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English and Dutch Caribbean Rally Around UN Sustainable Development Framework — Global Issues

Castle, Comfort Dominica. Dominica is the latest Caribbean country to sign on to the UN Multi-Country Sustainable Development Framework, to accelerate progress with sustainable development goals and recover from COVID-19 Credit: Alison Kentish/IPS
  • by Alison Kentish (dominica)
  • Inter Press Service

DOMINICA, May 02 (IPS) – Caribbean countries are signing on to the 2022-2026 agreement, hoping for increased development support to improve health, education and social services, while tackling climate-related challenges.When Dominica signed on to the United Nations Multicountry Sustainable Development Framework for the English and Dutch Speaking Caribbean (MSDCF) in March, the country joined others like Saint Lucia, St. Vincent, and the Grenadines, Suriname, and Aruba as part of a 5-year framework to plan and implement UN development initiatives.

Support for the 2022 to 2026 agreement has continued to grow since December 2021, when Antigua and Barbuda, Barbados, and Guyana signed the cooperation framework, which hopes to help nations achieve the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

For countries in the Caribbean, one of the most vulnerable regions globally, the framework is a critical instrument, based on building climate and economic resilience, the promotion of equality, and enhancing peace, safety, and the rule of law.

It is also crucial for a country like Dominica which in 2017 lost US$1.4 billion, or 226% of its GDP to Hurricane Maria. The small island state has been on a mission to build resilience across sectors through initiatives like its Climate Resilience and Recovery Plan, while grappling with the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on the economy.

The country’s representatives have used platforms like the United Nations General Assembly to urge development partners to consider the unique vulnerabilities of small island states in their support packages.

The country’s Prime Minister Roosevelt Skerrit says the UN framework will help Caribbean governments to implement programs that strengthen health, education, and social services while contributing to economic growth.

“We are operating in a tumultuous period defined by huge environmental and climate-related challenges, conflict, and economic uncertainty. The agreement proposes to help our small territories confront the trials of our time and achieve economic resilience and prosperity. It is cause for optimism as we devise ways to tackle our common problems together,” he said.

The agreement builds on a 2017-2022 framework which was signed by 18 Caribbean countries. Initiatives under that framework focused on areas such as building Caribbean resilience and the implementation of low-emission, climate-resilient technology in agriculture.

UN officials say that the new agreement, referred to as ‘the second-generation framework,’ considers lessons learned. Developed during the pandemic, it also acknowledges that COVID-19 has compounded structural vulnerabilities for Caribbean countries, which must now ‘build back better.’

“This new agreement opens a new era of cooperation to drive collaboration and mutual commitment for the people of Dominica,” UN Resident Coordinator for Barbados and the Eastern Caribbean Didier Trebucq said at the Dominica signing.

For months, leaders across the Caribbean have been speaking of being at risk of not meeting the Sustainable Development Goals, as they redirect scarce resources to cope with the protracted pandemic.

According to preliminary data from the UN, Goals 1 to 6, known as the ‘people-centered goals,’ have been severely impacted by COVID-19.

The Prime Minister of Barbados, the first leader in the Barbados and OECS grouping to sign the MSDCF, said the pandemic slowed progress towards meeting SDG targets.

“We’re going to have problems in the battle with poverty, we’re going to have problems in making sure that people don’t go hungry, we’re going to have problems in making sure that people have access to good health and well-being, as we know, is already happening in the pandemic. We’re going to have problems in delivering quality education and who have been the greatest victims of this pandemic if not our children across the world, many of who have been denied access to education because they don’t have access to things like electricity and online tools in order to be able to receive it,” Prime Minister Mia Mottley said, referencing Goals 1 to 4.

She said Goal 5 and 6 – Gender Equality and Clean Water and Sanitation are also at risk, noting that women have been disproportionately affected by COVID-19, while countries like Barbados continue to be concerned with access to groundwater in the face of the climate crisis.

The MSDCF was developed by the six UN Country Teams, after rounds of consultation with government agencies, the private sector, development partners, and civil society organizations.

It will function at two levels; regionally by adopting joint approaches to common challenges and nationally to tackle country and territory-specific issues and vulnerabilities while helping governments to prepare for future external shocks.

According to the MSDCF, the vision is for the region to become more resilient, “possess greater capacity to achieve all the SDGs, and become a place where people choose to live and can reach their full potential.”

It promises to provide more effective support to signatory countries, through streamlined use of UN resources and in keeping with the goals of the recently approved UN Development system reform.

It hopes to accelerate progress towards achieving the SDGs and facilitate faster recovery from the socio-economic and health impact of COVID-19, with one regional voice on a shared development path.

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New Tactical Nuclear Weapons? Just Say No — Global Issues

  • Opinion by Daryl G. Kimball (washington dc)
  • Inter Press Service

WASHINGTON DC, May 02 (IPS) – The writer is Executive Director, Arms Control Association, Washington DC.Russian President Vladimir Putin’s brutal war on Ukraine, along with his implied threats of nuclear weapons use against any who would interfere, has raised the specter of nuclear conflict.

Last month, CIA Director William Burns said that although there is no sign that Russia is preparing to do so, “none of us can take lightly the threat posed by a potential resort to tactical nuclear weapons or low-yield nuclear weapons.”

As the war drags on, it is vital that Russian, NATO, and U.S. leaders maintain lines of communication to prevent direct conflict and avoid rhetoric and actions that increase the risk of nuclear escalation.

Provocations could include deploying tactical nuclear weapons or developing new types of nuclear weapons designed for fighting and “winning” a regional nuclear war.

For these and other reasons, U.S. President Joe Biden was smart to announce in March that he will cancel a proposal by the Trump administration for a new nuclear-armed sea-launched cruise missile (SLCM), a weapon last deployed in 1991.

Before President Donald Trump, two Democratic and two Republican administrations had agreed that nuclear-armed cruise missiles on Navy ships were redundant and destabilizing and detract from higher-priority conventional missions.

