"Pay to delay" agreements may cost consumers in the United States up to 3.5 billion dollars per year. Credit: Bigstock

The Supreme Court pushed back Monday against a longstanding practise in the U.S. pharmaceuticals industry under which large-scale companies pay producers of generic copies to hold off introducing those low-cost drugs into the marketplace.

The practise, known as “reverse payments”, maintains a company’s lucrative monopoly over a drug, often resulting in significant extra income. Yet critics, including the U.S. government, have for years warned that the practise was both anti-competitive and harmful for consumers, who are forced to pay more for drugs.

While the decision did not declare reverse payments to be outright illegal, as the government had hoped, it does now allow the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to move forward with court cases against these arrangements, known colloquially as “pay to delay”. The decision also reversed previous rulings by lower courts.

“[T]he specific restraint at issue has the ‘potential for genuine adverse effects on competition,’” Justice Stephen Breyer wrote for the majority in the 5-3 ruling. “Payment for staying out of the market keeps prices at patentee-set levels and divides the benefit between the patentee and the challenger, while the consumer loses.”

According to advocates of the changes, competition from generics can often lower drugs prices by up to 90 percent. The FTC, meanwhile, has estimated that agreements to push off such competition cost consumers some 3.5 billion dollars per year in the United States alone.

Beyond setting an important legal precedent, the ruling will likely have little immediate impact outside of the United States, as the patents in question likely do not extend overseas.

Brand-name drugs comprised just 18 percent of all U.S. prescriptions written in 2011, according to statistics from IMS Health, a research company. Yet they accounted for almost three quarters of revenue for the industry, worth some 320 billion dollars a year.

“The incentives to engage in research and development are already out there without these kinds of agreements,” Scott Nelson, an attorney with Public Citizen, a public interest watchdog, told IPS.

“Signing one of these agreements will mean you may have to fight the U.S. government. Hopefully, the impact will be that companies think twice before entering into these types of agreements, which are basically just arrangements to split up profits under which consumers lose out.”

Collusive agreements

The Supreme Court decision revolves around 1984 federal legislation, known as the Hatch-Waxman Act, that was meant specifically to push generic drugs onto the market more quickly. As Nelson noted, this law offers incentives for the development of new drugs such as decades-long patents.

But it also allowed generics manufacturers to challenge these patents for a variety of reasons. According to a study by the FTC, until the early 2000s, the generics companies prevailed in these challenges almost three quarters of the time.

Yet reverse payments arrangements offered a lucrative loophole in this process.

“Today, the court echoed what I, along with many other members of Congress, have repeatedly said:  the over-arching goal of Waxman-Hatch is to foster competition in the pharmaceutical industry,” Henry Waxman, a member of the House of Representatives and co-author on the 1984 bill, said Thursday.

“The type of collusive agreement at issue in this case represents a total perversion of the spirit of this law. This is a significant victory for consumers.”

Increasingly over the past decade, brand-name drugs manufacturers have moved to counter-sue generics companies following the filing of a challenge. Typically the companies would allege patent infringement and threaten a lengthy and costly court fight.

Thereafter, the two companies would arrive at a large cash settlement – the reverse payment – along with an agreement that the generics manufacturer would not introduce any related product into the marketplace for a set period of time.

The case before the court involved a type of synthetic testosterone, called AndroGel, used by cancer sufferers and others. The brand-name version of this drug cost around 379 dollars for a month’s supply.

While the introduction of a generic version could have knocked that price down to around 40 dollars, a deal between AndroGel’s manufacturer and a number of generics companies pushed off the introduction of a low-cost AndroGel until August 2015.

“These reverse payments are a win-win for both the brand-name and generic companies, as the latter essentially gets a share of the profits but the brand name gets to hold onto its monopoly for longer than,” Laura Etherton, a health policy analyst with U.S. PIRG, a consumer rights advocacy group, told IPS.

“The problem is these deals are lose-lose for consumers and taxpayers, as consumers end up paying billions more for these drugs, while taxpayers are forced to foot higher bills for [social safety-net programmes]. That’s the wrong way to go about making necessary medications available for the public.”

According to information provided by U.S. PIRG, such deals have delayed the introduction of generic drugs meant to fight AIDS, cancer and high blood pressure, among other diseases.

Legislative next step

Still, for advocates like Etherton, Monday’s decision did not go far enough.

“We are disappointed the court didn’t take the next step and outright outlaw this anti-competitive practice,” she said.

“But the silver lining in not taking that next step is that the case has really raised the profile of this issue. Our hope now is that Congress will give the issue the attention it deserves and end ‘pay for delay’ once and for all.”

Two pieces of legislation are currently pending in the U.S. Senate that would crack down further on reverse payments. One would seek to reduce the incentive for generic companies to enter into “pay for delay” agreements, by allowing a second generic company to circumvent such an arrangement and bring the drug to market.

A second proposal would outlaw such payments entirely. Federal auditors estimate that such a move would save the government some 11 billion dollars over a decade, in addition to consumer costs.

India is home to 25 percent of the World’s Hungry. Credit: Manipadma Jena/IPS

As India’s Parliament prepares to pass a bill to provide heavily subsidised food to 810 million people, there are misgivings over its implementation through a notoriously corrupt public distribution system (PDS).

The National Food Security Bill will be debated and passed at a specially convened session of parliament, ahead of the regular monsoon session that begins mid-July.

Critics of the bill include members of the right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party as well as India’s communist parties in the Left Front, with the latter demanding that all of India’s 1.2 billion people be covered under a revamped ‘universal PDS’.

“We want amendments to the bill to ensure that there are no leakages through the creation of bogus categories of people such as those living below the poverty line and those living above it,”  D. Raja, national secretary of the Communist Party of India (CPI), told IPS.

According to Raja, while India certainly needs a food security law, implementing it through the existing PDS will only provide more opportunities for corrupt traders and officials to siphon out money from a dysfunctional system.

Government reports have shown that at least 50 percent of the grain channeled through the PDS – consisting essentially of a network of  50,000 fair price shops – is cornered by traders who then either sell the same grain in the open market at high profits, or export it.

