“He who loves does not kill, does not humiliate or mistreat” reads a poster carried in a protest against violence against women in Lima, the capital of Peru, which is part of a slogan repeated in demonstrations against femicides and other forms of sexist violence in Latin America. CREDIT: Mariela Jara / IPS
by Mariela Jara (lima)
Inter Press Service
LIMA, Nov 24 (IPS) – This article is part of IPS coverage of the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, celebrated Saturday, Nov. 25.”The Latin American and Caribbean region has made many advances in the fight against gender violence, but now we are facing reactions that show that our rights are never secure and that we must always be on the alert to defend them,” said Susana Chiarotti, a member of Mesecvi’s Committee of Experts.
Chiarotti summed up the regional situation of progress and setbacks in a conversation with IPS from her home in the Argentine city of Rosario, ahead of the United Nations’ Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women, commemorated on Saturday, Nov. 25.
Gender violence violates the human rights of one in four women in this region with an estimated female population of 332 million, 51 percent of the total, and escalates to the extreme level of femicide – gender-based murders – which cost 4050 lives in 2022, according to figures confirmed Friday, Nov. 24 by the Gender Equality Observatory for Latin America and the Caribbean.
Likewise, UN Women‘s regional director for the Americas and the Caribbean, María Noel Vaeza, told IPS from Panama City that the emblematic date seeks to draw the attention of countries to the urgent need to put an end to violence against women once and for all by adopting public policies for prevention and investing in programs to eliminate it.
She pointed out that Nov. 25 is the first of 16 days of activism against gender-based violence, which run through Dec. 10, Human Rights Day.
Vaeza said that less than 40 percent of women who suffer violence seek some kind of help, which clearly shows that they do not find guarantees in the prevention and institutional response system and therefore do not report incidents.
“This has serious consequences for their lives and those of other women, as the perpetrators do not face justice and impunity and violence continue unchecked,” she said.
Uruguayan María Noel Vaeza, UN Women regional director for Latin America and the Caribbean, draws the attention of countries to the urgent need to put an end to violence against women through the adoption of public policies for prevention and investment in programs to eliminate it. CREDIT: UN Women
Vaeza said that, despite these worrying trends, there is more evidence than ever that violence against women is preventable, and urged countries in the region to invest in prevention.
“The evidence shows that the presence of a strong, autonomous feminist movement is a critical factor in driving public policy change for the elimination of violence against women at the global, regional, national and local levels,” said the UN Women regional head.
She explained that many studies have shown that large-scale reductions in violence against women can be achieved through coordinated action between local and national prevention and response systems and women’s and other civil society organizations.
So in order to move towards regulatory frameworks and improve the institutional architecture and budget allocations to prevent, respond to and redress gender-based violence, strengthening the advocacy capacity of feminist and women’s movements and organizations is indispensable.
She also mentioned that whenever progress is made, there are setbacks as well, and “unfortunately history shows us that social changes against things like machismo/sexism and violence require the efforts of society as a whole and plans and policies that give answers to the victims today, but also make it possible to improve the system in the medium and long term.”
Vaeza stressed that violence against women and girls remains the most pervasive human rights violation around the world. Its prevalence worsened in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic and is growing further due to the interrelated crises of climate change, global conflicts and economic instability.
She also mentioned the proliferation of new forms of violence and the persistence of those “who believe that we do not have to guarantee women’s human rights, and organize themselves, and in the region we have situations such as attacks against women human rights defenders and activists that have become more frequent.”
Vaeza, from Uruguay, underlined that there is more evidence than ever that it is possible to change this reality and that in order to have peaceful societies, reducing inequality and poverty is key, and all this will depend on advancing gender equality and the rights of those who have historically faced discrimination.
They are mainly, she said, women living in poverty, indigenous women, women of African descent, rural women, women migrants, and women and girls with disabilities.
Susana Chiarotti is a member of the Committee of Experts of the Follow-up Mechanism to the Belém do Pará Convention, which has been monitoring the performance of States in their obligation to prevent, punish and eradicate violence against women for the past 30 years. CREDIT: Cladem Argentina
Strong reactions to progress
Chiarotti said: “I have been with Mesecvi for 20 years and I can see the changes. Let’s remember that it was only in 1989 that laws on violence against women began to be enacted and that we did not have services, shelters, specialized courts and even less a specific Convention to address this issue, which was the first in the world.”
The lawyer and university professor emphasized that in 40 years the women’s movement has put the issue of violence against women on the public agenda and has made such huge strides that “we could be called the most successful lobby in history in positioning an issue in such a massive and global manner.”
And she added that “we did not believe then, in 1986, 1987 or 1988, that the phenomenon had permeated all structures, not only the intimate sphere; there was symbolic, institutional, political and many other forms of violence, which led us to demand more answers, especially from the State, which, being patriarchal, admitted women only with forceps.”
Chiarotti, who is also a former head of the Latin American and Caribbean Committee for the Defense of Women’s Rights (Cladem), warns that they are now facing reactions to the extent that unimaginable alliances have arisen to stop them, such as that of the Vatican with conservative evangelical churches and far-right groups.
She also mentioned the decision of the U.S. Supreme Court that in June 2022 overthrew the right to abortion in that country, which had been in force for almost 50 years.
“That makes you realize that our rights are never secure, that we must always be on the alert to defend them. And it is difficult for a movement that is cyclical, that has waves, that rises and falls, to be always alert,” she said.
In addition, she mentioned the recent victory of the candidate Javier Milei as future president of Argentina and the dangers he represents for women’s rights, sexual diversity and the historical memory of human rights abuses.
“This will not be the first time that this people, and women especially, will enter a stage of resistance, because we have been resisting misogynistic attacks and fighting for life for centuries, but we have a very hard time ahead of us,” Chiarotti said.
She added that Latin America has fragile democracies that are only a few decades old and in crisis, which impact women’s rights. “Many of our countries came out of dictatorships, the longest has had 50 or 60 years of democracy. We will have to work to defend democratic institutions, to use them to defend our rights,” she said.
Holding up signs demanding “No to violence” and “No to machismo,” women demonstrate against gender violence in front of Peru’s main courthouse in Lima. CREDIT: Mariela Jara / IPS
Prevention: a task eluded by the States
The expert argued that since the work of preventing gender-based violence is more costly and time-consuming than that of punishment and less politically profitable, the efforts of countries are weak in this area despite their importance.
“Limiting the work to punishment and addressing incidents is like seeing a big rock that people stumble over and bang up against, and they are cured and taught to go around it, but without removing it from the path. Without prevention we will always have victims because the discriminatory culture that reproduces violence will not be transformed,” she warned.
But even adding up what countries invest to address and eradicate violence against women in the region, none of them reach one percent of their national budget according to the Third Hemispheric Report published by Mesecvi in 2017, a proportion that has apparently not changed since then.
In September of this year, the United Nations published a study showing that an investment of 360 billion dollars is needed to achieve gender equality and women’s empowerment by 2030, established as one of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). This would help to eliminate the scourge of gender-based violence.
NAIROBI, Nov 24 (IPS) – A just transition should be viewed as an opportunity to rectify some of the wrongs where women are not prioritised in the energy mix, yet their experience of the impact of climate change is massive, says Thandile Chinyavanhu, a young South African-based climate and energy campaigner with Greenpeace Africa.
Recent UN scientific research on the state of the climate change crisis and ongoing climate action reveals that the window to reach climate goals is rapidly closing. The world is not on track to reach the goals set out in the Paris Agreement, which commits all countries to pursue efforts to limit the global temperature increase to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels.
To achieve this goal, emissions must decrease by 45% by 2030 and reach net zero by 2050. Ahead of COP28 in Dubai, United Arab Emirates (UAE), expectations are high that a clear roadmap to net zero progress will be reached, bringing issues of energy, a global energy transition, and energy security into sharp focus.
The energy sector has a significant impact on climate as it accounts for an estimated two-thirds of all harmful greenhouse gas emissions. The burning of fossil fuels is the primary cause of the ongoing global climate change crisis, significantly altering planet Earth. The issue of energy and climate is of particular concern to African countries, especially the Sub-Saharan Africa region, as they also relate to increased vulnerabilities for women, especially rural women. The intersection between energy security and economic growth, poverty reduction, and the empowerment of women and girls is not in doubt.
