Black Sea Grain Initiative has been renewed – for now. Credit: Ihor Oinua/Unsplash
by Alexander Kozul-Wright (geneva)
Inter Press Service
GENEVA, Mar 22 (IPS) – Given the complex interplay between geopolitics and financial markets, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 sent shockwaves across the global economy. Admittedly, the implications both within and between countries have varied. However, there were some common denominators, including higher commodity prices.
Price disruptions were particularly severe for ‘soft’ agricultural commodities. During peacetime, Russia and Ukraine produced a large amount of the world’s grain, supplying 28 percent of globally traded wheat and 75 percent of sunflower products. Before the war, they were also among the world’s top providers of barley and corn.
After the start of hostilities, exports of grain were severely disrupted. For four months, Russian military vessels blocked Ukrainian ports. Supply constraints triggered market volatility and price rises. Wheat, for instance, reached a record high in March 2022. This left millions of people, particularly in developing countries, at the frontline of a food crisis.
Then, in July 2022, two agreements were signed: one was a memorandum of understanding between the UN and Moscow to facilitate global access for Russia’s food and fertilizer exports; the second was the Black Sea Grain Initiative (BSGI), signed by Russia and Ukraine, facilitating the safe export of grain and other foodstuffs from Ukrainian ports via the Black Sea.
Brokered by the UN and Turkey, the BSGI opened a protected maritime corridor through Ukraine. The agreement assuaged concerns about global grain supplies and led to price declines. Over 900 ships of grain and other foodstuffs have left Ukraine’s major ports since last summer.
Prior to the conflict, between 5-6 million tons of grain were exported from Ukraine’s seaports every month, according to the International Grains Council. By the end-2022, Ukraine had once again reached its historical exporting capacity (at just under 5 million tons). Production responses elsewhere also helped to increase global supplies.
Still, Ukrainian exports to developing countries remain below pre-war levels. And while unblocking the trade corridor did help to address food insecurity in 2022, export backlogs were significant. Today, grain prices (while they have come down in recent months) remain elevated.
Against this backdrop, negotiations between UN officials and Russian Federation representatives – headed by Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Vershinin – kicked off in Geneva last Monday on a possible extension of the BSGI. Subsequent to a four-month renewal last year, the deal was set to expire on March 18th.
Earlier this month, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres highlighted the deal’s importance. He stressed that “it contributed to lowering global food costs and offered critical relief to people…, particularly in low-income countries.” Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, also called for the initiative to be extended.
For their part, Russian officials argued that ‘hidden’ sanctions – targeting fertilizer firms and the country’s main agricultural bank – have undermined commodity exports. By way of background, exemptions were carved out for some Russian food and fertilizer products after Western sanctions first targeted the Kremlin in February 2022.
In Geneva, delegates stressed that over-compliance and market avoidance by private companies had resulted in Russian commodity exports being under-traded. They noted that sanctions on its payments, logistics, and insurance systems created a barrier for Moscow to sell its grains and fertilisers in international markets.
In response, they requested that national jurisdictions enhance exemption clarifications for food and fertilizers products. “I think it’s a fair request,” says Jayati Ghosh, professor of economics at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. “Hidden sanctions are impeding Russian financial transactions and undermining allegedly exempted exports.”
When the BSGI was last renewed in November, Russia threatened to renege on the deal unless hidden sanctions were addressed. While they eventually agreed to an extension, Moscow has since insisted that its own agricultural exports (notably ammonia) be included in the BSGI as a condition for its renewal.
Under the deal’s latest iteration, Russia’s pre-condition went notably unaddressed. Moscow, in turn, agreed to extend the deal for just two months. Ukraine, meanwhile, issued conflicting statements on the matter. Over the weekend, Deputy Prime Minister Oleksandr Kubrakov tweeted that the agreement had been extended for four months.
So far, the UN has not specified the length of the renewal, but “this could be the last time an extension is agreed,” according to Ghosh. “Russia is probably going to use this latest agreement as a threat. Rejecting a third extension in the spring may force the international community to listen to their concerns”.
WASHINGTON DC, Mar 21 (IPS) – It’s one of the great injustices of this era that countries contributing negligible amounts to global carbon emissions are now feeling the most harrowing impacts of climate change.
Pakistan, which makes up less than 1 percent of the world’s carbon footprint, had a third of its territory under water in last year’s floods. Parts of Kenya, Ethiopia and Somalia are experiencing the worst drought in 70 years of record-keeping, threatening millions with famine, even though the entire continent of Africa contributes less than 4 percent of global carbon emissions.
The World Bank and the donor countries that control it can do more to step up and tackle this generational challenge. To make the World Bank and other multilateral lending institutions fit for purpose in the 21st century, leaders need to figure out how to raise and leverage the massive amounts of capital that are going to be necessary in the coming years to help countries adapt to and mitigate a changing climate.
For years, climate financing took a back seat to the bank’s twin goals of reducing extreme poverty and promoting shared prosperity. Today, it is integral to achieving those goals. Helping the poorest of the poor will increasingly mean ensuring access to drought-resistant seeds and access to water as lakes dry up. In middle-income countries, promoting shared prosperity will increasingly mean expanding access to reliable, affordable clean energy.
The World Bank has played an active role in making progress in those areas. It has begun to help countries incorporate climate change into their overall economic development plans and should continue this necessary work.
Climate-related funding has already grown in importance at the bank; in fact, some of the poorest countries are already worried that it will cut into funding for basics like education and health care. That’s why additional funding is needed to assure them that taking global action on climate won’t come at the expense of their development.
About 36 percent of the money the World Bank lent last year was classified as climate related, although questions have been raised about how classifications are made. That comes to nearly $32 billion — a big jump from previous years, but still far short of what is needed.
In 2009, donor countries promised to mobilize $100 billion a year by 2020 to help lower income countries with mitigation and adaptation. They only mustered $83 billion, $36.9 billion of which came from multilateral development banks and climate funds, in 2020.
