NEW YORK, Sep 08 (IPS) – This week, the United Nations special rapporteur on human rights in Afghanistan, Richard Bennett, released his first report. It is a catalog of abuses under Taliban rule since August 2021 and their devastating impact on Afghans.
The report describes “staggering regression in women and girls’ enjoyment of civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights.” It notes that “in no other country have women and girls so rapidly disappeared from all spheres of public life,” echoing a recent statement by UN experts describing “wide-spread, systematic and all-encompassing” attacks on the rights of women and girls.
The report also details Taliban abuses against officials from the former government, journalists, and religious minorities, among other rights concerns.
As someone who worked in Afghanistan before the first Taliban government fell in 2001, I have witnessed Taliban oppression firsthand. The report’s details are distressingly familiar.
Under the Taliban, the rule of law has no meaning. It isn’t even clear what “the law” is. Since last year, when the Taliban revoked the country’s constitution and stated that all laws needed to comply with Sharia, or Islamic law, it hasn’t been clear which laws and regulations are in force or how crimes are to be handled.
Instead, there are only “evolving and arbitrarily interpreted rules and decrees,” according to the UN report, and legal cases “are handled idiosyncratically across jurisdictions and venues,” while basic crimes are “often dealt with by security forces without involving prosecutors or judges.”
In short, “the law” is whatever a Taliban official might say it is. A situation more threatening to human rights is hard to imagine.
The Taliban authorities should take the report’s recommendations seriously. Most urgently, they should rescind abusive policies that violate the rights of women and girls, protect religious minorities, and engage with the special rapporteur and other UN offices to develop reforms.
The UN Human Rights Council is due to discuss the findings of the report later this month. States should take this opportunity to renew the mandate of the special rapporteur and to establish a new body that will investigate abuses and advance accountability.
Afghans are entitled to better than what the Taliban have given them: A life with few freedoms, no real justice, and where half the population is shut out of education and work.
John Sifton is the Asia Advocacy Director at Human Rights Watch. He has previously served as a researcher and as Acting Deputy Washington Director. He focuses on South and Southeast Asia, East Asia, the Middle East, and terrorism and counter-terrorism issues worldwide.
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There are 244 million children out of school. Credit: Shafiqul Alam Kiron/IPS
by Baher Kamal (madrid)
Inter Press Service
MADRID, Sep 07 (IPS) – More than two-thirds of 10-year-olds are unable to read and understand a simple text. This shocking finding should be enough to be alarmed about the horrifying fate of an entire generation. But there is much more.
In fact, there are 244 million children still out of school, while educational centres are victims of armed attacks.
And millions more are falling prey to recruitment, enslavement, vital organs extraction, obliged displacements, drowning in the sea in migration journeys, homelessness, sexual violence, maiming, and a too long etcetera.
Half of them -or 80 million– are just 5 to 11 years old, and their number has been rising due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Without mitigation measures, their number could rise to nearly 170 million by the year 2022.
The world’s children are also exposed to grave health problems as a consequence of the “shocking, insidious, exploitative, aggressive, misleading and pervasive” marketing tricks used by the baby formula milk business with the sole aim of increasing, even more, their already high profits, as revealed by the World Health Organization (WHO).
Schools closed
Moreover, school closures and disruptions caused by the pandemic have likely driven learning losses and drop-outs. In the aftermath of the pandemic, nearly 24 million learners might never return to formal education, out of which, 11 million are projected to be girls and young women.
Grave violations affect boys and girls differently. Whereas 85% of children recruited and used were boys, 83% of sexual violence was perpetrated against girls, adds the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) to all the above.
The bell is ringing for the start of a new school year in many countries, but inequalities in access to education are keeping some 244 million children out of the classroom, according to data published on 1 September 2022 by UNESCO.
Where most?
Sub-Saharan Africa remains the region with the most children out of school, 98 million, and it is also the only region where this number is increasing.
The Central and Southern Asia region has the second highest out-of-school population, with 85 million.
The data has been provided by Education Cannot Wait (ECW), the UN global fund for education in emergencies and protracted crises, which also focuses on the staggering gender-based violations.
According to ECW’s recent Annual Results Report, conflict, forced displacement, climate-induced disasters and the compounding effect of the COVID-19 pandemic fueled increased education in emergencies’ needs with funding appeals reaching US$2.9 billion in 2021, compared with US$1.4 billion in 2020.
“While 2021 saw a record-high US$645 million in education appeal funding – the overall funding gap spiked by 17%, from 60% in 2020 to 77% in 2021.”
Education is under attack around the world, warns the study. From Afghanistan to Colombia, Mali to Thailand, “students and teachers are killed, raped, and abducted, while schools and universities are bombed, burned down, and used for military purposes.”
In 2020 and 2021, there were more than 5,000 reported attacks on education and incidents of military use of schools and universities, harming more than 9,000 students and educators in at least 85 countries. On average, six attacks on education or incidents of military use occurred each day.
Six attacks on education or incidents of military use occurred each day.
Explosive weapons were used in around one-fifth of all reported attacks on education during the reporting period.
The highest incidences of attacks on education schools were in Mali, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Myanmar, and Palestine.
Despite all the above, the world’s richest countries continue to be devoted to spending more than two trillion US dollars on weapons that kill tens of thousands of innocent children.
“These are only verified figures and the actual numbers are likely significantly higher,” explained Rosemary DiCarlo.
Displacement
All wars are tragic, but none more than wars of choice. The disturbing allegations of forced displacement and abuse in “filtration” camps in #Ukraine must be investigated. We need peace in Ukraine, peace based on the @UN Charter and international law. https://t.co/JVE3epY1x5
The war is also driving large-scale displacement, having left over 6.9 million people internally displaced to date.
