new stimulus

Finally, the General Assembly can potentially galvanize a much broader range of integrated action across the UN system than can the Security Council. This is a distinct advantage, as the complex and dynamic ways in which climate-related security risks take shape mean that lasting solutions to them require coordinated responses across sectors.

In addition, engagement on climate-related security risks in the General Assembly could generate important new stimulus for the UN Climate Change Conferences as well as international financial institutions.

How could the General Assembly take up the climate–security challenge?

The General Assembly has plenty of shortcomings. On contentious issues, it tends to issue fairly toothless statements, and it has struggled to generate action on some of the most pressing issues of our time.

That said, a more concerted effort to activate the General Assembly on climate, peace and security could have a broader impact across the system, including potentially within the Security Council. As the General Assembly considers how to revitalize its work, we offer four possible entry points:

1. Put climate–security challenges on the agenda. It is worth noting that when Ireland and Niger attempted to pass a resolution on climate and security in the Security Council in 2021, it was co-sponsored by 113 member states beyond the Council. This demonstrates the widespread support for tackling climate-related security issues at the multilateral level. During the next General Assembly session, which starts in September, the General Assembly’s new president, Dennis Francis, could play a crucial role in building on this support. Holding open debates on climate, peace and security and offering opportunities for high-level events in September could help to consolidate member states’ views. And pushing for the co-facilitators of the Summit of the Future to include climate, peace and security would also help to keep member states focused on the issue.

2. Build on the new right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment. Last year’s landmark General Assembly resolution (UN General Assembly Resolution A/76/L.75) establishing the human right to a clean, healthy, sustainable environment offers an important entry point for climate-related security issues. The strong links between human rights violations and violent conflict are well documented and could offer an important role for the Human Rights Council to take up this issue as well. The General Assembly’s recognition of environmental human rights should lead to greater focus on how violations can lead to risks of violence, and could be the basis for targeted actions such as investigations into violations of the right to a clean environment, or a call by the General Assembly for the Security Council to place climate on its agenda as a standing item.

3. Amplify the evidence. The General Assembly is able to establish commissions of inquiry and fact-finding missions on any issue it deems necessary. While in the past it has tended to create such bodies to address serious violations of human rights and humanitarian law, there is no reason the General Assembly could not also demand fact-finding around the security risks posed by climate change. Indeed, even the process of trying to establish such a commission could help to highlight the issue in a way that could also put pressure on the Security Council to act.

4. Mandate other bodies and enable financing. The General Assembly has an extraordinarily powerful role in setting the mandates of other bodies in the multilateral system. For example, it oversees the work of the Peacebuilding Commission and could consider expanding the commission’s mandate to include climate-related risks more explicitly. The General Assembly could also push for the IPCC to have a dedicated scientific track on climate, peace and security. In addition, the General Assembly’s Fifth Committee (Administrative and Budgetary) could catalyse an increase in funding dedicated to climate, peace and security, in peace operations and beyond.

Ultimately, the General Assembly cannot be the only forum for advancing multilateral action on climate-related security risks. But greater activity within the General Assembly could have a ripple effect across the system, potentially driving action on other fronts, and even pressuring the Security Council to take up the issue more directly.

Dr Adam Day (United States/United Kingdom) is the Head of the UN University Centre for Policy Research in Geneva and leads programming on peacebuilding, climate security, human rights, global governance and emerging risks; Dr Florian Krampe is the Director of SIPRI’s Climate Change and Risk Programme.

IPS UN Bureau

 

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The expansion towards the mountains of the coastal city of Ensenada, in the northwestern Mexican state of Baja California, stresses the water supply, which is scarce in this peninsular region due to its arid nature and deficiencies in water management. CREDIT: Emilio Godoy/IPS

By Emilio Godoy
ENSENADA, Mexico , Jun 21 2023 (IPS)

At the entrance to the coastal city of Ensenada in the northwestern Mexican state of Baja California a sign reads: “Every drop matters to us. Take care of the water.”