Those unfulfilled promises haven’t gone unnoticed. According to Ephraim Mwepya Shitima, chair of the African Group of Negotiators on climate change, many developing countries, including those in Africa, have put forth ambitious plans to curb emissions in the future, but have been “hampered by the pledged financial support, which are falling short of expectations.”
Although Covid, inflation and the energy crisis related to the war in Ukraine have strained government budgets everywhere, it would be shortsighted to ignore the significance and potential of investing in climate financing.
According to Devesh Kapur, a professor at Johns Hopkins and co-author of a history of the World Bank, raising an additional $100 billion in lending capacity for the World Bank could require donors to put up about $20 billion in cash. The cost to the United States, which holds 16 percent of shares, would be $3.2 billion, an amount that could be paid out over five years.
Getting new money in the door is important, but it’s not enough. The bank also should adopt new strategies and new rules that will allow it to funnel money more quickly to where it is needed the most and will be used most effectively.
For instance, some small island states have per capita incomes that are too high for concessional loans according to World Bank rules, despite their acute vulnerability to climate change. Those rules should be revisited, in some cases, to make sure that climate financing is prioritizing the areas that will make the biggest difference.
The bank should also provide more grants and below-market financing related to climate, as Senator Ed Markey of Massachusetts has called for. The World Bank and multilateral development banks provided only 15 percent of their adaptation finance and less than 5 percent of mitigation finance through grants — a fraction he called “shockingly low.”
By comparison, Green Climate Fund, a multilateral climate fund, issued grants 41 percent of the time for adaptation and mitigation projects.The transformation that is required at the World Bank will not be easy.
But the departure of its former president, David Malpass, who says he will resign in June, might help build confidence in the bank’s climate work. Mr. Malpass, who was nominated by the Trump administration in 2019, has been the subject of controversy since his bewildering public refusal last year to acknowledge the role of human activity in extreme weather resulting from climate change.
Ajay Banga, the former chief executive of Mastercard, is President Biden’s nominee to lead the bank, and is likely to be confirmed next month. The leadership change presents an opportunity to clarify the bank’s role and lay out an ambitious vision for its future. Mr. Banga, who has recently visited several African countries, has said that he sees the bank’s goals of addressing poverty, shared growth and climate as “intertwined.”
Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, who has been at the forefront of calls to overhaul the bank and to elevate the issue of climate, also noted the need for more concessional financing in a recent speech at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
The bank was designed to lend to individual countries to spur economic growth within their own borders, but that model doesn’t work to address global problems like climate change, she said, because the benefits “stretch far beyond the borders of the country where a given project takes place.”
If the benefits of investing in climate change adaptation and mitigation are shared, so should the costs.
The Center for Global Development works to reduce global poverty and improve lives through innovative economic research that drives better policy and practice by the world’s top decision makers.
Benson Musyoka rides his motorcycle from Kamboo health centre to transport vaccines to Yindalani village. Photo Joyce Chimbi/IPS
by Joyce Chimbi (nairobi)
Inter Press Service
NAIROBI, Mar 13 (IPS) – Up until 2019, nurses in three health facilities located in the semi-arid south-eastern Kenya region of Makueni County struggled to bring critical health services closer to a hard-to-reach population scattered across three remote, far-flung villages.
“Kamboo, Yindalani and Yiuma Mavui villages are located 17 and 28 kilometres away from Makindu sub-county hospital, and 10 and 22 kilometres away from the nearest electricity grid,” Benson Musyoka, the nurse in charge of Ndalani dispensary in Yindalani village tells IPS.
Without a cold chain capacity to store vital vaccines and drugs, health facilities records show vaccination coverage across these villages was well below 25 percent.
Babies were delivered at home because mothers could not raise 6 to 12 USDs to hire a boda boda or motorbike taxi, which is the only means of transportation in the area. Others could not reach the hospital in time to deliver.
“Every morning, I would collect vaccines at Makindu sub-county hospital and transport them inside a vaccine carrier box to Ndalani dispensary. Once the vaccines are inside the carrier box, they are only viable for up to six hours, at which point whatever doses will have remained unused must be returned to storage at Makindu sub-county hospital for refrigeration or thrown away,” Musyoka expounds.
In February 2019, a groundbreaking donation of a solar-powered freezer to the Kamboo health centre significantly improved availability and access to vaccinations as well as maternal health services across the three villages and surrounding areas.
Francis Muli, the nurse in charge of Kamboo health centre, tells IPS that without a fridge or freezer, “you cannot stock Oxytocin, and without Oxytocin, you cannot provide labour and delivery services.”
He says it would be extremely dangerous to do so because Oxytocin is injected into all mothers immediately after delivery to prevent postpartum haemorrhage. Oxytocin is also used to induce labour.
As recommended by the World Health Organization, Oxytocin is the gold standard for preventing postpartum haemorrhage and is central to Kenya’s ambitious goal to achieve zero preventable maternal deaths.
In 2017, the Ministry of Health identified sub-standard care in 9 out of 10 maternal deaths owing to postpartum haemorrhage. Overall, postpartum haemorrhage accounts for 25 percent of maternal deaths in this East African nation.
Usungu dispensary and Ndalani dispensary are each located 10 kilometres away from Kamboo health centre in different directions. Nurses in charge of the facilities no longer make the long journey of 28 kilometres to and another 28 kilometres from Makindu to collect and return unused vaccine doses on vaccination days.
“We collect vaccine doses from Makindu sub-county hospital at the beginning of the month and store them in the freezer at Kamboo health centre. The freezer is large enough to store thousands of various vaccine doses collected from the sub-county hospital for all three facilities,” says Antony Matali, the nurse in charge of Usungu dispensary in Yiuma Mavui village.
Two to three times a week, Matali and Musyoka collect doses of various vaccines, including all standard routine immunization vaccines, with the exception of Yellow Fever. The vaccines are transported to their respective dispensaries in a carrier box that can hold up to 500 doses of different vaccines, including the COVID-19 vaccines. All three facilities have recorded significant improvement in immunization coverage from a low of 25 percent.