Traders have even been caught selling subsidised grain right back to the government’s procurement agents in connivance with corrupt officials of the state-run Food Corporation of India.

“What is needed is a strengthening of the existing PDS which has become notorious for leakages that have been working to deny poor people access to food, defeating the purpose for which it was created,” Raja said.

That India needs to overhaul its PDS is painfully obvious from the fact that each year its granaries overflow with bumper harvests of wheat and rice, which are allowed to rot in the rain while large numbers of people go hungry.

Over the last decade, the average food grain surplus every year has been around 60 million tonnes. In 2012, the surplus stood at 82.3 million tonnes and this year, with a favourable monsoon underway, a 90 million-tonne surplus is predicted.

The government deals with the surpluses by allowing exports – about 10 million tonnes each of wheat and rice were exported last year – a practice that left-wing politicians and food security experts criticise as unconscionable when thousands of Indians go hungry.

Resolving the paradox of starvation amidst plenty has become a priority, what with India finding itself castigated by the World Food Programme of the United Nations for being home to 25 percent of the world’s hungry.

According to a 2012 report by the Washington-based International Food Policy Research Institute, India has lagged in improving its Global Hunger Index (GHI) rating despite strong economic growth.

In India, 43.5 percent of children under five are underweight, giving it an unenviable GHI ranking of 65 among 79 countries surveyed. From 2005 to 2010, India ranked below Ethiopia, Niger, Nepal, and Bangladesh.

The new bill aims to rectify that situation by distributing some 50 million tonnes of grain to 360 million people, categorised as living below the poverty line, at about 10 percent of prices prevailing in the open market.

According to the World Bank, 32.7 percent of Indians live below the international poverty line of 1.25 dollars per day while another 68.7 percent live on less than two dollars per day.

But India’s Planning Commission places the poverty line far lower than the international level and calculates it at a pitiable 28.65 rupees (about five cents) worth of daily consumption per head in the cities and 22.42 rupees (four cents) in the rural areas.

“People at such a low level of consumption are not just poor they are in need of emergency food aid,” says Devinder Sharma, one of India’s best-known food security experts and leader of the respected Forum for Biotechnology and Food Security.

Sharma told IPS that it would be impossible to sustain the massive feeding programme envisaged in the bill for more than a few years. “It really does look as if the new policy is designed with a view to win votes in general elections due in May 2014.”

Sharma blames the phenomenon of hunger in India on colossal mismanagement and consistently poor policies. “How else can you explain the paradox of hunger existing for years alongside exports and rotting grain?”

According to Sharma, the government should be addressing hunger through a community approach that builds capacities to become self-reliant rather than depending on doles and subsidies from the government.

“There are many examples of villages building community grain banks and becoming food secure. All that the government has to do is support and foster local self-help groups and replicate this model,” Sharma said.

India should be focusing its efforts on rejuvenating agriculture through a programme aimed at restoring soil fertility, reviving groundwater levels, and stopping the destruction of rich natural resources through unsustainable farming practices.

Most importantly, farmers need to be assured a monthly income. “Since farmers generate wealth in the form of agricultural commodities they should be adequately compensated rather than driven to suicide in droves.”

Sharma believes that India’s farmers have suffered as a result of agricultural imports under World Trade Organisation rules and free trade agreements. “For example, it is senseless to flood the country with duty-free imported edible oils when Indian farmers are capable of meeting the country’s needs.”

Schoolgirls in an Amazon community. In Peru, the indigenous children of the High Andes and Amazon regions are among the most malnourished in the world. Credit: Milagros Salazar/IPS

Since its founding in 2007 to help developing nations fight poverty, hunger, illiteracy, disease and gender discrimination, the Millennium Development Goals Achievement Fund (MDG-F) has financed about 130 joint programmes in 50 countries.

Regina Gallego of the U.N. Development Programme (UNDP), the lead agency overseeing the MDGs, told IPS the Fund’s nutrition programme alone has helped draft or revise some 25 national nutrition plans, encouraged the planting of 270 school and community gardens, and improved health access for about 534,000 citizens.

“Directly or indirectly, our contribution has improved the nutritional status of more than 900,000 children and 179,000 pregnant and breast-feeding mothers,” said Gallego, UNDP’s knowledge management specialist.

The 700-million-dollar MDG-F is a collaborative effort between the government of Spain and the U.N. system involving several agencies, both in headquarters and in the field.

The funding is focused on eight themes: children, food security and nutrition; gender equality and women’s empowerment; environment and climate change; youth employment and migration; democratic economic governance; development and the private sector; conflict prevention and peace building; and culture and development.

Raul de Mora Jimenez, communications specialist at UNDP, told IPS the Fund is actively assisting several countries worldwide.

For example, it is currently working to improve conditions for indigenous people in Brazil, where four out of 10 live in extreme poverty and more than half of the children are anemic.

The Eco-stoves Initiative is part of the joint U.N. programme “Promoting Food Security and Nutrition for Indigenous Children in Brazil”, a collaboration between the Brazilian government and five U.N. agencies aimed at improving food security and the nutritional status of native populations in the areas of Dourados and Alto Rio Solimões.

The five agencies are the World Health Organisation (WHO), the International Labour Organisation (ILO), the U.N. children’s agency (UNICEF), the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) and UNDP.

In Peru, the indigenous children of the High Andes and Amazon regions are among the most malnourished in the world: up to half of them suffer from chronic malnutrition and many are anemic and Vitamin A deficient.

This Joint Programme is supporting the Peruvian government’s effort to improve food security and nutrition in four of the country’s poorest regions by accelerating implementation of the national strategy titled CRECER.

In Ethiopia, nutrition has improved for children under five, Jimenez said, but the rate of progress must accelerate if the country is to achieve the MDG target of halving by 2015 the number of people who suffer from hunger.

Toward this end, the Ethiopian government has developed a National Nutrition Strategy and National Nutrition Programme, which form the framework for the MDG-F Joint Programme.

In Vietnam, the programme is focused on improving food security through increased production and consumption of quality food and targeted supplementation.
This is both a short-term strategy to address current issues of malnutrition – through breast-feeding, iron and vitamin A supplements – and a long-term strategy to provide a higher quality diet through improved food production systems, including animal (meat and milk) and aquaculture products.

