Africa - INTER PRESS SERVICE

Att.Editors: The following item is from the Emirates News Agency (WAM)

By Emirates News Agency (WAM)
ABU DHABI, Dec 22 2015 (IPS)

(WAM) – The Gulf Today, a United Arab Emirates (UAE) newspaper has said that years of strife and with millions of its people scattered across the globe, peace is what Syrians yearn for. The country is in ruins and the spreading of radicalism poses major security challenges regionally and globally.

“The Syrian conflict has rattled the world so much that any initiative aimed to restore peace in that country should be welcomed without any hesitation,” said ‘The Gulf Today’ in an editorial published on Monday.

“In this context it is good that in its first resolution that focuses on ending Syria’s five-year-long war, the Security Council has now given the United Nations an enhanced role in shepherding the opposing sides to talks for a political transition, with a timetable for a ceasefire, a new constitution and elections, all under UN auspices.

“Also to give the Syrian peace prospects a strong push, foreign ministers from 17 countries gathered in New York before the council’s session. The UAE has always been a peace-loving country and Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Foreign Minister, also took part in the meeting, presided over by U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry.

“As Kerry put it, the UNSC has sent a clear message to all concerned that the time is now to stop the killing in Syria and lay the groundwork for a government that the long-suffering people of that battered land can support.

“More than 250,000 people have been killed since Syria’s conflict erupted in March 2011. The civil war has been the main driver of mass displacement, with more than 4.2 million Syrian refugees having fled abroad and 7.6 million uprooted within their shattered homeland as of mid-year.

“An opportunity for peace has at last emerged. All parties involved in the talks should seize the chance. There is a dire need for leaders deliberating on the Syrian issue to take a flexible approach.

“The unambiguous goal is end to violence and a negotiated peace solution. The participating leaders should leave no stone unturned in achieving that,” concluded the Sharjah-based daily. (WAM) (END/2015)

Vasu Gounden, ACCORD's Chief, addresses high level expert group on climate and migration.

By Vasu Gounden
DURBAN, Dec 22 2015 (IPS)

On 21 November 2015, during ACCORD’s 2015 Africa Peace Award celebration, I made a call for the United Nations to convene the first ever UN Global Conference on Peace.

The call was made during the presentation of the Africa Peace Award to the African Union Commission (AUC), in recognition of its central role in contributing to peace and promoting development in Africa. The award was made at a gala dinner by the Chairperson of ACCORD, Madame Graca Machel, and received on behalf of the AUC by Dr Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, Chairperson of the AUC.

Over the past few months, our television screens and social media have again exposed us to the graphic nightmares currently plaguing humanity. Terrorism, violent uprisings, and devastating conflicts now afflict several parts of the world, with no corner of our planet immune to either these challenges or their consequences.

Conflicts throughout the world have multiplied in complexity and intensity. The previous paradigm of warfare, where two nations fight one another across borders, is no longer the norm. Today internal conflicts around a number of grievances dominate, and are complicated by the rapid expansion of amorphous groups of radicalised and militant individuals.

As evidenced by the current challenges in Syria and Iraq, Libya, Nigeria, Yemen and Ukraine, the consequences of the violence are devastating and will scar these societies for generations to come. Our global community can no longer afford to pursue exclusively military-oriented responses, nor can states afford to remain indifferent to situations that are beyond their immediate concerns or borders. We need a new paradigm for peace.

With an exponentially growing population, unprecedented urbanisation often into unplanned cities, destabilising climate change, a shaky global financial system, growing unemployment, mass migration, and expanding wealth inequality, our planet is in a race against time to create a sustainable future and prevent these global challenges from accelerating and entrenching global instability.

As our work on climate change has shown, challenges such as these can trigger conflict and so even adaptation measures need to be conflict sensitive. While humanity is equipped with unprecedented technological advancements and incredible demographic opportunities to build a better future, we must channel the collective expertise of our global community to find sustainable and transformative pathways forward. The need for sustainable global peace is urgent and the stakes are rising as the challenges deepen. The choice of inaction could close the door on the future for which many strive. We must act quickly!

Collective political dialogue is the only true pathway to begin addressing inter-connected challenges in a sustainable and holistic manner. Over our 23-year history and through engagements with governments, armed groups, civil society, and regional, continental, and multi-lateral bodies, ACCORD has found this maxim to be true.

Our global systems for peace have grown more fragile and stressed just as our conflicts and challenges have evolved with ever increasing complexity. Our dialogue must focus on strategies to resolve current crises, prevent future deterioration, and ensure that peace and prosperity finally take root equitably and sustainably. Further, an urgent need exists to promote critical reflection, earnest debate and mutual solidarity amongst all people. We must underpin these efforts by shepherding a collective shift from an exclusive focus on ‘national interest’ to a collective focus on ‘global responsibility’. There are no easy answers, and no nation on its own has the solution for the challenges of today and more importantly the challenges of tomorrow.

Since its inception the United Nations has convened a number of World Conferences. However, to this day there has not been a UN-sponsored World Conference focused explicitly on peace. Bringing the entire community of humanity under one forum to deliberate earnestly has in the past contributed to tangible landmark global commitments from governments, the private sector and non-state actors alike. Our institutions and processes often limit discussion but a global conference creates a space where all are placed on an equal footing. Many of the current achievements on human rights, social development, climate change, and gender were built on the fresh foundations created by global conferences and dialogue. Such foundations create paradigm shifts, which then lead to practical outcomes.

It is our hope therefore that the Republic of South Africa, in collaboration with other African nations and under the auspices of the African Union, can propose to the UN General Assembly to host the first ever UN Global Conference on Peace in 2019 in Durban, on the 25th anniversary of South Africa’s democracy.

In advance of such a UN Global Conference on Peace and to support a global debate on peace we intend to assemble a multi-disciplinary gathering of experts from around the world in 2017, two years prior to the UN gathering.

As we face our future together we remember that South Africa’s peaceful transition was the result of collective global action and the struggle and outcome gave inspiration and courage to many. Unanimous and collective opposition to apartheid, from Africa and beyond, were critical in supporting the emergence of a peaceful and democratic South Africa against expectations and great odds. We therefore call the entire world to join once more in a free and peaceful South Africa, in the same spirit of collective unity, to begin charting a way forward to deliver global peace.

Now is the time!

(End)

Juarez Saw is the chief of the Sawré Muybu village on the Tapajós River between the municipalities of Itaituba and Trairao in the state of Pará, Brazil. Credit: Gonzalo H. Gaudenzi/IPS

By Fabiana Frayssinet
SAWRÉ MUYBU, Brazil , Dec 21 2015 (IPS)

At dusk on the Tapajós River, one of the main tributaries of the Amazon River in northern Brazil, the Mundurukú indigenous people gather to bathe and wash clothes in these waters rich in fish, the staple of their diet. But the “evil spirit”, as they refer in their language to the Sao Luiz Tapajós dam, threatens to leave most of their territory – and their way of life – under water.

“The river is like our mother. She feeds us with her fish. Just as our mothers fed us with their milk, the river also feeds us,” said Delsiano Saw, the teacher in the village of Sawré Muybu, between the municipalities of Itaituba and Trairao in the northern Brazilian state of Pará.

“It will fill up the river, and the animals and the fish will disappear. The plants that the fish eat, the turtles, will also be gone. Everything will vanish when they flood this area because of the hydroelectric dam,” he told IPS.

The dam will flood 330 sq km of land – including the area around this village of 178 people.

According to the government’s plans, the Sao Luiz Tapajós dam will have a potential of 8,040 MW and will be the main dam in a complex of hydropower plants to be built along the Tapajós River and its tributaries by 2024.

But the 7.7 billion-dollar project has been delayed once again because of challenges to the environmental permitting process.

“The accumulative effect is immeasurable. Environmental experts have demonstrated that it will kill the river. No river can survive a complex of seven dams,” Mauricio Torres, a sociologist at the Federal University of Western Pará (UFOPA), told IPS."No river can survive a complex of seven dams.” -- Sociologist Mauricio Torres

The Tapajós River, which flows into the Amazon River, runs 871 km through one of the best-preserved areas in the subtropical rainforest, where the government whittled away at protected areas in order to build the hydroelectric dams, which are prohibited in wildlife reserves.

The area is home to 12,000 members of the Mundurukú indigenous community and 2,500 riverbank dwellers who are opposed to the “megaproject” – a Portuguese term that the native people have incorporated in their language, to use in their frequent protests.

The Mundurukú have historically been a warlike people, and although they have adopted many Brazilian customs in their way of life, they still wear traditional face paint when they go to the big cities to demonstrate against the dam.

Village chief Juarez Saw complains that they were not consulted, as required by International Labour Organisation (ILO) Convention 169 concerning Indigenous and Tribal Peoples in Independent Countries, which has been ratified by Brazil.

The process of legalisation of their indigenous territory has been interrupted by the hydropower project.

“We aren’t leaving this land,” he told IPS. “There is a law that says we can’t be moved unless an illness is killing indigenous people.”

The village is located in a spot that is sacred to the Mundurukú people. And they point out that their ancestors were born here and are buried here.

“This is going to hurt, us, not only the Mundurukú people who have lived along the Tapajós River for so many years, but the jungle, the river. It hurts in our hearts,” said the village’s shaman or traditional healer, Fabiano Karo.

The interview is taking place in the ceremonial hut where the shaman heals “ailments of the body and spirit.” He fears being left without his traditional medicines when the water covers the land around the village – and his healing plants.

Academics warn that the flooding will cause significant losses in plant cover, while generating greenhouse gas emissions due to the decomposition of the trees and plants that are killed.

A little girl in Sawré Muybu, an indigenous village on the Tapajós River between the municipalities of Itaituba and Trairao in the northern Brazilian state of Pará. Credit: Fabiana Frayssinet/IPS

This biodiversity-rich river basin is home to unique species of plants, birds, fish and mammals, many of which are threatened or endangered.

“The impact will be great, especially on the aquatic fauna, because many Amazon River basin fish migrate from the lower to the upper stretches of the rivers to spawn,” ecologist Ricardo Scuole, at the UFOPA university, explained to IPS.
“Large structures like dikes, dams and artificial barriers generally hinder or entirely block the spawning migration of these species,” he said.

The village of Sawré Muybu currently covers 300 hectares, and the flooding for the hydroelectric dam will reduce it to an island.

María Parawá doesn’t know how old she is, but she does know she has always lived on the river.

“I’m afraid of the flood because I don’t know where I’ll go. I have a lot of sons, daughters and grandchildren to raise and I don’t know how I’ll support them,” Parawá told IPS through an interpreter, because like many women in the village, she does not speak Portuguese.

