Opinion by Giulia Ribeiro Barao, Bosen Lily Liu (paris)
Inter Press Service
The following opinion piece is part of series to mark International Women’s Day, March 8.
PARIS, Mar 08 (IPS) – In September 2020, the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action for women’s rights celebrated its 25th anniversary. It was, however, a bittersweet commemoration, mixing joy for the progress in gender equality achieved since 1995, and the stark realization about the multidimensional gaps awaiting tackling and the new divides brought by the social consequences of COVID-19.
In 2021, UNESCO projected that 11 million girls were at risk of not returning to school after the education interruptions caused by the pandemic. Even though the educational disruption accelerated the way into innovative learning practices, including distance and online education, it was not an equal reality for all social groups, since those already marginalized were also overrepresented in the offline population, including girls and women, and especially those living in poverty and rural communities (ECOSOC, 2021).
In 2020, worldwide, 57 percent of women used the Internet, compared with 62 per cent of men (ECOSOC, 2021). In the least developed countries (LDCs), landlocked developing countries (LLDCs), Africa, and the Arab States, the gender gap in internet use remains more significant.
For instance, in LDCs, only 19 per cent of women are using the internet, which is 12 percentage points lower than men. Similarly, in Africa, 24 per cent of women use the internet compared to 35 per cent of men, while in the Arab States, the Internet usage rate is 56 per cent, compared to 68 per cent of men.
Girls and women who are kept without access to Internet and digital literacy will not benefit from the technological revolution that is currently transforming all areas of life, most centrally the educational sector and the job markets.
Even though innovation and technology for girls and women’s education is undoubtedly a critical topic in the contemporary scenario, we should notice that innovation itself extends beyond the boundaries of the digital world.
To further explore the field of innovation in education, the UNESCO Young People on Transforming Education Project (YPTEP) focuses on innovative learning practices – technological or non-technological tools and techniques – initiated and led by learners themselves for meaningful and transformative engagement in their own educational journeys.
One highlight of the project is on understanding the gender-responsive practices from girls and women.
Girls and women worldwide have long been innovative in fighting gender barriers and creating self-initiative and community strategies to accessing learning even when excluded from Internet access and other forms of innovation.
A female leader who creates a finance course for mothers, while providing turns of collective care for their children, is innovating in education. A girl who creates a book club with her friends to read and debate publications on feminism is innovating in education.
Women in STEM, taking part in research and development groups, although still underrepresented, are innovating in education.
So, here we are – right at the crossroad where education, innovation and gender inequalities meet. Not paying attention to those issues will only aggravate previous gaps, hampering the advancement of all 17 Sustainable Development Goals.
To contribute to this debate and pathways for solutions, the UNESCO team of Young People on Transforming Education Project (YPTEP) at UNESCO IESALC hosted a Fireside Chat on “Women and girls, innovation, and higher education” on 6 March 2023 to reunite women and girls from different countries and regions and celebrate their success not only to overcome challenges, but also to become changemakers in the field.
During the chat, we had the opportunity to engage with ten female storytellers who shared their stories on innovative learning and expand our understanding of innovation, creativity, and transformation in education.
Stories approached, in a broader sense, innovative paths in getting access to higher education; innovative learning practices to get through education and achieve learning goals; innovative tools and techniques that have enhanced their experiences as learners both inside and outside the classroom; and studying and working initiatives to design new technology and broader forms of innovation for education.
Participation in the Fireside Chat is also open and expected from all those who wish to share their experiences on innovative learning and higher education. We have organized interactive activities and will have “open chatbox” and “open mic” for anyone who are willing to present yourselves typing and tell your stories live.
References
Global Education Monitoring Report Team & UNESCO. (2021). #HerEducationOurFuture: keeping girls in the picture during and after the COVID-19 crisis; the latest facts on gender equality in education . UNESCO.
In our region, women and girls continue to be disproportionately affected by HIV, accounting for 63% of the region’s new HIV infections in 2021, write the authors. Credit: Shutterstock
Opinion by Anne Githuku-Shongwe, Eva Kiwango (johannesburg)
Inter Press Service
Anne Githuku-Shongwe is the UNAIDS Regional Support Team for Eastern and Southern Africa Director and Eva Kiwango is the Country Director of UNAIDS South Africa
JOHANNESBURG, Mar 07 (IPS) – Recent crises have pushed the gender inequality gap even wider and new technology has brought new threats to women’s autonomy and safety. This year’s International Women’s Day celebrated under the theme “DigitALL: Innovation and technology for gender equality” is an opportunity to strengthen efforts to uplift and empower women and girls’ digital participation to ultimately improve their lives.
Sima Bahous, UN Under-Secretary-General and Executive Director of UN Women has described it as “digital poverty”: the digital divide which “disproportionately affects women and girls with low literacy or low income, those living in rural or remote areas, migrants, women with disabilities, and older women”.
On a continent that contributes only 13% towards global internet users, nearly 45% fewer women than men have access to the internet in sub-Saharan Africa.
That means alarmingly high numbers of African women and girls are left out of digitally-enhanced opportunities such as employment, mobile money transactions and banking.
From a health perspective, excluding women and girls from digital participation restricts their access to life-saving information. That can have dire consequences in a region such as eastern and southern Africa where young women and girls carry the burden of HIV.
In our region, women and girls continue to be disproportionately affected by HIV, accounting for 63% of the region’s new HIV infections in 2021. HIV infections are three times higher among adolescent girls and young women (aged 15 to 24 years) than among males of the same age.
The factors fueling this reality are power, deep-set inequalities and limited access to information among other factors.
Our report Dangerous Inequalities highlights that sexual reproductive health rights (SRHR) barriers, lack of quality comprehensive sexuality education (CSE) and restrictive and contradictory policy frameworks make it difficult, if not impossible, for adolescent girls and young women to access essential SRHR and HIV prevention and treatment services.
Furthermore, sociocultural norms, stigmas, discrimination, perceptions and age of consent laws impede young women and girls from accessing HIV testing and SRHR services.
Such barriers discourage young women and adolescent girls from approaching healthcare centres for their sexual reproductive needs.
This leaves girls with insufficient knowledge and skills to protect themselves from unsafe and unhealthy sexual practices, leading to HIV infection and sexually transmitted infections, teenage pregnancies, unsafe abortions and sexual violence.
The UNFPA “Seeing The Unseen” report highlights that 13% of all young women in developing countries begin childbearing while still being children themselves. In eastern and southern Africa, the overall weighted pregnancy prevalence among adolescent girls and young women (10-24 years of age) is alarmingly high at 25%.