Still, despite access to reliable, affordable, and sustainable energy for all being articulated under the UN’s SDG 7, one in eight people around the world has no access to electricity. In sub-Saharan Africa alone, nearly 600 million people, or an estimated 53 percent of the region’s population, have no access to electricity. Currently, less than a fifth of African countries have targets to reach universal electricity access by 2030. For some, the silver bullet is to dump fossil fuels and go green; for others, it is an urgent, just, and equitable transition to renewables.
IPS spoke to Chinyavanhu about her role as a social justice and climate activist. She says she wants to contribute to climate change mitigation, ensuring that people and cities are prepared for climate change and can adapt to what is coming.
Thandile Chinyavanhu
Here are excerpts from the interview.
IPS: Why are current energy systems untenable, considering the ongoing climate change crisis?
Chinyavanhu: On going green and dumping fossil fuels, there are several issues at play, and they vary from country to country. Fossil fuels—coal, oil, and gas—are by far the largest contributors to global climate change, as they account for more than 75 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions and nearly 90 percent of all carbon dioxide emissions. South Africa, for instance, has a big coal mining industry and is one of the top five coal-exporting countries globally. The country relies heavily on coal for about 70 percent of its total electricity production. We need to move away from energy consumption models that are exacerbating the climate crisis, but we must also ensure that we are centred on a just transition.
IPS: What should a ‘just energy transition’ look like for Africa and other developing nations?
Chinyavanhu: Overall, we are looking at issues of socio-economic development models that leave no one behind. To achieve this, renewable energy is the pathway that provides us with energy security and accelerated development. We have serious energy-related challenges due to a lack of preparation and planning around the energy crisis. The challenge is that Africa needs energy and, at the same time, accelerates its development in a manner that leaves no one behind, be it women or any other vulnerable group that is usually left behind in policy responses.
There is a need to address challenges regarding access to energy for all so that, in transitioning to clean energy, we do not have any groups of people being left behind, as has been the case. This is not so much a problem or challenge as an opportunity for countries to address gaps in access to energy and ensure that it is accessible to all, especially women, bearing in mind the many roles they play in society, including nurturing the continent’s future workforce. A just energy transition is people-centred.
We must recognise and take stock of the economic impact that moving from fossil fuels to clean energy could have on people and their livelihoods, such as those in the mining sector. It is crucial that people are brought along in the process of transition, giving them the tools and resources needed for them to be absorbed into new clean energy models. There is a very deep socio-economic aspect to it because people must be given the skills and capacities to engage in emerging green systems and industries.
IPS: As a young woman activist, what do you think the roles of women in an energy transition are?
Chinyavanhu: Women are generally not prioritised, and so they do not have the same opportunities as men, even in matters of climate change adaptation and mitigation, and this is true for sectors such as agriculture and mining. Women have great economic potential and have a very big role to play towards a just energy transition as key drivers of socio-economic progress.
In the green energy space, economic opportunities are opening up. Men are quickly taking over the renewable energy industry, but there are plenty of opportunities for women to succeed if given the right resources. We are at a point in time when we have the opportunity to leave behind polluting technologies and, at the same time, address some of the key socio-economic challenges that have plagued societies for a long time.
This transition should be viewed as an opportunity to rectify some of those wrongs in a way that is people-centred and inclusive. No one should be left behind. It is really about building harmony with nature while also addressing many of the socio-economic issues that plague us today. This is more of an opportunity than a hurdle. It is about understanding and rectifying systems’ thinking that contributes to women being left behind. It is important that we see the bigger picture—identify and acknowledge that different groups—not just women, but any identifier that places people at a point of vulnerability—have been left furthest behind. The energy transition process has presented an opportunity to make it right.
IPS UN Bureau Report
LONDON, Nov 17 (IPS) – The need to act on the climate crisis has never been clearer. In 2023, heat records have been shattered around the world. Seemingly every day brings news of extreme weather, imperilling lives. In July, UN Secretary-General António Guterres grimly announced that ‘the era of global boiling has arrived’.
In short, there’s a lot at stake as the world heads into its next climate summit.
But there’s a big problem: COP28, the latest in the annual series of conferences of parties (COP) to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, will be held in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). This is a country with closed civic space, where dissent is criminalised and activists are routinely detained. It’s also a fossil fuel power bent on continuing extraction.
At multilateral summits where climate change decisions are made, it’s vital that civil society is able to mobilise to demand greater ambition, hold states and fossil fuel companies and financiers to account and ensure the views of people most affected by climate change are heard. But that can’t happen in conditions of closed civic space.
Concerning signs
In September, the UAE was added to the CIVICUS Monitor Watchlist, which highlights countries experiencing significant declines in respect for civic freedoms. Civic space in the UAE has long been closed: no dissent against the government or advocacy for human rights is allowed, and those who try to speak out risk criminalisation. In 2022, a Cybercrime Law introduced even stronger restrictions on online expression.
There’s widespread torture in jails and detention centres and at least 58 prisoners of conscience have been held in prison despite having completed their sentences. Many of them were part of a group known as the UAE 94, jailed for the crime of calling for democracy. Among the ranks of those incarcerated is Ahmed Mansoor, sentenced to 10 years in jail in 2018 for his work documenting the human rights situation, and held in solitary confinement for over five years and counting.
Ahead of COP28, civil society has worked to highlight the absurdity of holding such a vital summit in closed civic space conditions. Domestic civil society is unable to influence COP28 and its preparatory process, and it’s hard to see how civil society, both domestic and international, will be able to express itself freely during the summit.
Civil society is demanding that the UAE government demonstrate that it’s prepared to respect human rights, including by releasing political prisoners – something it’s so far failed to budge on.
An ominous sign came when the UAE hosted a climate and health summit in April. Participants were reportedly instructed not to criticise the government, corporations, individuals or Islam, and not to protest while in the UAE.
Civic space restrictions aren’t the only indication the UAE isn’t taking COP28 seriously. The president of the summit, Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber, also happens to be head of the state’s fossil fuel corporation ADNOC, the world’s 11th-biggest oil and gas producer. It’s like putting an arms manufacturer in charge of peace talks. Multiple other ADNOC staff members have roles in the summit. ADNOC is currently talking up its investments in renewable energies, all while planning one of the biggest expansions of oil and gas extraction of any fossil fuel corporation.
Instead of real action, all the signs are that the regime is instrumentalising its hosting of COP28 to try to launder its reputation, as indicated by its hiring of expensive international lobbying firms. An array of fake social media accounts were created to praise the UAE as host and defend it from criticism. A leaked list of key COP28 talking points prepared by the host made no mention of fossil fuels.
A summit that should be about tackling the climate crisis – and quickly – is instead being used to greenwash the image of the host government – something easiest achieved if civil society is kept at arm’s length.
Fossil fuel lobby to the fore
With civil society excluded, the voices of those actively standing in the way of climate action will continue to dominate negotiations. That’s what happened at COP27, also held in the closed civic space of Egypt, where 636 fossil fuel lobbyists took part – and left happy. Like every summit before it, its final statement made no commitment to reduce oil and gas use.
The only way to change this is to open the doors to civil society. Civil society has consistently sounded the alarm and raised public awareness of the need for climate action. It’s the source of practical solutions to cut emissions and adapt to climate impacts. It urges more ambitious commitments and more funding, including for the loss and damage caused by climate change. It defends communities against environmentally destructive impacts, resists extraction and promotes sustainability. It pressures states and the private sector to stop approving and financing further extraction and to transition more urgently to more renewable energies and more sustainable practices. These are the voices that must be heard if the cycle of runaway climate change is to be stopped.
COPs should be held in countries that offer an enabling civic space that allows strong domestic mobilisation, and summit hosts should be expected to abide by high standards when it comes to domestic and international access and participation. That should be part of the deal hosts make in return for the global prestige that comes with hosting high-level events. Civil society’s exclusion mustn’t be allowed to happen again.
Jovita Ambrose and Timson Irowane are two young athletes training to be part of the Solomon Islands national team at the Pacific Games. Credit: Catherine Wilson/IPS
by Catherine Wilson (honiara, solomon islands)
Inter Press Service
HONIARA, SOLOMON ISLANDS, Nov 17 (IPS) – The Pacific Games, the most prestigious sporting event in the Pacific Islands region, will open in the Solomon Islands in the southwest Pacific on 19 November. And it is set to shine a spotlight on the energy, hopes and aspirations of youths who comprise the majority of the country’s population.