“Most of the newly displaced are coming from eastern and southern Ukraine,” said the peacebuilding head, adding that Ukrainian refugees recorded across Europe have surpassed seven million, up from 6.7 million “just two weeks ago”.
Ukrainian women, who constitute half of these refugees, face significantly increased security risks, including sexual and gender-based violence, trafficking, exploitation, and abuse.
Amidst the international community’s incapacity to “stop this senseless war”, Ms. DiCarlo upheld the importance of recording its horrific consequences “as faithfully and accurately as possible”.
“It is our responsibility…to help prevent the war from escalating further and to deter other potential violent conflicts,” she underscored.
UN in action
Meanwhile, the UN continues to address the massive impact of the war on civilians.
The top political official noted that the UN Development Fund (UNDP) is assessing the war’s consequences on health, education access, livelihoods, food security, and overall levels of poverty and human development. Results are expected in December.
At the same time, the UN’s scaled-up humanitarian response now reaches 12.7 million people, and over 560 humanitarian organizations are now operating countrywide, all complementing the work of thousands of Ukrainian volunteers.
“The UN is actively seeking to ensure that protection and assistance are available in all areas of Ukraine,” she said, voicing concern over the lack of access to those living in areas not under Ukrainian control.
Global impact
Turning to food and fertilizer shortages, Ms. DiCarlo expressed concern for countries already severely hit by climate change, drought or instability.
Thousands in Somalia are dying in a historic drought made worse by the effects of the war in Ukraine, Ms. DiCarlo told the ambassadors.
On a brighter note, the Black Sea Grain Initiative continues to enable food exports from Ukraine.
“Since 1 August, 100 ships have left Ukrainian ports carrying over 2,300,000 metric tons of grain across three continents, including 30 percent to low and lower-middle income countries,” said the political chief.
Although world food commodity prices remain elevated, this is helping to bring prices down, she said, citing Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) reports.
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Zaporizhzhia and Olenivka
Ms. DiCarlo drew attention to the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant, recalling that during yesterday’s briefings the Secretary-General and the Director-General of the International Atomic Energy Agency warned of the dangers of continued military activity in and around the plant.
“Demilitarization is the only answer to ensure the safety of this facility,” she emphasized.
In the coming days, a fact-finding mission is set to deploy to Olenivka to probe an incident on 29 July that led to the death of 53 Ukrainian prisoners of war and inured between 75 and 130 others.
The mission “must be able to conduct its work without any interference and have safe, secure and unfettered access to people, places and evidence,” said the peacebuilding chief.
Repatriation obstacles
Ilze Brands Kehris, Assistant Secretary-General for Human Rights, spoke via video conference about persistent allegations of forced displacement, deportation and so-called “filtration camps” run by Russia and affiliated local forces.
As people fleeing danger have often felt compelled to evacuate in any possible direction, irrespective of their preferences, she told the Council that a significant number of documented cases of civilians have been displaced to Russia.
While there, they may move about freely, but should they chose to return to Ukraine, they are not provided with the necessary support, thus barring their repatriation.
There have also been credible allegations of forced transfers of unaccompanied children to Russian occupied territory, or to the country itself.
“We are concerned that the Russian authorities have adopted a simplified procedure to grant Russian citizenship to children without parental care, and that these children would be eligible for adoption by Russian families,” said Ms. Kehris.
“Moreover, we are particularly concerned that the announced plans of the Russian authorities to allow the movement of children from Ukraine to families in the Russian Federation do not appear to include steps for family reunification or in other ways ensure respect for the principle of the best interests of the child”.
‘Wars of choice’
In closing, she reiterated that the war in Ukraine is not only “devastating that country but also endangering regional and global stability”.
Just last week the 10th Review Conference of the parties to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty was unable to produce “a substantive outcome after consensus was blocked because of issues related to the war,” she said, calling the failure “only the latest example” of how the conflict has affected international relations and cooperation.
“All wars are tragic, but none more than wars of choice”.
‘Filtration’ camps
The UN humanitarian office, OHCHR, has verified that Russian armed forces and groups have subjected civilians to so-called “filtration” – a system of security checks and personal data collection, including individuals leaving hostilities and those residing in or moving through Russian-controlled territory.
“The practice has resulted, according to credible reports received by OHCHR, in numerous human rights violations, including of the rights to liberty, security of person and privacy,” said the senior UN official.
OHCHR has been unsuccessful in seeking access to those detained either after failing to pass or passing ‘filtration’ and they have been sent to a “centre for evacuees” in Donetsk region, close to the Russian border.
OHCHR is closely monitoring the situation in Ukraine and the broader region, paying particular attention to human rights violations, including trafficking.
Ms. Kehris concluded with a call to Russia to “grant unimpeded and confidential access to our Office…to all places of detention under their control, notably…where people who underwent ‘filtration’ are being detained”.
“To capitalize on this opportunity, federal and State authorities must collaborate closely to achieve progress on the new government’s goals, including improving governance and justice, effectively countering Al-Shabaab, and responding urgently to the worsening humanitarian crisis,” he said.
Somalia’s electoral process concluded on 15 May after Parliament voted in Hassan Sheikh Mohamud as President. The Prime Minister and Cabinet were endorsed in June and August, respectively.
Where are the women?
Mr. Swan said the new government moved swiftly to outline a four-year work programme that covers goals and activities across the six pillars of security, justice, reconciliation, economic development, social development and foreign relations.
However, he pointed to areas that still need to be addressed.