We have completely normalised the abnormal. That is a crisis in itself. However, closing the gender equality gap will give us the opportunity to change the inequality trajectory for women and girls.
Technology and the digital space should be made more inclusive and accessible in our region and beyond. Virtual medical consultations, SRHR apps and searchable information should be options our young women and girls should be able to explore in a shame-free, destigmatised environment.
We applaud African developers who have created multiple free apps such as In Her Hands developed by the Southern African Development Community with the support of UNAIDS. Such apps work to empower young women and girls with SRHR information as well as expand HIV prevention outreach.
However, all our efforts to make the digital world accessible and inclusive should also be safe. Unfettered access to information and unscrupulous persons leave women vulnerable to misinformation on the very health issues they would seek to treat.
Furthermore, while the virtual world gives us a space to create boundaries and interact at a seemingly safe level for school, work and socialization, online violence against women is proving to be pervasive.
A UN brief shares physical threats, sexual harassment, stalking, zoombombing and sex trolling as examples of some of the attacks women face online.
It is therefore important to accelerate internet literacy for women and girls and equip them with precautionary and reactionary measures to ensure their digital safety before online violence permeates the physical world leading to serious challenges such as physical stalking, abduction and trafficking.
In spite of the challenges and safety concerns, the digital world can be an empowering space when harnessed correctly. Safe digital spaces hold the potential to disseminate life-saving, evidence-based information on SRHR, HIV prevention, treatment, GBV reporting and related support mechanisms at the click of a button.
Initiatives addressing SRHR and HIV ought to be framed with an inclusive digital lens at the fore. Multi-stakeholder collaboration is key, particularly with the private sector, internet service providers and data hubs.
At UNAIDS, we have partnered with UNESCO, UNICEF, UNFPA and UN Women to launch the ‘Education Plus’ Initiative. The initiative accelerates actions and investments to prevent HIV by ensuring adolescent girls and young women in Africa have equal opportunities to access quality secondary education, alongside key education and health services and support for their economic autonomy and empowerment.
Furthermore, the Transforming Education Summit is a key initiative of Our Common Agenda launched by UN Secretary-General, Antonio Guterres, in September 2021. It works to recover pandemic-related learning losses and sow the seeds to transform education in a rapidly changing world.
If harnessed effectively, connectivity and openly accessible digital teaching and learning resources can contribute to the transformation and democratization of education.
As we work to end AIDS by 2030, access to new prevention technologies such as long-acting PrEP to be rolled out in Botswana, Uganda and Zimbabwe should be expanded to the entire region. That should be rolled out without disparity between rich and poorer countries.
Emerging technologies such as the vaginal ring, an important feminist option, need to be supported to increase efficacy and accessibility. Furthermore, the preventive benefits of antiretroviral treatment need to be promoted and understood. Platforms such as social media should be considered powerful and accessible tools to raise awareness of HIV prevention and care in our region.
Technology is a game changer in access to health information and enabling young people to break taboos around sexual health and HIV and feel empowered in their bodies.
We need to urgently level the digital space, use it to end gender inequalities and safeguard our women and girls from the scourge of HIV. There is no price on human life: Ending AIDS is a promise that can and must be kept.
Nearly every maternal death is preventable, and the clinical expertise and technology necessary to avert these losses have existed for decades. Credit: Patrick Burnett/IPS
by Baher Kamal (madrid)
Inter Press Service
MADRID, Mar 07 (IPS) – The answer is that there are alarming setbacks for maternal health care and, in many cases, even a total lack of maternity services, which threaten to further raise the number of these tragic preventable deaths one million or more a year by 2030.
Severe bleeding, high blood pressure, pregnancy-related infections, complications from unsafe abortion, and underlying conditions that can be aggravated by pregnancy (such as HIV/AIDS and malaria) are the leading causes of maternal deaths, UN specialised bodies report.
“These are all largely preventable and treatable with access to quality and respectful healthcare.”
Why then are these causes still not prevented and treated?
In theory, ending maternal mortality should be achievable, the UN Population Fund (UNFPA), the world’s sexual and reproductive health agency, on 23 February stated, that’s just three weeks ahead of this year’s International Women’s Day (8 March).
“Nearly every maternal death is preventable, and the clinical expertise and technology necessary to avert these losses have existed for decades.”
“Why, then, do almost 800 women still die every day from maternal causes? How, today, can one woman die every two minutes from pregnancy or childbirth?”
The report reveals “alarming setbacks” for women’s health over recent years, as maternal deaths either increased or stagnated in nearly all regions of the world.
“While pregnancy should be a time of immense hope and a positive experience for all women, it is tragically still a shockingly dangerous experience for millions around the world who lack access to high quality, respectful health care,” said Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director-General of the World Health Organization (WHO).
“These new statistics reveal the urgent need to ensure every woman and girl has access to critical health services before, during and after childbirth, and that they can fully exercise their reproductive rights.”
A miracle turned into tragedy
“For millions of families, the miracle of childbirth is marred by the tragedy of maternal deaths,” said UNICEF’s Executive Director Catherine Russell.
“No mother should have to fear for her life while bringing a baby into the world, especially when the knowledge and tools to treat common complications exist. Equity in healthcare gives every mother, no matter who they are or where they are, a fair chance at a safe delivery and a healthy future with their family.”
More poverty, more death
In total numbers, maternal deaths continue to be largely concentrated in the poorest parts of the world and in countries affected by conflict, according to the report.
In 2020, about 70% of all maternal deaths were in sub-Saharan Africa. In nine countries facing severe humanitarian crises, maternal mortality rates were more than double the world average (551 maternal deaths per 100.000 live births, compared to 223 globally).
Moreover, “inequities related to income, education, race or ethnicity further increase risks for marginalised pregnant women, who have the least access to essential maternity care but are most likely to experience underlying health problems in pregnancy.”
Needless deaths
“It is unacceptable that so many women continue to die needlessly in pregnancy and childbirth. Over 280.000 fatalities in a single year is unconscionable,” said UNFPA Executive Director Dr. Natalia Kanem.
“We can and must do better by urgently investing in family planning and filling the global shortage of 900.000 midwives so that every woman can get the lifesaving care she needs. We have the tools, knowledge and resources to end preventable maternal deaths; what we need now is the political will.”
The report reveals that the world must “significantly accelerate progress to meet global targets for reducing maternal deaths, or else risk the lives of over one million more women by 2030.”
Question: How much money is needed to put an end to such horrifying deaths? Wouldn’t it be enough to dedicate what the world’s giant private business gains in just one minute through selling weapons, speculating with oil, power and food prices, marketing artificial baby milk, and a very long etcetera, let alone technologies?
