Earthquake-affected families in Chamakhet village, Jajarkot, are staying in temporary shelters. Credit: Barsha Shah/IPS
by Tanka Dhakal (kathmandu)
Inter Press Service
KATHMANDU, Nov 10 (IPS) – Emergency health services are grappling with the enormous challenge of providing essential care to individuals affected by a deadly earthquake that claimed the lives of at least 153 and around 400 people wounded in western Nepal.
At midnight of Friday, November 3, a powerful 6.4 magnitude earthquake struck the remote district of Jajarkot in western Nepal, and rural communities are dealing with physical destruction, loss of life, and a lack of basic healthcare services, which pose a significant threat to public health in the aftermath of the earthquake.
“Affected families are living under the open sky in this cold winter, and we are struggling to manage basic services, including food, clean water, and healthcare facilities,” explained Bir Bahadur Giri, President of Barekot Rural Municipality, which was the epicenter of the earthquake.
“Emergency responses are still ongoing, and we are witnessing incidents of cholera infections. We need dedicated support from all stakeholders to address this threat before it worsens.”
Families, having lost their homes that were either completely destroyed or damaged, are struggling. There is a shortage of clean drinking water, food, and warm shelter.
Giri, who is also a local resident, stressed the need for a robust focus not only on emergency support but also on immediate responses to public health concerns, including psychological counseling for affected families. The earthquake and subsequent aftershocks have affected the historically vulnerable Karnali region, making it more prone to public health outbreaks. The risk has increased significantly due to the latest disaster.
The earthquake destroyed houses and killed more than 150 people. Credit: Barsha Shah/IPS
‘We Are Ready to Respond’
In the face of the crisis, the government is trying to console and keep the affected community hopeful about the assistance they will receive from the agencies. The Ministry of Health and Population claims that it is in continuous contact with the emergency medical team (EMT) and stakeholders to understand the situations on the ground. The Ministry stated, “There is a possibility of a public health-related impact after this hazard, and we are preparing for an effective response.”
As the central agency, the Karnali Province Government said it is monitoring the situation in real-time and ensuring that the response reaches the community on time. According to the Health Service Directorate of the provincial government, their current focus is on monitoring and preparing for potential health risks.
Dr Rabin Khadka, Office Chief at the Directorate, further explained, “Yes, we are facing shortages of resources and manpower, but we are trying to be ready for possible health risks. We are aware that there is a high possibility of an outbreak, and we are preparing for it, but we need help from all.”
Karnali Province, including severely affected districts like Jajarkot and West Rukum, is prone to diarrhea, cholera, and other water-borne diseases. According to the Directorate, around 500 people have died due to these diseases in the past ten years in the province.
The fear of water-borne and cold-related health risks is concerning for locals, especially when affected families are struggling to access clean water despite government agencies claiming they are prepared.
Concerning Reality
Sagar Budhathoki, a Kathmandu-based journalist who covers healthcare and is currently reporting from the earthquake-affected area, explained that the ground reality for affected families is heart-wrenching.
“Getting primary healthcare and accessing very basic needs is itself a huge battle for the locals here,” Budhathoki shared his observations. “The majority of healthcare centers are also destroyed, and now these families are fully dependent. We don’t see any effective preparedness to tackle a possible public health crisis.”
At least 14 health posts or healthcare centers have been either destroyed or damaged by the earthquake. Dr Pratikshya Bharati is leading health services at the Jajarkot district hospital, and her major concern is how remote villages will function during this challenging and demanding time when they are also hit by the earthquake.
“Healthcare facilities in the villages are struggling to maintain normal day-to-day health services,” Dr. Bharati said, “For the first few days, our focus was on rescue and emergency treatment, but now there is a fear of potential public health concerns, and we are not fully equipped.”
According to her, even the district hospital is only able to provide primary care and refer patients to hospitals in nearby cities, including Surkhet and Nepalgunj, which take at least 3 to 5 hours to reach. “If we were able to provide more services, we may be able to save a few lives,” Bhattrai shares her disappointment.
In addition to that, regular immunizations and breathing facilities are also affected. “Home delivery rates will rise because birthing centers are also destroyed,” she explained, “Institutional delivery is only at 52 percent here, and now there is a fear that risky home deliveries will increase, which is another area we need to be careful about.”
SAN FRANCISCO, USA, Nov 09 (IPS) – The governments of Israel and the United States are now in disagreement over how many Palestinian civilians it’s okay to kill. Last week — as the death toll from massive Israeli bombardment of Gaza neared 10,000 people, including several thousand children — top U.S. officials began to worry about the rising horrified outcry at home and abroad. So, they went public with muted misgivings and calls for a “humanitarian pause.” But Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made clear that he would have none of it.
Such minor tactical discord does little to chip away at the solid bedrock alliance between the two countries, which are most of the way through a 10-year deal that guarantees $38 billion in U.S. military aid to Israel. And now, as the carnage in Gaza continues, Washington is rushing to provide extra military assistance worth $14 billion.
Days ago, In These Times reported that the Biden administration is seeking congressional permission “to unilaterally blanket-approve the future sale of military equipment and weapons — like ballistic missiles and artillery ammunition — to Israel without notifying Congress.” And so, “the Israeli government would be able to purchase up to $3.5 billion in military articles and services in complete secrecy.”
While Israeli forces were using weapons provided by the United States to slaughter Palestinian civilians, resupply flights were landing in Israel courtesy of U.S. taxpayers. Air & Space Forces Magazine published a photo showing “U.S. Air Force Airmen and Israeli military members unload cargo from a U.S. Air Force C-17 Globemaster III on a ramp at Nevatim Base, Israel.”
Pictures taken on Oct. 24 show that the military cargo went from Travis Air Force Base in California to Ramstein Air Base in Germany to Israel. Overall, the magazine reported, “the Air Force’s airlift fleet has been steadily working to deliver essential munitions, armored vehicles, and aid to Israel.” And so, the apartheid country is receiving a huge boost to assist with the killing.
The horrific atrocities committed by Hamas on Oct. 7 have opened the door to protracted horrific atrocities by Israel with key assistance from the United States.
Oxfam America has issued a briefing paper decrying the Pentagon’s plans to ship tens of thousands of 155mm artillery shells to the Israeli military. The organization noted that “Israel’s use of this munition in past conflicts demonstrates that its use would be virtually assured to be indiscriminate, unlawful, and devastating to civilians in Gaza.”
Oxfam added: “There are no known scenarios in which 155mm artillery shells could be used in Israel’s ground operation in Gaza in compliance with international humanitarian law.”
During the last several weeks, “international humanitarian law” has been a common phrase coming from President Biden while expressing support for Israel’s military actions. It’s an Orwellian absurdity, as if saying the words is sufficient while constantly helping Israel to violate international humanitarian law in numerous ways.
“Israeli forces have used white phosphorus, a chemical that ignites when in contact with oxygen, causing horrific and severe burns, on densely populated neighborhoods,” Human Rights Watch senior legal adviser Clive Baldwin wrote in late October. “White phosphorus can burn down to the bone, and burns to 10 percent of the human body are often fatal.”
Baldwin added: “Israel has also engaged in the collective punishment of Gaza’s population through cutting off food, water, electricity, and fuel. This is a war crime, as is willfully blocking humanitarian relief from reaching civilians in need.”
At the end of last week, the Win Without War organization noted that “senior administration officials are increasingly alarmed by how the Israeli government is conducting its military operations in Gaza, as well as the reputational repercussions of the Biden administration’s support for a collective punishment strategy that clearly violates international law. Many worry that the U.S. will be blamed for the Israeli military’s indiscriminate attacks on civilians, particularly women and children.”
News reporting now tells us that Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken want a bit of a course correction. For them, the steady large-scale killing of Palestinian civilians became concerning when it became a PR problem.