A few hours from Sawré Muybu is Pimental, a town of around 800 inhabitants on the banks of the Tapajós River, where people depend on agriculture and small-scale fishing for a living.

This region was populated by migrants from the country’s impoverished semiarid Northeast in the late 19th century, at the height of the Amazon rubber boom.

Pimental, many of whose inhabitants were originally from the Northeast, could literally vanish from the map when the reservoir is created.

“With the impact of the dam, our entire history could disappear underwater,” lamented Ailton Nogueira, president of the association of local residents of Pimental.

The consortium that will build the hydroelectric dam, led by the Eletrobrás company, has proposed resettling the local inhabitants 20 km away.

But for people who live along the riverbanks, like the Mundurukú, the river and fishing are their way of life, sociologist Mauricio Torres explained.

“Their traditional knowledge has been built over millennia, passing from generation to generation,” he told IPS. “It is at least 10,000 years old. When a river is dammed and turned into a lake, it is transformed overnight and this traditional knowledge, which was how that region survived, is wiped away.”

The Tapajós River dams are seen by the government as strategic because they will provide energy to west-central Brazil and to the southeast – the richest and most industrialised part of the country.

“The country needs them. Otherwise we are going to have blackouts,” said José de Lima, director de of planning in the municipality of Santarém, Pará.

But the Tapajós Alive Movement (MTV), presided over by Catholic priest Edilberto Sena, questions the need for the dams.

“Why do they need so many hydropower dams on the Tapajós River? That’s the big question, because we don’t need them. It’s the large mining companies that need this energy, it’s the São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro markets that need it,” he told IPS.

It’s evening in Sawré Muybu and the families gather at the “igarapé”, as they call the river. While people bathe, the women wash clothes and household utensils.

From childhood, boys learn to fish, hunt and provide the village with water. For the community, the river is the source of life.

“And no one has the right to change the course of life,” says Karo, the local shaman.

Edited by Verónica Firme/Translated by Stephanie Wildes

Related Articles

• Mundurukú Indians in Brazil Protest Tapajós Dams
• Brazil’s Amazon River Ports Give Rise to Dreams and Nightmares
• Q&A: Room for Negotiation in Decisive Battle over the Amazon
• Q&A: Everyone Loses in War Over Amazon Dams
• Hydropower Dam to Flood Sacred Amazon Indigenous Site

By Lorena Di Carlo
MADRID, Dec 21 2015 (IPS)

The last week of November marked another phase of an ongoing shift in the Turkish Government´s approach to human rights issues – Two important events highlighted the ongoing attack freedom of press is suffering in Turkey. First two prominent Turkish journalists were arrested after publishing a story claiming that members of the state intelligence agency had provided weapons to Syrian rebels; second, lawyer and leading human rights defender and Tahir Elçi, President of the Diyarbakir Bar Association in south eastern Turkey, was killed in crossfire while making a press statement on Saturday 28th of November.

The Government´s reaction has fueled concerns about a sweeping media crackdown, which escalated just before the country´s national elections in November 1st. Since the Justice Development Party (AKP) was re-elected, under the leadership of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, conditions for media freedom have gradually deteriorated even further.

The present government has enacted laws expanding the state´s capacity to control independent media. The government has now an increased authority to block websites and the surveillance capacity of the National Intelligence Organization (MIT) has been strengthened. Journalists are currently facing unprecedented legal obstacles, while courts´ capacity to persecute corruption is circumscribed by references to “national security.” To regulate various media outlets, authorities are making use of the Penal Code, criminal defamation laws and an antiterrorism law.

As a direct result of mass protests in the summer of 2013, the Turkish government tightened its control over media and the internet even further. Followed by corruption allegations in December the same year, the government intensified its control over the criminal justice system and reassigned judges, prosecutors, and police in order to exercise a greater control over the country´s already politicized freedom of the press.

In 2013, during a corruption scandal revealed through leaks to social media of phone calls implicating ministers and their family members, the Turkish government reacted by shutting down Twitter and YouTube for several weeks and introducing an even more restrictive Internet Law than the one already in existence. However, the internet sites were reopened after the Constitutional Court had ruled against the Government measures.

Cumhuriyet, “The Republic”, is Turkey´s oldest up-market daily newspaper. Since AKP´s rise to power it has distinguished itself for an impartial and occasionally courageous journalism. In 2015 the newspaper was awarded the Freedom of Press Prize by the international NGO Reporters Without Borders for its stand against the Government’s mounting pressure on free speech. Shortly after that, Cumhuriyet’s editor-in-chief, Can Dündar, and the newspaper’s Ankara Bureau Chief Erdem Gül, were arrested and may face life imprisonment for a story claiming that Turkey´s secret services through convoys of trucks across the border were sending arms to Islamist rebels in Syria. Detailed footage depicted trucks allegedly delivering weapons and ammunition to rebels fighting the Syrian president Bashar al-Assad.

Despite its opposition to the Assad government the Turkish government has denied assisting Syrian rebels and by extension contributing to a consolidation of IS. Cumhuriyet’s accusation created a political storm in Turkey, enraging President Erdogan, who declared that the newspaper´s editor-in chief, would “pay a high price” for his “espionage.”

Dündar defended his paper´s action by stating: “We are journalists, not civil servants. Our duty is not to hide the dirty secrets of the state but to hold it accountable on behalf of the people.”
According to the Turkish Interior Ministry, the convoys were actually carrying humanitarian aid to the Turkmen community of neighboring Syria and the Cumhuriyet articles were accordingly politically motivated defamation. Right before appearing in court Dündar declared: “We come here to defend journalism. We come here to defend the right of the public to obtain news and their right to know whether their government is feeding them lies. We come here to demonstrate and to prove that governments cannot engage in illegal activities and defend such acts.”

The Secretary General of Reporters without Borders, Christophe Deloire, stated that “if these two journalists are imprisoned, it will be further evidence that Turkish authorities are ready to use methods worthy of a bygone age in order to suppress independent journalism in Turkey.”

Reporters without Borders, ranks Turkey as the 149th nation out of 180 when it comes to freedom of press, denouncing that there is a “dangerous surge in censorship” in the country. Reporters without Borders has urged the judge hearing the case to dismiss the charges against the two journalists as a case of “political persecution.”

The arrest of the two journalists has caused distress within the European Union. Europe is currently struggling with social problems and political crises due the influx of Syrian refugees and needs Ankara´s help to solve the crisis. Nevertheless, Turkish journalists have urged the EU to avoid making any compromises and in the name of freedom of speech, and as part of the efforts to combat the threat of IS totalitarianism, EU has to react to the Turkish Government´s intentions to control and manage independent information and reporting.

In the case of the lawyer, Tahir Elçi, was speaking to the press, pleading for an end of the violence between nationalist Kurds and the Turkish security forces. His death, considered an assassination by many, has f escalated tensions in Turkey´s Kurd dominated regions, where curfews have been imposed in several communities.

While Elçi, and other lawyers in the south eastern province of Diyarbakır were denouncing the damage caused to the historical patrimony during combat between the YDG-H Militants—a group related to the armed Kurdish group PKK—and the police. The incident was confusing. Video footage shows Elçi, hiding behind a man holding a pistol, as the sound of gunfire rings out from both ends of the street, a moment later the lawyer is seen lying face down on the ground. Officially it was claimed that Kurdish militants opened fire, which was returned by security men. Elçi´s last words before the attack had been: “We do not want guns, clashes or operations here.”

The HDP (People´s Democratic Party), an opposition party with Kurdish origins, declared that Elçi´s death was a planned attack and blamed the ruling AKP party. “This planned assassination targeted law and justice through Tahir Elci. … Tahir Elci was targeted by the AKP rule and its media and a lynching campaign was launched against him.” The HDP did not hesitate to remind that on October 19th, a warrant was issued against Elçi charging him with “propaganda for a terror organization.” The reason was that he during a CNN television program had stated that “PKK is not a terrorist organization… Although some of its actions have the nature of terror, the PKK is an armed political movement.”

Turkey´s Prime Minister, Ahmet Davutoglu, declared that it was unclear whether Elci was caught in a crossfire, or was assassinated, though he stated that: “The target is Turkey. It’s an attack on peace and harmony in Turkey.” On the same note Erdogan said the shooting was a clear indication that Turkey was right in “its determination to fight terrorism.”

(End)

This article is part of a research project by De Groene Amsterdammer, Oneworld and Inter Press Service, supported by the European Journalism Centre (made possible by the Gates Foundation). See www.aboutisds.org.

By Frank Mulder
Utrecht, The Netherlands, Dec 21 2015 (IPS)

Many Europeans fear the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) because it could enable American companies to file claims against their states. The strange thing, however, is that Western Europe is becoming a big hub in this mechanism, called the Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS), leading to billion dollar claims against poorer countries.

Imagine this: a country is in the middle of the worst economic crisis in decades. One in four people is unemployed. Tens of thousands are homeless. Four presidents have been replaced in two weeks’ time. To halt the downward spiral, the government decides to nationalize previously privatized sectors and companies. In response, dozens of companies sue the government, because they feel disadvantaged by the new policy. The government is forced to pay hundreds of millions in financial compensation in the years after.

Surreal? It happened to Argentina after the economic crisis early this millennium. Argentina had signed dozens of bilateral investment treaties (BITs) meant to attract foreign direct investments (FDI). The treaties gave investors the right to sue the Argentinean government in case of a conflict. Argentina became easy prey. With 56 claims to date, it is the most-sued country in the world.

ISDS is a mechanism by which a company can sue a state without actually going to court. The investor can bring his dispute before a panel of arbitrators, which acts as a kind of privatized court. The hearings often take place at the World Bank. Both parties appoint one arbitrator, and these two appoint a third one, the chairman. They are usually investment lawyers. The trio then will decide if the state treated the investor unfairly, and if yes, what it has to pay. There is no possibility to appeal.

Explosion

The world of investment arbitration is very intransparent. After a few months’ research, journalists working for the Dutch magazines Oneworld and De Groene Amsterdammer have published a number of stories about the hidden world of ISDS. The stories are accompanied by an interactive map, showing all ISDS claims ever filed against a state. The database behind this map contains information about the disputes, the awards and the members of the tribunals.

What is remarkable is the rise of the popularity of ISDS. Whereas in 2000 just 15 claims were filed, in 2014 alone nearly 70 new claims saw the light. By 2014, there were a total of 629 ISDS cases filed. This may turn out to be even more, because not all cases are public. The number of billion-dollar claims is growing.

Canada, the US and Mexico are on the top list of most-sued states. The reason is NAFTA, the free trade agreement of which ISDS is a part. However, the US has never lost a case. If we exclude the cases won by the state, a completely different picture emerges: Argentina, Venezuela, India, Mexico, Bolivia. In other words, developing and emerging countries. Many of these countries have now come to the conclusion that this arbitration system is unfair, or even neocolonial.