Moreover, re-nuclearizing the fleet would create serious operational burdens. In 2019, Biden called this weapon a “bad idea” and said there is no need for new nuclear weapons. He was right then and is right to cancel the system now.

Nevertheless, some in Congress are pushing to restore funding for a nuclear SLCM to fill what they say is a “deterrence gap” against Russia’s tactical nuclear weapons arsenal and to provide a future president with “more credible” nuclear options in a future war with Russia in Europe or with China over Taiwan. A fight over the project, which would cost at least $9 billion through the end of the decade, is all but certain.

The arguments for reviving the nuclear SLCM program are as flimsy as they are dangerous. Serious policymakers all agree that a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought. But deploying nuclear-armed cruise missiles at sea would undoubtedly increase the possibility of nuclear war through miscalculation.

By deploying both conventional and nuclear-armed cruise missiles at sea, any launch of a conventional cruise missile inherently would send a nuclear signal and increase the potential for unintended nuclear use in a conflict with a nuclear-armed adversary because the adversary would have no way of knowing if the missile was nuclear or conventional.

Furthermore, even if Russia’s stockpile of 1,000 to 2,000 short-range nuclear warheads is larger in number than the U.S. stockpile of 320, there is no meaningful gap in capabilities. Superficial numerical comparisons ignore the fact that both sides already possess excess tactical nuclear destructive capacity, including multiple options for air and missile delivery of lower-yield nuclear warheads.

Both also store their tactical warheads separately from the delivery systems, meaning preparations for potential use would be detectable in advance.

If one president authorized the use of these weapons under “extreme” circumstances in a conventional war, as the policies of both countries allow, neither side would need or want to use more than a handful of these highly destructive weapons.

Although tactical nuclear bombs may produce relatively smaller explosive yields, from less than 1 kiloton TNT equivalent to 20 kilotons or more, their blast, heat, and radiation effects would be unlike anything seen in warfare since the 21-kiloton-yield atomic bomb that destroyed Nagasaki.

Proponents of the nuclear SLCM claim that if Putin used a tactical nuclear weapon to try to gain a military advantage or simply to intimidate, the U.S. president must have additional options to strike back with tactical nuclear weapons. They further argue that he should strike back even if that results in nuclear devastation within NATO and Russian territory.

Theories that nuclear war can be “limited” are extremely dangerous and ignore the unimaginable human suffering nuclear detonations would produce. In practice, once nuclear weapons are used by nuclear-armed adversaries, there is no guarantee the conflict would not quickly escalate to a catastrophic exchange involving the thousands of long-range strategic nuclear weapons in the U.S. and Russian arsenals.

As Gen. John Hyten, head of U.S. Strategic Command, said in 2018 after the annual Global Thunder wargame, “It ends bad. And the bad, meaning, it ends with global nuclear war.” As the supercomputer in the 1983 movie War Games ultimately calculated, “The only winning move is not to play.”

Adding a new type of tactical nuclear weapon to the U.S. arsenal will not enhance deterrence so much as it would increase the risk of nuclear war, mimic irresponsible Russian nuclear signaling, and prompt Russia and China to build their own sea- or land-based nuclear cruise missile systems. Biden made the right decision to cancel Trump’s proposed nuclear SLCM, and now Congress needs to back the president up.

The Arms Control Association (ACA), founded in 1971, is a national nonpartisan membership organization dedicated to promoting public understanding of and support for effective arms control policies. Through public education and media programs and its flagship journal, Arms Control Today, the ACA provides policymakers, the press, and the interested public with authoritative information, analysis, and commentary on arms control proposals, negotiations and agreements, and related national security issues.

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Healthcare Inequities Exposed by COVID-19 Pandemic — Global Issues

Migrant labourers wait in queues in Kashmir in order to travel back to their homes. The second wave of COVID-19 in India has seen masses of people leave cities and towns to return to their rural homes. Credit: Umer Asif/IPS
  • by Ranjit Devraj (new delhi)
  • Inter Press Service

NEW DELHI, Apr 29 (IPS) – Public health specialists say that an ongoing wrangle between the Indian government and the World Health Organization (WHO) over the COVID-19 death toll in this country is symptomatic of a long-ailing public health delivery system.

India has consistently challenged estimates published by leading scientific journals such as the Lancet, which placed the number of excess deaths in the country at four million from 1 Jan 2020 to 31 Dec 2021.

On 16 April an official note from the Press Information Bureau in response to a New York Times article said, “India’s basic objection has not been with the results (whatever they might have been) but rather the methodology adopted for the same.”

India’s concern was that the projected estimates in the article, titled “India Is Stalling the WHO’s Efforts to Make Global COVID Death Toll Public,” for a country of its geographical size and population could not be done in the same way as for smaller countries. “Such one size fit all approach and models which are true for smaller countries like Tunisia may not be applicable to India with a population of 1.3 billion,” the official note said.

But independent public health specialists said that the concern was that India’s spat with the WHO was detracting from the more serious issue of the country’s tottering health delivery system failing to deal with the pandemic.

“Forget about the actual number of people who died of COVID-19 or because of comorbidities like diabetes, hypertension or cardiovascular disease — the fact remains that an unusually large number of people died during the pandemic because the health delivery system was overwhelmed,” said Mira Shiva, founder-member of the international Peoples Health Movement.

“One could say that the pandemic worked like a stress test of how good healthcare services were, and they were found seriously wanting,” said Shiva. ”Unsurprisingly, it was the poor and marginalised groups that took the brunt of it all — many more died of undocumented causes than usual as reflected in the several calculations based on excess deaths.”

Shiva said that, at the best of times, a cause of death is not properly registered in India. “We can only guess from the very large number of bodies seen floating down the main Ganges and Yamuna rivers during the second wave of the pandemic in 2021. There were also widely-circulated images of bodies laid out in rows on the river banks — these were obviously of people whose relatives could not afford to buy the firewood for cremations.”

Says Satya Mohanty, former secretary in the government and currently adjunct professor of economics at Jamia Milia Islamia University, New Delhi: “You can argue till the cows come home but the figures are going to be in the range of four to five million deaths as shown in several studies and any contestation would require robust data rather than bland denials.”