At Kamboo health centre, where the freezer is domiciled, records show measles immunization rate has surpassed the target of 100 percent to include additional clients outside the catchment population area of 4,560 people. Overall immunization coverage is at 95 percent, well above the government target of 90 percent.
At Ndalani dispensary, the immunization rate for measles has also surpassed the target of 100 percent as additional patients, or transit patients from four surrounding villages and neighbouring Kitui County, receive services at the dispensary. The overall vaccination rate for all standard vaccines is 50 to 65 percent.
In the Usungu dispensary, the vaccination rate for measles is at 75 percent, and for other vaccines, coverage is hovering at the 50 percent mark.
“Usungu and Ndalani have not reached the 90 percent mark because we suffer from both missed opportunities and dropouts. Missed opportunities are patients who drop by a facility seeking a service and find that it is not available at that very moment. Dropouts are those who feel inconvenienced if they do not find what they need in their subsequent visits, so they drop out along the way,” Musyoka explains.
A cold chain or storage facility such as the solar-powered freezer, Muli says, is the cornerstone of any primary health unit in cash-strapped rural settings, and all services related to mother and child are the pillars of any health facility. Without these services, he emphasizes, all you have is brick and mortar.
“At Usungu and Ndalani, we are currently not offering labour and delivery services because we do not have Oxytocin in the facility at all times due to lack of storage, and we cannot carry it around in the hope that a delivery will materialize that day due to the six-hour time limit,” Musyoka expounds.
Still, pregnant women receive the standard tetanus jabs and all other prenatal services, but close to the delivery period, Ndalani and Usungu refer the women to the Kamboo health centre and follow-up to ensure that they receive referred services. Facility records show zero infant and maternal mortality.
Annually, the Ministry of Health targets to vaccinate at least 1.5 million children against vaccine-preventable diseases such as measles, polio, tuberculosis, diarrhoea and pneumonia. Currently, one in six children under one year does not complete their scheduled vaccines.
Only one in two children below two years have received the second jab of Measles-Rubella, and only one in three girls aged 10 have received two doses of the HPV vaccine which protects against cervical cancer.
Ongoing efforts are helping address these gaps. For instance, the HPV vaccine was introduced in Makueni in March 2021. Musyoka vaccinated 46 girls aged 10 years with the two doses of HPV vaccine in 2021, and another 17 girls received their first HPV dose in 2022 and are due for the second dose in November 2022.
Healthcare providers say the freezer has transformed the delivery of mother and child services in the area by bringing critical immunization services closer to a marginalized and highly vulnerable community.
People lay flowers and candles outside the Teplaren LGBTQI
bar in Bratislava, Slovakia, following an attack outside the popular
a meeting place for members of the city’s LGBTQI community in which two
people were killed, and a third seriously injured. Credit: Zuzana Thullnerova/IPS
by Ed Holt (bratislava)
Inter Press Service
BRATISLAVA, Mar 07 (IPS) – When D.A.* first heard about the fatal attack on a gay bar in the Slovak capital, Bratislava, last October, their first reaction was a mix of grief, shock and anger.
But then, soon after, the university student and member of the country’s LGBTQI community immediately began to worry.
“I was scared for my own safety,” D.A. told IPS.
Even now, months later, that fear remains in the community.
“I know people who have told me they are afraid to go out at night or who won’t go out on their own and stick together in a group instead. I’m the same,” they said.
The attack on the Teplaren bar, which was carried out by a teenage far-right sympathiser, left two dead and a third, who later recovered, seriously injured. It shocked many and sparked debate about attitudes towards LGBTQI people in the conservative, predominantly Catholic country.
But it also highlighted the threat of extreme violence faced by members of the LGBTQI community not just in Slovakia, but across Europe, coming just months after an attack on a gay bar in Oslo, Norway, which killed two and injured a further 21 people.
And groups working with LGBTQI communities across Europe say that violence is becoming increasingly planned and deadly, leaving many feeling unsafe in countries across Europe.
A report by the European branch of the International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Association (ILGA-Europe) released in February showed that 2022 was the most violent year for LGBTQI people across the region in the past decade, both through planned, ferocious attacks and through suicides.
It said this violence came in the wake of rising and widespread hate speech from politicians, religious leaders, right-wing organisations and media pundits.
“We have noticed a rise in hate speech for some time now and have been flagging it up for a number of years. But what we have been surprised by is the sheer ferocity and violence of the hate, and the physical attacks against LGBTQI people,” Katrin Hugendubel, Advocacy Director at ILGA, told IPS.
ILGA’s report shows that problems with hate speech – be it online, or publicly from politicians, state representatives, or religious leaders – against LGBTQI people run right across the continent from Armenia and Austria to Serbia, Sweden, Turkey, and Ukraine, with dire consequences for people and communities “not only in countries where hate speech is rife, but also in countries where it is widely believed that LGBTI people are progressively accepted”.
ILGA’s report highlighted hate speech used during debates on transgender laws in Finland’s parliament, while previously Finnish prosecutors have voiced concerns about hate speech fuelling anti-LGBTQI sentiment in society.
And in Slovakia, politicians, including former prime ministers, have publicly denigrated LGBTQI people, talked of homosexuality and transgender people as “perversions” and, in some cases, even called for legislation to limit LGBTQI people’s rights.
D.A., who said they had friends who had been attacked because of their identity, believes this kind of rhetoric, from politicians or anyone else, helps fuel violence against the LGBTQI community.
“People in Slovakia are often and easily influenced by the kind of information they receive on a daily basis. So yes, hateful rhetoric leads to violence,” they said.
In some other countries, politicians have taken things even further, enacting legislation which effectively prevents any positive public portrayal of the LGBTI community.
At the end of last year, a new law banning LGBTQI ‘propaganda’ was passed in Russia banning any promotion of what authorities see as “non-traditional sexual relations”.