Timson Irowane (25), who has been competing in triathlons for the past six years, is brimming with confidence and anticipation. “The Pacific Games is a big event because my people are here, and it is very special because this is the first time the Solomon Islands is hosting the Games that I’ve been involved in,” Irowane told IPS during an interview at the Solomon Islands National Institute of Sport in the capital, Honiara.
Every four years, a Pacific Island nation is chosen to host the regional multi-sport Pacific Games. And this year, about 5,000 athletes from 24 Pacific Island states, such as Papua New Guinea, Kiribati, Fiji and New Caledonia, will arrive in Honiara to compete in 24 sports, ranging from athletics and swimming to archery and basketball.
The Solomon Islands has a high population growth rate of 2.3 percent and about 70 percent of the country’s population of about 734,000 people are aged under 35 years. Christian Nieng, Executive Director of the Pacific Games National Hosting Authority, told IPS that it will be a chance to showcase their talents and achievements. “It is the biggest international event ever hosted in the country. And as we are hosting, we want to compete for every medal chance,” Nieng said.
Not far from Honiara city centre, the new Games precinct includes a large national stadium, which can accommodate 10,000 people, as well as swimming and tennis centres. Eighty percent of the funding needed to build the facilities and organize the Games has been provided by international donors and bilateral partners, including Australia, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, China, Saudi Arabia, India, Korea and Indonesia.
“One of the long-term benefits of the Games is that we now have a new sports city as a legacy of the event,” Nieng added. It will be one of the best in the Pacific region, he believes, and, if well maintained, will last for 25 years, providing world-class facilities for Solomon Islanders to pursue their development and ambitions in sport.
At the sports institute, about 1,200 athletes are in training, and their energy and excitement is palpable. Here, Irowane, who is from Western and Malaita, two outer island provinces, is one among many who are striving to be selected for the national team of about 650 athletes who will represent the Solomon Islands later this month. His dedication has already led to international success. He participated in the Pacific Games held in Samoa in 2019 and numerous regional championships before heading to the Commonwealth Games hosted in Birmingham in the United Kingdom last year.
But he said that there were many wider benefits of sport to young people. “Triathlon is a multi-sport which involves discipline. Sport is not just for training, for fitness and skills that you learn in a specific sport, but it trains holistically to be a better person and a responsible person,” Irowane said. “And it helps athletes and individuals to be good citizens.”
Another local star aiming high is 21-year-old Jovita Ambrose, also from Malaita Province. “I started athletics and running during school games when I was 17 years old. When I’m running, I know that I’m good at it. When you are good at sport, it keeps you busy; it helps you stay healthy and not get involved in negative activities, such as drugs,” Ambrose said. In the last two years, she has travelled to competitions overseas, including the World Athletics Championships in Oregon in the United States last year and in Budapest, Hungary, three months ago.
Many local businesses in the formal and informal sectors are hoping for increased visitors and business during the Pacific Games being hosted in the Solomon Islands in late November. Burns Creek Settlement market in Honiara. Credit: Catherine Wilson/IPS
The Solomon Islands has a rural majority population that is scattered across more than 900 islands where there is often limited access to roads, basic services and employment. And the younger generation faces significant economic and development challenges. In a country which is not generating enough jobs for those of working age, the government estimates that 16,000-18,000 youths enter the employment market every year, with less than 4,000 likely to gain a secure job. Estimates of youth unemployment range from 35 percent to 60 percent.
“There is a lot of unemployment and, also, under-employment, where young people get a job opportunity which does not match their skill set. It is a real frustration for them when they are educated and still waiting for a job opportunity,” Harry James Olikwailafa, Chairman of the Solomon Islands National Youth Congress, explained to IPS. “The important issues for young people today are economic opportunities, employment opportunities and educational opportunities.”
In the last two decades, Solomon Islanders have also grappled with the aftermath of a five-year civil conflict. ‘The Tensions’, triggered by factors including urban-rural inequality, corruption and competition for land and resources, erupted in 1998 between rival armed groups representing local Guale landowners on Guadalcanal Island and internal settlers from Malaita Province. Hostilities ended in 2003, by which time many people, including children, had experienced violence, atrocities and displacement and had been deprived of education.
Morrison Filia 936) and his wife, Joycelyn (32), grew up in the aftermath of the conflict. And now, through a new entrepreneurial initiative, are aiming to help grow economic opportunities in Honiara. In August, they launched a new tourism business, Happy Isle Tours and Transfers, which offers airport transfers for visitors and tourists to hotels, as well as tours of Honiara, its history and landmarks, and excursions to World War II memorial sites on Guadalcanal Island.
“In Honiara, there are a lot of young people, and employment is a problem. So, the main idea is that we try to create this business so that we can employ more young people. We are trying to give young people opportunities,” Morrison told IPS.
They have also opened their business in time for the Games. “One of the other reasons why we started the business is that we noticed tourists and visitors coming , but they find it difficult to find transport,” Joycelyn said. “We are excited and looking forward to the Games because we are expecting more tourists. It will bring other different people to the country, and we are expecting increased bookings. I think it will also increase employment in the country and help us in our economy,” she continued.
The Pacific Games will continue for two weeks and finish on the 2 December. And like Morrison and Joycelyn, Timson Irowane has long-term goals. “I wish to be a role model, to introduce the sports and motivate more young people to be involved in any sport they are interested in. I love to encourage them because we have the advantage of the facilities here beyond the Games,” he declared.
José Lonardi stands in his tiny candy and beverage shop in downtown Buenos Aires. Customers, he says, have lost all reference points for the price of products in Argentina and so nothing surprises them anymore. CREDIT: Daniel Gutman / IPS
by Daniel Gutman (buenos aires)
Inter Press Service
BUENOS AIRES, Nov 16 (IPS) – People in Argentina have become accustomed to the fact that nothing costs the same today as it did the week before and they take price hikes in stride with resignation, says Mariano Cohen. “Almost nobody gets angry or complains anymore. They just don’t buy something if they can’t afford it,” he explains in his disposable goods store in Villa Crespo, one of Buenos Aires’ most commercial neighborhoods.
Mariano sells plastic cups, plates and bowls, cardboard packaging rolls and aluminum containers. He serves bars, restaurants and the public. He has a large sales room, about 80 square meters, and a mezzanine of the same size, which he uses as a warehouse and is a great asset for a merchant who sells non-perishable products.
The business owner tells IPS that he buys and stocks as much merchandise as he can, to anticipate price hikes.
“If I don’t have more, it’s because there’s no more coming in or because they don’t want to sell me large quantities. The other day a supplier suspended a very important delivery from one minute to the next and gave me back the money I had already paid him,” he comments, with the same gesture of resignation that, he says, his customers make when faced with the prices in his store.
The economy of this South American country, with a long history of imbalances and inflation, has entered a spiral of permanent price increases that has already squelched the capacity for amazement of its 46 million inhabitants.
In Argentina, the absurd has been normal for some time: here you can buy a pair of shoes in six installments without interest, with financing subsidized by the government or even by private banks, but to buy a house you must pay in cash, because mortgages are almost non-existent. Today, price rises are so common that people are surprised the few times that a price is the same from one week to the next.
In 2021, there was concern when inflation climbed to 50 percent per year, partly attributed to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, which forced an increase in currency issuance to meet social assistance needs. However, people soon became nostalgic for this figure: in 2022 the index climbed to 95 percent, the highest since 1991.
Even so, the economy of this nation – where more than 40 percent of the population is poor and practically no private sector employment has been created for the last 12 years – seems to be determined to prove that it can always get worse.
This year inflation climbed again, to an accumulative 103 percent in the first nine months alone, reaching 138 percent in the interannual index (from September 2022 to September 2023), according to official data. Projections indicate that 2023 will end with an increase in consumer prices of around 150 percent.
An employee uses a machine to count banknotes in a store in Patagonia in southern Argentina. The constant increase in prices has meant that many products must be paid for with dozens of bills of the devalued Argentine peso and has forced stores to buy counting machines to save time. CREDIT: Daniel Gutman / IPS
Emerging and drowning again
“I feel that the day I get paid my salary is the best day of the month, but also the worst,” Ariel Machado tells IPS, laughing bitterly.