Dressed up in an inexhaustible supply of euphemistic rhetoric and double-talk, such immoral policies are stunning to see in real time. And, for many people in Gaza, literally breathtaking.
Now, guided by political calculus, the White House is trying to persuade Israel’s prime minister to titrate the lethal doses of bombing Gaza. But as Netanyahu has made clear in recent days, Israel is going to do whatever it wants, despite pleas from its patron.
While, in effect, it largely functions in the Middle East as part of the U.S. war machine, Israel has its own agenda. Yet the two governments are locked into shared, long-term, overarching strategic interests in the Middle East that have absolutely no use for human rights except as rhetorical window-dressing.
Biden made that clear last year when he fist-bumped the de facto ruler of oil-rich Saudi Arabia, a dictatorship that — with major U.S. assistance — has led an eight-year war on Yemen costing nearly 400,000 lives.
The war machine needs constant oiling from news media. That requires ongoing maintenance of the doublethink assumption that when Israel terrorizes and kills people from the air, the Israeli Defense Force is fighting “terrorism” without engaging in it.
Another helpful notion in recent weeks has been the presumption that — while Hamas puts out “propaganda” — Israel does not. And so, on Nov. 2, the PBS NewsHour’s foreign affairs correspondent Nick Schifrin reported on what he called “Hamas propaganda videos.”
Fair enough. Except that it would be virtually impossible for mainstream U.S. news media to also matter-of-factly refer to public output from the Israeli government as “propaganda.” (I asked Schifrin for comment, but my several emails and texts went unanswered.)
Whatever differences might surface from time to time, the United States and Israel remain enmeshed. To the power elite in Washington, the bilateral alliance is vastly more important than the lives of Palestinian people. And it’s unlikely that the U.S. government will really confront Israel over its open-ended killing spree in Gaza.
Consider this: Just weeks before beginning her second stint as House speaker in January 2019, Rep. Nancy Pelosi was recorded on video at a forum sponsored by the Israeli American Council as she declared: “I have said to people when they ask me — if this Capitol crumbled to the ground, the one thing that would remain is our commitment to our aid, I don’t even call it aid — our cooperation — with Israel. That’s fundamental to who we are.”
Even making allowances for bizarre hyperbole, Pelosi’s statement is revealing of the kind of mentality that continues to hold sway in official Washington. It won’t change without a huge grassroots movement that refuses to go away.
Norman Solomon is the national director of RootsAction.org and executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy. He is the author of many books including War Made Easy. His latest book, War Made Invisible: How America Hides the Human Toll of Its Military Machine, was published in summer 2023 by The New Press.
UNITED NATIONS, Nov 09 (IPS) – The killings of thousands of civilians in the ongoing Middle East conflict are largely the result of an uneven battle—a nuclear-armed Israel, equipped with some of the most sophisticated American weapons systems, fighting a rag-tag militant group, Hamas.
Against this backdrop, a leading human rights organization, is appealing to Israel’s key allies—including the US, UK, Canada and Germany—to suspend military assistance and arms sales to Israel “so long as its forces commit widespread, serious abuses amounting to war crimes against Palestinian civilians with impunity”.
Iran and other governments, says Human Rights Watch (HRW), should also cease providing arms to Palestinian armed groups, including Hamas and Islamic Jihad, so long as they systematically commit attacks amounting to war crimes against Israeli civilians.
But the killings by the Israelis far outnumber the killings by Hamas, according to conservative estimates. Since October 7, about 1,400 Israelis and other nationals have been killed, and more than 10,000 Palestinians,40 percent of them children.
“Civilians are being punished and killed at a scale unprecedented in recent history in Israel and Palestine,” said Bruno Stagno, chief advocacy officer at Human Rights Watch. “The United States, Iran and other governments risk being complicit in grave abuses if they continue to provide military assistance to known violators.”
Kenneth Roth, the former executive director of HRW, was quoted as saying Israel dropping several large bombs in the middle of a densely populated refugee camp was completely and predictably going to lead to a significant and disproportionate loss of civilian lives and therefore a war crime.
Describing Israel’s military “as part of the US war machine”, Norman Solomon, national director of RootsAction.org and executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy, told IPS the solid bedrock alliance between Israel and the US has ensured the continuation of a 10-year deal that guarantees $38 billion in U.S. military aid to Israel.
And now, as the carnage in Gaza continues, he pointed out, Washington is rushing to provide extra military assistance worth $14 billion.
During the last several weeks, he said, “international humanitarian law” has been a common phrase coming from President Biden while expressing support for Israel’s military actions.
It’s an Orwellian absurdity, as if saying the words is sufficient, while constantly helping Israel to violate international humanitarian law in numerous ways, declared Solomon.
HRW said future military transfers to Israel in the face of ongoing serious violations of the laws of war risk making the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, and Germany complicit in these abuses if they knowingly and significantly contribute to them. Providing weapons to Palestinian armed groups, given their continuing unlawful attacks, risks making Iran complicit in those violations.
US President Joseph R. Biden has requested US$14.3 billion for further arms to Israel in addition to the $3.8 billion in US military aid Israel receives annually.
On November 2, the US House of Representatives passed a bill that would provide that military aid to Israel. Since October 7, the United States has either transferred or announced it is planning to transfer Small Diameter Bombs, Joint Direct Attack Munition (JDAM) guidance kits, 155mm artillery shells, and a million rounds of ammunition, among other weapons.
The United Kingdom has licensed the sale of GBP£442 million worth of arms ($539 million) to Israeli forces since 2015, including aircraft, bombs, and ammunition. Canada exported CDN$47 million ($33 million) in 2021 and 2022. Germany issued licenses for €862 million ($916 million) in arms sales to Israel between 2015 and 2019, according to HRW.
Hamas leadership publicly said in January 2022 that it received at least US$70 million in military assistance from Iran, but did not specify during what period of time this support was provided.
“How many more civilian lives must be lost, how much more must civilians suffer as a result of war crimes before countries supplying weapons to Israel and Palestinian armed groups pull the plug and avoid complicity in these atrocities?” Stagno said.
The United Nations, once described the deaths and destruction in the eight-year-old civil war in Yemen as “the world’s worst humanitarian disaster”.
The killings of mostly civilians have been estimated at over 100,000, with accusations of war crimes against a coalition led by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), whose primary arms supplier is the US.
And now, the killings of Palestinians in Gaza have come back to haunt the Americans in a new war zone. But still, the US is unlikely to be hauled before the International Criminal Court (ICC)., nor was it charged for human rights abuses, torture, and war crimes committed in Afghanistan and Iraq in a bygone era.
“If U.S. officials don’t care about Palestinian civilians facing atrocities using U.S. weapons, perhaps they will care a bit more about their own individual criminal liability for aiding Israel in carrying out these atrocities,” said Sarah Leah Whitson, executive director of Democracy for the Arab World Now (DAWN), an American non-profit organization that advocates democracy and human rights in the Middle East.
“The American people never signed up to help Israel commit war crimes against defenseless civilians with taxpayer funded bombs and artillery,” she noted.
Last month, Josh Paul, a longstanding official at the State Department’s political-military bureau resigned because of what he said was immoral US support and lethal aid for Israel’s bombings in Gaza.
According to the State Department, Israel has been designated as a Major Non-NATO Ally under U.S. law. This status provides foreign partners with certain benefits in the areas of defense trade and security cooperation and is a powerful symbol of their close relationship with the United States.
Consistent with statutory requirements, it is the policy of the United States to help Israel preserve its Qualitative Military Edge (QME), or its ability to counter and defeat any credible conventional military threat from any individual state or possible coalition of states or from non-state actors, while sustaining minimal damages and casualties.
This requires a quadrennial report to Congress, for arms transfers that are required to be Congressionally notified, and a determination that individual arms transfers to the region will not adversely affect Israel’s QME.