Groups working with Russia’s LGBTQI community said the new law – an extension of 2013 legislation banning the positive portrayal of same-sex relationships to minors – was the latest part of a state system designed to further stigmatise the minority and was brought in amid intensifying anti-LGBTQI political rhetoric.
Violence against the community has been on the rise in Russia over the last decade, and they worry the new law will only fuel it further.
In Hungary, a similar law was passed in 2021, and experts there say it has emboldened people to express their hatred of the LGBTQI community physically.
“According to statements made by the perpetrators of hate incidents (and from looking at social media) it seems that the law reaffirmed already existing homophobic and transphobic prejudices and made it ‘okay’ to act upon them – people are citing that the law is on their side,” Aron Demeter, Programme Director at Amnesty International in Hungary , told IPS.
“Since the law is purposely confusing (and absurd) it is enough that they have an understanding of that it ‘protects children from LGBTI people’ and that serves as a ‘lawful authorisation’ to be hostile,” added.
While such overtly repressive legislation is not common in other countries in Europe, rights activists point out there are gaps in laws in many states protecting the community.
“In quite a lot of countries, there is still a lack of legislation dealing with hate speech specifically against the LGBTQI community,” Hugendubel pointed out.
She added that this should be addressed, but that it was crucial that people at the highest political levels must speak out against anti-LGBTQI hate.
“We feel that we need to see much more from EU institutions and national leaders in a real effort to stop the hate. There need to be clear statements from them saying that hate is not acceptable,” she said.
Immediately after the attacks in Norway and Slovakia, many politicians, both domestic and in other states, were quick to condemn it and the hatred behind it.
But worries remain that LGBTQI people will continue to be used as a welcome source of polarisation by politicians.
“It is important to see how politicians are using LGBTQI as a polarising tool. It’s something they can use to motivate a specific conservative voter base, and it is a tool with works to a certain extent. It is also being used to distract from other issues, such as corruption – it is polarisation at the expense of the LGBTQI community,” said Hugendubel.
However, while hate speech, and the violence it drives – prior to the killings in Norway, there was a massive rise in anti-LGBTQI hate crimes, jumping from 97 in 2020 to 240 in 2021, according to ILGA – is on the rise in Europe, action is being taken against it with growing numbers of prosecutions for hate speech and crimes in many countries.
Progress is also being made on legislative protections for LGBTQI people.
Meanwhile, despite an intensifying instrumentalization of LGBTQI issues by politicians and others against the community, there is a growing acceptance and support for the community in societies, notably in countries where governments are pursuing strongly anti-LGBTQI policies, such as Poland and Hungary, according to the group.
More needs to be done though, said Hugendubel.
“We are calling on all political leaders to step-up, speak out, and be proactive in fighting hate speech, rather than being reactive when faced with its consequences,” she said.
Note: *D.A.’s name has been withheld for reasons of personal safety.
Chronic underinvestment in agriculture is a key cause of the widespread hunger experienced in 2022, according to Oxfam report. Credit: Busani Bafana/IPS.
by Baher Kamal (madrid)
Inter Press Service
MADRID, Mar 03 (IPS) – The data is shocking: three-quarters of African Governments have already reduced their agricultural budgets while paying almost double that on arms.
Africa is home to a quarter of the world’s entire agricultural land. Nevertheless, in the 12 months that African leaders vowed to improve food security in the continent, over 20 million more people have been pushed into “severe hunger.”
“The hunger African people are facing today is a direct result of inadequate political choices…,” said Fati N’Zi-Hassane, Oxfam in Africa Director.
Chronic underinvestment
The report further explains that chronic underinvestment in agriculture is a key cause of the widespread hunger experienced in 2022.
Specifically, it adds, the majority of African governments (48 out of 54) reportedly spend an average of 3.8% of their budgets on agriculture -some spending as little as 1%.
“Nearly three quarters of these governments have reduced their agricultural spending since 2019, failing to honour their Malabo commitments to invest at least 10% of their budget on agriculture.”
In 2014 African leaders signed the Malabo Declaration, which stipulated that African governments must spend at least 10% of their budget on Agriculture and supporting farmers.
Politicians doubling military spending
In contrast, “African governments spent nearly double that budget (6.4%) on arms last year. Ongoing conflict, especially in Sahel and Central Africa, has continued to destroy farmland, displace people and fuel hunger.”
In addition, “worsening climate-fuelled droughts and floods, and a global rise in fuel and fertilisers prices, made food unobtainable for millions of people. In 2022 alone, food inflation rose by double digits in all but ten African countries.”
No access to neighbouring markets
As the 36th African Union Summit was held in February 2023, focussing on intra-continental free trade, “millions of smallholder farmers, who are vital food producers in the continent, cannot reach markets in neighbouring countries due to poor infrastructure and high intra-African tariffs.”
In other words, “many African nations find it cheaper to import food from outside the continent than from their next-door neighbour.” According to Oxfam:
As of August 2022 (the last available figure), there were 139.95 million people in 35 African countries living in “Crisis or worse acute food insecurity.” That is an increase of 17% (20.26 million people) over the same number a year earlier (119.69 million people).
South Sudan spends less than 1% of its budget on Agriculture. Calculations of all agricultural spending in Africa is based on data from the government spending watch, national budgets and FAO.
According to the CAADP report and the FAO Crop Prospects report, Africa’s cereal production in 2022 was 207.4 million tons, a decline of 3.4 million tons from the average of the previous five years.
Five-fold increase in extreme weather events
The increasing hunger in Africa –which is imposed by both externally and internally– is just part of a widespread drama.
In fact, climate change is fuelling hunger for millions of people around the world. “Extreme weather events have increased five-fold over the past 50 years, destroying homes, decimating livelihoods, fuelling conflict and displacement, and deepening inequality,” Oxfam reports.
Hunger more than doubling
Climate change has resulted in more frequent and intense droughts, floods, and heat waves. “The number of disasters has increased five-fold over the past 50 years.”
This is hitting low-income countries hardest, Oxfam goes on, adding that the 10 countries with the highest UN appeals related to weather extremes since 2000, have seen a 123% rise in the number of people suffering extreme hunger -from 21.3 million to 47.5 million.