“I’m happy when I get paid, but when I set aside the money for fixed expenses and calculate how much I’ll have left, I feel like I’m drowning again,” says Ariel, who has a son and is separated from his wife, and who is employed by a well-known public relations agency in Buenos Aires and also sells selected wines over the Internet to supplement his income.
A typical member of the strong middle class of Buenos Aires, used to going on vacation to the beaches of Brazil and dining in restaurants a couple of times a week, Ariel says that those things are now just memories and that today he sometimes feels like he’s spinning “on a wheel of unhappiness, because of the amount of things I want to do and can’t.”
He tries to forget about it, but doesn’t succeed. “Worrying about money consumes a lot of energy. Three years ago I couldn’t save either, but this didn’t happen to me. Now there are days when even having a cup of coffee outside the office seems like a wasteful luxury,” he says.
By his own admission, Ariel is not even remotely among the most vulnerable segments of the population, who spend practically all their income on food, prices of which have been rising more than average.
Latin America’s third largest economy is immersed in a process of stagnation and deterioration that began in 2012 and caused the governing parties to lose the last two presidential elections, in 2015 and 2019.
On Sunday Nov. 19, the next president will be chosen in a runoff election in which the ruling party’s centrist candidate Sergio Massa will compete against the far-right opposition candidate Javier Milei.
Only the extravagant proposals of Milei, who calls for the free carrying of arms and the creation of a market for the sale of organs, in addition to immediate dollarization and the elimination of the local peso from the Central Bank, have made Massa, who since 2022 is the Minister of Economy, competitive.
Elections always generate even more instability in the economy and situations that are difficult for visitors to understand.
Those who can afford to do so stock up on items in anticipation of what will happen to prices and consumption after the elections.
Thus, September, the month prior to the first round of elections, showed a strong increase in consumption in supermarkets (eight percent above the previous month, according to private sector data), comparable only to March 2020, when the pandemic confinement began.
In any case, the impact of inflation on the poorest is especially visible in the outskirts of the capital. Greater Buenos Aires is home to 15.5 million people, or one third of Argentina’s population, where more and more people sleep on the streets or wander around in search of something to eat.
The poor suffer from a decline that is measured not only in terms of income but also with respect to access to basic services and to environmental conditions.
A paper published in October by the Argentine Catholic University’s (UCA) well-respected Observatory of Social Debt found that since 2018 a process of reduction of the inequality gap began in Greater Buenos Aires, but due to the worsening living conditions of the middle class rather than to improvements in households in the most impoverished neighborhoods.
Members of these vulnerable sectors of Buenos Aires told IPS that the escalation of inflation is more a problem of the middle class people living in the city, who have to lower their standard of living and who are becoming poorer, while in their case “we were and are so bad off that a jump in inflation of 100 to 150 percent does not change anything for us.”
In addition, part of the poorest population of Buenos Aires and its outlying areas receives social assistance from the central or city governments, or from non-governmental organizations.
A supermarket in Buenos Aires displays a sign from the “Fair Prices” program, which consists of an agreement between the Argentine government and companies to curb the prices of basic products. People frequently complain that the products are often not available, due to the reluctance of the companies to comply with this commitment. CREDIT: Daniel Gutman / IPS
No reference point
José Lonardi owns a tiny shop selling candy, beverages and cigarettes on Paraguay Street, a few blocks from the Obelisk, an icon of downtown Buenos Aires. The prices of the merchandise, he tells IPS, increase almost every week, sometimes by three to five percent, and sometimes by 20 to 30 percent.
“Two or three years ago, customers still complained when prices went up, because they had some point of reference. Today, inflation has picked up so fast that nobody knows how much things are worth and nobody says anything anymore,” he remarks.
Against this backdrop, contradictory advice is rampant. The value of pesos is melting like ice cream under the sun and people want to get rid of them. On afternoon TV programs, a steady parade of economists advise people to buy large quantities of toilet paper to beat inflation.
Many people, however, do not pay attention to them: in different neighborhoods of Buenos Aires restaurants are always full, even on weekdays. “In the Argentine economy nobody knows what might happen next week. So pesos are burning holes in people’s pockets, and people, as long as they have them, spend them,” says José.
David Obwona at his seed rice farm in Katukatib village, Amoro district, northern Uganda. The farmer is part of a group that is now engaged in seed rice farming to climate-proof agriculture courtesy of the Regional Universities Forum for Capacity Building Agriculture. Credit: Maina Waruru/IPS
by Maina Waruru (nairobi)
Inter Press Service
NAIROBI, Nov 14 (IPS) – Smallholder farmers from the Global South benefit from a grossly disproportionate 0.3% of international climate finance despite producing a third of the world’s food and despite holding the key to climate-proofing food systems.
The family farmers and rural communities received around USD 2 billion from both public and private international climate funds out of the USD 8.4 billion that went to the agriculture sector in 2021, even as over 2.5 billion people globally depended on the farms for their livelihoods.
The USD 8.4 billion was almost half of the USD 16 billion that was availed for the energy sector and is only a fraction of the estimated USD 300-350 billion needed annually to “create more sustainable and resilient food systems,” a new report has found.
The amount was also quite different from the USD 170 billion that smallholder farmers in Sub-Saharan Africa alone would require per year, the study on global public finance for climate mitigation and adaptation conducted by Dutch climate advisory company Climate Focus has found.
The low level of climate finance for agriculture, forestry, and fishing is of concern, given the impact of climate change on food production and the extent to which food and agriculture are fueling the climate and biodiversity crisis.
Agricultural productivity has declined by 21 percent due to climate change, while the food and agriculture sector as a whole is responsible for 29 percent of greenhouse gas emissions and 80 percent of global deforestation, the study explains.
The farmers have been sidelined by global climate funders and locked out of decision-making processes on food and climate despite being the engines of rural economic growth. This is especially so in Sub-Saharan Africa, where up to 80 percent of agriculture is by smallholder farmers and where 23 percent of regional GDP is attributable to the sector.
It reveals that 80 percent of international public climate finance spent on the agri-food sector is channeled through governments and donor country NGOs, making it hard for smallholder farmers’ organizations to access it. This is because of complex eligibility rules and application processes and a lack of information on how and where to apply.
Many family farmers also lack the infrastructure, technology, and resources to adapt to climate impacts, with serious implications for global food security and rural economies as well, it notes.
The study ‘Untapped Potential: An analysis of international public climate finance flows to sustainable agriculture and family farmers,’ published on 14 November, laments that only a fifth of international public climate finance for food and agriculture supports sustainable practice. The money mainly goes to the Global North, even as agriculture becomes the third biggest source of global emissions. and the main driver of biodiversity loss.
“Climate change is hitting harvests and driving up food prices across the globe. It has helped push 122 million people into hunger since 2019. We need to create more sustainable and resilient food systems that can feed people in a changing climate, but we can’t do this without family farmers,” the report compiled on behalf of ten farmer organizations in Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Pacific says.
“Family farmers are also key to climate adaptation. They are at the forefront of the shift to more diverse, nature-friendly food systems, which the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) says is needed to safeguard food security in a changing climate,” it further notes.
The groups are led by the World Rural Forum and include African groups—the Eastern Africa Farmers Federation, Eastern and Southern Africa small-scale Farmers Forum, the Regional Platform of Farmers’ Organisations in Central Africa, and the Network of West African Farmers’ and Producers’ Organisations. Also part of the group is Northern Africa’s Maghreb and North African Farmers Union.
The Asian Farmers Association for Sustainable Rural Development, the Pacific Island Farmers Organization Network, the Confederation of Family Producers’ Organizations of Greater Mercosur, and the Regional Rural Dialogue Programme are also represented in the study.
Many of the farmers are already practicing climate-resilient agriculture, including approaches such as agroecology, which implies a wider variety of crops, including traditional ones, mixing crops, livestock, forestry, and fisheries, while reducing agrochemical use, and building strong connections to local markets.
The study by the new alliance of farmer networks representing over 35 million smallholder producers ahead of COP28, which is set to agree on a Global Goal for Adaptation, is concerned that since 2012, overall, only 11% of international public climate finance has been targeted at agriculture, forestry, and fishing, which amounts to an average of USD 7 billion a year.