Strengthening their military relationship further, the United States and Israel have signed multiple bilateral defense cooperation agreements, including: a Mutual Defense Assistance Agreement (1952); a General Security of Information Agreement (1982); a Mutual Logistics Support Agreement (1991); and a Status of Forces Agreement (1994).
Armenians from Nagorno Karabakh on September 25, departing from the besieged enclave. Virtually the entire population has fled for fear of violence by Azerbaijani forces. Credit: Gaiane Yenokian/IPS
by Gaiane Yenokian (tegh, armenia)
Inter Press Service
TEGH, Armenia, Nov 08 (IPS) – From the balcony of the house she’s lived in for the past weeks, 32-year-old Margarita Ghushunts says she often looks in the direction of her home, in Nagorno Karabakh.
“Every time I look that way, I remember the hellish journey we took to escape from home. It feels like losing it over and over again,” she tells IPS.
Also called “Artsakh” by its Armenian former residents, Nagorno-Karabakh was a self-proclaimed republic within Soviet Azerbaijan which had sought international recognition and independence since the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991.
The First Nagorno-Karabakh War (1988-1994) ended with an Armenian victory. Azerbaijan would unleash its armed forces in 2020 and take back many of the areas lost years before.
But grievances were still not settled.
On September 19, Azerbaijan launched a massive attack against Nagorno Karabakh. All the population —more than 100,000 ethnic Armenians— fled the region for Armenia within a few days.
Panicked by the Azerbaijani attack, the civilian population rushed to evacuate. The sole road connecting Nagorno Karabakh to Armenia —closed by a 9-month blockade imposed by Azerbaijan— had just been reopened, but it could be closed again at any moment.
After a 28-hour, exhausting ride to the Armenian border from Nagorno Karabakh´s capital city Stepanakert, Margarita, her husband Harutyun and their three minor children arrived at her father’s house in Tegh village, in southern Armenia.
The village is located right on the Azerbaijani border. Margarita can even see the Azerbaijani military positions and their flags waving from the neighbouring mountain peaks.
“We can also hear the periodic gunshots so my children cannot sleep peacefully. Even when they hear the sound of thunder, they come to me and ask: “Mama, are they shooting at us again?”
Refugees in Kornidzor, the first town on the Armenian side of the border, on September 25. Many arrived empty-handed after fleeing on foot through the forest and under shelling. Credit: Gaiane Yenokian/IPS
Killed and tortured
On September 28, the last leader of Nagorno Karabakh, Samvel Shajramanian, issued a decree dissolving the self-proclaimed Nagorno Karabakh Republic as of January 1, 2024.
Today, the population of the evacuated enclave is spread throughout the regions of Armenia. Some of them are in the accommodations provided by the government, while others rent houses or live in free accommodations offered by caring individuals.
In several public speeches and international meetings, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev has repeatedly emphasized that the rights of Armenians living in Nagorno Karabakh would be safeguarded “with Azerbaijan’s national legislation and international commitments”.
But there’s little trust among the Armenians. Less than 40 remain in the besieged enclave. They are now provided with humanitarian aid by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC).
On October 19, the Armenian Human Rights Defender, Anahit Manasyan, reported that the bodies of the victims in Nagorno-Karabakh during the Azeri attack from September 19-21 showed signs of torture and mutilation.
It matches data issued by Armenia’s Investigative Committee on the 31st of October which points to 14 people being tortured by the Azerbaijani military and 64 people dying on the road from Nagorno Karabakh to Armenia.
In an interview with IPS in Yerevan, southern Armenia, International law and human rights expert Siranush Sahakyan notes that previously recorded cases of brutal murders among the civilian population of Nagorno-Karabakh demonstrate the futility of Aliyev´s words.
“After the 2020 war, up to 70 civilians decided to remain in their settlements of Hadrut, Shushi and other regions which came under Azerbaijani control. All these civilians were either captured, taken to Baku, tortured and killed or murdered in their own houses. Their bodies were desecrated,” recalls Siranush Sahakyan.
UN also called on Azerbaijan that “Rights and security of Karabakh Armenians must be guaranteed”. Other than just making calls, says Siranush Sahakyan, the UN should also create the conditions for it.
“The first condition is to eliminate hatred against Armenians. Also, an international fully mandated mechanism needs to be deployed in Azerbaijan to protect Armenians in case they face security issues. Without a substantial change in the situation, no one will return,” stresses the lawyer.
Romela Avanesyan prepares a traditional dish from Nagorno-Karabakh. As winter approaches, these displaced people depend on both government and international aid. Credit: Gaiane Yenokian/IPS
Fear of new attacks
Margarita Ghushunts’s little daughter, Rozi, was born under the blockade of Nagorno Karabakh during which they were deprived of gas, electricity, food, medicine, and fuel, and the healthcare system was almost non-functional.
But it was not the harsh living conditions that forced Margarita to leave Stepanakert
“We could bear all the cruelty of the blockade to protect our right of self-determination, but as Artsakh’s government was forced to surrender arms to save the civil population, we could not stay there anymore,” explains the displaced woman.
Life in Artsakh without its defence army, she claims, “simply equates to death for the population.”
Today, Ghushunts her neighbours often ask if they will stay in the village. Her answer, however, is unsettling for everyone. The displaced woman fears Azerbaijani troops “may launch an attack on Armenia at any moment.”
It can happen. According to the Armenian MFA, after the 2020 war Azerbaijan has occupied 150 square kilometres of the internationally recognized territories of the Republic of Armenia.
Displaced children from Nagorno Karabakh play in the only park in the town of Kalavan. According to the Armenian government, around 30,000 of the more than 100,000 refugees are minors. Credit: Gaiane Yenokian/IPS
On November 1st, The Lemkin Institute for Genocide Prevention issued a “Red Flag Alert” for the Republic of Azerbaijan in the Republic of Armenia, due to the alarming potential for an invasion of Armenia by Azerbaijan in the coming days and weeks.
Siranush Sahakyan, the International law expert interviewed by IPS, claims that the ratification of the Rome Statute on the International Criminal Court (ICC) by Armenia’s parliament on the 3rd of October could open the door to an international investigation of Azerbaijan’s crimes against Armenia.
“Non-ratification of the Rome Statute by Azerbaijan creates obstacles to investigate their crimes in Artsakh, but it will fall under jurisdiction for the crimes committed on the internationally recognised territory of Armenia starting from May 2021. This could be one of the ways to protect Armenia from future international crimes,” Sahakyan states.
The Avanesyans also left Nagorno Karabakh to settle in Vazashen, another border village in Armenia´s south. But they soon decided to move again.
“Our neighbour pointed out the Azerbaijani positions right in front of the village. He mentioned that they could not graze the cattle because the Azerbaijanis were stealing it. The children got scared, so we had to seek another shelter,” Lusine Avanesyan, a 35-year-old mother of five children told IPS from Kalavan village.
That´s where they moved again after the local guesthouse offered its rooms for the family allowing them to stay as long as they wished.
Romela Avanesyan, Lusine Avanesyan’s mother-in-law, began exploring the resources available in Kalavan to start a farm as soon as they arrived.
The displaced 61-year-old remembers the pomegranate garden she planted many years ago but was forced to leave behind. While they were rushing to evacuate Karabakh, she held onto what was most precious to her: the seeds of plants and vegetables from her garden.
“I was urging my grandchildren to pick only the cracked pomegranates and leave the beautiful ones to ripen,” Avansesyan tells IPS. Today, she adds, “those pomegranates are lost, and so is our entire homeland.”
Opinion by Armida Salsiah Alisjahbana, Natalia Kanem 2 (bangkok, thailand)
Inter Press Service
BANGKOK, Thailand, Nov 08 (IPS) – Asia and the Pacific is an economic powerhouse, fuelled by its vibrant and diverse population. Comprising 60 per cent of the world’s population, this region is bursting with both a wealth of experience and untapped potential.