These countries are Afghanistan, Burkina Faso, Djibouti, Guatemala, Haiti, Kenya, Madagascar, Niger, Somalia and Zimbabwe. According to this data, 7 out of these 10 countries are Africans.
Fossil fuel staggering profits
The G20 countries are amongst the most polluting nations in the world, collectively responsible for nearly 77% of carbon emissions, reports Oxfam, a global movement of people, working together to end the injustice of poverty, by tackling the inequality that keeps people poor.
It is extraordinary that as humanity faces this existential crisis, there is still more incentive to destroy our planet than to save lives.
“The oil and gas industry has enjoyed staggering profits as they wreak havoc on the planet –amassing 2.8 billion US dollars a day (or more than 1 trillion US dollars per year) for the last 50 years.”
Seismic hunger
For its part, the World Food Programme (WFP) reports that the current seismic hunger crisis has been caused by a deadly combination of factors: conflict, economic shocks, climate extremes are combining to create a food crisis of unprecedented proportions.
Much so that “as many as 828 million people are unsure of where their next meal is coming from.”
More than 900,000 people worldwide are fighting to survive in famine-like conditions, the world body reports, adding that this is “ten times more than five years ago, an alarmingly rapid increase.”
In short, politicians also in the most needed and highest exposed to staggering hunger countries, continue to attach higher relevance to spending on arms fueling conflicts, and on fuel fuels spreading climate disasters, rather than investing in saving the lives of their own people.
In the southern city of Taiz, 11-month-old Ameer Hellal receives WFP supplementary food for malnutrition. Photo: WFP/Albaraa Mansoor
by Alexander Kozul-Wright (geneva)
Inter Press Service
GENEVA, Mar 03 (IPS) – At a high-level UN event, global donors pledged US$1.2 billion in aid operations to Yemen in 2023. Millions of Yemenis require humanitarian assistance as the country continues to suffer from the fallout of a prolonged civil war.
While the Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator Martin Griffiths noted that the UN had received 31 commitments during the conference on February 30, 2023, in Geneva, the amount pledged remains well below the organisation’s target of US$4.3 billion.
The conflict in Yemen started in 2014 when Iranian-backed Houthi rebels – representing the country’s Zaidi Shia Muslim minority – seized the capital, Sanaa. The war intensified in 2015 when a Saudi-led coalition intervened on behalf of the government against the Houthis.
Owing to repeated Saudi-led bombardment campaigns and deep territorial divisions (half of the country remains under Houthi control in the north and the other half under government control in the south), Yemen’s economy has ground to a halt.
Last year, exogenous factors also led to steep falls in Yemen’s Rial relative to the U.S. dollar, pushing inflation up to 45 percent. Elsewhere, food prices surged by 58 percent. In 2022, 13 million people in Yemen relied on the UN’s World Food Program for basic staples.
To date, the conflict has killed more than 375,000 people, sixty percent from indirect causes (mainly from malnutrition and disease). The war has also razed the country’s civilian and physical infrastructure, including its oil sector – Yemen’s only source of foreign exchange.
Last year, warring parties agreed to an UN-brokered cease-fire. Though it expired in October, the six-month truce led to a reduction in casualties. It also enabled commercial traffic to flow through the port of Hodeida, increasing the supply of goods and aid into the country.
A slight improvement in food security at the end of last year meant two million fewer Yemenis suffered from acute hunger. The number of people in famine-like conditions also dropped from 161,000 to zero. But progress remains fragile.
Yemen continues to rely on foreign aid. “More than 21 million people, or two-thirds of the country’s population, will need humanitarian assistance in 2023,” said UN secretary-general António Guterres.
Among those in need, more than 17 million are understood to be living below Yemen’s poverty line. Meanwhile, an estimated 4.5 million Yemenis are internally displaced, largely due to climate-change-related events.
According to the UN, Yemen is “highly vulnerable” to the effects of rising global temperatures (notably arid weather). In recent years, severe droughts have exacerbated food shortages caused by the war.
Yemen Remains in Need of External Support
The UN’s US$4.3 billion funding objective is nearly double what it received last year. Looking ahead, reliance on external aid will be particularly acute in 2023 due to constrained oil exports linked to Houthi attacks on government-held oil terminals last October.
This week’s conference took place as the country’s rival groups agreed to an informal suspension of hostilities. Efforts are underway to declare a lasting peace after the parties failed to extend their UN-backed peace agreement last year.
“We have a real opportunity to change Yemen’s trajectory and move toward peace by renewing and expanding the truce,” noted Guterres at the pledging event, co-hosted by Sweden and Switzerland.
The meeting was attended by officials worldwide, including U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Germany’s Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock. In his speech, Blinken called on donors to step up their contributions, citing last year’s funding shortages.
The UN missed its financing target for Yemen by US$2 billion last year. Blinken also urged the international community to help restore Yemen’s economy, suggesting this would “reduce people’s suffering over the long term.”
“Large-scale investment will be needed to rebuild Yemen’s physical infrastructure. Securing peace, however, remains the top priority. “Without it, millions will continue to face extreme levels of poverty, hunger and suffering,” added Blinken.
Meanwhile, the UN secretary-general warned that aid funding would not provide a panacea for Yemen.
“Humanitarian assistance is a band-aid. It saves people’s lives but cannot resolve the conflict itself.”
IPS UN Bureau Report
Shahd, a 12-year-old girl with a hearing disability, stands in front of a window facing her father, in the house her family live in, Azaz, Aleppo, Syria. Credit: Human Rights Watch.
Opinion by Emina Cerimovic (new york)
Inter Press Service
NEW YORK, Feb 28 (IPS) – Emina Cerimovic is a senior disability rights researcher at Human Rights Swatch.A few days ago, I saw a photo shared to Twitter of Sham, a young Syrian girl rescued from under the rubble in northwest Syria, sitting upright in her hospital bed, According to the Syrian Civil Defense, a volunteer humanitarian group also known as the White Helmets, Sham will lose both her legs because of injuries from the quake.