In 2021, the World Bank, Germany, the Green Climate Fund, and European Union institutions contributed around half—54 percent, amounting to USD 4 billion collectively, while Nigeria, India, and Ethiopia were the top recipients, receiving a combined USD 1.8 billion. Notably, some of the world’s most food insecure countries, including Sudan, Sierra Leone, and Zambia, each received less than USD 20 million, it discloses.
“As the climate crisis pushes the global food system ever closer to collapse, it is vital that governments recognize family farmers as powerful partners in the fight against climate change,” it warns.
Hakim Baliriane, Chair of the Eastern and Southern Africa small-scale Farmers Forum, observed: “Climate change has helped push 122 million people into hunger since 2019. Reversing this trend will not be possible if governments continue to tie the hands of millions of family farmers.”
The study defines small-scale family farms as those of less than two hectares, mainly in developing countries.
On the other hand, international climate finance broadly refers to finance channeled to “activities that have a stated objective to mitigate climate change or support adaptation. These include multilateral flows in and outside the (UNFCCC) and the Paris Agreement, as well as bilateral flows at national and regional levels, including the Global Environment Facility, Adaptation Fund, and Green Climate Fund, and are usually disbursed as grants and concessional loans
The study finds that family farms are also the backbone of rural economies, supporting over 2.5 billion people globally who depend on family farms for their livelihoods. It says that in Sub-Saharan Africa, where up to 80 percent of farming is done by smallholder farmers, agriculture contributes 23 percent to regional Gross Domestic Product.
Family farmers are also key to climate adaptation in that they are at the forefront of the shift to more “diverse, nature-friendly food systems,” which, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), are critical in safeguarding food security in a changing climate.
It finds that millions of smallholder farmers are already practicing climate-resilient agriculture, including approaches such as agroecology—growing a wider variety of crops, including traditional crops, mixing crops, livestock, forestry, and fisheries, reducing agrochemicals use while building “strong connections to local markets.”
It concludes that governments must ensure that available climate finance for sustainable climate-resilient practices is increased, including that of agroecological approaches.
It explains: “This means funds to support diverse, nature-friendly approaches and to create community-based solutions that build on traditional expertise and experience.
It recommends that small-scale family farmers ought to have direct access to more climate finance and that financing mechanisms and funds should be developed with the participation of farmers’ organizations to meet their needs.
In addition, efforts should be made to ensure longer-term, flexible funding so that communities can determine their own priorities.
The role of the farmers as powerful catalysts for climate action, food system transformation, and the protection of biodiversity should be acknowledged and given a “real say” in decision-making on food and climate at the local, national, regional, and international levels. This should include decisions on land reform and agricultural subsidies.
The COP28 in Dubai later this month has food systems as a big part of the agenda.
An August report by the UK’s ActionAid has found that climate adaptation and green transition initiatives in the Global South received 20 times less financing when compared to main global emitters, fossil fuels, and intensive agriculture sectors in the last seven years.
It found that leading banking multinationals funded the emitters’ activities in the southern hemisphere to the tune of USD 3.2 trillion since 2015 when the Paris Agreement on Climate was adopted. German agrochemical giant Bayer was the biggest recipient of the financing, receiving an estimated USD 20.6 billion since 2016.
Tandahara women tend to the new Casuarina plants. Credit: Manipadma Jena/IPS
by Manipadma Jena (puri, india)
Inter Press Service
PURI, India, Nov 07 (IPS) – For more than 33 years, a group of strong-willed women from the village of Tandahara, India have kept their homes and village safe and plan to continue despite the unrelenting impacts of increasingly severe monsoons.
The sun is high in the noon sky—humidity unrelenting at 95 percent in this Indian sea-coast village. The monsoon has been deficient; rice paddies are yellowing on the edges from the salty surf misting in on them. Waves now break barely 200 metres from the farms and homes.
Sixty-year-old Bengalata Rout heads for the Casuarina “forest wall” off the shoreline, trees that the women in the 108-household village Tandahara planted after the 1999 Super Cyclonic Storm decimated their mud-walled thatched-roof huts leaving their fertile farms salt-poisoned.
That year, 33 years ago, they planted the trees on the village boundary, a good distance away from the shoreline; today, on a stormy night, the sea crashes against the tree trunks, threatening to run amok into their homes.
Tandahara, sitting on the Bay of Bengal, is one of the last villages in the eastern Indian State Odisha, some 20 kilometres from Konark Sun Temple, UNESCO’s designated heritage site that is itself showing the impacts of seas closing in.
The ‘Big Storm’ Discovery
“When the big cyclone hit us, the Casuarina shelter belt that was standing from before, planted by the government, lay battered,” Rout told Inter Press Service (IPS) as we walked toward the Casuarina forest. “We immediately realised had it not been standing there between the sea and our village we would have been wiped out.”
And it was a life-changing discovery for these rural women.
The category-5 storm, carrying wind speeds of 160 miles hourly that made landfall over Odisha in October 1999, killed more than 10,000 people, mostly owing to 20 ft high storm surges that brought water 16 to 20 miles inland.
But Tandahara had not lost a single life. Losing no time, every woman volunteering, even the children clamouring to pitch in, they sorted themselves into ten groups of ten members with a mix of young and old. Saplings were requested from government and non-profits who came to help. Planting was done; the men lent a hand, but the women took it upon themselves to make sure the saplings survived.
“It was challenging. The soil had salted up, and the young plants struggled to survive,” said Kanaka Behera, 32, one of the younger women. “And the water we got in our village had turned a bit saline also.”
“We thought, for our cooking and drinking, we fetch groundwater from a shallow dug pit; why not get the sweet water for the plants, too? But that was a kilometre inland from our village, more distance from the plantation in the opposite direction. We will do it, we decided and dug the pit wider to get more water,” Behera added.
“For months till the plants survived, we would be up before the sun, lining up our buckets around the water pit where water replenishes naturally overnight. Then the real arduous work began,” said middle-aged Bena Mallika dressed in a bright green sari. Some ten of them would fill the buckets and hand them to ten others who relayed them to more waiting women till the saplings, one-and-half kilometres away, were sloshed and glistening. Only by noon, they were done, exhausted but triumphant, having carried one thousand buckets to the plants. They did this every alternate day. Meticulously, around each baby tree, they gouged a six-inch wide circular channel with their bare hands to hold the sweet water for longer and create an oasis of nutrition.
Bengalata Rout, the women’s group leader, poses amidst the Casuarina forest the women planted after the 1999 Super Cyclonic Storm. Credit: Manipadma Jena/IPS The women’s group poses on the narrow strip of beach that’s all that’s left between the village boundary and the advancing sea. Credit: Manipadma Jena/IPS Clusters of betel-vine bowers shelter behind the protective wall of Casuarina trees. Credit: Manipadma Jena/IPS
Climate Events More Frequent, Intense, and the Sea Keeps Getting Closer
But growing tree shields is a daunting exercise against a wounded, intermittently raging ocean. It is a handful of strong-willed women pitted against climate events getting more frequent and more intense from a rapidly warming sea. Odisha has encountered 10 cyclones in a span of 22 years from 1999 to 2021, with frequency rising over earlier decades, according to data from the Odisha State Disaster Management Authority (OSDMA), which works to reduce disaster risk.
More broadly, the Indian subcontinent has witnessed more than 478 extreme events since 1970, whose frequency has accelerated after 2005, IPS had earlier reported.
But another phenomenon, more insidiously devastating, is creeping in on Tandahara.
Sitting on a cemented platform under the shade of an ageing banyan tree, there are several elders who share how the sea has moved closer. Remembering over five decades back, 70-year-old Tahali Kalia Gopal Behera narrated to IPS, “When I was 18, we youngsters went to the sea to catch the red beach crabs. We carried our lunch and left home in the morning, returning only in the evening. Those days, the sea was more than 3 kilometres away.”
“The sea has eaten away 20 hectares of our village land,” Bidyadhar Bhuyan, another elderly man, said.
Of Odisha State’s over the 480-kilometre coastline, a high 79 percent has experienced drastic modification.
The State’s coastline change trend shows 21 percent has been subject to erosion, and 51 percent is impacted by accretion. Based on 26 years of satellite images, the 2018 study by the National Centre for Coastal Research of Earth Sciences Ministry remains the latest using such extensive data.