Exciting advancements have been made here, in education; health care, including sexual and reproductive health; jobs, and sustainable development. Yet there is a catch: this progress has not been evenly distributed. In fact, inequity pervades the region, especially within individual countries.
Women still lose their lives during childbirth at alarming rates, and in many countries we have seen limited progress in reducing maternal mortality in the past decade. In several countries, less than 30 per cent of women of reproductive age use contraception. Unemployment rates among young women remain high, reaching up to 25 per cent in some places.
Women are still struggling for a seat at the political table, with less than a quarter of national parliamentary seats being occupied by women in 35 countries across the region. Progress towards gender equality and women’s empowerment has been sluggish, creating a roadblock to sustainable development.
The region is particularly susceptible to the effects of climate change and environmental degradation, with disasters claiming 2 million lives since 1970. Financial losses from these calamities add up to $924 billion every year, eating up nearly 3 per cent of the region’s GDP. Humanity’s environmental footprint has expanded dramatically. The region’s greenhouse gas emissions have risen by 54 per cent since 1990, largely due to the energy and agricultural sectors.
Population ageing is another mega-trend affecting this part of the world. More people are enjoying longer and healthier lives, and in this new reality we need policies that adapt to these shifts and invest in every stage of life. Rather than perceiving older persons as a drain on resources, we should recognize them as individuals with human rights who make important contributions to society in various ways all the time.
The same applies to persons with disabilities, migrants and other groups who have much to contribute, yet too often face stigma and discrimination. Let us build societies for people of all abilities and ages.
Over 60 per cent of the population in the Asia Pacific region has access to the internet, and this has turbocharged development across many sectors. Nevertheless, these technological advances bring new challenges, from the digital divide between the haves and the have-nots, to privacy violations and a disturbing rise in technology-facilitated gender-based violence.
While it is important that we celebrate the region’s many achievements, we must simultaneously confront its population and development challenges. We have a unique opportunity to do so as we mark 60 years since the first Asian and Pacific Population Conference and 30 years since the International Conference on Population and Development – two important milestones on the path towards sustainable progress.
At the midpoint of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, as countries seek to accelerate action towards our global goals, we urgently need comprehensive, forward-thinking, intergenerational approaches to harness the opportunities of population dynamics for sustainable development. To be effective, such approaches must be based on individual human rights and rooted in evidence and data.
Innovative solutions, financing and political commitment through inclusive partnerships are our path forward. Let us ensure young and older persons have a voice in decision-making and in designing solutions. Let us tap into the goldmine of shared knowledge and proven methods we have built over the past few decades.
Investing in people, through improved health, education and training, while providing social protection for all to retain development gains, lays the foundation for inclusive, just and sustainable societies. It is also our route to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals.
The Seventh Asian and Pacific Population Conference taking place this week is the perfect launchpad for collective action. Governments, civil society, young people and others can come together and make a real difference, building on their collective investments and successes to date. Together, we can protect people and the planet and ensure prosperity for all, now and in the future.
Let us refocus our actions to ensure human rights and choices for everyone, driving us closer to peace and a sustainable future for this generation and those that follow.
Armida Salsiah Alisjahbana is UN Under-Secretary-General and Executive Secretary of the Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP); Natalia Kanem is UN Under-Secretary-General and Executive Director of the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA).
Coastal protection at Anse Kerlan Beach in the Seychelles where residents often take the initiative to protect their properties from the impact of climate-change-induced environmental changes. The Commonwealth Climate Finance Access Hub assists small island states, among others, with climate finance and technical assistance. Credit: Kadir van Lohuizen/NOOR/UNEP
by Joyce Chimbi (nairobi)
Inter Press Service
Climate change finance will continue to be a focal point during the upcoming COP28 negotiations in the UAE. Dr Oldman Koboto, manager and advisor for the Commonwealth Climate Finance Hub, speaks about what’s expected.
NAIROBI, Nov 08 (IPS) – As the countdown to COP28 in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, continues, IPS caught up with Dr Oldman Koboto, Mauritius-based Manager for the Commonwealth Climate Finance Access Hub (CCFAH).
The hub was established through the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) in 2013 to provide technical assistance aimed at enhancing the countries’ access to international climate finance. This is achieved through technical assistance around project proposal development, policy support, human and institutional capacity building, knowledge management, and learning, all of which are anchored on gender and youth mainstreaming.
The hub embeds climate finance experts in individual government ministries to work with and offer technical support. The experts help identify project proposals, provide policy support, and, above all, build the capacity of both technical and institutional capacity in those ministries to develop bankable funding proposals. Since its operationalization in 2016, the hub has supported member countries to access USD 315 million in climate finance. Additionally, projects amounting to over USD 800 million are in the pipeline.
Here are excerpts from the interview.
Dr Oldman Koboto
IPS: What is the nature of climate negotiations thus far?
Koboto: Negotiations are progressing well, in my view, considering the historical background. Negotiations started when climate jurisprudence was still in its infancy. It has since progressed to a point of more certainty around legal systems and transformative approaches to address the climate change convention’s objectives. Negotiations have moved from the actual architect for implementing the convention to innovative approaches toward achieving the 1.5°C Paris Agreement aspiration.
One of the pending issues, especially on finance, is the establishment of the Loss and Damage Fund – to be operationalized through the COP28. The draft outcome document for the Transitional Committee on operationalizing the Loss and Damage Fund showed consensus that could catalyze its operation. That being said, critical gaps still exist. IPCC cautions that even if we were to implement all the Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs), we would still not achieve the 1.5°C targets, many of them centered around mitigation actions.
This is an indictment on the international community, through these negotiations, to make progress on adaptation-related issues. And fast-track resilience building and adaptative capacities of small and other vulnerable member states. One of the innovative approaches is leveraging private sector finance for NDCs towards climate mitigation action. But, the design parameters for both adaptation and mitigation projects are such that mitigation actions are attractive to the private sector more than adaptation measures. This creates innovation gaps toward adaptation actions, and yet mitigation initiatives do not build significant resilience. There are, therefore, successes and challenges to these negotiations.
IPS: Have countries voiced concerns regarding these negotiations?
Koboto: Almost all countries raise concerns around the pending areas and celebrate progressive areas. Countries prepare to go into the COPs by developing country positions informed by developments in international negotiations. They then build interventions around points of divergence to be ironed out in upcoming negotiations to inform or shape COP outcomes. This, on its own, is a demonstration of the countries’ concerns around those specific agenda items. It is not about one country speaking about being unhappy, but the process itself, through the established legal frameworks, enables countries to raise their concerns through platforms where such consensus could become part of the formal documentation for the COP process.
IPS: Is Africa better placed for COP28 negotiations, having recently held its inaugural Climate Summit?
Koboto: The inaugural Africa Climate Summit was a step in the right direction. It allowed African countries to paint their own vision and develop a basket of issues to push forward within international negotiations. The Nairobi Summit was consistent with other platforms for engagement on development challenges facing Africa. The message was that Africa is part of the solution and requests to be treated as equals, which is consistent with the messaging at the World Economic Forums and UN General Assembly. The draft outcome of the Loss and Damage Fund Transitional Committee indicates that developed countries’ parties will contribute to the financing of loss and damage and that developing country parties are also encouraged to contribute.
IPS: What sustains the impasse on climate financing between developed and developing countries? What will it take to break the impasse?
Koboto: This is a tough one because it falls at the heart of the principle of Common but Differentiated Responsibilities and Respective Capabilities of the UNFCCC. Having said that, it is also very difficult to target one country with the capability or capacity to provide support because of foundational principles of state policy, which sets the direction of each country regarding national and international interests. It goes without saying that national interests take precedence over international interests in areas where the two compete.
There is a willingness at the international level for developed countries to help. Meanwhile, the African continent must design innovative financing instruments to facilitate access to climate finance and attract investments to the continent. Such innovative mechanisms can be developed in subsequent African climate summits. The global climate solution lies in Africa, for the continent still has a lot of unexploited potential both in resources and opportunities around geothermal, hydrothermal, and solar energy.