Dutch sandwich

Where do the claims originate from? In the list of home countries of investors the US is still number one, but in the last few years they have been surpassed by Western Europe. In 2014, more than half of all claims were filed by Western European investors. Claimant country number one is the Netherlands, with more claims than the United States.

However, a closer look at the companies involved shows that more than two-thirds of all Dutch claims have actually been filed by so-called mailbox companies. They choose to settle in the Netherlands for its attractive network of investment treaties, 95 in total, which are deemed investor-friendly.

“This is known as the Dutch sandwich,” says George Kahale III, an American top lawyer, who defends states in large investment cases. “You put a Dutch holding in between, and you can call yourself Dutch. This is how the system is misused.”

White men

In 88 per cent of the cases, the researchers found the names of the arbitrators involved. From this a picture emerges of a highly select club of men – and two women – who are assigned time and again to judge. A top-15 of arbitrators have been involved in a striking 63 per cent of all cases. In 22 per cent of the cases, even two members of the top-15 were involved, which means that they have been able to make or break the case.

“This is not strange,” says Bernard Hanotiau, a Belgian arbitrator who is also a member of the top-15. That a few arbitrators dominate the scene, he says, is just because they are the best ones. “If you look for lung cancer specialists in Belgium, you also end up with a small group. We are specialists.”

Yet this is problematic. After all, the arbitrators are not judges who have sworn an oath and have been appointed publicly. Most of them are commercial lawyers, who even continue to act as counsels next to their work as arbitrators. It is possible that a state is condemned by a judge whose law firm partner is a lawyer for an investor in a comparable case. The possibility of conflicts of interest is big.

According to Kahale, this leads to too many legal mistakes. “Their business background shines through in their decisions. Their background is commercial arbitration. The aim there is not to create correct legal precedents, but to get parties back to business again as soon as possible. Which is very bad. This is not about some little disputes, this is about multi-billion dollar claims, about principles that are crucial for countries, many of which have just a small GDP.”

Future

Criticism against the current system of investment arbitration is rising, as a growing number of countries decide to terminate the investment treaties behind ISDS. Not only countries like Venezuela, but also Indonesia, South Africa, Ecuador and India. Brazil is working on a model in which only states can file a claim on behalf of an investor.

Even the European countries, in their negotiations with the United States about TTIP, have now decided to plead for an independent investment court, in which investment cases are handled by former judges. The Dutch government has announced it will renegotiate existing investment treaties and make it harder for mailbox companies to abuse the system.

Whether these good wishes will be translated into real policy remains to be seen.

(End)

Details of a secret detention center, where serious human rights abuses took place, deep inside the sprawling Tricomalee Naval base in the east of Sri Lanka are slowly emerging. The site is nothing new to those who were held there. In June this year the South Africa-based International Truth and Justice Project, Sri Lanka (ITJPSL) […]

By Mario Lubetkin
ROME, Dec 21 2015 (IPS)

One of the most significant aspects of the international conference on climate change, concluded in Paris on December 12, is that food security and ending hunger feature in the global agenda of the climate change debate.

The text of the final agreement adopted by the 21st Conference of the Parties (COP21) of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change recognizes “the fundamental priority of safeguarding food security and ending hunger and the special vulnerability of food systems production to the impacts of climate change.”

Indeed, of the 186 countries that presented voluntary plans to reduce emissions, around a hundred include measures related to land use and agriculture.

The approved programme of measures constitutes a sector-by-sector program to be implemented by 2020, which implies there will be ongoing focus on agricultural issues and not just about energy, mitigation or transportation, which drew so much of the attention in Paris.

In the next years the commitments must be implemented, which will require helping developing countries make necessary adaptations through technology transfer and capacity building.

The Green Climate Fund, comprising 100,000 million per year provided by the industrialized countries, will be a key contributor to this process. Contributions of additional resources to the Fund for the Least Developed Countries and the Adaptation Fund, among others, have also been announced.

The issue of future food production, long saddled with a low profile in the media, is increasingly a major concern and poses a challenge to governments.

A recent World Bank report estimated that 100 million people could fall into poverty in the next 15 years due to climate change. Agricultural productivity will suffer, in turn causing higher food prices.

According to Jose Graziano da Silva, Director-General of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), “climate change affects especially countries that have not contributed to causing the problem” and “particularly harms developing countries and the poorer classes.”

The facts speak for themselves. The world’s 50 poorest countries combined, are responsible for only one per cent of global greenhouse emissions, yet these nations are the ones most affected by climate change.

Approximately 75 per cent of poor people suffering from food insecurity depend on agriculture and natural resources for their livelihoods. Under current projections, it will be necessary to increase food production by 60 per cent to feed the world’s population in 2050.

Yet crop yields will, if current trends continue, fall by 10 to 20 per cent in the same period, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and higher ocean temperatures will slash fishing yields by 40 per cent.

One of the least-mentioned problems associated with climate change are the effects of droughts and floods, which have become a near constant reality. On top of the destruction of resources and huge losses brought by these phenomena, they also cause increases in food prices which in turn affects mainly the poor and most vulnerable.

Rising food prices have a direct relation to “climate migrants”, as the drop in production and income is one of the factors that triggers displacement from rural areas to cities, as well as from the poorest countries to those where there are potentially more opportunities to work and have a dignified life.

For example, migration in Syria and Somalia are not driven by political conflicts or security issues alone, but also by drought and the consequent food shortages.

This is why FAO argues that we must simultaneously solve climate change and the great challenges of development and hunger. These two scenarios go hand-in-hand. The dilemma is to make sure that measures adopted to address the former do not generate a constraint on the latter. Production capacity, particularly of developing countries, must not be jeopardized.

This is why developing countries argue that, to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, they need technologies and support that they cannot fund with their own resources without hobbling their own development plans.

And since the most responsible for greenhouse gas emissions are the industrialized nations, the countries of the South insist, and have done so long before the COP21, that richer nations contribute to funding the changes needed to preserve the environment.

It was therefore natural that this dilemma was at the center of discussions in Paris and that efforts were made to find an agreement.

The creation of the Green Climate Fund was one of the keystones for an agreement that practically binds the whole world to the goal of keeping average temperatures at the end of the century from rising more than two degrees Celsius. The agreement will enter into force in 2020 and will be reviewed every five years. In that period, many problems will arise and need to be resolved.

Yet beyond the difficulties we will face on the way, it now seems legitimate to expect that the big problem will be addressed and the future of the planet will be preserved.

(End)

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Dec 18 2015 (IPS)

The world’s refugee crisis – triggered mostly by conflicts and persecutions – will continue to be one of the biggest problems facing the United Nations next year.

With almost a million people having crossed the Mediterranean as refugees and migrants so far, 2015 is likely to exceed all previous records for global forced displacement, the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) warned in a new report released Friday.

But 2016 could be even worse — if the Syrian conflict continues unabated and new political trouble spots arise, primarily in the Middle East and Africa.

“As we enter 2016, the world needs to aim for a new global compact on human mobility. Demonizing and scapegoating these people based on their religion, ethnicity or country of origin has no place in the 21st century,” says Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.

The United Nations is appealing for a staggering 20 billion dollars in funds to meet next year’s humanitarian needs — five times the level a decade ago.

But donors have been exceedingly generous, says Ban, “but we will likely enter 2016 with a funding gap of more than 10 billion dollars — the largest ever. “

The increased funds will be needed largely to feed, shelter and provide medical care to millions of refugees fleeing conflict zones, including Syria, Iraq, Libya and Afghanistan.

But the devastating conflict in Syria, now into its fifth year, has been described as “the main driver of this sea of humanity on the move.”

According to the UN, about 60 million people are now homeless as a result of armed conflict, instability and persecution, and more than 125 million people will need humanitarian assistance in 2016.

The 20 billion dollar target for 2016 seems phenomenal in comparison to the UN’s regular budget of 5.57 billion dollars for 2016-2017 and its peacekeeping budget totaling 8.2 billion dollars for 2015-2016.

Since the crisis is expected to continue into 2016, the World Humanitarian Summit meeting in May 2016 in Istanbul is expected to be “a critical moment to address systemic funding problems, and agree on concrete steps to better prepare for and respond to crises.”

The UNHCR study, titled ‘Mid-Year Trends 2015’, says the global refugee total, which a year ago was 19.5 million, had as of mid-2015 passed the 20 million threshold (20.2 million) for the first time since 1992.

Asylum applications were meanwhile up 78 per cent (993,600) over the same period in 2014. And the numbers of internally displaced people (IDPs) jumped by around 2.0 million to an estimated 34 million.

A consequence of more refugees being stuck in exile is that pressures on countries hosting them are growing too – something which unmanaged can increase resentment and abet politicization of refugees, the study said.

Despite such risks, the first half of 2015 was also marked by extraordinary generosity: on an absolute basis, and counting refugees who fall under UNHCR’s mandate (Palestinians are under the mandate of the UN Works and Relief Agency or UNRWA), Turkey is the world’s biggest hosting country with 1.84 million refugees on its territory, as of 30 June.

Lebanon meanwhile hosts more refugees compared to its population size than any other country, with 209 refugees per 1,000 inhabitants.

And Ethiopia pays most in relation to the size of its economy with 469 refugees for every dollar of GDP (per capita, at PPP), according to UNHCR.

Overall, the lion’s share of the global responsibility for hosting refugees continues to be carried by countries immediately bordering zones of conflict, many of them in the developing world.

Europe’s influx of people arriving by boat via the Mediterranean is only partly reflected in the report, mainly as arrivals there have escalated in the second half of 2015 and outside the period covered by the report.

Nonetheless, in the first six months of 2015, Germany was the world’s biggest recipient of new asylum claims – 159,000, close to the entire total for all of 2014. The second largest recipient was the Russian Federation with 100,000 claims, mainly people fleeing the conflict in Ukraine, according to the report.

Speaking at a high-level event marking the 10th anniversary of the UN’s Central Emergency Response Fund (CERF), the secretary-general said the fund was a breakthrough in providing fast and predictable funding for early action at times of global crisis.

Over the past decade, the Fund has been an essential component of the UN’s humanitarian response – and it has enhanced the credibility of the United Nations, he added.

Among the CERF’s key strengths is its flexibility and speed. CERF resources are not earmarked for specific countries or crises, but can be deployed quickly wherever needs are greatest.

“Whether a crisis is sudden or protracted; whether it is in the news or not, CERF funds are allocated only on the basis of need,” Ban noted.

Within 11 hours of the earthquake in Haiti, trucks were unloading life-saving aid. And within 48 hours of Nepal’s recent earthquake, people were receiving timely life-saving assistance.

