Csaba Kőrösi painted a near apocalyptic picture of ordinary life in the Taliban-ruled nation that has endured almost five decades of “relentless conflict”, urging the international community to make up the $2.3 billion shortfall in the UN humanitarian appeal for $4.4 billion.
‘Moral imperative’
In a powerful speech to ambassadors in New York, during a full session of the UN’s most representative body, he said that there was “a moral and also a practical imperative for the international community to support an inclusive and sustainable peace in Afghanistan.”
The resolution expressed deep concern over Afghanistan’s current trajectory and the volatility there since the Taliban takeover.
It urges Afghanistan to honour and fully respect and implement all treaties, covenants or conventions, bilateral or multilateral, which is has signed up to.
Drugs and terror
Beyond the disastrous humanitarian and human rights situation, he said the country was now “awash with heroin and opium.”
“Organized crime and terrorist organizations are thriving once again. Afghanistan is facing complex and interlinked challenges that the Taliban have shown they cannot – or would not – solve.”
Now is the time to come up with some concrete solutions that put the Afghan people first, he said, suggesting one concrete way the General Assembly could help right away:
“I encourage the country’s reengagement with the international science community. And to allow women who used to be respected members of the country’s science community, to resume their research and their studies.
Alone in denial
Afghanistan is now the only State in the world, denying girls the right to a full education, he added, noting that their prospects are totally uncertain, “amid seemingly random edicts from the Taliban.”
For even the most powerful women in the country, “dreams of becoming President have been replaced by the reality of child marriage. Arrests if women and girls leave their home without a male chaperone.
A father brings his child to a UNICEF-supported mobile health clinic to seek treatment in Logar Province, Afghanistan, where his home has been destroyed by recent floods.
Protect all Afghans
“I reiterate my call for the protection of fundamental rights and freedoms of all Afghans, especially women and girls.”
Mr. Kőrösi urged the Taliban to ensure the safety of all Afghans – regardless of gender, ethnicity, religion or politics – protection for journalists and civil society members, and the unhindered delivery of aid.
Amid the economic meltdown, he pointed out the shocking fact that narcotics constitute the biggest sector in the country, with the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, revealing a 32 per cent growth in illegal opium cultivation.
“We know where these drugs are sent. And we know who profits from these drugs. The threat from drug trafficking is linked with the threat of terrorism, regional and global security.”
Get serious
He said Taliban leaders needed to engage in serious dialogue about counter-terrorism to reverse the flow of foreign extremists into the country – and prevent their own from becoming foreign terrorist fighters elsewhere.
“Afghanistan must never again become a breeding ground and safe haven for terrorists. I call on the Taliban, other Afghans and members of the international community to cooperate with the Special Representative (for UN Assistance Mission, UNAMA) as she implements the Mission’s mandate.
After debating the resolution, it was adopted by the General Assembly with 116 votes for, and 10 abstentions – Belarus, Burundi, China, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, Ethiopia, Guinea, Nicaragua, Pakistan, Russia and Zimbabwe.
“Since February, aid workers have provided critical aid and protection services to some 13.5 million people across all regions of Ukraine”, Associate Spokesperson Stéphanie Tremblay told journalists at a regular briefing in New York.
She added that more than 4.2 million people have received cash assistance over the past eight months and that markets are reopening, as the Government works to restore banking services in the Kharkiv and Kherson regions, where Ukraine has recently regained control.
Moreover, partners are also extending their cash programmes also in these areas.
Russian military commanders announced Wednesday that their forces were withdrawing from Kherson – it’s largest gain during the invasion – with the Ukrainian military reporting on Thursday that it had made rapid advances on two fronts to the outskirts of the southern city.
Health services hit hard
With hundreds of medical facilities across the country damaged, humanitarians are working to bolster health assistance even as the war continues to decimate health services.
“For example, this month, the UN Population Fund (UNFPA) is delivering 30 mobile clinics that will provide reproductive health services for women in at least 19 regions of Ukraine,” said Ms. Tremblay.
“Since the beginning of the war, we and our partners have provided health services to more than 8.6 million people”.
Meanwhile, as infrastructure damage has made it increasingly difficult for communities to access clean water, the UN and its partners continue to provide water and hygiene assistance, having reached 5.7 million so far.
A man inspects damage on the roof of an apartment complex destroyed by artillery and air strikes in a Kharkiv suburb..
Donor support
The UN spokesperson attributed the scale up of aid to donor support, crediting them for providing more than 70 per cent of the $4.3 billion requested for aid operations.
“However, as the war continues to drive humanitarian needs in Ukraine, the international community’s support will be critical to ensure that aid organizations can continue supporting the people of Ukraine”, she reminded.