IPS: What are the expectations from small island states and other vulnerable countries on new funding mechanisms and the Loss and Damage Fund going into COP28?
Koboto: The newest funding mechanism is the Loss and Damage Fund. Others are the Global Environment Facility, the Green Climate Fund, and the Adaptation Fund. African countries are unrelenting about the USD100 billion pledge made at COP15. All these funds must trickle down to developing states so that the Loss and Damage Fund becomes just an additional funding to existing funding sources.
African countries are focused on building enough consensus and influencing developed countries to deliver on promises made. Institutions such as the Commonwealth Climate Finance Access Hub, which I lead, stand ready to facilitate African countries’ access to those Funds as soon as there is predictable and adequate funding in those Funds.
CCFAH can provide technical assistance to enhance access to climate investments at a country level and to build capacities to access these funds without the use of third parties. But these countries are unrelenting and are firmly focused on unlocking much-needed climate finance to establish and or accelerate climate action.
Opinion by Jomo Kwame Sundaram (kuala lumpur, malaysia)
Inter Press Service
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia, Nov 08 (IPS) – Public-private partnerships (PPPs) for infrastructure and service provision are both costly and risky. Worse, PPPs typically fail to ensure universal, let alone fair access to public amenities.
Public-private partnerships?
PPPs usually involve long-term contractual arrangements in which private businesses provide infrastructure and services traditionally provided by governments. In recent years, PPPs have built or run hospitals, schools, prisons, roads, airports, railways, water and sanitation.
Jomo Kwame SundaramRisk-sharing between public and private sectors has long been widespread. In recent years, more than two dozen different types of PPPs have been identified. Such variations reflect differences in deals between governments and commercial partners.
Most international financial institutions (IFIs) advise governments to guarantee profits for their private partners. The IFIs continue to urge governments to ‘de-risk’ commercial providers to attract their investments.
Private investor preferences for specific types of PPPs may vary over time and with circumstances, often reflecting changing needs and priorities. As no one type fits all, changing circumstances and preferences have increased the variety of PPPs.
PPP problems
PPPs are far more complex than suggested by their cheerleaders’ narratives. Their negative impacts on infrastructure and public service delivery have been highlighted again by a Eurodad-led report. Public expenses rise as governments bear private costs and risks.
Following World Bank and other IFI advice, national authorities attract commercial financial investments by appealing to private greed. PPPs have been used to ‘de-risk’ such investment, by using their terms to ensure profits for private investors.
The report also exposed PPPs’ negative impacts for democratic governance. PPP arrangements typically lack transparency, and rarely involve prior consultation with affected communities. Thus, they have been more prone to corruption and abuse.
While private partners are guaranteed profits, their PPPs may still fail. In recent years, PPPs’ fiscal and other costs kept mounting as their shortfalls grew despite their rising profitability. As such problems grow, criticisms and dissent have risen.
Why PPPs fail?
PPPs have increasingly been touted as the magic solution to many problems, particularly financial constraints, poor management and delivery. PPPs have become popular among elites in the global South, where their ‘middle classes’ were enticed by the promise of better services and ‘trickle-down’.
The private sector is supposedly more efficient and better able to deliver public amenities including energy, education, health, water and sanitation. But better value for money has rarely ensued, as many studies show. Instead, the converse is more typical.
A 2020 study by the European Federation of Public Service Unions and Eurodad identified eight major reasons why PPPs in Europe have not improved outcomes.
First, PPPs rarely raised additional funds. Instead, they have typically incurred more public debt in the form of government guarantees, rather than direct borrowing. But such additional public debt has often been obscured from the public.
Second, private commercial loans generally cost much more than government borrowings. Third, public authorities, especially central governments, still bear ultimate responsibility, especially in the event of project failure.
Fourth, PPPs have rarely delivered better ‘value for money’ than reasonably managed public projects. Fifth, seeming PPP efficiency gains have been largely due to risky cost-cutting, e.g., in public infrastructure or healthcare provision.
Sixth, PPPs distort public policy priorities, typically requiring even more cost-cutting. Seventh, PPPs have rarely delivered both ‘on-time’ and ‘on-budget’. Eighth, PPP deals are typically opaque, rather than transparent, often involving abuses and corruption.
From early 2020, the Covid-19 pandemic exposed the long-term adverse effects of earlier austerity and underfunding of public health. More recently, inflation, stagnation and more extreme weather have exposed other vulnerabilities and their causes.
What can be done?
As the world faces multiple and interconnected crises, PPPs offer bogus, even dangerous solutions. Eurodad has made policy recommendations to national governments and development finance institutions (DFIs) to improve infrastructure and public service financing.
• Stop promoting PPPs. The World Bank, IMF, regional development banks and DFIs should all end the promotion of PPPs, especially for social services. Access to health, education, water and sanitation should not depend on capacity to pay.
• Fiscal and other major PPP risks should be publicly acknowledged. Governments should be warned of PPPs’ generally poor outcomes, and of the pros and cons of various financing arrangements. DFIs should all more effectively finance national plans for sustainable and equitable development.
Countries should be helped to find the best financing means to deliver responsible, transparent, gender-sensitive, environmentally and fiscally sustainable public infrastructure and social services consistent with national and multilateral obligations.
• Informed public consultations should always precede any infrastructure and public service provision agreement by PPPs. These should include ensuring the rights of all affected communities, including those to fair remedy or compensation.
• Exercise rigorous and transparent government regulation, especially for public spending, PPP contract values, project impacts, and long-term fiscal implications. The public interest must always prevail over commercial ones.
DFIs should only finance projects serving the public interest. Appropriate, publicly funded public services should be promoted, with transparent contracts for and accountable reporting on social service and infrastructure project delivery.
PPPs have often proved to be budgetary frauds, exacerbating, rather than reducing national fiscal deficits. Far from being the financial silver bullet they have been touted as, PPPs have proven to be blanks, making much noise, but with little real benefit.
Community Efforts Boost Wastewater Treatment in El Salvador
by Edgardo Ayala (chirilagua, el salvador)
Inter Press Service
CHIRILAGUA, El Salvador, Nov 07 (IPS) – Neither the central government nor most of El Salvador’s 262 municipalities have had the capacity to install enough wastewater treatment plants to prevent it from being discharged directly into the environment.
As a result, most of the rivers are polluted to such a degree that only 12 percent of them have good quality water, and the pollution translates into gastrointestinal and other diseases among the 6.7 million inhabitants of this Central American country.
But there are some towns and cities that are making efforts to keep running the treatment plants they have managed to set up, with financial support from international institutions.
One of these municipalities is Chirilagua in eastern El Salvador, along the Pacific Ocean in the south, the only ocean that bathes the coast of this Central American isthmus country.
The municipality operates a wastewater treatment plant built in the surrounding area as part of a 40-unit housing project called La Española that houses 40 families affected by Hurricane Mitch, which caused death and destruction in Central America in October 1998.
The project was largely financed with funds from the government of the southern Spanish region of Andalucía.
“The benefit is to the environment and to the families living around here, because the less the environment is polluted the healthier the population is,” Eduardo Ortega, in charge of the plant’s maintenance, told IPS.
The treatment plant filters the sewage that arrives at the station, using various processes, including ponds filled with volcanic soil and gravel.
“The aim is to keep the treated water from polluting the San Roman River,” said Edwin Guzman, head of the Environmental Unit of the municipality of Chirilagua.
Close to the municipality is another rural settlement also built by Spanish aid funds for survivors of Hurricane Mitch, called Flores de Andalucía, which includes its own treatment plant.
With greater capacity, this station also receives sewage from El Cuco, a fishing village three kilometers to the south on a beach that due to population growth has become a town with modest stores, hostels and restaurants that receive tourists attracted by its gray sand beaches and gentle waves.