The message is important, as the city faces shortages due to hoarding by agricultural producers and builders, as well as the drought that has become more severe because of the effects of the climate emergency."There is enough water, but there is hoarding. We consume a lot. It is a question of management. Consumption can be moderated, there are experiences around the world in this regard." -- Adrián González

But cities such as Ensenada, which has a population of 443,000 and is located 2,883 kilometers from Mexico City, do not take sufficient advantage of the reuse of water, a technique that along with other measures can contribute to the fight against the water shortage at a time when Mexico is suffering from intense drought and an unusual heat wave.

Independent expert Adrián González said a conventional focus on obtaining water that ignores improvements in its use continues to prevail.

“There is enough water, but there is hoarding. We consume a lot. It is a question of management. Consumption can be moderated, there are experiences around the world in this regard,” he told IPS.

Demand exceeds supply, and supply cuts and overexploited sources dry up the water supply. The delivery and sale of water in “pipas” or tanker trucks is a common sight in Ensenada, located in an arid region between the Pacific Ocean and the mountains.

Due to the overexploitation of the aquifers and the growing demand, Ensenada is suffering from a deficit, so long-term solutions are urgently needed.

Consumption stands at about 1,000 liters per second (l/s), which should increase to about 1,260 in 2030, while supply totals about 800 l/s, according to the State Water Commission, the government agency responsible for water resource management in Baja California, on the peninsula of the same name, bordering the United States.

While installed capacity and treatment are on the rise, a widespread problem lies in the historical lack of efficiency and maintenance of facilities, which limits the scope of the available technologies.

In 2021, coverage reached 67.5 percent of the wastewater generated and collected in the municipal sewage systems of this Latin American country, just a few tenths more than the previous year, according to data from the National Water Commission (Conagua).

Treated water can be used for agricultural irrigation, gardening, domestic and industrial uses, and can help recharge aquifers.

Local water agencies can undertake aquifer recharge projects, but incentives for doing so are needed. In fact, the legal framework does not stipulate recovery rights for reused water, which falls under the general jurisdiction of Conagua.

 

The El Naranjo municipal treatment plant in the city of Ensenada, in the northwestern peninsular state of Baja California, is operating below its installed capacity, which is further affecting the distribution of scarce water in the city. CREDIT: Conagua

 

Mexico, with a population of 128 million inhabitants spread over an area of 1.96 million square kilometers, is facing increasing water stress, ranking 24th among the countries in the world with this phenomenon, caused by overexploitation, pollution, scarcity and inequity in access to water.

In 2021, 2,872 water reuse plants were operating in Mexico – three percent more than the previous year-, with an installed capacity of 198,603 l/s and a treated flow of 145,341 l/s, just 0.5 percent above the 2020 level.

The northern state of Sinaloa has the largest number of plants (311), followed by Durango also in the north (241) and neighboring Chihuahua (195). Despite their water needs, those with the smallest number of plants are the southeastern state of Campeche and the northern state of Coahuila (27 each), which furthermore operate below capacity.

There are 44 plants operating in Baja California, with an installed capacity of 7692 l/s and a performance of 6222. At the same time, 14 of the 48 groundwater reservoirs in the state, including the Ensenada reservoir, suffer shortages because annual extraction exceeds renewal.

Regional and federal authorities have resorted to seawater desalination in the state, but it only refines about 130 l/s, out of a capacity of 250.

Martín Zepeda, founder of the non-governmental Citizens’ Water Commission, criticized the measures applied so far in the reuse of water.

“We have only achieved palliative measures. We have been suffering from the same problems for 30 years,” he stressed.

 

The coastal city of Ensenada in the northwestern Mexican state of Baja California depends on aquifer extraction, seawater desalination and the transfer of water from the state of Tijuana, also on the U.S. border, as not enough water is reused. CREDIT: Emilio Godoy/IPS

 

Baby steps

In another northern state, in the east, Nuevo León, reuse is showing signs of success, but more progress is needed.

Antonio Hernández, a researcher with the non-governmental organization Pronatura Noreste, stressed to IPS the need for treated water infrastructure.

“We don’t have a sufficient network to distribute the treated water available. In 2022, when the water shortage crisis began, the agency responsible instructed the municipalities to buy treated water and thus take pressure off the groundwater,” he told IPS from Monterrey, Nuevo León’s capital.