“Unfortunately, women remain under-represented in cabinet positions and parliamentary committees. Just 13 per cent of cabinet members are women, and 21 per cent of parliamentary committee members,” he reported.
“I call again for Somali leaders to take further measures to ensure women’s meaningful participation across institutions of government, as well as the inclusion of youth and historically marginalized groups.”
Insecurity a priority
Mr. Swan said the new administration has identified security as its top national priority, which “comes at a time when Al-Shabaab has demonstratedincreased boldness.”
The insurgents have recently carried out targeted assassinations, complex attacks, and large-scale military actions along the border with Ethiopia, which he condemned.
The Special Envoy commended the Security Forces and their counterparts from the African Union Transition Mission in Somalia (ATMIS) “who at great cost in lives continue to fight to defend the population against Al-Shabaab”.
UN Photo / Fardosa Hussein
Somalia is facing the risk of an unprecedented famine
Spectre of famine
Somalia currently is facing a humanitarian crisis, brought on by the worst drought in at least 40 years. Some 7.8 million people, nearly half the population, are affected, and some areas are already at risk of famine.
Although the number of people reached by humanitarians has quadrupled since January to 5.3 million, a further scale-up in aid is needed.
Mr. Swan called for all parties in Somalia to facilitate humanitarian access, and for donors to increase funding.
Women and children vulnerable
“The ongoing humanitarian crisis has especially contributed to the vulnerability of displaced women and children, who historically have faced discrimination and exclusion from service,” he said.
“I urge the Somali authorities to increase prevention measures for the risk of sexual violence particularly against women and girls, including by strengthening security at water points and at food distribution sites”.
Addressing longer-term development, Mr. Swan highlighted progress on debt relief.
In June, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) released $350 million in development funding for Somalia. Other donors also have resumed budgetary support so the country can sustain required reform efforts to complete the debt relief process.
The Special Envoy concluded his remarks by reiterating the UN’s commitment to continue supporting the Somali government and people in achieving their national goals.
Nesbit Gavanga, who mines sand illegally and sells it to builders, says he has few other economic options in Zimbabwe. Environmentalists, however, are concerned about land degradation. Credit: Jeffrey Moyo/IPS
by Jeffrey Moyo (chitungwiza, zimbabwe)
Inter Press Service
CHITUNGWIZA, Zimbabwe, Sep 07 (IPS) – In Chitungwiza, right next to the highway, 36-year-old Nesbit Gavanga and his five colleagues use shovels as they load trucks with sand.
The six apparently are in the business of sand-poaching and openly explain that every other day they engage in running battles with environmental officials who seek to curtail land degradation here. The group’s informal sand quarry lies 25 kilometers southeast of the Zimbabwean capital Harare.
For Gavanga and his colleagues, sand-poaching has been a source of income for years as the gang has never been formally employed.
Gavanga, with the others, invaded a patch of land in Chitungwiza to begin mining sand about eight years ago.
“This patch of land has given us money over the years, and we can’t afford to leave it. We are here to stay, and we are here to turn the sand into money,” Gavanga told IPS.
Gavanga is unfazed by the severity of damage he and his colleagues have unleashed on the giant swathes of land they have invaded in Chitungwiza.
What they care about is money, and Gavanga, with his colleagues, has managed to establish a huge customer base over the years.
“We just bring our picks and shovels here, and customers come with their trucks, and we fill the trucks with the sand we sell. Yes, this isn’t our land, but we have to survive from it even though (the authorities say) we are not allowed to mine,” 34-year-old Melford Mahamba, one of Gavanga’s colleagues, told IPS.
Gavanga claimed they make at least 30 to 40 US dollars daily from the enterprise.
But that is bad news for the environment.
Sand poachers have wrought huge scars on land across Zimbabwe as they harvest the river sand. These poachers leave uncovered pits.
Their customers are desperate individuals building urban homes.
According to the Environmental Management Agency (EMA), Zimbabwe’s statutory body responsible for ensuring the sustainable management of natural resources and protection of the environment, approximately 1694 hectares of land are affected by sand-poaching in the country, with Harare contributing to over 850 hectares of the statistics.
EMA has not been successful in stopping the sand poachers.
“Authorities chase us away from the places we mine for sand, but we always return in no time, even as they arrest us at times. We just bribe the officials and continue with the business,” Mahamba said.
Environmentalists like Happison Chikova, based in Harare, blamed Zimbabwe’s poor economy for the land degradation unleashed by sand poachers.
“These people have no jobs. They think by digging up sand soils for sale, believing they may break free from bankruptcy and poverty, but alas. They only make the environment suffer as they get very little money that hardly changes their lives,” Chikova told IPS.
But for the sand poachers like Mahamba, the profits are significant.
“The profits are huge since sand sells for 6 to 8 US dollars a cubic meter. We sell to clients using their own transport,” said Mahamba.
The sand poachers, in fact, incur very few costs, and the only costs they have to shoulder are the bribes given to council police.
Council authorities, for instance, in Chitungwiza, even though they conduct regular raids on sand poachers, are not fully capacitated.
“We conduct raids on sand poachers, but we don’t do that always due to insufficient resources, and so the sand poachers always go back to their illegal activities. It is like a cat-and-mouse game,” said Lovemore Meya, the Chitungwiza Municipality public relations officer.
For environmentalists like Chikova, sand poachers “damage vegetation while they dig out wide and deep pits which subsequently get flooded each rain season.”
Amid growing sand poaching in Zimbabwe, environmental lawyers insinuate that the practice contributes to climate change.
“Sand poaching increases Zimbabwe’s vulnerability to flooding in areas receiving high rainfall, with the practice of sand poaching also threatening wetlands, but sand poaching also affects water availability downstream, which then affects water use for climate adaptation purposes,” Ray Ncube, an environmental lawyer in private practice, told IPS.
