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Boxen war seine grosse Leidenschaft. Am Ende hat sie Moises Fuentes das Leben gekostet. Mit nur 37 Jahren ist er gestorben.

Forty-year-old Admire Gumbo has invested in cattle back home in Zimbabwe's rural Mwenezi district. The picture shows Gumbo's cattle in Mwenezi. Credit: Jeffrey Moyo/ IPS.

By Jeffrey Moyo
MBERENGWA, Nov 25 2022 (IPS)

In 2007 as inflation walloped the Zimbabwean currency, rendering it valueless, then 54-year-old Langton Musaigwa of Mataruse village west of Zimbabwe in Mberengwa district switched to cattle as his currency.

He wasn’t alone; scores of other villagers in his locality followed suit.

In no time, cattle became a new currency as the Zimbabwean dollar went down the drain, pounded by inflation.

“We had no choice. It appeared cattle was the only money we could stare at and not the real Zimbabwean bank notes, which were now losing value every day as prices skyrocketed,” Musaigwa told IPS.

Many villagers like Musaigwa, pummeled by inflation then, found the panacea in their livestock like cattle.

The cattle, said Musaigwa, could be traded by villagers for any valuable goods or services.

One such villager whose life was saved by her cattle is 67-year-old Neliswa Mupepeti hailing from the same village as Musaigwa.

“I fell sick very seriously and was no longer able to walk on my own. I had to use one of my cows to pay a local school headmaster to transport me using his car to Zvishavane to get medical treatment in 2008,” she (Mupepeti) told IPS.

Then, Zimbabwe’s inflation peaked at 231 percent.

Zvishavane is a Zimbabwean mining town located in the country’s Midlands Province, south of the country.

Fourteen years later, inflation has resurfaced in the southern African country, and cattle have again turned into a currency as people evade the worthless local currency.

But from 2009 to 2013, during the country’s unity government that followed the disputed 2008 elections, Zimbabwe enjoyed some currency stability because authorities allowed the use of the USD and many other regional currencies.

Many Mberengwa villagers, like Musaigwa and Mupepeti, had been visited by inflation before, and they know the survival tricks.

“We have just had to return to using cattle as our money. I can tell you I have recently managed to buy a cart and a bicycle using just one cow here because villagers can’t accept the local currency. Many don’t have the popular USD, and cattle have become the readily available currency,” said Musaigwa.

Zimbabwe’s inflation currently stands out at 257 percent, according to the Zimbabwe National Statistics Agency, with the local currency ever falling against international currencies like the USD.

As cattle turn into currency, just a single cow in Zimbabwe ordinarily costs about 400 US dollars.

In order to store the value of their worth, many Zimbabweans who can at least access US dollars, like Mwenezi district’s 67-year-old Tinago Muchahwikwa, whose children working abroad send him money for personal upkeep, have had to buy more cattle.

“Money, either USD or any other currency – tends to lose value at any time, but cattle, for as long as they are well-fed and regularly treated for any diseases, remain with their value, and one can trade them off when a need arises,” Muchahwikwa told IPS.

For Muchahwikwa, cattle are the currency he can rather trust than any money, worse the Zimbabwean dollar, he said.

Even for 40-year-old Admire Gumbo, a Zimbabwean based in Cape Town in South Africa, investment in cattle has become the way to go back in his village home in Mwenezi as Zimbabwe contends with an inflation-ravaged currency.

“Back home, the money I send is buying cattle because when I settle back home, I don’t want to suffer. As my herd of cattle increases, that also means the increase of my own worth in terms of money,” Gumbo told IPS.

A worker at a grape farm in Cape Town, Gumbo bragged about owning a herd of 15 cows that he had bought back home.

As many like Gumbo surmount inflation in Zimbabwe using cattle, the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), has been on record saying livestock accounts for 35 percent to 38 percent of this Southern African country’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP).

Faced with a collapsing Zimbabwean dollar, cattle seem to have become a more stable currency than the local currency for many, like Gumbo.

“I have made sure my mother buys cattle for me and not keep the money when I send cash to her because of the risks faced by the local currency back home, which has kept losing value, meaning even if one changes money from Rands to Zimbabwean dollars, it won’t make any sense as the manipulated exchange rate there would still mean one remains with nothing meaningful,” said Gumbo.

For agricultural experts, with inflation ravaging Zimbabwe’s currency, cattle have become the alternative currency.

“Inflation has meant that many people now abhor the local currency and rather prefer foreign currencies like the USD, but many have no access to the USD, and cattle have become the readily available currency,” Steven Nyagonda, a retired agricultural extension officer in rural Mwenezi, told IPS.