Odisha’s Puri province, where sea-front villages like Tandahara face the brunt, experienced the highest accretion on 110 km of its total 140 km shore length, this study said.
Coastal accretion is the gradual increase or acquisition of land by the sea. It occurs through washing up sand, soil, or silt. Erosion is the gradual washing away of land along the shoreline.
While erosion-accretion phenomena are natural, climate disasters and persisting low-pressure events that cause turbulent seas are increasing ecological imbalance, according to an OSDMA expert.
“When I married and came to the village, there were sand dunes stretching all the way,” remembered 46-year-old Mallika. “Now there’s hardly any beach left for dunes to stand; only the shore sands are rising higher.”
So close is the sea now that this year, 2023, even without any major low-pressure event, sea-water ingress has cut a 100-metre channel into pastureland on the village outskirt, Bhuyan added.
Oxford University research from across 52 sites worldwide on ‘nature-based solutions’ said coastal forest walls, mangroves and coral reefs cause waves to break before they hit the shore or ingress towards human habitats, lowering both the force and height of the swell and in the process reducing the likelihood of the sea breaching over into people’s land.
The study found that natural habitats were 2-5 times more cost-effective than engineered structures, like the geotextile tube installed in another affected district in Odisha, which was in tatters within 10 years. These (like Tandahara’s bio-wall) can help to protect from climate change impacts while slowing further warming (by carbon sequestration), supporting biodiversity, and securing ecosystem services, researchers widely believe.
Of Bulls, Goats and Other Challenges
As the Bay of Bengal became a hotspot for tropical storms and waves inched closer to Tandahara, coating salty mist day and night on everything, their staple rice crops began failing. Employable males migrated out.
Left behind with children and ageing parents to make ends meet were again the women. They began goat-keeping. The 108 households have no less than 500 goats today.
One adult goat weighing 15kg can easily fetch up to INR 8000 (USD 96.3), extra during festive seasons.
Handsome returns, yes, but also the biggest daily menace to women’s Casuarina walls.
“Until saplings are at least 5 feet tall and out of reach of the ever-hungry goats, we need to protect them. We patrol in groups of three, morning and afternoon,” elderly Harkamani Swain said.
A woman goat herder confines her grazing cattle to the grass on the farms’ boundaries, away from the fresh Casuarina plantations, to avoid cash penalties. Credit: Manipadma Jena/IPS In the afternoon, with household chores done, women retreat to relax and bond under the cool forest’s shade. Credit: Manipadma Jena/IPS Every morning, taking turns, one group meets at the village temple to decide on patrolling responsibilities. Credit: Manipadma Jena/IPS Cyclone Phailin in 2013 wrought maximum damage and loss of life as rural settlements had only mud-walled, thatched-roofed homes. A woman stands desolately, having lost her home and belongings to the storm in Bhubaneswar. Credit: Manipadma Jena/IPS
Rout walks on purposefully; it’s difficult to keep up with her, traversing over uneven abandoned paddy fields. She is going to check if any goats or the village bull have walked in to nibble at the new saplings planted under the government’s forestry scheme earlier in August this year when rains came.
If she espies the bull amidst the plants, she’ll holler, and the women will rush and help chase it out.
“If cattle destroy the plants, their owners have to pay a 100 rupees (USD 1.2) penalty, Rout explains, sighing in relief on seeing no intruder. “To get a hungry bull off the plantation requires more than one woman. If a help call is shouted out, but the group member whose house is closest does not respond, they are charged 100 rupees as well,” she explains how strict community rules have helped them grow the tree wall.
Seeing their zeal, in 2000, the forestry officials mentored them to form a village Forest Protection Committee. They were provided, one-time and free of cost, several large party-sized ironware pots worth 60,000 rupees (USD 722.8) to rent out to village events and maintain bank funds.
“Were this active group not been looking after the coastal forest, even when the government plants and sometimes waters them too, they would not remain alive beyond a month. There is a strong sense of ownership instilled within them. With them, we have a true partnership,” a local supervisory-level government forest official told IPS, wishing not to be named as they were not allowed to speak to the media.
Green Walls Provide Direct and Indirect Income for an Entire Village
When forest officials came with saplings this monsoon, the nearby beach was littered with dead Casuarina stumps and branches left from an earlier storm and proliferating beach creepers. The women’s group offered to clear the large stretches. In return, they got to take home the dead wood.
“With the thinner branches, we were able to repair seaside fences,” Kanaka Behera told IPS. The official would otherwise have hired contractors’ men on wages. “We take ownership of the storm walls. We will patrol till the saplings are grown.”
Dead trees get used for roof beams of thatched cattle sheds and for firewood, fulfilling needs in rural households. Odisha government, since the 2013 Phailin storm, has provided concrete-roofed, brick-walled disaster-resilient houses within 5 km of high tide.
Under the thick canopy of Casuarinas, a rotting pile of hay lies in a corner. The women can grow two mushroom crops here from early July to late August. The dense thicket obstructs damaging rain directly falling on the delicate fungi; high humidity is just right for bountiful harvests, which income goes into the group’s bank account, used when members need funds urgently.
Rout points further afield at over 25 green net-cloth-covered betel vine bowers just behind the Casuarina thicket. The 8-feet high square bamboo bowers, locally called ‘bareja’, are shading structures creating a green-house environment for better quality betel leaves. It can fetch a good income but is a fragile cultivation. “Those ‘barejas’ stand because this thick line of Casuarinas stands against strong winds that can easily bring the structures down and deprive a quarter of our village households of their livelihood,” she said.
Most afternoons, with household chores and afternoon meals done, the women leave the village behind to sit in the quiet under the trees. Sometimes, they laugh together, sing even if tunelessly, as the birds call from the branches, used to their presence.
“These trees are today like our grown-up sons; they stand strong here, ready to protect us, giving us confidence and moments of contentment,” says the elderly Bengalata Rout, whose only son Ritu, 40 years old, is working as a computer clerk thousands of kilometres away in Surat in western India, holding on to a deeply grooved tree trunk. A widow, she lives with her daughter-in-law and two little grandsons.
Powerful Agents of Change United in Fighting More Than Just the Storms and Seas
The water from the borewells in Tandahara became progressively so salty that children, no matter how thirsty, would often refuse to drink. Water carried from the small groundwater pit never sufficed. Forced to drink increasingly salty water, stomach upset, nausea and skin irritation have become chronic.
Bonding together for the tree barrier has, over the years, given the women of Tandahara a sense of unity and empowerment, and they are changing the collective traditional mindset of the village as well.
Post-pandemic, taking the poor drinking water issue into their own hands, the traditionally village-bound women marched to the local-level government officer with bottles of the salty water they got from hand pumps and asked the officer to drink it. The officer was shocked at the confrontation from a group of village women but finally admitted the water was undrinkable and ordered water tankers to deliver to the village.
Water is, however, supplied only in April and May, peak summer months when local water turns saltier. Again, it is limited to daily just two buckets per household, even for large families. On repeated visits by the women, administration higher-ups even visited the village five months back, promised piped water, but work is yet to begin, said 29-year-old Gouri Padhi, who has been in school up to class ten and is more educated than the others.
Looking Ahead
“Communities already have the agency to adapt and make decisions in the face of change,” said the Global Resilience Partnership Report 2023, but often need support in the form of appropriate data, knowledge, information, and resources to further strengthen adaptation and resilience actions.
“As climate and other shocks become more frequent, severe and overlapping, it is urgent to become smarter and faster when it comes to building resilience,” Dina Esposito, Assistant to the Administrator for the Bureau for Resilience and Food Security, told IPS via email. “At USAID, we’re bringing innovative solutions, such as shock response monitoring systems, to build resilience and to measure impact so that we can learn and adapt as we go.”
For the women of Tandahara, resilience is found in their collective efforts to save their village.
While murmurs are growing stronger among elderly men to step back from the advancing sea and resettle their homes at a safe distance. Two neighbouring villages have already left, illegally squatting on forest land, they point out.
“True, whenever the winds wail, my heart palpitates with dread; I think today all will end. When the government mobile alerts shriek, we flee to the two-storied storm shelter with our cattle. But we will not abandon our ancestral village,” Rout says firmly. “We will do whatever it takes to make it safer, but we will not leave,” she echoes her group’s stand on this crucial issue. Many of the younger generation youth listening nod in agreement.