Asked about funding for the reduction of extreme poverty and hunger by the 2015 deadline, Galego told IPS the general trends of the MDGs indicators show that despite the progress made, eradicating extreme hunger is still a challenge.

About 850 million people, or nearly 15 percent of the global population, are estimated to be undernourished, while one in five children under age five in the developing world is underweight.

Food security is starting to gain ground in the national agendas in a systematic and structured way, she added.

She said the MDG-F programmes have drawn some lessons about key issues to be taken into account, so that the target of reducing by 50 percent those living in extreme hunger can be reached.

A link between food security and nutrition needs to be forged to realise the Zero Hunger Challenge.

To ensure that people not only have enough food, but also sufficiently nutritious food, it is necessary to acknowledge the inextricable link between food security and nutrition security, Gallego said.

“In other words, not just the quantity of the food must be considered, but also other aspects such as its nutritious value and accessibility as well as the health status, socio-economic status and level of knowledge of the population,” she said.

The experience of the MDG-F has proved that multi-sectorial interventions, when applied in a coordinated manner, are more efficient in achieving results.

The key for success is to customise the design of the multi-sectorial interventions by selecting the most relevant sectors, taking into account the specific conditions of the targeted population, including cultural realities, political interests, and involved stakeholders, she added.

The combination package might include sectors such as health, education, agriculture, water, sanitation or energy sectors, among others, Gallego said.

The MDGs, which were formally approved by the General Assembly in September 2000 and launched a year later, expire in 2015.

But since the overwhelming majority of the 132 developing nations have not met their targets, the General Assembly will hold a high-level meeting in September this year to take stock of the successes and failures – and how best to proceed.

Meanwhile, the United Nations is negotiating a new set of goals – Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), described as a successor to MDGs – which will be part of the U.N.’s post-2015 development agenda.

Nigerian Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development Akinwumi Adesina holding the FAO award recognising outstanding progress in fighting hunger and attaining MDG One. Credit: Busani Bafana/IPS

Thirty-eight countries were recognised for the first time on Sunday by the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organisation for cutting in half the prevalence of people suffering from undernourishment, one of three targets under the first Millennium Development Goal.

Of those countries, 18 also achieved the tougher World Food Summit Goal of halving the absolute numbers of hungry people: Armenia, Azerbaijan, Cuba, Djibouti, Georgia, Ghana, Guyana, Kuwait, Kyrgyzstan, Nicaragua, Peru, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Samoa, Sao Tome and Principe, Thailand, Turkmenistan, Venezuela and Vietnam.

“You are the proof that when societies decide to put an end to hunger, when there is political will from governments, we can transform that will into action,” FAO Director General Jose Graziano da Silva told leaders of the awarded countries during the Rome ceremony. “Thank you for showing us that it is possible.”

Twenty other countries were recognised for cutting by half the prevalence of hunger (but not yet absolute numbers): Algeria, Angola, Bangladesh, Benin, Brazil, Cambodia, Cameroon, Chile, Dominican Republic, Fiji, Honduras, Indonesia, Jordan, Malawi, Maldives, Niger, Nigeria, Panama, Togo and Uruguay.

At the Rome World Food Summit in 1996, countries around the world committed to working towards food security for all. In 2000, the U.N. adopted the eight Millennium Development Goals, meant to guide global efforts towards offering all people a decent life.

MDG One, “eradicating extreme poverty and hunger”, is broken down into three targets: reducing by 50 percent the proportion of hungry people, achieving decent employment for all, and halving the number of people living on less than 1.25 dollars a day by 2015.

Received with broad acclaim by the FAO assembly during the award ceremony, the new Venezuelan president, Nicolas Maduro, outlined in brief his country’s path to reducing hunger prevalence from 13.8 percent to 2.4 percent over the last decade, emphasising the core role played by former president Hugo Chavez in this battle.

“We are asking the FAO to assist us in creating a system to safeguard a permanent, stable food supply, which would permit us to confront the covert speculative attacks that Venezuela is currently enduring,” he told IPS TV.

Caribbean small island state Saint Vincent and the Grenadines is another of the countries acknowledged for meeting both goals. Since the early 1990s, it has reduced hunger rates from 20 percent to 4.9 percent, according to Prime Minister Ralph Gonsalves, who spoke to IPS on the sidelines of the Jun. 15-22 FAO biannual conference in Rome.

Gonsalves explained that climate change and pressures from international markets on domestic banana production posed significant challenges to his country in the attempt to defeat hunger. And yet the 120,000-person state seems to have found a working mix of solutions.

“We have a history of root vegetables and fruit crops and an accumulated two centuries worth of knowledge resident in the folk which should be mobilised and is being mobilised,” Gonsalves said.

“Secondly, important is the organisation of farmers to engage in cooperative work with the state. Finally, we are implementing targeted solutions such as feeding programmes for school children and the elderly and in general developing a strong safety net.

“We are addressing the production side but also the consumer side through targeted interventions,” the prime minister said.

Georgia, another country recognised in Rome, reduced the prevalence of malnourishment from 60 percent to 25 percent over the past decade, according to FAO figures.

“This was possible because of a number of different measures that we took to generally improve the economy and combat corruption and mismanagement, which allowed us to have double-digit growth for the past years,” Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili told IPS in Rome.

“Growth was combined with implementing poverty reduction programmes helping families to reach subsistence levels.”

Current estimates put the number of people suffering from hunger today at 870 million.

According to the U.N.’s The State of Food Insecurity in the World 2012 report, significant progress has been made on combating hunger since 1990, yet in some areas around the world this was either slowed down or even reversed by the global economic crisis.

The U.N. says that meeting the MDG goal of halving hunger prevalence by 2015 is within reach but only if measures are taken to make up for the negative impact of the crisis.

Residents of Kudankulam, a village in Tamil Nadu, protest against the Indian Supreme Court verdict approving construction of a nuclear power plant. Credit: K. S. Harikrishnan/IPS

The Tirunelveli district in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu may seem idyllic, dotted with lush green fields, but upon closer inspection one sees signs of a battle that does not appear to be abating.