EMA statistics have shown that as of December 2019, 9.5 million square meters of land across Zimbabwe had degraded due to illegal sand poaching.
As vast swathes of land fall to degradation, environmental activists like Kudakwashe Murisi in Masvingo, Zimbabwe’s oldest town, has blamed the country’s polarized politics for enabling sand poachers to do so as they please with the environment.
“Sand poachers are often youths with links to the ruling Zanu-PF party, obviously shielded by their political leadership, making it difficult for anyone to call them to order when they start digging up everywhere for sand soil,” Murisi told IPS.
In power for 42 years, Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front (Zanu-PF) is this Southern African nation’s governing political party.
A student teacher at the National Teacher’s College Kabale follows a lecture through his smartphone. Credit: Michael Wambi/IPS.
by Wambi Michael (kampala/kabale)
Inter Press Service
KAMPALA/KABALE, Sep 07 (IPS) – Before the outbreak of COVID-19, an education officer in the district neighbouring Uganda’s capital Kampala decreed that teachers could not take computers, mobile phones, or tablets into classrooms.
Frederick Kiyingi said phones and information and communications technology (ICT) tools distract learners and would compromise their learning and focus.
But William Musaazi, a teacher who had realised the importance of using ICTs in teaching, tried to reason otherwise. “With this smartphone, I’m able to get the whole world around me just at the click of a button… And at the same time, it makes my lessons interesting, like a very interesting movie,” he told IPS recently.
In the end, Musaazi decided to keep the vital tools out of class for fear of contradicting the guidelines.
Then in March 2020, at the height of the pandemic, Uganda President Yoweri Museveni announced a total lockdown, sending learning to a halt. Schools and universities remained closed for two years, leaving 15 million students with no education.
Uganda’s Ministry of Education and Sports (MoE) suggested delivering lessons through radio and television but that was not effective. The ministry turned to Enabel, the development agency of Belgium. It developed and implemented a distance learning strategy known as the TTE Sandbox to ensure that learning continued by training educators at the five national teachers colleges (NTCs).
Teaching using a sandbox
Teachers in training had to undertake a crash programme on how to use technology for teaching instead of the traditional methods. They were taught how to use digital tools such as screen-casting, podcasting, video conferencing and e-books or padlets.
Ironically, Enabel had suggested using technology in teaching at NTCs in 2019 but veteran lecturers were reluctant, remembers Virginie Hallet, a portfolio manager at the organisation.
“They said ‘we were born before computers, we don’t know anything about computers. Why do you want us to use ICTS in delivering lectures’?” she told IPS.
Andrew Tabura, a principal education officer in charge of post-secondary and secondary teacher education at the MoE, told IPS that while the colleges had already been supplied with ICT tools, the lecturers had technology phobia. After training, they can now use ICTs. “When the COVID-19 situation came, it forced them to think ‘OK we have these facilities but how can we use them to reach out to our learners,” he said.
According to Hallet, 62% of learners who were at home in different parts of Uganda were able to follow classes via the TTE Sandbox. “It meant that education was able to continue… So really to us, the sandbox was like a mind shift from resistance to total buy-in,” she said. “To us, this is a major success.”
At Kabale National Teacher’s College 400 km south of Kampala, IPS found lecturers still using the TTE Sandbox and other online tools to teach pre-service teachers close to a year after colleges were reopened.
Teaching teachers to use ICTs
It’s early morning. IPS has been granted access to one of the lectures at NTC Kabale. The punishing cold from the Rwenzori Mountains finds its way into the room but warm-hearted learners seem unbothered as Molly Nakimera delivers her lecture. The room has an overhead projector and a set of loudspeakers. A number of cables linked to a laptop computer are visible. Nakimera projects a role-play video about education management, then the class is invited to comment.
Afterwards, Nakimera tells IPS that previously it would take more than three weeks to complete such a course unit, but using ICTs like videos and podcasts means less time is consumed and outcomes are better.
“I teach a very big class. Yet I had failed to figure out a method that would help me to work with big numbers. I used to shout a lot as a teacher. Sometimes I could feel like I’m stretching myself. And sometimes I could not complete the syllabus the way I’m doing it with the sandbox,” she says.
Nakimera adds that while before she knew how to type Word documents, she didn’t know anything about podcasting and producing videos for teaching. To her, the smartphone was for placing calls and checking emails but she has realised that it is actually a small computer, and a key teaching and learning tool too. “These are new things that made me feel more interested, that made my work easy, made me feel that I should become more serious,” added the teacher.
Physics and mathematics lecturer Mujungu Herbert told IPS that before the pandemic every lecturer was using what he described as traditional methods of teaching, which included ‘chalk and talk’ lectures and, sometimes, laboratory equipment or materials from the environment. “With the TTE Sandbox, I have noticed that the learners are more active during the lessons. The teaching is more learner-centred than teacher-centred,” he explained.
Asked why he had not previously embraced ICTs, Herbert said he and other lecturers did not see the reasons for using them and that the pedagogy in place did not include how to teach using ICTs or how to apply for online learning or teaching.
The only option during lockdown
“I would only get to a computer at the time of preparing or setting an exam. I had not heard of Zoom before the pandemic. But while we were in lockdown, we realised that the learners were away from us. The only way to access them was to use ICT tools,” added Herbert.
With such tools, lecturers were able to enrol learners to attend virtually, run quizzes and assign tasks like assignments. Classes were interactive. Herbert did note that some students who lacked access to the Internet would miss classes, while those who had not invested in smartphones or tablets would find it hard to access online resources.