Looking at her photo, I couldn’t help but think of the additional human rights abuses Sham will experience on the basis of her disability. She will join the ranks of all the children with disabilities who are surviving the 12-year-conflict in Syria without equal access to humanitarian aid.
And so will others who experienced traumatic physical and psychological injuries in the wake of the earthquakes: a girl who had spent 30 hours under the rubble in the heavily affected town of Jindires in northwest Syria and who had lost both her legs; a 3-year-old boy in Jinderis who was trapped for 42 hours and whose left leg was amputated; a young Syrian man living in Gaziantep, Turkey, whose right hand was amputated.
As issues of humanitarian aid access to various affected parts of Syria dominatethe news, relief efforts should not overlook the short and long-term needs of people with disabilities and the thousands of earthquake survivors who have sustained physical and psychological injuries that could lead to permanent disabilities.
As two more powerful earthquakes struck the region on February 20, panic and fear spread among earthquake survivors in both Syria and Turkey, bringing into sharp focus the psychological trauma caused by the natural hazard and, for Syrians, by over 12 years of war.
In Syria, approximately 28 percent of the current population – nearly double the global average – are estimated to have a disability, and their rights and needs are largely unmet. As I found in my September report on the greater risk of harm and lack of access to basic rights for children with disabilities caught up in the Syrian war, the design and delivery of humanitarian programs in Syria are not taking into account the particular needs of children with disabilities. In some cases, such programs explicitly exclude them.
As an example, some educational activities and child-friendly spaces excluded children with intellectual and developmental disabilities. Children with disabilities are growing up without safety, basic necessities, education, assistive devices, or psychosocial support, in ways that put their lives and rights at risk.
They experience stigma, psychological harm, and higher levels of poverty. The situation is no better for adults with disabilities who also face systematic challenges in accessing humanitarian services on an equal basis with others.
This crisis should serve as a wake-up call for UN agencies, donor states, humanitarian organizations, and charities to properly respond to all children’s rights by ensuring the rights and needs of children with disabilities are also met.
They should develop and implement their response and recovery action plans with people with disabilities at their core. The attention and investment in children – like Sham – and adults with disabilities will enhance human rights for everyone.
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, Feb 24 (IPS) – While its origins may be rooted in the discrimination faced by people living with HIV, Zero Discrimination Day has evolved to celebrate commitments to the fundamental human right of being treated equally in law and in practice.
Within the context of global health, the day is an opportunity to examine discrimination from the perspective of health and care workers, who face barriers based on their race, gender, and other socio-economic and cultural factors.
In the context of a global health workforce under siege from the threat of the great resignation in health, it is especially important to examine the impact of discrimination on health systems at global, national and local levels.
In recent times, recognition of the gender pay gap in health of 24% and its impact on national and regional economy has spurred greater research into the unequal treatment of women, taking into account their specific contexts and locations. Despite efforts to address these issues, progress has been uneven.
Mounting evidence around gender inequities in the health workforce, specifically at the leadership level underscores the problem of gender bias in health decision-making. Women who make up 70% of the overall health workforce and 90% of frontline staff continue to be marginalised in leadership, occupying just one-quarter of the decision-making roles in health.
Furthermore, occupational segregation and the clustering of women into low-earning professions and settings further limit their career advancement. Their experiences in the health workforce are further compounded by various forms of discrimination, such as harassment, violence, assault and discrimination at several levels.
Gender is not the only factor at play. As health workers migrate from rural and remote areas to well-resourced urban centres, or from developing to developed countries, new forms of barriers and biases emerge in a global context where high-income nations wield most of the socio-economic power.
These include the need to undergo resource-intensive accreditation and licensing exams, encountering anti-immigrant hostility and changing patient-provider dynamics, limited options from smaller job pools, and being affected by global events and geopolitical shifts.
This “brain drain” of health workers also has negative implications for the understaffed health systems that they leave behind.
In addition to gender and migrant status, healthcare workers may also face discrimination based on their race, ethnicity, language and dialect, marital status and sexual orientation, amidst other factors. These experiences affect the health workforce in different ways, resulting in inefficiencies, demotivation and burnout at the local, national and regional levels.
Healthcare systems that fail to acknowledge and address latent discriminatory actions may unintentionally perpetuate these inequalities, further exacerbating the biased experiences of healthcare workers, despite the need for a diverse health workforce to better serve their diverse populations.
While we talk about zero discrimination, dignity, decent work, fair pay, and the importance of endorsing diversity and practising inclusion at the macro level of health systems, are we also ‘seeing’ and ‘acknowledging’ where this discrimination exists and understanding the negative consequences on health workers and population’s health? Are we collecting and analysing the data that give us the full picture?
More importantly, discrimination in healthcare settings not only violates the fundamental human right to be treated with respect and equality, but also severely limits the chances of achieving the SDGs by 2030. The 2017 UN statement succinctly framed this understanding in their call to end discrimination in healthcare settings.
Equal opportunities and experiences for health and care workers must be ensured at every stage of their career, including recruitment, promotion, growth and advancement, particularly in the post-COVID era of globalisation.
Gender and race are the primary drivers of inequality, around which most of the structural discrimination in health revolves. Therefore, policies and practices must be devised to study and address this discrimination and their underlying drivers, to fully exploit the available talent and potential of the health workforce and to ensure equitable opportunities for growth and leadership and strategically achieve UHC.
Now more than ever, it is urgent that leaders in global health take bold action by committing to a new social contract that prioritises the rights of health and care workers. This step will not only ensure a more equitable and just health workforce, but also provide better health outcomes for communities worldwide.
Roomi Aziz is Technical Lead of the Pakistan Chapter, Women in Global Health
“A child in North Syria passing by the ruins, after the earthquake hit his town.” – Credit: Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC)
by Baher Kamal (madrid)
Inter Press Service
MADRID, Feb 23 (IPS) – While the world’s biggest powers and their giant private corporations continue to attach high priority to their military –and commercial– dominance, both of them being shockingly profitable, entire generations are being lost to deadly armed conflicts, devastating climate catastrophes, diseases, hunger and more imposed impoverishment.