Since 2011, Ban said, the CERF has allocated more than 200 million dollars to humanitarian efforts in Syria and neighbouring countries. “And the CERF continues to deliver in the face of new challenges.”

Currently, the Fund is one of the earliest and largest supporters of early response in countries such as Ethiopia, Malawi and Honduras that are being affected by the El Niño phenomenon, which is one of the strongest in decades.

The world has changed radically over the past decade. But despite the generosity of donors, the gap between humanitarian needs and the resources available to meet them is growing every year, the secretary-general declared.

The writer can be contacted at thalifdeen@aol.com

Ilsy Membreño separates green and red coffee beans, part of the tasks involved in the harvest on the Montebelo farm in El Salvador. The drop in production caused by coffee leaf rust has driven wages down to just three dollars a day. Credit: Edgardo Ayala/IPS

By Edgardo Ayala
EL CONGO, El Salvador , Dec 18 2015 (IPS)

Sitting in front of a pile of coffee beans that she has just picked, Ilsy Membreño separates the green cherries from the ripe red ones with a worried look on her face, lamenting the bad harvest on the farm where she works in western El Salvador and the low daily wages she is earning.

As it spread through this country and the rest of Central America, the fungus (Hemileia vastatrix) that causes coffee leaf rust infected the farm where she works.

“There is less coffee to pick, and in the end there is less money for us,” lamented Membreño, one of 30 people working in the harvest on the Montebelo farm in the municipality of El Congo in the western Salvadoran department (province) of Santa Ana.

The parasitic fungus feeds off the leaves of the plants, infecting them with yellow and brown spots. The leaves fall off and the beans are unable to mature.

Coffee production generates some 150,000 direct jobs and 500,000 indirect jobs, according to the report “Coffee Cultivation in El Salvador 2013”, drawn up by the governmental Salvadoran Coffee Council (CSC). Between 1995 and 2012, coffee represented 7.5 percent of the country’s total exports.

The fungus threatens to further impoverish El Salvador’s rural areas, where 36 percent of households already live in poverty, according to the government’s Multiple-Purpose Households Survey 2013.

Membreño told IPS that before the coffee leaf rust outbreak ravaged the farm, she picked two quintals (92 kilos) a day, earning around eight dollars a day during the three-month harvest.“The disease caught us with our pants down.” -- Julio Grande

“But now I don’t even manage to pick one quintal, and I earn just three dollars a day,” she said with resignation.

The other day labourers who talked to IPS described a similar situation when we visited the privately-owned farm, which is 116 manzanas (a manzana is equivalent to 0.7 hectare) in size.

Climate change has also hurt the coffee crop, with lengthy droughts in the rainy season and heavy rains in the dry season.

“The rain has knocked the coffee beans off, and we lose time picking them up,” said Sonia Hernández, a mother of three who is also working on the Montebelo farm, told IPS.

Official figures published on the CSC web site show that output plunged from 1.7 million quintals in the 2012-2013 harvest to just 700,000 in the 2013-2014 harvest, due to the coffee leaf rust outbreak.

In the period in question, the total payments to temporary harvest workers dropped from 21.6 million dollars to 8.7 million dollars.

Production rallied somewhat during the 2014-2015 harvest, to 925,000 quintals. The CSC’s forecast for the 2015-2016 harvest is 998,000 quintals – still below the output obtained prior to the outbreak.

“Without a harvest, these poor people don’t have work,” Manuel Morán, the foreman, told IPS.

Montebelo is in the Apaneca-Lamatepec mountains, where conditions are perfect for coffee cultivation. But neither corn nor beans, the staples of the Salvadoran diet, are grown in the area.

And without land to grow subsistence crops or money to buy food, the people in this rural community face threats to their food security.

“We don’t have anywhere to plant corn or beans, we depend on our work on this farm for a living,” said Membreño.

There are approximately 19,500 coffee growers in the country, 86 percent of whom are small farmers with less than 10 manzanas of land, who represent 21 percent of the total national output, according to the CSC.

“Outside of harvest time, we gather firewood, that’s how we support ourselves, because there isn’t anything else here,” said Membreño, who has an eight-year-old son. Her husband works in the same activities.

Coffee leaf rust, found in El Salvador since the late 1970s, began to spread rapidly in 2012. But the devastating effects were not felt until 2013, and caught coffee growers as well as the government off guard.

“The disease caught us with our pants down,” Julio Grande, a researcher at the governmental National Centre of Agricultural and Forest Technology (CENTA), told IPS.

In one area of the Montebelo farm, he is studying the biology of the parasite and the epidemiology of the disease, while testing fungicides.

The idea is integral treatment of the disease, simultaneously focusing on fertilisation of the plant, pruning, and the use of fungicides, he said.

These three elements together can bring good results, he added.

In fact, in the areas where he used fungicides, the coffee bushes are relatively healthy, and out of danger.

“The fungicides work, but if the other aspects of the equation are neglected, the effect is limited,” he added.

Renewing coffee plantations is an effective technique, because the older the plants, the more vulnerable they are to the fungus, the researcher added. El Salvador’s coffee trees are considered old – over 30 years old.

Besides technical assistance, fungicides and other inputs, the government distributed around eight million coffee rust-resistant plants to 4,200 farmers, to begin a process of renewal of their fields, Adán Hernández, manager of Centa’s coffee division, told IPS.

And on their own, farmers have planted another eight million, he added.

But large-scale renovation would require heavy government investment, to buy from private nurseries the 300 million seedlings needed to plant the 217,000 manzanas of coffee bushes in the country. And at any rate, there are not enough seeds available to do that.

Meanwhile, sitting next to the pile of coffee cherries, Ilsy Membreño has just one thing on her mind: how to get by on three dollars a day.

Edited by Verónica Firme/Translated by Stephanie Wildes

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By Dacia Pajé and Margherita Rossi
Dec 18 2015 (IPS)

How could a chocolate snack challenge a regime? Surprisingly, in North Korea, it can.

On the 30th of July 2014, a group of 200 people gathered in Paju, a small South Korean city situated at the borders with North Korea. South Koreans, along with North Koreans defectors, grouped to send to the other side 50 oversized balloons, filled with boxes of Choco Pie, a well-known South Korean snack.

The North Korean totalitarianism banned the snack as a symbol of the American capitalism strongly fought in any way by the North Korean dictatorship.

As reported by Sokeel Park in The Guardian, Choco Pies have always played an important role in the Korean Hallyu (the Korean Wave of pop culture), one of the most effective soft power tools used by South Korea to spread its culture all around the world. North Korean dictator, Kim Jong-un, saw it as a potential contaminator and an enemy for his regime. After banning it, he decided to create a domestic competitor of it as well. On one hand, taking this commercial measure created an alternative to the consumers. On the other hand, stopping the so-called sweet revolution, he again took away the choice from the citizens.

The Cold War between the two Koreas has started long ago, after WWII, which provoked the breakup of lots of families as well as a strengthening the regime. The outlawing of the Choco Pie is just an example of what it is going on inside the country. It is just a hint of how human rights are not respected at all. This apparently absurd privation shows also how North Korean people have no voice in their own country as well as outside it.

In North Korea, we cannot even talk about censorship of means of communication, because everything belongs to the dictator and it is controlled from the beginning by the political headquarter.

Have you ever thought about the fact that we are shown only images about the regime ceremonies?

When we watch the society celebrating the oligarchic government acting like robots, do we perceive them as regular human beings? And still, they are.

The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (the official title of North Korea) is actually a huge bubble of violence, in which no one can neither enter nor escape. The country has closed its commercial doors in order to preserve itself and to cut off its population form the occidental world.

“Democracy grows from within, and external actors can only support it.” That is what we can read among the four key recommendations resulting from the International Round Table on Democracy, Peace and Security: The Role of the United Nations, in 2010. However, it is difficult to make this principle reality if we are in a non-existent society with non-existent rights. It is hard to believe that North Korean people by themselves could stand the systematic violence committed by the oligarchic group of soldiers who keep the country as a social prison.

If they refuse everything coming from the outside world, why should we turn our back on them? They deserve the right to bite a pie freely, don’t they?

(End)

Alaa Arsheed, Syrian refugee and violinist, and Gian Pietro Masa, experimental electronic musician, during their live peromance at the inauguration of Fornasetti's Calendarium exhibition. Credit: Fornasetti / IPS

By Francesco Farnè and Valentina Gasbarri
ROME, Dec 18 2015 (IPS)

“In Beirut I was like a bird in a cage, I felt like a prisoner. Today, I have the chance to let my dreams come true, make a living with my music, realizing my dad’s project: open a new Alpha – my family’s cultural center, destroyed during the war- to share Syrian culture and help my people in Europe,” Alaa Arsheed, a Syrian refugee, told IPS.

Alaa, 29-year old and an accomplished violinist has become living proof of the positive effects migration can have on host countries, especially in countries like Italy where structural problems related both to the financial and migration crises have changed the course of present political history.

In the past century Italy has gone through mass emigration, internal migration and mass immigration. According to ISTAT (Italian National Institute of Statistics) almost 4 million non-EU migrants live in the country in 2015. The flimsy boats filled with human cargo and often sink in in the Mediterranean leaving many adrift in the cold sea, and some perish.

About 3 per cent of the world’s refugees arrive in Italy says the Report on International Protection in Italy 2015, released by The National Association of Italian Municipalities (ANCI) , Caritas Italiana, Cittalia, Migrantes Fundation and the The SPRAR project (Protection System for Refugees and Asylum Seekers), in partnership with the Ministry of Interior and The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). The report says by the end of 2014 there were 33 on-going wars, 13 crisis situations and 16 UN missions. The humanitarian crises in the Middle-East pushed nearly 19.5 million refugees to flee their home country, 38,2 million were internally displaced people (IDPs) from war and persecution and 1.8 million were asylum seekers. As a consequence, the number of migrants reached 59.5 milion people.

According to the last figures from the Italian Ministry of Interior, in 2015 about 120,000 migrants arrived in Italy. The vast majority of people are refugees and migrants from Syria, followed by Afghanis, Pakistanis and Iraqis. The countries of origin for people crossing from Libya include Eritrea, Gambia, Mali, Nigeria, Somalia and Sudan. 2,900 migrants have lost their lives in the Mediterranean during their dangerous journey.

Alaa Arsheed says he was drawn by the magnetism of Italy and Italian people while he was looking for a better life and a place where he could have the “right of having rights.” He describes how music, and art in general, helped him overcome many of the difficulties he faced since he left Syria and why he is convinced that Italy is such an inspiring place where he loves to live. An Italian friend of his, Marta, a painter, put him in contact with Barnaba Fornasetti. Barnaba is the son of the internationally renowned Italian designer Piero Fornasetti, and CEO of the Fornasetti Design company. Barnaba, like his father, is an artist and also a skilled DJ.