Is digitisation more urgent?
There is another question needing an answer: how come that, in spite of the above-mentioned findings, the United Nations now focuses on the need to ‘digilitalise’ the lives of women?
See what the UN says about this year’s International Women’s Day (8 March), under the theme: DigitALL: Innovation and technology for gender equality:
“Our lives depend on strong technological integration: attending a course, calling loved ones, making a bank transaction, or booking a medical appointment. Everything currently goes through a digital process.”
“However, 37% of women do not use the internet. 259 million fewer women have access to the Internet than men, even though they account for nearly half the world’s population.”
The world’s major multilateral body further explains that if women are unable to access the Internet and do not feel safe online, they are unable to develop the necessary digital skills to engage in digital spaces, which diminishes their opportunities to pursue careers in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) related fields.
And that by 2050, 75% of jobs will be related to STEM areas. “Yet today, women hold just 22% of positions in artificial intelligence, to name just one.”
True: women have historically been victims of all sorts of abuse, violence, and targeted inequalities that have systematically left them far behind in all aspects of life.
Shouldn’t their indisputable right to the most basic health care be –now and always– a high priority on the world’s agenda?
Opinion by Mercy Erhi Makpor (guimarães, portugal)
Inter Press Service
Guimarães, Portugal, Mar 07 (IPS) – The following opinion piece is part of series to mark International Women’s Day, March 8. The accelerating pace of digitalization has ushered humanity into a whole different era of information and communication. Today, digitalization permeates every aspect of our lives, socio-economically and politically.
BONN, Mar 07 (IPS) – The following opinion piece is part of series to mark International Women’s Day, March 8. When it comes to land, gender inequalities are pervasive. Today, nearly half of the global agricultural workforce is female – yet less than one in five landholders worldwide are women 1. ?
Women’s land rights are essential for their economic empowerment and the sustainable development of rural communities. However, women continue to face significant barriers to accessing and controlling land resources, which limits their ability to participate fully in agricultural production, improve their livelihoods, and contribute to broader economic growth.?
Moreover, the lack of access to land and other productive resources adversely impacts on women’s enjoyment of human rights.
According to a landmark study by UNCCD, gender equality remains unfinished business in every part of the world. For instance, in more than 100 countries today, women cannot inherit their husband’s property under customary, religious, or traditional laws and practices.
Andrea Meza MurilloDue to the COVID-19 pandemic, some women tragically lost not only their spouses but also access to their land. Even in countries where women have the same legal rights as men to own and access land – as is the case in Costa Rica – only 15.6% of farm ownership is currently in the hands of women.?In the Middle East and North Africa region, just 4% of women hold land titles.
Discrimination related to land tenure, credit access, equal pay and decision making often keeps women from playing an active role in sustaining land health. When they do have property rights, women often own smaller plots, and less fertile lands, compared to male landowners.
And when land becomes degraded and water is scarce, rural women?are usually the worst affected, often skipping meals in favour of other family members. ?
Globally, women already spend a collective 200 million hours every day collecting water. In some countries, a single trip to fetch water can take over an hour. Droughts make the situation even harder—they tend to increase the burden of unpaid care and domestic work shouldered by women and girls.?
But women are not only on the frontline of climate change and land degradation impacts; they can also be major actors in the global efforts to restore the land back to health and boost drought resilience.?
Evidence shows that when women and men have equal land tenure rights, women are more likely to invest in soil conservation and sustainable land management practices. For example, in Ethiopia, land certification and registration undertaken in the early 2000s increased tenure security for women and men and boosted landowners’ likelihood of investing in soil and water conservation measures by 20-30%.?
Gender equality is vital to deliver sustainable, progressive, and meaningful action to advance sustainable land stewardship. The recognition of women’s land and resource rights will accelerate land restoration efforts by opening doors to markets and finance, training and other services, and gender-appropriate sustainable land management tools and technologies.
It will also enable women to step up their contribution to the achievement of climate and biodiversity goals, keeping global temperature increase to 1.5°C and restoring at least 30% of degraded ecosystems by 2030.
Already, women worldwide use traditional knowledge and innovative solutions to address desertification, land degradation and drought. In India, irrigation systems developed by women farmers rely on rainwater harvesting. In Jordan, a plant nursery entirely run by women using state-of-the-art methodologies and protocols is producing high-quality native seedlings for land restoration.?
The UNCCD has a long track record in placing gender equality firmly at the core of its mandate as a vital catalyst of progress. Gender-responsive land restoration is an obvious pathway to reduce poverty, hunger, and malnutrition.
When women are empowered to have a say in decision-making on land matters, entire communities and societies benefit, and these benefits can be passed on to future generations.?
We must urgently change the way both women and land are treated. We must invest more in women as the custodians of healthy land and thriving communities. It’s time for women and girls to be at the forefront of land restoration efforts.
For this, governments must take action to assess and reform legal and regulatory frameworks, promote gender-responsive policies and public services, and support successful programmes that promote women’s rights to land and resources.
Ending discrimination against women in their access to, use of, and control over land and other resources is crucial. In doing so, we can create a more just and sustainable world for all.
Andrea Meza Murillo is Deputy Executive Secretary of the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD). Prior to joining the Convention, she served as Minister of Energy and Environment for the Government of Costa Rica. She brings over 20 years of expertise in sustainable development, having worked in more than 15 Latin American countries to formulate public policies, participate in international negotiations, and execute climate, conservation and restoration projects.
Opinion by Magdalena Sepulveda (geneva, switzerland)
Inter Press Service
GENEVA, Switzerland, Mar 06 (IPS) – The following opinion piece is part of series to mark International Women’s Day, March 8. She will be called Aya. This is the name that nurses gave to the infant baby pulled from the rubble of a five-story building in Jinderis, northern Syria. A miracle. Beside her, the rescuers found her mother, dead.
She had given birth within hours of the 7.8-magnitude earthquake that struck Turkey and Syria on the night of February 6, 2023. Like her, more than 50,000 people died in the earthquake. As tragic as it is hopeful, this story has moved the international media.
It also reminds us that over 350,000 pregnant women who survived the earthquake now urgently need access to health care, according to the United Nations. And this is only one aspect of women’s vulnerability to natural disasters.
Floods, droughts, earthquakes, and other extreme events are not gender-neutral, especially in developing countries. Evidence shows that women and girls die in greater numbers and have different and uneven levels of resilience and capacity to recover.
Of the 230,000 people killed in the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami, for example, 70% were women. Because of gender barriers, they often have fewer survival skills: boys are taught to swim or read first. This makes it difficult for them to access early warnings or identify safe shelters.