Mine contamination
Meanwhile, the UN humanitarian office, OCHA, expressed concerned over an increasing number of incidents involving mines and explosive ordnances – particularly in the recently regained Kharkiv region in the northeast.
At least five incidents of mines detonating or explosions causing deaths or injuries occurred during the first two days of this month, compared to four throughout the who second half of October.
While explosive ordnances have been responsible for hundreds of deaths, injuries or maiming since the beginning of the war, just on Tuesday, two people were killed and two others injured while repairing a road in Chuhuivskyi District, Kharkiv region.
Moreover, accidents involving farmers trying to get back to their land following Russian withdrawal, are becoming progressively more common.
Authorities say that since March, more than 150,000 explosive devices have already been removed and destroyed, but millions remain. Clearing landmines in Ukraine could take decades, the UN spokesperson said.
Nuclear experts warn that ‘tactical’ nuclear weapons could have devastating death toll and destruction. This photo shows the war damage in Borodianka, Kyiv Oblast. Photo: Oleksandr Ratushniak / UNDP Ukraine
by Ed Holt (bratislava)
Inter Press Service
BRATISLAVA, Nov 10 (IPS) – Since the start of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the conflict’s potential to escalate to the use of nuclear weapons has been highlighted by political analysts and military experts alike.
Now growingly bellicose rhetoric from Russian president Vladimir Putin, particularly following the illegal annexations of four parts of Ukraine at the end of September, has raised fears he may be seriously considering using them. He has been quoted in September this year as saying that Russia would use “all available means to protect Russia and our people”, but last month said there was no need to consider the use of nuclear weapons. This week Russia ordered troops to withdraw from the Dnieper River’s west bank near the southern city of Kherson.
But while much of the media debate around this prospect has focused on the expected use of a so-called low-yield “tactical” nuclear weapon and what this might mean strategically for either side in the war, anti-nuclear campaigners say any discussion should be reframed to reflect the devastating reality of what the use of even the smallest weapons in modern nuclear arsenals would mean.
They say that even if only one such bomb was dropped, be it in Ukraine or in any other conflict, the consequences would cause a country – if not a continent-wide catastrophe, with horrific immediate and long-term health effects and a subsequent humanitarian disaster on a scale almost certainly not seen before.
Moreover, they say, a single strike would almost certainly be met with a similar response, quickly igniting a full-scale nuclear war that would threaten much of human life on earth.
“There is no conceivable reality in which a nuclear weapon is used, and life goes on as normal. It is very, very likely that there would be escalation and additional nuclear weapons used, but even the use of one nuclear weapon would break a decades-long taboo on the use of the most catastrophic, horrific weapon ever created,” Alicia Sanders-Zakre, Research, and Policy Coordinator, at the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) told IPS.
“We have already seen the global impacts of the war in Ukraine just using conventional weapons, including worldwide rising inflation, and energy and food shortages. But the use of a nuclear weapon would really have consequences beyond what any of us can imagine,” she added.
Since the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 – the only time nuclear weapons have been used in conflict – a number of states have built up nuclear arsenals, including bombs many times more powerful than those dropped on the two Japanese cities.
But they also include bombs that can be set to have varying explosive yields -which are measured in kilotons – including potentially in just single figures. For comparison, the devices dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki had yields of around 15 kilotons.
These lower yield bombs are, unlike strategic nuclear weapons with yields in the hundreds of kilotons that, are specifically meant to cause mass destruction and serve a deterrent purpose, designed for use on a battlefield to counter overwhelming conventional forces.
The strategic thinking behind their use is that they could cause maximum damage to enemy troops in specific areas without the wider massive destruction caused by larger bombs.
This does not mean, though, that tactical nuclear weapons are not devastatingly lethal – an estimated 130,000 people were killed by the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima, while NUKEMAP predicts that even a 5-kiloton bomb detonation on Kyiv would leave more than 90,000 people dead, and injured.
Campaigners against nuclear weapons worry the global public is not being made properly aware of the scale of the loss of life and ecological damage which would be wrought by the use of such a weapon.
“There has been a lot of discussion about using a tactical nuclear bomb in Ukraine. But the use of the word ‘tactical’ is no more than a rebranding exercise to make a nuclear weapon sound like a conventional one,” Dr Ruth Mitchell, Board Chair of the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW), told IPS.
“A tactical nuclear weapon would be about the same size as the one dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and we don’t need to imagine what the effects would be; we have already seen them,” she added.
The death toll itself would be massive, but authorities would also have to deal with radioactive fallout possibly contaminating large areas, while the event itself would trigger massive population dislocation.
And a report by ICAN also shows that even the most advanced healthcare systems would be unable to provide any effective response in such a situation, highlighting the likely destruction of local healthcare facilities and staff and pointing out that the 1945 atomic bombing of Hiroshima destroyed 80% of its hospitals and killed almost all its doctors and nurses.