Part I of this series of two articles focussed on the unprecedented suffering of the most innocent and helpless human beings – children– in 11 countries. But there are many more.
According to the UN Children Fund (UNICEF), hundreds of thousands of children continue to pay the highest price of a mixture of man-made brutalities, with their lives, apart from the unfolding proxy war in Ukraine, and the not yet final account of victims of the Türkiye and Syria earthquakes, which are forcing children to sleep in the streets under the rumble, amid the chilling cold.
Nigeria
Nigeria is just one of the already reported cases of 11 countries. UNICEF on 11 February 2023 appealed for 1.3 billion US dollars to stop what it calls “the ticking bomb of child malnutrition.”
The appeal is meant to help six million people severely affected by conflict, disease, and disaster in Northeast Nigeria.
“The large-scale humanitarian and protection crisis shows no sign of abating,” said Matthias Schmale, the UN Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator for Nigeria. “An estimated 2.4 million people are in acute need – impacted by conflict, disaster and disease – and require urgent support.”
The “ticking time bomb” of child malnutrition is escalating in Nigeria’s Northeast, with the number of children suffering from acute malnutrition projected to increase to two million in 2023, up from 1.74 million last year, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs reported.
Already high levels of severe acute malnutrition are projected to more than double from 2022 to a projected 697,000 this year. Women and girls are the hardest hit, said Schmale.
“Over 80% of people in need of humanitarian assistance across Borno, Adamawa and Yobe states are women and children. They face increased risks of violence, abduction, rape and abuse.”
The UN Special Adviser on the Prevention of Genocide Alice Nderitu raised concerns about a worsening security situation, calling for urgent action to address conflicts and prevent “atrocity crimes.”
Urgent immediate actions must be taken now, both to address the crisis in the short-term and long-term. Credit: James Jeffrey/IPS
Horn of Africa: the suffering of over 20 million children
By the end of 2022, UNICEF warned of a funding shortfall as the region faces an unprecedented fifth consecutive failed rainy season and a poor outlook for the sixth.
The number of children suffering dire drought conditions across Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia has “more than doubled in five months,” according to UNICEF.
“Around 20.2 million children are now facing the threat of severe hunger, thirst and disease, compared to 10 million in July , as climate change, conflict, global inflation and grain shortages devastate the region.”
While collective and accelerated efforts have mitigated some of the worst impacts of what had been feared, “children in the Horn of Africa are still facing the most severe drought in more than two generations,” said UNICEF Deputy Regional Director for Eastern and Southern Africa Lieke van de Wiel.
“Humanitarian assistance must be continued to save lives and build the resilience of the staggering number of children and families who are being pushed to the edge – dying from hunger and disease and being displaced in search of food, water and pasture for their livestock.”
More than two million people are displaced internally because of drought.
Water insecurity has more than doubled with close to 24 million people now confronting dire water shortages.
Approximately 2.7 million children are out of school because of the drought, with an additional estimated 4 million children at risk of dropping out.
As families are driven to the edge dealing with increased stress, children face a range of protection risks – including child labour, child marriage and female genital mutilation.
Gender-based violence, including sexual violence, exploitation and abuse, is also increasing due to widespread food insecurity and displacement.
UNICEF’s 2023 emergency appeal of US$759 million to provide life-saving support to children and their families will require timely and flexible funding support, especially in the areas of education, water and sanitation, and child protection, which were ”severely underfunded” during UNICEF’s 2022 response.
An additional US$690 million is required to support long-term investments to help children and their families to recover and adapt to climate change.
Meanwhile, more unfolding tragedies for children
The above-reported suffering for the most defenceless human beings–children, does not end here. Indeed, two more major tragedies continue unfolding. Such is the case of the brutal proxy war in Ukraine and the most destructive earthquakes in Türkiye and Syria.
“A child in North Syria passing by the ruins, after the earthquake hit his town.” – Credit: Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC)
Türkiye-Syria Earthquakes
A steady flow of UN aid trucks filled with vital humanitarian relief continues to cross the border from Southern Türkiye into Northwest Syria to help communities enduring “terrible trauma” caused by the earthquake disaster, UN aid teams on 17 February 2023 reported.
As UN aid convoys continue to deliver more relief to quake-hit Northwest Syria via additional land routes from Türkiye, UN humanitarians warned that “many thousands of children have likely been killed,” while millions more vulnerable people urgently need support.
“Even without verified numbers, it’s tragically clear the number of children killed, the number of children orphaned is going to keep on rising,” on 14 February 2023 said UN Children Fund (UNICEF) spokesperson James Elder.
In Türkiye, the total number of children living in the 10 provinces before the emergency was 4.6 million, and 2.5 million in Syria.
And as the humanitarian focus shifts from rescue to recovery, eight days after the disaster, Elder warned that cases of “hypothermia and respiratory infections” were rising among youngsters, as he appealed for continued solidarity with all those affected by the emergency.
“Everyone, everywhere, needs more support, more safe water, more warmth, more shelter, more fuel, more medicines, more funding,” he said.
“Families with children are sleeping in streets, malls, mosques, schools, under bridges, staying out in the open for fear of returning to their homes.”
“Unimaginable hardship”
“The children and families of Türkiye and Syria are facing unimaginable hardship in the aftermath of these devastating earthquakes,” said UNICEF Executive Director Catherine Russell.
“We must do everything in our power to ensure that everyone who survived this catastrophe receives life-saving support, including safe water, sanitation, critical nutrition and health supplies, and support for children’s mental health. Not only now, but over the long term.”
The number of children killed and injured during the quakes and their aftermath has not yet been confirmed but is likely to be in the many thousands. The official total death toll has now passed 45,000.