Locals here have been waging an incessant campaign against a proposed nuclear power plant that was supposed to be operational in 2012 and which is currently sitting idle 24 kilometres from the tourist town of Kanyakumari, located on the southern tip of the Indian peninsula.

A recent report by a group of prominent Indian researches has now added another issue to a long list of grievances with the Kudankulam Nuclear Power Project (KKNPP) that activists and residents have been compiling since August 2011: evidence of faulty material used in the construction of the plant itself.

Plans for the plant were first drawn up in 1988 under a bilateral agreement between Russia and India, but various political obstacles kept construction on hold for over a decade. It was not until 2001 that a fresh attempt was made to jump-start the 3.1-billion-dollar venture, which has an installed capacity of 1,000 megawatts (MW).

Fishermen and their families protesting against the Kudankulam Nuclear Power Plant. Credit K. S. Harikrishnan/IPS

Things were moving smoothly until news of the meltdown at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear reactor in Japan in March 2011 went viral. Fearing a repeat performance of the tragedy, locals here took to the streets, protesting lax safety standards and possible nuclear radiation in the event of an accident.

The government has refused to address protestors’ concerns, instead issuing blanket assurances that the plant has been constructed using state of the art instrumentation and contains a passive cooling system and other mechanisms that will enable it to withstand natural disasters like earthquakes and tsunamis.

Nalinish Nagaich, executive director of the National Power Corporation of India Limited (NPCIL), has repeatedly insisted that the equipment installed in the power station has undergone multi-stage quality checks.

Last month, in a 247-page ruling, a division bench of the Supreme Court of India consisting of Justices K.S. Radhakrishnan and Dipak Misra dismissed protestors’ concerns as “baseless”, adding: “The benefits we reap from KKNPP are enormous since nuclear energy remains an important element in India’s energy mix, which can replace a significant (quantity) of fossil fuels like coal, gas (and) oil.”

But new information brought to light in ‘Scandals in the Nuclear Business’, a report published by Dr. V. T. Padmanabhan, a member of the European Commission on Radiation Risk, exposes cracks in the government’s position and highlights the potential crises arising from the use of faulty parts.

According to the study, the Reactor Pressure Vessel (RPV), considered to be the “heart” of a nuclear station, has been built using an outdated, three-decade old model. In addition, various pieces of equipment supplied by Russia have been found to be faulty.

The report has only deepened a crisis of confidence that surfaced earlier this year when Russian Federal prosecutors booked Sergei Shutov, procurement director of the Russian company ZiO-Podolsk that supplied vital equipment to the KKNPP, on corruption charges.

Shutov was charged with “having sourced cheaper sub-standard steel for manufacturing components that were used in Russian nuclear installations in Bulgaria, Iran, China and India”, according to a joint letter sent by over 60 scientists to the chief ministers of Kerala and Tamil Nadu.

The New Delhi-based Coalition for Nuclear Disarmament and Peace (CNDP) has expressed serious concern over the recent scam, calling it a direct violation of the Atomic Energy Regulatory Board (AERB)’s safety norms.

Back in April, following a series of tests, the AERB itself acknowledged that four valves in the KKNPP were defective and ordered the NPCIL to replace the parts and surrender itself for review by the regulatory authority, before resuming construction.

World Nuclear News reported last month that “technical issues discovered during the commissioning of Unit One have necessitated the replacement of several valves in the passive core cooling system, leading to further delays” in the commissioning of the KKNPP.

Dr. A Gopalakrishnan, former chairman of AERB, has urged the government to put an immediate stop to the project until allegations of corruption and faulty equipment have been adequately addressed, and the safety and quality of the parts used to house the reactor have been determined.

Police crack down on women protesting against the Kudankulam nuclear plant in India. Credit: K. S. Harikrishnan/IPS.

“The fact that a high-cost, high-risk nuclear reactor is (thought to have) defects…in its components and equipment even before it (has started operating) is highly unusual, and indicates gross failures at several levels in the AERB-NPCIL-Atomstroyexport (triumvirate),” he said, referring to Russia’s national nuclear vendor that stands accused of supplying low-quality parts to India.

N. Sahadevan, environmentalist and prominent campaigner against nuclear arsenals, told IPS that the recent scandal necessitated a “thorough re-examination of the safety aspects of the plant.”

Furthermore, according to Supreme Court Lawyer Prashant Bhushan, the NPCIL, which operates the KKNPP, has failed to comply with the 17 post-Fukushima safety recommendations made by a special AERB committee.

Meanwhile, thousands of villagers in and around Kudankulam continue their daily, peaceful demonstrations.

S. P. Udayakumar, leader of the People’s Movement Against Nuclear Energy, told IPS that the Fukushima catastrophe categorically proved that nuclear power projects are not aligned with the welfare of the people, especially those living in the vicinity, and are incapable of providing any kind of “security”, energy or otherwise.

Activists have also exposed discrepancies in the government’s claim that nuclear power is crucial for the Indian economy, pointing out that the country currently has just 4,880 MW of existing capacity, “which contribute to only 2.7 percent of the total electricity generation in the country,” according to Dr. E. A. S. Sarma, former Union Power Secretary of India.

Banana vendors in Chennai, South India. Credit: McKay Savage/CC-BY-2.0

India’s environmental and food security activists who have so far succeeded in stalling attempts to introduce genetically modified (GM) food crops into this largely farming country now find themselves up against a bill in parliament that could criminalise such opposition.

“Popular opposition to the introduction of GM crops is the result of a campaign launched by civil society groups to create awareness among consumers,” said Devinder Sharma, food security expert and leader of the Forum for Biotechnology and Food Security. “Right now we are opposing a plan to introduce GM bananas from Australia.”

Sharma told IPS that if the BRAI bill becomes law such awareness campaigns will attract stiff penalties. The bill provides for jail terms and fines for “whoever, without any evidence or scientific record misleads the public about the safety of organisms and products…”

Suman Sahai, who leads ‘Gene Campaign’, an organisation dedicated to the conservation of genetic resources and indigenous knowledge, told IPS that “this draconian bill has been introduced in parliament without taking into account evidence constantly streaming in from around the world about the safety risks posed by GM food crops.”