Healthcare staff in Ukraine have told IPS that preparations are being made at hospitals and healthcare facilities to respond to a nuclear attack, including plans for reprofiling wards and forming special teams of emergency staff to treat those affected both directly in the area of any strike and where needed in other parts of the country.
Meanwhile, authorities in cities have said potential evacuation centres have been set up, and supplies of potassium iodide, which can help block the absorption of harmful radiation by the thyroid gland, have been secured to be distributed if needed.
Some doctors have said they are also counting on international help for Ukraine’s healthcare response if the worst to happen.
But Mitchell said while admirable, such efforts were likely to be of little help.
“It is naïve to think there is a terrible amount that we can do in the event of use of a nuclear weapon against civilian populations, which is the only way any will ever be used. They will be used strategically, i.e., on a populous city. No one’s going to be dropping them in a paddock. It would be a massive disaster,” she said.
Some Ukrainian doctors admit they may not be able to provide much help.
“If the hospital is hit with a bomb then there won’t be much we can do,” Roman Fishchuk, a doctor at the Central City Clinical Hospital in Ivano-Frankivsk in western Ukraine told IPS.
Another key issue, Mitchell said, is the fact that any use of a nuclear weapon in a conflict situation, be it in Ukraine or anywhere else, would almost certainly not be left in isolation.
There would likely be a response in kind, followed by a very rapid escalation to nuclear war and multiple missile detonations, with terrifying planet-wide consequences, she said.
A recent report by experts studying the potential effects of a nuclear conflict concluded that while more than 5?billion could die from a war between the United States and Russia, “even a war between India and Pakistan using less than 3% of the global nuclear arsenal” could result in famine for a third of Earth.
ICAN’s Sanders-Zakre explained that the current situation in Ukraine has only highlighted the need for nuclear weapons to be abolished across the world, and how more attention needs to be paid to experts pointing out their potential for civilisation-threatening destruction.
“What this shows is that we really need to listen to medical professionals, and organisations like IPPNW. They have been warning for decades about the consequences of using nuclear weapons, and we have learned from the catastrophic Covid-19 pandemic that it is essential that we listen to professionals and experts and take their expertise seriously, and it’s the same in this case with the use of a nuclear weapon,” she said.
Meanwhile, in Ukraine, people are preparing for the worst. Some have begun stocking rooms converted into bomb shelters with food and other supplies they believe will help them ride out the aftermath of a nuclear strike. Others have been buying potassium iodide tablets.
But some say they have little faith they would survive any such attack and are just hoping it will never happen.
“The Health Ministry has given out advice on what to do if there is a nuclear attack, and I know some of the basic things to do, but I don’t feel like I’m prepared to deal with something like this if it happens. I just hope we won’t have to deal with this. It would be horror,” 23-year-old Kyiv resident Viktoria Marchenko (NOT REAL NAME) told IPS.
Decision-making power is still held at the national and international level, often failing to (financially) enable local actors to lead climate action. Credit: Joyce Chimbi/IPS
Opinion by Anne Jellema (capetown, south africa)
Inter Press Service
CAPETOWN, South Africa, Nov 09 (IPS) – Anne Jellema is CEO of HivosImagine a world where the people hit hardest by climate crisis have a say in how to stop it. Imagine that youth, Indigenous Peoples, women, and others most affected by global warming have the resources to implement their own climate solutions. Solutions that are highly effective because they meet local needs, suit the local context, and create sustainable economic opportunities for local people. This world would be one where people have a much better chance of surviving, and even thriving, despite the massive upheavals of the climate crisis.
Climate finance remains a pipe dream at local level
At the global level, to achieve the key commitments made in Paris, climate investment should count in trillions rather than billions. The 100 billion per year climate financing target from 2020 onwards has already been missed. Industrialized countries have overwhelmingly failed to provide anything close to the scale of climate financing needed – let alone the specific demand for a loss and damage financing facility.
And at the local level, although ever more governments and stakeholders understand the importance of shifting resources, leadership and agency to the local level, the world pictured above is still far from reach
There are many reasons why climate finance doesn’t end up at the local level.
Some are related to complex rules and requirements in accessing international funding, which local actors often lack the knowledge, network, skills and/or scale to comply with.
Decision-making power is still held at the national and international level, often failing to (financially) enable local actors to lead climate action. Even at national level, those most affected by climate change often have the least say in setting priorities for climate policy and funding.
What needs to happen
Recently, Hivos – as part of the Voices for Just Climate Action alliance – studied a handful of promising alternative finance delivery mechanisms. While some have performed better than others, they share the potential for downward accountability and effective participation of different voices as an integral part of the funding mechanism. Based on the study, we put forth the following recommendations which governments, international intermediaries, and global banks and funds should give serious consideration to at the upcoming COP27.
