Tag: Farhana Haque Rahman

Media Freedom is Vital but have we Passed Peak Press? — Global Issues

  • Opinion by Farhana Haque Rahman (toronto, canada)
  • Inter Press Service

TORONTO, Canada, Apr 30 (IPS) – Peak oil was first up, followed by peak gas, gold and others, as if the world was draining natural resources like toilet roll panic buying in a lockdown supermarket. But should we now be worried about Peak Press?

Farhana Haque RahmanShifting and even intangible is it possible that we are already sliding downhill, and that moment of peak media freedom is disappearing in the rear-view mirror?

World Press Freedom Day, child of the UN General Assembly, marks its 30th birthday on May 3 – still relatively young, but definitely showing signs of wear and tear.

Measuring the state of its vital organs is not an exact science. The Paris-based non-profit media watchdog Reporters Without Borders (RSF) compiles an annual and thorough medical bulletin, and the latest check-up, country-by-country, makes for mostly alarming reading.

There are common denominators in all the ailments afflicting press freedom around the world, but with each region or continent seeming to specialise in certain characteristics.

Asia is particularly worrying, with the common theme of muscle-flexing autocrats vying for absolute control of information and exercising what RSF calls a dramatic deterioration of press freedom. Post-coup Myanmar and China are the world’s biggest jailers of journalists. Afghanistan back under the Taliban is brutally repressive. North Korea brings up the rear of the rankings, again.

Hong Kong, under China’s imposition of the draconian national security law, fell 68 places in the RSF league table. Vietnam and Singapore also tightened their grip on the media.

Anuradha Bhasin, executive editor of The Kashmir Times recently wrote in The New York Times that his newspaper “may not survive Mr. Modi. His repressive media policies are destroying Kashmiri journalism, intimidating media outlets into serving as government mouthpieces and creating an information vacuum in our region of about 13 million people.”

This year Pakistan was placed at 157 among 180 countries on RSF’s World Press Freedom Index list. The country has been ruled by the military for more than half of it’s 75 years of independence since 1947. In a report last year, along with a list of global leaders who suppressed opposing voices, RSF named former Prime Minister Imran Khan as one of the “predators of press freedom”.

Repression is dressed up in legislation as seen in Bangladesh’s Digital Security Act, passed in 2018 and applied to journalists, activists and others.Two days after a journalist with Prothom Alo was detained, the UN Human Rights Chief Volker Türk called on Bangladesh to suspend application of the DSA immediately.

Where Asia can be ruthless and draconian, it is lawlessness and societal fragmentation that make parts of Latin America the most dangerous place for journalists. Mexico and Haiti lead the way. At least 67 journalists and media workers were killed in 2022, an increase of almost 50 percent on 2021, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists. Research published by the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism found that 30 to 42 media workers were killed in Latin America in the line of duty.

Rocío Gallegos, a journalist and co-founder of La Verdad Juárez, an investigative journalism outlet in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, was quoted as saying the situation is desperate and complex, not just due to growing conditions for violence, but because there is “less and less support from society towards journalists and journalism.”

Courageous reporters like Gallegos and the underground citizen journalists covering Myanmar’s horrific civil war inspire us, and lend hope to the survival of the ideals of a free press.

But it is in the West, the cradle of a free media, that we can feel most cynicism over the frightening erosion of media credibility led by its very own moguls and conglomerates.

The wanton and deliberate peddling of conspiracy theories over the 2020 US election results by Fox News (among others) was laid bare by the defamation case brought by Dominion Voting Systems. Fox settled out of court for $787 million in damages. Its lies were not trivial as we know. Five people died as a result of the January 2021 storming of the US Capitol by a mob of Donald Trump’s supporters.

Democracies need truth-telling media to flourish, and it was telling that much of the media coverage focused instead on 92-year-old Rupert Murdoch and his family succession machinations.

Fox News was – and quite possibly will remain — the ultimate mainstream player in the theatre of performance media, where facts don’t get in the way of a good conspiracy.