In addition, it is more difficult for women to escape from danger, since they are most often responsible for children, the elderly, and the sick. Heightened tensions and fear, as well as the loss of income provoked by disasters, drive increased domestic violence against women and girls.
They are also the first victims of sexual violence and exploitation when entire populations are displaced – this was one of the first concerns in Pakistan when more than 8 million people had to leave their homes because of the terrible floods in June-August 2022.
Natural catastrophes negatively impact everyone economically, but women and girls are disproportionately affected. World Bank data show that female farmers suffer much more than male ones in rural areas.
Assigned to domestic tasks, they are more dependent than men on access to natural resources and are, therefore, the first to suffer when these become scarce. In every region, food insecurity is higher among women than men.
In 2020, it was estimated that nearly 60% of the people who go hungry are women and girls, and the gender gap has only increased since then. Their lack of access to bank accounts also means that women’s assets are less protected than men’s.
And, of course, recovery from any crisis builds on societal expectations related to gender roles. Consequently, women bear the brunt of the increased domestic burden after a disaster at the cost of missing out on other income-generating activities.
We know that women spend, on average, 3.2 times more time than men on unpaid care work, and the COVID-19 pandemic – another human-induced natural catastrophe – made evident how unequally unpaid care and domestic work is shared, and how undervalued and underrecognized it is.
This is a major constraint on women’s access to education, an obstacle to their entry into and advancement in the paid labor market, and to their political participation, with serious consequences in terms of social protection, income, and pensions.
Gender inequality exacerbates the impact of natural disasters, and the consequences of natural disasters exacerbate gender inequality. An unacceptable vicious cycle. With the world already facing a growing number of climate-related tragedies, governments must take immediate and long-term action to invest in universal access to health care, water and sanitation, education, social protection, and infrastructure for gender equality and the full enjoyment of women’s human rights.
Even in times of crisis, when state coffers are nearly empty, there are equitable solutions to raise revenues to fund the investments needed to strengthen women’s resilience: to make those who profit from the crises ravaging the planet, including from those natural disasters, pay, as recommended by the Independent Commission for the Reform of International Corporate Taxation (ICRICT), of which I am a member alongside, among others, Joseph Stiglitz, Jayati Ghosh, and Thomas Piketty. Instead of implementing austerity programs that devastate the most disadvantaged, states can increase their fiscal space by taxing companies and the super-rich more.
It starts with taxing the super profits made by multinationals, and several countries in Europe and Latin America have already begun to do so. This is particularly true for the pharmaceutical giants that have made a fortune selling vaccines against Covid-19, which they were able to develop due to public subsidies. This is also the case for multinationals in the energy or food sector.
Oxfam estimates that their profits increased by more than two and a half times (256%) in 2022 compared with the 2018–2021 average. For the same reasons, it is urgent to tax the richest, who get away with paying hardly any taxes these days.
One cannot accept that, as Oxfam reminds us, a man like Elon Musk, one of the wealthiest men in history, is taxed at 3.3%, while Aber Christine, a market trader in Uganda who sells rice, is taxed at 40%.
Progressive taxation – making the richest people and multinationals pay their fair share – is one of the most powerful tools for reducing inequality of all kinds. As the world celebrates International Women’s Day, let’s keep in mind that it is impossible to build more resilient societies without fighting for gender equality.
Continuing to ignore it is a political choice, and an even more perilous threat to development than natural disasters themselves.
Magdalena Sepúlveda is the Executive Director of the Global Initiative for Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, and a member of the Independent Commission for the Reform of International Corporate Taxation (ICRICT). From 2008-2014 she was the UN Special Rapporteur on Extreme Poverty and Human Rights @Magda_Sepul
Pakistani women peacekeepers in the audience at the National University of Science and Technology in Islamabad, where Secretary-General António Guterres delivered an address on the topic of peacekeeping. Credit: UN Photo/Mark Garten
Opinion by Simone Galimberti (kathmandu, nepal)
Inter Press Service
The following opinion piece is part of series to mark International Women’s Day, March 8
KATHMANDU, Nepal, Mar 06 (IPS) – If you want to have a good reading on women and young girls’ activism, there is a high chance that you have missed an incredibly interesting report.
On the one hand, the special procedures under UN Human Rights focused on women should be re-organized and on the other hand, country level programs supporting women should become more unified. Meanwhile, a new global platform, building on the Generation Equality Forum, could bring these two complementary but vastly different realm of works, together to engage the global public and the leaders.
The blueprint offers a real and practical guidance on about how the direct involvement and engagement of women and young girls is essential if governments are serious about achieving gender equality and ends, once for all, any type of gender-based discriminations.
The Working Group is composed by five experts, mostly academician but also practitioners, on women’s rights and despite the low profile, it maintains a real busy annual schedule that makes its work incredibly relevant and valuable.
It does not only meet three times a year for planning and coordination and but also holds a dialogue at the Human Rights Council in June in addition to reporting to the General Assembly in October/November and also participates at the annual March meeting of the Commission on the Status of the Women.
On the top of all these tasks and consider that their commitment with the Working Group proceeds along their official and equally demanding full-time jobs, the members also conduct annual visits to member states to monitor and assess their work to protect women and girls against discrimination.
The problem is that its work does get neither visibility nor recognition.
One of the reasons is that the UN human rights architecture promoting and defending the rights of women is too complex and fragmented and requires a drastic overhaul.
There are too many mechanisms often with an almost overlapping mandates tasked to protect women’s rights, perhaps also a reflection on the inevitable rivalries at the UN and the consequent compromises that are always struck by the member states.
Her mandate is stronger and certainly more visible than those of the members of the Working Group even though she operates within UN Human Rights.
Though the former mechanism is focused on fighting discrimination and the latter is instead exclusively aimed at assessing cases of violence against women, you might wonder if it could be more effective and value for money to devise a more united approach, a more effective modality to monitor and defend the rights of women around the world.
Certainly, we cannot discount the fact that we are talking about special procedures mechanisms within the Human Rights Council, an intergovernmental body within the UN that is actually the only forum where the member states of the UN discuss, share and peer reviews their human rights.
The special procedures are important because they uniquely involve top experts in matters of human rights and their contributions provide even more legitimacy to the important work that the UN System is doing to uphold the rights of vulnerable persons around the world.
A possibility to strengthen their work could be to imagine a different “governance” that maximizes their opinions and reviews, even with the possibility to provide full time tenures and adequate resources to support their work and give it the visibility it deserves.