Firstly, create mechanisms for participatory funding and oversight structures to ensure that local actors drive decision making. This includes addressing structural inequalities faced by women, youth, children, Indigenous people, and other marginalized groups, and fully integrating these groups in the design and implementation of adaptation and mitigation actions.
Secondly, routinely set concrete targets for funds that need to reach climate solutions driven by local actors. Provide grants instead of loans, and use long-term, patient and flexible programmatic funding instead of short-term, ad hoc project funding. At COP27 the rich countries must deliver robust action to scale up grant-based climate finance to the developing world.
Thirdly, ensure easy access for local actors by simplifying fund application processes.
Lastly, decisive steps must be taken to use national, not international financing mechanisms and structures for channeling finance. The International Institute of Environment and Development (IIED) designed a climate finance delivery mechanism that bypasses international intermediaries. Here, money flows directly to local civil society, national and local governments, and/or the private sector.
Hivos joins hands with its partners and climate movements in demanding that concrete, gender-responsive targets are set to get climate funding into the hands of local actors, and new funding mechanisms are developed by and with climate-affected communities to make climate finance work for them.
To conclude…commitments are vital, but focus must shift
The COP Presidency, this year in the hands of Egypt, has called for significant progress on commitments and pledges, especially on the delivery of the annual USD 100 billion from developed countries to developing countries. Failure to keep to this commitment has often been a breaking point in climate negotiations and has damaged trust between countries.
Equally important, however, is shifting our focus from the volume of climate finance to its effectiveness. Only then will a world governed by climate justice be within reach.
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Map of the 1858 trans-Atlantic cable route. Credit: Wikipedia.
Opinion by Manuel Manonelles (barcelona)
Inter Press Service
BARCELONA, Nov 09 (IPS) – The recent incidents of sabotage of the Nord Stream gas pipeline in the depths of the Baltic Sea, the authorship of which still raises doubts today, have reminded us that some of the key infrastructures that condition geopolitics, and our daily lives, are largely located deep under the sea.
One of these strategic infrastructures, the importance of which is inversely proportional to their public awareness, also lies in the underwater environment. It is about submarine cables, generally of fiber optic, through which more than 95% of internet traffic circulates. A thick and growing network of undersea cables that connect the world and through which the lifeblood of the new economy, data, circulates.
The history of submarine cables is not new. The first submarine cables were installed around 1850 and the first intercontinental cable, 4,000 kilometers long, was put into operation in 1858, connecting Ireland and Newfoundland (Canada).
It was at that time a telegraph cable, and while the first telegram—sent by Queen Victoria to then US President James Buchanan—took seventeen hours to get from one point to the next, it was considered a technological feat. From here, the network grew unstoppably and communications in the world changed.
Telephone cables followed, and in 1956 the first intercontinental telephone cable was put into operation, again connecting Europe and America with thirty-six telephone lines that would soon be insufficient. Thirty years later, the first fiber optic cable —replacing copper— was activated in 1988 and in recent decades the submarine cable network has dramatically increased, driven by the exponential growth in demand generated by the new digital economy and society.
It is surprising, then, that an infrastructure as critical and relevant as this goes so unnoticed, considering that it is the backbone of a society increasingly dependent on its digital dimension. This is what experts call the “paradox of invisibility”.
Because, again, more than 95% of what we see daily on our mobiles, computers, tablets and social networks, of what we upload or download from our clouds or watch through platforms —and thus millions of people, institutions and companies of all over the world— go through this submarine cable system.
The financial transactions transmitted by this network are approximately of 10 trillion dollars a day; and the global market for fiber optic submarine cables was around 13.3 billion dollars per year in 2020, expected to reach 30.8 billion in 2026, with an annual growth of 14%.
A system, however, that suffers from a significant governance deficit and, at the same time, is subject to substantial changes in its configuration and, above all, in the nature of its operators and owners. Moreover, traditionally the main operators of these networks were the telecom companies or, above all, consortiums of several companies in this sector.
Many of these companies were owned or had a close relationship with the governments of their country of origin —and, therefore, were linked in one way or another to some sort of national or regional legislation— and they generated a model focused on the interests and the interconnectivity of its clients.
In recent years, however, the growing need for hyper-connectivity of the large digital conglomerates (Google, Meta/Facebook, Microsoft, etc.) and their cloud computing provider data centers has resulted in that these have gone from being simple consumers of submarine cabling to becoming the main users (currently using 66% of the capacity of the entire current network). Even more, from users they have become the new dominant promoters of this type of infrastructure, which results in the reinforcement of their almost omnipotent power, and not only in the digital environment.