Audience attending the live music perfomance at the inauguration of Fornasetti’s Calendarium exhibition. Credit: Fornasetti / IPS

When Barnaba met Alaa, he immediately recognized talent and saw the potential for an artistic collaboration. He invited Alaa to play his violin during the inauguration of his exhibit in Milan. It was an artistic collaboration as the experimental electronic musician Gian Pietro Masa and Alaa, played together in a long session, coordinated by musician and composer Roberto Coppolecchia.

“Art can be a powerful tool for integration, and music, in particular, it is a language that speaks directly to your inner soul, no matter what your religion, nationality, political affiliation, sex or age is,” said Alaa.

“I was born in As-Suwayda, in the Daraa province in southern Syria, where the so called ‘Arab spring’ started in February 2011,” said Alaa. His family owned an art café called Alpha which was the only free cultural space where artists could gather in the city. Alpha’s motto was “Art for All,” he said and then quoted Article 27 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights: “Everyone has the right to freely participate in the cultural life of the community, to enjoy the arts and to share in scientific advancement and its benefits.”

Since its foundation, more than 140 art exhibitions, music, and literary events took place in Alpha, bypassing government censorship. “That was our way to protest, peaceful, based on art and free from religious and political influences. Once, we revisited Voltaire’s quotations in a visual art exhibit,” he said.

Late in 2011, Alaa, like many other Syrians, was forced to leave his country in the face of the civil war. He was able to bring just his violin and a few things with him. He moved to Beirut, where he lived teaching and playing music. Six months ago, he had a meeting that changed his life forever. While teaching violin to Palestinian refugees in a camp, he met Italian actor and UNHCR ambassador Alessandro Gassman, while he was in Lebanon filming a documentary about “art in times of war” called “Torn – Strappati.”

Alaa was involved in the making of this documentary, which was presented at the 72nd Venice International Film Festival, and he features playing his violin. For him, this instrument has become the symbol of how music can heal the pain of a generation of young Syrians.

His talent, and the visibility that Gassman and UNHCR gave to his him, the Fabrica Communication Research Group offered Alaa a music scholarship in Treviso, a city located in the North-East of Italy. “In Italy I found an inspiring, friendly atmosphere and I was also able to realize one of my professional dreams: publish my first album, sham, which means “Damascus” in the Aramaic language,” he said.

Eventually, he asked for asylum in Europe and today he lives in Italy. “I miss my family and my hometown,” and he said he still plays music with his brothers and sister who play the violin, viola and cello, via Skype. They want to play together as a string quartet in Italy someday.

Alaa is now working on a project, in partnership with Fabrica, that he says will make his parents happy and proud of him. As Alpha was destroyed during the war, he would like to rebuild this cultural space in Europe where it would be a landmark for plenty of refugees with the aim of preserving and spreading Syrian culture, as he said, “Art is stronger than everything.”

(End)

From the left: Gian Pietro Masa, Alaa Arsheed, Barnaba Fornasetti, CEO, Fornasetti design company, and IPS Director General Farhana Haque Rahman at the inauguration of Fornasetti’s Calendarium exhibition. Credit: Fornasetti / IPS

A hospital in Srinagar, Kashmir. Credit: Umer Asif/IPS

By Umar Shah
SRINAGAR, India, Dec 18 2015 (IPS)

In an isolated ward of one of Kashmir’s largest government-run hospitals, 54-year-old Ashraf Ali Khan is finding it hard to sleep properly. His 15-year-old son, Asif, is sitting on a bench near the bed staring at his ailing father.

Asif has not been told by his family that his father is suffering from a potentially terminal disease cancer. He knows his father is suffering from a consistent fever which sent him to the hospital, but doesn’t know his father is in the last stage of the crippling disease.

Ashraf Ali, a carpenter, went to the doctor eight months ago after persistent coughing. He had a chest X-ray which then led to further examinations. After series of tests, it was finally he was diagnosed with lung cancer. He has two months to live at best.

Ashraf is among thousands of people who have ben struck down with the disease. In a war-torn Kashmir, about 4000 cases are found every year in this Himalayan region.

Apart from the political uncertainty, which so far has claimed thousands of lives, experts says there is a 20 per cent rise in cancer cases in Kashmir with figures never decreasing. The latest data published by the state’s health department has Kashmir topping the list of cancer cases in India.

The data reveals in the past three years, more than 1,700 people have died due to cancer in Kashmir. It says that since January 2014 there were 12,091 patients who were detected with cancer in various state hospitals. In 2013, 6,300 patients were detected with the killer disease.

The top 10 cancers taking a toll in Kashmir are lung cancer, stomach, colon (large intestine cancers), breast, brain, esophagus (cancer of food pipe), non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, gastroesophageal, junction cancer (cancer between the stomach and food pipe), ovarian and skin cancers.

Experts say the cancer mortality rate among the people in Kashmir witnessed a sharp increase due to some leading behavioural and dietary risks, including high body mass index, low fruit and vegetable intake, lack of physical activity, tobacco use and lack of regular check-ups. Changing lifestyle, environmental degradation and differing food habits are reasons attributed to the surge in all the cancers especially in esophagus, colon and breast cancers.

Kashmir’s leading oncologist Mohammad Maqbool Lone says the situation in Kashmir is becoming more grim every day a with the highest number of lung cancers In the country found in the people of Kashmir.

“The situation is indeed alarming in Kashmir. There are patients hailing from every part of Kashmir including the far flung areas which are diagnosed with such a terminal disease,” says Lone.

Until now no single factor has been identified as the main cause of the rising cancers as compared to other regions of India. As health experts in Kashmir are not certain about the major causes for the rise of the deadly disease, they suspect three main components can trigger the rise of cancer in this Himalayan region.

One is a societal component with poor rural lifestyles and general deprivation, in particular a lack of vitamins and dietary nutrients.

The second reason for rising cancers in Kashmir is the use of copper utensils in cooking, the consumption of spicy, deep fried foodstuffs, and the drinking of hot salty tea which is largely being consumed in every home in Kashmir.

The third factor in rising cancer cases is an environmental issue with exposure to high levels of dietary nitrosamines from diverse sources. Overall, these three components are the general pattern that has led to esophageal and other cancers.

Oncologist Abdul Rashid Lone says that rising numbers of smokers has led to a rise in lung cancers here. He also claims that the detection rate also has increased besides the advancement in medical technologies.

“Earlier, most of the cancer cases in Kashmir used to go unnoticed. At present, the technology has advanced so much that a patient can be diagnosed with the disease. This is the main reason that today we say cancer cases rise in Kashmir,” Dr Lone said.

Oncologist Riyaz Ahmad Shah says that apart from the lung cancer, there are cases of stomach cancer on the rise in Kashmir. He says certain types of cancers are found in children including blood cancers and tumours.

“In case of females, there are cancers related to the reproductive system like cervical cancer, ovarian tumours and breast cancer. In males there are stomach, lung, and esophagus cancers found,” said Dr Shah.

Renowned gastroenterologist, Dr Showkat Ahmad Zargar, says any delay in the detection of cancer could prove fatal for the patient. He says due to the massive adulteration in food items, gastric diseases are on rise in Kashmir.

“Such diseases are killing people slowly. The people here are not very much health conscious which leads to the delay in detecting whether a person is suffering from a cancer or not,” Dr Showkat said.

“There are high chances that a person suffering from cancer can be cured if detected at early,” said Dr Sana-ul-lah who heads the oncology department in one of Kashmir’s leading government run hospitals.

Tobacco use in Kashmir has increased along with unhealthy diets. “If the key risk factors are avoided, Kashmir could be saved from this fatal disease which continues to claim thousands of precious lives every year in the region,” Dr Sana-ul-lah said.

Insha Usman, a research scholar says there are no major steps being taken by the state government to ensure that people are informed and are aware of cancer. She says early symptoms and preventive measures should be made public in far flung areas of Kashmir so that people are conscious of the cancer threat.

“Ironically, there is no comprehensive policy available with the government at the present time that could have made people aware of such a fatal disease. Mass awareness campaigns in villages and towns and people are informed about the symptoms of cancer and early treatment,” she said.

According to the latest study, colorectal cancer (CRC) is the major cause of mortality and morbidity worldwide and in Kashmir, CRC has been found to be the third most common gastrointestinal cancer after esophageal and gastric.

The study says there are certain factors which increase person’s risk of developing CRC. “The most important of these are the age, diet, obesity, diabetes and smoking, personal cancer history, alcohol consumption, large intestinal polyps, family history of colon cancer, race and ethnic background, genetic or family predisposition,” said the finding.

It adds that another major cause of cancer deaths was a late visit to the doctor. “The involvement of quacks, inexperienced medical practitioners and post-referral delays make the situation difficult to handle,” the study concluded.

The steady rise in cancer patients began several decades ago leading to the establishment of an NGO. The Cancer Society of Kashmir, formed in 1999, provides medical and financial help to poor patients suffering from the dreadful disease here.

Masood Ahmad Mir from Cancer Society of Kashmir says that they have started a one-day care centre which runs twice a week. “During this time, doctors from different fields like medical oncology, radio oncology, and gastroenterology sit together and treat patients. We do not charge anything from the people who visit us for the treatment,” he said.

(End)

The corn is cooked with limewater to eliminate aflatoxins that cause liver and cervical cancer. Here a worker at the Grulin company is stirring the corn before it is washed, drained and ground, in San Luís Huexotla, Mexico. Credit: Emilio Godoy/IPS

By Emilio Godoy
TEXCOCO, Mexico , Dec 18 2015 (IPS)

Every day in the wee hours of the morning Verónica Reyes’ extended family grinds corn to make the dough they use in the tacos they sell from their food truck in Mexico City.

Sons, daughters-in-law and nephews and nieces divide the work in the family business that makes and sells cecina (dried, salted meat) tacos, longaniza (a kind of Spanish sausage), quesadillas and tlacoyos (thick stuffed oval-shaped corn dough tortillas).

“We cook the corn the night before and we grind it early in the morning, to serve people at 8:00 AM,” said Reyes, who has made a living selling food for years.

The family loads up the metal countertop, gas cylinders, tables, chairs, ingredients and over 60 kg of corn dough in their medium-sized truck before heading from their town of San Jerónimo Acazulco, some 46 km southwest of Mexico City, to whatever spot they have chosen that day to sell their wares.

When the taco truck packs up, it has sold just about all the food prepared that day.