To Nyagonda, as long as cattle are well-fed, it means they gain more weight and, therefore, more value if one wants to trade them off.

Pummeled by inflation here, even urban dwellers like 51-year-old Kaitano Muzungu are having to hoard things like solar panels, which they trade off with cattle in the villages while they shun the worthless local currency.

“When I get the cattle on trading off my solar panels in the villages, I feed the cattle in order to increase their weight so that I sell them to butcheries in the city in Harare in USD to business people here, save the profits and keep ordering solar panels to keep trading in the villages where I get cattle currency,” Muzungu told IPS.

With cattle currency gaining traction across Zimbabwe, entrepreneurial Zimbabweans have formed cattle banks, where investment in cattle has become a sensation.

According to Ted Edwards, who is the chief executive officer of Silverback Asset Managers, one emerging cattle bank in Zimbabwe, they have established a unit trust investment vehicle where Zimbabweans can invest in cattle using the local currency.

In this model, when a cow produces offspring, the value of that calf is added to the client’s portfolio, meaning a rise in worth for a particular cattle investor.

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

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A meeting of the Human Rights Council in Geneva. Credit: UN / Jean-Marc Ferré

By Marty Logan
KATHMANDU, Nov 25 2022 (IPS)

Human rights defenders are alarmed at what appears to be a new process permitting countries to keep confidential their responses to UN experts about allegations of human rights abuses.

A page on the website of the UN human rights office hosts letters (known as “communications”) from human rights experts, or “special rapporteurs”, to those alleged to have committed the abuse — usually a government. In most cases the page also hosts the response, but in some recent instances a placeholder document has appeared that says, “The government’s reply is not made public due to its confidential nature.”

That withholding of information, say the defenders, is unacceptable because the person who sent the allegation of a human rights violation, sometimes at the risk of personal harm, deserves to know how the government is responding

Replies from at least four governments — Ecuador, Guatemala, India and Nepal — and one non-government entity, UK-based tobacco company Imperial Brands PLC, show this form letter.

That withholding of information, say the defenders, is unacceptable because the person who sent the allegation of a human rights violation, sometimes at the risk of personal harm, deserves to know how the government is responding.

“There is a lot of effort from the side of those sending information about incidents of human rights violations happening to them, and they send these to the rapporteurs even knowing that there can be risk to their lives,” says Victoria Tauli-Corpuz, executive director of the Philippine human rights organization Tebtebba, which works for the rights of Indigenous Peoples.

“Part of the process of resolving issues brought before the special rapporteurs is for the victims to read the response of the state, which will be the basis for the next steps they can take. Withholding publication of responses is a dead end for potential resolution of issues,” added Tauli-Corpuz in an email interview. She was the UN special rapporteur on the human rights of Indigenous peoples from 2014 to 2020.

The UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), which hosts the webpage, did not respond to requests for comment about the apparent change in process.

Communications can also include objections to laws or practices that contravene human rights standards. In 2021, a total of 1,002 communications were sent from experts to 149 countries and 257 “non-state actors”, which include businesses and international bodies and agencies, says an OHCHR report. Of those communications, 651 received replies.

The 1,002 communications concerned 2,256 alleged victims. No statistics are available on how many requests were made for communications to be kept confidential, adds the report.

One Nepal-based defender says she’s not surprised that states have asked for confidentiality, but was startled to hear that it was granted. “Individuals and organizations seek help from the UN because their government does not respond to these issues… they should be receiving updates,” says Mandira Sharma, a human rights lawyer who has experience with UN human rights bodies. “Otherwise why would anyone engage?”

“Unless there is very critical information that would put someone’s life at risk they should be able to make the information public,” added Sharma.

It is not unusual for a reply from a government to include information that is redacted.

There should be a space for human rights experts and countries to have private conversations about allegations, says Sarah M. Brooks, Programme Director for the organization International Service for Human Rights.

“But the communications process is premised on information coming from the ground, from victims and advocates, who often take great risks to share it with the UN. To then hold state responses confidential aligns neither with the purpose of the communication procedure, nor the principle of actually respecting and empowering victims in its conduct,” she said in an online conversation.

“To bend to states’ requests to hold certain information confidential — in other words, to not share possibly life-saving information with victims, family members and lawyers — would be a grave error on the part of any UN actor,” added Brooks.

Ce mardi 22 novembre 2022, les députés de l’Assemblée populaire nationale (APN) ont adopté à la majorité, lors d’une séance plénière, le projet de loi de finances pour l’année 2023. Le texte du PLF 2023 comporte une série de mesures qui concernent, entre autres, l’investissement, la fiscalité, le pouvoir d’achat, etc. Mais la plus phare d’entre ces nouvelles mesures […]

L’article PLF 2023 – Algérie : augmentation sans précédent du budget de l’armée est apparu en premier sur .