France Ruhuma, a student majoring in biology and chemistry at NTC Kabale, is one of the cohort of students who were introduced to the TTE Sandbox and have continued to use it after schools reopened.
“Now, most of my lifestyle has been shifted online. I don’t have to carry a lot of books. I just get to the sandbox, click on the links and get access to interactive videos,” Ruhuma told IPS. He added that videos packed with illustrations and diagrams are far better to learn from than the old chalkboard and teacher illustration methods.
When he spoke to IPS, Ruhuma had just returned from a teaching practice at a school near Kabale. He said that he realised that veteran teachers were yet to adopt ICT, while not all learners had access to mobile phones. “So as an upcoming teacher, I’m leaving the college when I’m equipped with ICT skills. But the challenge is that in most of these schools, teachers are computer illiterate and the school environment is not prepared for ICTs in teaching,” he said.
MoE Officer Tabura told IPS that the ministry is developing a policy and guidelines to integrate ICTs into education. “It will give guidance to schools on how ICT facilities can be used because there is a fear that teachers or learners will misuse the ICT gadgets,” he said.
According to Tabura, the TTE Sandbox was a small innovation that was developed to reach learners during the lockdown, but it has opened many doors for lecturers. “ I know it requires Internet for example. And that can be a challenge. But if you have Internet, this is something that can be replicated all over the world,” he said.
María del Carmen Aguirre, 52, stands outside her home and pizza business in El Zonte, on the Pacific coast of El Salvador. Her daughters send her remittances from the United States, but they use traditional systems and not the bitcoin electronic wallet, after this country became the first to make bitcoins legal tender on Sept. 7, 2021. CREDIT: Edgardo Ayala/IPS
by Edgardo Ayala (san salvador)
Inter Press Service
SAN SALVADOR, Sep 07 (IPS) – A year after Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele decided to make El Salvador the first country where bitcoin is legal tender, the experiment has so far failed, as few of the original plan’s objectives have been achieved.
This result was foreseeable since Sept. 7, 2021, when Bukele’s government decided, out of the blue and without any precedent, to make bitcoin legal tender through a law approved by the legislature, controlled by members of the ruling party, Nuevas Ideas.
The aims of that decision were never explained in detail in an official plan, but were basically set out by Bukele, in power since 2019, through his tweets, as well as by officials who merely repeated what the president, given to governing with an authoritarian style, in which he is the only authorized voice for almost everything, has said.
“Unfortunately there is no formal document or official information from the government in which the specific objectives of the measure have been laid out,” economist Tatiana Marroquín told IPS.
But judging by the president’s announcements, and by communications between the government and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), which requested in January 2022 that the measure be annulled, several aims can be highlighted, such as boosting financial inclusion and tourism and improving the country’s “brand”, said Marroquín.
Disenchantment with the Chivo Wallet
The government claimed that bitcoin as legal tender would reduce the gap of unbanked people, which is around 70 percent of the population.
That segment would begin to carry out digital financial transactions with several clicks from their cell phones, according to the government.
However, because much of the information on bitcoin transactions has been classified by the authorities, it is unknown, for example, what percentage of the population is still actively using the Chivo Wallet, the digital wallet created by the government, and in what amounts.
Chivo is basically slang for “cool” in El Salvador.
It is known that at the beginning of the cryptocurrency’s implementation, around four million people downloaded the application, but basically they did so in order to collect a 30 dollar bonus granted by the government to promote the use of bitcoins.
But by this point it is clear that very few people are still using the application, judging by what you hear and see in the towns and cities of this Central American country of 6.7 million people.
“In the end, the majority of the population is not using either the government e-wallet or bitcoins in general,” Marroquin said.
Some businesses use them to receive payments, but there are very few transactions, analyst Ricardo Chavarría, director of Renta Asset Management, a company that manages investment funds in the international market, told IPS.
Nor has the government managed to convince Salvadorans living abroad to use the app to send family remittances to El Salvador, one of its main aims when it dove headfirst into bitcoins.
Each year, the country receives around seven billion dollars in remittances, representing 26 percent of GDP.
In August 2021, a month before the approval of the so-called Bitcoin Law, Bukele said in a tweet that Salvadorans pay around 400 million dollars in commissions to send money to their families in El Salvador.
That amount of money would be saved by sending it through the Chivo Wallet.
One of the Chivo ATMs scattered throughout El Salvador, in an attempt by the government to make it easier for the public to make transactions in bitcoin, the cryptocurrency that is legal tender in El Salvador, but which very few are using a year after its implementation. CREDIT: Edgardo Ayala/IPS
Not even the diaspora trusts the cryptocurrency
However, according to official figures, only 1.5 percent of remittances were sent through e-wallets in the first quarter of 2022, a percentage far below what the government expected.
This was probably influenced by the high volatility of cryptoassets such as bitcoin, which is currently going through a crisis in its value, dubbed as a crypto winter.
Bitcoin’s price plunged to 19,813 dollars at the close on Sept. 5, well below last year’s peak, when it surpassed the 60,000 dollar mark.
And the Salvadoran population abroad, especially in the United States, where more than three million live, is reluctant to bet on something so volatile and, therefore, risky.
“People are extremely careful, despite the political capital of the president (Bukele), the same people over there (Salvadorans in the United States) do not risk their money,” said Chavarría.
That is the case of María del Carmen Aguirre, a 52-year-old entrepreneur who runs a small pizza business in El Zonte, a coastal community on El Salvador’s Pacific coast, some 50 kilometers southeast of San Salvador, part of the municipality of Chiltiupán, in the central department of La Libertad.