The recent demise of BuzzFeed News and its Pulitzer-prize winning department can also be seen as marking the end of an era. The suggestion by its founder, Jonah Peretti, that there may not be a sustainable business model for high-quality online news should be ringing alarm bells everywhere.

To add to this potentially toxic mix, where social media platforms become a blurry cauldron of conspiracy theories and state-sponsored disinformation, we now have to contend with the new disruptive age of ChatGPT.

The polarisation of the press in the West and its weaponisation in superpower conflicts are highly damaging trends. Russia’s arrest of Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich and China’s detention of Taiwan publisher Li Yanhe are the most recent examples. A possible Biden-Trump rematch in the 2024 US elections, and the dangerous deterioration in Sino-US relations threaten to exacerbate both polarisation and weaponisation of the media.

As for Peak Oil – the world may have passed that point already, and economists are debating whether 2019 was when overall fossil fuel demand reached its zenith. There are many reasons for this historic shift, not least that the alternatives, such as renewable energy, are becoming cheaper.

But what is the substitute for a free and healthy press – the lifeblood of free and healthy societies? The alternatives are clearly on view all around us and they don’t look good.

Farhana Haque Rahman is Senior Vice President of IPS Inter Press Service; a journalist and communications expert, she is a former senior official of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization and the International Fund for Agricultural Development.

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War, Famine, Disease, Disasters 2022 a Year Staring at Apocalypse — Global Issues

  • Opinion by Farhana Haque Rahman (toronto, canada)
  • Inter Press Service

TORONTO, Canada, Dec 23 (IPS) – A year that started with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and is ending with famine in Africa, while still spreading death and misery through an enduring pandemic and a deteriorating climate crisis — 2022 has been an apocalyptic warning of the frailty of our planet and the woeful shortcomings of humankind.

Farhana Haque RahmanBeyond the stark statistics of millions of people displaced by war and natural disasters, it has been a 12 months that tragically highlighted our global interconnections and how a confluence of events and trends can bring another year of record levels of hunger.

Tens of thousands of soldiers and civilians (numbers given by the UN and involved parties vary enormously) have been killed in Ukraine since Russia launched war on February 24. More than 7.8 million Ukrainians have fled the country. Billions of dollars have been spent on armaments.

But the impact of the war has been felt worldwide, driving up prices of basic commodities such as oil, gas, grain, sunflower oil and fertilisers. Somalia, now in the grip of the worst drought to hit the Horn of Africa in 40 years, used to import 90 per cent of its wheat from Russia and Ukraine.

Commodities have been weaponised. Countries slipped back into recession, just as they were slowly recovering from the economic distress of Covid-19 lockdowns. A deepening relationship between sanctioned Russia and an energy- hungry China exacerbated existing tensions with the US over Taiwan. The result? China broke off climate cooperation efforts with the US in the run-up to the COP27 climate conference hosted by Egypt in November with 200 countries and 35,000 people attending.

Against the backdrop of devastating floods in Pakistan and West Africa, and with 2022 on its way to becoming one of the five hottest years on record, agriculture and food security joined the COP27 agenda. Talks ran into extra time, as they tend to, and countries of the global South emerged with the landmark creation of a special fund paid by wealthier countries to address the Loss and Damage caused by climate change in the most vulnerable nations.

“After 30 contentious years, delayed tactics by wealthy countries, a renewed spirit of solidarity, empathy and cooperation prevailed, resulting in the historic establishment of a dedicated fund,” said Yamide Dagnet, director for climate justice at the Open Society Foundations, reflecting a sense of hard fought victory among developing countries.