“If the crude death rate on average is one per thousand per month, anything above that average over a period of two years can be safely taken as deaths due to a differentiator – in this case the COVID and post-COVID effects,” says Mohanty. “There cannot be any other reason unless other differentiators were at play and to the best of our information there were no other differentiators.”

Sandhya Mahapatro, assistant professor at the A.N. Sinha Institute of Social Studies (ANSISS) in Patna, Bihar state, says “while India has made great strides in reducing inequalities in healthcare, large access gaps by socioeconomic status remain. Our studies show that 38 percent of outpatients in Bihar, a state with a population of 128 million, had no access to public healthcare.”

“There is growing concern about the distributive consequences of welfare initiatives on different socioeconomic groups,” Mahapatro added. “The historical disadvantages of healthcare access experienced by women and marginalised groups continue, with factors like caste, class and gender intersecting at various levels to create advantage for some sections and disadvantages for others,” she said.

A paper published by Mahapatro and her colleagues in the peer-reviewed journal Health Policy Open in December 2021 showed that social status clearly determined whether a person could access healthcare or not, despite pledges to ensure equity in healthcare provision and commitment to the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) Goal 3 — providing quality health services to all at an affordable cost.

“The issue of inequity played out during the COVID-19 pandemic affecting the poor and marginalised disproportionately,” said Mahapatro. “Internal migrants were greatly affected by the lockdowns with a staggering economic burden befalling them. The pre-existing inequality has widened and is expected to further widen as a result of the pandemic.”

Mahapatro said a study conducted at ANSISS during the post lockdown period found a familiar pattern of deprivation in healthcare services as in earlier studies. “The burden of unmet healthcare needs was substantially higher among the poor, women and people of low caste,” Mahapatro said. “Unmet healthcare needs were found to be particularly high among women of lower caste groups.”

“Importantly, our studies show that the pattern of health spending has remain unchanged over the decades and that the household remains the main source of financing healthcare before and during the pandemic,” she added.

A local priest and relative of a family member who died from Covid watching a pyre burn at the Garh Ganga Ghat in Mukteshwar, in Uttar Pradesh on 4 May, 2021. (Mukteshwar, Hapur/ File-Amit Sharma)

“The ongoing economic crisis due to the pandemic and inadequate healthcare capacity would obviously constrain healthcare utilisation by the marginalised sections of society, with internal migrants being the worst impacted as a result of the lockdowns,” Mahapatro said.

A staggering 450 million Indians are internal migrants according to the 2011 census, 37 percent of the total population. A national lockdown imposed with a four-hour notice on 24 March 2020 left most of these domestic migrants with no option but to undertake long treks back home with little money or food.

The national lockdown, considered among the tightest globally, went into three more phases with increasingly relaxed restrictions on economic and human activity until 7 June.

“Almost 80 percent of the migrant workers we surveyed had lost their jobs during the lockdowns,” said Mahapatro. This naturally affected their ability to access healthcare, with huge nutritional implications for them as well as their women and children.”

“If the unmet needs of such large and deprived social groups are not catered to then equity in healthcare and the UN SDGs on health will remain a distant dream,” Mahapatro added.

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Commitment to African Medicines Agency Needs More Than Words — Global Issues

To date, 19 countries have already ratified the treaty. However, this number remains far short of the 55 AU member states and excludes some of the region’s power houses such as South Africa, Nigeria, Kenya, Ethiopia, and Senegal. Credit: Charles Mpaka/IPS
  • Opinion by Johnpaul Omollo, Taonga Chilalika (nairobi/johannesburg)
  • Inter Press Service

NAIROBI/JOHANNESBURG, Apr 29 (IPS) – Across Africa, local manufacturing and pharmaceutical companies are responding to the urgent need for locally produced medical products and technologies despite the existing regulatory challenges. We can support manufacturing capacity by expediting the establishment and operationalisation of the African Medicines Agency (AMA).

In November 2021, after 15 countries signed and ratified the AMA treaty, the AMA became a specialised agency of the African Union (AU). To date, 19 countries — Algeria, Benin, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Chad, Egypt, Gabon, Ghana, Guinea, Mali, Mauritius, Namibia, Niger, Rwanda, Seychelles, Sierra Leone, Tunisia, Uganda, and Zimbabwe — have ratified the treaty.

However, this number remains far short of the 55 AU member states and excludes some of the region’s power houses such as South Africa, Nigeria, Kenya, Ethiopia, and Senegal.

Over the next five years, Africa’s health care sector, especially local pharmaceutical production, will be a key economic driver for the region—predicted to be about two percent of the global pharmaceutical market in 2022.

Harmonising health product regulations will make Africa a more attractive market for the pharmaceutical sector, for both research and development, as well as introduction of innovations.

These harmonisation efforts will further improve trade in support of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA), by deepening African integration and enabling the development of markets for health commodities and technologies? Of most importance, the agency will coordinate joint assessments and inspections for a select group of products, and coordinate capacity building.

The next two years will be critical in setting up the agency, including selecting a host country, appointing the director general, recruiting staff, and setting up offices for AMA. Countries that have not yet ratified will not have an input into these key decisions which will bolster the medicines regulatory environment in the region.

This has been a long journey. The agency is derived from the African Medicines Regulatory Harmonisation (AMRH) initiative launched in 2012, led by African Union Development Agency (AUDA-NEPAD) to address challenges faced in medicines regulation in Africa.

These challenges include weak legislative frameworks, duplicative and slow medicine registration processes, and subsequent prolonged approval decisions, limited technical capacity, and weak supply chain control. As COVID-19 has shown, these challenges pose both a public health and economic risk to the continent.

To improve the fragmented regulatory system for medical product registration in Africa, the vision is to gradually move from a country-focused approach, with 55 countries acting independently to a collaborative regional one, with five Regional Economic Communities supporting one Agency.

AMA will review regional policies and identify new sources of funding to enhance national capacity to regulate medicines, as well as try to simplify the complex requirements from regional and global level standards and guidelines.