In El Salvador, only 8.52 percent of wastewater receives some type of treatment, and much of the waste is dumped into the different bodies of water, polluting ecosystems and harming people’s health. Now some communities and municipalities have managed to install treatment plants that are run by local residents and improve their lives.
Tandahara women tend to the new Casuarina plants. Credit: Manipadma Jena/IPS
by Manipadma Jena (puri, india)
Inter Press Service
PURI, India, Nov 07 (IPS) – For more than 33 years, a group of strong-willed women from the village of Tandahara, India have kept their homes and village safe and plan to continue despite the unrelenting impacts of increasingly severe monsoons.
The sun is high in the noon sky—humidity unrelenting at 95 percent in this Indian sea-coast village. The monsoon has been deficient; rice paddies are yellowing on the edges from the salty surf misting in on them. Waves now break barely 200 metres from the farms and homes.
Sixty-year-old Bengalata Rout heads for the Casuarina “forest wall” off the shoreline, trees that the women in the 108-household village Tandahara planted after the 1999 Super Cyclonic Storm decimated their mud-walled thatched-roof huts leaving their fertile farms salt-poisoned.
That year, 33 years ago, they planted the trees on the village boundary, a good distance away from the shoreline; today, on a stormy night, the sea crashes against the tree trunks, threatening to run amok into their homes.
Tandahara, sitting on the Bay of Bengal, is one of the last villages in the eastern Indian State Odisha, some 20 kilometres from Konark Sun Temple, UNESCO’s designated heritage site that is itself showing the impacts of seas closing in.
The ‘Big Storm’ Discovery
“When the big cyclone hit us, the Casuarina shelter belt that was standing from before, planted by the government, lay battered,” Rout told Inter Press Service (IPS) as we walked toward the Casuarina forest. “We immediately realised had it not been standing there between the sea and our village we would have been wiped out.”
And it was a life-changing discovery for these rural women.
The category-5 storm, carrying wind speeds of 160 miles hourly that made landfall over Odisha in October 1999, killed more than 10,000 people, mostly owing to 20 ft high storm surges that brought water 16 to 20 miles inland.
But Tandahara had not lost a single life. Losing no time, every woman volunteering, even the children clamouring to pitch in, they sorted themselves into ten groups of ten members with a mix of young and old. Saplings were requested from government and non-profits who came to help. Planting was done; the men lent a hand, but the women took it upon themselves to make sure the saplings survived.
“It was challenging. The soil had salted up, and the young plants struggled to survive,” said Kanaka Behera, 32, one of the younger women. “And the water we got in our village had turned a bit saline also.”
“We thought, for our cooking and drinking, we fetch groundwater from a shallow dug pit; why not get the sweet water for the plants, too? But that was a kilometre inland from our village, more distance from the plantation in the opposite direction. We will do it, we decided and dug the pit wider to get more water,” Behera added.
“For months till the plants survived, we would be up before the sun, lining up our buckets around the water pit where water replenishes naturally overnight. Then the real arduous work began,” said middle-aged Bena Mallika dressed in a bright green sari. Some ten of them would fill the buckets and hand them to ten others who relayed them to more waiting women till the saplings, one-and-half kilometres away, were sloshed and glistening. Only by noon, they were done, exhausted but triumphant, having carried one thousand buckets to the plants. They did this every alternate day. Meticulously, around each baby tree, they gouged a six-inch wide circular channel with their bare hands to hold the sweet water for longer and create an oasis of nutrition.
Bengalata Rout, the women’s group leader, poses amidst the Casuarina forest the women planted after the 1999 Super Cyclonic Storm. Credit: Manipadma Jena/IPS The women’s group poses on the narrow strip of beach that’s all that’s left between the village boundary and the advancing sea. Credit: Manipadma Jena/IPS Clusters of betel-vine bowers shelter behind the protective wall of Casuarina trees. Credit: Manipadma Jena/IPS
Climate Events More Frequent, Intense, and the Sea Keeps Getting Closer
But growing tree shields is a daunting exercise against a wounded, intermittently raging ocean. It is a handful of strong-willed women pitted against climate events getting more frequent and more intense from a rapidly warming sea. Odisha has encountered 10 cyclones in a span of 22 years from 1999 to 2021, with frequency rising over earlier decades, according to data from the Odisha State Disaster Management Authority (OSDMA), which works to reduce disaster risk.
More broadly, the Indian subcontinent has witnessed more than 478 extreme events since 1970, whose frequency has accelerated after 2005, IPS had earlier reported.
But another phenomenon, more insidiously devastating, is creeping in on Tandahara.
Sitting on a cemented platform under the shade of an ageing banyan tree, there are several elders who share how the sea has moved closer. Remembering over five decades back, 70-year-old Tahali Kalia Gopal Behera narrated to IPS, “When I was 18, we youngsters went to the sea to catch the red beach crabs. We carried our lunch and left home in the morning, returning only in the evening. Those days, the sea was more than 3 kilometres away.”
“The sea has eaten away 20 hectares of our village land,” Bidyadhar Bhuyan, another elderly man, said.
Of Odisha State’s over the 480-kilometre coastline, a high 79 percent has experienced drastic modification.
The State’s coastline change trend shows 21 percent has been subject to erosion, and 51 percent is impacted by accretion. Based on 26 years of satellite images, the 2018 study by the National Centre for Coastal Research of Earth Sciences Ministry remains the latest using such extensive data.
Odisha’s Puri province, where sea-front villages like Tandahara face the brunt, experienced the highest accretion on 110 km of its total 140 km shore length, this study said.
Coastal accretion is the gradual increase or acquisition of land by the sea. It occurs through washing up sand, soil, or silt. Erosion is the gradual washing away of land along the shoreline.
While erosion-accretion phenomena are natural, climate disasters and persisting low-pressure events that cause turbulent seas are increasing ecological imbalance, according to an OSDMA expert.
“When I married and came to the village, there were sand dunes stretching all the way,” remembered 46-year-old Mallika. “Now there’s hardly any beach left for dunes to stand; only the shore sands are rising higher.”
So close is the sea now that this year, 2023, even without any major low-pressure event, sea-water ingress has cut a 100-metre channel into pastureland on the village outskirt, Bhuyan added.
Oxford University research from across 52 sites worldwide on ‘nature-based solutions’ said coastal forest walls, mangroves and coral reefs cause waves to break before they hit the shore or ingress towards human habitats, lowering both the force and height of the swell and in the process reducing the likelihood of the sea breaching over into people’s land.
The study found that natural habitats were 2-5 times more cost-effective than engineered structures, like the geotextile tube installed in another affected district in Odisha, which was in tatters within 10 years. These (like Tandahara’s bio-wall) can help to protect from climate change impacts while slowing further warming (by carbon sequestration), supporting biodiversity, and securing ecosystem services, researchers widely believe.
Of Bulls, Goats and Other Challenges
As the Bay of Bengal became a hotspot for tropical storms and waves inched closer to Tandahara, coating salty mist day and night on everything, their staple rice crops began failing. Employable males migrated out.
Left behind with children and ageing parents to make ends meet were again the women. They began goat-keeping. The 108 households have no less than 500 goats today.
One adult goat weighing 15kg can easily fetch up to INR 8000 (USD 96.3), extra during festive seasons.
Handsome returns, yes, but also the biggest daily menace to women’s Casuarina walls.
“Until saplings are at least 5 feet tall and out of reach of the ever-hungry goats, we need to protect them. We patrol in groups of three, morning and afternoon,” elderly Harkamani Swain said.