It is composed by twenty-three experts and one of its main tasks is to “assist States parties in the preparation of initial and subsequent periodic reports” and holding constructive dialogue with them and issue the so called “concluding observations” on what the member states present to show their commitment to CEDAW.
Officially started in 2017, the platform aims to “promote thematic and institutional cooperation between the UN and regional expert mechanisms on the elimination of discrimination and violence against women and girls with the view of accelerating domestication of international and regional standards, achieving gender equality and empowering women and girls”.
The reality is that this mechanism never got traction nor got the mandate to truly coordinate among UN and external, autonomous regional mechanisms outside of the purview of the UN system.
Mentioned earlier, the Commission on the Status of the Women is the oldest of all these mechanisms that, while proved to be indispensable over the last decades to mainstream women rights within the universal human rights agenda, is now outdated.
Till now we have been only focusing on mechanisms to uphold, monitor and protect the rights of women.
We have not yet discussed the “program” side of the equation, the work to prevent violence and discrimination against women and promote their empowerment being done by UN agencies and programs, including UN Women the agency that provides the secretariat of the Commission on the Status of Women.
In this respect, there is also, always within the UN System, the Inter-Agency Network on Women and Gender Equality or IANWGE, bringing together all the main women focal points of all UN agencies and programs.
Under responsibility of UN Women, the Network appears weak and just a formality though we should assume that at country level, all the work related to women’s empowerment is coordinated under the United Nations Sustainable Development Cooperation Framework (formerly named United Nations Development Assistance Framework).
This is a process that itself could require a further upgrade to truly maximize cooperation and avoidance of overlaps between and among agencies and programs.
It is evident that in both domains, on the one hand, the human rights accountability mechanisms and on the other hand, the actions and programs on the ground to change the status quo, there is need of a much stronger synergy and coordination, something that might be objected by several members of the UN that are unlikely to support anything akin to strengthen mechanisms upholding human rights.
Even the Commission on the Status of Women itself, whose upcoming session will be held between the 6 and17 March, should be re-thought.
With a multiyear thematic plan, the Commission, is a toothless and unnoticed advocacy and knowledge creation institution that each year comes up with a topic up for analysis and discussion.
This year, for example, the focus will be on “Innovation and technological change, and education in the digital age for achieving gender equality and the empowerment of all women and girls” while last year’s theme was centered around climate change, environment and disaster prevention.
There are no doubts that it is important to have a global convening forum that brings together the top experts on issues that are so relevant to achieve SDG 5. Yet it is not hard to imagine how a stronger, more coordinated women centered architecture in the UN could achieve and produce more while spending less.
Let’s remind ourselves that the Agenda 2030 and the SDGs brought some institutional innovations in the way the UN operates, primarily the High-Level Political Forum on Sustainable Development, that is the major SDGs focused platform promoted by the UN.
Besides its usual gathering in July, this year the Forum will also host another SDG Summit in September, the biggest format to discuss about and review the SDGs at the highest levels of political leadership worldwide.
Yet, while we are referring to a strong advocacy and review mechanism with a considerable amount of convening power, the High-Level Political Forum is simply what it is, a review mechanism of countries’ performances towards accomplishing the SDGs and important vehicle for debating them.
A reform of a stronger UN System that is better positioned to truly achieve SDG 5, should acknowledge an existing deep gulf between promotion and defense of human rights focusing on women (as well other human rights issues) and, on the other end, actions on ground at legislative, judiciary and economic and social levels to change the status quo.
For example, UN Human Rights has no formal role in hosting the High-Level Political Forum that is instead organized by ECOSOC and has a very limited presence at countries level.
A better chance at ensuring that the rights of women are defended while their living conditions improve, could be based on two complementary internal reforms within the UN System: an improvement on how Human Rights operates and a drastic rethinking of how the women focused service, advocacy and delivery-oriented agencies of the UN work.
On the former, the UN Human Rights could undertake, with the aim of giving them more voice and authority, a major reform of its “accountability” mechanisms that rely on the professionalism, integrity and expertise of world class activists, advocates and legal scholars.
The role of the Commission on the Status of the Women should also be reviewed. As per now, its outreach and voice are limited within the development sector and it has become almost irrelevant and unknown to the global public opinion.
On the latter, in terms of programs and initiatives supporting women and their rights around the world, only a true One United Nations approach at country level could do the job with ultimately a much better coordination and one unified “delivery” channel.
Both processes of change and their respective spheres of work, accountability and program, could then be promoted through a united “Global Women” platform that could end up with the same visibility that COP process gained for climate action.
A recently created multi partnership forum could, potentially, become such main vehicle to achieve SDG 5. I am talking of Generation Equality Forum, a joint initiative of Mexico and France that has been facilitated by UN Women.
It holds a great potential to facilitate new collaborations that so far has been convened twice in 2021, first in Mexico City and then in Paris, paving the way for an ambitious global program of action, the Global Acceleration Plan.
The interesting part of it is that the Forum is truly action oriented with its members committing to take action through six sub areas groups, branded as Generation Equality Action Coalitions that include the entire spectrum of areas that would ensure achieving SDG 5.
From gender violence to economic justice, to bodily autonomy and sexual reproductive rights, to climate justice to technology and innovation, to leadership, the coalitions, made up by hundreds of civil society organizations, global foundations and private corporations, can really facilitate partnerships with private sector and civil society, a capacity that the UN System has never mastered.
Can this new and bold attempt to catalyze efforts and investments for the rights of women and girls around the world become the epicenter of a new women focused development architecture?
Can a hybrid vehicle to rally global investments and actions for women help galvanize global attention on their rights and at same time do the job of meeting the targets of SDG 5?
Finally, would a new women focused “governance” of development assistance also force the UN System to change for good its working modalities?
Even if the accountability mechanisms under UN Human Rights would remain formally separated by this process of renewal for women ‘rights, nevertheless the banner of the Generation Equality Forum transformed into a “Global Women” platform could be used to highlight and “empower” their work.
The fact that this year there will be another gathering of the Generation Equality Forum could offer additional new momentum to the initiative though last year only a very low key event celebrated its 1st year anniversary.
Yet it was still an important gathering because it was where the Forum’s first accountability report was unveiled.
In few days from now the Forum will actively participate in the upcoming session of Commission on the Status of Women but with some insights, perhaps, the opposite process should occur.
The Commission and all other women focused mechanisms and programs, at minimum, could become part of a much larger and more institutionalized institution that should also be fully aligned to and possibly become the central pillar for SDG 5 of The High-Level Political Forum on Sustainable Development.