MONTEVIDEO, Uruguay, Nov 03 (IPS) – For many of Argentina’s voters the choice in the 19 November presidential runoff is between the lesser of two evils: Sergio Massa, economy minister of a government that’s presiding over a once-in-a-generation economic meltdown with a whopping 140-per cent inflation rate, or Javier Milei, a far-right libertarian who admires Donald Trump, wants to shut down the Central Bank and wields a chainsaw in public as a symbol of his willingness to slash the state. Many will rue that it ever came to this.
A peculiar outsider
A post-modern media celebrity, Milei’s performance style is a perfect fit for social media. He’s easily angered, reacts violently and insults copiously. He’s unapologetically sexist and mocks identity politics.
Milei bangs the drum for ‘anarcho-capitalism’, an ultra-individualistic ideology in which the market has absolute pre-eminence: earlier this year, he described the sale of human organs as ‘just another market’.
To expand his appeal beyond this extreme economic niche he forged an alliance with the culturally conservative right. His running mate, Victoria Villarruel, represents the backlash against abortion – legalised after decades of civil society campaigning in 2020 – and sexual diversity and gender equality policies, along with reappraisal of the murderous military dictatorship that ruled Argentina between 1976 and 1983.
In the run-up to primary elections in August, the two mainstream coalitions – the centre-left incumbent Union for the Homeland (UP) and the centre-right opposition Together for Change (JxC) – displayed a notable lack of leadership and indulged in internal squabbles that showed very little empathy for people’s daily struggles. All they had to offer in the face of widespread concerns about inflation and insecurity were the candidacies of the current minister of the economy and a former minister of security. They made it easy for Milei to hold them responsible for decades of corruption, ineffectiveness and failure.
In Milei’s discourse, the hardworking, productive majority is being bled dry by taxation to maintain the privileges of a parasitic and corrupt political ‘caste’. His proposal is deceptively simple: shrink the state to a minimum to destroy the caste that lives off it, clearing their way for individual progress.
Milei gained traction among young voters, particularly young men, via TikTok. He found fertile ground among a generation that no longer expect to be better off than their parents. While many of his followers concede that his ideas may be a little crazy, they appear to be willing to take the risk of embracing the unknown on the basis that the really crazy plan would be to allow those long in control to retain their power and expect things to turn out differently. Milei has capitalised on the despair, hopelessness and accumulated anger so many rightfully feel.
Surprise after surprise
The first surprise came on 13 August, when Milei won the most votes of any candidate in the primaries.
Milei only entered politics in 2021, when the 17 per cent vote he amassed in the capital, Buenos Aires, sent him and two other libertarians to the National Congress. In the 2023 primaries he went much further, winning 30 per cent of the vote. He placed ahead of JxC, whose two candidates received a joint 28 per cent, and UP, the current incarnation of the Peronist Party, which took 27 per cent. The bulk of the UP vote, 21 per cent, went to Massa. That Peronism, once the dominant force, came third was a historic first.
The second surprise came on 22 October. Following the primaries, all talk was of Milei winning the presidency. He trumpeted his intent to win the first round outright. Measured against these expectations, his second place looks like an underperformance. But the fact that a candidate who wasn’t on the radar before the primaries has made the runoff shows how quickly the political landscape can shift.
In the October vote Milei took almost the exact share he’d received in the primaries. Massa finished above him with almost 37 per cent, displacing JxC, which lost four points on its second-place performance in the primaries.
The fact that the economy minister was able to distance himself from the government he’s part of – one often described as the worst in 40 years – to come first was viewed as a notable victory, even though his share was just about the lowest Peronism has ever received.
One explanation for Massa’s improved performance was turnout, which increased by eight points to almost 78 per cent – still low for a country with compulsory voting, but enough to make a difference. Much of the increase could be credited to the political machinery that mobilised voters on election day, aided by the minister-candidate pulling as many levers as he could to improve his chances. This included putting lots of instant cash into voters’ pockets, including through tax breaks benefiting targeted groups of workers and consumers.
An unpalatable decision
There’s still much uncertainty ahead. Economic failure is Milei’s best propaganda, so much will depend on how the economy behaves over the next couple of weeks. Milei and the destruction he represents can’t be written off.
Neither those currently in power nor those in the mainstream opposition recognise the obvious: Milei is their fault. They’ve held power for the best part of the past 40 years without effectively tackling any of the issues that concern people the most.
Many voters now feel they face an unpalatable choice between a corrupt and failing government and a dangerous disruptor. They fear that if they choose to keep Milei out, their votes may be misinterpreted as a show of active support for a continuity they also reject. What’s at stake here is more than one election. If Milei is kept at bay, the political dynamics leading to the current economic dysfunction will still need to be addressed – or the far-right threat to democracy won’t end with Milei.
ACAPULCO, Mexico, Nov 02 (IPS) – Acapulco is a paradise. A port of golden sunsets, toasted sand, and deep blue sea. Its dream beaches captivated the hearts of Elvis Presley and Elizabeth Taylor. US President John F. Kennedy chose its shores to spend his honeymoon with Jackie Kennedy. Its luxury hotels and the untamed sea made it the most famous tourist destination in Mexico.
Rosi OrozcoToday, Acapulco is devastated. A Category 5 hurricane—the deadliest possible rating—called “Otis” hit the beach on October 25 with incomparable force. No one anticipated it. Hours before it made landfall, it was just an inconvenient storm. Suddenly it became a deadly cyclone. Most of the hotels are destroyed, the sea swallowed people, houses were blown away, and dozens of people are dead.
In the last century, its beauty attracted the world’s most influential celebrities. Its tranquil mornings and lively nightlife attracted actresses, singers, politicians, aristocratic musicians, and families who wanted to spend their summers by the sea. I myself spent my youth at the family timeshare apartment in Acapulco, and it was there that I met my husband Alejandro, with whom I’ve been married for 40 years. My life is permanently connected to Acapulco.
Luxury businessmen, millionaire athletes, and Michelin-starred chefs arrived. Also drug dealers, money launderers, and men looking for girls and boys to rape in exchange for food or a few dollars for their parents who lived in the city’s poor areas.
Because there are two Acapulcos. They both share an airport and roads, so all roads lead to that pair of versions of the same city. There is a “diamond Acapulco” where the rich vacation with all the amenities at their disposal. And there is a “traditional Acapulco,” where the poor live who work for wealthy tourists.
The people who inhabit “diamond Acapulco” and “traditional Acapulco” do not usually cross paths. They live in the same city, but they are separated by golf courses and exclusive shopping malls. Only rich foreigners and wealthy nationals cross to the poor side when they feel a repugnant urge: to make their plans for child sex tourism a reality with girls and boys as young as 3 years old.
Acapulco is one of the most unequal tourist destinations in the world. In Mexico, it is the most unequal municipality of all: more than 60% of its 900,000 inhabitants live in extreme poverty, which means they do not know what they will eat today or tomorrow. They are the workers who serve plates of fresh seafood, who sweep marble floors, who fill the wine glasses of tourists.
For years, journalists and human rights organizations have told horrific stories that combine poverty, inequality, and sex tourism: a 6-year-old boy rented out to be photographed naked in exchange for milk and eggs; a 9-year-old girl sold to a Canadian tourist to be his wife for a month; homeless teenagers invited to sex parties on lavish yachts in exchange for food; parents and mothers waiting outside hotels for their children to be raped for a price paid in dollars per hour.
Those pedophiles and child molesters turned Acapulco into the country’s primary destination for child sexual tourism. They also led Mexico to the disgraceful second position in the production of child pornography, only surpassed by Thailand, according to data from the Mexican Chamber of Deputies and the United Nations Children’s Fund.
Today, Acapulco is a different place. Little remains of the port that enchanted singers Agustín Lara and Luis Miguel. There are thousands of poor families without homes, hundreds of workers who lost their jobs, and dozens of fishermen without boats to go out to sea to find sustenance. The destruction is so extensive that complete economic recovery is estimated to take decades, not years.
Under these conditions, childhood is at very high risk. Many families have lost so much that their bodies are the only currency they have left. And in the dirty business of forced prostitution, child bodies are the most sought after.