Still unresolved however is which countries will give money and to whom. China in particular seems uneasy over which category it belongs to. However COP27 joined its 26 forerunners since 1995 in not reaching a binding agreement on cutting fossil fuel burning which has continued to rise globally, except for a brief pandemic dip. For this, many branded it a failure. “Humanity has a choice: cooperate or perish. It is either a Climate Solidarity Pact – or a Collective Suicide Pact,” UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres told the opening plenary session. By the end, many felt the conference had concluded with the latter. Rather than falling, the latest estimates from the Global Carbon Project show that total worldwide CO2 emissions in 2022 have reached near-record levels.

Victims of devastating floods, heatwaves and forest fires, and severe drought in Central Sahel and East Africa surely needed no confirmation from the final decision text of COP27 which recognises “the fundamental priority of safeguarding food security and ending hunger” and the vulnerability of food production to climate change.

In this respect, COP27 recognised the importance of nature-based solutions – a theme driven by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) in ringing alarm bells on the degraded soil, water sources and eco-systems caused by intensive agriculture with overuse of fertilisers and pesticides. According to FAO, more than 25 percent of arable soils worldwide are degraded, and the equivalent of a football pitch of soil is eroded every five seconds. The planet’s bio-diversity is being devastated as a result. As highlighted by the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) in stressing the vital connections between Nature and people, a landmark report in July found that 50,000 wild species provide food, osmetics, shelter, clothing, medicine and inspiration. Many face extinction. As international agencies and NGOs (and media outlets) jostled and competed for funding to deal with the fallout from wars and climate emergencies, the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) which is active in the Sahel cautioned that only 1.7 per cent of all climate finance reaches small-scale producers in developing countries and as little as 8% of overseas aid goes to projects focused primarily on gender equality. Women’s empowerment has been made a major focus of ASAP+, IFAD’s new climate change financing mechanism.

Women and girls are paying “an unacceptably high price” among communities hit by severe drought in the Horn of Africa, according to the UN Population Fund (UNFPA). It launched a $113.7 million appeal to scale-up life-saving reproductive health and protection services, including establishment of mobile and static clinics in displacement sites.

Also overshadowed by wars and pandemics in 2022 were marginalised communities lacking a voice, suffering diseases such as leprosy or exploited in the form of child labour.

Yohei Sasakawa, WHO Goodwill Ambassador for Leprosy Elimination, says many issues have been sidelined because of the Covid-19 pandemic. Society has the knowledge and means to stop and cure leprosy, he says in the ‘Don’t Forget Leprosy’ campaign by the Sasakawa Leprosy Initiative.

“When people are still being discriminated against even after being cured, society has a disease. If we can cure society of this disease—discrimination—it would be truly epoch-making,” he told IPS.

A similar message was delivered by Nobel Laureate Kailash Satyarthi who told the 5th Global Conference on the Elimination of Child Labour that a mere $53 billion per annum – equivalent to 10 days of military spending – would ensure all children in all countries benefit from social protection. International Labour Organisation and UNICEF statistics from 2020 show at least 160 million children are involved in child labour, a surge of 8.4 million in four years. Children denied education became a burning issue in Afghanistan in March when the Taliban declared that girls would be banned from secondary education. The UN said 1.1 million girls were affected. The late-night reversal of a decision by Taliban authorities to allow girls from grades 7 to 12 to return to school was met with outrage and distress, inside and outside Afghanistan. Denial of human rights to girls and women has fuelled the desire of many to get out of Afghanistan and seek a better life elsewhere, adding to the millions around the world forced to flee their homes because of conflict, repression or disaster. The Ukraine conflict has displaced more than 14 million people, about a third of the population.

A UN Office on Drugs and Crime report on trafficking warns that refugees from Ukraine are at risk of including sexual exploitation, forced labour, illegal adoption and surrogacy, forced begging and forced criminality.

As they come over border crossings into Poland, refugees – including victims of rape – are greeted with posters and flyers carrying warnings about jail terms for breaking local abortion laws, images of miscarried foetuses, and a quote from Mother Theresa saying: “Abortion is the greatest threat to peace”.

UNDP, which is assisting the Ukraine government in getting access to public services for IDPs, says in its 2022 report, Turning the tide on internal displacement, that earlier and increased support to development is an essential condition for emerging from crisis in a sustainable way.