Une lettre adressée aux eurodéputés, consultée par EURACTIV, indique que la Commission espère apaiser les opposants à la révision du cadre de l’UE sur les pesticides en proposant une éventuelle libéralisation des nouvelles techniques génomiques (NGT).

Le 20 juillet 2020, la wilaya de Tiaret a fait face à un crime des plus dévastateurs : l’assaisonnât de Mohamed Adjrad, le « médecin des pauvres ». Tous se rappellent des éléments sordides de l’affaire, et attendaient de voir le dénouement de cette affaire. Pour rappel, 5 personnes avaient été arrêtées. Ce n’est que ce mardi, […]

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532055 OSCE Centre in Ashgabat

Some 100 law students from four institutions of higher education in Turkmenistan attended an OSCE-organized online course on the rights of suspects and defendants during all stages of criminal proceedings that took place from 14 to 18 November 2022.

The OSCE Centre in Ashgabat organized the five-day course to expose students to international human rights standards applied in criminal proceedings and investigations and contribute to the modernization of human rights education in Turkmenistan.

International experts focused on the right to human liberty at the stage of pre-trial investigation and delivered presentations on ensuring the right of suspects and accused persons to a fair defence and legal counselling, as well as standards for custody, guarantees against ill treatment and the use of force.

"All 57 OSCE participating States recognize human rights as an inherent right of all people, inalienable and guaranteed by law; therefore strengthening their protection throughout the OSCE region is a key component of our organization's work,” said John MacGregor, Head of the OSCE Centre in Ashgabat.

“The training course for students is one of those projects that we have been jointly carrying out for several years now and it is our firm belief that they will contribute to the implementation of the National Action Plan of Human Rights in Turkmenistan for 2021-2025,” MacGregor added.

The course also addressed gender-based violence, with an emphasis on domestic violence, and elaborated on the implementation of relevant international standards at the national level and best practices from OSCE participating States.

The event brought together students and teachers from the Institute under the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the Institute of International Relations of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Magtymguly Turkmen State University and International University for Humanities and Development of Turkmenistan.

VIENNA/WARSAW, 25 November 2022 - On the occasion of the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women, and the start of the 16 Days of Activism against Gender-based Violence, OSCE leaders called on participating States to enhance efforts on the prevention and elimination of violence against women in conflict.

Gender-based violence is a threat to comprehensive security, with at least one in three women surviving some form of violence in their lifetime. Violence increases in times of conflict and crisis, and has lifelong consequences for women affected by it – as well as their families and communities.

OSCE leaders expressed their grave concern about the reports of gender-based violence and, in particular, the increase of the violence against women and girls in conflict zones across OSCE region.

"The ongoing Russian aggression against Ukraine continues to take a toll on the security and well-being of millions of women and girls in Ukraine. We witness not only unjustified military aggression and violence but also disregard for human dignity,” said OSCE Chairman-in-Office, Polish Foreign Minister Zbigniew Rau.

“The OSCE participating States invoked so-called Moscow Mechanisms to examine the human rights and humanitarian impacts of Russia's war. The experts' reports confirmed rape and other sexual violence committed by the Russian forces in Ukraine. We need to do our utmost to end violence against women," he stressed.

OSCE Secretary General Helga Maria Schmid called on participating States to strengthen measures to protect women and girls from violence, and to ensure sufficient funds for adequate and timely access to quality services for survivors.

“I unequivocally condemn all forms of violence against women and girls, in peace or in conflict. Lack of accessible support services for survivors, as well as prevailing stigma and impunity towards gender-based violence across OSCE participating States prevent survivors from receiving the support they need,” she said.

“States need to do more to implement their commitments on preventing and combating violence against women, and to protect and support women in conflict settings and other crisis situations,” Secretary General Schmid stressed.

Secretary General also reiterated how important it is for women and men alike to take a stand and work together to end gender-based violence.

“Sexual violence is a serious human rights violation, which in some cases can even constitute a crime against humanity or a war crime,” said ODIHR Director Matteo Mecacci. “Armed conflicts and fragile security situations allow perpetrators to commit sexual and gender-based violence on a large scale and with relative impunity, resulting in a higher number of cases. It is paramount that all allegations of such crimes are investigated and perpetrators brought to justice.”

ODIHR recently published a dedicated factsheet explaining the unique characteristics of sexual and gender-based violence during armed conflict, together with information about the international legal framework in this area and an overview of international and domestic efforts to hold perpetrators accountable.