Aguirre told IPS that she regularly receives remittances from her two daughters who live in the United States, in San Francisco, California, but neither of them send the money through Chivo Wallet or any other similar platform.
“They send it only through the bank. It seems that they are quite afraid. ‘What happens if we send 200 dollars and at that moment the price of bitcoin goes down?’ they say to me,” said Aguirre, in her pizzeria.
El Zonte is a beach area known for its surfing and because an unusual community effort to use the cryptocurrency was launched there, about two years before the government decided to try bitcoins.
This initiative was promoted thanks to a donor, who remains anonymous, who gave money to carry out works in the town, but on the condition that those who worked on them would be paid in bitcoins and not in dollars, the legal tender in El Salvador since 2001.
That still raises suspicions: why would anyone be interested in promoting the crypto-asset in a poor coastal town, with dirt roads and modest shacks, although there are also some luxury hotels, hostels and restaurants.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, families in El Zonte received, on several occasions, 30-dollar vouchers from the mystery donor to use for bitcoin transactions.
“They gave us the bonus three or four times so we could go to the stores that already handled bitcoin,” Aguirre said.
Chavarría said the cryptocurrency is probably at the end of the so-called crypto winter, and he expects it to rise again in the future.
“For me, in a medium to long term horizon it is going to recover and it is going to win out,” he argued.
A street corner in the town of El Zonte, on the Pacific coast of El Salvador, which became the place where a project to promote the use of bitcoins in the country started, before the government of Nayib Bukele gave the cryptocurrency legal status in September 2021. Most businesses in this town accept them as a form of payment, but in the rest of the country the use of bitcoins is marginal. CREDIT: Edgardo Ayala/IPS
Not just gangs
One thing that Marroquín the economist and financial analyst Chavarría agreed on is that, with the passage of the Bitcoin Law, El Salvador made the global headlines about something other than the recurring issue of gang violence, which used to be the only issue of interest to the international press.
In this sense, it could be argued that the country’s image improved somewhat on the world news agenda.
“The fact that El Salvador is on the news map and that it appears in Bloomberg, in The New York Times, in Spain’s El País, when the only topic before was the gangs, is good news for me as a Salvadoran,” said Chavarría.
Marroquín concurred that “El Salvador is undoubtedly no longer known as it used to be solely for violence.”
She added that the adoption of the bitcoin has also bolstered tourism in the country by attracting a segment of visitors interested in the cryptocurrency, although it remains to be seen whether this improvement will have an impact on poor communities near tourist spots.
The bitcoin symbol can be seen everywhere in El Zonte, a coastal community in southern El Salvador, such as on this 1970s Volkswagen van or ‘furgoneta’, called the Bitcoineta. The implementation of the cryptocurrency in this country has not gone well and so far has been a setback for President Nayib Bukele, although the outlook could change if the price of the cryptoasset rallies. CREDIT: Edgardo Ayala/IPS
A cloak of secrecy
The government has been harshly criticized for the secrecy with which it has handled not only the adoption of the bitcoin but also other important issues about which the public has demanded information, since they have involved the use of public funds for which the Bukele administration has not been held accountable.
When it has been made available, Information has arrived in dribs and drabs.
It is known that the government has purchased 2,381 bitcoins, on which it has spent 106.04 million dollars. But when related investments are factored in, such as the ATMs placed at various points around the country, the total investment exceeds 300 million dollars.
“There is a big black cloak surrounding the government’s use of public funds,” Marroquín said.
GENEVA, Sep 07 (IPS) – Afghanistan is where history has taken it! The Trump-Taliban “Agreement for Bringing Peace to Afghanistan,” signed on 29 February 2020, is deemed by many as the submission of a superpower to a group that had perpetrated acts of extreme ferocity and terror.
The withdrawal of Western countries in August 2021 was the logical ramification of that “peace deal” and the dilapidation of the aspirations of Afghans who believed in democracy, respect for human rights, good governance, the rule of law, and many other attributes that had taken rightfully free societies to fame and gain.
The return of the Taliban to power reserves an unpredictable future for the Central and South Asia region and puts the entire world on alert. Western assertions during the past year that the religious clerics “had changed” or their regime “would improve with time” tallied the same dictions twenty years ago about the corrupt Karzai government.
Never fact-based, such postulations were not clear-sighted and cogent from various perspectives.
However, the Taliban articulate what the Western capitals desire to heed. In addition, falsity and negation of truth have become the daily practice of their leadership. A quick review of the situation since 15 August 2021 reveals drastic reversals in the country.
A – Human Rights and Humanitarian Situations
Human rights, particularly those of women and girls, are the prime prey of the Taliban. The Ministry of Women’s Affairs and the Independent Human Rights Commission were instantly banned. Instead, the Ministry of Virtues is established to implement archaic dogmas that they attribute to Islamic Sharia.
While children are permitted to attend school, the prospects of secondary and higher education and job opportunity remain unattainable to the female population. In addition to the imposition of total body cover, women are restricted from traveling, visiting a doctor, or reaching a health clinic without a recognized male chaperone, who must be the father, brother, or husband.
In retaliation to the nascent resistance that grows in strength in Central and Northern provinces, reports of young women and girls sexually assaulted and raped by the Taliban militants surface daily. In addition, collective punishment, torture, assassination, and expulsion/forced displacement of civilians, replaced by Taliban sympathizers brought from elsewhere, have increased.
Civil society activists are forbidden, and their demonstrations are viciously suppressed. Many human dignity advocates left the country. Others are arrested, tortured, and in some cases, assassinated.