This can induce movements – albeit barely perceptible but equally relevant – in the complex balance of global power, by concentrating one of the strategic components of the global critical infrastructure into the hands of the technological giants.
All this with the absence of a global governance mechanism addressing this question, since the International Convention for the Protection of Submarine Cables of 1884 is more than outdated. As it is the case for the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) –in which the abovementioned convention is currently framed- whose challenges are more than evident, with the obvious conclusion about the urgent need for the international community to provide an answer to this pressing question.
A response that not only has to be at a global level, but also at a regional one, for example at the level of the European Union, especially if digital sovereignty is to be ensured, a vital element in the current present and even more in the future.
Proof of this is that in the last weeks there have been several incidents in relation to submarine cables both on the British, French and Spanish coasts that several analysts have linked to the Ukraine war.
In the case of the United Kingdom, there were cuts in the cables that connect Great Britain with the Shetland and Faroe Islands, while in France two of the main cables that land through the submarine cable hub that is Marseille were also cut. Even if some of these cases have been proven the result of fortuitous accidents, in others there is still doubt about what really happened.
Some experts have pointed to Russia, recalling the naval maneuvers that this country carried out just before the invasion of Ukraine in front of the territorial waters of Ireland, precisely in one of the areas with the highest concentration of intercontinental cables in the world.
In this context, perhaps it is not surprising that the Spanish Navy has recently reported that it monitors the activity of Russian ships near the main cables that lie in sovereign Spanish waters, indicating that in recent months more than three possible prospecting actions carried by vessels flying the Russian flag had been detected and deterred. One more proof of the growing value of these infrastructures that, despite being almost invisible, are strategic.
Manuel Manonelles is Associate Professor of International Relations, Blanquerna/University Ramon Llull, Barcelona
The Amazon Rainforest in Brazil. June 2022. Credit: CIAT/Neil Palmer
Opinion by Alon Ben-Meir (new york)
Inter Press Service
NEW YORK, Nov 09 (IPS) – The electoral defeat of Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro is a triumph for everyone who is concerned about the peril of climate change. Bolsonaro’s well-deserved defeat could help save the Amazon rainforest, which has been ravaged under his criminal rule, and the process of reversing the looming climate change catastrophe can begin
Righting the Wrong
President-elect Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s victory over Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil represents a historic chance to begin undoing some of the great harm that was inflicted on Brazil’s Amazon rainforest over the last four years.
Since taking office in January 2019, Bolsonaro has ravaged the earth for short-sighted gains, turning back environmental regulations that any thinking human being would wish to preserve in the face of such unprecedented global degradation.
Bolsonaro systematically dismantled environmental protections so that those who could not care less about the environment would be free to clear the land and turn it into pastures without any accountability. The unfolding crisis of the Amazon is a catastrophe for climate change, biodiversity, Indigenous people of the region, and the untold wonders that human science has yet to understand.
A 2020 study published in the journal Nature has shown that if the systematic destruction of the Brazilian Amazon continues unabated, much of it could become an arid savannah, or even “dry scrubland,” within decades given the rate of deforestation, largely due to deliberate and illegal fires that are meant to permanently convert forest into pastureland.
With the devastation of the rainforests has also come the devastation of those Indigenous people whose homelands and livelihood are being destroyed by deforestation.
Just imagine, between August 2020 and July 2021 over 5,000 square miles of rainforest were lost in the Brazilian Amazon – that is an area larger than the land area of Connecticut. In fact, under Bolsonaro the rate of destruction reached a ten-year high, as his administration turned a blind eye to illegal logging, the deforestation of Indigenous land, and, as Amnesty International notes, the “violence against those living on and seeking to defend their territories.”
Under Bolsonaro’s reckless and corrupt rule, his government deliberately “weakened environmental law enforcement agencies, undermining their ability to effectively sanction environmental crime or detect exports of illegal timber,” as Human Rights Watch describes. Fines for illegal logging in the Brazilian Amazon were suspended by presidential decree at the beginning of October 2019.
Illegal seizures of land on Reserves and Indigenous territories in Brazil’s Amazon became routine, as Bolsonaro slashed the budget of agencies that protected the jungle from unauthorized clearing.
Criminal organizations, aptly called “rainforest mafias,” allow cattle ranchers to operate with impunity, and according to the US State Department possess the “logistical capacity to coordinate large-scale extraction, processing, and sale of timber, while deploying armed men to protect their interests.”
It is hard to fathom the sheer scale of destruction that was wreaked by Bolsonaro upon the Amazon. Such rampant deforestation is tragic on many levels — it is destroying habitats and countless species being pushed to the brink of extinction when we are already in the midst of a mass extinction of this planet’s animals, insects, and plants.