Amid this unprecedented crisis in Mexico, the Chamber of Deputies approved amendments to the general law against human trafficking. These changes aim to broaden the scope of the law enacted in 2012 and update it to address new technologies that traffickers and organized crime engaged in sexual exploitation can use. The wording has some issues that we are still analyzing, but it also includes positive aspects.
For example, it introduces new protections for individuals with injuries, intellectual disabilities, and Afro-Mexican towns and communities. The latter represent 6.5% of the total population in Guerrero and 4% of the residents in Acapulco, according to the National Population Council.
Civil society organizations are monitoring these changes and hope that the deputies will honor their commitment to protecting the victims.
Meanwhile, it is the responsibility of all, not just in Mexico, to help Acapulco back on its feet, a place that has given so much to both nationals and foreigners. It won’t be easy or quick, but every day we delay puts the vulnerable children at risk due to the magnitude of sexual tourism in that beautiful port.
After Hurricane Otis, Acapulco will be different. Its reconstruction is an opportunity to build a new city on the ruins of depravity, one with values and respect for human dignity. I long for the day to see it standing and for its coastline, beach, and air to remain a paradise, especially for children like me who grew up happily by the sea.
MONTEVIDEO, Uruguay, Oct 27 (IPS) – In response to lawsuits brought by LGBTQI+ activists, the Mauritius Supreme Court has issued two landmark judgments striking down the criminalisation of consensual sex between adult men as unconstitutional. Its reasoning turned upside down the argument used by anti-rights forces to attack LGBTQI+ activists in many African countries: it acknowledged that criminalisation is the foreign import rather than gay sex, and a relic of colonialism it’s high time to shake off.
A damning colonial legacy
As in so many other Commonwealth states, criminalisation of consensual sex between men in Mauritius dated back to the British colonial era. Former colonies inherited criminal provisions targeted at LGBTQI+ people and typically retained them on independence and through subsequent criminal law reforms long after the UK had changed its laws.
That’s exactly what happened in Mauritius, which declared independence in 1968 but retained Criminal Code provisions criminalising homosexuality dating from 1838. Section 250 of this law punished ‘sodomy’ with penalties of up to five years in prison.
Around the Commonwealth, same-sex sexual acts remain a criminal offence in 31 out of 56 states, often punishable with harsh jail sentences, and in three cases – Brunei, north Nigeria and Uganda – potentially with the death penalty.
Even if extreme punishments are unlikely to be applied, as was the case in Mauritius, they have a chilling effect. Legal prohibitions stigmatise LGBTQI+ people, legitimise social prejudice and hate speech, enable violence, obstruct access to key services, notably healthcare, and deny them the full protection of the law. As a result, LGBTQI+ lives remain shrouded in uncertainty and fear.
Conflicting trends
Only in two Commonwealth states – Rwanda and Vanuatu – were same-sex relations never criminalised. In others, decriminalisation has come over time. A few – Australia, Canada, Malta and the UK – began processes leading to decriminalisation in the 1960s and 1970s, followed by New Zealand in the 1980s and the Bahamas, Cyprus and South Africa in the 1990s.
As some of these states went on to make further progress, notably in equal marriage rights, civil society activism continued to fuel the decriminalisation trend in the 2010s, starting in Fiji, with nine countries following over the next decade. Four more – Antigua and Barbuda, Barbados, Singapore and St Kitts and Nevis – followed suit in 2022.
The visible backlash against LGBTQI+ rights in Commonwealth states such as Ghana, Kenya and Uganda, where small gains in rights and visibility are bringing a disproportionate anti-rights response, tend to grab the headlines. The struggles of LGBTQI+ people in these countries are vital. But this shouldn’t obscure an overall trend of progress.
There are conflicting processes at play, with a tug of war between forces struggling for the realisation of rights and those resisting advances in the name of tradition and a supposedly natural order. In this struggle setbacks are inevitable – but in the long term, the side of rights is winning.
A rights-ward trajectory
Things started to change in Mauritius in the mid-1990s, when the issue of healthcare for LGBTQI+ people was first raised in the National Assembly in relation to HIV/AIDS prevention, care and treatment. The country’s first public Pride event was held in 2005, and soon afterwards, in 2008, the Employment Rights Act banned discrimination based on sexual orientation. In 2012, the Equal Opportunities Act came into force, mandating protections in employment, education, housing and the provision of goods or services.
In October 2019 LGBTQI+ rights activist Abdool Ridwan Firaas Ah Seek, backed by his LGBTQI+ organisation Collectif Arc-en-Ciel (Rainbow Collective), filed a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of section 250. Two similar challenges had been filed the previous month, including one by Najeeb Ahmad Fokeerbux of the Young Queer Alliance, alongside three other plaintiffs.
On 4 October 2023, the Supreme Court delivered its historic decisions. In the Ah Seek case, it ruled that the constitution’s ban of discrimination based on sex includes sexual orientation, and that the prohibition of sex between consenting adult men was discriminatory and therefore unconstitutional. In the Fokeerbux case, it sustained the plaintiffs’ argument that the sodomy provision treated gay men as criminals and their sexuality as a crime and disrespected their relationships.
Legal and social change
Having decriminalised same-sex relations, Mauritius now places 54 out of 197 countries on Equaldex’s Equality Index, which ranks countries on their LGBTQI+-friendliness. The island nation scores 58 out of 100 points, a measure of all that remains to be done, even though it ranks far above the African region as a whole, which averages 28 points.
Outstanding issues in Mauritius include full protections against discrimination, marriage equality and adoption rights and recognition and protections for transgender people.
Mauritius scores higher for its legal situation than it does for public attitudes towards LGBTQI+ people. A recent survey showed that tolerance towards LGBTQI+ people has increased but there’s still work to be done. For the LGBTQI+ rights movement, it’s clear that while legal advances help normalise the existence of LGBTQI+ people, changing laws and policies is not enough.
A welcome opportunity for visibility came three weeks after the Supreme Court ruling, when the Pride march returned to the streets of Mauritius after a two-year absence. But the opportunity was also seized by an anti-rights group to stage a demonstration against advances in LGBTQI+ rights.
Who’s next?
The Mauritius Supreme Court ruling was welcomed by United Nations human rights experts and agencies, which encouraged the state to continue along the reform path and called on the 66 countries that still criminalise gay sex – almost half of them in Africa – to follow suit.
The landmark Mauritius court ruling is part of a global trend that’s likely to continue. Civil society’s successes should offer further inspiration for advocacy efforts elsewhere. But given the potential for backlash, there’s also a need to protect and defend rights and take violations of LGBTQI+ people’s rights seriously wherever they occur.
We use cookies on our website to give you the most relevant experience by remembering your preferences and repeat visits. By clicking “Accept”, you consent to the use of ALL the cookies.
This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website. Out of these, the cookies that are categorized as necessary are stored on your browser as they are essential for the working of basic functionalities of the website. We also use third-party cookies that help us analyze and understand how you use this website. These cookies will be stored in your browser only with your consent. You also have the option to opt-out of these cookies. But opting out of some of these cookies may affect your browsing experience.
Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. These cookies ensure basic functionalities and security features of the website, anonymously.
Cookie
Duration
Description
cookielawinfo-checkbox-analytics
11 months
This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Analytics".
cookielawinfo-checkbox-functional
11 months
The cookie is set by GDPR cookie consent to record the user consent for the cookies in the category "Functional".
cookielawinfo-checkbox-necessary
11 months
This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookies is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Necessary".
cookielawinfo-checkbox-others
11 months
This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Other.
cookielawinfo-checkbox-performance
11 months
This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Performance".
viewed_cookie_policy
11 months
The cookie is set by the GDPR Cookie Consent plugin and is used to store whether or not user has consented to the use of cookies. It does not store any personal data.
Functional cookies help to perform certain functionalities like sharing the content of the website on social media platforms, collect feedbacks, and other third-party features.
Performance cookies are used to understand and analyze the key performance indexes of the website which helps in delivering a better user experience for the visitors.
Analytical cookies are used to understand how visitors interact with the website. These cookies help provide information on metrics the number of visitors, bounce rate, traffic source, etc.
Advertisement cookies are used to provide visitors with relevant ads and marketing campaigns. These cookies track visitors across websites and collect information to provide customized ads.