“The transfer was to be by truck. But it did not happen, because the municipalities did not buy the water nor did the government build the distribution network. Availability does not mean accessibility,” he said.

In 2022, Nuevo León, especially greater Monterrey with a population of more than five million people, faced a severe water crisis.

As a result, the authorities resorted to supply cuts, rate hikes, anti-waste fines and awareness campaigns on water usage.

In that state, 13 of the 24 aquifers are overexploited, including the one outside of Monterrey proper.

The population of Monterrey drinks about 16,000 l/s, which results in a deficit of about 3,000 l/s. That means the 56 treatment plants are insufficient, managing 12,387 l/s, compared to an installed capacity of 16,162 l/s.

 

Mexico does not take sufficient advantage of wastewater reuse, which can be used to recharge aquifers, for consumption in industrial facilities, for agricultural irrigation or for urban use. Pictured is a fountain in a park in a neighborhood in south-central Mexico City. CREDIT: Emilio Godoy/IPS

 

Half-hearted measures

Despite the problems faced by the plants, the Federal Attorney General’s Office for Environmental Protection (Profepa) only inspected four municipal facilities, most of them private, in 2016 in Baja California, where it found “minor irregularities” and charged fines in three, according to a public information request filed by IPS.

In Mexico City, only two were inspected – in 2018 and in 2022 – and minor irregularities were found in one private municipal plant, although it was not fined. In 2018, Profepa visited four plants in Nuevo León in which it found minor irregularities.

In total, Profepa inspected a total of 330 plants, including 50 in the western state of Jalisco and 33 in the northern state of Chihuahua. Of that total, it found minor irregularities in 234, and none in 69.

 

Focus on pipes and little else

The generalized view is the conventional one of promoting the construction of infrastructure to face the crisis, without addressing the scarcity of water resources.

The current Mexican government boasts that it is promoting 15 water projects, such as the construction of dams, aqueducts and treatment plants, mainly in the north of the country to combat the crisis.

In places like Ensenada, the outlook is no different.

Over the next few years, the State Water Commission foresees the expansion of the desalination plant, the modernization of an aqueduct, the rehabilitation of five treatment plants, the delivery of treated water to the agricultural zone, and the rehabilitation of pumping plants and wells.

Despite the situation, the Baja California state government is just now drafting its water plan for the 2022-2027 period.

In Nuevo León, authorities announced the digging of more wells, the construction of the Libertad dam, the El Cuchillo II Aqueduct and four treatment plants, as well as the modulation of pressure to reduce waste.

The Libertad dam will have a capacity of 1,500 l/s, at a cost of some 350 million dollars. Meanwhile, the aqueduct will transport 5,000 l/s, thanks to an investment of some 495 million dollars.

Mexico has also benefited from international financing for water projects. Since 1997, the North American Development Bank has financed 27 water and sanitation projects in Baja , in addition to three in Nuevo León since 2001.

 

The Norte treatment plant in the Mexican state of Nuevo León seeks to promote water reuse for automobile assembly, urban and agricultural activities in an area that experienced a severe water crisis in 2022. CREDIT: Conagua

 

Its financing of a 6.8 million dollar wastewater management initiative in the city of Mexicali is currently under public consultation.

In addition, the U.S.-Mexico binational financial institution is backing the issue of a 150 million dollar green bond for water projects.

The experts consulted proposed several measures, such as awareness campaigns, water reuse, and leak repair.

González, the independent expert, said the combination of reuse and efficiency offers very low costs and promising results.

“There is not going to be just one single solution. Fate is going to catch up with us. We can’t continue following strategies that have never worked and that have been exhausted,” he argued.

Zepeda, the water activist, also suggested the creation of a citizen water commission to audit the operation of the system.

“The situation is not going to improve until availability and uses are corrected. It is a combination of water sources and activities. We need long-term solutions,” he said.

Meanwhile, Hernández the researcher proposed a revision of zoning and land use plans to address the construction of neighborhoods, golf courses and vehicle assembly plants, to promote the efficient use of water.

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