It is hastening the onslaught of climate change when we are already facing the dire effects of a warming planet. And it is obliterating the lands of Indigenous people who have already suffered and been persecuted and murdered for decades.
To be sure, the extent of devastation of the rainforest under Bolsonaro was so enormous that we can barely begin to comprehend the loss to humanity, to science, and to our knowledge of undiscovered plants and animals that hold the answers to questions of which we have not even dreamt. This is a shameful loss to the entire world and to generations hence.
The Bolsonaro government failed miserably to act as a responsible custodian of the Amazon and Pantanal (the world’s largest tropical wetland located mostly within Brazil, which along with the Amazon has some of the world’s most biologically diverse ecosystems) — instead it helped in every way it can to hasten this unimaginable devastation.
Dr Michelle Kalamandeen, a tropical ecologist on the Amazon rainforest, observed that “When a forest is lost, it is gone forever. Recovery may occur but never 100% recovery.”
We must bring this travesty to a halt. By this wanton and dismally short-sighted decimation of the rainforests we are depriving humanity of knowledge which could alter medicine, improve our lives and transform the world, from the way we build our cities to the ways we make our homes.
Plant and animal species inspire new technologies, new forms of architecture, new kinds of design and materiality. Yet probably less than 1 percent of rainforest trees and plants have been studied by science — though not less than 25 percent of Western pharmaceuticals are derived from rainforest ingredients. By allowing rampant deforestation to continue, we are doing ourselves and future generations untold and unconscionable harm.
Let us remember that the Amazon does not simply belong to the countries in which it happens to be found – it is not the exclusive resource of those companies that are able to exploit it, appropriate its resources, and destroy it with impunity.
The Amazon is part of our collective patrimony, a heritage beyond price which we are duty-bound to pass on to future generations, regardless of the profits that we may yield from its systematic rape.
And let us make no mistake, or mince words—the Amazon is being raped hour by hour, month by month, year by year, and the world is watching in silence as this violation is repeated daily. The time is running out for us to act in a meaningful way to stop this mindless decimation of one of the world’s greatest natural wonders.
With the election of Lula as President of Brazil, we now have a historic opportunity to support and encourage him to immediately start working on a plan to reverse Bolsonaro’s disastrous policies in three main areas: the environment, public security, and scientific discoveries.
First, President Lula should start by prohibiting deforestation, illegal logging, and land grabbing. To that end, he must stop short of nothing to pass a new law to be enshrined in the Brazilian constitution that puts an end to the systematic destruction of the rainforest. The law should include mandatory prison sentences as well as heavy fines to prevent cattle ranchers and illegal loggers from committing such crimes ever again with impunity.
Second, he must develop a comprehensive plan to protect the human rights of Indigenous communities from the criminal networks that use violence, intimidation, and terror to cow the locals into silence. He should make such a plan the center of his domestic policy while improving security and providing the necessary funding for environmental agencies to perform their tasks with zeal.
Third, President Lula should invite the global scientific community to further study the wonders of the Amazon and in partnership with them initiate scores of scientific projects from which the whole world would benefit, while preserving the glory of the Amazon as one of the central pillars in the fight against climate change.
Finally, President Biden, who understands full well the danger that climate change poses, should provide political support and financial assistance to President Lula to help him reverse some of the damage that was inflicted on the Amazon by his predecessor.
President Lula must view his rise to power and the responsibility placed on his shoulders as nothing less than a holy mission that will help save the planet from the man-made looming catastrophes of climate change.
Dr. Alon Ben-Meir is a retired professor of international relations at the Center for Global Affairs at New York University (NYU). He taught courses on international negotiation and Middle Eastern studies for over 20 years.
Ms. Lawlor has issued a statement expressing her increasing concern for the health and life of Mohammad Al-Qahtani, a founding member of the Saudi Civil and Political Rights Association, which was dissolved in 2013.
He was sentenced to a decade in prison that same year for allegedly providing false information to outside sources, including UN human rights mechanisms.
Appeal to authorities
“I am concerned at reports that his family has lost communication with Mohammad Al-Qahtani since 23 October 2022, after filing a complaint about attacks on him by other inmates,” said Ms. Lawlor.
“I am calling on the relevant authorities in Saudi Arabia to inform his family of his whereabouts and current state of health, and to allow access by his family and lawyers.”
The Special Rapporteur is in contact with the authorities about the case.
Against incommunicado detention
Mr. Al-Qahtani has repeatedly protested against ill treatment at Al-Ha’ir Reformatory Prison in the capital, Riyadh, where he is serving his sentence.
The human rights defender has complained about attacks by other prisoners since May, but authorities have refused his request to be transferred.