She said that Indian activists are now studying a new report published in the peer-reviewed Organic Systems Journal by Judy Carmen at Flinders University in Adelaide, Australia, showing evidence that pigs fed on GM corn and soy are likely to develop severe stomach inflammation.

“The new bill is not about regulation, but the promotion of the interests of food giants trying to introduce risky technologies into India, ignoring the rights of farmers and consumers,” Sahai said. “It is alarming because it gives administrators the power to quell opposition to GM technology and criminalise those who speak up against it.”

The past month has seen stiff opposition to plans to introduce GM bananas into India by a group of leading NGOs that includes the Initiative for Health & Equity in Society, Guild of Services, Azadi Bachao Andolan, Save Honey Bees Campaign, Navdanya and Gene Ethics in Australia.

These groups are seeking cancellation of a deal between the Queensland University of Technology (QUT) and India’s biotechnology department to grow GM bananas here.

Vandana Shiva, who leads the biodiversity conservation organisation Navdanya, and is among India’s top campaigners against GM crops, told IPS that such food crop experiments pose a “direct threat to India’s biodiversity, seed sovereignty, indigenous knowledge and public health by gradually replacing diverse crop varieties with a few patented monocultures.”

She fears that an attempt is being made to control the cultivation of bananas in India through patents by “powerful men in distant places, who are totally ignorant of the biodiversity in our fields.”

India produces and consumes 30 million tonnes of bananas annually, followed by Uganda which produces 12 million tonnes and consumes the fruit as a staple.

India’s National Research Centre for Banana (NRCB), which has preserved more than 200 varieties of the fruit, is a partner in the GM banana project. Others include the Indian Institute of Horticulture Research, the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC) and Tamil Nadu Agricultural University.

With so much official involvement there are fears that GM bananas may eventually find their way into nutrition programmes run by the government. “There is a danger that GM bananas will be introduced into such programmes as the integrated child development scheme and the midday meals for children,” Shiva said.

India’s Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS), the world’s largest integrated early childhood programme, began in 1975 and now covers 4.8 million expectant and nursing mothers and over 23 million children under the age of six. Bananas are included as part of the meals served in many of the 40,000 feeding centres.

QUT’s Prof. James Dale, who leads the project, has, in interviews given to Australian media, justified the GM experiment by saying that it will “save Indian women from childbirth death due to iron deficiency.”

According to studies conducted by the International Institute for Population Sciences in Mumbai, more than 50 percent of Indian women and more than 55 percent of  pregnant women in India are anaemic. It is estimated that 25 percent of maternal deaths are due to complications arising out of anemia.

In a Mar. 9, 2012 interview with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, Dale said, “One of the major reasons around iron is that a large proportion of the Indian population are vegetarians and it’s very difficult in a vegetarian diet to have intake of sufficient iron, particularly for subsistence farming populations.

“India is the largest producer of bananas in the world but they don’t export any; all of them are consumed locally. So it’s a very good target to be able to increase the amount of iron in bananas that can then be distributed to…the poor and subsistence farmers.”

Dale denied in the interview that there were risks to existing Indian banana strains and said because bananas were sterile there is no danger that the genes being introduced will enter and destroy other varieties.

But experts like Shiva have challenged Dale’s claim. She said Australian scientists are using a virus that infects the banana as a promoter and that this could spread through horizontal gene transfer.

“All genetic modification uses genes from bacteria and viruses and various studies have shown that there are serious health risks associated with GM foods,” she stressed, adding that there are safer, cheaper and more natural ways to add iron to diets.

India is the world’s biggest grower of fruits and vegetables with many varieties naturally rich in iron. “Good sources of dietary iron in India included turmeric, lotus stem, coconut, mango (and) amaranth…there is no need to genetically modify banana, a sacred plant in India,” she said.

Attempts by IPS to contact Dale directly and separately through QUT’s press relations department on the risks from horizontal gene transfer and the possible danger to public health failed to elicit any response.

According to Shiva there is a concerted move by food corporations to control important food crops and staples in their centres of origin. “We have seen GM corn introduced into Mexico and there was a determined attempt to introduce GM brinjal in India.”

In February 2010, the then minister for environment, Jairam Ramesh, ordered a moratorium on the brinjal project and his action was seen as a major blow to the introduction of GM food crops in India.

“If the new bill is passed, we could have a reversed situation and projects like GM bananas will be quickly cleared with the backing of the government – and it will only be a matter of time before India becomes a GM banana republic,” Sharma said.

In June, New York state legislature will vote on a bill that will increase protection for sex trafficking victims. Credit: Bigstock

It started for Ruth when she was 12 years old and for Lowyal when she was 13. After being raped by her mother’s boyfriend, Ruth ran away from home and was picked up by a pimp, who sold her into prostitution.

Lowyal, bullied at school and facing a deteriorating situation at home, dropped out of school and eventually began working on the streets. In a drawing Lowyal created to depict this traumatic time in her life, a wide eye reflects a city skyline as red flames curl at the bottom, with menacing faces on both sides.

This month, New York’s legislature will vote on the New York Trafficking Victims and Protection and Justice Act (TVPJA), which would give more protection to girls like Ruth and Lowyal, and harsher punishments for those who trafficked them. It is part of the Women’s Equality Act that supporters hope will be voted on before the legislative session ends Jun. 20.

Equality Now, an international human rights organisation, is working with the Jewish Child Care Association and the New York State Anti-Trafficking Coalition to get the law passed.

The organisation is encouraging supporters to send letters to Governor Andrew Cuomo, Assemblyman Sheldon Silver, and State Senator Dean G. Skelos.

The TVPJA will direct resources to toughening laws to target and arrest pimps and buyers rather than victims. And under the new law, penalties for buying sex from a minor will be similar to those for statutory rape.

The law would also mean that all prostituted persons under the age of 18 are treated as trafficking victims instead of criminals in the state of New York. Currently, 16- and 17-year-olds arrested for prostitution are prosecuted as adults.