Member states also need to be cognizant of the extensive operationalization process required to set up the agency’s administrative and technical workstreams. For instance, as part of the administrative workstream, they need to select a host country, appoint a Director General, recruit staff, set up office space, and register the treaty with the UN Secretary General.

We need to move swiftly to ensure the entire continent is on board. By now, every AU member state should have approved and ratified the AMA by signing, ratifying, and depositing its instruments at the AU commission.

Member states need to commit resources to co-finance the operations of the agency as top priority, building on the already existing commitment of more than €100 millionby the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the European Union.

With the vision of preparing Africa to facilitate the production of 60 percent of vaccines needed on the continent by 2040, the establishment of AMA is a clarion call to countries and regulators. We must urgently put in place the tools needed to realise the optimal operationalisation of the Agency by the end of 2022.

We applaud the 19 member states that have ratified the AMA. We urge these states to be champions by promoting the benefits of the agency all over the continent to encourage and motivate the rest to come on board and ratify the Africa Medicines Agency.

Johnpaul Omollo is a Senior Advocacy and Policy Officer at PATH in Kenya. Follow him on Twitter @JPmcOmollo

Taonga Chilalika is a Senior Advocacy and Policy Associate at PATH in South Africa. Follow her on Twitter @TaongaChilalika.

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Breaking Vicious Cycle of Trafficking for Sexual Exploitation — Global Issues

Rural women are often targeted by human traffickers and taken across borders in Africa and forced to become sex workers. Credit: Aimable Twahirwa/IPS
  • by Aimable Twahirwa (kigali)
  • Inter Press Service

KIGALI, Apr 29 (IPS) – Desperate to escape the rural area where she was engaged in the informal economy in Kayonza, a district in Eastern Rwanda, Sharon* made a long and arduous journey to Kenya in the hope of a well-paid job.

An unidentified individual contacted her, paid for her ticket, and gave her a modest amount of pocket money to travel to Kenya by road. The person told the 19-year-old she was traveling to take up an “employment opportunity”.

However, Sharon found herself in sexual servitude at a karaoke bar on the outskirts of the Kenyan capital Nairobi.

Sharon’s job was to bow elegantly to all customers at the door and usher them inside the bar.

“I was also hired as a nightclub dancer and sometimes forced by my employer to engage in sexual intercourse with clients to earn a living,” the high school graduate told IPS in an interview.

Like Sharon, activists say the number of young women from rural areas trafficked into the sex trade across many East African countries is growing. The young women are lured with the promise of good jobs or marriage. Instead, they are sold into prostitution in cities such as Nairobi (Kenya) and Kampala (Uganda).

Both activists and lawmakers warn that people with hidden agendas could target young women from Rwanda.

The process of trafficking most of these young women into neighboring countries is complex. It involves false promises to their families and victims in which they are promised a “better life”, activists say.

In many cases, traffickers lure young women from rural villages to neighboring countries with the promise of well-paid work. Then, victims are transferred to people who become their enslavers – especially in dubious hotels and karaoke bars.

While Rwanda has tried to combat human trafficking, law enforcement agencies stress that the main challenge revolves around the financial and other assistance for repatriated victims. Limited budgets of the institutions in charge of investigation and rehabilitation of the victims have meant that these programmes are not working optimally.

The chairperson of the East African Legislative Assembly’s Committee on Regional Affairs and Conflict Resolution, Fatuma Ndangiza, warned that if no urgent measures are undertaken, the problem is likely to worsen.

“Most of these young women without employment were victims of a well-established human trafficking ring operating under the guise of employment agencies in the region,” Ndangiza told IPS.

The latest figures by Rwanda Investigation Bureau (RIB) indicate that 119 cases of human trafficking, illegal migration, and smuggling of migrants in the region were investigated in the last three years.

These involved 215 victims, among whom 165 were females and 59 males.

Driven by the demand for cheap labor and commercial sex, trafficking rings across the East African region capitalize primarily on economic and social vulnerabilities to exploit their victims, experts said.

But estimates by the UN International Organization for Migration (IOM) show that the lack of relevant legislation and needed administrative institutions across the East African region have continued to give traffickers and smugglers an undue advantage to carry on their activities.

To prevent human trafficking, Rwanda has adopted several measures, including passing a new law in 2018.

Under the current legislation, offenders face up to 15 years of imprisonment, but activists say this measure is not enough deterrent.

Although law enforcement officers were trained in combatting human trafficking, Evariste Murwanashyaka, a fervent defender of human rights who is based in Kigali, told IPS that enforcing laws is a challenge, mainly because it is hard to detect women who are engaged in sex work or other forms of sexual exploitation in neighboring countries.

Murwanashyaka is the Program Manager of Rwandan based Umbrella of Human Rights Organization known as ‘Collectif des Ligues et Associations de Défense des Droits de l’Homme’ (CLADHO)

“Young women are still more likely to become targets of trafficking due to the growing demand for sexual slavery across the region, ” he said.

Now with the COVID-19 pandemic, activists say there is not only a lack of awareness but people, especially youth, who are unaware they are victims of a human trafficking offense.

“Most informal job offers from abroad for these young people are associated with illicit businesses, such as human trafficking, mainly of women, and their sexual and labor exploitation,” Murwanashyaka told IPS

According to the Africa Centre for Strategic Studies, the increasing unemployment rates, malnourishment, and school closures have increased human trafficking.

Meanwhile, RIB spokesperson, Dr Thierry Murangira is convinced that human trafficking is a transnational organized crime.

“Being transnational organized crimes, “this requires the involvement of more than one jurisdiction and regional cooperation to investigate and prosecute the crime,” he said.

This article is part of a series of features from across the globe on human trafficking. IPS coverage is supported by the Airways Aviation Group.
The Global Sustainability Network ( GSN ) is pursuing the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal number 8 with a special emphasis on Goal 8.7, which “takes immediate and effective measures to eradicate forced labor, end modern slavery and human trafficking, and secure the prohibition and elimination of the worst forms of child labor, including recruitment and use of child soldiers, and by 2025 end child labor in all its forms”.
The origins of the GSN come from the endeavors of the Joint Declaration of Religious Leaders signed on 2 December 2014. Religious leaders of various faiths gathered to work together “to defend the dignity and freedom of the human being against the extreme forms of the globalization of indifference, such as exploitation, forced labor, prostitution, human trafficking”.