Ms. Lawlor said she is gravely concerned about the use of incommunicado detention as it represents a violation of detainees’ rights under international law.
“Such methods give rise to grave concerns for the personal integrity of detainees, as they run a heightened risk of being subjected to ill-treatment and torture when all contact with the outside world has been blocked,” she added.
Role of UN Rapporteurs
Special Rapporteurs are appointed by the UN Human Rights Council to monitor and report on specific country situations or thematic issues.
These human rights experts are independent of any government and operate in their individual capacity.
They are not UN staff and they do not receive a salary for their work.
It is the first to examine the implications of COVID-19 for vaccine markets and highlights the disparity in access around the world.
The report says that the way the global market is not fully conducive to the development, supply and access for essential vaccines – with some regions depending almost entirely on others for vaccine supply.
“The right to health includes the right to vaccines”, saidWHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, adding that the report “shows that free-market dynamics are depriving some of the world’s poorest and most vulnerable people of that right”.
Calling for change
WHO is calling for much-needed changes in vaccine distribution “to save lives, prevent disease and prepare for future crises”.
Although manufacturing capacity worldwide has increased, it remains highly concentrated. Ten manufacturers alone provide 70 per cent of vaccine doses, excluding those for COVID-19.
Several of the top 20 most widely used vaccines, such as the pneumococcal conjugate vaccine (PCV), and human papillomavirus (HPV), measles and rubella containing vaccines, each currently rely mostly on two suppliers.
Concentrated manufacturing risks shortages as well as regional supply insecurity.
In 2021, the African and Eastern Mediterranean regions were dependent on manufacturers headquartered elsewhere for 90 per cent of their vaccines.
Driving imbalances
Limited vaccine supply and unequal distribution drive global disparities, according to WHO.
The HPV vaccine against cervical cancer has been introduced in only 41 per cent of low-income countries – despite their carrying much of the disease burden – compared to 83 per cent of high-income countries.
Affordability is also an obstacle to vaccine access.
While prices tend to be tiered by income, price disparities see middle-income countries paying as much, or even more, than wealthier ones for several vaccine products.
Last year, approximately 16 billion vaccine doses, worth $141 billion, were supplied – representing almost three times the 2019 market volume of 5.8 billion and nearly three-and-a-half times that of its $38 billion market value.
The increase was primarily driven by COVID-19 vaccines, showing the incredible potential of how vaccine manufacturing can be scaled up in response to health needs.
WHO is calling on governments, manufacturers and partners to take ambitious action to guarantee equitable access to vaccines and improve responses to future pandemics.
Over 50 activists of all ages and backgrounds took over the so-called ‘Blue Zone’ – the main area of the conference centre in Sharm el-Sheikh overseen by the UN – to chant “Stop funding fossil fuels! Stop funding death!”
Susan Huang, representing the NGO Oil Change International, was among the participants aiming to shed light on the fact that wealthy countries, as noted by the UN Secretary-General earlier this week, are still pouring money into fossil fuels at a time when we need an urgent transition to renewable energy.
“At the G7 summit last year, there was an agreement to end public finance for fossil fuels by the end of this year. But the International Energy Agency has come out and said that actually the slow transition to renewables is what is exacerbating the climate crisis and the energy crisis. So, we’re urging world leaders to fulfil their commitment and stop public finance for fossil fuels,” she told UN News.
Ms. Huang said that these investments are also causing incredible damage, destroying biodiversity and devastating livelihoods across the world, and she was not alone: Dipti Bhatnagar, from Friends of the Earth International in Mozambique, delivered an impassioned speech that, if the nodding heads and enthusiastic murmurs of agreement were any indication, clearly resonated among all those entering the main square of the conference centre.
“Rich countries are out to grab the huge gas reserves, and people are being dispossessed of their land. One million people out of the 23 million [of Mozambique’s] population are living in refugee camps because of gas. We say no to more gas finance. We won’t let Africa burn,” she shouted.
The activists made clear that the best way to increase energy access worldwide and meet the needs of the most vulnerable is by investing in community-supported renewable energy plans.
“Energy plans that can be controlled and operated by the people in the community,” Ms. Huang explained.
Meanwhile, just two pavilion zones away, the UN Secretary-General also called out Governments and the big banks for continuing to invest in fossil fuels.
António Guterres was speaking at the launch of a new independent inventory of greenhouse gas emissions created by the Climate TRACE Coalition and spearheaded by former US Vice-President Al Gore.
The tool combines satellite data and artificial intelligence to show the facility-level emissions of over 70,000 sites around the world, including companies in China, US and India. This will allow leaders to know the location and scope of emissions being released.
Mr. Guterres explained that the data released by the initiative shows that because methane leaks, flaring, and other activities associated with oil and gas production are underreported, emissions are many times higher than previously thought.