A woman goat herder confines her grazing cattle to the grass on the farms’ boundaries, away from the fresh Casuarina plantations, to avoid cash penalties. Credit: Manipadma Jena/IPS In the afternoon, with household chores done, women retreat to relax and bond under the cool forest’s shade. Credit: Manipadma Jena/IPS Every morning, taking turns, one group meets at the village temple to decide on patrolling responsibilities. Credit: Manipadma Jena/IPS Cyclone Phailin in 2013 wrought maximum damage and loss of life as rural settlements had only mud-walled, thatched-roofed homes. A woman stands desolately, having lost her home and belongings to the storm in Bhubaneswar. Credit: Manipadma Jena/IPS
Rout walks on purposefully; it’s difficult to keep up with her, traversing over uneven abandoned paddy fields. She is going to check if any goats or the village bull have walked in to nibble at the new saplings planted under the government’s forestry scheme earlier in August this year when rains came.
If she espies the bull amidst the plants, she’ll holler, and the women will rush and help chase it out.
“If cattle destroy the plants, their owners have to pay a 100 rupees (USD 1.2) penalty, Rout explains, sighing in relief on seeing no intruder. “To get a hungry bull off the plantation requires more than one woman. If a help call is shouted out, but the group member whose house is closest does not respond, they are charged 100 rupees as well,” she explains how strict community rules have helped them grow the tree wall.
Seeing their zeal, in 2000, the forestry officials mentored them to form a village Forest Protection Committee. They were provided, one-time and free of cost, several large party-sized ironware pots worth 60,000 rupees (USD 722.8) to rent out to village events and maintain bank funds.
“Were this active group not been looking after the coastal forest, even when the government plants and sometimes waters them too, they would not remain alive beyond a month. There is a strong sense of ownership instilled within them. With them, we have a true partnership,” a local supervisory-level government forest official told IPS, wishing not to be named as they were not allowed to speak to the media.
Green Walls Provide Direct and Indirect Income for an Entire Village
When forest officials came with saplings this monsoon, the nearby beach was littered with dead Casuarina stumps and branches left from an earlier storm and proliferating beach creepers. The women’s group offered to clear the large stretches. In return, they got to take home the dead wood.
“With the thinner branches, we were able to repair seaside fences,” Kanaka Behera told IPS. The official would otherwise have hired contractors’ men on wages. “We take ownership of the storm walls. We will patrol till the saplings are grown.”
Dead trees get used for roof beams of thatched cattle sheds and for firewood, fulfilling needs in rural households. Odisha government, since the 2013 Phailin storm, has provided concrete-roofed, brick-walled disaster-resilient houses within 5 km of high tide.
Under the thick canopy of Casuarinas, a rotting pile of hay lies in a corner. The women can grow two mushroom crops here from early July to late August. The dense thicket obstructs damaging rain directly falling on the delicate fungi; high humidity is just right for bountiful harvests, which income goes into the group’s bank account, used when members need funds urgently.
Rout points further afield at over 25 green net-cloth-covered betel vine bowers just behind the Casuarina thicket. The 8-feet high square bamboo bowers, locally called ‘bareja’, are shading structures creating a green-house environment for better quality betel leaves. It can fetch a good income but is a fragile cultivation. “Those ‘barejas’ stand because this thick line of Casuarinas stands against strong winds that can easily bring the structures down and deprive a quarter of our village households of their livelihood,” she said.
Most afternoons, with household chores and afternoon meals done, the women leave the village behind to sit in the quiet under the trees. Sometimes, they laugh together, sing even if tunelessly, as the birds call from the branches, used to their presence.
“These trees are today like our grown-up sons; they stand strong here, ready to protect us, giving us confidence and moments of contentment,” says the elderly Bengalata Rout, whose only son Ritu, 40 years old, is working as a computer clerk thousands of kilometres away in Surat in western India, holding on to a deeply grooved tree trunk. A widow, she lives with her daughter-in-law and two little grandsons.
Powerful Agents of Change United in Fighting More Than Just the Storms and Seas
The water from the borewells in Tandahara became progressively so salty that children, no matter how thirsty, would often refuse to drink. Water carried from the small groundwater pit never sufficed. Forced to drink increasingly salty water, stomach upset, nausea and skin irritation have become chronic.
Bonding together for the tree barrier has, over the years, given the women of Tandahara a sense of unity and empowerment, and they are changing the collective traditional mindset of the village as well.
Post-pandemic, taking the poor drinking water issue into their own hands, the traditionally village-bound women marched to the local-level government officer with bottles of the salty water they got from hand pumps and asked the officer to drink it. The officer was shocked at the confrontation from a group of village women but finally admitted the water was undrinkable and ordered water tankers to deliver to the village.
Water is, however, supplied only in April and May, peak summer months when local water turns saltier. Again, it is limited to daily just two buckets per household, even for large families. On repeated visits by the women, administration higher-ups even visited the village five months back, promised piped water, but work is yet to begin, said 29-year-old Gouri Padhi, who has been in school up to class ten and is more educated than the others.
Looking Ahead
“Communities already have the agency to adapt and make decisions in the face of change,” said the Global Resilience Partnership Report 2023, but often need support in the form of appropriate data, knowledge, information, and resources to further strengthen adaptation and resilience actions.
“As climate and other shocks become more frequent, severe and overlapping, it is urgent to become smarter and faster when it comes to building resilience,” Dina Esposito, Assistant to the Administrator for the Bureau for Resilience and Food Security, told IPS via email. “At USAID, we’re bringing innovative solutions, such as shock response monitoring systems, to build resilience and to measure impact so that we can learn and adapt as we go.”
For the women of Tandahara, resilience is found in their collective efforts to save their village.
While murmurs are growing stronger among elderly men to step back from the advancing sea and resettle their homes at a safe distance. Two neighbouring villages have already left, illegally squatting on forest land, they point out.
“True, whenever the winds wail, my heart palpitates with dread; I think today all will end. When the government mobile alerts shriek, we flee to the two-storied storm shelter with our cattle. But we will not abandon our ancestral village,” Rout says firmly. “We will do whatever it takes to make it safer, but we will not leave,” she echoes her group’s stand on this crucial issue. Many of the younger generation youth listening nod in agreement.
NEW YORK, Nov 07 (IPS) – There are five measures the Israeli government, along with the US and Saudi Arabia, should put in place to move the peace process forward.
First, Israel must limit its ground invasion to northern Gaza, as a large-scale war will inevitably inflict massive destruction and thousands of casualties on both sides, especially Palestinian civilians, and put the lives of the hostages at a much greater risk.
More than anything else, it is a dangerous illusion for anyone to assume that a large-scale invasion will capture or kill all of Hamas’ leaders and senior operatives and prevent it from ever reconstituting itself both as a resistance movement and as a political entity.
Many of Hamas’ leaders have not lived in Gaza for years, or have recently fled. Most of Hamas’ commanders and ‘foot soldiers’ are embedded in the civilian community and a massive complex of tunnels while lying in wait for the ground invasion, in order to kill and injure hundreds if not thousands of Israeli soldiers.
They know full well that they will sustain massive casualties and destruction, but they will only technically lose the war and can still reconstitute themselves regardless of the immense losses they might sustain.
Israel simply cannot eradicate a religious movement or obliterate an ideology. And to suggest, as Israel’s Defense Minister Yoav Gallant recently stated, that “we will wipe them off the face of the earth,” is an illusion. Even if Israel manages to decapitate every senior Hamas leader, it will be only a question of time when a new generation of Palestinian leaders will rise.
If Israel reoccupies Gaza to prevent Hamas from reconstituting itself, it will be sheer madness, a quagmire from which Israel cannot exit without incurring massive casualties. Moreover, Israel will have to care for 2.2 million Palestinians, coupled with a relentless insurgency by Palestinian militants bent on killing and maiming Israeli soldiers.
The urge for revenge and retribution following the massacre of 1,400 Israelis is perfectly understandable, and in the minds of many, revenge is the only way to assuage the unbearable pain that so many Israelis are living with. But then the inevitable death of hundreds of young Israeli soldiers, should Israel decide to an all-out invade Gaza, will only add to the national tragedy and offer no solution.