“There are two provisions that we are having a hard time with and [are] getting opposition to,” Lauren Hersh, New York director of Equality Now, told IPS. Hersh is perplexed as to why these provisions are problematic.

The first is making sex trafficking a violent felony in New York State, which would send a message to law enforcement that trafficking is a violent crime, Hersh explained.

“Talk to any sex trafficking victim, and they’ll tell you how violent it is,” she added.

The second is aligning New York state law with U.S. federal law, which does not require prosecutors to prove that minors were coerced into sexual acts. Under the current law, with most cases in New York, victims have to testify in court, Hersh said.

“The New York State assembly is historically against raising penalties,” Emily Amick, staff attorney at Sanctuary for Families and legislative director for the New York State Anti-Trafficking Coalition, told IPS.

“The law needs to evolve,” Amick said. “Albany is letting politics get in the way of helping people,” she added, with state lawmakers who oppose these provisions working against the livelihoods and futures of sex trafficking victims.

Despite some opposition, Hersh sees the bill as “excellent and comprehensive”.

The fact that women and girls are being trafficked not only inside U.S. borders, but also within city limits, may be a surprise to some people, Hersh said.

“When people think of sex trafficking, they often only think of women and girls being smuggled across international borders. But sex trafficking is happening within New York City, and many of its victims are American-born,” Hersh said in a statement.

Legislative justice is one part of the solution. Sexually exploited girls like Ruth and Lowyal should also be given a voice in the process of advocacy and justice, Hersh said. Project IMPACT, a New York-based programme that allows trafficking victims to share their stories, if and how they choose to, is one way to do so.

“I think telling my story matters because it could help other girls like me,” Veronica, another formerly trafficked girl, said, after sharing her story at Project IMPACT. “Storytelling is important because I lived this – I’m the one who knows what it’s really like.”

Ruth, Lowyal and Veronica are part of Gateways, a residential treatment program for commercially sexually exploited youth that is run by the Jewish Child Care Association and allows them to rebuild their lives and self-esteem. Some Gateways residents visited Albany in May to lobby for the bill’s passing.

Reliable statistics on sex trafficking are difficult to obtain due to the hidden and underground nature of the crime, according to Hersh, but a 2010 State Department report put the number of people trafficked to the United States each year at around 15,000.

Two million children are exploited each year in the international commercial sex trade, according to 2012 data from the International Labour Organisation, which also estimates that women and girls make up 98 percent of sex trafficking victims.

And in the United States, while little data is available for the number of victims, the FBI estimates that 293,000 American children and teenagers are at risk of becoming victims of commercial sexual exploitation.

“The only way we’re going to have justice in New York is to pass this bill in its entirety,” Hersh told IPS.

An estimated half of fresh produce in Papua New Guinea is lost between harvesting and marketing. Credit: Catherine Wilson/IPS

With less than three years before a 2015 deadline, the developing world is largely expected to miss one of the U.N.’s key Millennium Development Goals (MDGs): halving the number of people living in extreme poverty and hunger.

Despite limited progress, there are still more than 1.4 billion people – out of a total global population of over seven billion – who live below the poverty line of 1.25 dollars and on the razor edge of starvation.

“This was made possible by the priority the government has set on ensuring the right to food and polices it has implemented,” says FAO Director-General Jose Graziano da Silva.

The 16 countries – namely Armenia, Azerbaijan, Chile, Cuba, Fiji, Georgia, Ghana, Guyana, Nicaragua, Peru, Samoa, Sao Tome and Principe, Thailand, Uruguay, Venezuela and Viet Nam – will be honoured at an FAO ceremony in Rome on Jun. 16.

Meanwhile, in a report released last month, a high-level panel of eminent persons has projected a 2030 deadline to eradicate extreme poverty and hunger from the face of the earth.

But how realistic is this new deadline?

Ambassador Ernest Corea, who served for nearly 19 years on the staff of the World Bank’s secretariat for the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR), told IPS: “On the quicksand of development, predictions are dangerous.”

Two missed monsoons could upend whatever progress has been made towards reaching this goal, he noted.

“Still, it is better to reach out towards a worthwhile objective than to do nothing at all.”

Hunger is a cruel and debilitating scourge. Malnutrition, often the by-product of hunger, causes the deaths of three million children per year, he added.

“Reversing this tragic situation is a goal worth striving for,” said Corea, a former Sri Lankan ambassador to the United States.

Dr. Joan Russow of the Canada-based Global Compliance Research Project told IPS one of the reasons for the failure of the MDG1 might have been because the urgency was not effectively communicated by using the word “halving”.

The goal should have been “eradicating extreme hunger and poverty and then delineating the drastic means to do so,” she said.

“It will only be possible to do so in 2030 if the global community drastically alters current global practices,” said Russow, a longtime peace and environmental activist.

These include, at a minimum, prohibiting land grabs for biofuel production around the world; establishing a global ban on genetically engineered food and crops, promoting organic agriculture and instituting a fair and just transition for farmers and communities affected by the ban.

Additionally, she said, there should be a ban on the production and use of pesticides such as neonicotinoids, which have been destroying the world’s honeybee population.

Frederic Mousseau, policy director at the San Francisco-based Oakland Institute, an independent policy think tank, told IPS the 2007-2008 food price crisis has mostly resulted in wishful thinking at international conferences that food security can be accomplished.

“However, silver bullet policy solutions, for instance suggesting foreign investment in agriculture will result in food security, ignore the unprecedented land rush over the last five years to grab the natural resources – land, water, forests – that the poorest depend on for their livelihoods.”

He said: “We know there are enough resources to feed everyone; it is therefore possible to eradicate hunger by 2030.”

However, this would require a major overhaul of current food security and development policies, which would have to focus on supporting the livelihoods of the rural poor in developing countries, protecting their rights to land and access and control over natural resources and promoting sustainable production methods.

Corea pointed out it would be a worthwhile exercise for a small working group convened by the FAO to review the record of the 16 countries and determine what common policies and practices among them contributed to their success.

Was it good governance? A crackdown on corruption? The development through research of enhanced sustainable productivity? Something else?