The cooked corn dough takes on a yellow tone, an effect caused by a process called nixtamalisation – the preparation of corn or other grain, which is soaked and cooked in an alkaline solution, usually limewater, and hulled.According to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), 25 percent of world food crops are contaminated with aflatoxins.

This technique dates back to before the arrival of the Spanish conquistadors in Mexico in the 15th century, when local indigenous people cooked corn this way.

Nixtamalisation significantly reduces aflatoxins – any of several carcinogenic mycotoxins produced by molds that commonly infect corn, peanuts and other crops.

“In Mexico aflatoxins are a serious problem,” Ofelia Buendía, a professor at the department of agroindustrial engineering at the Autonomous University of Chapingo, told IPS. “A major effort has been made to eliminate them. The most effective is the traditional nixtamalisation technique.”

She has specialised in “nixtamalising” beans, quinoa, oats, amaranth, barley and other grains, and in producing nutritional foods.

Mexico’s corn dough and tortilla industry encompasses more than 78,000 mills and tortilla factories, over half of which are concentrated in just seven of the country’s 31 states.

Nearly 60 percent of the tortillas sold were made with nixtamalised dough.

Corn is the foundation of the diet in Central America and Mexico, where the process of nixtamalisation is widely used.

But consumption of tortillas has shrunk in Mexico, from 170 kg a year per person in the 1970s to 75 kg today, due to the inroads made by fast food and junk food.

Mexico is now cooperating with Kenya in east Africa to transfer know-how and technology to introduce the technique, to help that country reduce aflatoxins.

Mexico and Kenya signed two cooperation agreements, one of which offers technical support and involves the sending of mills by Mexico’s International Development Cooperation Agency.

Kenya, the world’s second-largest producer and consumer of corn, needs 45 million 90-kg bags of corn a year, and only produces 40 million.

According to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), 25 percent of world food crops are contaminated with aflatoxins, and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimate that more than 4.5 billion people in the developing world have chronic exposure to them.

Studies by the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) suggest that approximately 26,000 people in sub-Saharan Africa die every year of liver cancer associated with chronic exposure to aflatoxins.

At 3:00 AM, the machines are turned on in the processing plant of the Comercializadora y Distribuidora de Alimentos Grulin food processing and distribution company in the town of San Luís Huexotla, some 50 km east of Mexico City.

The work consists of washing the corn cooked the night before, draining it, and grinding it to produce the dough for making tortillas and toast, which are packaged and distributed to sales points in the area.

“Nixtamalisation respects the nutrients in the corn, although some are lost in the washing process,” José Linares, director general of Grulin, told IPS. “There are faster systems of nixtamalisation, but they’re more costly. The technology is shifting towards a more efficient use of water and faster processing.”

His father started out with one tortilla factory, and the business expanded until the Grulin company was founded in 2013.

Grulin processes between 32 and 36 50-kg balls of dough a day. One kg of corn produces 1.9 kg of dough.

The corn is cooked for 90 minutes and then passes through a tank of limewater for 30 seconds before going into tubs with a capacity of 750 kg, where it remains for 24 hours. It is then drained and is ready for grinding between two matching carved stones.

Officials from the Kenya Agricultural and Livestock Research Organisation (KALRO) have visited Mexico to learn about nixtamalisation and test corn products.

The experts who talked to the Kenyan officials said the technique could be adopted by nations in Africa.

“In Africa they want to know about the process, because of its tremendous uses for food. Some variables can be influenced, such as texture and taste,” said Buendía. “The Chinese eat tortillas, so this technique could be adopted. These opportunities cannot be missed.”

Besides cultural questions, the availability of water and generation of waste liquid – known as ‘nejayote’ – can be problems. For every 50 kg of corn processed, some 75 litres of water are needed. The nejayote, which is highly polluting because of its degree of alkalinity, is dumped into the sewer system.

Academic researchers are investigating how to make use of the waste liquid to produce fertiliser, to reuse it in washing the corn, and to make water use more efficient.

“It would be necessary to overcome the cultural barriers, and make sure the taste of lime isn’t noticeable….The technique is replicable,” said Grulin’s Linares.

In 2009, the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA), the African Agricultural Technology Foundation (AATF), and the U.S. Department of Agriculture – Agricultural Research Service developed a biological control technology called AflaSafe, to fight aflatoxins in corn and peanuts. It is so far available in Nigeria, Burkina Faso, Gambia, Kenya, Senegal and Zambia.

Edited by Estrella Gutiérrez and Verónica Firme/Translated by Stephanie Wildes

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By Valentina Ieri
UNITED NATIONS, Dec 17 2015 (IPS)

The United Nations is convinced the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), adopted by world leaders last September, can be successfully implemented only with the inclusion of all segments of society, including governments, civil society organisations (CSOs), women, youth, indigenous people and the private sector.

David Le Blanc, Senior Sustainable Development Officer at the U.N. Department for Social and Economic Affairs (UN/DESA) pointed out that the word “inclusive” is mentioned in five out of the 17 SDGs targets, and 22 times overall in the agenda.

Speaking during a UN panel discussion on ‘Exploring Inclusiveness in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development’, on December 14, Le Blanc added: “It means reaching the “furthest behind first […] including all sections of the society as it would be very hard to defend a society where some do not have access to basic necessity, such as shelter, health services, income, discrimination of women, or lack of opportunities.”

Setting the tone at the opening of the U.N. Summit for the 2030 Development Agenda last September, the Secretary General, Ban Ki-moon, said SDGs will leave “no one behind”:

“The new agenda is a promise by leaders to all people everywhere. It is a universal, integrated and transformative vision for a better world…for people, to end poverty in all its forms.”

The panel discussion, organised by the Mission of South Korea, in collaboration with the U.N. Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) and the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC), focused specifically on the concept of inclusiveness.

Ambassador Choong-hee Hahn, Deputy Permanent Representative of the Republic of Korea and chairman of the 47th session of the U.N. Commission on International Trade Law (UNCITRAL), said : “Three key words relate to inclusiveness: people, justice and dignity. Dignity should be our ultimate goal for achieving inclusiveness, as people need to be aware of their rights and privileges, in order to change current inequalities and injustice,” socially, economically and politically.

Therefore, – continued Ambassador Hahn – in order to create a safe, and sustainable framework for economic and human development, the world needs to achieve global citizenship through education, gender equality and women empowerment.

Lakshmi Puri, U.N. Assistant Secretary-General for Intergovernmental Support and Strategic Partnerships, and Deputy Executive Director of UN Women said without half of humanity realising their rights, sustainable development will not be achieved.

‘Therefore inclusiveness is about policies implementation, but also about driving a global movement for a structural transformation for people at the citizenship level,” added Puri.

But how can “inclusiveness” be implemented in real terms?

Only through a well-designed joint action between the private sector, good governance, and the rule of law.

“Examples of inclusive business” – said Ambassador Hahn – “are long term contracts between companies and small-medium manufacturing companies in developing countries. In this way, the supply and the demand can be sustainable.”

“Inclusive entrepreneurship” – continued the Korean Ambassador- “Is about training and teaching students of the developing countries so that they can open a business in a sustainable way,” along with inclusive knowledge-sharing, through communication technologies in developing economies.

The innovative aspect of inclusive business is that the role of the private and public sector in boosting sustainable development must not be conceived purely in terms of income growth.

Taffere Tesfachew, Director, Division for Africa, Least Developed Countries and Special Programmes at UNCTAD, said: “Eradicating poverty by 2030, means eradication to zero, everywhere. This means a 4-5 times increase gross national income (GNI) per capita, that is inclusive, if we are going to achieve it. But first, we must recognise that [previous] growth and development strategies were not inclusive.”

He said about 450,000 million people are currently living, below the poverty line of 1.25 dollars per day in 48 Least Developed Countries (LDCs). 34 out of 48 LDCs are in Africa, where the daily consumption is around 20-25 cents a day, Tesfachew said.

“We always believed that economic growth is the key to development, in terms of rising incomes, industrialisation and poverty reduction…But we know that all this has not happened. What drives growth, matters. But if growth is not originating where the poorest live and work (in rural areas), then there is no way to bring inclusiveness,” he argued.

Growth is about investing in people, said Tesfachew. “Inclusiveness cannot be solved by transfer of income, but only by creating jobs, which is the most effective and dignified way to reduce poverty,” he continued.

“That is why the private sector is very critical in creating jobs and opportunities. The challenge of the 2030 SDGs is to lead growth by creating jobs and bringing more income, consumption and demand for investments. Inclusiveness should benefit everyone, and hence, the idea of leaving no one behind.”

(End)

By Tharanga Yakupitiyage
UNITED NATIONS, Dec 17 2015 (IPS)

The United Nations has failed to appropriately respond to cases of sexual violence committed by peacekeeping forces in the Central African Republic, a new report revealed.

The report, an Independent Review on Sexual Exploitation and Abuse by International Peacekeeping Forces in the Central African Republic (CAR) commissioned by the Secretary-General, has exposed significant flaws in the UN’s response to sexual abuse allegations in the conflict ridden country.

“The Report depicts a United Nations that failed to respond meaningfully when faced with information about reprehensible crimes against vulnerable children,” said Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon upon receiving the report on 17 Dec.

“I express my profound regret that these children were betrayed by the very people sent to protect them,” he continued.

In the spring of 2014, claims surfaced that international troops serving in a UN peacekeeping mission in the Central African Republic (MINUSCA) sexually abused young children from the M’Poko displacement camp in exchange for food or money.

Though the alleged perpetrators, largely from a French military force known as the Sangaris Forces, were not under UN command, the report reveals the UN failed to thoroughly investigate and report on the cases.

For instance, the Human Rights and Justice Section (HRJS) of MINUSCA did not conduct an in-depth examination of the allegations and deliberately did not follow-up with the High Commissioner for Human Rights and/or the French government on the cases.

The UN’s children’s agency UNICEF and UN human rights staff in the country also failed to ensure that children received adequate medical attention and assistance and neglected to protect other potential victims.

“Instead, information about the allegations was passed from desk to desk, inbox to inbox, across multiple UN offices, with no one willing to take responsibility to address the serious human rights violations,” the report stated.

The review, conducted by a panel chaired by former Justice of the Supreme Court of Canada Marie Deschamps, also found that numerous UN officials failed to act when provided information on the accusations.

Officials include Former Special Representative of the Secretary-General (SRSG) for MINUSCA Babacar Gaye, who resigned in August 2015 at the request of the Secretary-General, and SRSG for Children in Armed Conflict (CAAC) Leila Zerrougui.

Commenting on the review, both Gaye and Zerrougui denied they received verified information, and that they responded inappropriately to the cases.