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Government Ministries Must Collaborate to End Teenage Pregnancy Crisis in Kenya — Global Issues

Credit: Michael Duff/UNFPA
  • Opinion by Stephanie Musho
  • Inter Press Service

Apr 29 (IPS) – The Ministry of Health in Kenya recently reported there were 45,754 cases of adolescent pregnancies between January and February this year – that translates to 700 cases a day. Of the total number, at least 2000 of these cases resulted from sexual and gender based violence (SGBV), a figure which is likely lower than the reality.

What is more is that every week, 98 girls were reported to have contracted HIV in the study period.

Having been a teenage mother myself and now a sexual and reproductive health advocate, the worrisome statistics hit close to home. As Kenyans, we have cultivated and normalized a culture of public outcry on issues of concern and shortly thereafter, swiftly moving on.

This must change. We must pay attention to this crisis and address it. The price to pay if current trends continue is too high, as this directly touches on the lives of the future of our great Republic.

Stephanie Musho

The effects of teenage pregnancy are often deleterious affecting that affect the social and, economic aspects of young mothers. Consider that often, teenage mothers drop out of school due to the stigma, and are inadequately supported postpartum to return to school in their new status of motherhood.

Disruptions in education ultimately perpetuate a vicious economic dependency cycle, often on people who abuse their vulnerability. There are also health risks involved like infections and obstetric fistula among others – as well as mental health challenges including anxiety and depression.  Additionally, babies born to adolescents are more likely to have low birth weight and severe neonatal conditions.

The startling figures from earlier this year point to two scenarios. On the one hand is that adolescents are engaging in consensual sex amongst themselves. This could be attributed to curiosity and the raging hormonal changes that come flooding in at puberty.

On the other hand, incidents could point to a sexual and gender based violence crisis that is perpetuating the teenage pregnancy crisis in the country. For both scenarios, Kenya has a robust legal and policy framework to prevent these crises that must be better employed.

The Constitution, which is the supreme law of the land, explicitly guarantees the right to reproductive health in Article 43. This is working in tandem with the National Adolescent Sexual and Reproductive Health Policy (2015) that employs a preventive approach to teenage pregnancy through, among others, the access to correct sexual and reproductive health information.

Additionally, is the Return to School Policy that provides guidelines on the reintegration of adolescent mothers to school, postpartum. Additionally, the Children’s Act, the Sexual Offences Act and the Penal Code all prescribe strict punishment for sexual and gender based violence.

These are complemented by the Kenya School Health Policy which ideally safeguards learners from the same.

So, there are laws, but the problem lies in the implementation – or lack thereof, of these solid frameworks.

Implementation is additionally hindered when duty bearers misinterpret or are unaware of their own policies. Just recently, a senior Ministry of Health official publicly stated that giving contraceptives to minors is a criminal offense punishable by a jail term of up to 20 years.

This is however not a true representation of the existing legal and policy framework. In his erroneous statement that pointed to a draft policy that is yet to be passed, the ministry official misled millions of Kenyans.

The crisis at hand shows how critical it is for adolescents to receive correct information on sexual and reproductive health, products and services to make wise decisions.  Opponents argue that this would increase promiscuity among adolescents.

However, that perspective remains an inadequate rejoinder because the fact of the matter is that whether we like it or not, teenagers are having sex – a lot of it too.  They therefore need to freely make informed decisions that protect their health and their future.

As we move into the month of May which is dedicated to preventing and ending teenage pregnancies worldwide, the Kenyan government must intentionally work on ending the scourge that has persisted over the years.

The Ministry of Health must provide products and services for prevention and mitigation in accordance with the law. The Ministry of Education must work to standardize and deliver comprehensive sexuality education across the country.

To galvanize this, Kenya must reaffirm the regional Ministerial Commitment on Comprehensive Sexuality Education and Sexual and Reproductive Health Services for Adolescents and Young People in Eastern and Southern Africa which it signed in 2013 but shied away from recommitting to in December 2021.

The Ministry of Interior and Coordination of National Government under which security falls, must work to investigate and provide evidence for the prosecution of perpetrators.

The Ministry of Culture must also fight against harmful traditional practices that feed into the crises. This should all be in collaboration with the relevant ministries that house the youth affairs and gender affairs dockets respectively.  Until then, the health, life and future of Kenyan girls hang in the balance.

Stephanie Musho is a human rights lawyer and a Senior New Voices Fellow at the Aspen Institute

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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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With Violence on the Rise, Asian Americans Establish Support Groups for Help — Global Issues

Asian Americans affected by anti-Asian sentiment and hate crimes have provided support to each other. Left to right from top: Dr Boyung Lee, Dr Russell Jeung, Cynthia Choi, Myleen Hollero, and Dr Bryant Lin. Credit: Myleen Hollero
  • by Seimi Chu (california)
  • Inter Press Service

California, Apr 28 (IPS) – Dr Boyung Lee, a widow and the Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs and Dean of the Faculty at Iliff School of Theology, would use a short break in her working day to walk around her neighborhood. The fresh air helped her deal with her grief and work-related stress.

In May 2020, however, this small but significant daily ritual ended abruptly.

Lee was walking when she noticed a dirty white truck but did not think much of it. She carried on walking, then heard something. The noise continued, and when she looked back, she noticed the driver inside the truck was shouting at her.

Dr Boyung Lee was targeted by a truck driver on this street on S Elati Street near W Bates Avenue in Englewood, Colorado.

Listening carefully, Lee realized that he was jeering at her – including using one of the common taunts directed at the Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) community: “Go back to your country.”

Slightly shaken by this hostile confrontation, Lee continued walking. However, the driver followed her. Thankfully, Lee acted swiftly and ran into the opening of her neighbor’s apartment building, so the driver could not follow her.