“More efforts are needed to end the marginalization of internally displaced people, who must be able to exercise their full rights as citizens including through access to vital services such as health care, education, social protection and job opportunities” said Achim Steiner, UNDP Administrator.

Nearly one million Rohingya refugees languishing in refugee camps in Bangladesh after being driven out of Myanmar in waves since 2016 would surely agree.

Asif Saleh, executive director of BRAC, said to be the world’s largest NGO and founded by Sir Fazle after the independence of Bangladesh in 1972, says work needs to “shift towards a development-like approach from a very short-term umanitarian crisis-focused approach”. But the only solution for the Rohingya refugees is their sustainable and voluntary repatriation to Myanmar. As 2022 closes, that unfortunately looks highly unlikely as the military junta that seized power in 2021 fights ethnic armed organisations on multiple fronts.

There was one seismic milestone event that happened in late 2022 although no one is quite sure exactly where and when. The few people to witness it were not aware either – not that it prevented the UN from declaring it a special day. The birth of the 8 billionth person was celebrated on November 15. The world’s population has doubled from 4 billion in 1974 and UN projections suggest we will be supporting about 9.7 billion people in 2050. Global population is forecast to peak at about 10.4 billion in the 2080s.

Inger Andersen, executive director of the UN environment programme, sent a message to the baby, and the rest of the world, as countries meet in Montreal for the COP15 biodiversity conference this month.

“We’ve just welcomed the 8 billionth member of the human race on this planet. That’s a wonderful birth of a baby, of course. But we need to understand that the more people there are, the more we put the Earth under heavy pressure,” she said.

Farhana Haque Rahman is Senior Vice President of IPS Inter Press Service and Executive Director IPS Noram; she served as the elected Director General of IPS from 2015-2019. A journalist and communications expert, she is a former senior official of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization and the International Fund for Agricultural Development.

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World Press Freedom Faces a Perfect Storm — Global Issues

  • Opinion by Farhana Haque Rahman (toronto, canada)
  • Inter Press Service

TORONTO, Canada, Apr 29 (IPS) – The UN will be commemorating World Press Freedom Day on May 3. The following article is part of a series of IPS features and opinion pieces focused on media freedom globally.Empowered by a global pandemic and the drum beats of war, the strongest despots are growing more despotic, and criminal cartels even more brazen in their violence. Extremists of various hues are also stepping out of the shadows.

Just when the world most needs press freedom to thrive, the liberties that societies only really treasure when they are emasculated are coming under more pressure from different directions, old and new.

Farhana Haque RahmanThe 2021 World Press Freedom Index measured by Reporters Without Borders (RSF) declined last year, and is 12% down since first issued in 2013. RSF reported “a dramatic deterioration in people’s access to information and an increase in obstacles to news coverage”. The coronavirus pandemic was cited as widely used to block journalists’ access to information.

Lest you think that this deterioration is the preserve of less developed countries under autocratic rule, RSF noted an increase in attacks against journalists and arbitrary arrests in Germany, France, Italy and several other European states.

This year –as we approach World Press Freedom Day on May 3 — is measurably worse already, notably in Russia and China, but also in Mexico with an escalation of targeted killings of journalists by suspected drug traffickers.

Some 200 Russian journalists and several dozen foreign reporters have left Russia since the passing of a draconian media law on March 4 which criminalises “deliberately false” information. It outlaws calling the invasion of Ukraine a “war”. In addition Russia is still applying its “foreign agents” legislation to punish and intimidate critical media outlets, including PASMI dedicated exclusively to fighting corruption.

“The Russian authorities’ crackdown on independent media is escalating at breakneck speed. Evidently unsatisfied with merely blocking critical news sites or forcing reporters into exile, the Kremlin now seeks to incarcerate journalists who report on anti-war protests or Russian soldiers who refuse to fight in Ukraine,” Amnesty International said on April 14 commenting on the arrests of two journalists in the Russian republics of Altay and Khakassia.