“If the SRSG CAAC had received verified information on the violations through the appropriate formal channels, or was alerted by any entities that the violations were ongoing at any point in the intervening period, she would have followed up with the Country Task Force and with the French authorities to discuss further follow up options,” Zerrougui remarked.

In order to rebuild the trust of victims, local populations and the international community, the UN and troop-contributing countries (TCCs) must take immediate action, the panel stated.

One such action is the acknowledgement that sexual exploitation and abuse by peacekeepers, whether or not they are under UN command, must be treated as a serious human rights violation that can be met with criminal prosecution.

Among its other recommendations, the panel also called for the creation of a coordination unit in the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) to monitor, report and follow-up on sexual abuse allegations; a mandatory and immediate reporting policy; establish a Trust Fund to provide specialized services to victims of conflict-related sexual violence and; negotiate with TCCs to screen troops and prosecute crimes of sexual violence.

While accepting the report’s findings, the UN Chief stated he intends to act “without delay” to address the systemic issues, fragmentation and other problems concerning sexual abuse by peacekeepers.

“Victims do not care what colour helmet or uniform is worn by those who come to protect them,” Ban remarked.

“Sexual exploitation and abuse of power has no place in the United Nations or in the world of dignity for all that we are striving to build,” he concluded.

Since the early 1990s, there have been sexual abuse cases committed by UN peacekeepers around the world from Haiti to Kosovo to Cambodia.

Though a zero-tolerance policy was implemented by the Secretary-General in 2003 and was reiterated in 2015, it has had little effect.

In 2014 alone, there were 79 cases of sexual exploitation and abuse, 51 of which were in peacekeeping missions and special political missions.

Given the flaws around investigation and reporting of sexual abuse cases, the review panel notes that it is likely that incidence of such cases are vastly under-reported.

(End)

Jomo Kwame Sundaram is the Coordinator for Economic and Social Development at the Food and Agriculture Organization and received the 2007 Wassily Leontief Prize for Advancing the Frontiers of Economic Thought.

By Jomo Kwame Sundaram
ROME, Dec 17 2015 (IPS)

With the increased frequency and severity of extreme weather events adversely affecting agricultural outputs and farmers’ incomes, commercial crop insurance has been touted as the solution for vulnerable farmers all over the world. Financial and farm interests have been promoting US crop insurance as the solution. It is instructive to consider lessons from the 2012 drought.

Jomo Kwame Sundaram. Credit: FAO

Driven by the expectation of high maize prices, owing to the maize bio-ethanol mandate introduced almost a decade ago, US farmers planted a record 96.4 million acres in the spring of 2012 – even planting on previously fallow and marginal fields. Farmers also knew that crop insurance would guarantee a handsome return on their investment even in the event of crop failure.

Unexpectedly low crop yields caused by the drought in much of the US significantly drove up global cereal prices by mid-year. By July 2012, more than 55 per cent of the US was in a state of moderate to extreme drought – the worst since 1956. US maize yield fell far short of the 166 bushels per acre that the US Department of Agriculture had projected in the spring. The USDA rated only 31 per cent of the crops “good” or “excellent”, while 38 per cent were rated “poor” or “very poor.”

When bad weather destroys part or all of their crop, those with a harvest-price clause in their insurance policies are compensated for most of their expected crop at the market price. When farmers can earn more from insurance at higher prices, they have an incentive to behave in ways that may raise prices even more, e.g. by delivering less.
Insurance payments for lost yields are based on current market prices, not some pre-agreed prices. Given the structure of these payoffs, it is not surprising that 85 per cent of all planted US farmland was insured in 2012, up from 75 per cent a decade ago, and only 25 per cent in 1988. Hence, many US maize farmers had their highest incomes ever despite the harvest failure!

By reducing the harvest, the drought drove up prices, boosting farmers’ incomes from insurance payments. If farmers with good insurance coverage make claims instead of harvesting, even less maize gets to market, raising prices – and insurance payments – further. When farmers planted in the spring, the maize price was less than 5 dollars a bushel.

Indeed, with highly subsidized crop insurance, if prices rise high enough, American farmers can earn far more from a failed harvest, than from a successful harvest. As insurance paid 80 per cent of current harvest prices, many farmers made more from insurance when prices rose above 6.25 dollars, than with a full harvest.

The supply shortfall pushed up maize prices to more than 8 dollar per bushel. As more land had been planted than ever before, many had expected a bumper crop, aggravating the low yield’s impact on prices. As the US is, by far, the world’s largest maize producer, and maize is the most popular animal feed, the poor harvest raised other food prices as well.

Nevertheless, this is very big—and very good—business for the insurance companies. Every year between 2000 and 2010, US crop insurers collected more in premiums than they paid out. But insurance companies also have little incentive to deter excessive payouts as the US government covers roughly three-fifths of premiums and reimburses private crop-insurance companies for administrative and operating costs exceeding a fifth of total premiums. Thus, the larger the nominal losses to insurers, the greater the share of payouts the government covers.

In 1989-2009, crop insurance cost US taxpayers 68.7 billion dollars, rising from 2 billion dollars in 2002 to 9 billion dollars in 2011, with more frequent and devastating extreme weather events. In 2011, when drought hit Texas and the US Southwest, total indemnified agricultural losses amounted to 10.8 billion dollars. But, as the government subsidized both premiums and re-insurance, private insurers still made a profit of 1.7 billion dollars. With the greater severity of the 2012 drought, the payout was much larger.

The federal government subsidy to crop insurance has since increased with the latest US farm bill. Yet, US policymakers have no reason to change things. Farm incomes account for a relatively small share of the US economy. In the run-up to national elections, powerful farm lobbies regularly call for even more federal protection. With candidates from both major parties vying for farm votes, neither side will discuss the perverse effects of US crop insurance or even its effect on the fiscal deficit – much less its impact on food prices and the world’s poor.

Instead, crop insurance is still touted as the best means to reduce farmer vulnerability, or even to combat poverty in developing countries. In Europe, the crop insurance lobby is calling for a “level playing field” by emulating US arrangements — by raising the level of support from the current 20 per cent to the US’s 70 per cent!

As such generous underwriting is allowed under WTO rules, and most developing countries cannot afford to subsidize crop insurance to the same extent, their farmers will consequently be at a further disadvantage. In any case, most poor farmers in developing countries are unlikely to be able to afford even the subsidized premiums offered by commercial insurance.

The “success” and popularity of US crop insurance is clearly due to high levels of government subsidy, beyond the means of most developing country governments.

While the risk-sharing that crop insurance offers is undoubtedly attractive, commercial insurance companies would not participate if they were really sharing risk. Surely, there are better options for protecting farmers — in the US and elsewhere.

(End)

By N Chandra Mohan
NEW DELHI, Dec 17 2015 (IPS)

South Asian integration remains a distant dream as some member countries like Nepal resent India’s big brotherly dominance in the region. They perceive that they have no stakes in India’s rise as an economic power. Ensuring unrestricted market access perhaps would have made a big difference in this regard. Their resentment has only deepened as this hasn’t happened. Instead they have registered growing trade deficits with India! The on-going travails of the Himalayan kingdom vis-a-vis India exemplify the problematic nature of integration in a region that accounts for 44 per cent of the world’s poor and one-fourth of its’ population.

N Chandra Mohan

Nepal appealed to the UN to take “effective steps” to help remove an “economic blockade” imposed on it by India. According to SD Muni, Professor Emeritus at the Jawaharlal Nehru University, this situation is reminiscent of what happened in 1989 when King Birendra’s decision to import anti-aircraft guns from China and his refusal to reform the Panchayat system in the face of a democratic movement precipitated tensions in bilateral relations. India closed down the special entry points for trade and transit, resulting in a severe shortage of essential supplies. Twenty-six years later, Indian trucks have been stopped from entering Nepal.

This blockade similarly has resulted in a shortage of fuel, food and medicines in the Himalayan Kingdom. Supplies of vaccines and antibiotics in particular are believed to be critically low. UNICEF has warned that this will put more than three million infants at risk of death or disease as winter has set in. More than 200,000 families affected by earthquakes earlier in the year are still living in temporary shelters at higher altitudes. The risks of hypothermia, malnutrition and shortages of medicines will disproportionately affect children. As if all this weren’t bad enough, fuel shortages are resulting in illegal felling of forests.

Nepal’s non-inclusive constitution is the proximate cause of this development disaster-in-the-making. The blockade is being spearheaded by ethnic communities who make up 40 per cent of the population like the Madhesis and Tharus from the southern plains or the Terai These minorities have strong historic links with India and are protesting that the recently promulgated constitution marginalizes them. They have stopped goods from India entering the country by trucks since September. India of course formally denies that it has anything to do with the blockade but it is concerned that the constitution discriminates against these minorities.

As Nepal shares a 1,088 mile open border with it, India is concerned that the violent agitation over the constitution will spill over into its country. The bulk of the Himalayan Kingdom’s trade is with India, including a total dependence on fuel. It is also a beneficiary of special trading trade concessions and Indian aid. Nepali soldiers in the Indian army constitute one of its leading infantry formations — the Gurkha Regiment. Nepali nationals freely cross the border and work in India. Normally, such interdependence should occasion closer bilateral ties and integration. Unfortunately, this hasn’t happened till now.

Nepal’s ballooning bilateral trade deficit is of course one factor behind the lingering resentment of India. Realizing this, India’s PM Narendra Modi assured South Asian leaders during a summit meeting in Kathmandu in November 2014 that this trade surplus was neither right nor sustainable. That India stood ready to reduce deficits which South Asian countries were incurring in exchange of their goods and services. This is as clear as it gets that India might roll out unilateral trade liberalization; take whatever they have to offer to boost trade within South Asia from the lowly five per cent level at present.

India’s compulsions to do so are simple. If the drift in South Asian integration is allowed to continue, it will only be to the advantage of China. The dragon’s shadow is indeed lengthening over the region, as it is rapidly developing port and transport infrastructure in Pakistan and Sri Lanka. It has promised aid to Nepal to develop its northern border districts. Nepal has also opened more border trading points with China. That China has become Bangladesh’s largest trading partner is a painful reminder to India of its failure to deepen economic cooperation in the neighborhood. Clearly, the challenge for India is to defend its turf against China.

It is in Nepal’s interests, too, that it addresses the sources of discontent over the constitution through dialogue to ensure broad-based-ownership and acceptance. Its top leadership has also agreed to amend the constitution within three months. A more harmonious relationship with India, too, is in its interests. For instance, it has not been able to tap its abundant water resources by developing hydroelectricity generation. South Asia’s diverse topography lends itself to greater cross border power trade, but political inhibitions have ensured that progress has been less than the potential. Some power trading is taking place in the region bordering Bhutan and India.