Rather they should be truly embraced head-on. Meanwhile another great publication on women and young girls’ activism will be read by too few people.
Simone Galimberti is the Co-Founder of ENGAGE and co-initiator of the Good Leadership, Good for You & Good for the Society, both active in Nepal. He writes on volunteerism, social inclusion, youth development and regional integration as an engine to improve people’s lives
Queues and frustration met the changes to the currency and withdrawal limits in Abuja. Credit: Abdullahi Jimoh/IPS
by Abdullahi Jimoh (abuja)
Inter Press Service
ABUJA, Mar 06 (IPS) – Nigerians confronted by hardships over the scarcity of the newly redesigned naira notes in conjunction with the country’s cashless policy introduced by the apex bank have had a last-minute reprieve from a policy that had disrupted their lives and exacerbated hunger.
On Friday, March 3, 2023, the country’s Supreme Court temporarily suspended the March 10, 2023, deadline for use of the redesigned naira and said the imposition of such a tight deadline was an affront to the 1999 constitution.
Trying to get money from the ATMs of accredited commercial banks had created so many difficulties that people had put their lives on hold. Artisans, teachers, and other professionals could not go to work, many school children were loitering at home, itinerant traders were stranded, and families were now hungry and, on occasion, resorted to violent protests because they had not been able to access their money.
Experts had warned that the situation could trigger a cash-induced recession because the country’s economy is chiefly cash-based.
In October last year, the Central Bank of Nigeria Governor, Godwin Emefiele, announced that three major denominations would be redesigned on the Federal government’s orders.
Emefiele announced that Nigeria’s last redesign was in 2014 when the N100 note was redesigned to mark the country’s centenary.
“In line with sections 19, subsection a and b of the CBN Act 2007, the management of the CBN sought and obtained the approval of President Muhammad Buhari to redesign, produce and circulate new series of banknotes at N200, N500 and N1000 levels,” he said.
In November last year, Buhari launched the new naira notes and said they would be in circulation from December 15, and the deadline for swapping old notes for new ones in the Deposit Money Banks (DMBs) was slated for this year on January 31. But the mass objection and the banks’ inability to swap the money forced it to be extended to February 10, 2023. On February 17, the old notes ceased to be recognized as legal tender.
To add to the woes on December 6, the apex bank, in an attempt to push a cashless economy, introduced a cash withdrawal limit and directed the lower banks to limit over-the-counter amounts to be withdrawn by individuals and corporate entities to N100,000 and N500,000 (about USD 207 and USD 1085. 5) per week. This order was expected to take effect on January 9, 2023, and ATMs and point of sale (PoS) terminals would dispense a maximum of (N20,000) (USD 43.4) at a time.
The cashless policy’s first phase was introduced in April 2012 in Lagos to encourage electronic transactions and enhance the efficiency of Nigeria’s payment system. It was successful there, and the policy was then extended to five other states in July 2013. For the expansion of financial access points and financial inclusion and proliferation of electronic transactions, the CBN gave full implementation in September 2019 before the nationwide implementation was recently announced to commence on January 9 this year.
Like many other developing African countries, Nigeria’s economy was greatly affected by the Russian/Ukraine war. In 2016 the country hit a recession, which caused her economy to contract by 1.6 percent due to a fall in the price of oil in the international market.
Also, in the third quarter of 2020, its economy plunged into recession over the negative impact of COVID-19 on travel and the supply chain of goods worldwide.
Moreover, the growth of her inflation rate climbed to 21.82 percent in January 2023.
The CBN justifies the cashless policy in the banking system, saying it could defuse kidnapping for ransom, armed robbery, graft terrorism financing, extortion, advance fee fraud, and other crimes, while the compulsory withdrawal limit will cause deflation to the country’s economy.
Inflation occurs when there is too much money in circulation. The central bank’s findings showed that as of October last year, currency in circulation was N3.23 trillion naira, but there was only 500 billion naira in various banks’ custody, and 2.7 trillion naira was permanently undeposited. Observers have projected that with the decision to take the money out of circulation, inflation would decrease.
Not Enough Money in Circulation
News analysts questioned whether the Nigerian Security Printing and Minting (NSPM) could print the money. It was created in 1963 with authority to produce currencies and security documents for ministries, agencies of government, and companies.
In addition, a World Bank survey revealed that there were 16.15 ATMs per 100,000 adults in Nigeria in 2021 – which means that for a population of over 200 million people in Nigeria, there are only 32,000 ATMs across the federation. Each ATM would need to dispense a minimum of 1 million naira daily.
But the problem was exacerbated because the commercial banks were short of cash and unable to get the newly printed naira from the central bank because the NSPM could only print 4 billion banknotes per year.
The central bank’s deputy governor, Aisha Ahmad, said in December that 500 million new notes had been ordered, which a financial analyst describes as insufficient.
“The intention for the naira redesign and adoption of cashless transactions is to reduce vote buying and terrorism in the country, but the CBN needs to release more cash into circulation,” a Lagos-based analyst from KPMG Babatunde Babajide told IPS in an interview.
The Vote Buying
As enticing voters with cash was a phenomenon in previous Nigerian elections, the CBN insisted on retaining the notes in the banks and kicking against any further extension of the swapping of the old currency to check vote buying during the February election.
However, many members of the All Progressive Congress (APC), the ruling party, said the cash crunch is a plot against their candidate Bola Ahmed Tinubu. Last week Tinubu was declared the winner of the election – despite allegations that the poll was flawed, and is now contested by both the main opposition leaders Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Atiku Abubakar and Labour Party’s Peter Obi.
A political scientist from the University of Nigeria, Adilieje Chukwuma, also affirmed that the naira redesign was principally for economic gain but may also have had political undertones.
“Looking at the timing, it could have a political undertone. But I prefer to view the situation mainly as an economic recovery,” he told IPS.
While some believe the programme to replace the naira was designed to impact the poor, Babajide, the financial analyst, views it as beneficial to the majority.
“Nigerians just need to adopt electronic transactions. The CBN action is intentional, mainly to reduce the supply of cash and curb inflation,” Babajide says.
The analyst, however, added that hopefully, after the country’s general election, things would start to return to normal.
Chronic underinvestment in agriculture is a key cause of the widespread hunger experienced in 2022, according to Oxfam report. Credit: Busani Bafana/IPS.
by Baher Kamal (madrid)
Inter Press Service
MADRID, Mar 03 (IPS) – The data is shocking: three-quarters of African Governments have already reduced their agricultural budgets while paying almost double that on arms.
Africa is home to a quarter of the world’s entire agricultural land. Nevertheless, in the 12 months that African leaders vowed to improve food security in the continent, over 20 million more people have been pushed into “severe hunger.”