Despite the Taliban’s impressive repression machinery, dauntless women still express their demands for access to freedom, higher education, and job, either in closed premises or in public, at the cost of their lives. One woman recently mentioned that “their struggle is against submission, dishonor, or suicide!”
Freedom of expression and independent media also befell targets of the new regime. Journalists and bloggers are not free anymore as they have to obey strict guidelines imposed by the Taliban. Reporters, scholars, and artists who freely expressed their opinion exercise no more such privilege. Some were arrested, and others were tortured and even killed. Culture has not been spared.
The Ministry of Virtues prohibited listening to music or performing shows. They focus on the size of men’s beards, people’s sartorial, parting men and women, and preventing unaccompanied ladies from using public transportation.
Ethnic, religious, and linguistic discriminations are manifest. Decision makers around the country are Sunni Pashtuns. The Hazara are deliberately targeted, justifying calls for genocide against them.
At the same time, the Taliban “impose” Pashtu in Dari-speaking provinces. Subsequently, conversations with Tajik, Hazara, Uzbek, Turkmen, and others appear quasi impossible, leading to systematic and senseless harassment.
The Taliban rebuffed recognition of the Shia Jaffary doctrine. Following the Jewish, the remaining Afghan Hindu and Sikh populations had no alternative but to depart the country. The few Christians face unbearable hardship.
The humanitarian situation is devastating. Most educated people lost their jobs and were replaced by religious clerics. Citizens depend on the alms of those residing outside Afghanistan.
In addition to repeated droughts, the recent destructive floods around the country have further deteriorated the conditions of ordinary people. The Taliban misappropriating international humanitarian aid has been reported in multiple instances, and sites.
B – Security Situation
The Taliban are a divided organization. Their leadership does not seem to have authority over the foot soldiers. Despite their spiritual leader’s amnesty to former security officers, hundreds of them have been brutally assassinated.
Resistance fronts in Panjshir, Baghlan, Takhar, Kapisa, Parwan, Badakhshan, Sari Pol, and many other provinces have gained strength. The Taliban suffer hefty losses in these mountainous areas.
Subsequently, they target civilians, including women and children, accusing them of helping the resistance and apply the “Discovery Doctrine.” Some already speak of war crimes.
In addition, over 100 incidents of explosive weapons have been recorded in the country. Recruitment by the Taliban of youngsters in the south to fight in the north will inevitably deepen the divide in Afghanistan. Reports of one million internally displaced and many more fleeing the country seem credible.
Fatal border clashes have occurred with neighboring Iran, Pakistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan. Despite the Taliban’s denial, the presence of notorious regional and international terrorist organizations in Afghanistan cannot be refuted, transforming this country into a haven for evildoers.
The killing of Ayman Al-Zawahiri in Kabul supports the above assertion. Some foreign militants fight alongside the Taliban; others pursue their specific objectives. Confrontation with numerous resistance fronts would likely intensify in the near future.
C – Political Situation
Similar to communists, the Taliban are inspired by deleterious ideologies. They derive their philosophy, policies, and actions from “self-defined” doctrines that are often contradictory even to the fundamentals of Islam. International norms for human dignity are ignored. The regime’s effort for international legitimacy has so far dramatically failed.
The willingness of the world community to provide humanitarian aid has been presented to the Afghan people as “de facto recognition” of their regime. The West bears a heavy responsibility for the current situation.
Their capitals deliberately trusted the Taliban rhetoric to justify their failure and hasty withdrawal from Afghanistan. However, the current contentious debate in the UN Security Council on the travel of the Taliban leaders may be a sign of change in the right direction.
There seems to be no place for democratic institutions in the Islamic Emirate. The “Supreme Leader,” assisted by a selected group of “religious scholars,” defines and decides everything. Under such circumstances, it would be challenging for the International Community to recognize the Taliban regime.
D- Economic Situation
Prior to the arrival of the Taliban, there was no viable economy in Afghanistan. Lack of proper vision and planning, rampant corruption, mismanagement, nepotism of the rulers, politicians, and senior managers, and many other misdeeds had gangrened public and private sectors. Since August 2021, the situation has worsened.
The Taliban appointed religious clerics to run each sector of the government (security, political, social, economic, financial, humanitarian, public relations, etc.) Those who could assist have either been sidelined or left the country. Afghanistan is in a terrible economic situation.
Despite numerous hydroelectric dams, Central Asian countries provide electricity to Afghans. Kazakhstan and India have provided significant quantities of wheat. And the International Community continues providing humanitarian assistance to delay or avert a looming calamity.
Conclusions
A new corrupt “Taliban elite” is being formed. They desperately lobby the Western countries for the sustention of their regime. Afghans have lost trust in bilateral or multilateral foreign security, humanitarian, and development actions.
World superpowers seem to compete to assert their supremacy in Central and South Asia. It can lead to another prolonged phase of instability! Though it is difficult to predict the corollaries of the current situation, the following would constitute the basis of sound assertions:
1 – Afghanistan is central to peace, stability, and security in Central and South Asia.
2 – The Taliban cannot govern Afghanistan alone. Their zealous effort to convince the Afghan people and the International Community that they are the right choice to govern the country failed. However, they would not share power. Therefore, insecurity will increase, and soon they will lose territory to the resistance. Lawlessness will intensify, and Afghanistan could face a “fractured country-like” situation. Human rights and humanitarian situations would severely worsen.
3 – Superpowers may destabilize each other’s interests through diverse internal and foreign groups rooted in Afghanistan. Neighboring countries would try to safeguard their interests using ethnic and/or religious affinities. The country could face the serious challenge of disintegration and the region the possibility of lengthy conflicts.