The findings of such a review would be invaluable to other countries.

Russow told IPS there are also other urgent issues that have to be resolved in order to eradicate hunger by 2030, including climate change.

She said there should be a substantial reduction in greenhouse gas emissions – primarily by conserving carbon sinks, ending subsidies to fossil fuel industries and by seriously phasing out the production and use of fossil fuels and abandoning an animal-based diet in favour of a vegetarian diet.

She also called for a substantial reduction in global military budgets, and investments in socially equitable and environmentally sound transportation, and energy, such as wind, solar and geothermal power.

Russow said there should be a revoking of the charters of transnational corporations, which, in pursuing unsustainable exploitative development, have destroyed food security around the world.

And the world should abide by the legally binding International Covenant on Social and Economic Rights, reaffirming that everyone has the right to be free from hunger and enshrining the right to food and drinking water.

She said it is necessary to move away from the over-consumptive model of consumption and towards an effective programme of conservation, coupled with a serious reduction of the ecological footprint.

Additionally, Russow said, there should be a cancellation of the “devastating debt of developing states”, and the abandoning of structural adjustment programmes by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the elimination of the World Bank’s ill-conceived projects.

"I'm happy being a prostitute," says the HIV/AIDS prevention campaign poster that was subsequently withdrawn. Credit: Beijo da Rua

Happiness, the subject of endless philosophical discussions, has now become the focus of controversy in an HIV/AIDS prevention campaign aimed at prostitutes in Brazil. The campaign chief has been booted out and a further question has been raised: What are the limits of popular participation in the definition of public policies?

Before the Health Ministry campaign was even broadcast, shocked conservative sectors complained that it condoned prostitution.

As part of a strategy against HIV/AIDS, the slogan “Sou feliz sendo prostituta” (I’m happy being a prostitute) arose from national debates and workshops involving the targeted participants.

“(The slogan) expresses the dignity of our profession. To remove that phrase is a violation of our rights, especially because of the social stigma we suffer,” said Leila Barreto, of the Group of Women Prostitutes in the northern state of Pará.

The campaign, run by the department of sexually transmitted diseases (STD), AIDS and hepatitis, resulted in the dismissal of the head of department, Dirceu Greco, and the resignation of two assistant directors.

“It was a great disappointment,” Barreto told IPS. “The stronger we are, the less vulnerable we will be to diseases, unless society says: these women do not exist. But they do exist, and their work contributes to society,” she said.

The anti-AIDS campaign, which had not been authorised by the ministry’s advisory office for communications, included other statements such as “O sonho maior é que a sociedade nos veja como cidadãs” (Our greatest dream is for society to see us as citizens). It had barely gone out over the internet on Jun. 2, International Sex Workers Day, before it was withdrawn.

The version that replaced it reverted to the old-fashioned style: advice to sex professionals about the importance of using condoms and encouraging them to seek preventive measures in public hospitals.

“Prostituta que se cuida usa sempre camisinha” (Prostitutes who take care of themselves always use condoms) says the new campaign, which seeks to “strengthen tolerance” and “eliminate prejudice”.

In Brazil, AIDS is concentrated in the big cities, where most of the at-risk groups are to be found. Prevalence is 5.9 percent among drug users, 10.5 percent among men who have sex with men and 4.9 percent among women professional sex workers.

Each year there are on average 37,000 new HIV/AIDS cases in this country of more than 198 million people, where an estimated 530,000 people are HIV-positive, 150,000 of whom do not know that they are infected.

“The preventive measures we advocate work for any person, whether they are ‘happy or sad.’ It is not the Health Ministry’s business to make assessments of the state of mind of individual persons,” a communiqué from the ministry said.

Some people complain of a “regression” in Brazil’s anti-HIV/AIDS strategy, which was considered one of the boldest and most effective in the world.

“Brazil taught the world, with the concept of AIDS prevention, that at-risk and historically excluded populations like homosexuals, prostitutes and drug addicts are citizens who have rights, and that this is the stance to take when speaking of prevention,” Agustín Rojo, an Argentine expert on communications and HIV, told IPS.

But in this country, where conservative evangelical churches have great political clout, “there is a risk of ‘killing the programme off’ by mixing religion with public health,” said George Gouveia, of the Grupo pela VIDDA, an HIV/AIDS patients self-help group.

That risk is already a reality in the view of Greco, who attributes his dismissal to disagreements “over a policy based on human rights and valuing the populations that are most at risk,” due to a conflict with “the conservative policy of the present government” of centre-left President Dilma Rousseff.

He mentioned other cases as examples, such as the banning of a carnival video that showed a relationship between two men, and a cartoon strip for schools on homophobia and sexuality.

“They can’t treat us as if we were in the closet. If they don’t grant us visibility, we will continue to feel that our rights are curtailed,” Julio Moreira, the president of the gay rights group Arco Iris, told IPS.

In Rojo’s view, the issue is that the state “should allow sectors that are discriminated against to have a voice and visibility, in order for society first to recognise their existence and then to listen to them – but it is not for the state to take on each and every one of their positions.

“When a woman who is paid for sex publicly says that she feels happy, she is expressing more than a personal feeling. To be perfectly clear, she is stating a political position,” said Rojo, a sociologist who has coordinated official policies in Argentina on AIDS and other STDs.

In this case, “being happy” with what one does, like being “proud” of one’s sexual orientation, is a legitimate vindication of a social group, he said.

But the expression “cannot be transferred automatically to a government-run mass media campaign, because it will not be easily understood by everyone. The state has no business telling prostitutes they cannot be happy, but it shouldn’t applaud, or not applaud, their choices,” Rojo said.

“On the other hand, if any citizen, whether a prostitute, transvestite or drug addict, does not have access to condoms to take care of his or her health, or does not know how to use them or where to go for help – this is a problem for the state to address, whether in the case of a sex worker or a homemaker, a homosexual or a heterosexual,” he said.

Brazilian Health Minister Alexandre Padilha made similar comments. “I respect the groups and movements who wish to send that message (about being happy), but that is their role,” he said.

Now discussions are centred on the scope of a call for social participation in real politics.