“The hunger African people are facing today is a direct result of inadequate political choices…,” said Fati N’Zi-Hassane, Oxfam in Africa Director.
Chronic underinvestment
The report further explains that chronic underinvestment in agriculture is a key cause of the widespread hunger experienced in 2022.
Specifically, it adds, the majority of African governments (48 out of 54) reportedly spend an average of 3.8% of their budgets on agriculture -some spending as little as 1%.
“Nearly three quarters of these governments have reduced their agricultural spending since 2019, failing to honour their Malabo commitments to invest at least 10% of their budget on agriculture.”
In 2014 African leaders signed the Malabo Declaration, which stipulated that African governments must spend at least 10% of their budget on Agriculture and supporting farmers.
Politicians doubling military spending
In contrast, “African governments spent nearly double that budget (6.4%) on arms last year. Ongoing conflict, especially in Sahel and Central Africa, has continued to destroy farmland, displace people and fuel hunger.”
In addition, “worsening climate-fuelled droughts and floods, and a global rise in fuel and fertilisers prices, made food unobtainable for millions of people. In 2022 alone, food inflation rose by double digits in all but ten African countries.”
No access to neighbouring markets
As the 36th African Union Summit was held in February 2023, focussing on intra-continental free trade, “millions of smallholder farmers, who are vital food producers in the continent, cannot reach markets in neighbouring countries due to poor infrastructure and high intra-African tariffs.”
In other words, “many African nations find it cheaper to import food from outside the continent than from their next-door neighbour.” According to Oxfam:
As of August 2022 (the last available figure), there were 139.95 million people in 35 African countries living in “Crisis or worse acute food insecurity.” That is an increase of 17% (20.26 million people) over the same number a year earlier (119.69 million people).
South Sudan spends less than 1% of its budget on Agriculture. Calculations of all agricultural spending in Africa is based on data from the government spending watch, national budgets and FAO.
According to the CAADP report and the FAO Crop Prospects report, Africa’s cereal production in 2022 was 207.4 million tons, a decline of 3.4 million tons from the average of the previous five years.
Five-fold increase in extreme weather events
The increasing hunger in Africa –which is imposed by both externally and internally– is just part of a widespread drama.
In fact, climate change is fuelling hunger for millions of people around the world. “Extreme weather events have increased five-fold over the past 50 years, destroying homes, decimating livelihoods, fuelling conflict and displacement, and deepening inequality,” Oxfam reports.
Hunger more than doubling
Climate change has resulted in more frequent and intense droughts, floods, and heat waves. “The number of disasters has increased five-fold over the past 50 years.”
This is hitting low-income countries hardest, Oxfam goes on, adding that the 10 countries with the highest UN appeals related to weather extremes since 2000, have seen a 123% rise in the number of people suffering extreme hunger -from 21.3 million to 47.5 million.
These countries are Afghanistan, Burkina Faso, Djibouti, Guatemala, Haiti, Kenya, Madagascar, Niger, Somalia and Zimbabwe. According to this data, 7 out of these 10 countries are Africans.
Fossil fuel staggering profits
The G20 countries are amongst the most polluting nations in the world, collectively responsible for nearly 77% of carbon emissions, reports Oxfam, a global movement of people, working together to end the injustice of poverty, by tackling the inequality that keeps people poor.
It is extraordinary that as humanity faces this existential crisis, there is still more incentive to destroy our planet than to save lives.
“The oil and gas industry has enjoyed staggering profits as they wreak havoc on the planet –amassing 2.8 billion US dollars a day (or more than 1 trillion US dollars per year) for the last 50 years.”
Seismic hunger
For its part, the World Food Programme (WFP) reports that the current seismic hunger crisis has been caused by a deadly combination of factors: conflict, economic shocks, climate extremes are combining to create a food crisis of unprecedented proportions.
Much so that “as many as 828 million people are unsure of where their next meal is coming from.”
More than 900,000 people worldwide are fighting to survive in famine-like conditions, the world body reports, adding that this is “ten times more than five years ago, an alarmingly rapid increase.”
In short, politicians also in the most needed and highest exposed to staggering hunger countries, continue to attach higher relevance to spending on arms fueling conflicts, and on fuel fuels spreading climate disasters, rather than investing in saving the lives of their own people.
Opinion by Noura Hamladji, Samuel Rizk (united nations)
Inter Press Service
UNITED NATIONS, Mar 03 (IPS) – There is no better environment for the expansion of violent extremist groups than a vacuum in state authority. It provides ideal conditions for these groups to prey on existing and historical grievances, fill the void with promises of financial support, access to services and attention for marginalized, neglected communities.
But, at what cost?
In sub-Saharan Africa, we are witnessing the toll. In the past decade, violence linked to the influence of global violent extremist groups like Al Qaeda and Daesh has spread swiftly across the region. In 2022, new global epicentres of terrorism were found in sub-Saharan Africa.
With thousands killed and millions displaced, this violence threatens the stability of the entire region and hinders development gains on the continent.
To better understand how violent extremist groups proliferate, and how they impact development and social cohesion, UNDP commissioned unique research to find out what gives violent extremists a foothold in particular contexts.
We looked at the Sahel, the Lake Chad Basin, DR Congo, Somalia and Northern Mozambique. What we found is that while every country – and district – has its own story, there are clear common denominators that help design relevant, coherent responses.
This new study, Dynamics of Violent Extremism in Africa: Conflict Ecosystems, Political Ecology, and the Spread of the Proto-State complements the research we have done into how and why individuals join violent extremist groups in the Journey to Extremism series.
Filling the void
As they expand in size and resources, buttressed by a link to a global ideological orientation, some violent extremist groups organize in ways akin to local government structures. They begin to compete with the state not only by monopolizing the threat/use of violence – in this case, instilling terror – but also by promising some of the most essential local services that people are aspiring to, such as a relative sense of security, sources of income and swift adjudication of disputes.
They may do so cruelly and oppressively, but even that may initially be attractive to communities weary of years of lawlessness, corruption and chaos. Indeed, the more deeply structured local violent extremist groups have evolved from raiding bands and now show many of the characteristics of a “proto-state”, typified by Daesh in Syria.
As the study findings suggest, the modus operandi of these local violent extremist groups is not centred mainly around persuading people to adopt their ideology. Instead – and often coming from the locality itself – they are grievance entrepreneurs, exploiting local development deficits, and forging alliances of convenience with other violent groups and criminal networks, like smugglers or local militias.