The presentation of the unprecedented interactive inventory, now online, saw Al Gore running around with a clicker, scrolling through slide after slide of climate-fuelled destruction.
The renowned author of An Inconvenient Truth, known for being one of the early advocates for climate action, played the video of an atomic bomb exploding on the massive 360 screens around the plenary. The booming sound left attendants perplexed, but curious.
He was aiming to spotlight a fact he shared earlier at the opening of the COP27 World Leaders Summit: greenhouse gas pollution accumulated in our atmosphere traps as much extra heat as 600,000 atomic bombs exploding every day.
“Two months ago in September, at the UN General Assembly, the Secretary-General told us about the heat waves in Europe, the floods in Pakistan, the severe droughts… and he linked it all correctly as the price of humanity’s fossil fuel addiction,” he reminded delegates.
Mr. Gore said that these catastrophes are currently costing the global economy two and a half trillion dollars annually.
However, he said, the world is at a turning point because solutions exist to reverse this dire trend, particularly by boosting investment in renewables.
Mr. Gore went on to note that while the financing and subsidies for fossil fuels is “insane”, the potential of funding for renewable energy in Africa is being overlooked.
“The potential for wind and solar is 400 times larger than Africa’s total fossil fuel reserves and it comes pollution-free and creates more jobs, but there is finance gap…That is why there is so much attention at this COP to changing the global capital allocation system,” he emphasized.
He then explained that the Climate TRACE inventory, which combines reliable and verified data from over 100 institutions and 30,000 sensors, can help governments target their actions.
“It makes it impossible for the emitters to cheat,” he explained and revealed that currently, the top 14 individual sources of emission in the world are all oil and gas fields.
“One of the most striking early insights from this work is the scale of emissions from oil and gas production – particularly those that have not previously been reported,” Mr. Guterres added, calling the data a “critical source” of information in the effort to tackle the climate emergency.
The UN Secretary-General underscored that the new tool will be crucial for business leaders working to decarbonize their supply chains, for governments working to align policymaking with their climate plans, and for investors working to track private sector progress toward net zero.
“The problem is even greater than we were led to believe and that means we must work even harder to accelerate the phase-out of all fossil fuels”, he warned.
More COP finance highlights
Finance day at COP27 highlighted that trillions of dollars’ worth of investments are needed each year to achieve the rapid, far-reaching transformations required to address the impact of the climate crisis, and to deliver on the objectives of the Paris Agreement.
In various conference rooms, pavilions and ‘action hubs’, and in closed-door negotiations, delegates, activists, investment bankers, and other stakeholders discussed the importance of closing the current finance gap in critical areas of climate action such as mitigation of emissions, adaptation and loss and damage.
Experts agreed that the financial push must come from all sectors, public or private, debt or equity, commercial or philanthropic.
“Finance is the biggest solution that can propel action everywhere”, Anjali Viswamohanan, policy director at the Asia Investor Group, told UN News.
One of the big calls was to close the “adaptation gap”. According to UN Climate Change (UNFCCC), project developers and investors must focus on preparing and investing in projects that build resilience and protect the vulnerable from the negative impacts of climate change; to drive systemic change and innovation for carbon neutral, climate resilient transformation in the context of just transition; and to protect and restore natural capital.
Also on Wednesday, with a pledge of $20 million, New Zealand was added to the list, alongside Scotland, Norway, Germany, Austria, and Belgium, of those that have promised finance to the issue of loss and damage (payments to developing low-carbon-emitting countries affected by climate change disaster).
Meanwhile, the United Kingdom said that it would allow payment deferrals to countries hit by climate disasters.
The Africa Climate Risk Facility, an initiative of the Nairobi Declaration on Sustainable Insurance, was also launched, with signatories committing to underwrite $14 billion of cover for climate risks by 2030.
The US Climate Envoy, John Kerry, also held an event at COP27 announcing plans for companies to “buy carbon credits” and support countries transitioning away from coal.
Under the proposed plan, called the Energy Transition Accelerator, state bodies could earn carbon credits by reducing their emissions if they cut their use of fossil fuels and increase renewable energy use.
On that note, during a UNICEF press conference, young German activist Luisa Neubauer sent a stark message to world leaders making promises at COP27:
“Don’t come here and talk of climate action as long as you engage in any new fossil fuel infrastructure across the globe. Don’t come here and speak of climate justice as fossil fuel funding is exploding. Don’t come here try to explain that money might be short for adaptation and loss and damage while fossil fuel investments around the world are skyrocketing, day by day”.
Want to know more? Check out our special events page, where you can find all our coverage of the COP27 climate summit, including stories and videos, explainers, podcasts and our daily newsletter.
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