The incident made her feel unsafe. She was even nervous about grocery shopping. The verbal attack turned a Korean American independent feminist into a dependent person.

Lee now covered herself with masks and hats to prevent others from noticing that she was an Asian.

She started to feel safe when her peers offered to go with her on her walks. However, outside of that, Lee was afraid. It took Lee over a year to feel comfortable going out to work by herself.

Angered because her experience had turned her into a dependent person, Lee thought about how she could educate the public about the beauty of Asian culture.

Dr Boyung Lee ran into the opening of this apartment building when the truck driver followed her. Targeted because she is an Asian American, the incident resulted in a loss of independence until she became involved in hosting lectures and workshops about Asian culture and art. Credit: Supplied

By teaming up with a few Asian colleagues, she brought in Asian American artists. She hosted lectures and workshops to educate the community about the intersection of Asian culture and art. Through this experience, Lee felt empowered and returned to being the independent feminist she once was.

Lee is not alone in her experiences of Asian hate abuse. Many in the AAPI community faced harassment, discrimination, and abuse.

When a Pacific Islander spoke Chamorro at a mall in Dallas, Texas, a passerby coughed on her and jeered: “You and your people are the reason why we have corona. Go sail a boat back to your island.”

A mother tried to enroll her daughter in a gymnastics class in Tustin, California. However, the owner refused because the mother’s name was ‘Asian’. These were two of the numerous incidents reported by Stop AAPI Hate, a support group that works to end racism.

From March 19, 2020, when the pandemic emerged, until December 31, 2021, there were over 10,000 incidents reported to Stop AAPI Hate, of which 4,632 happened in 2020 and 6,273 in 2021. Based on the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism’s data, there was a 339% increase in anti-Asian hate crimes in 2021 compared with the previous year.

The increase in hate crimes against Asian Americans stems from the virus’s origin. COVID-19 was first identified in Wuhan province, China. Due to its origin, hostile rhetoric was used to connote the coronavirus, such as “Kung Flu”, “Chinese virus”, and the “Wuhan virus.” Racializing the virus led to an uptick in anti-Asian racism, prejudice, discrimination, and hate crimes. Common verbal harassment included: “Go back to China” and “Take your virus, you Chinks!”

The most recent report released by Stop AAPI Hate found that 63% of the hate incidents involved verbal harassment, 16.2% involved physical assault, 11.5% involved civil rights violations, and 8.6% involved online harassment. Most occurred in public spaces, such as public streets and public transits.

Asian Americans were blamed for “bringing the virus” to America.

Russell Jeung, professor of Asian American Studies at San Francisco State University, worked with Cynthia Choi, Co-Executive Director of Chinese Affirmative Action, with other leaders, spearheaded the mission to fight anti-Asian racism. Jeung wanted to provide Asian American communities with resources, so this harassment would not happen again.

Along with Choi and Manjusha Kulkarni, Director of the AAPI Equity Alliance, Jeung founded Stop AAPI Hate to find solutions to the underlying causes of discrimination and hate. He formed a research team of San Francisco State University students to collect data to create the reports published on the Stop AAPI website. Jeung and his students discovered that hate crimes against Asian Americans occurred most frequently in California.

Jeung also noticed Asian Americans were taking a stance against racism.

Asian Americans used their social media platforms and utilized hashtags, such as #Racismisavirus, to ensure their posts would go viral. Another trend Jeung witnessed was that Asian Americans elected officials who would speak up against xenophobia.

As a result, Asian Americans turned out in their numbers to vote in 2020. As Jeung explained, Asian Americans voted for candidates who would support their beliefs and promised to fight against xenophobia.

Chinese Affirmative Action, a support community-based civil rights organization to protect the rights of Chinese and Asian Americans, and Stop AAPI Hate, collected first-hand accounts of people who self-reported what was happening and what was said to them.

The two organizations have been working on advancing racial equity by dealing with racial tensions between the Asian communities and other communities. These reports helped them understand the nature of the violent attacks. So far, over 3,700 cases have been reported to these organizations. They also work with the media to share the information.

“Certainly, in my lifetime, we have not witnessed this level of hate directed at our communities,” Choi lamented.

Bryant Lin, a Clinical Associate Professor of Medicine at Stanford University School of Medicine and Co-Director and Co-Founder of the Center for Asian Health Research and Education, led a project that researched people’s perception of the relationship between COVID-19 and discrimination. They surveyed nearly 2,000 people across the country.

Lin explained the results of his study. “Chinese, Koreans, Japanese, and other Asian Pacific Islanders showed up to 3.9 times increased odds of self-reported racial discrimination due to COVID-19 and experienced nearly up to 5.4 times increased odds of concern for physical assault due to COVID-19.”

Although Asians are very diverse and heterogeneous – there are six major subgroups in the United States – they are treated as a monolithic group. Lin revealed that East Asians tended to experience more discrimination than South and Southeast Asians. The highest rates of self-reported discrimination were from Chinese Americans.

“Our study also found that people were very concerned about physical attacks, and people were also considering buying firearms,” Lin said. He added they were likely to do a further study on how perceptions changed.

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Big Business Depletes Nature, Big Business Supplants Naturewith Synthetic Food — Global Issues

If forest loss continues at the current rate, it will be impossible to keep warming below two degrees Celsius as pledged in the Paris Agreement.
Credit: José Garth Medina/IPS
  • by Baher Kamal (madrid)
  • Inter Press Service

MADRID, Apr 27 (IPS) – In case you were not aware, please know that humanity used to cultivate more than 6.000 plant species for food, but now instead fewer than 200 of these species make major contributions to food production. Out of these, only 9% account for 66% of total crop production.

Also that 33% of the world’s fish stocks are overfished.

And that 26% of the nearly 8.000 local breeds of livestock that are still in existence are now at risk of extinction.

And most coral reefs face too many pressures from pollution to overfishing and habitat destruction.