Freezing
Many families have lost their homes and are now living in temporary shelters, “often in freezing conditions and with snow and rain adding to their suffering.” Access to safe water and sanitation is also a major concern, as are the health needs of the affected population.
Hundreds of thousands of people have seen their homes, businesses or schools damaged or destroyed while continuing attacks on critical energy infrastructure have left millions of children without sustained access to electricity, heating and water.
The list of brutalities committed against the world’s children goes on. The funds desperately needed to save their lives represent a tiny faction of all that is being spent on wars.
MADRID, Feb 22 (IPS) – Today, there are more children in need of desperate humanitarian assistance than at any other time since World War II.
“Across the globe, children and their families are facing a deadly mix of crises, from conflict and displacement to disease, outbreaks and soaring rates of malnutrition. Meanwhile, climate change is making these crises worse and unleashing new ones.”
Tragically enough, UNICEF – the world’s body which was created in the aftermath of the Second World War to save the lives of millions of children who fell prey to the devastating weapons used by their own continent: Europe – could not depict more accurately the current situation of the most innocent humans.
The UN Children Fund in fact reports on the pressing need to provide life-saving help to millions of children trapped in continuing atrocities committed by adults.
Unprecedented flooding in South Sudan has taken a devastating toll on families. Crops have been destroyed, grazing spaces for cattle and other livestock have been submerged and families have been forced to flee their homes.
With hunger and malnutrition on the rise across the flooded regions, some communities are likely to face starvation without sustained humanitarian assistance.
UNICEF is working to screen and treat children with severe acute malnutrition, also known as severe wasting – the most lethal form of undernutrition, and one of the top threats to child survival. Read the latest appeal for South Sudan
Yemen
After eight years of conflict, the systems that Yemen’s families depend on remain on the edge of total collapse. More than 23.4 million people, including 12.9 million children, have, so far, fallen victim to such a brutal war.
In addition, more than 11,000 children have been killed or maimed since 2015, while conflict, massive displacement and recurring climate shocks have left more than 2 million children “acutely malnourished and struggling to survive.” Read the latest appeal for Yemen
Haiti
Political turmoil, civil unrest and gang violence, crippling poverty and natural disasters, a deadly combination of threats are already posing a massive challenge for families in Haiti. A surge in cholera in 2022 is posing yet another risk for children’s health – and their lives.
“There is an urgent need to step up efforts to protect families against cholera by delivering cholera kits and water purifying tablets and trucking in clean water.”
To contain malnutrition, UNICEF is also screening children for wasting to ensure that those who need help can be treated in mobile clinics and other facilities. Read the latest appeal for Haiti
DR Congo
An escalation in armed conflict and recurrent outbreaks of deadly diseases are taking a heavy toll on millions of children in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
The country hosts the “second-highest number of internally displaced people in the world.”
A father and son remove their belonging from their flooded home in Taluka, Shujabad, District Mirpurkhas, Pakistan. Credit: RDF
Pakistan
The rains that brought historic flooding to much of Pakistan in 2022 may have ended, but the crisis for children has not.
Months after floods ravaged the country, vast swathes of cropland and villages remain under water, while millions of girls and boys are still in need of immediate lifesaving support.
Around 8 million people are still exposed to flood waters or living close to flooded areas. “Many of these families are still living in makeshift tents alongside the road or near the rubble of their home – often in the open, right next to contaminated and stagnant water.”
Political fragility, the impacts of climate change and economic and health crises have contributed to the internal displacement of around 1.7 million people in Burkina Faso – 60% of them are children.
“The anxiety, depression and other stress-related problems associated with displacement can take a lifelong toll on children’s emotional and physical health.” Read the latest appeal for Burkina Faso
Rohingya IDPs confined to a Sittwe camp in Rakhine State wait for international intervention. More than 1.5 million people are displaced in Myanmar. Credit: Sara Perria/IPS
Myanmar
Deepening conflict in Myanmar continues to impact children and their families, with some 5.6 million children in need of humanitarian assistance.
The conflict has undermined the delivery of child health services, including routine immunisation, threatening to take a long-lasting toll on children’s health and well-being. Read the latest appeal for Myanmar
Palestine
“Children in the State of Palestine continue to face a protracted protection crisis and an ongoing occupation.” Around 2.1 million people – more than half of them children – now require humanitarian assistance.
Since 2009, UNICEF has been supporting family centres across the Gaza Strip to provide psychosocial care for children.
Children in need of more specialised services – such as those facing violence at home, school or work – are provided with a case manager who works directly with them and their families. Read the latest appeal for the State of Palestine
Bangladesh
As the Rohingya refugee crisis enters its fifth year, Bangladesh still hosts hundreds of thousands of Rohingya refugees who settled in the Cox’s Bazar District after fleeing “extreme violence” in Myanmar.
While basic services have been provided in the camps, “children still face disease outbreaks, malnutrition, inadequate educational opportunities and other risks like exploitation and violence.” Read the latest appeal for Bangladesh
Syria
The situation was already dire far earlier to the recent earthquakes. In fact, “more than a decade of humanitarian crises and hostilities has left children in Syria facing one of the most complex emergencies in the world.”
“Two thirds of the population require assistance” due to the worsening economic crisis, continued localised hostilities, mass displacement and devastated public infrastructure.
The conflict has seen one of the largest education crises in recent history, with “a whole generation of Syrian children paying a devastating price.” Read the latest appeal for Syria
Kenya
Four failed rainy seasons in a row have left Kenya experiencing its worst drought in 40 years. Without water, crops cannot grow, and animals and livestock die.
The resulting loss of nutritious food, combined with poor sanitation, has left “hundreds of thousands of children requiring treatment for wasting.”
Children with wasting are too thin and their immune systems are weak, leaving them vulnerable to developmental delays, disease and death. Read the latest appeal for Kenya
Millions more
In addition to these 11 nations so far identified by UNICEF as needing urgent life-saving humanitarian assistance, with millions of children being the most vulnerable, there are several other countries where they live in dire situations, on which IPS reports in Part II of this two-part series.
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