“Designing a campaign for gays, prostitutes or prisoners is in itself a recognition that grants dignity to these persons,” Rojo said.

“It puts them on a level with the rest of the citizenry…which is a powerful political decision. It confronts stigma from the heights of power, with the message that ‘we do not care only about rich heterosexuals, but also about poor gays, prostitutes, transsexuals and so on, because to us they are all equal’,” he said.

“By selecting only one particular message among those created by the workshops, the government is rejecting the concept of equality, because prostitutes are denied the right to express their dreams and ideals of citizenship, and the affirmation of their identity and social visibility,” said Gabriela Leite of Davida, a sex workers’ group.

She said it was “arrogant to believe that a prostitute can’t be happy.”

A profile of Brazilian prostitutes drawn up by the Health Ministry contributes to the quantification of this relative happiness.

The majority of female sex workers are between the ages of 20 and 29, have not completed primary school, and are proud of being able to support their children. They do not suffer discrimination in the public health service, they like the freedom of their work, and they consider that it pays better than other jobs.

However, they feel humiliated and discriminated against, they avoid telling others what they do, especially their children, and they are forced to put up with unpleasant clients and those who refuse to wear condoms.

Over the years Zanzibar’s sea levels have risen to erode beaches and contaminate some of the island’s fresh water supply. Credit: Giandomenico Pozzi/CC by 2.0

Khadija Komboani’s nearest well is filled with salt water thanks to the rising sea around Tanzania’s Indian Ocean island of Zanzibar.

And until recently, the 36-year-old mother of 12 from Nungwi village in Unguja on the northernmost part of Zanzibar, spent most of her day walking to her nearest fresh water supply to collect safe drinking water.

“The water is very salty so it can’t be used for anything. You will use a lot of soap and water if you use it for washing clothes or dishes. Another difficulty is that you can’t use it for cooking or drinking. That is why we had to walk for long distances to collect water from fresh water wells,” Komboani tells IPS.

According to Zanzibar’s Department of Environment, rising sea levels have resulted in seawater mixing with fresh water supplies and contaminating the wells here. Zanzibar does not have rivers and the main source of water remains groundwater, which depends on the currently erratic rainfall. 

But thankfully, for Komboani, the experience of spending hours collecting water is now just a memory, since the implementation of a project to supply clean and safe water to households in her village.

In October 2012, the Africa Adaptation Programme (AAP) of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) constructed an eight-km pipeline from Kilimani village, in the interior, to Nungwi village, which lies along the coast. A huge water tank near Kilimani village sustains the water supply.

The AAP, a climate change programme implemented in 21 African countries, aims to assist Tanzania with the development of climate-smart policies and climate change adaptation projects.

Meanwhile, the 15,000 people from Nungwi village now have access to water 24 hours a day, which can be sourced from taps and reservoir tanks.

Komboani says that since the water project was introduced, she now has more time to concentrate on her business of selling snacks. She says she earns approximately five dollars a day from this.

“I don’t have to worry about waking up early to collect water anymore. I use the time to engage in other productive activities, such as selling snacks and working in my vegetable garden.

“My husband used to accuse me of being unfaithful when I would return home late from the well. I am now glad that we have peace in our home,” she says.

Not only has it brought peace to Komboani’s home, but the easy access to drinking water has saved many women and girls from unwanted marriages.

Zanzibar’s North A district commissioner, the equivalent of a governor, Tatu Mganga, says her office had to intervene several times when they heard about women being married off so they could be used to fetch water for their new husbands.

“Such incidents were common and we had to intervene and rescue girls when we heard these stories,” Mganga tells IPS.

She says that while everyone in Nungwi village was affected by the shortage, women and children suffered the most because they were responsible for fetching water for their families.

Mganga says that the lives of the people from Nungwi village and its surrounding areas have now changed for the better.

“Almost all the people living in the area now have access to clean and safe water. Families can now wash their hands and clothes, and bathe properly. Subsequently, there has been improved sanitation,” says Mganga.

UNDP country director for Tanzania, Philippe Poinsot, tells IPS that the AAP is focused on improving the supply of clean and safe water to households through pilot projects.

“Women and children were walking for too long to fetch water from dirty surface water points (and consumption of this water) had accelerated ill health,” Philippe says. The rampant use of unclean water in Nungwi village led to an increase in pneumonia and skin diseases. Local health authorities say there has since been a decrease in these cases.

Ally Jabir Haiza, Zanzibar’s district health officer, tells IPS that the water from shallow wells along the island’s coast was tested and found to be excessively salty. This, he explains, impacted on healthcare in the area. In Unguja, a newly built maternity ward could not be used because of the shortage of clean water.

“Students too could not concentrate on their studies because they were frequently worried about fetching water when they returned home. And they were already tired when they commenced their lessons in the morning (from going to fetch water before school).

“Sometimes new mothers from Nungwi, who were experiencing postpartum stress, were forced to walk down the three-km road to fetch water from the nearest fresh water well,” says Hiza.

But now that fresh water is being piped in, the residents of Nungwi village have access to more water – some 20 litres per day compared to the five litres a day they collected from their nearest fresh water wells.

According to Sheha Mjanja, director of environment in Zanzibar’s Vice President’s Office, several surveys conducted over the past 10 years have confirmed that the island is vulnerable to the impact of climate change, particularly rising sea levels and beach erosion.

“The impact of climate change in Nungwi village is one of the biggest challenges at the moment. The water is quickly eating into the land and we fear the situation could worsen,” Mjanja tells IPS.

Mjanja adds that rising sea levels could cause a serious water shortage on the island as salt water is increasingly seeping into the ground water supply.

He says that the government is currently preparing a strategy paper to address the impact of climate change here and hopes to involve the private sector in implementing solutions.

Meanwhile, the elders here are witness to the impact climate change has had on this island. One community elder, 58-year-old Masoud Haji, tells IPS that over the years sea levels have risen about 80 metres.

“In December, we didn’t see any rains, compared to when I was young. The ocean was far from the shore, but it has now risen … the villages used to be far from the shore, but now everyone lives close to the ocean,” Haji says.