In addition, many species, including pollinators, soil organisms and the natural enemies of pests, that contribute to vital ecosystem services, are in decline as a consequence of the destruction and degradation of habitats, overexploitation, pollution and other threats.

There is also a rapid decline in key ecosystems that deliver numerous services essential to food and agriculture, including supply of freshwater, protection against storms, floods and other hazards, and habitats for species such as fish and pollinators.

All the above facts do not come out of the blue – they, among many others, are based on specific scientific findings provided by 91 countries and 27 international organisations, and contributions from over 175 authors and reviewers, who elaborated The State of the World’s Biodiversity for Food and Agriculture.

What is biodiversity for food and agriculture?

The UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) explains that biodiversity is the variety of life at genetic, species and ecosystem levels. Biodiversity for food and agriculture is, in turn, the subset of biodiversity that contributes in one way or another to agriculture and food production, it says, adding the following:

Biodiversity includes the domesticated plants and animals that are part of crop, livestock, forest or aquaculture systems, harvested forest and aquatic species, the wild relatives of domesticated species, and other wild species harvested for food and other products.

It also encompasses what is known as “associated biodiversity”, the vast range of organisms that live in and around food and agricultural production systems, sustaining them and contributing to their output.

Biodiversity supplies many vital ecosystem services, such as creating and maintaining healthy soils, pollinating plants, controlling pests and providing habitat for wildlife, including for fish and other species that are vital to food production and agricultural livelihoods, adds FAO, while also explaining the following:

Biodiversity makes production systems and livelihoods more resilient to shocks and stresses, including those caused by climate change. It is a key resource in efforts to increase food production while limiting negative impacts on the environment.

It makes a variety of contributions to the livelihoods of many people, often reducing the need for food and agricultural producers to rely on costly or environmentally harmful external inputs.

Biodiversity at genetic, species and ecosystem levels helps address the challenges posed by diverse and changing environmental conditions and socio-economic circumstances.

Diversifying production systems, for example by using multiple species, breeds or varieties, integrating the use of crop, livestock, forest and aquatic biodiversity, or promoting habitat diversity in the local landscape or seascape, helps to promote resilience, improve livelihoods and support food security and nutrition.

“Many key components of biodiversity for food and agriculture at genetic, species and ecosystem levels are in decline. The proportion of livestock breeds at risk of extinction is increasing. Overall, the diversity of crops present in farmers’ fields has declined and threats to crop diversity are increasing.”

More than 6,000 plant species have been cultivated for food. Now, fewer than 200 make major contributions to food production globally, regionally or nationally. A sea of soy is seen near the city of Porto Nacional, on the right bank of the Tocantins River, Brazil. Credit: Mario Osava/IPS

Demolishing our own home

Should this not be enough, please also know that the world’s oceans are getting warmer because of increasing global carbon dioxide emissions.

Also that the world’s best-known coral reefs could be extinct by the end of the century unless more is done to make them resilient to our warming oceans.

In short, “We are wreaking havoc on our own home – the only home we have, the one home we all share,” UN General Assembly President Abdulla, Shahid said on 22 April 2022 on the occasion of the International Mother Earth Day.

But who is behind the destruction of biodiversity?

Obviously, those who have been making voracious profits by exploiting the essential infrastructure of all kinds of life on Earth, through their industrial intensive agriculture, the collection of genetic resources of flora and fauna to register them as their own “property”, the production of genetically modified food, and the over-use of chemicals.

They are also the big timber business destroying forests, inducing the waste of huge amounts of agriculture and livestock products to keep their prices the most profitable possible, and a long, very long etcetera.

And who profits from such destruction?

A specific, accurate answer to this question may be deduced from the numerous studies elaborated by Professor Vandana Shiva, the world-famous environmental activist from India, who is known for her opposition to big multinationals such as Monsanto for their “nefarious influence on agriculture.”

In her ‘must read’ report, The Corporate Push for Synthetic Foods: False Solutions That Endanger Our Health and Damage the Planet, Vandana Shiva informs that fully artificial food is an increasingly popular trend focused on developing a new line of synthetically produced, ultra-processed food products by using recent advances in synthetic biology, artificial intelligence, and biotechnology.

“These new products seek to imitate and replace animal products, food additives, and expensive, rare, or socially conflictive ingredients (such as palm oil), explains the world-known physicist, ecofeminist, philosopher, activist, and author of more than 20 books and 500 papers.

“Biotech companies and agribusiness giants are seeing the opportunity to move into this promising market of “green” consumption and hence these products are marketed to a new generation of environmentally conscious consumers who are growing critical of the grim realities of industrial food production.

“As a result, meatless burgers and sausages, as well as imitations of cheese, dairy products, seafood, and others, have begun to flood the market, being found anywhere from fast food chains to local grocery stores.

Such products market themselves as ‘eco-friendly’, ‘healthy’, and ‘sustainable,’ says Vandana Shiva, who already three decades ago, founded Navdanya and the Navdanya movement to defend Seed and Food sovereignty and small farmers around the world, as well as the Research Foundation for Science, Technology, and Ecology (New Delhi, India).

In short: big business has largely contributed to destroying the essential web of life… and big business now supplants Nature by producing synthetic food.

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Indigenous Women in Mexico Take United Stance Against Inequality — Global Issues

Every other Tuesday, a working group of Mayan women meets to review the organization and progress of their food saving and production project in Uayma, in the state of Yucatán in southeastern Mexico. CREDIT: Courtesy of the Ko’ox Tani Foundation
  • by Emilio Godoy (uayma, mexico)
  • Inter Press Service

UAYMA, Mexico, Apr 26 (IPS) – Every other Tuesday at 5:00 p.m. sharp, a group of 26 Mexican women meet for an hour to discuss the progress of their work and immediate tasks. Anyone who arrives late must pay a fine of about 25 cents on the dollar.

The collective has organized in the municipality of Uayma (which means “Not here” in the Mayan language) to learn agroecological practices, as well as how to save money and produce food for family consumption and the sale of surpluses.