“Apart from state propaganda, there is no media landscape in Russia,” Journalist Alexey Kovalyov, now based in Riga, told Al Jazeera. The power of that propaganda must not be underestimated. Accounts are widespread of people living in Ukraine telling relatives in Russia that they are being bombed by the Russian army but their own family members refuse to believe them.

The “world’s biggest jailer of press freedom defenders”, reports RSF, is however China, with 115 men and women currently incarcerated. China ranks 177 out of the 180 countries and territories surveyed. “Media freedom in China is declining at breakneck speed,” the Foreign Correspondents Club (FCC) stated in January. China has labelled the FCC an “illegal organisation” and appears in its rhetoric to be encouraging an exodus of foreign journalists.

Free media in Hong Kong, once among the freest in Asia, has been almost completely dismantled, according to Hong Kong Watch, a UK-based advocacy group. Its recent report followed the HK FCC’s announcement it would suspend its Human Rights Press Awards as it risked violating the city’s national security law imposed by Beijing in 2020.

Whereas Russia and China are deploying “lawfare” against independent journalists and big companies in developed countries are stifling the press with “vexatious” lawsuits, it is more a legal wasteland or absence of the state that is killing journalists in Mexico, among others.

A wave of murders has targeted at least eight journalists so far this year, with seven killed in all of 2021, making Mexico under populist President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador one of the most dangerous countries for the press. Journalists, in the words of Adela Navarro Bello, director of the Tijuana weekly Zeta, are “caught in the crossfire between the threats and bullets of narco-traffickers and organised crime and the threats and verbal attacks and attempts to morally annihilate us from the federal and state governments”.

International human rights organisation Article 19 says the Mexican government’s denial of what is happening “results in no urgent measures being taken to stop this brutal spiral of violence”.

A similar pattern is seen in Bangladesh where suspected narco-traffickers killed Bangladeshi journalist Mohiuddin Sarker Nayeem on April 13.

The Committee to Protect Journalists publishes an annual Global Impunity Index and notes that no one has been held to account in 81% of journalist murders worldwide over the past 10 years. Somalia tops the list, with Mexico ranked 6th and Bangladesh 11th.

State-sponsored or tolerated violence and political persecution aside, world press freedom is also being eroded in an insidious way in places where such freedoms are commonly understood to be vital in sustaining well-functioning democracies. Coupled with the apparently unstoppable rise of social media as a source of information – some surveys suggest 50% of adults in the US and UK get their news from social media – the state of much of the traditional press, digital or not, is far from healthy.

The annual Digital News Report by the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism found the US ranked last in media trust, at 29%, among 92,000 news consumers polled in 46 countries. (Finland came top).

Governments must not be passive while the same powerful corporate lobbies that have spent fortunes over decades spreading climate dis/misinformation in traditional media now feed on the rapacity of Big Tech social media, which are failing to disclose comprehensive policies to combat this. Climate disinformation as a threat to climate action is highlighted in the latest UN Climate Reports.

Press offices of international organisations, particularly the UN and large INGOs, also have a particular responsibility to uphold media freedom by eschewing the corporate dark arts of delay, denial and obfuscation.

A new proposal by the EU executive to protect journalists and campaigners from so-called vexatious lawsuits is highly welcome. The move would target “strategic lawsuits against public participation” known as Slapps, where the rich misuse legal means to silence troublesome investigative reporters and NGOs.

No press freedom, no democracy. Just like freedom of speech, that does not mean a free press can publish whatever it wants. Both need to be defined and, in these very dark times, defended.

Farhana Haque Rahman is Senior Vice President of IPS Inter Press Service and Executive Director IPS North America, including it’s UN Bureau; she served as the elected Director General of IPS from 2015-2019. A journalist and communications expert, she is a former senior official of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization and the International Fund for Agricultural Development.

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