All reaffirmed their call to put an end to the use of rape, sexual violence and other sexual crimes as a tactic of war in Ukraine and around the world. Such a heinous crime can have no place and must be stopped.

SEDE organises a public hearing on 'The war in Ukraine: implications for arms export policies at the EU level' on Tuesday, 29 November 2022 from 15.00 to 16.30hrs in Brussels (room SPINELLI 1G2). SEDE Members will exchange of views with external experts and the EEAS on the modalities of control in the transfer of military equipment to Ukraine for its right to self-defence, including via the European Peace Facility, due to Russia's illegal war of aggression.
Draft programme
Poster
Source : © European Union, 2022 - EP

SEDE organises a public hearing on 'The war in Ukraine: implications for arms export policies at the EU level' on Tuesday, 29 November 2022 from 15.00 to 16.30hrs in Brussels (room SPINELLI 1G2). SEDE Members will exchange of views with external experts and the EEAS on the modalities of control in the transfer of military equipment to Ukraine for its right to self-defence, including via the European Peace Facility, due to Russia's illegal war of aggression.
Location : SPINELLI 1G2 Brussels
Draft programme
Poster
Source : © European Union, 2022 - EP

532049 Marina Živaljević

On 25 November, on the International Day against Violence against Women, the OSCE Mission to Montenegro joins the global “16 Days of Activism against Gender-based Violence” with a television campaign that encourages people to take action to prevent and combat domestic violence. This continues until 10 December, the International Human Rights Day.

The video, produced in partnership with the Ministry of Human and Minority Rights is designed to raise public awareness on the different forms violence against women and girls. Violence against women and girls affects families, communities, workplaces and societies in general. It manifests in a variety of forms that largely go unreported. Silence and stigma surrounds it, makes it one of most pervasive human rights violation.

The evidence is clear, as found in a recent survey commissioned by the Mission where a third of women respondents said that they had experienced at least one form of psychological violence and over half did not report it, while only a third turned to family and friends. Psychological violence often precedes physical. A disturbing fact was that one third of the respondents believed that women and girls make false claims of psychological violence to draw attention to themselves.

Domestic violence should not be hidden, minimized or ignored. The first step to end violence against women and girls is to trust survivors and encourage reporting. Montenegro has the legislative framework to protect citizens. It needs to be implemented. Neither society nor institutions should remain silent in the face of human rights violations.

Even though it is widespread, domestic violence can be eliminated. Therefore, the video encourages everyone to take action to prevent and combat violence .

Violence can be stopped. Let’s stop it together. LET’S REACT!

En Inde, la police a accusé les rats d'avoir détruit près de 200 kg de cannabis saisi dans les commissariats.

EU energy ministers today agreed on the content of the proposal for a Council regulation on further temporary emergency measures to contain high energy prices and improve security of supply. The new measures will improve solidarity in case of a real emergency and shortage in gas supply shortage, ensure a better coordination of joint gas purchases, limit volatility of gas and electricity prices, and set reliable gas price benchmarks.

EU energy ministers today agreed on the content of a Council regulation laying down a temporary framework to accelerate the permit-granting process and the deployment of renewable energy projects. The regulation introduces urgent and targeted measures that address specific technologies and types of projects, which have the highest potential for quick deployment and the least impact on the environment.

Today, the application period for the post of Eurogroup President has ended, and one candidate applied by the deadline: Paschal Donohoe.

Main agenda items, approximate timing, public sessions and press opportunities.

Main agenda items, approximate timing, public sessions and press opportunities.

The President of the European Council, Charles Michel, will be travelling to Beijing on 1 December to meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping.

Die Energieministerinnen und ‑minister der EU haben sich heute auf den Inhalt des Vorschlags für eine Verordnung des Rates über weitere befristete Notfallmaßnahmen zur Eindämmung der hohen Energiepreise und Verbesserung der Versorgungssicherheit geeinigt. Mit den neuen Maßnahmen wird die Solidarität in echten Notfällen und bei Gasversorgungsengpässen verbessert, für eine bessere Koordinierung der gemeinsamen Beschaffung von Gas gesorgt und die Volatilität der Gas- und Strompreise begrenzt; außerdem werden zuverlässige Gaspreis-Referenzwerte festgelegt.

Die Energieministerinnen und -minister der EU haben heute eine politische Einigung über eine Verordnung des Rates erzielt, mit der ein vorübergehender Rahmen zur Beschleunigung des Genehmigungsverfahrens und der Einführung von Projekten im Bereich der erneuerbaren Energien festgelegt wird.