Nepal has of late seized this opportunity but politics can swiftly derail this process. The signing of a much delayed $1.4 billion deal between the Investment Board of Nepal and India’s GMR Group to develop a 900 MW dam and tunnel system on the upper Karnali River is exactly the sort of big ticket project that can transform the economy of this Himalayan kingdom. Another Indian firm, Satluj Jal Vidyut Nigam Limited signed a deal with the Nepal Government to build a 900 MW project known as Arun-3 in east Nepal. These are just two examples of India’s involvement to help Nepal realize its hydro power potential.

Nepal is also part of India’s efforts to secure greater connectivity by road, rail and sea within South Asia with Bangladesh and Bhutan. These countries have signed a motor vehicle agreement for freer movement of passenger, cargo and personnel traffic within these countries. These processes must be allowed to fructify. This is exactly the sort of stake that Nepal needs to develop in an economics and business-driven partnership with India. Allowing the processes of regional integration to drift is another Himalayan blunder that Nepal can do without.

(End)

At 40, Durga Rajak, co-owner of “Mailadai Hans ko Choila,” a popular eatery in Kathmandu, is learning to light a stove all over again. However, this time she is using diesel fuel instead of kerosene. She admits this is a risky job. “There is always the danger of a blast, so I must never pump […]

A group of women wait their turn to buy rationed food that is sold at subsidised prices, at a government shop in Havana, Cuba on Nov. 21, 2015. Credit: Jorge Luis Baños/IPS

By Patricia Grogg
HAVANA, Dec 16 2015 (IPS)

While the normalisation of diplomatic relations between the United States and Cuba is moving ahead, and the U.S. and Cuban flags have been proudly waving in Havana and Washington, respectively, since last July, the year gone by since the thaw has left many unanswered questions.

“You shouldn’t ask me, because in my view, nothing has changed,” one slightly angry middle-aged man told IPS while waiting his turn in a barbershop. In a nearby farmers’ market, a woman asked, loudly so that everyone could hear, why a pound of tomatoes cost 25 pesos (nearly a dollar).

Many Cubans feel that they don’t have much to celebrate this Dec. 17, the first anniversary of the day Presidents Raúl Castro of Cuba and Barack Obama of the United States took the world by surprise with their decision to reestablish diplomatic relations, severed in January 1961.

People who got excited about the idea that their daily lives would begin to improve after more than half a century of hostile relations are ending the year with public sector salaries that do not even cover their basic food needs.

The Cuban press reported that Marino Murillo, minister of economy and planning and vice president of the Council of Ministers, admitted at a recent session of the provincial legislature of Havana that the overall economic indicators in the capital had improved, but that this has not yet been reflected in the day-to-day lives of local residents.

The thaw has, however, had a positive impact on tourism, by giving a boost to emerging private enterprises like room rentals and small restaurants, options chosen by many visitors interested in getting to know Cuban society up close.

According to official statistics, in the first half of 2015 this country of 11.2 million people was visited by 1,923,326 people, compared to 1,660,110 in the first half of 2014. Visitors from other parts of Latin America can be frequently heard saying that they wanted to come to Cuba before the “invasion” of tourists from the U.S.

People from the United States can only travel to Cuba with special permits, for religious, cultural, journalistic or educational purposes, or for “people-to-people” contacts. Experts project that 145,000 people from the U.S. will have visited the country this year – 50,000 more than in 2014.

Two primary school students walk by a group of foreign tourists in a plaza in Old Havana. Credit: Jorge Luis Baños/IPS

The ban on travel to Cuba for the purpose of tourism and the embargo that Washington has had in place against this socialist country since 1962 are among the pending issues to resolve in the process of normalisation of ties promoted over the last year by official visitors to Cuba who have included Secretary of State John Kerry, two other members of Obama’s cabinet, and three state governors.

“Beyond a number of grandiloquent headlines, everything remains to be done,” Cuban journalist and academic Salvador Salazar, who is earning a PhD in Mexico, told IPS. In his view, only the first few steps have been taken towards “what should be a civilised relationship marked by talking instead of shouting, and debating instead of attacking.”

Sarah Stephens, executive director of the Washington-based Center for Democracy in the Americas, concurred that after 55 years of hostile and dangerous relations, the governments of the two countries are learning how to respect each other.

“…[I]f 2015 was about both governments learning to treat each other with dignity and respect, 2016 has to be about building on that progress and using diplomacy to create lasting benefits for both countries in order to make the changes we are seeing irreversible and the further changes we want inevitable,” she told IPS by email.

In September, a binational commission created after the official restoration of diplomatic relations and the reopening of embassies defined the issues for starting talks aimed at clearing the path towards normalisation, including communications, drug trafficking, health, civil aviation and maritime security.

Human rights, human trafficking and demands for compensation by both sides were other questions on the agendas outlined by the delegations from the two countries. The list also includes immigration, an issue that has been discussed for years in periodic talks held to review progress on agreements signed in 1994 and 1995.

The talks about the agreements aimed at ensuring “safe, legal and orderly” immigration are not free of tension, given the Cuban government’s frustrated demand for the repeal of the U.S. Cuban Adjustment Act’s “wet foot, dry foot” policy and other regulations that according to authorities here encourage illegal migration.

Washington has reiterated that it will not modify its immigration policy towards Cuba. The anniversary of the start of the thaw finds some 5,000 Cuban immigrants stranded at border crossings in Costa Rica without any apparent solution, in their quest to reach the United States by means of a route that takes them through Central America and Mexico.

John Gronbeck-Tedesco, assistant professor of American Studies at Ramapo College in New Jersey, believes the Obama administration is doing its part to clear the way towards reconciliation, and says the talks held so far have calmed the “anti-normalisation rhetoric.”

But the academic says he does not yet see a climate favourable to the lifting of the embargo, which can only be done by the U.S. Congress, “especially” given the fact that 2016 is an election year.

According to the Cuban government, the embargo has hindered this country’s development and has caused 121.192 billion dollars in damages over the past five decades.

“I think that before Congress takes up the matter, however, the significant issue of debts still owed will need to be settled more clearly,” added the analyst, referring to the question of compensation that the two countries began to discuss in a Dec. 8 “informational” session in Havana.

“The U.S. has a price for Cuban American property and investments lost (nationalised) due to the revolution, and Cuba has a number in mind regarding the economic harm caused by the embargo. These debts are as politically symbolic as they are materially real for both interested parties,” added Gronbeck-Tedesco, without mentioning specific figures.

In an interview with the press published Monday Dec. 14, Obama reiterated his interest in visiting Cuba, although only if “I get to talk to everybody”.

He said that in his conversations with Castro he has made it clear that “we would continue to reach out to those who want to broaden the scope for, you know, free expression inside of Cuba.”

The two leaders have spoken by phone at least twice and met in person for the first time on Apr. 11, at the seventh Summit of the Americas in Panama. And on Sep. 29 in New York they held the first official meeting between the presidents of the two countries since the 1959 Cuban revolution.

*With reporting by Ivet González in Havana.

Edited by Verónica Firme/Translated by Stephanie Wildes

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By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Dec 16 2015 (IPS)

When German Chancellor Angela Merkel defended her immigration policies early this week — and announced plans to absorb about one million refugees, mostly from Syria — she was apparently greeted with a nine-minute standing ovation by members of her Christian Democratic Union.

If that was the good news, the bad news arrived 48 hours later: a grim report that the conflict in Syria has led to “the largest refugee crisis of our time, with colossal human, economic and social costs for the refugees, host countries and host communities,” according to a new study released Dec 16 by the World Bank Group and the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).

The nearly 1.7 million Syrians who are registered in neighbouring Jordan and Lebanon live in precarious circumstances– notwithstanding the generosity of hosting governments.

“Refugees have few legal rights, and face constrained access to public services due to unprecedented demand. The vast majority of these refugees live on the margins, in urban or peri-urban areas, many in informal settlements, rather than in refugee camps.”

The plight of the refugees is dire and the lives and dignity of millions is at stake, declared the joint study.

Nearly nine in ten registered Syrian refugees living in Jordan are either poor or expected to be in the near future.

The crisis has had effects that go beyond the Middle East as desperate refugees are starting to move to Europe and beyond, the study warned.

“We have a collective responsibility to respond to the humanitarian and development crises unfolding in the Middle East and to act on the immediate consequences as well as on the underlying causes of conflict,” said Hafez M. H. Ghanem, World Bank’s Vice President for Middle East and North Africa Region.

But despite Germany’s generosity, there is still lingering opposition to the concept of open borders to refugees, who also include asylum seekers from Iraq, Libya and Afghanistan.

Frans Timmermans, first vice president of the European Commission, told a news conference in Strasbourg, France, Tuesday: “The borders that migrants cross are not just Greek borders or Bulgarian borders – they are European borders.”

Such borders are a collective responsibility, he said, and added: “if we don’t protect them in the right way, the consequences will be for all Europeans.”

Still there is widespread criticism of the negative responses both from Eastern European countries and the rich Arab Gulf nations.

Asked whether Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon is disappointed that Gulf states and Asian countries have not offered to host refugees, UN deputy spokesperson Farhan Haq said: “Well, you’ll have seen the offers as they come in. It’s still not really enough by our standards.”

He said there’s still a lot more that needs to be done to accept Syrian refugees, but the UN is appreciative of the offers that have gradually been coming in from countries in the Western world, in the region and around.

“But, ultimately, in order to lower the burden on countries like Turkey, like Jordan, like Lebanon, we’ll need other countries to step up and do more.”

Asked specifically about the Gulf countries, he said there’s been some slight movement in different areas, “but it’s still not at the level that we need to actually ease the burden on the countries in the region.”

Addressing the UN General Assembly last month, Abdulmohsen Alyas of Saudi Arabia told delegates his country “had hosted 2.5 million refugees and allowed them free movement within the country.”

He also said Saudi aid to the Syrian people had reached about 700 million dollars, according to the Third International Humanitarian Pledging Conference for Syria, held in Kuwait last March.

Still the irony of the crisis was best reflected in a cartoon where Merkel appeals to King Salman of Saudi Arabia, one of the richest countries in the Gulf, to allow some of the migrants to settle in his kingdom.

“Don’t worry Ms Merkel,” King Salman is quoted as saying, “you can take all the refugees – and we will build 200 mosques for them in Germany.”

According to the Lebanese newspaper Al Diyar, Saudi Arabia has vowed to build one mosque for every 100 refugees entering Germany.

Andrea Scheuer, general secretary of the Christian Social Union (CSU) in Bavaria, described the offer as ‘cynical’.

‘No, it is more than cynical,” he added as an afterthought.

“This is no Muslim Brotherhood. Where is the solidarity in the Arab world?’ he asked.

The writer can be contacted at thalifdeen@aol.com