Even so, this does not make them one-dimensional opportunists. Their link to global networks helps to give them direction, binds them together and adds to their appeal. They are both global and local, both ideological and economic alternatives that can be appealing to people living in perceived or de facto state vacuum.
One common finding in this study is that violent extremist groups rarely appear in places well served by stable, predictable governments and governance systems. Instead, they operate where there is already poverty and instability, away from capital cities, in marginalized places where public services are thin or non-existent – all of which are often the product of local power-brokers’ interests.
The lack of trust between communities in these remote and crisis-hit areas and their government is also a common factor highlighted in the research. All too often communities suffer acute insecurity, feeling let down, targeted, and abused by the very state that should be protecting them. Violent extremist groups then plug in to fear or anger among communities and local leaders.
The first step to addressing this growing trend is to understand the political economy of violent extremist groups, and the sources of their power, with a view to halt and reverse their stranglehold on society.
The next step requires collaboration by the international community, supporting national partners not only to address the visible manifestations of the problem, but also to reverse years or decades of state fragility, exclusion and insecurity that emboldened these groups over time.
To this end, UNDP’s work on sub-national and local governance and institutions is critical – resilient, responsive, accountable, transparent, linked to national-level reforms that will have the biggest impact on violent extremist groups’ “business models.”
UNDP also works to empower local communities and local leaders towards positive and inclusive governance and improving access to basic services in under-served areas. This is the way to avoid recreating the same conditions that enabled the governance void to exist in first instance.
Gaining a foothold
It is clear that many of the conflicts which give these groups a foothold are over land and water. Desertification, climate change and poor land management have made traditional ways of life difficult in many places where land has degraded and pastures no longer support herds, nor do farms support crops.
But this need not be irreversible. With careful attention to local power politics, social relationships and trust-building, we can help communities to regenerate land and revive livelihoods – and to capture carbon in the soil in the process, offering local solutions to global problems and giving communities agency in shaping their present and future.
We call it “political ecology”, and with this approach we can simultaneously improve lives and undercut the appeal of violent extremist groups.
Also crucial to this approach is understanding how illicit funds flow around an economy, both inside a country and across borders; how power-brokers depend on and manipulate instability and corruption for greater influence; and which actors have a real interest in reform. This knowledge can help identify and interdict income sources of violent extremist groups while sustainably rebuilding local economies.
A human-centred approach
While there is a common thread of misogyny in the narrative and behaviour of violent extremist groups, women’s roles are not homogenous or predestined to victimhood. On one hand, Boko Haram has used women as suicide bombers and al Shabaab as intelligence sources, but on the other hand women form the backbone of many peacebuilding and victim support efforts, and are the engine of cross-border trade in many areas.
This very diversity makes it more important to ensure that both women and men are fully involved in our efforts, from analysis to implementation to evaluation. In the end, where does the study address our collective approach to human security, to people-centred development, justice and peace?
These conflicts, and all the horrors committed by these groups, leave deep scars, and the trauma is long-lasting. Even in contexts that are not impacted by war, political conflict or pervasive violent extremism, we are starting to understand the cost of recent lockdowns and isolation during the COVID-19 pandemic, in mental health and alienation.
In conflict zones, the depth of trauma needs much more research, but we know it is severe. And people cope with it in ways that can lead to further violence, at a personal, family and community level. Sadly, that often helps to perpetuate cycles of conflict.
So, if we are to address these historical, multigenerational grievances which violent extremists can prey on, while working to heal their ongoing grief, we need to expand our capacity to provide the mental health and psycho-social support that individuals and communities need.
And if we can do so, we can demonstrate in action the positive alternatives to hatred and violence that these groups peddle.
Development first
A new approach is needed – one that first invests in understanding and complex ways in which these violent extremist groups win hearts and minds in different communities, acting as alternatives to state authority.
With this knowledge, we can work together with national and local governments to ensure a developmental, preventive, inclusive approach where people have access to the rights, goods and services they need to live prosperous lives, thus removing the power that these groups wield. Rather than helping people to get by; getting ahead, with hope and dignity, should be the goal.
Through this approach, we can improve the lives of citizens and communities across the region and turn back the tide of violence and despair. The challenge remains complex and urgent, and our collective responses must overcome by being more informed, adaptive, innovative and inclusive to promote and sustain development and peace.
Noura Hamladji is Deputy Regional Director, Regional Bureau for Africa; Samuel Rizk is Head of Conflict Prevention, Peacebuilding and Responsive Institutions, UNDP
Note: The research study was prepared in a process co-led by the UNDP Regional Bureau for Africa (RBA) and the Crisis Bureau (CB) Conflict Prevention, Peacebuilding and Responsive Institutions (CPPRI)/Prevention of Violent Extremism (PVE) Team. The study paper was developed by lead researcher Peter Rundell and supporting researchers Olivia Lazard and Emad Badi, under the editorial direction of Noura Hamladji and Samuel Rizk, and coordination by Nika Saeedi and Nirina Kiplagat.
We use cookies on our website to give you the most relevant experience by remembering your preferences and repeat visits. By clicking “Accept”, you consent to the use of ALL the cookies.
This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website. Out of these, the cookies that are categorized as necessary are stored on your browser as they are essential for the working of basic functionalities of the website. We also use third-party cookies that help us analyze and understand how you use this website. These cookies will be stored in your browser only with your consent. You also have the option to opt-out of these cookies. But opting out of some of these cookies may affect your browsing experience.
Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. These cookies ensure basic functionalities and security features of the website, anonymously.
Cookie
Duration
Description
cookielawinfo-checkbox-analytics
11 months
This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Analytics".
cookielawinfo-checkbox-functional
11 months
The cookie is set by GDPR cookie consent to record the user consent for the cookies in the category "Functional".
cookielawinfo-checkbox-necessary
11 months
This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookies is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Necessary".
cookielawinfo-checkbox-others
11 months
This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Other.
cookielawinfo-checkbox-performance
11 months
This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Performance".
viewed_cookie_policy
11 months
The cookie is set by the GDPR Cookie Consent plugin and is used to store whether or not user has consented to the use of cookies. It does not store any personal data.
Functional cookies help to perform certain functionalities like sharing the content of the website on social media platforms, collect feedbacks, and other third-party features.
Performance cookies are used to understand and analyze the key performance indexes of the website which helps in delivering a better user experience for the visitors.
Analytical cookies are used to understand how visitors interact with the website. These cookies help provide information on metrics the number of visitors, bounce rate, traffic source, etc.
Advertisement cookies are used to provide visitors with relevant ads and marketing campaigns. These cookies track visitors across websites and collect information to provide customized ads.