“We have to be responsible. With savings we can do a little more,” María Petul, a married Mayan indigenous mother of two and a member of the group “Lool beh” (“Flower of the road” in Mayan), told IPS in this municipality of just over 4,000 inhabitants, 1,470 kilometers southeast of Mexico City in the state of Yucatán, on the Yucatán peninsula.

The home garden “gives me enough to eat and sell, it helps me out,” said Petul as she walked through her small garden where she grows habanero peppers (Capsicum chinense, traditional in the area), radishes and tomatoes, surrounded by a few trees, including a banana tree whose fruit will ripen in a few weeks and some chickens that roam around the earthen courtyard.

The face of Norma Tzuc, who is also married with two daughters, lights up with enthusiasm when she talks about the project. “I am very happy. We now have an income. It’s exciting to be able to help my family. Other groups already have experience and tell us about what they’ve been doing,” Tzuc told IPS.

The two women and the rest of their companions, whose mother tongue is Mayan, participate in the project “Women saving to address climate change”, run by the non-governmental Ko’ox Tani Foundation (“Let’s Go Ahead”, in Mayan), dedicated to community development and social inclusion, based in Merida, the state capital.

This phase of the project is endowed with some 100,000 dollars from the Commission for Environmental Cooperation (CEC), the non-binding environmental arm of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), formed in 1994 by Canada, the United States and Mexico and replaced in 2020 by another trilateral agreement.

The initiative got off the ground in February and will last two years, with the aim of training some 250 people living in extreme poverty, mostly women, in six locations in the state of Yucatán.

The maximum savings for each woman in the group is about 12 dollars every two weeks and the minimum is 2.50 dollars, and they can withdraw the accumulated savings to invest in inputs or animals, or for emergencies, with the agreement of the group. Through the project, the women will receive seeds, agricultural inputs and poultry, so that they can install vegetable gardens and chicken coops on their land.

The women write down the quotas in a white notebook and deposit the savings in a gray box, kept in the house of the group’s president.

José Torre, project director of the Ko’ox Tani Foundation, explained that the main areas of entrepreneurship are: community development, food security, livelihoods and human development.

“What we have seen over time is that the savings meetings become a space for human development, in which they find support and solidarity from their peers, make friends and build trust,” he told IPS during a tour of the homes of some of the savings group participants in Uayma.

The basis for the new initiative in this locality is a similar program implemented between 2018 and 2021 in other Yucatecan municipalities, in which the organization worked with 1400 families.

María Petul, a Mayan indigenous woman, plants chili peppers, tomatoes, radishes and medicinal herbs in the vegetable garden in the courtyard of her home in Uayma, in the southeastern Mexican state of Yucatán. CREDIT: Emilio Godoy/IPS

Unequal oasis

Yucatan, a region home to 2.28 million people, suffers from a high degree of social backwardness, with 34 percent of the population living in moderate poverty, 33 percent suffering unmet needs, 5.5 percent experiencing income vulnerability and almost seven percent living in extreme poverty.

The COVID-19 pandemic that hit this Latin American country in February 2020 exacerbated these conditions in a state that depends on agriculture, tourism and services, similar to the other two states that make up the Yucatán Peninsula: Campeche and Quintana Roo.

Inequality is also a huge problem in the state, although the Gini Index dropped from 0.51 in 2014 to 0.45, according to a 2018 government report, based on data from 2016 (the latest year available). The Gini coefficient, where 1 indicates the maximum inequality and 0 the greatest equality, is used to calculate income inequality.

The situation of indigenous women is worse, as they face marginalization, discrimination, violence, land dispossession and lack of access to public services.

More than one million indigenous people live in the state.

Women participating in a project funded by the North American Commission for Environmental Cooperation record their savings in a white notebook and deposit them in a gray box. Mayan indigenous woman Norma Tzuc belongs to a group taking part in the initiative in Uayma, in the southeastern Mexican state of Yucatán. CREDIT: Emilio Godoy/IPS

Climate crisis, yet another vulnerability

Itza Castañeda, director of equity at the non-governmental World Resources Institute (WRI), highlights the persistence of structural inequalities in the peninsula that exacerbate the effects of the climate crisis.

“In the three states there is greater inequality between men and women. This stands in the way of women’s participation and decision-making. Furthermore, the existing evidence shows that there are groups in conditions of greater vulnerability to climate impacts,” she told IPS from the city of Tepoztlán, near Mexico City.

She added that “climate change accentuates existing inequalities, but a differentiated impact assessment is lacking.”

Official data indicate that there are almost 17 million indigenous people in Mexico, representing 13 percent of the total population, of which six million are women.

Of indigenous households, almost a quarter are headed by women, while 65 percent of indigenous girls and women aged 12 and over perform unpaid work compared to 35 percent of indigenous men – a sign of the inequality in the system of domestic and care work.

To add to their hardships, the Yucatan region is highly vulnerable to the effects of the climate crisis, such as droughts, devastating storms and rising sea levels. In June 2021, tropical storm Cristobal caused the flooding of Uayma, where three women’s groups are operating under the savings system.

For that reason, the project includes a risk management and hurricane early warning system.

The Mexican government is building a National Care System, but the involvement of indigenous women and the benefits for them are still unclear.

Petul looks excitedly at the crops planted on her land and dreams of a larger garden, with more plants and more chickens roaming around, and perhaps a pig to be fattened. She also thinks about the possibility of emulating women from previous groups who have set up small stores with their savings.

“They will lay eggs and we can eat them or sell them. With the savings we can also buy roosters, in the market chicks are expensive,” said Petul, brimming with hope, who in addition to taking care of her home and family sells vegetables.

Her neighbor Tzuc, who until now has been a homemaker, said that the women in her group have to take into account the effects of climate change. “It has been very hot, hotter than before, and there is drought. Fortunately, we have water, but we have to take care of it,” she said.

For his part, Torre underscored the results of the savings groups. The women “left extreme poverty behind. The pandemic hit hard, because there were families who had businesses and stopped selling. The organization gave them resilience,” he said.

In addition, a major achievement is that the households that have already completed the project continue to save, regularly attend meetings and have kept producing food.

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