4 – To ensure that Afghanistan poses no threat, its entire political, social, and economic structures must alter with the sincere assistance of the International Community. The Afghan society has dramatically changed; previous government formulas and leaders proved futile.
For nearly three centuries, the centralized government has not served the population equitably. The so-called “peace agreements” and “all-inclusive governments” never proved efficient as they did not address the root causes of the repeated conflicts.
There is an urgent need to invest in a new generation of leaders from within the country and support them to identify the main grounds of dispute, disparity, injustice, and unhappiness. New good-governance formulas must be agreed upon. A unique Afghan-led peace process in which national, regional, and international dimensions of the puzzle are addressed must be sponsored and backed unequivocally. Any foreign interference would cause disruption and further deteriorate the situation.
Saber Azam is a former official of the United Nations and author of Soraya: The Other Princess, Hell’s Mouth: A Journey to the Heart of West African jungles, and numerous political and scientific articles .
For several years, the World Health Organization has warned that practically all the air we breathe is polluted, and that it’s killing around seven million people every year: about 90 per cent of those deaths take place in low and middle-income countries.
In 2019, the UN General Assembly adopted a resolution designating 7 September as the “International Day of Clean Air for blue skies”, and stressed the urgent need to raise public awareness at all levels, and to promote and facilitate actions to improve air quality.
Five years on, WHO scientists have concluded that the impact of air pollution kicks in at a much lower level than previously thought; is the international community taking the issue seriously? And, crucially, what can be done to tackle it?
To discuss the deadly issue, UN News spoke to two experts from the Climate and Clean Air Coalition, a grouping that is hosted by the UN Environment Programme (UNEP): Martina Otto, head of the Secretariat, and Nathan Borgford-Parnell, Coordinator of Science Affairs.
Martina Otto Air pollution has often been seen as a very local, national problem. There have been efforts by a lot of countries to bring down emissions, but definitely not at the level that is needed.
And since pollutants are travelling in the air, and often for long distances, we can’t solve this by isolated measures. It’s the air we share, and that means we also have to share the solutions.
Air pollution in Dhaka, Bangladesh, is leading to a series of health problems for the city’s inhabitants.
UN News How has the situation evolved in recent years?
Nathan Borgford-Parnell Air quality has not improved dramatically over the last decade, and the World Health Organization (WHO), using a very rigorous multi-year process, put out new ambient air quality guidelines last year, which cut the level at which fine particulate matter affects health by half (from 10 microns to five microns).
UN News Low and middle-income countries are identified as being by far the worst affected regions of the world. Why is that?
Nathan Borgford-Parnell The populations there have particular vulnerabilities, linked to the technologies they use for cooking, for heating their homes, for transportation, and the kind of energy that is often used.
Also, there are factors related to the age of populations, and the very young and the very old are particularly vulnerable, often without means and access to healthcare. UN News How would you evaluate the amount of cooperation that’s taking place now compared to previous years?
Martina Otto We’ve just completed our third assessment of Africa, which brought the issue to the table of governments. We’ve used those regional assessments to discuss the issues, and there is appetite to start looking into that and we’ll see where it takes us. But we are hopeful to see much more regional cooperation.
It’s no longer a blame game. It’s about looking together at the solutions, which lie in cooperation. It’s a sustainable development issue: the very thing that keeps all of us alive breathing makes us sick as well.
UN News The right to a clean environment was adopted by the UN General Assembly in July. Why was this important?
Martina Otto Because air pollution is an issue that affects all of us, and disproportionately affects those that are most vulnerable, as Nathan explained.
There’s also an economic and gender issue to this. For example, air pollution might be bad in a certain city, but the level of pollution depends very much on neighbourhoods as well, where certain industries are located, where the wind is blowing.
We know that pollution is actually greater in poor neighbourhoods, so there is a real issue of environmental injustice.
A transition towards renewables will cut air pollution levels
UN News What concerns you most about the links between climate change and air pollution?
Nathan Borgford-Parnell What concerns me is that we may not get enough people to recognize that there is no separation between air pollution and climate change.
Wildfires are human driven, yet some people try to act as if they’re natural occurrences. But the precipitous increase in wildfires in recent years, and the modelling that says that we’re going to continue to see them increasing all over the world in places we couldn’t have ever imagined them, shows us that climate change will directly impact the burden of disease from air pollution caused by the wildfires.
And air pollution impacts the climate: there are no air pollutants that do not impact the climate. None. Greenhouse gases, aerosols, pollutants, they all impact the climate. The links between air pollution and climate change are legion and increasing.
However, the great benefit of the fact that these things are linked, and we can combine the climate and the air quality issues in the public health communities, and push them towards solutions that achieve benefits for all.
That is the empowering message of the Climate and Clean air Coalition, and why people have been so excited to be with us for the last decade.
Vehicle emissions, diesel generators, the burning of biomass and garbage have all contributed to poor air quality in Lagos Lagoon in Nigeria. (file 2016)
UN News The Cop 27 UN climate conference is coming up in November. Will air pollution be an important part of the discussions there?
Martina Otto There will be a number of events around the issue. I think the the message is getting home, in the sense that people can already see the impacts.
We know what we need to do. There are many solutions out there that make economic sense and can get the job done. We just have to get them to scale, and put political will behind that.
For example, end the open burning of waste which allows methane to escape, and manage waste in a proper way, which is also good sense because there are economic opportunities in that process.
The issue of transport as well, how we design our cities to reduce the need for transport, and make it easier to walk and cycle safely, reducing the need for fossil fuel options by looking at alternative fuels.
There’s a long list of solutions, but they’re very concrete and they actually improve the way we live in our cities as well.
You can hear the full discussion on the UN’s flagship news podcast, The Lid Is On.
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