The better path for Israel is to pursue targeting killings, and engage in a limited invasion into northern Gaza, keep Hamas’ leaders on the run, and cut off the flow of money, while focusing on releasing the hostages. Israel must make it publicly and unequivocally clear that its fight is against Hamas and not against innocent Palestinian people.
Furthermore, Israel ought to facilitate the delivery of all the basic necessities, especially drinking water, medicine, food, and under strict monitoring by UN observers, fuel to generate electricity and feed generators. But since Israel cannot eliminate Hamas, it can only weaken it to a point where it is effectively inoperative by providing an alternative that will dramatically improve the lives of the Palestinians and offer them a promising path for the future.
Second, Israel should come to terms with the inevitability of a Palestinian state and inform the US and Saudi Arabia that it is willing to negotiate a peace agreement with the Palestinians in the West Bank based on a two-state solution. I expect that the current Netanyahu government will fall and sooner perhaps rather than later, there will be a new government in Israel and a new Palestinian Authority in the West Bank.
They should begin to engage, under the auspices of the US and Saudi Arabia, in a peace process accompanied from the onset by a process of reconciliation, both government-to-government and people-to-people, to mitigate the pervasive hatred and distrust between the two.
An Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement in the West Bank that would lead to a dramatic improvement in the living standard of the population and a growing sense of security will be the most potent weapon against Hamas. Hamas will have to choose between joining the peace process by first recognizing Israel’s right to exist, or remaining under blockade.
The Palestinians in Gaza will be well aware of the changing fortune of their brethren in the West Bank and will not accept a continuing life of despondency and despair in Gaza. Hamas being on the run and with depleting resources to deliver what the people need will be hard pressed to change direction, or else face the wrath of the people. Hamas’ claim that Israel is the cause of their suffering will no longer resonate.
In the final analysis, the creation of an independent Palestinian state will be strengthened and peacefully sustained through the establishment of an Israeli-Palestinian-Jordanian confederation, once a Palestinian state is first established.
Indeed, given the interspersed Palestinian populations in the West Bank, Jerusalem, Israel proper, and Jordan, the geographic proximity of the three states, their unique religious affinity to Jerusalem, and their intertwined national security, it is not only possible but necessary to establish such a confederation where all three countries will collaborate on a host of issues to serve their national interests.
Some will say that this is a glaringly naïve proposal and, in any case, this is the wrong time to talk about a two-state solution. Naïve or not, I challenge anyone to tell me what is the alternative? Where does Israel go from here?
The Palestinian problem will not simply disappear; they are not going anywhere and they are more determined today than any time before to unshackle themselves from the occupation. The unfolding tragedy and its inescapably horrifying consequences made the need for a solution ever more urgent. And if not now, then when?
Third, the development of a major economic program is critical to sustaining any Israeli-Palestinian peace in the West Bank. What is needed is a sort of a Marshall Plan for the West Bank to be financed by the Gulf states, the US, and the EU. Such a program should be at the center of the peace process to relieve the people of their economic hardship. The West Bank is in desperate need of better infrastructure, schools, and hospitals. Such national projects would also provide job opportunities for the tens of thousands of unemployed youths.
Moreover, since the Palestinian refugees have and continue to play a major role in the search for a resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, a solution to the Palestinian refugees must be found based on resettlement and/or compensation.
A solution to this and other conflicting issues, including the future of Jerusalem and the Israeli settlements, which have stymied peace negotiations in the past and remain contentious issues, can be and in fact must be resolved.
The inevitability of coexistence and the inescapable need for a peace agreement based on a two-state solution, coupled with a commitment by a new Israeli government, the Palestinian Authority, and the US’ determination to that end, will facilitate a solution to these conflicting issues, however intractable they may seem at this juncture.
Fourth, Saudi Arabia should play a front and center role, at the urging of the US. Saudi Arabia, which has been negotiating normalization of relations with Israel behind-the-scenes and has linked normalization to the establishment of a path that will solve the Israeli Palestinian-conflict, should publicly state so once the war ends.
This will not only assure the Palestinians that they will not be abandoned, but it will also send a clear message to the Israelis that they now have a historic opportunity not only to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict but open up the door wide to normalization of relations between Israel and much of the Muslim world.
The Saudis and every Arab state in the region know that as long as there is no solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, instability will continue to rattle the region, making normalization of relations with Israel tenuous at best. Moreover, Israel must remember that regardless of how the Saudis and other Arab states feel toward the Palestinians, in any violent confrontation between Israel and the Palestinians, as demonstrated in the current conflagration, they will always land on the Palestinians’ side.
And even though the Israel-Hamas war started because of the horrific massacre of Israelis, the Arab public throughout the region and beyond is sympathizing with the Palestinians. It is the death of thousands of innocent Palestinians in Gaza that is capturing headline news now, not the indescribably horrendous massacre of Israelis.
Thus, the greater the casualties and destruction inflicted on Gaza, the harder it will be for the Saudis to resume negotiations over the normalization of relations with Israel. Normalization can serve as the conduit for Israeli-Palestinian peace, which will be deferred for years if not lost for the foreseeable future unless Israel weighs carefully what will happen next if the war spins completely out of control.
But then again, it is up to Israel and the US—which will have a say on this matter as Israel today cannot simply say NO to the US—to ensure that the war does not cripple the prospect of normalization between Israel and other Arab states.
Fifth, the US paying lip service to the idea of a two-state solution must now be acted upon. Successive American administrations have demonstrated consistent support of Israel and the US became the de facto guarantor of Israel’s national security. No US president, however, has demonstrated in words and deeds the US’ commitment to Israel’s security and prosperity more than President Biden.
His visit to Israel in the moment of unprecedented national grief and his dispatch of formidable American forces to the region, including two aircraft carriers to deter Israel’s sworn enemies and prevent the escalation of the war, sent an unambiguous massage that has not been lost on Iran and Hezbollah.
Although Israel is receiving annually $3.8 billion in military aid from the US, at no time in recent memory has Israel found itself so dependent on the US for additional military aid and political backing. Israeli National Security Minister Ben-Gvir’s statement earlier this year that Israel is “not another star on the American flag. We are a democracy and I expect the U.S. president to understand that,” is no less stupid than his boss Netanyahu, who stated in March that “Israel is a sovereign country which makes its decisions by the will of its people and not based on pressures from abroad, including from the best of friends.”
Now the Israeli government recognizes how indispensable America is, forcing it to listen carefully to what President Biden is recommending, which is clearly against waging an all-out ground invasion without very diligent consideration of what comes next, which will otherwise be catastrophic by any account.
Thus, President Biden is now in a position, more than any of his predecessors, to exert significant influence over Israel. There is no better time for the US to formulate a plan that would begin a peace process and stick to it regardless of what transpires on the ground. By providing Israel all it needs to protect itself and maintain a military edge over its adversaries and now to prevail in this war, the US becomes complicit to Israel’s conduct in Gaza.
This is also applicable to the occupation of the West Bank, which is inconsistent with the US’ formal position. Therefore, the US should make it clear to Israel that given America’s unflagging support, it is seen as a party to the occupation which must end.
It is time for the Biden administration to translate the lip service that the US has customarily been paying to the two-state solution into a plan of action. Upon his return from Israel, President Biden reiterated that the two-state solution is the only realistic option.
And however far-fetched this may seem to Israelis and Palestinians at this juncture, President Biden must begin to press the issue and pave the way for serious negotiations, albeit he has to wait for Netanyahu’s exile from the political scene, which may well happen sooner than later.
The breakdown in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict can dawn a historic breakthrough to reach at last a peace agreement. There is no need for even one more Israeli or Palestinian child to die on the altar of misguided leadership on both sides. The Israeli and the Palestinian publics must rise in unison pour into the streets by the hundreds of thousands and scream:
Enough is Enough.
Dr. Alon Ben-Meir is a professor of international relations at the Center for Global Affairs at New York University (NYU). He teaches courses on international negotiation and Middle Eastern studies.
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